took it. “Thank you, sir, for recovering the gold and helping my country.”
“You’re welcome. I do wish we could have gotten her.” He glanced up to Juma. “Any word yet?”
Juma shook his head. “Her helicopter went down near Al Lisaili, but there’s still no sign.”
The boy released Brent’s hand. “Captain, if there is anything I can ever do for you?”
Brent took a long breath. “Hold that thought. I may come looking for a favor sooner rather than later.”
Hussein nodded. “Anything you need. Just let me know.”
Two crew members from the chopper lifted Brent’s long backboard and carried him away. At his request, they placed him beside Lakota in the helicopter’s cramped bay. He reached over, took her hand, then raised his voice over the droning engines. “You did good, kid.”
She sighed. “You, too!”
He raised his head and spotted Voeckler and Schleck seated across from him. They were ragged, red-eyed, exhausted.
He took a deep breath. The rest of his team who’d been riding in the pickup truck was coming home in body bags. He closed his eyes and braced himself.
The guilt burned.
And burned. And burned.
The Snow Maiden stood over his bed, watching him sleep. He was a pathetic old man swollen with greed and with a terrible lust for power that had blinded him to the atrocities committed by his government. He had been schooled in the rules of success by a war hero father who’d taught him to crush those in his way, so even from the beginning there had been no hope for him. He was a schoolyard bully with a war machine at his disposal.
Her breath grew shallow as she considered shooting him. Ending it quickly. No words. Just instant gratification. Revenge served coldly, as it should be.
Instead she nudged his head with her pistol until he jolted awake.
She flicked on her penlight and shone it on her face, illuminating herself like some night creature.
“Viktoria, is that you?” he said, lifting his hand and squinting.
“Yes, General. Heinrich said you wanted to talk to me.”
“We assumed you were dead. Like him.”
“Another friend gave me a ride, although she’s no more trustworthy than you.”
“If you’ve come to kill me, then be done with it. I’m sixty-two and much too old to be insulted by you.”
“You’re fat and ignorant. And even with a gun to your head you still think you can give orders?”
“Viktoria, we didn’t kill your husband. Or your brothers. You’ve constructed this fantasy and turned us into murderers, when we are anything but.”
She jabbed the pistol into his forehead, and he groaned sharply. Then she climbed on top of him and began pressing the muzzle deeper and deeper into his flesh. “You don’t know anything about me.”
She began to tremble.
“Just shoot me!” he cried.
“I should,” she gasped, beginning to pant, her face warming with the desire to finish him now. “But I won’t. I can’t.”
“Then what do you want?”
“You’re coming with me.”
He stifled a laugh. “You’re going to kidnap me?”
“Yes. I need your help.”
“With what?”
“With killing the president. With bringing down the motherland. And then we will stand back and watch it burn.”
“You’re insane.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Viktoria, whatever you say. Whatever you want me to do, I will do.”
She pulled the pistol from his head and set it on the night table. “First you’ll satisfy my needs, then you pack. We have a long trip ahead of us.” She shoved her tongue down his throat and tore at his pajamas.
Igany Fedorovich rose from his desk as the Snow Maiden and Izotov strode into the room. Patti entered from a side door, and all four of them took seats around a small conference table.
“Please forgive the weapons search,” said Fedorovich. “But it was necessary. I’m sure you understand.”
“I hope this will be brief,” said Izotov.
The side door opened again, and the Snow Maiden lost her breath as in stepped Colonel Pavel Doletskaya, along with another woman, smartly dressed and at least ten years younger than Pavel. She seemed strangely familiar.
The Snow Maiden bolted from her chair and crossed to her old colleague and lover. His eyes were already glassy. He rushed to her, took her into his arms, and clutched her tightly, whispering, “There is nothing we have to say. We are together again, that is enough. You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this moment…”
Patti cleared her throat, and slowly, they broke their embrace and returned to their seats.
Fedorovich introduced the younger woman as Major Alice Dennison of the Joint Strike Force. She was the
“My God, woman, what have you done? She works for you?” asked Izotov, his jaw hanging open.
“And so do you.”
He recoiled.
“Our plan is to bring a peaceful end to the conflict, one which will be mutually beneficial to us all. We will cut the power lines of corruption in Washington, in Moscow, and in Paris in order to better stabilize the world’s economy and foster the health and welfare of all human beings. And when we’re finished, the world will, indeed, be a better place.”
Izotov began to chuckle. “Good luck with that. I’ve never heard a more ridiculous and naive plan.”
“When your surgery is completed, you will believe in it as fervently as we do,” Patti said, raising a welltweezed brow at him.
Izotov’s smile vanished. “Surgery?”
“It’s painless… and completely undetectable,” said Dennison, her eyes eerily vacant. “And when it’s over, you’ll feel a sense of freedom you’ve never felt before.”
A chill woke across the Snow Maiden’s shoulders. Dennison’s tone was unsettling, and the Snow Maiden wondered if Patti and Fedorovich were already controlling her and that everything she’d done this far was part of their master plan and that she’d never had free will. She’d been their instrument from the beginning. No, that couldn’t be true…. Could it?
“All right, let’s talk now about Dubai’s oil reserves,” Patti began.
It was about five P.M., and Brent sat alone in his usual corner booth. He’d been released from the hospital the day before. They’d kept him a bit longer than Lakota to perform a second surgery and had finally removed a piece of shrapnel that had been lodged in his back. He was scheduled to meet with Colonel Grey tomorrow morning, but the meeting was a formality. He was being reassigned to the JFK School, and his days in Ghost Recon were over. That news had come through the grapevine and was no surprise. He told himself he was all right with it.
Thomas Voeckler had been nursing a beer at the bar and finally came over to sit across from Brent. “Didn’t see you here.”
“And you call yourself a spy?”
