In For the Kill (40 page)

“Ridiculous.” Renato spat the words out. “Criminal scum.”

“As you see, Renato does not approve of my plans, but I'm going forward with Pavel's idea anyway,” Hazlett said. “But a new and improved version, of course. We noticed yesterday as we followed your RF signal that you lingered in the garbage dump in the canyon for over thirty minutes. So we told Josef to pay particular attention to that area. And lo and behold, there was The Sword of Cain. Josef is quite a discovery, by the way. He was the one who told us what happened in Sant' Orsola. Bold ideas, nerves of steel. A good replacement for Pavel. And thank goodness for someone who can make that bomb for us.”

Sveti's mouth dangled open. “You're setting off the bomb?
Why?
”

He lifted his arms. “Because I can.”

Her mouth worked. “But . . . but that's crazy!”

“Not at all,” he said calmly. “Anarchic, yes, but Pavel's unhinged thinking process took him to places that mine had never dared to go. The more I thought about it, the more attractive the idea became. Remember at the gala, when I spoke of my passion for finding those pressure points? This is a nerve center so tender, it will make the whole world jump six feet into the air. It'll be so entertaining.”

“You're doing this because you are
bored?”

He looked irritated. “You're missing my point. You just handed me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It's not exactly the gift I was longing for, but I'll be a good sport and take it. This bomb can never be traced to me. I did not purchase the material, nor build it, nor pay to have it built. Nor did I have contact with anyone who did, except for a few untraceable calls from burner phones. The only point of contact is you, Svetlana. With you gone, I can detonate this bomb and cause mass mayhem with absolute impunity. How could I possibly resist?”

The question was so foreign to the way her mind was wired, it left her stupid and stammering. Hazlett sailed smoothly on past.

“Renato and I were sure when we planted the trace on you that Pavel and his goons would just kill you. But you killed him instead. Who'd have thought you were such a virago, to look at you. So delicate. So feminine.” His eyes raked her hungrily, up and down.

“Sasha.” Her voice caught on his name. “Sasha killed him.”

Hazlett shrugged. “Whatever. Last man standing takes the credit. I was astonished you survived. I hated the thought of Pavel doing something grisly to your lovely, delicate person, but it was such a simple way to solve our problem.”

“Like with Mama,” she said. “You let them execute her.”

“True. But you survived long enough to deliver the long-lost radioactive materials into my hands. There's really only one thing to do with such an item, right? Josef is hard at work right now, making us a huge, awful bomb. Alas for poor Rome. So rich in history and culture. My heart bleeds for the Sistine Chapel, and Michelangelo's
Pietà.
Rome will be uninhabitable for God alone knows how long.”

“Rome? But . . . but . . .” She looked frantically from one man to the other. “You can't mean to blow up a dirty bomb in Rome!”

Renato and Hazlett exchanged glances. “I've weighed the pros and cons, and I'm willing to sacrifice Rome,” Hazlett said. “Though you'll be leaving this earthly plane tonight, so it hardly concerns you.”

That was too obvious to deserve comment. “But a war could start!” she protested. “So many people killed!”

“Not really,” Hazlett soothed. “Several hundred tourists are likely to die in the initial blast, yes, but it won't level the city like a nuclear bomb would. It's the lingering radioactivity that will be the problem. And the panic that will convulse the entire planet, of course. It's like a needle, and I can jab it at the nerve center of the global economy, stand back, and see what twitches. What a rush. Josef will go ahead with his looting, which will be profitable enough to content him. And there will be a tremendous surge in interest for our new compound. An anti-radiation sickness med from TorreStark. Imagine the possibilities.”

Sveti's gorge rose. “You're doing this to drive up
stock value?
”

Hazlett shrugged. “I sounds so banal when you put it that way. It's not that I need the money. After a few hundred millions, one wouldn't even notice a tenfold increase. But once one starts making money at that level, it's a habit that's very hard to break.”

She had to keep him talking. “Why Rome?”

