He began searching Hansen’s pockets and weapons belt, along with the pack, which he’d removed before setting him down. After the fat man moved the gear to a nearby table, he grabbed Hansen’s wrist, studied the OPSAT, whose touch screen remained dark, then decided to remove the device and toss it down with the other stuff.
Just then Hansen began to stir, his head lolling from right to left, and suddenly the fat man smacked him across the face. “Wake up! Wake up!”
Slowly Hansen lifted his head, glancing vaguely, and that was when the fat man reared back and delivered a solid blow to the jaw. Sergei flinched and glanced away for a moment, even as the Russian let loose another fist.
Then the bastard went over to the table, took something, and returned.
A blade sprang to life in his hand.
Sergei wasn’t sure he could watch any more of this. In his mind’s eye, he saw Hansen’s severed fingers dropping to the floor… then an ear… another ear… and shrieks of agony from his old friend.
“We know why you’ve come,” growled the fat man. “Now, if you tell me what I need to know, you will live.”
Like Sergei, Hansen had been trained on how to steel himself against torture, but you never really knew how you’d react until it was real. Would Hansen really hold it?
And then Sergei wondered why he was crouched there, just watching. Why hadn’t he already reacted? Would he let the fat man kill Hansen? Why not? Wasn’t it easier that way? But then, what about Victoria? He needed to ensure that she would not be harmed, and all he had left was the mission.
“You won’t break me.” Hansen gasped.
The fat man grinned and leaned over to stare directly into Hansen’s eyes. “It’s going to be a long night for both of us.”
Ames was at a precipice between sheer panic and utter violence. The bile was already gathering at the back of his throat, and he clutched his binoculars with a white-knuckled grip.
Then — as if watching Bratus kill everyone wasn’t enough, as if the universe had a personal vendetta against him, one Allen Ames, Third Echelon operative and NSA mole — someone from somewhere took a shot at the Russian operative, who’d been standing by his car, on the phone.
Bratus’s head snapped back like a PEZ dispenser, and he dropped out of sight behind his car.
Trembling and swearing aloud, Ames scanned the area. He searched the low-lying forest, the ditches, the hangar areas, and all along the service road.
It was as though the bullet had been fired by an apparition that had dematerialized into the night.
Now everyone — save Bratus’s fat driver, Hansen, and Sergei — was dead. Ames thought of that Anvil case inside Bratus’s car. If he could recover it… But there was a shooter out there.
As much as he hated the decision, Ames knew what he had to do. Nothing. Except watch.
Sergei slid from behind the tool cart, took aim at the fat man, and fired a single suppressed round into the back of the man’s head.
As the Russian fell forward, Sergei sighed and shrank behind the cart, just breathing and wondering if he could go through with the rest.
And then, for just a few seconds, his hackles rose and he sensed that someone else was inside the hangar.
He craned his neck, shot glances toward the big doors, the office, and all along the workstations. The shadows seemed to come alive as his paranoia grew, and he imagined a man dressed all in black and wearing trifocal goggles. He leapt down from an impossibly high rafter, stood before Sergei, and tore off his goggles.
It was Hansen, who took a deep breath and said,
Sergei ground his teeth, shuddered off the image, then reached into his breast pocket and dug out a cigarette. He placed it between his lips, stood, and moved around the cart.
Hansen had dug himself out from beneath the fat Russian and was lying there, asking questions.
Sergei barely heard the man. He grabbed his lighter, lit his cigarette, and took a long drag.
They talked, and it was a like dream, the words floating on currents of blood that wound their way through a dark forest at the end of which lay Victoria, on a stone altar, her hands folded over her chest, her skin alabaster white to match her diaphanous dress, which fell in great waves across the mossy earth.
Sergei took a deep breath and stared through the image and finally saw Hansen. There was so much he wanted to tell the man, but he feared that if he turned his apology into a speech, by the time he finished, his pistol would be back on his belt and he’d be helping Hansen off the floor.
All Sergei really wanted to do was thank Hansen for what he’d done in the past, for his unconditional friendship, for his belief that Sergei, despite his failures, could still make something of his life. Even Sergei’s own father did not believe in him the way Hansen had.
Hansen deserved the truth. At the very least. Sergei apologized and added, “They sent me to kill you.”
That was all he wanted to say.
But Hansen demanded the details, so without hesitation he supplied them. And again, he wanted to say so much more, to somehow justify what he was doing, but there were no words that could ever do that. All he could say was, “I didn’t want to see you suffer.”
When he showed Hansen the camera, his old friend cursed at him, and that was all right. That was natural. And that helped, didn’t it? It was better if the man hated him.
Sergei had been thinking about how they’d been trained to deal with torture, and now he would use the same methods to steel himself against the killing of a friend.
He was now a being of cold flesh and function.
Action. Reaction.
There was the camera, the tiny screen with its crystal-clear image of Hansen lying on the floor, glowering at him, but there were no emotions now, just the camera in one hand, the gun in the other, the cigarette dangling from his lips.
“You see, he is alive,” Sergei began for his audience of NSA thugs. “And now—”
A sharp pain woke deep inside his head, and for a heartbeat he thought he was falling forward, the world tipping on its side and framed in darkness.
He didn’t feel the concrete, but he sensed he was on it and realized with a curious resignation that he’d been shot, that he wouldn’t have to worry about forgiveness or about them killing Victoria or about a career or about anything else except what lay out there, waiting for him…
11
Hansen had braced himself for death. He’d always imagined that if he were captured, he would use his last breath to curse his enemy and never, ever be broken. It was one of those grand dramatic moments in his mind’s eye, brought fully to life by his inflated ego and his arrogance.
And, yes, at that second when he knew Sergei would not change his mind, that his buddy from the CIA would not only kill him but record the act for his bosses, Hansen had fulfilled that promise and taken the starring role in the climax of his life. He had cursed at Sergei, yes, but his thoughts had not focused with rage on what was happening. He could only ask two questions: Was it going to hurt? And was there something more beyond this life?
The questions hung before him even as he faced the ugly truth that his own runner had been blackmailed into turning against him, and that his death wasn’t going to be glorious or noble or memorable… just pathetic.
Then came another improbable turn of events as Sergei himself was taken out by a shooter so stealthy that Hansen had wondered if the shot had come from some higher power. His father would attribute the miracle to the “visitors” who’d always been here among us. No, a little green man or a “gray” had not saved Hansen. The bullet and the blood had been real, and while the shooter was seemingly incorporeal and godlike, those facts
