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Unfortunately, she had no choice.
She leaped out, headfirst, and flipped over midair so that her spine led the way. If she’d calculated correctly the hay should be right beneath her. She heard the wooden tower collapse from the rocky onslaught. She closed her eyes and waited. A second later she found the hay, which cushioned her impact and brought her to an abrupt stop. She opened her eyes, lying faceup, and listened to the crescendo of rock and wood finding the ground.
She stood and surveyed the destruction.
Clouds of dust rolled skyward.
Her employees rushed over and asked if she was hurt. She shook her head and made sure again that all of them were all right.
“Looks like we have a mess to clean up,” she said.
She rolled out of the cart, her nerves rattled, but accidents happen, especially on a project of this magnitude. Thankfully, to date, none of the on-site injuries had been substantial.
She held a degree in medieval architecture from l’École pratique des hautes études in Paris, her master’s thesis on Pierre de Montreuil, the 13th-century proponent of Gothic style. She’d taken nearly a year to design her castle and hoped to be around when it was finished. She was not yet forty, so age wasn’t the problem. It was the risks she sometimes took, and not just the ones that came from falling rock. Through the years she’d been involved with some scary stuff. She’d worked with foreign governments, intelligence agencies, even presidents, never allowing the inevitability of a routine to capture her. But if you stayed around people with guns long enough, eventually something bad happened. So far, though, she’d been lucky.
Like today.
The workers headed for the rubble.
Her cell phone vibrated in her coat pocket.
Over the past couple of weeks she’d been working more closely with her family corporation, headquartered in Barcelona. Her mother and father had bequeathed the company to her as their sole heir and she was its only shareholder, its assets totaling in the billions and stretching across six continents. Usually business was one of her least favorite tasks, the day-to-day operations left to competent officers, but work of late had taken her mind off other things. She assumed this was another call from the chief executive officer. They’d already talked once today.
But the alert had been for a text.
She tapped the icon and saw the sender.
STEPHANIE NELLE.
Her spine stiffened, as this the last, or at least next-to-last person she wanted to hear from.
She read the message.
Cotton’s in trouble and I wouldn’t be telling you this if it wasn’t bad.
CHAPTER FIVE
LAKE BAIKAL, RUSSIA
Malone shut his eyes in a bid to clear his mind. He had one shot to survive, so he held on to the yoke and kept the nose straight into the headwind, intentionally trying to stall. The guy who’d turned the plane over to him had bragged that the An-2 was capable of flying backward in a thirty-knot headwind. Pilots had even managed to maneuver themselves to the ground like a parachute. He’d wondered about such a boast, but was about to find out if it was true.
The plane bucked in the turbulence and he yanked the control column full aft, keeping the wings level, which wasn’t easy considering that a respectable part of the two left ones was gone. The engine remained dead, instruments not working, the cockpit turning cold from the lack of a heater, his exhales evident in gray fogs. Luckily, he was dressed properly. Thermals close to the skin, windproof on the outside, insulation in between, all Russian army issue. Gloves protected his hands, boots his feet, and a fur-lined hood part of his fiber-pile coat.
He felt airspeed diminish, the plane being held aloft by the headwind. Two loud snaps drew his attention. Stress on the wings had buckled the leading edge slats. He began to lose altitude and not at a steady rate, more a steep drop. He worked the control surfaces and managed to regain some stability, the plane leveling but still falling. He stole a quick glance out the windows and saw the blue ice and sugared surface of the lake approaching. The plane rocked right, then left, but he was able to counter the motion and keep the fuselage pointing into the wind. Sunlight blared back in reflection from the windows. A buffeting blast of icy air blew straight at him, the stiff wind acting like his engine and providing lift, the plane heading down backward against the gusts. He had no idea where or what he would hit and realized the landing would be anything but smooth, so he quickly made sure his harness was tight and braced himself.
