“He said?—”
“I heard what he said.”
He looked at Ham, who gave him a grim smile. “Let’s go get your girl.”
And he nodded, even as he pocketed the phone, as he took off across the park through the thickening rain.
Yeah. He was going to get his girl.
CHECHEN MOUNTAINS, 2016
Oh, Alan hated how the man drove.
Dust kicked up from the Jeep’s tires as Crowley navigated another hairpin turn. Alan gripped the door handle, watching the valley floor drop away through gaps in the pine trees.
Eight months of missions like this. And he still wasn’t used to the casual way Crowley drove through hostile territory. Especially here, on the rocky edge of the Caucasus Mountains.
“Nervous?” That hint of amusement in Crowley’s voice that always made Alan want to punch him.
“Focused.” Alan adjusted the scope on his rifle, checking the sight picture for the third time. “You said Tsarnaev doesn’t like surprises.”
“He doesn’t like weakness. There’s a difference.”
The compound came into view as they crested the next ridge—a modern security facility dropped into the middle of a traditional Chechen village. Concrete barriers and razor wire surrounded stone buildings with red-tile roofs. A guard tower at each corner of the compound. Soldiers with AK-47s who moved with the easy confidence of men who’d been killing for years.
Crowley pulled the Jeep behind a cluster of boulders overlooking the compound. “There.”
A convoy of black SUVs wound up the access road, windows tinted dark against the afternoon sun. American diplomat plates.
“Senator Jackson’s early.” Alan settled the rifle across his knees.
“Politicians.” Crowley spat into the dust. “No concept of operational security.”
Alan raised his binoculars, tracking the convoy as it passed through the compound’s gates. Three vehicles. Standard diplomat-protection detail. Jackson would be in the middle car, probably reviewing her talking points one last time.
Believing she was about to make history.
If she only knew what kind.
The SUVs stopped in the compound’s central courtyard. Car doors opened. Senator Reba Jackson emerged—confident stride, expensive suit slightly wrinkled from travel, briefcase in hand. She looked every inch the junior senator, ready to negotiate peace in a region that had forgotten what the word meant.
“She really doesn’t know, does she?” Alan lowered the binoculars.
“Would it matter if she did?”
Good question. Eight months ago, he would have said yes. Now... now he wasn’t sure what mattered anymore.
A flap opened in the main building.
Pavel Tsarnaev appeared.
Even through the binoculars, the man’s presence was magnetic. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a perfectly tailored suit that somehow managed to look both Western and traditionally Chechen. Gray beard trimmed close, dark eyes that missed nothing. He moved with the sort of quiet thunder of someone who’d spent decades surviving in a place where weakness meant death.
And he was the warlord of it all.
But it wasn’t Pavel Tsarnaev who made Alan’s breath catch.
It was the woman who walked behind him.