He dropped, legs limp, allowing him to wrench free, then he whirled and threw a forearm into her knee, kicking her legs out from under her. She'd tried to avoid the move, but she was an instant too late.
Down she went.
She rebounded with the agility of a tumbler, but he thrust a straight arm into her face, the heel of his palm pounding the tip of her nose.
She staggered, weaving from disorientation.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on- He punched her again and she collapsed across the row of wooden chairs, which clattered about, one of the legs breaking from the impact. A thin trickle of blood crawled down the corner of her mouth.
"You want some more?" he asked her, his breathing coming hard and fast. "Come on, and I'll give it to you."
His face surely had the look of coal, not candy. Or at least that's how his mother used to describe it. He'd been taught since childhood that hitting a woman was bad. But his parents had never met predators like Anya Petrova. Enough extra doses of testosterone flowed through her to disqualify the "Don't hit a woman ever" rule.
And there was still the matter of his beloved car.
Which this nutcase had shot to hell and back.
She stayed down. All her energy seemed spent.
He found his gun, then pressed his knee into her spine, pinning her to the floor.
"You're under arrest."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.
RUSSIA.
Cassiopeia hated helicopters worse than airplanes. The ones she'd been always compelled to ride inside seemed to bump and grind their way through the air, like a car on a pitted highway, and all to the deafening beat of powerful rotors. Compounding the experience here was the pitch dark, the cold, and her anxiety over what may have happened to Cotton. She'd been sent no new information from Stephanie and the briefing she'd received on landing at the air base did nothing to alleviate her fears. No word had been heard or seen of Cotton since his plane went down. Or at least no word the authorities were willing to pass on.
She decided the crash site would be her starting point, so a military chopper was ferrying her east toward Lake Baikal. She'd appreciated, though, the cold-weather gear, which definitely helped, and the officer in charge seemed quite accommodating. If she weren't mistaken he may actually have been flirting with her, which was the last thing she needed to deal with at the moment.
Clouds hung low in a freezing shroud and they skirted the air just beneath the ceiling. A rim of lights blurred by distance framed a halo around Irkutsk to the south. Over the years she'd learned to sleep in snatches, and she'd caught some rest on the jet flight east. She tried again now, hoping to take her mind off the fact that she was hundreds of meters off the ground in a machine that, technically, should not even be able to stay aloft. Like the bumblebee, she'd read once. Neither should be able to fly, but somehow both managed. The local time was approaching 11:00 P.M., but her body was still seven hours behind in France.
"The wreck site is twenty kilometers ahead," the voice said through her headset.
"How far is the dacha from that location?"
"Ten kilometers north."
She nodded at the officer sitting across from her. Two pilots manned the controls. Everything had been spoken in English, Stephanie suggesting that her linguistic skills be kept to herself. She'd learned Russian in college, along with a few other languages, thinking that one day they'd all come in handy. At the time she'd had no idea how handy. Though she might try to deny it, she liked the action, and enjoyed a good fight. Most of the intrigue she'd participated in had started from some personal motivation, mainly thanks to her old friend Henrik Thorvaldsen. God rest his soul. After Henrik died, she'd occasionally outright worked for Stephanie Nelle. Never for money, more as a favor, friend-to-friend.
But Utah changed all that.
Yet here she was, flying through Russia, headed to who-knew-what.
This time for love.
Malone engaged the clutch, then ground the shift into second and spun the wheel. The rear end swung wide, the low gear gripping the cold road. He floored the accelerator and turned up the high revs in a straightaway before working his way through the gears on a curve.
Bullets whizzed by.
The road clung to the side of a hill, a cathedral column of trees tightly packed along sharp embankments. The chassis slewed side-to-side on the occasional ice and crusted snow. He rode the clutch. Wind buffeted the cab, rocking the vehicle. Everything in the Goat rattled.
A side window shattered from a round.
Fragments of glass stung the back of his head and neck.
He was trying to be a difficult target but was not having much luck. The road found ground level and he moved out of the trees. To his right stretched the wide-open expanse of the lake, its frozen surface offering little cover. Yet there was something to be said for room to maneuver where he would not have to worry about slamming into a tree. So he angled the front end to the right, leaped the road, and tunneled through underbrush, leaving a rugged swath before emerging onto the ice.
The chattering of the weapon continued and a bullet sang off the Goat's interior. He decided to change things around, downshifting and swinging the vehicle hard left. With a foot on the clutch, the tires glided easily across the ice and he executed a smooth 180-degree spin. He then jammed the gearshift into second and accelerated straight toward his pursuer.
The action had clearly caught the two men behind him off guard and he swerved left and right to thwart any clear shot at his windshield. The other vehicle veered hard left to avoid a collision, which showed him that his pursuers may not have the stomach for this fight. He swung around in a wide arc and set his sights on the windshield on the other vehicle.
Headlights filled his rearview mirror.
A new player.
More gunfire came his way.
Cassiopeia stared down at the wreckage. A pair of night-vision goggles offered her a view of the burned-out hulk of a plane and the two bodies at either end. The Russians had already reported to Stephanie that there was no third corpse. She should take a look inside the cockpit. Stephanie was interested to see if Cotton's cell phone was there, as there'd been no signal from it for several hours. The Magellan Billet tracked its phones with sophisticated software and Stephanie had suggested a retrieval, if possible.
"We have a report of gunshots on the lake," she heard in Russian through her headphones.
"Where?" the officer-in-charge asked.
"Six kilometers north."
They hovered thirty meters over the ice.
She kept up the ruse of not understanding and asked in English, "What's going on?"
The officer explained.
"It could be him," she said.
The officer motioned for the pilots to fly that way.
