Mission Critical

She began working, and opened the large metal drawer in under a minute. Inside she found one item only. It was an iPad, the newest model, along with a charger.

Perplexed, she put the device inside her shirt and the charger in her hip bag, and then she headed back out of the vault, grabbing a thick wrapped stack of twenty-pound notes on the way.

 

* * *

 

• • •

Five minutes later she had descended the outside of the building and was just dropping down to street level when a pair of black four-doors skidded through the intersection, turning her way. She tried to dive into a darkened area, but this was Earl’s Court, and the street lighting was good. She turned and ran as fast as she could, unsure who was after her, but under the assumption that Fox and his big goon had called for support, and she just happened to be unlucky enough to time her escape to coincide perfectly with the arrival of the reinforcements.

She was on foot, she hadn’t brought a car or a motorcycle, but she was able to duck down a side street, then turn into a narrow alleyway, at the end of which she saw a sizable wall.

She sprinted towards it.

One of the sedans turned into the alleyway behind her.

As she approached the fourteen-foot-high wall ahead, her brain worked through the geometry and physics involved with climbing it. She told herself the corners would be key; she could pick a side, launch up, and use a foot against the building next to the wall, then the wall itself, and alternate back and forth, harnessing the momentum generated in her run along with the momentum generated by her legs during the pushoff of the climb.

This basically meant she would be running up the corner, and she knew she couldn’t do it for long before the momentum stored and generated equaled less than the force of gravity pulling her back to Earth, and at that point she would fall.

She hoped by then she’d be close enough to the top to grab hold.

The sedan behind her had her pinned in. It stopped and she heard car doors open. The driver put his high beams right on her.

Zoya leapt into the air. Right foot on the building, shoving up and high, left foot on the wall, hands slapping both surfaces for balance and a tiny bit more help with her climb. Back and forth, three steps on each side in all, and then she extended her arms over her head, grabbed the six-inch ledge at the top of the wall, and heaved herself up with her strong arms, shoulders, and back.

She had just started to fling herself over onto the other side and away from her attackers when she saw the second sedan parked there, the men from it just now getting out of their vehicle.

Der’mo!

She launched to her feet and began moving across the narrow ledge no wider than a balance beam.

Guns were raised in her position on both sides, but as she ran she heard no gunfire, only Fox’s voice, speaking Russian. “Zoya? Your father would like a word.”

Instantly she stopped. She turned towards the side of the alley from where Fox’s echoing voice addressed her. She gasped out a reply. “What . . . what did you say?”

“Your father. He sends his love. He asked me to bring you to him. I apologize about the men back there. They had been asked not to harm you, but you frankly sent one of them over the edge. Your father will be furious with them, and me, when he finds out what happened.”

“He’s . . . here? In London?”

“Indeed.”

Her heart pounded, both from the effect of adrenaline still and from the man’s words.

“You are lying,” she finally forced herself to say.

Zoya stood in the gunsights of at least six weapons, still and stationary, her arms by her sides and her chest heaving from exertion from the run and the climb and the crazy stress of all this.

Fox added, “Who is your friend? The sniper?”

Zoya recovered from the news she just heard. “He’s watching us right now. I give a signal and—”

Fox laughed. “We are two blocks away, down in an alley. We saw no force of men around the building, so you likely just had one comrade with you in this, and he has lost his line of sight.”

She did not reply to this.

“Come. Let’s go see the general. You’ll have a nice chat.”

She didn’t trust Fox, but she didn’t see many other options.

“All right,” she said. “I’m coming down.”

“Toss your weapon.”

She still had the .38 in the ankle holster; it was hidden under her black pants, and the Israelis hadn’t found it during their rough shakedown. So she pulled the Walther and dropped it onto the cobblestones below her.

“Very well,” said Fox. “I’d ask if you needed help climbing down, but from what I just witnessed, you should have no problems.”

Zoya sat down on the top of the wall, spun around and hung from it, then dropped the rest of the way. She’d just begun to turn around when the sound of a car’s engine and squealing tires entered the alleyway behind Fox and his car.

The headlights of a silver Volvo spun into view, and the vehicle raced forward at speed, clearly having every intention of slamming into the four-door parked there.

All the men standing next to the car, Fox included, spun their weapons towards the threat.

Zoya turned to her left and saw a window into a darkened room, just fifteen feet from her, and she ran for it.

Racing towards the window, she knew if it was anything more than a single-pane plate she’d probably not be able to just dive through it as though she were in an old Western film. Ideally she’d put a bullet hole or two in the glass to weaken it, then crash through, but she didn’t want to stop to draw from her ankle holster.

She kept running, praying she’d get lucky.

But luck wasn’t with her. Zoya saw, as she neared the window at a full sprint, that it was clearly double-pane energy-efficient glass.

But she was committed to the leap now, so she tried to generate as much power from her legs as possible. She was sure that even if she did break the glass, she’d probably also break a collarbone in the process.

Der’mo, she thought again as she went airborne.

But an instant before she made contact with the window, gunfire erupted to her right, and two rounds struck the pane in front of her, not two feet away, and by the bullets damaging the integral strength of the glass she was able to dive through easily in a shower of shards, landing and sliding along the floor inside the building.

CHAPTER 31



   Court fired the shots at the window from the driver’s side of his car to help Zoya get out of the kill zone, but now he bailed out into the alley with his rifle, and scurried behind the vehicle.