He found the ground, tail-first, the landing skis smacking, then recoiling, strong surface winds assaulting the An-2. A rasp of steel edges on the crusted ice told him he was no longer airborne. Pain from the sharp impact shot through his head, short-circuiting his brain in a starburst of sparks that exploded before his eyes. He tasted blood on his tongue. Nothing he could do but hope the slide ended soon. The plane’s weight finally allowed it to settle on the surface, skidding backward then spinning like an amusement park ride. Thank goodness there was plenty of room.
He juddered to a stop.
Nothing but the pulsating blood in his ears and the puff of his exhales broke the silence.
He smiled.
That was a first.
He was once a fighter pilot, trained by the navy, and he still maintained a commercial licence. He’d flown a variety of aircraft, just about everything. But he bet few had ever stalled out then landed backward and lived to tell the tale.
He released his harness and squinted out at the shimmering blue plate. A weather-scarred truck, painted a dull red beneath a gray dribble of slush on its hood and sides, approached. From the fuselage, he noticed liquid gushing out on the ice, the stench of fuel strong in the freezing air. He’d sprung a leak, big time. The truck was speeding straight at him across the lake through a light mist that wreathed the surface. It could be someone coming to help. He could definitely use a ride to Babushkin, where his own ground transportation was waiting. He needed to not only investigate the dacha but also discover who’d tried to shoot him down.
The truck kept coming, its treaded tires spitting out snow. Wind buffeted the plane and the temperature inside the cockpit turned colder. He slipped the hood of his coat up over his freezing ears. His Magellan Billet–issued Beretta was tucked inside a shoulder harness beneath his coat. His cell phone remained connected to the An-2’s communications equipment. He was about to disconnect it when the truck glided to a stop thirty yards away and two men emerged, both carrying automatic rifles, their eyes staring out from apertures in ski masks.
Not the usual Welcome Wagon fare.
They crouched and aimed.
He rolled from his seat just as gunfire erupted.
Rounds obliterated the forward windscreen. Shrouds of glass rained down. The plane’s aluminum skin was no match for high-caliber bullets, which penetrated at will. He needed to leave. Now. He crawled through the doorway into the aft compartment.
So much for a simple recon mission.
He reached beneath his coat and found his gun. Then he realized that the exit door was on the side of the plane opposite from where the truck had stopped. He wrenched the latch open and launched himself out onto the blue ice. Gunfire continued to echo, the plane peppered with rounds. He hoped he’d have a few seconds of freedom before his assailants realized he was gone.
He kept the plane between him and them and ran.
Twenty yards out he stopped and turned.
The firing had stopped.
He saw one of the men near the propeller, the other rounding the tail, their attention on the plane, then on him. Fuel continued to pour from the center of the fuselage to the ice, the orangey liquid oozing out across the frozen surface. Normally a bullet would not ignite anything. That only happened on television. But he knew that rule did not apply to aviation juice. Not much was needed to set it off.
He aimed mid-center and fired two rounds.
Neither man got a chance to do a thing.
An explosion lit the s
ky and a maelstrom of forced air rushed his way. He was thrown down to the ice, which felt like slamming onto concrete. He rolled twice then refocused on the plane, which was gone, along with the two problems, which were now charred lumps of blackened flesh and carbonized bone.
As was his phone.
Which meant he had no way of immediately contacting anybody.
He trotted around the holocaust of flames and smoke and found the truck. Thankfully, keys remained in the ignition. A handheld radio lay on one of the seats. He climbed inside, pushed the SEND button, and said, “Who’s listening?”
“I am,” a male voice said in perfect English.
“And you are?”
“How about you go first?”
“I’m the guy who just took out two men with rifles.”
“That would make you a problem.”
“I get that a lot. Why did you shoot me down?”
“Why are you here?”
He could not reveal the real reason, so he decided on another tack. “How about we meet, face-to-face, and have a chat. I’m American, not Russian. If that matters to you.”
“You were spying on my home.”
Then he realized who was speaking.