“I personally would have preferred another city, or another country altogether. I'm fond of Italy, and I'd rather target a place where I don't own valuable property, where the disarray will not impact industries in which I am heavily invested, and where my favorite vacation spots will not become radioactive wastelands. But there are other considerations that lead me to choose Rome.”

He waited for her prompt, his eyes glittering.

She was unable to wait him out. “And these are?”

Hazlett's smile was smug. “The people arriving at the airport this morning. Tamara Steel, Valery Janos, Nick Ward, Rebecca Cattrell.”

Fresh panic scattered what was left of her composure. “But how did you . . . I didn't even know they—”

“We've been monitoring your e-mail, Svetlana. Ever since you were old enough to have your own accounts. They sent you their travel details. They have rooms at the historic Hassler Hotel, right next to the Trinità dei Monti church, overlooking the Spanish Steps. I'm very fond of the Hassler myself, and I regret blowing up a precious chunk of Roman history. But if it's necessary . . .”

“No! Think this through!” she begged.

“I've thought of everything. With one push of a button, all the angry, irritating people who would have searched for you disappear, in a puff of radioactive dust. Of course, there's your pit bull, but one of my people will pay him a visit, let's see”—he glanced at his watch—“any minute now. A few drops into his IV and good-bye, Sam Petrie.”

“No! You don't have to hurt Sam! Call your man off! He won't look for me! We broke up, understand? Badly! He hates me now!”

“It's probably already taken care of by now, Svetlana. Resign yourself.” Hazlett's eyes were gloating. “And don't lie. I saw the way he looked at you. You excite violent feelings, as you did in me. Renato, too. Even Josef. He wants to do the honors himself, when the time comes. You have panting admirers right and left.” He patted her cheek with the hand not holding the gun. She twisted, tried to bite him.

He yanked his hand free and whacked her in the face with the hand that held the gun. “Snotty bitch,” he hissed. “You never learn.”

She reeled for a second, head ringing, but lunged to spit in his face as soon as she could see straight. He punched her in the belly.

She pitched off her chair and thudded to the floor on her side, gasping for air. Hazlett's flushed face hung over hers, the sour tang of wine heavy on his breath. “We're going for a drive. What Josef has in mind for you requires soundproof walls. Lucky you're so tiny. You'll fit perfectly in my rolling suitcase. Like a helpless little rag doll.”

She struggled frantically, kicking and flailing. Hazlett pinned her while Renato knelt down by her, grinning. He brandished a spray bottle.

“I love it when they go limp,” he said, with relish.

He squirted. She gasped, sputtered. His hideous face swelled like a balloon, distorting until it filled her entire field of vision.

Huge wings, beating. The harsh shriek of a raptor rending her ears, as it swooped down to rip and gouge and feed on fresh hot flesh.

And then, nothing.

 

The shotgun blast from the Saiga 12 that knocked out the lock on Pavel Cherchenko's back door was deeply satisfying.

Sam swung open the ruined door. Grateful to the departed mafiya asshole Sveti had gut-shot yesterday for posthumously donating his shotgun and his sintered breaching rounds to the cause. Thank God he'd urged Sveti to take the new car. The old one was waiting for him, right where Sveti had left it, with its bloodstained arsenal still in the trunk. The shotgun really should have been part of the evidence collection.

Tough shit. He needed it more right now.

The house was dimly lit. No alarm went off, no one challenged him. He was almost disappointed. Putting a slug into someone's chest would suit his mood. But the rats had abandoned the burning ship. After years in police work, he knew just how cruel people could be to one another, and it still chilled him to think of them leaving a kid locked in a basement to die alone in the dark. That was unfathomably cold.

He kept the gun at the ready as he kicked doors open, calling out, making lots of noise. He found a staircase leading down, and finally heard the kid's muffled voice through the walls and doors.

“Here! I'm here!” Misha yelled.

At the foot of the stairs was a long corridor. The doors that opened off it led to storage rooms, a huge garage with multiple vehicles cloaked in canvas, and what appeared to be a data center full of computer equipment. At the end of the corridor was a door with a barred steel gate mounted on it. A jail cell for rebellious sons.

