King checked his phone once again.
“If there’s something you need to be doing, I can go.”
Before he could respond, a horn blasted from the road. Five long and drawn-out beeps.
“Expecting someone?” Cali said.
“No,” King told her as he stood from the table.
“Sounds like someone’s expecting you.”
9
Moscow, Russia, 8:00 p.m.
As Sam walked over to Zhanna, she motioned for Zhanna to hand over Veronika’s phone. Whoever was listening in on the other end of Veronika’s phone during this transaction gone bad in the hangar, Sam had to learn their identity. Zhanna obliged and Sam checked the phone’s screen. It was an unknown number.
“Veronika!” a man with an American accent shouted.
To hear an American’s voice come from the phone while she was standing around a pile of bodies in a private hangar in Moscow, Russia, was a bit of a shock to Sam’s system. She covered the phone and handed it back to Zhanna. She mouthed to Zhanna to speak in Russian. Zhanna understood. She took the phone and said one sentence in her native tongue. It was enough to help whoever was on the other end of that call to end it immediately.
“They hang up,” Zhanna said as she switched back to her broken English.
“Shit.” Sam took the phone and pocketed it for later. She took in the carnage around her and moved over toward the briefcase. Though it didn’t go down like she had hoped, Zhanna was alive, she had a phone that she hoped she could connect to something of importance, and the briefcase lying on the ground just to her left could fully change the entire complexion of the problems at hand. All in all, it was a win.
“Yes, it is shit,” Zhanna said. “But worse shit is coming if we don’t leave now.”
Sam knew Zhanna was right. “Before we get split up, give me your number.” Sam pulled out her phone as Zhanna rattled off some numbers. She pressed call so Zhanna would have her number stored as well. “Why don’t you grab that briefcase and I’ll see if we have any company outside.”
Zhanna gave her a nod, and Sam walked back toward the side door she’d used earlier. On her way, she ejected her mostly empty magazine and replaced it with a full one. It was a good thing she did. Just as she was within a few feet of the door, the pewter handle moved downward. Sam jumped to the spot on the wall where the door was opening toward. She saw the end of a pistol move inside.
Sam grabbed the barrel of the pistol and pushed it to the right as she ducked and shot the man in the knee. She had to go to the floor with him, because there were three more men in military fatigues coming toward her, only about ten feet away.
Military fatigues?
Sam’s mind raced as she hit the ground. Her plan of shooting the man in the knee to keep him alive for questioning was immediately out the window. Now her focus was survival. As she landed face-to-face with the man she’d shot, his eyes were wide with surprise as the two of them bounced off the ground nose to nose, she pulled her gun up and shot him in the stomach.
“Find a back way out!” Sam shouted at Zhanna.
She was able to use the large man as a springboard, digging the right toe of her shoe into his belt and sliding her body along the floor to avoid the shots the men with him fired just before the door slammed shut in their face. Her first instinct was to scramble fast enough to get to the door and lock it. But if she wasn’t quick enough, they’d beat her there and shoot her dead. So she popped up to her feet, ran around the boxes back toward the dead bodies she’d already helped lay to rest, and sprinted over to Zhanna whose back was running around the prop plane.
“This way!” Zhanna shouted.
The door behind Sam exploded inward. A cascade of bullets followed, and the loud bangs echoed through the hangar. Sam jumped the body of the man who’d once held the briefcase, and she surged past the plane. The aluminum was filling with holes from the ammo being expensed behind her. She didn’t have time to worry about the same damage filling her back. She just had to run.
In front of her, a different door silhouetted Zhanna with bright light. It was dark out, but the light shining down on her made her glow. Before Sam could feel any sense of relief, Zhanna was already shooting around the door at the men in military gear. Whoever it was, whether the actual Russian military or some sort of mercenary team, they weren’t commissioned by the American voice Sam had heard coming through Veronika’s phone. This team of gunmen had already been at the hangar waiting, either to intercept this briefcase exchange or to shut it down. Regardless, Sam and Zhanna were trapped.
Zhanna fired a few more times and then jumped back inside the hangar, swinging the metal door shut as bullets clanked against it.
“How many?” Sam shouted as gunfire continued behind her.
“Two, maybe more!” Zhanna wasn’t rattled yet, but she was on her way there.
The two of them crouched. The prop plane on one side and a thin wall on the other were the only two things keeping them alive. Sam scanned the area around her. On the back wall there were more boxes, and beside them, a pushback tractor. None of it useful. As she scanned back toward the hangar door, she fired a couple of rounds in the direction of the men who were shooting at them from behind the stack of boxes on the other side. If the men outside the door on her right were trained, as long as they were firing they wouldn’t enter the hangar for fear of friendly fire. This was her and Zhanna’s only window.
Sam took the briefcase from Zhanna and moved toward the door. The men on the other side of the hangar finally stopped shooting. They shouted something in Russian. Sam assumed it was some iteration of “Don’t move,” but she couldn’t worry about that.
Sam looked back at Zhanna as she placed her hand on the door handle. “When I show the briefcase, I need you to shout in Russian that we surrender and tell them to take the briefcase. Tell them to spare us and take what they came for.”
Zhanna didn’t protest or ask questions. She knew Sam was baiting them. Sam cracked the door open and shoved the briefcase out into the cold air. Zhanna shouted in Russian, a man shouted back, and Zhanna followed with something else that even in Russian sounded like Zhanna was pleading with them. The men shouted once again behind them from the other side of the hangar, but Sam was focused forward out the door, waiting for one of the men to make a move for the briefcase.
Sam reached her hand back and whispered, “Your gun!” Zhanna handed the gun to Sam, and Sam tossed it out the door toward the briefcase. Zhanna shouted something else to the men. Everything went still. Sam raised her Glock in front of her. She could hear the squeak of shoes on the polished floor behind them. The men on the other side of the boxes inside the hangar were coming her way. Zhanna pleaded again, but the men were closing in behind them. They were going to have to make a move whether it was the right time or not.
Then, finally, outside the crack in the door, a hand reached out and grabbed for the briefcase. Sam squeezed the trigger and shot the handle. As the man jerked his hand back, she shoved the door open with her foot and put two in the man’s chest, then dove out from behind the open door. As her left side hit the pavement, she shot three more times, hitting the second man twice. As he dropped to the ground, gunfire erupted from inside the hangar, and Zhanna came diving to the ground behind her. Sam jumped up, picked up the briefcase and Zhanna’s gun, and handed the gun to her like a relay sprinter passing the baton, and both of them were off and running.