Endgame

wings extended out at forty-five-degree angles in a V pattern and were slightly hooked at their ends, like a bat’s.

Exercising extreme care, Hansen unfolded those wings, tested to be sure they were locked in place, then activated the bat via its smart-phone-sized remote with touch screen. He carefully slipped it through the hole he’d cut in the window, then gave the bat a slight shove, and it immediately took to the wind. With a barely perceptible buzz from its tiny motor, the bat headed toward the airport as Hansen worked the touch-screen controls and adjusted the main camera to point down at the airport. Meanwhile, Zhao’s chopper drew closer. The gusts were increasing in strength and frequency, and it was all Hansen could do to maintain control of the little plane.

Then, without warning, the signal from the bat turned to static. Hansen checked his OPSAT. Same thing.

Someone was jamming him.

9

Sergei left the keys in the ignition and quietly stepped out of the car. He eased the door shut. The snow and wind immediately cut across his face, forcing him to turn up his collar. He squinted as he turned back to Ames, who crossed to the driver’s side.

They had taken a dirt road through a forest adjoining the airport and had pulled off into the brush so Sergei could move in from the west, hopefully undetected.

“If you leave me here,” Sergei began in a warning tone.

“Why would I do that? You need to finish the job, and I need to collect the video.”

Sergei gave a little snort. “Right. But after I hand you the video, you won’t give me the money. You’ll kill me.”

“That’s a chance you have to take. You walk away now, and we push that special button.”

Hissing, Sergei slipped the camera into his deep front pocket. “I’m not sure I can find him.”

“I’m jamming his OPSAT, his SVT, and his little spy plane. He’s deaf and blind. He’ll get in closer. He has to.”

“Whatever you say.”

Sergei took a deep breath and started away from the car, the snow already collecting on his shoulders. He saw a fuel truck parked beside the easternmost hangar. He’d have cover from the group and a good view of the west side of the airport, Hansen’s most likely route of advance because of the drainage ditches and better cover.

Sergei glanced back one last time at Ames, who was inside the car and on his satellite phone, then stopped and thought for a moment.

He could go back now and kill the little bastard. Just be done with it. Then he would find and warn Hansen. He could do the right thing, and maybe Grim and the rest of Third Echelon would deem him a hero for exposing their mole, even though he’d been one himself. Maybe they’d reconsider their decision to drop him from the Splinter Cell program. He could save Hansen now. He still had that chance.

But Victoria… They would kill her. And then, yes, they would come for him. The consequences were that simple… and that deadly.

Sergei pushed on through the trees, ducking below low-hanging boughs as the whomping of the helicopter resounded like a racing heart.

* * *

Hansen had darted out of the church and dropped down into a long embankment running parallel to a service road near the main airstrip. He’d seen how several culverts could provide fast and temporary cover before choosing his course, and he dropped into one drainage pipe just as the chopper thundered overhead and descended toward the helipad. He waited there for another few seconds, then slipped back out, dropped to his hands and knees, and crawled forward for a better view of the pad — about two hundred yards away.

He wasn’t sure if the people on board the chopper or Sergei or someone else was jamming him, but he still had no contact with Grim and no electronic surveillance of the area via the COM-BAT plane, which now was circling the airport in an endless loop, waiting for its next set of instructions. Sergei’s silence raised questions about him; but, then again, maybe he, too, was being jammed, and his signal had been cut off before Hansen’s. He wanted so badly to give the man the benefit of the doubt, but a more powerful sense told him, No, you can’t trust him anymore. He’s turned.

The chopper pitched up, but the pilot was skilled enough to lower the bird into a hard but efficient landing despite the crosswinds.

Bratus, Zhao, and Murdoch had moved back toward the hangars and were shielding their faces from the rotor wash as the engine began to wind down. Hansen also noted that while the window was down on Bratus’s car, the driver was no longer there. He scanned the area. No sign of him. Hmm.

It took several moments before the door on the chopper finally popped. Here we go, Hansen thought. This was either going to get very enlightening or very frustrating, depending upon what he could capture with the laser microphone in this weather and with all that rotor wash.

* * *

After making his phone call, Ames got out of the car, donned a black balaclava to conceal his face, and followed Sergei’s boot prints until he reached a stand of trees on the edge of the airport grounds. He sat on his haunches beside a thick oak, shivering. From this vantage point, he could survey most of the airport with his pair of 18 ? 50 all-weather binoculars.

Within ten seconds, he spotted Sergei crouched down near the fuel truck. The fool was partially exposed and easily identifiable from this angle. Not so from where the agents and helicopter were positioned, but Ames would not have chosen that spot. Rookie.

Then, almost losing his breath, Ames spotted Hansen tucked in tightly along the embankment, surveying the scene with his trifocals and trying to listen in with his laser mic. He’d done an admirable, if imperfect, job of concealing himself from the group near the helicopter, but from the rear he was vulnerable, and that was when Ames noticed the monster of a man in a long coat and Soviet Army ushanka crouched over and drawing up behind Hansen. Unbelievable. Perhaps it was the wind or the continuing rotor wash from the chopper, but Hansen did not react to the guy’s approach. It was Bratus’s driver, and he was about to make contact.

No no no. This was not acceptable. Ames began to hyperventilate. If this fat ape reported trouble back to Bratus, then the meeting could go to hell. Ames looked to Sergei, still sitting there like a little bird in a nest, waiting for his mother. The fool! Ames flicked his gaze back to the helicopter, then back to the fat man, who was already on his phone. Ames’s mouth fell open.

* * *

Two men exited the chopper and moved toward the group, ducking slightly against the wash. Hansen zoomed in even more, and the floodlights from the hangar revealed both men as Asian, assumedly Chinese. They shook hands with Murdoch, Bratus, and Zhao, who steered them toward the chopper, where another pair of men was unloading a black Anvil case about the size of a coffin, with a pair of heavy locks. Hansen couldn’t get a good beam with his laser mic so he pocketed it and just observed.

Abruptly, Bratus raised a phone to his ear, then suddenly backed away from the group and drew a pistol.

“Oh, my God,” Hansen muttered aloud.

Even as the words came from his mouth, Bratus shot Zhao in the head; then he fired at Murdoch, striking him in the chest. Both men dropped to the icy tarmac.

But Bratus wasn’t finished. He shot the two men unloading the large case, then pushed into the open chopper and shot the pilot and copilot.

He killed everyone except Murdoch’s driver, who attempted to squeal away in his car, but not before Bratus put four bullets into the driver’s-side window and the car simply came to a slow halt on the tarmac.

Just then a baritone voice rose from behind Hansen: