The Right Hand by Derek Haas Page B
Authors: Derek Haas
failed to bring adequate forces to take him before, they appeared determined not to underestimate him again. Well, he’d dispatched every last son of a bitch who’d tried before, so could he blame them for switching to a strength-in-numbers assault?
He set his jaw, lowered his head, and mashed the accelerator, vaulting the Volga at the trio of trucks that wished to drive him from the road.
Marika’s head peeked out like a prairie dog’s, and she let out an eardrum-shattering shriek as she saw the SUVs closing the distance in front of them.
“Down!” he snapped for the second time that day, and this time she obeyed.
He twirled the wheel at the last possible moment, and his side-view mirrors popped like balloons as he judged correctly and squeezed the Volga between two of the SUVs as they shot past him, two bullets with a hairsbreadth of space between them. The paint on the Volga’s doors might need retouching when this was over.
Nelson. Everything Nelson suspected about the girl must’ve been true. The Russians hadn’t sent a sniper after her; they’d sent a goddamn division.
As if to accentuate the point, the familiar wut-wut-wut of a helicopter’s rotors overpowered the whine of his sedan’s engine moments before the black beast buzzed overhead and burst out in front of him.
Well, that complicated things. The ledger was starting to bleed red, and Clay doubted it would ever return to black. If he’d thought he could outrun or outduel them, that notion went out the window now that they had eyes in the sky. No, this account had gone belly-up quickly, but Clay would be damned if he was going to cut his losses and run.
He threw up the hand brake, spun the wheel, and skidded up on two tires as he took a turn back toward the city while keeping the accelerator mashed to the floorboard. The helicopter banked and turned after him, while behind him, two of the six SUVs overshot the turn and smashed into each other. The remaining four filed in line behind him.
“You have a parking garage here? Any place I can hide from the chopper?”
“Fortress museum,” came the reply from the backseat.
She was right. Vladivostok was teeming with sprawling, unique subterranean forts built in the late nineteenth century to fend off a Japanese invasion. Later, they’d been expanded right through the cold war to house Soviet platoons and matériel. They were extensive, empty, interconnected, and everywhere under the city.
“Which way?”
She poked her head up again and did a quick scan of their position. The noise of the chopper’s rotors beat down on them like a machine gun.
“Ul Zapadnaya!” she screamed, and cowered back down, covering her ears with her hands.
He cut through the city, left, then left again, angling for the water once more. Every time an SUV attempted to slide in behind him, he cut off the angle.
The sun hit the water with a glancing blow as it descended, throwing harsh light into his eyes, and he squinted to fight off the glare. He dodged through light traffic like a mouse in a maze and then ducked left onto the wider Ul Zapadnaya. Wider is relative in Russia: this street managed to have two lanes going in the same direction. The chopper overhead swung low and practically filled his front windshield. He braked sharply, spun the Volga up on the curb, and cut over a grassy knoll toward the entrance to the fortress. Tourists were mostly absent at this hour, as the museum was thirty minutes from closing. Clay honked and snaked past a couple of bicyclists, then drove the sedan up the sidewalk bordering the fortress’s entry point, almost losing control as his tires hugged the curb that protected the shrubbery along the fortress’s side. As the SUVs swarmed behind, attempting to keep pace, Clay gritted his teeth and gunned the car for the glass doors of the tunnel entrance.
A sleepy ticket-taker barely managed to pivot out of the way as the Volga took out the glass and frame like a passing hurricane.
He set his jaw, lowered his head, and mashed the accelerator, vaulting the Volga at the trio of trucks that wished to drive him from the road.
Marika’s head peeked out like a prairie dog’s, and she let out an eardrum-shattering shriek as she saw the SUVs closing the distance in front of them.
“Down!” he snapped for the second time that day, and this time she obeyed.
He twirled the wheel at the last possible moment, and his side-view mirrors popped like balloons as he judged correctly and squeezed the Volga between two of the SUVs as they shot past him, two bullets with a hairsbreadth of space between them. The paint on the Volga’s doors might need retouching when this was over.
Nelson. Everything Nelson suspected about the girl must’ve been true. The Russians hadn’t sent a sniper after her; they’d sent a goddamn division.
As if to accentuate the point, the familiar wut-wut-wut of a helicopter’s rotors overpowered the whine of his sedan’s engine moments before the black beast buzzed overhead and burst out in front of him.
Well, that complicated things. The ledger was starting to bleed red, and Clay doubted it would ever return to black. If he’d thought he could outrun or outduel them, that notion went out the window now that they had eyes in the sky. No, this account had gone belly-up quickly, but Clay would be damned if he was going to cut his losses and run.
He threw up the hand brake, spun the wheel, and skidded up on two tires as he took a turn back toward the city while keeping the accelerator mashed to the floorboard. The helicopter banked and turned after him, while behind him, two of the six SUVs overshot the turn and smashed into each other. The remaining four filed in line behind him.
“You have a parking garage here? Any place I can hide from the chopper?”
“Fortress museum,” came the reply from the backseat.
She was right. Vladivostok was teeming with sprawling, unique subterranean forts built in the late nineteenth century to fend off a Japanese invasion. Later, they’d been expanded right through the cold war to house Soviet platoons and matériel. They were extensive, empty, interconnected, and everywhere under the city.
“Which way?”
She poked her head up again and did a quick scan of their position. The noise of the chopper’s rotors beat down on them like a machine gun.
“Ul Zapadnaya!” she screamed, and cowered back down, covering her ears with her hands.
He cut through the city, left, then left again, angling for the water once more. Every time an SUV attempted to slide in behind him, he cut off the angle.
The sun hit the water with a glancing blow as it descended, throwing harsh light into his eyes, and he squinted to fight off the glare. He dodged through light traffic like a mouse in a maze and then ducked left onto the wider Ul Zapadnaya. Wider is relative in Russia: this street managed to have two lanes going in the same direction. The chopper overhead swung low and practically filled his front windshield. He braked sharply, spun the Volga up on the curb, and cut over a grassy knoll toward the entrance to the fortress. Tourists were mostly absent at this hour, as the museum was thirty minutes from closing. Clay honked and snaked past a couple of bicyclists, then drove the sedan up the sidewalk bordering the fortress’s entry point, almost losing control as his tires hugged the curb that protected the shrubbery along the fortress’s side. As the SUVs swarmed behind, attempting to keep pace, Clay gritted his teeth and gunned the car for the glass doors of the tunnel entrance.
A sleepy ticket-taker barely managed to pivot out of the way as the Volga took out the glass and frame like a passing hurricane.