Three Jack McClure Missions Box Set (121 page)

She nodded. “Now are you going to drive or am I going to leave you here?”

*   *   *

“Dennis, are you okay with this?” Jack asked, as Thatë, at the head of his dirty half dozen, led them along the roundabout route he had first suggested, east, then north, then northwest toward Tetovo.

“Do I have a choice?” Paull grumbled. “I fucked up, Jack. I don’t know what got into me. I should’ve listened to your instincts.” He shook his head. “But to be led to Arian Xhafa by this kid.” Paull glared at Thatë trekking easily and confidently up ahead. “I mean, this kid should still be sucking up his mother’s milk, for Christ’s sake.”

“He didn’t have a mother,” Alli said.

They both looked at her.

“At least,” she continued, “a mother he remembers.”

“Boo hoo!” Paull parodied crying.

“You never even gave him a chance,” Alli said hotly.

“And you gave him too much of one.” Paull jerked his head. “Let’s just hope he didn’t kill any of my men when he escaped from the plane.”

“He didn’t,” Alli said.

“He told you that, did he?”

“Bite me.” She extended her middle finger at him and, picking up the pace, wound her way through the Russians to walk beside Thatë.

“Thanks for that,” Jack said.

“A word of warning,” Paull shot back. “The next thing you know they’ll be making the two-backed beast and then you’ll never be able to pry them apart.”

Jack considered for a time as the forest slid past them. Off to their left, they could hear the watercourse that marked the far end of the valley. Over the ridge beyond lay Tetovo.

“I remember hearing about a man who turned so sour on life he wouldn’t believe a boy who rang his doorbell was his long-lost son.”

Paull scoffed. “I know how this ends: he turns the boy away only to find out later that he was, in fact, his son.”

“No,” Jack said. “Against his better judgment, he takes the boy in, feeds him, clothes him, gives him a soft bed to sleep in. The two spend a week together, then another and another. Gradually, the man’s guard lowers as he comes to appreciate the boy, then to mentor him. He realizes that, in the end, it doesn’t matter whether this boy is his blood son or not.

“One night, he’s awakened by unfamiliar sounds. He goes down the hall to his son’s room. The door is open, his son’s clothes are laid out, the bed is made just as it had been before he arrived. Grabbing a gun, the man goes down to the first floor and turns on the lights.

“Someone is sitting in his easy chair. This shadowy figure calls the man by his Christian name, even though the man is certain he’s never seen the stranger before in his life.

“‘Don’t you recognize me?’ the stranger says. As he stands up, a pair of enormous black wings unfold from points on either shoulder.

“‘Where’s my son?’ the man shouts. ‘What have you done with him?’

“‘I?’ the devil says. ‘I have done nothing with your son. He’s dead—dead and buried years ago.’

“‘You’re lying,’ the man says. He’s shaking with anger.

“‘You may think so,’ the devil says. ‘But the fact remains he’s not here. He never was.’

“All at once, the man breaks, falling to his knees. ‘Why? Why?’ he cries out.

“‘Because,’ the devil says, ‘life is hell.’”

Paull moved his assault rifle from one arm to another. “Does this piece of crap have a moral?”

“You know the moral, Dennis,” Jack said. “Why do you think that life is hell?”

Paull made a sour face. “What, have you suddenly found God?”

“My only compact,” Jack said, “is with my daughter.”

Paull came up short and turned. “What are you talking about? Your daughter is dead.”

“The dead never leave us, Dennis. At least, their spirits don’t.” Jack looked him in the eye. “I suspect that’s what you’re struggling against.”

*   *   *

Annika Dementieva sat in the first-class departure lounge drinking a vodka martini. Her flight was scheduled to depart in just over an hour. She could have left the city later, but she had decided that the airport was the safest place for her now. She didn’t want Naomi Wilde coming to look for her.

The preliminary phase of the plan had been successfully concluded. She was pleased to know that Naomi had no idea where Jack was. That meant virtually no one else did, either. A good thing because his destination was one of the most dangerous places on earth. She had witnessed the American SKOPES unit annihilated by Arian Xhafa’s battle-hardened guerillas. She had had no interest in the guerillas themselves, but in the weaponry they employed. Watching the massacre had proved the wisdom of her being sent to Tetovo. The array of Xhafa’s cutting-edge war materiel was astonishing. No wonder warning alarms had been set off in her part of the world. The Macedonian situation was already on the verge of being out of control.

