Once we calledJackpot,Wolf and his crew would arrive in, as Meg called it, thebig box of fun. At that early hour, we should be able to drive into the Everglades undetected, then call for our exfiltration all the way back to Easton, Maryland. If shit wentsouth, Fletcher and Porter’s Black Star Services was supposed to have a dedicated bird circling off the Florida coast for an immediate medevac.
Once in Easton, we’d go to work on the twins and politely ask them to give up the mole. If that didn’t do the trick, we’d switch to more, uh, persuasive methods.
Oliver and I knew the plan was shitty and there were lots of ways it could go sideways, but we agreed that surprise was on our side and that made up for a lot. We had suppressed weapons in case we met armed resistance, but the whole idea of the snatch mission was to take the targets alive, using dart guns loaded with enough sedative to knock out a friggin’ elephant. The op would be smooth and silent.
By the time we were in the air heading south, Wolf, JP, and Stu were in Daytona Beach, loading another Florida Moving and Storage truck. Meg, Jimmy T., Si, and Rudy seemed hyped about the snatch mission. I think we all were excited to be back in the saddle. Hopefully there would be no fireworks tonight.
I told Meg I would call her when we were about ten minutes from wheels down.
CHAPTER 84
Alexander Egorov swallowed the last of his whiskey, his eyes burning.
“When Joseph returns,” Egorov told his sons after the traitor and her accomplice had departed with their product packages, “we will be leaving. Joseph and Natasha will close this house for a while—maybe forever. Bad people will come, so we must be prepared. They are most formidable.”
Pavel and Taras knew enough not to question his plan.But leave the house permanently?That was a drastic move. One vault in the garage held $10 million in cash alone. Another contained thousands of ounces of gold. And then there was the art. But Joseph was a master when it came to deception: He would make all of it disappear without a trace.
Egorov asked Natasha for another drink, studying his sons while he waited. Of course he loved them both, more than anything—when he wasn’t pissed off at them, which was often. He didn’t think he’d spoiled them after their mother died, but they were soft, probably because of him. He definitely hadn’tbeen spoiled whenhismother died. But none of that family history mattered now: He was hard and going to die; they were soft and going to live.
An electronic signal from the front gate broke the silence in the room.
The cargo is about to arrive,the arms dealer thought to himself.
Natasha handed Egorov a fresh glass as Joseph and two of his men entered. They placed a limp body on the floor, its head covered with a black hood, its hands and feet bound.
Egorov took a sip as he surveyed the cargo, then nodded at Joseph to remove the covering.
Joseph pulled the hood off. It was a woman. “This one is Meg Fuller,” Joseph reported, “the intelligence officer for the group.”
“And the others?”
“Taken care of, Mr. Egorov—as you ordered.”
CHAPTER 85
Embassy jet
As the Dassault Falcon 2000 climbed to altitude, Rowan Anderson looked around the cabin of the French-made business jet.
It had been so easy for them to fly to Florida unnoticed, and now to fly back with three cardboard sleeves of state-of-the-art explosives.
The pilots had their orders. Now that the connection to Alexander Egorov had been made, everything would happen at warp speed. Had Nat and his people seen Elise or her? They were on their ninth life, the grains of sand running quickly through the hourglass. Anderson shook her head in disgust.How could I have been so complacent?
“What do you need me to do?” Elise Courville asked nervously.
“We need to be ready to execute this plan fucking soon,while we can still move without restrictions. If the Russians talk, they could connect us.”
“I could contact him,” Courville said.
“Absolutely not. He would sell us out in two seconds.” Anderson thought for a moment, then asked, “Elise, you have access to a car with diplomatic plates, right?”
Courville nodded.
“Excellent. I need to borrow it for a couple of days.”
Rowan Anderson smiled. It was time to kill the president.
CHAPTER 86
