Page 35 of Close Pursuit

The door moved a few inches but then stopped.

“Help me,” he grunted.

She put her hands beside his and threw her weight into tugging. Together, they slowly dragged the rusted door open another two feet. Alex took the cyalume stick from her and slipped through the narrow opening first. Katie moved Dawn’s sling to the side and squeezed through the slit after him. She coughed at the dust their feet had stirred up and looked around in the dim green glow.

It looked like a storeroom with wooden crates covered in dust stacked high along the walls. Alex was moving away from her quickly and she hurried after him murmuring, “I say again, what the fuck?”

“Don’t ask,” he bit out.

The far wall came into view. It wasn’t a cave, then. This space was manmade.

She stared as she spotted an old-fashioned metal console with what looked like radio controls mounted in it. Alex sat down in the metal chair in front of it and wiped off the glass dial faces with his sleeve. She moved close behind him and her jaw dropped as she spied Cyrillic letters on the dials.

“This is a Russian place? How on earth did you know about this? And that combination? And about this radio?”

“Later,” he bit out. He stood up and moved to one side of the console. A big, round wheel was mounted there with a foot long handle protruding from it. He grabbed the handle and began turning the wheel slowly. It creaked and groaned.

“Dig in my pack and get me the petroleum jelly,” he ordered.

She did as he asked and pulled out a small plastic container of the goop. Using his finger, he daubed the lubricant around the shaft of the wheel and commenced pushing at it again. The thing turned smoothly and silently this time. He picked up speed, cranking for a minute or so.

“Take over cranking the generator for me, will you?” he asked.

She shed her coat and wrapped Dawn in it, then took over his position at the crank wheel. He sat back down at the console and flipped several switches. A small light came on, dim and flickering in rhythm with her cranking. But as she continued, the bulb glowed brighter and steadier.

Alex picked up a potato-sized microphone and held it to his mouth, speaking rapidly into it…in Russian.

What. The. Hell?

6

Alex supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d been forced into using this emergency supply dump his father had told him about right before he came on this cursed mission. Why had his father asked him to look into Doctors Unlimited, anyway?

He’d been shocked by Roman Koronov’s phone call, even more shocked when his old man told him to copy down a set of lat-long coordinates and a number combination.

How had his old man known he would need the information unless his father had expected someone to come after his son in Zaghastan? Had Roman sent that Spec Ops guy after him? Had his father’s suggestion that he go to work for D.U. been a set-up?

Had Roman sicced the rebels on his own son with the intent to kill him? Was he that cold a bastard? Why would his father do a thing like that? What die Doctors Unlimited have to do with it?

Lord knew, Alex didn’t for a minute think Doctors Unlimited was the innocent aid organization it purported to be. Were the persistent attacks by those extremely well-armed rebels the reason his father had wanted him to take the job? What did the attacks signify?

While he waited for the vacuum tubes in the radios to warm up and start working again, he acknowledged it might be arrogant to assume this mess was all about him. It seemed as if larger forces at work around him and Katie, and now the baby. But who? Andwhy?

He was missing something critical. He felt it in his bones.

Static snapped and popped over the radio and he fine-tuned the AM frequency, holding his breath and praying this would work. If not, he could only hope there was enough gasoline stored somewhere in here to travel a hundred miles on the ATV to the nearest large city, a prospect he did not relish.

He hated making this call with every fiber of his being. But as sure as the sun rose every morning, when that guy he’d stabbed reported back to whoever he worked for, more men just like him would be coming. A lot more. All together next time And with a woman and baby in tow, he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of avoiding them or beating them in combat.

He sent the distress call again.

Without warning, an answering voice crackled over the radio.

He had to yell into the microphone to be heard, but he relayed his position and the code words scribbled on the piece of paper from his wallet. There was a pause of nearly two interminable minutes, but then the voice at the other end of the radio came back and reported that a ride would be dispatched to his position, ETA six hours.

It was done.

He’d made a deal with the Devil, and now there would be hell to pay.

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