Chapter Thirty-One
“I apologize, Konstantin. I didn’t realize you—” Townsend stopped and blinked in surprise and confusion. “Quinn. James. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Borovsky’s relaxed posture vanished. He bolted up in his seat and snapped, “Do you know these people?”
“Yes,” Rhys said, clearly perplexed. “I met Quinn and James in Turks and Caicos a couple of months ago. They were on their honeymoon.”
Borovsky turned and eyed her with suspicion. “Explain this.”
“It was our cover,” James said without missing a beat. “We were doing a job.”
Equilibrium regained, Quinn said, “That’s right. We’ve used a number of aliases. I’ve already admitted Victoria isn’t my real name.” Her muscles grew taut.
“You weren’t really on your honeymoon? You had me fooled.” Rhys looked at Borovsky with raised eyebrows. “They were very convincing.”
A malignant energy radiated from Borovsky.
“Was Gibson Honeycutt’s estate your target?” Rhys asked. A light bulb practically blinked on over his head. “Anatoly and Viktor caught you reconnoitering the grounds. That’s why you got into that fight.”
“No,” James said. He may have appeared at ease, but Quinn knew he was as tense as she. “We were casing the casino the night you invited us to the estate.”
Borovsky ignored James and Townsend. He rose to his feet and seethed at Quinn. “My operation in Saint Petersburg was raided soon after that by, among others, a handsome man and attractive young woman.” A malevolent calm settled over him. He didn’t know it all. But he knew enough. His eyes burned with rancor when he snarled, “Kill them.”
Ovechkin leapt up and whipped out his weapon.
James heaved the case at Ovechkin and knocked the gun from his hand. He launched across the table and drove his shoulder into Ovechkin’s gut. They tumbled over the chair and crashed to the deck.
Quinn went for the tranquilizer gun in her thigh holster. Borovsky smashed the side of her face with his fist, knocking her sideways. She fell off the couch and dropped to her hands and knees. Stars sparkled at the edges of her vision.
Borovsky grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. She blinked and her vision cleared in time to see him rear back his hand. He drove the knockout punch forward, his face twisted with unmitigated rage.
She ducked, grabbed his arm, and pivoted. With a mighty yank, she flipped him over her shoulder.
His back hit the deck with a solid thump.
Quinn ripped her tranquilizer pistol from its holster and took aim.
Before she could pull the trigger, Borovsky rolled away. He grabbed a chair cushion and flung it at her, knocking her off balance. He scrambled to his feet, sprinted to the back edge of the deck, and hurdled over the railing.
She dashed forward and leaned over the rail. He crawled off the cushions of the outdoor lounge one level below. He bellowed for Dmitri and Yuri.
Quinn whirled around. James and Ovechkin scrabbled on the deck in battle.
She raised her pistol. The second she had a clear shot at Ovechkin’s back, she squeezed the trigger. The dart impaled Ovechkin below the shoulder blade. He arched, roared a string of expletives, and went limp.
“Nice shot,” James said and pushed off the unconscious bag of bones.
Quinn hurried over and helped James to his feet. “Thanks. You okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah. Borovsky jumped over the rail and landed one deck down.” She went to the bar and peered behind it. Margarita crouched with the wine bottle gripped in both hands, ready to wield it as a club. The bottle shook and her breaths came in short, gasping bursts.
“It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you,” she said in Russian. “We’re United States federal officers here to take Konstantin Borovsky into custody.” Margarita didn’t respond and looked to be on the verge of hyperventilating. “Take a long, deep breath, hold it, and then blow it out.” Quinn demonstrated.
Margarita did as instructed.
“Good.” Relief swept over Quinn when Margarita’s panic began to subside. “Do that a few more times.”
While Margarita performed her breathing exercises, Quinn glanced over her shoulder to see James lifting a set of plastic zip-tie handcuffs from her purse. “Townsend isn’t back here,” she said. “He must have bolted during the ruckus.”
“He can’t have gone far,” James replied. He stepped over Ovechkin, tugged the Russian’s wet noodle arms behind his back, and tightened the cuffs around his wrists. “Probably holed up somewhere.” James relieved Ovechkin of his gun, checked the magazine, and slapped it back in place. He straightened and slid the pistol in the empty holster at his hip. “Let’s find him and Borovsky.”
