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Someone must’ve tipped him off about the meeting, and he planned to use her mother as either a shield or a bargaining chip. Had they been discussing the change in the location prior to Doc removing the tracking device from her body? She didn’t think so, which meant he had to have someone on the inside, reporting to him. Maybe Gunner’s instincts about Pimm had been right after all.
She could follow, maybe even kill Petrov before he had a chance to act, but that meant her shot had to be dead-on. It had been years since she’d executed a nighttime kill without the assistance of an NVD.
22
Something was off. Gunner could feel it in his bones. He studied McTiernan as he outlined the deal they’d brought to the Russians, kept his eye on Shiv and Striker, and watched the three other men from United Russia who were with them in the dimly lit room.
If Razor were here, it would take one look between them for his friend to know Gunner’s hackles were raised, and vice versa. Neither Shiv nor Striker had made eye contact with Gunner at all.
Every man in the room, with the exception of McTiernan and his UR counterpart, had their hands on their guns. All things being equal, neither organization could take the other out…unless one of them had less backup posted outside. K19 had four—Monk, Onyx, Alegria, and Dutch. United Russia had agreed to the same number, but it was anyone’s guess as to whether they stuck to the deal or not.
“Wait. This wasn’t part of our agreement,” Gunner heard McTiernan say. The man turned around and looked between Gunner and Shiv.
Shiv approached while Gunner kept watch.
“The terms of the deal cannot be changed at this juncture,” Shiv snapped, standing and glaring at the Russian negotiator whose only response was a smug look Gunner wanted to rip off his face.
“What’s changed?” he asked Shiv.
“They’ve added Petrov to the deal.”
“He was already part of the deal.”
“We have to deliver him to them instead of the other way around.”
The idea didn’t exactly bother Gunner, but the fact that UR was changing the deal now pissed him off as much as it did Shiv.
“Dead or alive?” he asked.
Shiv looked back down at the document. “Either.”
Killing Petrov would be his pleasure, but he wanted the deal done now anyway.
As he contemplated their next move, Gunner saw a shadowed figure right outside the window. It appeared that whoever it was, wasn’t alone.
“Code black,” he barked, and every light in the place immediately went out. It was a different meaning for a commonly used code that he, Striker, and Shiv had agreed to prior to the start of the meeting. “We have company, gentlemen,” he whispered in the now-silent room.
“Who?” asked Shiv.
“I’m almost positive it’s Petrov, and if so, he just made finalizing this agreement far easier.”
Gunner, Shiv, and two of the Russians slipped on night-vision devices. Shiv and Gunner crept to the back door while the Russians went out the front.
“We’ve got company,” Gunner whispered into his mic.
—:—
Raketa felt the gun pressed against her temple at the same time she heard a familiar voice say, “Don’t make a sound or a move.”
Topor. Once again he’d caught her off guard. Instead of assessing her surroundings, she’d only been focused on Petrov and her mother.
“Keep quiet and your mother might live. Make a sound and she’ll be dead instantaneously.”
In the next few seconds, all hell broke loose outside the back of the cottage. Raketa watched in horror as Gunner and Shiv came out and found themselves face-to-face with Petrov, who pressed his gun into her mother’s temple the same way Topor’s was still pressed against hers. Raketa’s worst nightmare had come true. She and her mother would die tonight, and there was nothing she could do to stop it from happening.
—:—
The fact that he wasn’t wearing an NVD didn’t seem to thwart Petrov at all. There was enough light from the moon and the other cottages that he could see exactly who and what he was up against.
