59
“We killed your man,” Jack said. “He was too loyal for his own good, staying back to let you escape.”
“Abram was with me since I was a boy and he a young man of twenty.” He pointed his Beretta at Cam’s chest. “I told you to move away from him.”
Cam took two steps back to lean against the railing. From the lights moving along on the shoreline, she could tell they were picking up speed, heading south. She said, “It was one of our agents who spoke to Abram on the burner phone you provided your assassin at Ginger Lake. Keeping him alive helped us find you.” As she spoke, she flicked her comms unit to transmit. Now Ruth and Ollie and the SWAT team would hear everything. She waved her hand toward the pilot house. “You put it on autopilot, heading south.”
“Of course, there’s no need to adjust the course this time of night.”
Jack said, “Did you put the boat under Elena Orlov’s name, that is, Cortina Alvarez’s name?”
Petrov said nothing, grimaced as he tightened the towel around his leg.
Jack’s arm pulsed with pain, but he ignored it. “Listen to me, Petrov. You’re a banker, not a trained KGB agent. You’ve got no more assassins waiting in the wings for your orders. You’ve got to realize there’s no way you’re going to get out of here. The Coast Guard will be along soon.”
“It’s not the KGB, you fool. The KGB no longer exists.”
“Oh yeah, new name, same thugs.”
Petrov moved his Beretta back and forth between Jack and Cam. “You will now tell me how you found me. How you know about Elena and Cortina.”
Cam gave him a wide smile. “We’re special agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’ve got really good brains, plus you’re on our turf.”
Petrov actually sneered. “You idiot woman, you’re nothing compared to Putin’s GRU and FSB.”
Jack laughed. “I’ve got to admit you did a fine job of freeing Manta Ray on Monday. But look here, Petrov”—he snapped his fingers—“it’s only Wednesday night and we found you already.”
Petrov winced at the pain in his leg, knew it hadn’t stopped bleeding. He touched his hand to the towel, pressed it in. He saw Cam move and immediately straightened. “Don’t you take another step! If you move again, I will kill you. Now, I won’t ask either of you again. How did you find me and Elena?”
But Cam hadn’t moved, scarcely breathed, she’d only leaned a bit toward Jack, away from him. She didn’t want him to hear the low-level feedback coming from her comms. She said, “Come now, Sergei, it wasn’t that difficult. Elena flew to Washington with you on Aeroflot 104 from Moscow, she wasn’t hard to find at all. She’s listed as your employee, your bodyguard. It made sense you would use her to rent a safe-deposit box as Cortina Alvarez. You sure weren’t about to use your own name. And why waste that near-perfect legend you had created for her?”
His forehead furrowed, not in pain, but something he remembered he didn’t like. Then he shook his head. He looked back south over the water.
Cam said, “Elena wasn’t at your house, only Abram. Where is she, Sergei? Was she with your pilot when you blew up the helicopter?”
“I won’t tell you again, shut up.”
Jack said, “I’ll bet she was in the helicopter. She became one last loose thread to you, didn’t she, Sergei? You killed not only your pilot, you killed your lover. Anyone else in the helicopter?”
Cam said, “I don’t suppose Manta Ray was in that copter with them?”
“Shut up, both of you. You haven’t explained anything. How did you find me?”
Cam said, “A young man named Saxon Hainny. Under hypnosis, Saxon saw you clearly standing with Mia Prevost as he lay in a stupor on the bed, before you murdered her.”
“That’s impossible! He was unconscious, I checked him myself.”
“Sorry, Sergei,” Jack said. “He wasn’t unconscious, and as Agent Wittier told you, he remembered everything under hypnosis. He saw you, described you. That hair you have, that widow’s peak, it’s very distinctive. And that white, white skin of yours, like a vampire. By the way, the towel around your leg is getting soaked with blood, the pressure isn’t working. That isn’t going to turn out well for you.”
Still, Petrov kept looking south. Cam knew he wasn’t looking for any islands, he was planning to kill them and dump them overboard, as soon as he was out far enough. She looked at the wave caps shining and sparkling in the moonlight and felt a punch of fear. She clamped it down.
“Jack’s right, Sergei. You’re going to bleed out before you can find medical help.”
He didn’t answer, looked back between her and Jack at the frothing water churned up by the yacht’s engine.
She said, “Want to tell us why you murdered Mia Prevost?”
Petrov shook his head. “She was a tool, nothing more. I’m tired of talking. Shut up.”
Cam said, “Sergei, face it, you’ve failed. It’s all over. You, your daddy, and Transvolga are all beyond help. You’ll never get out of American waters.”
He trained the Beretta on her. Both Jack and Cam knew it was crunch time. “Help him up. You can both go over the rail now or I will shoot you and throw you over myself.”
“What’s this?” Jack said. “And here I thought you were going to set us down on a nice deserted island.”
“Do it!”
Cam dropped to her knees beside Jack, leaned in close to help him rise, whispered, “Distract him.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him he had to stand.”
Jack got slowly to his feet, his right hand clutching his left arm. He groaned and stumbled back against the yacht railing. Cam leaned toward him to grab him, whipped out her ankle piece and fired, center mass.
The bullet struck Petrov high in the chest. The force of the bullet sent him back into the pilot house. Still he managed to fire two more rounds at them as they dove behind a teak storage box on the deck. One of the bullets slammed into the box, but it was sturdy enough to stop the bullet from going through.
“Give it up, Sergei!” Jack yelled.
He came out of the pilot house, blood streaming down his leg, blood staining his chest, heaving with pain, with the loss of everything he saw as his by right. He didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. He fired at them, but the Beretta was empty. He pulled another magazine out of his pants pocket, shoved it in with bloody fingers.
Cam shouted. “Drop the gun or I’ll put a bullet through your throat.”
He yelled something in Russian, raised the Beretta.
Cam shot him in the throat.