Geri Krotow - The Fugitive's Secret Child

Hot summer sun beat on the back of Rob’s neck and through his drab olive T-shirt and cargo pants. The Poconos were beautiful when snow covered, or drenched in green as they were now. But the July humidity was oppressive, soaking his clothes after only an hour on target.

He’d thought Ivanov would have shown his face by now. There’d been no sign of him since last night, when Rob spotted him taking his last smoke break before bed, around nine o’clock. He knew Ivanov chain-smoked and had come out for fresh air, a risk when he had to know he was a wanted man. Ivanov and Vasin had been surrounded by guards. If Rob wasn’t on such strict orders from Trail Hikers headquarters in Silver Valley to keep collateral damage to a minimum, he’d have taken out both monsters and their thugs in that moment. His mission was to disable Ivanov and Vasin, call in other law enforcement agencies, or LEAs, and then get the hell out of Dodge. Typical of a Trail Hikers op, there were to be no fingerprints of his government shadow agency’s involvement.

Rob liked to think of Trail Hikers as the helping hand for all other LEAs, national and local. A Trail Hikers agent enabled an FBI agent, state trooper, sheriff or local cop to come in and finish the job. And take credit for it.

The real reason he’d gone with Trail Hikers instead of another shadow agency was for his mental health. After three years of ignoring the regret of not crossing the street to let Trina Lopez know he’d lived, he’d sought counseling six months ago. And discovered he still needed to finish what he’d tried to do in Norfolk. Trina was with the US Marshals in Harrisburg, and Silver Valley was only twenty minutes away across the Susquehanna River. He’d made the move to Silver Valley a month later, so that he could face her again, put to right the lack of initiative on his part three years ago. As far as he knew she was still with someone else, had her own family, but he still needed some kind of closure, if only to wish her well. It was for his own sanity.

The beauty of Trail Hikers was that he could live anywhere in the country and work for them. He’d grown to like Silver Valley over the past several months, and it would be nice to stay, but he didn’t think permanently living that close to Trina would be healthy, even with closure.

A gnat flew into his eye, and he swatted it away.

He wondered why Ivanov was staying inside so much today. Usually he liked to go for a walk, at least twice a day if not more often. That sense of dread Rob identified as his instinct waved a warning flag. Did Ivanov and Vasin know Rob was out here?

Ivanov had puffed on his cigarette with Vasin and four other men around him, as if he knew he was hunted, that his enemy was close. Of course by now the criminal had to be downright paranoid, considering his constant need to be on the run. Add in his love of women, vodka and tobacco and he probably had at least the beginnings of cirrhosis and lung cancer. Ivanov’s mind and sense of trust in humanity were pretty much shot, Rob figured.

That Rob understood.

A glint of metal in the sun was his only warning before the building’s door opened. He took the safety off, positioned his fingers to shoot without hesitation.

He waited. And waited.

Nothing. The door was open, but nobody came out. With experience wrought only from years of tortuous situations, Robert ignored his annoyance, his impatience. He could outwait the best of them. As he watched, a tiny figure appeared at the edge of the doorway. An animal? Peering through the scope he discovered he was looking at a puppy.

A dog ? He’d seen a lot of strange things in his years as a SEAL, CIA operative and now Trail Hikers secret agent, but he’d never seen a dog, much less a puppy, around Vasin. Unless it was a guard dog with killer instincts. He hadn’t seen any sign of guard dogs or any strays around this compound of sorts. He swiped at the sweat on his nape, the bandanna around his head unable to keep it as dry as his temples as sweat streamed off him, making rivulets through his sunscreen. He sensed a slight breeze around his neck and shoulders and went still.

“We meet again, Robert Bristol.” Hearing his name spoken by the all-too-familiar bass voice chilled him to the bone and made him grateful he’d heeded the CIA’s suggestion and changed his name after he’d been presumed dead as a Navy SEAL. The cold metal of a gun barrel pressed painfully into his temple. “Get up slowly, and leave your rifle. You won’t be needing it.”

Rob did as instructed. He knew the voice, the heavy accent. His captor was no one to brook argument.

Once Rob was standing, his nemesis shoved the gun more deeply into the side of his head, the pressure making white floaters appear in Rob’s vision.

“You try my patience, Bristol. Put your hands up and turn around.”

Robert turned, his arms at shoulder level, dreading whom he’d see.

“Vasin. Fancy seeing you in the Poconos, of all places. I thought Jersey City was your jurisdiction.”

“Go to hell, Bristol. Your time is over.” Vasin’s voice pulsated with acrimony as he stared at Rob, surrounded by four henchmen who also carried the best handguns money could buy. Vasin had stayed as lean and lethal as when Rob had tracked him in a CIA operation three years ago, and ended up in actual hand-to-hand with him. It had been a fight that started with knives and ended with several broken bones, on Vasin’s part. Rob had suffered three butterfly stitches over his left eye that one of his fellow agents had tended to on their helo ride out of New Jersey.

“How’re your ribs, Vasin? I see you can at least breathe again.”

Rob saw the polished tip of Vasin’s Italian loafer close in a nanosecond before an explosion of pain shattered his vision. His body collapsed with zero fight. A kick to the balls did that to a guy.

Dirt. The ground is hard. The grass is like straw.

Thoughts to take his mind off the pain, keep him detached from the anguish to come. Vasin knew a sadist’s way around the human body—what hurt the most, what would elicit a confession the quickest. Rob and cruelty were on a first-name basis. He knew every torture method intimately. So did his bones.

“Drag him by his feet to the ATVs.” Vasin’s thugs grabbed his legs and started the laborious trek over hardened field grass and mud. Rob sucked in his gut as hard as he could despite the quaking tremors from his groin. It was enough to hold his neck up, away from the ground. Enough to protect it from the excruciating jolts, enough to be able to observe that Vasin and his dirtbags were facing front, not looking at him as they trudged to the waiting off-road vehicles. In an instant he grabbed the knife he’d tucked in his front pocket and threw it with little preparation. His target arched his back and dropped. The man let out a loud whoosh as he hit the ground. Satisfaction cleared some of Rob’s pain-addled vision.

One punctured lung.

The second knife was in his left hand, raised to throw it, when one of the remaining men turned and crushed Rob’s arm with one fierce stomp of his foot. Rob saw Vasin’s shoe again through a shroud of unbearable pain before his throat was pressed closed and darkness prevailed.

* * *

US Marshal Trina Lopez looked at the map, her phone GPS and the email from her boss. She was four hours into what was supposed to be a two-and-a-half-hour drive, and all of her coordinates indicated she was in the right spot. But instead of a resort complex as described in her target’s case file, she was looking at a warehouse of sorts. A single, nondescript warehouse that in any other part of the country, on the outskirts of a city, would look normal. If it were lined up with other warehouses. If it had trucks coming and going. If it had access to an interstate highway.