Court realized Zoya had drugged him so he couldn’t stop her from going after her father.

He wanted to be angry, to shout, and he wanted to pull his phone to call Zack or Brewer, but his eyes shuddered and closed before any of this happened, and he put his face down on the wooden floor and fell unconscious.

* * *

• • •

Zoya raced west through the morning in a stolen minivan she picked out of a driveway four blocks away from the safe house. She’d only walked that far because she needed to find something she could boost easily with the tools that had been left in the upstairs apartment closet for use by CIA officers working there, and was thankful enough to spot a Toyota Sienna van old enough to be an easy mark. She was in it and driving in three minutes, and not one of the neighbors already up this morning had seen or heard a thing.

All night long she thought about it; sleep eluded her because of the stress and strain, but eventually she’d become convinced there was only one possible solution.

She’d told herself she had to do it. From the moment Court fell asleep Zoya knew she had to be prepared to find a way to get out of there and go for her father on her own. She couldn’t let Zack or Court kill him; she needed to be the one to do it herself. But not until after confronting him about the death of her brother.

While Court slept Zoya took his phone, put earphones in, and turned off the ringer. The hope had been that Brewer would call with the location of her father’s staging area for the air attack of Castle Enrick.

And her plan had worked. At five thirty a.m., just as the first rays of dawn hit, Brewer called and asked to speak to Violator, but Zoya told her he was too drugged to talk. Reluctantly Brewer explained that a high-flying Royal Navy jet had spotted an abandoned church on a hill twenty-two miles west of Loch Ness. A few hundred yards away, the figure of a small aircraft could just be made out from its concealment under a tarp and some brush.

Another overflight with thermal imaging confirmed a half dozen or so men in defensive positions in a graveyard in front of the church.

Zoya wrote the coordinates down and was told the Ground Branch team at Castle Enrick was being mustered to attack the location, but that Romantic was already out scouting a location for the helo to land. Violator would wait for a call from Romantic, then meet him at the pickup point for the helicopter to join the raid on the church.

Brewer informed Anthem, in clear and unambiguous terms, that she was disallowed from leaving the safe house, because of the personal nature of the opposition.

The men would take care of things without her.

She deleted the evidence that Suzanne had called from Court’s phone, and she made coffee. While it brewed she went back into the bedroom and stood over Court, watching him sleep. Even in the low light she could see the discoloration on his face from the beating he’d taken. His hand, bandaged to the wrist save for his thumb and fingers, lay on the bed to his left.

She had felt sickened by what she was about to do, but at that moment her anger and need for revenge were even stronger than her love.

She felt like the worst person in the world for this, but she also felt committed to her task.

There would be no stopping her. She was, after all, her father’s daughter.

She put a few drops of the M99 tranquilizer in Court’s coffee, then positioned her clothes and a few other items in the bathroom. She kissed his bruised and tired face, handed him his coffee, and then lied, claiming Suzanne Brewer had not called.

After that she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

She thought he’d be down at least three hours with the tranquilizer, and according to the GPS on her phone it was only forty minutes to her father’s staging area.

She pushed down on the pedal of the Sienna now and increased her speed, determination and shame coexisting in her consciousness.

* * *

• • •

Forty-five minutes later, Zoya stood at the bottom of the hill below the church, her arms outstretched to show that she was unarmed. Although it was raining, breezy, and in the upper fifties, she had taken off her raincoat and even her gray sweater to reveal a black sports bra, showing the men who would inevitably have her under riflescope that she was unarmed.

Slowly she began walking up the rain-soaked hill, her sweater held in one hand.

A pair of men in ski masks appeared out of the tall grasses in the unkempt cemetery in front of the church and ordered her forward in Russian. At the low stone wall they commanded her to drop to her knees and then lie flat on a patch of pasture trimmed short by a flock of sheep grazing on the hill. She complied, they stepped over the wall, and she was searched. She was pulled to her feet and walked towards the entrance to the sanctuary, and she put her sweater on as she did so.

Zoya noted the gear and stature of the men walking alongside her. Immediately she could tell these were not Bratva gunmen from Moscow’s Solntsevo neighborhood, nor were they like the other security forces she’d seen around Fox and her father. No . . . these guys were not in military uniforms, but they sure as hell looked like the Spetsnaz men she’d worked with in the past.

Looking up into the church windows she saw a pair of snipers, also in ski masks. Again, their positioning, the gear she could see, their professional demeanor: it all told her there was a sizable force here protecting her father’s operation that the Americans knew nothing about.

This suddenly terrified her. She knew a raid on this location would be coming, perhaps within a couple of hours. Ten or so American operators, even highly skilled ones, would not be able to take this place from a platoon of Spetsnaz men with high ground and fortified positions without suffering devastating losses.

* * *

• • •

Feodor Zakharov sat at the small wooden table in the church canteen. He looked on at his daughter as she was brought in and placed in a chair in front of him. He had a cup of tea for himself but offered his daughter nothing even though she shivered in her wet clothes. He ordered Fox and Hines to give them the room, but he allowed two mercenaries to stay. They leaned against an empty bookshelf behind Zoya, providing security in case she tried something stupid.

Finally he relented in his hard stare, then asked one of the men to grab a towel from the kitchen, and when he returned Zakharov handed it over to his daughter himself. She began toweling off her face and hair without thanking him for the gesture.

His voice was low. Soft but intimidating. “My little Zoyushka. I was so pleased you escaped the laboratory with your life. But it was foolish of you to come here.”

“And you are a fool for being here. Did you not think you would be found when the Americans captured Dr. Won? You’re working with the DPRK? Was that to reflect responsibility on them when this was over?”

“That’s exactly what it was. Your mind works in the strategic realm as well as the tactical realm. That makes me proud. All the years of instruction I gave you.” He didn’t seem proud. He sounded as if he was about to have her shot.