On Target (53 page)

Two hours later, Court felt certain they were well out in international waters. He could hear soft moaning and an occasional wheeze from the man behind him. Zack babbled incoherently at one point. Gentry knew Hightower could still die from his wound or from an infection, even if he made it to top-flight medical care in the next hours. Sir Donald would have to come through big time to rescue them.

The irony was not lost on the Gray Man. He’d saved Sir Donald a few months earlier, told himself he’d never trust him again, and now the portly knight was Court’s very last hope.

The sub finally surfaced at eight fifteen in the morning. The sun was well up now, straight off the bow of the little vessel. Gentry used it to orient himself as the HUD was difficult to read with the bright daylight penetrating the cockpit. Court activated the FM beacon and waited.

They bobbed up and down on the open sea.

A little after ten he saw the ship. It was a huge tanker, and as it loomed above the submarine, loomed above Gentry’s head right at the waterline, it seemed as high as a skyscraper and menacing with its jet-black hull. The ship took nearly a half hour from first sight to the point at which a ladder was lowered to the sub and Court popped his canopy. He called out for help, and two men came down on separate ladders, secured Hightower in a harness, and had him lifted three stories up to the railing.

Court climbed up the ladder under his own power, though his shoulder burned with the strain, and he vomited in the heat as the huge ship rose and fell with him hanging on alongside. He’d nearly made it to the top when he passed the big letters on the port side bow. He had to lean back to read the name of the craft that rescued him.

“LaurentGroup Cherbourg.”

“Perfect,” he said. Court had had dealings with LaurentGroup, the huge multinational corporation that had tried to kill him the previous year. He never thought he’d willingly climb aboard one of their vessels but, again, desperate times called for desperate measures.

Court continued up the ladder to the railing and was pulled over the side by a crew of Indonesians.

Zack was laid out on a stretcher and rushed hurriedly away. Court himself fell to the deck, was lifted by his arms and legs, and then more dragged than carried into a cool hallway in the superstructure of the ship. Within minutes he asked for morphine, a syringe appeared, and shortly thereafter, he was out.

When he awoke, he’d already been transferred to another boat, a tall sailing ship owned by a Welsh media tycoon and, as it turned out, a friend of a friend of Sir Donald. Court asked about the condition of the man brought aboard the tanker with him, but the crew of his new vessel had no information.

Four days later, they made port in Alexandria, and Court Gentry slipped ashore and away. The crew of the sailing ship never saw him leave.

They just awoke one morning and found him gone.

Of all the eighty nations around the globe to which Rosoboronexport sold arms, Il-76 senior pilot Gennady Orloff most enjoyed his layovers in Venezuela. It was not because of Caracas’s nightlife, which had taken a hit with the austere Communist demagoguery that President Hugo Chávez had advanced in the past few years. And it was not because of the natural, rugged beauty of the country, as Gennady rarely had more than one day until his turnaround flight back to Russia and therefore insufficient time to leave Caracas proper, the smoggy urban jungle of five million.

No, Gennady enjoyed Venezuela because of a woman.
One
woman, which was hardly the norm for a bon vivant such as Gennady Orloff. On his flights to Bolivia, in contrast, there were three women from whom he was forced to choose. In Cuba, there were seven, although a couple were getting a bit long in the tooth for Orloff’s taste. In Vietnam there were nearly a dozen ladies whose company he enjoyed for a single night, though half accepted dong or credit cards for the service, and none of them would have been able to keep his wandering eyes or other body parts from straying had he any forty-eight-hour layovers in Ho Chi Minh City.

But Miss Venezuela was different. She was the only woman in the country that he had eyes for. He’d met her on the Internet, which was de rigueur for the forty-four-year-old Russian husband and father. For the past eighteen months he’d made at least one flight a month to Caracas, ferrying missiles or warship parts or seemingly every major item from the Russian military catalog with the exception of the Kalashnikov rifle, as the Russian government had licensed a plant in Maracay, Venezuela, to produce AK-103s domestically. And virtually every time he came to Caracas, twenty-nine-year-old Tanya del Cid was waiting for him in a junior suite at the Gran Meliá Caracas, arguably the most opulent five-star hotel in all of Venezuela. Tanya was a cashier at a Lexus dealership, and she had a girlfriend who worked as a concierge at the Gran Meliá, and both women traded secret overnight loans of the goods and services of their employers. While Tanya enjoyed her dashing Russian pilot in a junior suite, Maria cruised Avenida Principal de las Mercedes in an SC10 convertible “borrowed” off the lot.

Two weeks to the day after his flight to Al Fashir, Gennady Orloff and his crew said good-bye at Ground Transportation of Simón Bolívar Airport, with plans to see one another the next afternoon for the return flight. The four other Russians ran through a late afternoon downpour to jump into a shuttle bus to ferry them to a nearby airport inn, while Gennady climbed in a cab with instructions to rush him to the Gran Meliá.

Thirty-five minutes later, the rain-soaked shoes of Gennady Orloff squished down a beautiful hall on the seventh floor of the hotel, his weathered canvas flight case and nylon overnight bag rolling behind them. Gennady’s tension, both nervous and sexual, made him feel like he was back in school. He arrived at room 709 and found the door cracked. Curious but not worried, he pushed the door open slightly.

Rose petals lay in a wide path through the sitting area, disappearing down the candlelit hallway to the bedroom. Soft Latin music, a somber serenade by María Teresa Chacín, played on the stereo.

Gennady smiled. Ah, this again.