To think how he'd whined about his own tragic daddy issues.

“I'm here! In here!” The kid's voice was high and trembling. The door rattled as he pounded on it.

“Stand back,” Sam instructed. “Way back. As far as you can.”

He heard scrambling footsteps. “I'm against the back wall now!”

Sam slid the last sintered metal breaching round into the shotgun, slid back the bolt.
Boom.

There was a twisted hole where the lock had been. The door inside had a knob lock that yielded to a single violent kick, which ripped the stitches in his inner thigh. A flash of agony, and blood flowed, staining his pants.
Fuck.
Onward. He staggered forward into the dark hole.

The light did not go on when he flicked it. It was a storage closet, pitch-dark, with no ventilation. The stench of urine made his eyes water. What father would do this to his own child? It defied biology.

“Misha?” he called out.

The boy shuffled into the light, squinting. There were some bottles of water, a few packages of junk food lying on the floor. Nothing else.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “It's Sam. It's all right now.”

Misha covered his eyes with his arm to block out the light. “I did not think you would really come.” His voice quavered.

“Come on,” Sam urged. “We have to get out of here. Fast. Move it.”

Misha could not move faster than that dreamy shuffle. He flinched when Sam seized his upper arm. He was so thin. Nothing to him but bones and skin. As he lurched out into the corridor, Sam saw that he'd been badly beaten. Nose broken, both eyes blackened.

“Misha,” he said more gently. “You've been through hell and you're all messed up, but I need your help, and I don't have much time. Can you pull it together? Can you help me find that signal, for Sveti?”

Misha nodded. “I can do it,” he said hoarsely. “I'll find her.”

“Then let's get to it.” Sam got behind him, nudging him along.

Misha led the way, shaking off Sam's helping hand.

“Where are we going?” Sam asked, as they climbed the stairs.

“My father's study,” Misha said.

The study was a big, wood-paneled room with a huge desk of polished mahogany. A slim laptop sat upon it. Misha sat down in front of it and punched the keys, his pallid, discolored face eerily lit with the computer's glow. His fingers were a chattering blur. Sam stared over his shoulder and ground his teeth, until he saw the map. An icon, blipping.

“She's moving,” Misha said. “The Autostrada. Near Salerno.”

She could be in the trunk. Or joyriding with Hazlett in his fucking Ferrari, scarf fluttering behind her, no clue about her mortal peril. “Here's how this is going to work,” he told Misha. “Charge up that phone and sit down, because we'll be on it nonstop until Sveti is with me. You don't take your eye off that icon until I tell you that you can.”

“No, I am coming with you, with the
chiavetta.
” He held up a router. “We will get coverage on the way with this.”

Sam's blood roared in his ears. “You aren't going anywhere,” he said. “You're staying right here, where it's safe. You are a kid.”

“Kid?” Misha's voice dripped with irony. “Me? Safe? Where?”

Sam hissed through his teeth. “Okay, so you're not a normal kid, that I'll concede. But you're still fourteen, and I'm responsible for you.”

“I've been responsible for myself since before my mother died.”

“I don't give a fuck who you think is responsible for you. I let you out of that room, so I'm responsible now. And I say you stay here.”

Misha's fingers clicked. The screen went dark. He snapped the laptop closed. “Okay,” he said. “Take the laptop. Guess my father's password. Figure out how to use the program. Find the code for the RF frequency of Sveti's tag, all by yourself.”

Sam's jaw dropped. “You manipulative little shithead.”

Misha crossed his arms over his thin chest. His eyes blazed defiantly from his pallid face. “I have been called worse.”

“I'm sure you deserved it. Do you want to help Sveti or not?”

“Of course I want to help Sveti,” Misha said haughtily. “Sasha would want that. But if you want my data, you cannot leave me here.”

Sam pulled out the Glock and pointed it at Misha's thigh. “Not happening, kid. Sorry.”