The 14th Colony (Cotton Malone 11)

Kelly had emerged from the shelter, a briefcase in hand.

Was the other dead man with Malone? Or against? The gunfire he’d heard earlier seemed to indicate a battle. Was the other one SVR? Possible. No, more probable. His mind was suddenly flooded with doubt, a sense of traps laid and not sprung.

Kelly came close. “Are they American?”

“This one is.”

“How do you know?”

“He was supposed to have died in Siberia. That one over there could be Russian, like at your house.”

“The rental car,” Kelly said. “It’s possible they found us through it. Technology allows that. I simply assumed no one here was watching. You should have told me everything back at my house. I would have done things differently.”

Too late now.

He stood, hearing nothing from the darkness around them. Surely the explosion would have attracted reinforcements.

But nothing.

Maybe these were the only ones.

“It’s ready,” Kelly said, motioning with the case. “The battery will handle things for at least a few days. More than enough time for tomorrow.”

His mind swirled with new possibilities. Contingencies to deal with the Americans that might assure success. Just in case.

Improvise. Think.

“We’re taking all five weapons.”

“They’re heavy, Aleksandr.”

He recalled. About twenty kilos each. “We can manage.”

And they should leave with a change of vehicle. He searched Malone’s pockets and found keys.

“We’ll need the things that are inside our car,” Kelly said.

And he wanted his knapsack. “I’ll get them. Prepare the other weapons. I’ll be back to help carry them up.”

One other thing.

Kelly never had the chance to explain about St. John’s Church, the White House, and what the Tallmadge journal had revealed.

“You need to finish telling me what you started to say downstairs.”

“And you must explain about Siberia and the Americans.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

Malone opened his eyes.

Snow covered his face, more trickling down the opening at his collar. Someone was shaking him, calling his name. He recognized the face. One of the agents from McDonald’s. Cold lay tight around his temples and he struggled with numbed senses, but just feeling anything seemed a good sign considering what he recalled happened.

The barn had exploded, covering both him and Cassiopeia. He was lying next to her, the other agent rousing her awake. He pushed himself up. His head ached, his neck stiff. Everything flashed woozy. His mouth was dry, so he sucked in some of the snow. His breath clouded around him in puffs of distress and relief. He checked his watch. A little after 5:00 A.M. They’d been out a few hours.

“We waited as long as we could,” one of the agents said. “Then we came and found you.”

Cassiopeia sat up and stared at him. “That hurt.”

“You got that right.”

“What happened?” an agent asked.

He hobbled to his feet and sucked in more cold air, trying to rid the staleness from his lungs. “Zorin did not appreciate being trapped underground. So he blew his way out. You didn’t hear it?”

“We were ten miles away, inside a building.”

“What about the other two we took down?” Cassiopeia asked.

“Both dead,” an agent reported. “We’re still trying to determine how they tracked Zorin.”

Not all that hard, really. As Cassiopeia had surmised earlier, they knew generally about weapons caches, just not the details, especially any booby traps. So they kept watch and got lucky. But they weren’t the problem anymore.

He stared over to where the barn once stood. “We need to take a look at something.”

His adrenaline, sluggish at first, now pricked and prodded him into alertness. He borrowed one of the agent’s flashlights and led the way through the dark, finding the underground entrance from earlier, its cover gone, leaving a neat hole in the ground.

“That metal hatchway kept the explosion directed upward, like a cannon, instead of outward,” he said. “Otherwise we’d be dead.”

It had to be a bomb shelter of some sort, or perhaps a facility built specifically by the KGB. His head still spun, so he stopped a moment and allowed the cobwebs to clear.

“You two keep an eye out up here,” he called out. “And nobody heard the explosion?”

“This is the middle of nowhere. The next farm is several miles away.”

He climbed down into the blackness, hoping for no more booby traps. At the bottom he found a half-open metal door, which he closely examined, determining that nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

He eased the door open and pointed his light inside.

A switch was affixed to the rounded outer wall, a conduit leading up to overhead bulbs. He wondered about flicking it on but decided, what the hell, and did.

The tubes shone bright.

He switched off the flashlight.

Cassiopeia followed him inside.

He was impressed with the array of stored materials. Anything and everything an enterprising spy might need. Inside an ice cooler lay bricks of plastic explosives, which explained how Zorin had managed to free himself. He took inventory of the small arms, rifles, and ammunition along with survival supplies.

But no RA-115s.

A table did stretch down one side of the shelter, its top empty, nothing there to indicate that nuclear weapons had once been here.

“Just great,” he muttered. “He’s gone and we still have no idea if he’s a threat or not.”

Being unable to hear the conversation earlier now became a big problem. He banged his palms against the wall in impotent fury. Anger surged in him like nausea, filling his throat. He’d messed up. Big time. The two agents on site should have been included as backup. But he was trying to keep the information trail contained. The mockery of the shelter seemed evident, and though roomy he still did not like the enclosed feeling. With nothing further to be learned, they climbed back to ground level.

“Is the other car still up there in the road?” he asked one of the agents.

He was told that it was, so he and Cassiopeia broke into a trot, finding it parked in the lane beyond where trees blocked the path. She seemed to know what he was after and they both stared into the rear windows. The nylon bag, there earlier, was gone.

“So they apparently needed a sledgehammer, bolt cutters, and a hasp lock,” she said.

That they did.

The other two agents caught up to them.

“Is our car here?” he asked one of them. “Back near the highway.”

“Didn’t see one.”

Ju

st wonderful.

“He has several hours’ head start,” Cassiopeia said. “So he’s certainly wherever he meant to be by now.”

“Even worse, no one has been looking for him.”

Time to report the bad news.

* * *

Stephanie sat at the small desk inside her hotel room. She’d returned here from the Justice Department, after calling Danny and telling him that he should open a fortune-telling business. He’d just chuckled and said it didn’t take a psychic to read these people. Sleep had proved impossible. Outside, four stories below, amber lights illuminated the hotel’s main entrance, taxis and cars-for-hire coming and going. Light snow had fallen through the night, leaving remnants but little ice. That would hurt later today. Better weather meant more crowds, more distractions, more opportunities for Zorin.

Her phone rang.

“I hope it’s good news,” she said, answering.

“It’s not,” Cotton said.

And she listened to what happened.

“We have cameras all over this city,” she said to him. “I’ll have the footage checked. That car has to appear somewhere.”

“Assuming Zorin is coming into DC. He may be planning an aerial attack from the outside.”

“We have the skies covered better than the ground.”

“I’ll leave that to you. We’re headed back to the White House.”

She ended the call and decided to play out her deal with Fox, dialing Litchfield’s cell phone. The moron answered quickly and she told him that they had nothing and Zorin was still on the loose.

“No proof he has a nuke?” Litchfield asked.

“Afraid not.”

“Fox will want to keep to the schedule.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll be at the White House around ten,” he told her. “If there’s any change let me know and I’ll make sure he acts immediately.”

“You’ll be the first call I make.”

She clicked off the phone, hating herself for even appearing to cooperate. She still planned to quit later today. The thought of working for these people turned her stomach. Hell, Litchfield was bad enough. She could find something else to do somewhere. Maybe she’d follow Cotton and move overseas. That had always carried an appeal to her.

Her phone rang again.