Quinn turned to Margarita. “Stay hidden until things settle down. Hang on to that bottle just in case.” Margarita gulped and nodded. Quinn gave the teen a confidence-boosting smile before pushing away from the bar.
“I’ll take point,” James said. He hustled to the top of the steps with his tranquilizer pistol level in front of him.
Quinn grabbed her purse from the sofa, tossed the strap over her head, and settled it across her chest. She fell in behind James.
They stealthily descended the steps and stopped at the bottom. James peeked into the salon where Olga had been reading. “Clear.”
They stole through the lounge and came to an open doorway.
James poked his head around.
A gunshot exploded. A bullet hole blossomed in the wood above them.
He snapped his head back. “Olga’s guarding a door.”
“I bet that’s where she stashed the kids working on this tub.” Quinn gripped her pistol tighter. “That woman pisses me off.” She stuck her arm around the edge of the wall and pulled the trigger. She yanked her arm back, looked into James’s eyes, and waited. A few seconds later, as expected, she heard the unmistakable clunk of a body collapsing on the floor. “Knocking that woman out never gets old.”
“She deserves it,” James said. They hurried down the hall. “Borovsky might be hiding in there, too.” He stepped over the unconscious woman and tried the doorknob. “Locked.”
“She’s gotta have a key.” Quinn rifled through Olga’s pockets. Her fingers touched metal in a front pocket of the other woman’s slacks. She handed a key to James. “Try this one.” Olga’s pistol went into Quinn’s purse.
James slid the key into the lock. It turned. He put his hand on the doorknob and pointed his gun at the door.
She stood and readied her pistol.
He held her gaze. “Three, two, one.”
He shoved the door open. They barreled into the room. Their shouts of “United States federal officers!” could barely be heard over the screams of the three early teens huddled together at the center of a king-size bed.
James checked the closet while Quinn tried the knob on the bathroom door. Locked. “Over here,” she called to James and indicated the door with a tip of her head.
He raised a foot and smashed it against the door. The jamb splintered as the door slammed open.
Quinn rushed into the bathroom and found Rhys Townsend cowering in the shower stall.
She grabbed him by the lapels of his bathrobe and hauled him to his feet. Her fury uncontained, she yanked him forward, and smashed him back against the granite shower wall.
“You bastard!” she thundered. “Using innocent kids to fuel your coke habit!” After another hard shove, she spun him around and pushed his chest against the wall. Blood trickled from a cut on the back of Townsend’s head.
James stepped into the shower and helped Quinn secure plastic cuffs around Townsend’s wrists. They hauled him into the hall and pushed him onto his knees next to Olga.
When Quinn cocked the hammer of her pistol, he sputtered, “Don’t shoot me. I’ll give you money. Drugs. Anything.”
“The only thing I want from you is the years you stole from innocent children,” Quinn spat. “Oh, right. You can’t do that. You lose.” She squeezed the trigger and put a dart in Townsend’s back.
He crashed face-first to the floor.
While James cuffed Olga, Quinn returned to the bedroom. Ashen and clinging to each other, the two boys and a girl were clearly petrified.
Making her tone as gentle as possible, she asked, “Do any of you speak English? Russkiy?”
One of the boys whispered, “I speak little.”
Hearing the thick Russian accent, Quinn switched to Russian. “I know you’re scared. It’s going to be okay. As soon as we tie up all the bad people on this boat, you’ll be taken somewhere safe. You won’t have to stay with Mother Olga anymore.”
“You know Mother Olga?” the girl asked.
“Sort of. We’ve run into each other a couple of times.” With a small smile, she added, “Mother Olga doesn’t like me very much.”
Quinn released a relieved breath when the three kids seemed to relax, if only a little.
“In the meantime, we need you to stay safe right here in this room. We’re going to lock the door and keep the key with us. Don’t open it for anyone. Do you understand?”
Three heads nodded.
Darius’s voice came through her earpiece. “Hey, you two,” he shouted. “You’d better hustle. Borovsky and one of his thugs are getting ready to jump ship.”