Inside he left his cases at the door as he shut and locked it. He kicked off his wet shoes and yanked off his soaked socks, quickly pulled a long-stemmed white rose from an arrangement on the coffee table, and walked down the hallway. He paused at the door to savor the moment, the smell of lavender wax from the candles, the feel of the moist petals between his toes, the perfume of Tanya, which wafted gently in the air.

Gennady opened the door, his eyes following the petals all the way to the bed.

Tanya sat on the bed, fully clothed. Her arms were tied behind her back at the elbows, she’d been gagged with panty hose, and her eyes were wide from fright and red and puffy and dripping tears.

Gennady heard the hammer of a pistol cocking behind his head.

He dropped the rose.

English words: “Hands high. Walk backwards down the hall. Slowly.”

Gennady Orloff did as he was told. His frightened eyes locked with Tanya’s. She tried to say something, but only a series of high notes and a quarter cup of spit came out of her mouth through the panty hose.

Once back in the living room, the music was turned down. He waited several seconds for instructions, but when none came, he put as much masculinity into his voice as he could muster and said, “I am turning around slowly.”

A man in a suit sat in a leather chair, his back to the far wall, a raincoat folded beside him. Both hands were empty now; they rested on his knees. To the man’s left the thunderstorm raged in the window, the light on his face coming from outside and, through the water streaming down the glass, made it seem as if his face was melting before Orloff’s eyes.

The face. Gennady knew that face.

It was the American assassin he’d flown into Sudan, the one who’d caused him so much trouble. The Russian tried to not let his nervousness show.
“Chto Novava?”
What’s new?

“Nichivo.”
Nothing much.

“Shto ty hochesh?”
What do you want?

“For starters, I want to speak English. Sit down.”

Gennady sat on the sofa across from the American. He moved slowly, warily, but the bearded man in the leather chair gave no indication of threat. He seemed thinner somehow than in the Sudan. His face appeared drawn and gaunt, though again, his face
was
somewhat obscured by the rain-diffused lighting.

The Russian pilot switched to English. “All right. What do you want?”

“I want to have a conversation with you.”

“You caused me a lot of problems after Al Fashir.”

The American shrugged. “Apparently everything is okay now. You are still flying weapons for Rosoboronexport.”

“
A kak je?
Why wouldn’t I be? I did nothing wrong.”

“Other than violating sanctions, you mean.”

Gennady relaxed a little. He waved his arm like shooing a fly from his face. “Politics. I don’t have anything to do with those decisions. I am just a pilot.”

The American shrugged. “We all have our expertise.”

Gennady swallowed, stopped himself from asking about the American’s expertise. He knew he was a killer, and did not want to bring that up.

“Did you . . . do anything to Tanya?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘anything.’ I put a gun in her face. I tied her up. I scared the piss out of her, quite literally, as a matter of fact. Yeah, I did ‘something’ to her.” The man seemed distant for a moment. But his eyes retrained on Gennady in a second. “She’s a spook, by the way.” He said it nonchalantly.

“What?”

“Yeah. She’s GIO.”

Gennady just stared back. He did not understand.

“General Intelligence Office.”

Still no comprehension of what he was being told.

The American sighed, frustrated. “A Venezuelan spy. I pulled a wire from her.” He dangled a tiny listening device with an antenna no wider than a strand of wet spaghetti out in front of him, then swung it across the coffee table to Orloff.

Gennady caught it and looked it over. He laid it down on the table. “You lie.”

“No . . . I kill. I do not lie.”

Orloff believed. For several seconds he all but forgot about the American in front of him. He wanted to stand and return to the bedroom to beat the shit out of the little lying Latin whore, make good use out of those restraints holding her arms back.

But the American? What was his angle?

“You work for Gregor Sidorenko. The FSB told me this when they questioned me about your disappearance. Are you here to protect me from Venezuelan intelligence?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Does your wife know about the affair?”

Gennady’s eyes narrowed. “Not this one, no. But she would understand. She knows I am a man who is loved by many women.”

“Especially those paid to sleep with you.”

The Russian sighed. Shrugged. “I love my wife.”

“Do I look like I give a flying fuck about your marriage?”

“Then what is this about?”

“I don’t know what the Venezuelans plan to do with the intelligence they’ve gotten from you, but you have to ask yourself if you have ever said one thing in bed with the beautiful Tanya del Cid that you don’t want the FSB to know about. Nothing negative about home? About your work? Nothing significant that could hurt you if Russian state security heard it?”

Gennady shrugged. “I am just a pilot. And a proud Russian. I have said nothing that worries me.”

“You are certain?”

The Russian nodded slowly, perhaps not so sure but unwilling to reveal anything to this American.

The American seemed unfazed. “I need you to do something for me. I am prepared to pay you a lot of money.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Something that you already do well. Talk.”

“Talk about?”

“Talk about flying into Darfur. Talk about ferrying in an assassin from the Russian mafia to do a job for Russian state security. Talk about the types and quantities of weapons you brought into the country, weapons that won’t show up on any invoices. Show the West Russia’s crimes, and show the Sudanese that the Russians killed their leader.”

“What will that prove?”

“What many people already assume. But it will put pressure on Russia, get them kicked out of the country. Damage their influence. It just might prevent a war.”

“Why the hell would I do something so crazy as this? The FSB would kill me if I did.”

“Not if they could not get to you.”

Gennady shook his head. This discussion was madness, completely out of the question. “I have a family. They could get to them. My wife and three children—”

“Five children, actually.” The American said, his voice menacing. “Must be hard to keep up, isn’t it? Three with your wife, Marina, in central Moscow, plus a six-year-old girl with Mina, a Thai factory worker, and a twelve-year-old boy with Elmeera, a Tunisian flight attendant.”