Mission Critical
The man had been shot through the left arm, and from the blood on his mouth she realized at least one of his lungs had been perforated by bullet fragments.
He turned his head to her slowly but said nothing.
Zoya now snatched up the CZ 75 and thumbed off the safety. Pointing it at him with her left hand she said, “Unlock it!”
Reluctantly, the man did so. Zoya kept one eye out the front windshield and the other on the wounded mafia goon, and when he tapped in his code he handed it back to her.
She reached for it, turned the wheel to avoid a rainwater-filled pothole in the gravel road, then looked over to the man.
He reached out and lunged at the pistol.
Zoya fired three times across her body, knocking the Russian dead into the passenger-side door.
She scrolled through the man’s apps. Once she found the navigation app, she checked it to see where she was in relation to Castle Enrick.
She knew she had to hang back so as not to be detected but stay close enough to not lose the entourage racing away from the church. She knew her father. He wouldn’t drive these obvious vehicles up to the castle. No, he would switch vehicles, do something to obscure his plan and his approach to his target obliquely.
As she was thinking over her desperate predicament, the yellow Air Tractor flew through the air above her on her right. She looked at it in surprise, then saw that it was trailing both smoke and fire.
As it plunged back to Earth, Zoya was relieved that the plague weapon had been destroyed, but she was still worried. She worried the Americans behind her would think their battle was won, when in truth her father had hinted he had a different type of attack up his sleeve.
She pushed down harder on the gas, increasing her speed, and the dead body slumped over into her lap.
* * *
• • •
Court watched as the yellow airplane sputtered and died in the air, then began its death spiral at only four hundred feet.
It hit a field of heather nose down, then exploded in a ball of fire.
Court pumped his fist in the air. To Zack he said, “I shot down an airplane with a rifle!”
Zack snorted. “Dude, get over yourself. It was a crop duster.”
Crestfallen, Court said, “It’s still a plane, Zack.”
“Does this mean we’re about to get the bubonic plague or some shit?”
“Pneumonic,” Court corrected. “I didn’t think it through that far when I started shooting at it.”
Zack started moving around the van for the church. “Fuck it, Six. Let’s go out in a blaze of glory before I cough up a couple of lungs.”
Court followed behind him, and he and Zack entered the church, but only after notifying Jenner of their intentions to do so.
The four able-bodied men of Jenner’s team, plus Court and Zack, cleared the church over the next ten minutes, killing three Russians on the ground floor and two more hiding in the tower. They radioed back to Castle Enrick and were informed that the burning crash site would have immediately destroyed all the weaponized bacteria, so they had not been exposed to the plague.
As they looked over all the dead inside and out, the majority of the combatants appeared to be Bratva soldiers, but a few were clearly of a different mold. Their gear was better, more coordinated and uniform, and the men looked more fit, more rugged.
But no less dead.
Jenner called in the Direct Action Penetrator helicopter, and he and his mates began treating the wounded. He had two KIA—McClane and Aaronson—and two more, Partridge and Stapleton, were wounded, stable but out of the fight.
Court asked if anyone had seen Zoya.
Travers said, “I saw her. She took one of the vehicles and headed off in the same direction as the others.”
Jenner said, “So she’s with them, after all.”
Travers countered, “She was bound when I found her. I cut her free.”
Again Jenner replied, “And then she ignored your instructions and jumped in a van and drove off with her father.”
Court said, “Not with her father. After her father.”
Jenner shrugged. “She hauled ass right behind the rest of them, Gentry. That’s all we know.”
Court and Zack were tasked with carrying the body of Aaronson—Court didn’t learn the man’s name till after he died—towards a makeshift landing zone at the bottom of the hill on the airstrip. As they struggled with the dead weight of the operator, Court took a moment to look back to the burning wreckage of the aircraft in the distance.
When they had the body at the LZ, Zack said to Court, “I’m going to call Brewer. You know what she’s going to say about Anthem, don’t you?”
Court did know exactly what Brewer would say, but he defended her to Zack now. “Zoya is on our side.”
“Good ole Suzanne’s not gonna see that. Zoya drugged you and ran, and then she ran again from Ground Branch. It looks bad for her.”
“She’s on our side,” Court repeated.
Zack said, “You need to stow that sentimental bullshit. If Brewer or Hanley orders me to take her out, then that’s what I’ll do.”
Court squared off in front of the bigger man. “Then you and I are going to have a problem.”
“Again?”
“It’s not me, Zack. It’s you.”
“Wrong, Six! That hard-on you have for her is making the rest of you soft! And soft makes you dead. Quit your job and you can be as big a pussy as you want for as long as you want; you can get a whole slew of kittens and grow flowers or whatever else it is that makes you whole. But as long as you are in this shit, with me, especially, you will fucking man up and do the jobs we are assigned.”
“I’m not killing Zoya.” His voice lowered. “And neither are you.”
“If Brewer tells me to—”
“I’m not saying you won’t try. I’m saying you’ll die before you do.”
The two men stared each other down, but behind them the helicopter landed, drowning out any further conversation.
CHAPTER 60
Suzanne Brewer sat in the living room of Matt Hanley’s suite at Castle Enrick. His accommodations were much nicer than hers, but he was DDO so she was not surprised or offended by this. She expected to have his job someday, or she had expected it until recently. Now she knew she’d have to extricate herself from the black ops world to have a shot at a higher position and the perks that came along with it.
Together they’d sat on the sofa and listened to Zack Hightower’s voice over the sat phone, talking over the rotors of the helo, delivering his after-action report about the attack on the church. Two Ground Branch men killed, two wounded, no sign of Zakharov or Primakov, Mars, or Fox. Anthem was freed, but she immediately fled the area, and her status remained unconfirmed.