She was going to die in a gulag or be assassinated walking to the grocery if she didn’t find a way to get away from these men before she was handed over to SVR.

As the group approached the elevator, it surprised everyone when it dinged to indicate a car arriving on the floor. The armed men stopped and looked back to Fox, and Fox immediately reached for his radio to see who was coming.

The doors began to open, and everyone reached for their weapons. Hines moved in front of Fox, pushing the smaller man back.

“The girl,” Fox said, and the Englishman grabbed Zoya by her shirt and yanked her onto her heels and back behind him, as well.

As the door opened, the carnage was immediately apparent. Two dead men were lying one on top of the other on the floor of the car. Blood splattered the walls and drenched the carpet below them.

Zoya recognized both men as Bratva soldiers who had been guarding the stairwell and the elevator when she’d arrived.

“What the fuck?” one of the Bratva men said, his MP5K up at his shoulder and scanning left and right. The men around him did the same. No one advanced on the elevator, and soon the door closed again.

Fox brought the radio to his mouth and ordered all the men still alive in the building to be on the lookout. He sent three of the five men who had been guarding Janice Won downstairs to immediately head to the rear stairwell to meet this group on the top floor. They would descend the rest of the way together, all the way down to the parking garage.

Zoya complied in silence, but inside she was telling herself two things. One, she needed to find an opportunity in this moment of chaos to get away.

And two, Court had come for her.

* * *

• • •

Court had made his way to the second floor after killing the two guards and dumping them in the elevator, then pushing the button for the top floor and leaping out. He didn’t know who would find them, but he did know that once they were found it would create a moment of chaos that he wanted to exploit.

And he didn’t have to wait long for an opportunity. When the frantic radio call came over the walkie-talkie he’d taken from a dead guard, he understood enough of the Russian to recognize that the principals, whoever they were, would be descending from the top floor via a staircase at the back of the building. Court raced through a hallway past one laboratory after another, his Glock’s silencer shifting left to right to cover all the angles as he moved.

Two men came out of a doorway on Court’s right. He fired one round into each man’s head, then shifted aim to a third figure, moving just behind them. At first he thought he was looking at a child but quickly realized it was an Asian woman in her thirties or forties, her black hair tied severely back, and her tiny frame covered in a white lab coat.

She held no weapon, just stared at Court with uncomprehending eyes.

“You’re interesting,” Court said. “You’re coming with,” and he pulled her into the well-lit hallway, past the two dead bodies, and he shoved her up against the wall.

He began running his free hand all over her body while he pressed the suppressor to the back of her head.

“English?” he asked while frisking her. He pulled a phone from her back pocket and slipped it into his. He left no inch of her body untouched, taking no chances that she might have a gun or a blade stashed somewhere.

Her body began to shake uncontrollably and for an instant he thought she was having a seizure from panic.

But when she didn’t answer him he repeated himself. “English?”

He put his hand in the crotch of her slacks, and pressed up, almost lifting her off the ground in the process of searching her. She shut her eyes tight and slammed her forehead against the wall. “Stop it!”

“Cool,” he said. “You do speak English, which means you and I can have a chitchat. Where’s the Russian woman being held?” He knelt and felt over her quivering legs.

She didn’t answer him, even when he stood back up and spun her around to face him. Her pupils were all but dilated now. She looked to Court like someone with a preternatural fear of sharks finding herself surrounded by great whites in an ink black ocean.

He realized his hand was wrapped around her throat, but he was just holding her in place, not clamping down. He detected some sort of aversion to touch, but just as he was about to use this to get her to talk, the elevator fifty feet down the hall dinged, and Court immediately dropped to the floor amid the two dead guards he’d shot a minute earlier. The woman stared down at him in shock and confusion and Court said, “Raise your hands.”

“What?”

He twitched the pistol in his right hand so she’d notice it. “I said, raise your hands.” She did so.

“You say a single word, and I shoot you first.” He lay flat, his legs draped across the bodies there, his right arm outstretched with his pistol in it pointing at the elevator, his captive standing above him.

* * *

• • •

Janice Won was frozen in fright, fighting waves of nausea she’d never felt in her life, but she did manage to turn her head towards the elevator. Two Russian mafia men carrying rifles came out; one went to the left wall of the hallway, the other to the right. They saw her immediately and held her at gunpoint. They both knew the scientist and were aware she spoke Russian, so one called out to her. “What happened?”

Won did not reply at first. Below her she heard the man whisper.

“Byt ostorozhen. Ya gavaryu paruskie.” Be careful. I speak Russian.

The crazed gunman played dead at her feet, and she knew if she made any utterance of this fact, any gesture to the two security men, then he would shoot her just as he’d shot the two others with her.

She called to the Russians. “A man shot these three, then went up the stairs.”

Both men rose, lowered their guns, and began running forward towards the stairs behind where Won stood.

They made it less than ten feet before Court sat up suddenly and shot them both twice in the chest. The two men fell dead, still thirty feet from where Won stood.

Won saw the gunman struggle to get back up to his feet, as if he had a problem with his back and shoulder. But soon he was with her, turning her roughly up the hallway, away from the rear stairs.

* * *

• • •

Zoya Zakharova descended the rear stairs surrounded by muscular men. She was behind Fox and Hines and in front of five Bratva foot soldiers now, all moving at speed to get the hell out of there.

The circular stairwell was open in the middle, and glancing down she could see all the way to the ground floor, some fifty feet down. She knew there would be more Russians down in the parking garage waiting for them in vehicles, and although her chances for escape now were not good, they would only get worse once she had more men around her to deal with.