The 14th Colony (Cotton Malone 11)

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Can’t take it?”

A defiant smirk came to her lips.

Large, liquid brown eyes showed anger and rage.

She pounced like a cat, grabbing him by the neck, her fingers burrowing into his flesh. She clamped her arm around his neck and, using her other hand, formed a vise that held him in an iron grip and began to restrict his breathing. He swung around so her spine faced the solid interior wall and drove her body into it. Once. Twice. On the third time her breath exhaled in a swish and she released her grip. He swung around, giving her arm a violent twist, then slammed his right fist into her jaw.

But she had staying power.

An elbow caught the back of his head, driving his face into the wall. His arms were yanked back and up in a painful double hammerlock. She forced him to his toes, his face and chest now jammed to the wall. In movies and on television it was normal to see the tough aggressive woman taking down some larger man with a few well-placed kicks and punches. In reality, size mattered, and he had the advantage of both weight and reach.

He dropped, legs limp, allowing him to wrench free, then he whirled and threw a forearm into her knee, kicking her legs out from under her. She’d tried to avoid the move, but she was an instant too late.

Down she went.

She rebounded with the agility of a tumbler, but he thrust a straight arm into her face, the heel of his palm pounding the tip of her nose.

She staggered, weaving from disorientation.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on—

He punched her again and she collapsed across the row of wooden chairs, which clattered about, one of the legs breaking from the impact. A thin trickle of blood crawled down the corner of her mouth.

“You want some more?” he asked her, his breathing coming hard and fast. “Come on, and I’ll give it to you.”

His face surely had the look of coal, not candy. Or at least that’s how his mother used to describe it. He’d been taught since childhood that hitting a woman was bad. But his parents had never met predators like Anya Petrova. Enough extra doses of testosterone flowed through her to disqualify the “Don’t hit a woman ever” rule.

And there was still the matter of his beloved car.

Which this nutcase had shot to hell and back.

She stayed down. All her energy seemed spent.

He found his gun, then pressed his knee into her spine, pinning her to the floor.

“You’re under arrest.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

RUSSIA

Cassiopeia hated helicopters worse than airplanes. The ones she’d been always compelled to ride inside seemed to bump and grind their way through the air, like a car on a pitted highway, and all to the deafening beat of powerful rotors. Compounding the experience here was the pitch dark, the cold, and her anxiety over what may have happened to Cotton. She’d been sent no new information from Stephanie and the briefing she’d received on landing at the air base did nothing to alleviate her fears. No word had been heard or seen of Cotton since his plane went down. Or at least no word the authorities were willing to pass on.

She decided the crash site would be her starting point, so a military chopper was ferrying her east toward Lake Baikal. She’d appreciated, though, the cold-weather gear, which definitely helped, and the officer in charge seemed quite accommodating. If she weren’t mistaken he may actually have been flirting with her, which was the last thing she needed to deal with at the moment.

Clouds hung low in a freezing shroud and they skirted the air just beneath the ceiling. A rim of lights blurred by distance framed a halo around Irkutsk to the south. Over the years she’d learned to sleep in snatches, and she’d caught some rest on the jet flight east. She tried again now, hoping to take her mind off the fact that she was hundreds of meters off the ground in a machine that, technically, should not even be able to stay aloft. Like the bumblebee, she’d read once. Neither should be able to fly, but somehow both managed. The local time was approaching 11:00 P.M., but her body was still seven hours behind in France.

“The wreck site is twenty kilometers ahead,” the voice said through her headset.

“How far is the dacha from that location?”

“Ten kilometers north.”

She nodded at the officer sitting across from her. Two pilots manned the controls. Everything had been spoken in English, Stephanie suggesting that her linguistic skills be kept to herself. She’d learned Russian in college, along with a few other languages, thinking that one day they’d all come in handy. At the time she’d had no idea how handy. Though she might try to deny it, she liked the action, and enjoyed a good fight. Most of the intrigue she’d participated in had started from some personal motivation, mainly thanks to her old friend Henrik Thorvaldsen. God rest his soul. After Henrik died, she’d occasionally outright worked for Stephanie Nelle. Never for money, more as a favor, friend-to-friend.

But Utah changed all that.

Yet here she was, flying through Russia, headed to who-knew-what.

This time for love.

* * *

Malone engaged the clutch, then ground the shift into second and spun the wheel. The rear end swung wide, the low gear gripping the cold road. He floored the accelerator and turned up the high revs in a straightaway before working his way through the gears on a curve.

Bullets whizzed by.

The road clung to the side of a hill, a cathedral column of trees tightly packed along sharp embankments. The chassis slewed side-to-side on the occasional ice and crusted snow. He rode the clutch. Wind buffeted the cab, rocking the vehicle. Everything in the Goat rattled.

A side window shattered from a round.

Fragments of glass stung the back of his head and neck.

He was trying to be a difficult target but was not having much luck. The road found ground level and he moved out of the trees. To his right stretched the wide-open expanse of the lake, its frozen surface offering little cover. Yet there was something to be said for room to maneuver where he would not have to worry about slamming into a tree. So he angled the front end to the right, leaped the road, and tunneled through underbrush, leaving a rugged swath before emerging onto the ice.

The chattering of the weapon continued and a bullet sang off the Goat’s interior. He decided to change things around, downshifting and swinging the vehicle hard left. With a foot on the clutch, the tires glided easily across the ice and he executed a smooth 180-degree spin. He then jammed the gearshift into second and accelerated straight toward his pursuer.

The action had clearly caught the two men behind him off guard and he swerved left and right to thwart any clear shot at his windshield. The other vehicle veered hard left to avoid a collision, which showed him that his pursuers may not have the stomach for this fight. He swung around in a wide arc and set his sights on the windshield on the other vehicle.

Headlights filled his rearview mirror.

A new p

layer.

More gunfire came his way.

* * *

Cassiopeia stared down at the wreckage. A pair of night-vision goggles offered her a view of the burned-out hulk of a plane and the two bodies at either end. The Russians had already reported to Stephanie that there was no third corpse. She should take a look inside the cockpit. Stephanie was interested to see if Cotton’s cell phone was there, as there’d been no signal from it for several hours. The Magellan Billet tracked its phones with sophisticated software and Stephanie had suggested a retrieval, if possible.

“We have a report of gunshots on the lake,” she heard in Russian through her headphones.

“Where?” the officer-in-charge asked.

“Six kilometers north.”

They hovered thirty meters over the ice.

She kept up the ruse of not understanding and asked in English, “What’s going on?”

The officer explained.

“It could be him,” she said.

The officer motioned for the pilots to fly that way.

* * *

Malone counted three more Goats, the vehicles fanned out in an attack pattern like fighter jets.

All that room on the lake worked both ways.

He definitely had a problem similar to the one back at the dacha with the cuffs and the iron pipe. He could keep going until he found the west shore, but that could be many miles. At least this time he was armed, as he’d brought along the assault rifle.

One of the Goats swung out, trying to flank him on the left, attempting to pass. He decided a little offense would be good, so he swerved its way, cutting in front and causing the other driver to make a fast decision.