Quinn cocked her head and detected the faint thwup of Darius’s helicopter overhead.
“Copy,” James said. He leaned into the room. “Babe, we gotta go.”
“Roger that.” She didn’t want to promise them she’d see them again. Given the fluidity of the situation, she wasn’t sure she would. Instead, she smiled and said, “Take care.” She stepped out of the room and locked the door.
“We gotta head for the aft platform,” James said.
They backtracked toward the staircase.
“The yacht tender?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“If Borovsky’s got either Dmitri or Yuri with him, where’s the other?”
“Between us and them would be my guess.”
They stole down the stairs to the level above the platform. They skirted past the formal dining table and took up a position behind the partition between it and the room where Yuri and Dmitri had watched television.
The motor of the tender revved.
James peeked around the partition. A burst of automatic gunfire had him dropping to the floor, pulling Quinn down with him. “Every. Time,” he hissed.
Quinn drew in a breath. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air. She glanced up at the wall above their heads. Splinters of wood stuck out at wonky angles where the bullets had blasted clean through. “Whoever it is, he’s carrying a serious caliber,” she whispered. “Did you see where he’s positioned?”
“Behind the bar. You keep him busy. I’ll skirt around behind the furniture and take him out from the other side.”
“You be careful.”
“I will. You too.”
To cover James, Quinn needed more firepower. She took her Glock from the secret pocket in her bag and gripped it.
James counted down from three on his fingers.
He power crawled across the gap and hid behind the closest armchair while she stuck the gun around the divider, aimed toward the bar, and fired three times.
She whipped the gun back and called out in Russian, “Give yourself up.”
“You speak Russian after all.”
Yuri.
The growl of the motor grew faint as Borovsky and Dmitri sped away.
“I do. Some,” she said. James gave her the signal to keep talking. “Come on, Yuri. Let’s not do this. I don’t want to hurt you. Borovsky just left you behind to fight us off by yourself.” James scrambled from the armchair to behind the couch. “Is he really worth taking a bullet for?”
“Without him, I would have nothing.” He popped up and fired off another burst of bullets, shredding an upper section of the partition.
She winced at the rifle’s concussion.
“I must protect him.”
Time to take a different tact. “Do you have a family, Yuri? A wife? Children?”
“I have a wife, a daughter, and a son.”
She peered around the edge of the divider and spotted James. He’d commando crawled along the front of the couch and taken up a position at the end nearest the bar.
“You know why these kids are here, Yuri. Would you want your children taken away from you and sold into slavery?”
“I cannot leave. I do not care if they kill me. They will torture my family.”
Quinn knew he was right. She peered around the corner. Yuri duck walked from behind the bar toward the partition, his AK-47 gripped in front of him.
“I bet if you give up information that will help take down Borovsky’s organization, the United States government will be very grateful.”
James rose up and fired.
Yuri never saw the dart coming. He looked down at it, jabbed into his upper arm, with an expression of shock. Seconds later, he crashed to the floor like a bag of wet sand.
“Clear!” James called.
She popped out from behind the wall.
“Cuff him and meet me on the platform,” James said. “We can catch them on one of the Jet Skis.”
“Copy.” She headed for Yuri while James strode for the stairs.
“Darius, you got eyes on the tender?” James asked as he descended the steps.
“Affirmative. I’m right overhead.”
“Copy,” she heard James say.
Quinn listened to James identify himself to the crew on the platform and explain the situation while she restrained Yuri’s hands behind his back. She picked up the Kalashnikov, flicked on the safety, and released the iconic curved magazine. A yank on the charging handle ejected the chambered round and sent it arcing through the air. She stuck the magazine behind a throw pillow on the couch and hid the rifle behind the bar.
Now that Yuri and his weapon had been secured, she trotted to the top of the steps. His back to her, James watched two crewmen tug the Jet Ski into position at the platform.
She was halfway down the steps. A metallic click from above and behind caught her attention. She craned her neck and spotted an unaccounted-for crewman standing at the back rail two decks up. He pointed a pistol directly at James’s back. The tattoo on the inside of his arm was Perun’s thunder mark.
She raised her Glock and squeezed off three shots.