Page 43 of Close Pursuit

While she’d been asleep, Alex had rigged a better baby sling made out of a bed sheet. She tucked Dawn into it with a grateful smile for him, and followed him out of the bunker. It took both of them to haul the steel door shut, and she heard the tumblers of the lock fall into position.

“What was that place?”

“It’s for emergencies. Served us well enough. That’s what matters.”

Didn’t feel like answering questions, did he? Of course, how in the hell he’d known of the bunker’s existence was the biggest question of all.

The made their way out of the crevasse and back into the open.

Alex jogged away from her dropping red cyalume sticks in a straight line. He even jumped on the ATV and drove off, continuing to drop red lights in a line that must go for nearly a mile. What on earth?

She heard their ride before she saw it. As she stared in disbelief, a small cargo plane descended toward them and landed on the impromptu runway. It had twin propeller engines mounted on high wings and looked like a miniature, skinny C-130. It taxied up to the near end of the marked landing strip and the rear cargo ramp started to open.

“Come on!” Alex yelled over the roar of the engines.

She ran after him, shielding Dawn from the dust storm the props kicked up as best she could. She ran up the metal ramp after Alex and into the dim interior of the cargo bay. A man in a gray flight suit pushed buttons that raised the ramp, then gestured them into crude webbing seats along the sides of the aircraft.

How did Alex, an American citizen, have the power to make a single radio call and get an immediate evacuation by a Russian military aircraft? Granted, his father had been an FSB employee at some point. But high enough ranking to rate this quick a rescue for his son?

Her impression was that Alex and his father were estranged. Why then, would the elder Koronov make a military aircraft available to Alex like this? What exactly was his relationship with his father…and more importantly with his father’s government? Was Alex a more loyal son of Mother Russia than he let on?

A frisson of cold, hard terror rippled down her spine.

She finished strapping in beside Alex and held Dawn close as the bird lifted off, bound for who knew where.

What the hell have I gotten myself into, now?

7

Ian McCloud swore as he watched the Antonov 26 lift off of Zaghastani soil carrying his sister and the bastard who’d stabbed him.

He—grudgingly—gave Koronov props for not killing him in cold blood. But the guy was a traitor like his father and seriously needed to die. If he’d needed any more proof of that, the Russian military markings on the plane flying off in the distance confirmed it.

He couldn’t believe Koronov had gotten the jump on him like that. But he probably should have expected it, given that the man had managed to slip out of the Karshan valley alive.

Thankfully, Alex had gotten Katie out of there alive and unhurt, too. He supposed he owed the bastard one for that. He’d been following his little sister as a side gig to his observation mission in the region. He was convinced Katie was in over her head and might need emergency extraction at some point.

But when the Russian Spetznatz team running with the local rebels had gone full-out scorched earth on the Karshan pass and all its inhabitants, even he, a hardened Spec Ops type, had been taken aback at the carnage.

Then, of course, there was his other, off-the-books mission—learning where Alexei Petrovich Koronov’s loyalties lay and taking him out if he did anything to harm the U.S. government. Of course, if Alex harmed his little sister, he would take the bastard out regardless of his loyalties.

Now that he was fucking gutted and Koronov stole his ride, he wasn’t going to be able to re-establish surveillance on the Russian hit team to figure out why they were out here or who was giving them orders.

He wouldn’t be at all surprised if Alex Koronov and his father weren’t pulling the team’s strings. It would explain how Alex kept managing to stay one step ahead of the “rebels” marauding through the region.

What the hell were the Koronovs up to out here?

Frustrated all to hell as the Antonov droned away into the haze obscuring the rising sun, he cranked up his satellite phone and extended its long antenna. Reception out here sucked even on a sat phone, and he prayed to the electronic gods that the cursed thing worked today.

Static crackled, and a tinny voice said, “Identify.”

“It’s Candyman. Current location and authentication to follow. Standby to copy.”

When the guy at the other end indicated he was ready to copy, Ian rattled off the lat-long coordinates from his GPS and the six-letter-code from his one-time use pad. While he waited for verification, he tore the top sheet off the pad and lit it with a match. The flash paper burned brightly and was gone in a puff of ash almost as quickly as it ignited.

“You are authenticated. Go ahead Candyman.”

“I need a secure patch to a land line.”

---