If the problem was simply Xhafa she could have handled it herself, but it stretched across borders, spanned oceans, was infused with incalculable amounts of money, fueled by a hatred and fanaticism beyond even Xhafa himself. She knew she needed help, she knew who she needed to help her. And he was the one person guaranteed not to comply.

She drank her vodka martini as if it were a beer, and ordered another, chewing thoughtfully on the liquor-soaked olive until the refill arrived. Through the thick, shatterproof glass, the world looked unnaturally dark, drained of color, unreal. She listened to the muted clatter of laptop keyboards, the clink of glasses, snatches of cell phone conversations. Within thirty seconds of entering, she had observed and catalogued every person in the lounge. She was like a jungle cat, interested only in danger and prey—everything else fell to gray ash.

But then gray was the color of her life; everything in it had turned to ash. The kidnapping and extended sexual and physical abuse by her father, Oriel Jovovich Batchuk, had set fire to her heart, reduced it to a blackened cinder of antimatter. In its place a void had opened up inside her that could never be filled. She had thought that her revenge on her father in the Ukraine last year would save her, or at least stop the void from widening, but the reverse had happened—she had fallen farther into the void, and now she suspected nothing could get her out.

This had not always been so. There was a time when she had childishly believed that Jack and Alli would be her saviors. But at the time she had met them, she had already betrayed Jack, and so their relationship was doomed before it began. As for Alli, she had been the one surprise in Annika’s life. The short time she had spent with Alli and Jack had given her a false sense of security—for those weeks she had deluded herself into thinking that the three of them were a family. How could she not? It had felt so good, so right. And she was so certain that the void inside her had started to shrink back to a manageable level. But then she’d been forced to choose between Jack and Dyadya Gourdjiev. It had been her grandfather who had finally saved her from her father, so it was no choice at all. After he’d told her she could have no more contact with Jack, she had wept bitter tears through a long and lonely night. And then, defying her grandfather, she had broken protocol and contacted Jack, confessing her sin. Why she had omitted the real reason she had murdered Senator Berns she’d never be fully able to understand. Perhaps she needed to put herself on the rack, to flay herself open for Jack to see, as no one else—not even Dyadya Gourdjiev—had before or ever would again.

The truth was she loved him, but now she had ensured that he would never love her. Agonizing as that was, it was preferable to continuing to lie to him. Enmeshed as she was in concentric webs of lies, it nevertheless felt intolerable to lie to him.

Now Dyadya Gourdjiev was in the hospital following a serious heart attack. He faded in and out of consciousness. None of the doctors she had spoken to would venture a definitive prognosis. Instead, they spoke in the kind of circular logic peculiar to their profession. After such a long time, she was completely on her own.

She crossed her long, beautiful legs and stared at herself in the mirror. Everything about her was beautiful, and it was that incandescent beauty that from an early age had been a terrible curse. It was her beauty that had impaled her father with jealousy, rage, and, finally, unstoppable lust. It was her beauty that had allowed her to slip through her adolescence with a minimum of fuss so that she could use her brain for what she wanted most: revenge. With her grandfather’s help, she had trained herself in all forms of weaponry and espionage. From one of his closest friends she had learned the intricate byways of the con game. Lying came naturally to her; she had lied to her father from the time she was four years old. Lies had been her only protection against him, therefore she had become expert at it. As an adult, she had come to view lying in the same way actors viewed a role: It allowed her to be someone she was not, allowed her to express opinions that were not hers. It allowed her, in other words, to hide in plain sight.

Her flight was being called, but it was not yet time for her to board. She had one more task to perform. While she took out her cell phone, she thought about Alli, about how the girl had touched her so unexpectedly and deeply. The two of them shared similar histories of kidnap, imprisonment, and abuse. From the few intimate stories Alli had shared, it was clear that she and Annika were kindred spirits. And, despite Annika’s steely reserve, her fierce armor, she had fallen in love with Alli, the way, Dyadya Gourdjiev had told her, her mother had fallen in love with her the first time she had rested her tiny head on her mother’s breast.

