Peter Kirsanow - Second Strike

The approaching footfalls gradually grew louder. Egorshin marveled that someone would have the temerity to approach so slowly while the tyrant waited. For a moment Egorshin wondered whether it might be President Mikhailov himself who would be making his entrance.

Seconds later, Egorshin was startled to see his former boss, Ivan Uganov, enter the room. Judging by the faint gasp, others in the room also had heard the rumors of Uganov’s supposed banishment to Black Dolphin for questioning Stetchkin’s intelligence.

Yet there he was, staring uncowed at the tyrant Stetchkin. Uganov entered the room, his pace more casual than even Stetchkin’s. Though not nearly as tall as Stetchkin, he was much heavier. A smaller man followed close behind. A confrontation was about to occur. Two gunfighters from a scene in an old American Western.

Uganov’s steps were painfully slow, ponderous, and a bit unsteady. Egorshin thought he might be inebriated, not an unexpected condition for a man about to lock horns with the tyrant.

But as Uganov continued his steady approach, his pace seemed more of a shuffle than a confident stride. And as he passed, Egorshin observed that his former boss’s eyes weren’t vengeful or even purposeful, but glazed and vacant. His facial muscles were slack and his complexion chalky. Two fresh red scars dashed his temples. The body was ambulatory, but there was no animating intelligence within.

The small man Egorshin had presumed was Uganov’s aide guided him to the front of the room only a few feet from Stetchkin. The tyrant glared at the husk of a man contemptuously for several seconds and then waved for the smaller man to turn Uganov around to face the assembly.

Silence enveloped the room. Everyone present stared at the general with emotions ranging from pity to terror. Then the small man turned Uganov back to Stetchkin, who sat ramrod straight in his chair, a cruel sneer covering his face.

“Who’s the idiot now?” Stetchkin bellowed.

There was not a person present who did not absorb the message. Stetchkin was invincible. Stetchkin was supreme. And Stetchkin would suffer no apostasies.

And Piotr Egorshin knew that from that moment forward fear would govern every aspect of his life.

DALLAS FORT WORTH AIRPORT,

AUGUST 15, 9:02 A.M. CDT

Garin left as many bread crumbs as he could.

He ran a stop sign in full view of a Dallas police officer, then dutifully provided the officer with his actual driver’s license. He explained that the car was a loaner from DGT and was pleased when, as expected, the officer radioed various entities throughout the Southwest attempting to verify the explanation from a Michael Garin, currently of Dale City, Virginia.

Shortly after the traffic stop, Garin returned to the Omni Hotel, where he checked in once again, using a credit card that had expired. When it was rejected, he apologized and provided a current one—again with his actual name.

Once registered, he proceeded not to the floor of the room assignment, but to the fourth floor, where hours ago he had killed the two shooters. He walked to the emergency door leading to the stairwell where he’d placed the bodies, opened it, and confirmed that the bodies were no longer there. Had the bodies been discovered by anyone other than Bor’s associates, the area would have been cordoned off as a crime scene and police would be everywhere. Thus, Garin knew Bor’s people were somewhere in the vicinity.

Garin returned to the front desk and checked out with an apology that he’d been summoned to an important appointment in Cleveland, Ohio. He left the hotel, returned to the DGT loaner, and parked a block away. He waited for about a half hour, smoking an Arturo Fuente and presuming it unlikely anything would happen. His presumption proving correct, he drove to DFW, where he parked the car in the long-term parking lot.

Garin entered the terminal, making sure to afford each and every surveillance camera he could find an unobstructed view of his face. He purchased a ticket for an American Airlines flight to Cleveland, Ohio, using yet a third credit card that bore his actual name. Before leaving the ticket counter he apologized to the agent and asked to change his flight to the earlier flight to Cleveland, using a different credit card. The agent happily complied. Garin then cleared passenger screening at the TSA checkpoint and proceeded to the gate.

Garin sat in the waiting area facing the concourse, observing the crush of passengers flowing through the terminal. He was confident he had triggered enough alarms in the last couple of hours for Bor’s highly placed confidant or confidants within the US government to alert the assassin and his team as to Garin’s whereabouts. If anything, the alarms had been so obvious, so blatant, that even marginally sophisticated trackers would immediately suspect Garin was triggering them intentionally. Garin was unconcerned. Regardless of whether Bor’s confederates thought the alarms were inadvertent or intentional, they would be coming after him.

Optimally, Bor would prefer one team to accompany Garin on the flight and another to be waiting for his arrival in Cleveland. If Dan Dwyer’s speculation that the team was comprised of Zaslon operators was correct, they would be tactically proficient. Garin, however, had little doubt he would be able to detect them. Men who kill know the look of men who kill.

Garin scanned the immediate vicinity and saw no one who appeared even remotely capable of posing a threat. The adjacent seating areas were populated by business travelers, vacationers, and students. Some looked pleasant, others serious, most merely preoccupied. None had the telltale hardness in their eyes.

On the other side of the concourse, however, was a man browsing in a bookstore. He wore casual business attire like many in the gate area and was too far away for Garin to discern any particular look in his eyes. But his movements gave him away. He stood with his weight on the balls of his feet rather than on his heels. His stance was shoulder-width, like that of an athlete prepared to pivot.

Garin stared at the man for several minutes. He moved slowly from bookshelf to magazine shelf to knickknack shelf. He opened a paperback, read the jacket of a hardcover, and spoke to the cashier. At no time did he cast even a glance in Garin’s direction or speak into his cell phone to report contact with Garin. A professional. Probably elite. Possibly even Zaslon level.

If, of course, there was such a thing.

MOSCOW,

AUGUST 15, 8:11 P.M. MSK

Mike Garin’s credit card transactions, the electronic log of the radio call the Dallas police officer had made regarding Garin’s traffic violation, as well as millions of other bits of electronic communications were intercepted and processed by one of Spetssvyaz’s Inter-Ghost Surveillance Program’s supercomputers located in a massive underground facility beneath the buildings that housed Piotr Egorshin’s nameless enterprise. An algorithm flagged the transactions and displayed them on a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling screen in a room on the fourth floor of the facility. Seated at a desk before that screen was Major Valeri Volkov, who, upon viewing the data, typed a series of commands on his keyboard prompting the screen to display a satellite image of the city of Dallas, Texas, USA. A series of red arrows pointed to the locations from which the transactions emanated. Beneath the locations were rectangular boxes containing text descriptions of the various locations, along with the times of the transactions.

Volkov picked up the phone, paused, and then put it down again. This was important enough for a personal visit with his boss. An opportunity to ingratiate himself with the rising star.