Malone counted three more Goats, the vehicles fanned out in an attack pattern like fighter jets.
All that room on the lake worked both ways.
He definitely had a problem similar to the one back at the dacha with the cuffs and the iron pipe. He could keep going until he found the west shore, but that could be many miles. At least this time he was armed, as he'd brought along the assault rifle.
One of the Goats swung out, trying to flank him on the left, attempting to pass. He decided a little offense would be good, so he swerved its way, cutting in front and causing the other driver to make a fast decision.
Malone stamped on the brakes, gripped the wheel, and began skidding across the ice.
The other jeep veered left too fast, tires spinning upward, the vehicle twisting in the air then smashing back down on its side, sliding off with the grinding screech of metal on ice.
One down.
He straightened out the wheel and kept moving.
Cassiopeia saw a melange of headlights lancing the night. Four pairs were pursuing one pair, all of them moving fast. In the night-vision goggles she saw they were off-road vehicles, like jeeps. One tried to cut off the lead one, ending up on its side skidding across the lake. Relief, disbelief, anticipation, and exhilaration tumbled through her mind.
She knew who was driving the lead vehicle.
The chopper roared north, skimming low over the lake. She watched the officer across from her as he studied the scenario. She knew the icy surface below stretched many kilometers, and if she'd not come along Cotton might have had some trouble getting out of this predicament.
The least she owed him was to save his ass.
"Let's be sure it's him," she said in English.
The chopper swung around parallel to the chase. Through her night-vision goggles, in a faint reflection of dash lights, she saw a familiar face.
One it was good to see.
"It is," she said.
Through the goggles she also saw two figures emerge from the passenger side of following jeeps.
Both aimed rifles.
"Those are Kozliks. Military," she heard the pilot say to the officer in Russian.
"I know," he replied. "Which is a problem. Are we to fire on our own people?"
She noted their confusion, but could not reveal she understood the concern, so she simply said in English, "We need to do something."
Malone had no choice but to keep going. He was cold from the lack of a window, the Goat's heater doing little to abate the frigid night. He heard pops and realized the shooting had started again, single rounds becoming repeated bursts, the lake's smooth surface allowing for a better aim.
A few deep gulps of the cold air freed his brain.
Lights appeared in the sky before him, swooping down to a hundred or so feet off the ground. In the blackness, with nearly no illumination, it was hard to know exactly what had arrived. But the powerful heartbeat-like throb echoing around him signaled a helicopter.
He hoped Zorin did not have access to one.
The lights approached fast and he heard the distinctive sound of cannon fire. Since none of the rounds came his way, he assumed they were for his pursuers. In the rearview mirror he saw headlights scatter as the Goats broke formation. He whipped his head around and stared out the open rear window. The chopper was swinging for another pass, the Goats making a beeline away.
More cannon fire kept the taillights receding.
He slewed the front wheels into a sideways skid and stopped, but left the engine running. The chopper completed its assault and, seemingly satisfied that the problems were gone, swung back around and headed his way. He assumed it was the military to the rescue, which puzzled him, considering that the military may have been the ones after him.
The dark hulk of a gunship filled the sky. A light appeared in the rear cabin and framed a helmeted man crouched in an open hatch. Malone squinted against the blinding aurora. The rotors' throbbing clatter seemed earsplitting as the chopper made a final descent, the blades' downblast churning up a cauldron of snow.
Skids touched ice.
A figure hopped out and trotted his way.
In the penumbra of his headlights he began to see that the person was slim and small, clothed in a thick coat with a hood. Ten feet from the jeep he caught the dark hair and delicate features that showed a Spanish ancestry.
Then the face.
Cassiopeia.
She stopped at the Goat's front end and stared at him through the windshield. Her dark eyes projected love and concern. The sheer joy of seeing her lifted his heart. She stepped around to the driver's-side door, which he opened. There were so many things to be said, but the first word that came to mind seemed the most obvious.
Thanks.
He stepped from the truck, and before a sound could escape his mouth she brushed his lips with her gloved fingertips and said in a soft voice, "Don't speak."
Then she kissed him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.
WASHINGTON, DC.
Luke shoved Anya Petrova down into one of the dining table chairs and secured her to it with more duct tape. Back at Anderson House he'd used a roll to bind her hands behind her back, then led her from the building, making their escape just before the DC police arrived. Stephanie had stayed to deal with the authorities, made necessary by someone placing an emergency call. Not particularly what they'd wanted to happen, but understandable given the gunfire. He and Petrova had left the ballroom through a rear courtyard that opened to another street. From there, he'd found a cab that had taken them across town to his apartment, his Defense Intelligence Agency badge and a $20 tip calming the driver's anxieties.
He lived near Georgetown in an ivy-veined brick building brimming with tenants in their seventies. He liked the quiet and appreciated the fact that everyone seemed to mind their own business. He spent only a few days here each month, between assignments, enjoying the place.
"Is that your family?" Anya asked him, motioning with her head to a framed photograph.
He'd been born and raised in Blount County, Tennessee, where his father and uncle were both known, particularly his uncle, who served in local political office, then as governor and a U.S. senator before becoming president. His father died from cancer when he was seventeen. He and his three brothers had been there for every moment of those final days. His mother took the loss hard. They'd been married a long time. Her husband was everything to her, and then, suddenly, he was gone. That's why Luke called her every Sunday. Never missed. Even when on assignment. It might be late at night her time when he had the chance, but he called. His father always said that the smartest thing he ever did was marry her. Both his parents were devoutly religious-Southern Baptists-so they'd named their sons to correspond with the books of the New Testament. His two older brothers were Mathew and Mark. His younger, John. He was the third in line and acquired the name Luke.
The photo was of the family just a few weeks before his father died.