Now both Jack and Alli were lost to her.
Christ, emotion tears your guts out,
she thought, as she stared at the blank face of her phone. For the first time in her life she was aware of two forces battling for possession of her soul. The knowledge set her mind to thrumming.

Then she thought,
Fuck it!
and dialed a local number.

“Henry,” she said, when Carson answered, “I’m leaving.”

“Everything is in place on this end.”

She could hear the relief in his voice. “This is far from over,” she warned. “You still need to exercise caution.”

“I’m covered.”

She rose and, grabbing the handle of her rolling carry-on, said, “Naomi Wilde is on a collision course with Mbreti.”

“Do you think that wise?”

“We’ll find out shortly.” She walked out of the lounge, riding the escalator down to the gates. “Henry, remember what I told you at the very beginning.”

“‘Trust eats its own children.’” His laugh was metallic. “Jesus, Annika, how could I forget such a dire fucking warning?”

20

Night had passed its zenith. More stars appeared as the highest peaks of the Korab mountains shredded the clouds to ribbons. Dolna Zhelino was far behind. So were Arian Xhafa’s dead guerillas. Thatë’s men had found a satellite phone on one of the corpses, but it was unclear whether the man had communicated with his headquarters during the firefight.

“We have to make the assumption that Xhafa knows a force is on its way to attack him,” Thatë said.

They all agreed. They were camped on the narrow rolling plateau of the final ridge beyond which lay the outskirts of Tetovo, its lights flickering indistinctly through the black mesh of trees.

Paull looked at the kid. “Do you know what happened to the American unit sent to eliminate Arian Xhafa?”

“They were annihilated,” Thatë said. “I was in D.C. at the time, but these men told me. The American soldiers were killed within minutes. They didn’t get within ten miles of Xhafa’s headquarters.”

“Fuck me. So they’re dead, every one of them.” Paull gave Jack a sharp look. “How the hell could these guerillas destroy a heavily armed SKOPES unit in a matter of minutes? Christ, this situation gets worse by the second.”

Jack felt it imperative to move on. “Have you been to Xhafa’s stronghold?”

Thatë nodded. “All too briefly. I was made. I had to get the fuck out of there.”

“Tail between your legs.” Paull nodded. “No wonder you’re so hot to go back there.”

“How many men?” Jack asked, to ease the tension.

“Twenty to twenty-five.” Thatë shrugged. “His is a decentralized system, like the Muslim terrorists. The bulk of his men are deployed, some in other countries arranging deals, receiving payments, or overseeing smuggling shipments. The cadre in and around the stronghold are personal bodyguards, the fiercest fighters.”

“The Praetorian Guard,” Paull muttered.

An owl hooted and there was a flurry of wings overhead, a soft cry, and then a small spray of blood as the owl carried off its prey.

“A fantastic hunter, the owl,” Thatë said. “Its wings make no sound. That’s how we will be.” He indicated Paull with his chin. “Did your people give you a way in?”

Paull nodded, spread out the plastic-covered map, and lit it up with a penlight. The beam was powerful but didn’t spread. He traced the path with his finger. Xhafa’s stronghold was in the northeastern section of Tetovo, at the summit of a small rise.

“Do you have a problem with this section of the route?” Paull’s voice was a challenge.

Thatë shook his head.

“The stronghold itself,” Jack began.

“It’s a stone structure of approximately fifty-two-hundred square feet,” Paull said before the kid could answer. Once again, he was showing off the expertise of the American clandestine services. “No basement because in that area the bedrock is so hard it’s apparently not worth the effort. There are two entrances, front and rear, and, here, on the west side, is what appears to be a soccer field, presumably to help keep the men in shape when they aren’t on a killing spree.”

“The intel comes from satellite imaging.” Jack looked at Thatë. “Accurate?”

“Oh, it’s accurate,” the kid said, and Paull looked smug. “As far as it goes.”

Paull scowled. “Meaning?”

“Xhafa’s stronghold is actually a school. The soccer field is for the students.”

“Sonuvabitch.”

“It gets worse,” Thatë said. “The students are orphans. They live there.”

Another silence settled over the group. They stared through the trees at the lights of Tetovo. Somewhere out there Xhafa and his men were waiting for them.