Collateral (Tier One #6)

East Perimeter of Odessa International Airport

Grimes watched the fence line stream by in a blur as Martin piloted the SUV along the perimeter of the airport. She closed her eyes and did a series of long, slow four-count tactical breaths. The adrenaline coursing through her veins and her elevated pulse and respiration rates would significantly degrade her precision on the Sig 716. She couldn’t permit that to happen.

This would be the shot of a lifetime.

This would be the shot that defined her career.

“Slow down, Yankee,” Wang said on the comms circuit, and she felt Martin brake. “There’s a gate in the fence line in fifty yards . . . that’s your turn. There’s a military vehicle at the gate waiting to give you escort. South takes you to the military side of the field, but you want to head north.”

She opened her eyes and saw the perimeter security gate already rolling back. A blue compact SUV was waiting for them at idle, with two security personnel in the front seats. She gripped the handle on the A-pillar as Martin took the turn at speed and entered the airport.

“There’s a large corporate hangar at the end of the road, just behind the passenger lounge building,” Wang said. “It gives you perfect lines on the Embraer that Zhukov will be boarding. He’s still inside, but you need to hurry. If you set up on the west side of the roof, you’ll have a clear line. There’s an exterior ladder you can use for roof access.”

Grimes rolled her head to release the tension in her neck, already setting up the shot in her mind. As she took more long, slow breaths to check her rising heart rate, she pondered whether Arkady had spotters positioned to spoil their infiltration.

He probably still has dozens of Zeta agents spread all over the world. So why would he not have personnel positioned here for security?

Is that what Ember would do? Probably not. Any real footprint would compromise the NOC, and the Russian spymaster had cultivated this legend carefully over many years. And yet, she knew better than to make assumptions. The Russians didn’t think, or fight, like Ember clones. They had their own tactics and methods.

Martin circled around the back of the large hangar, following their escort vehicle. The little blue SUV screeched to a less than subtle stop, forcing Martin to brake hard behind it. Her mind on the prize, she leapt out the passenger side door, tightening her sniper rifle to her side and gripping the MCX Rattler in a combat carry. She ran to the metal ladder bolted to the side of the corrugated metal building, but Martin beat her there and stopped her before her boot could hit the bottom rung.

“I’ll go up first, for security.” When she started to object, he cut her off. “I can’t make the shot, Elizabeth. Only you can.”

She gave him a curt nod, then flashed a crooked smile at the two BDU-clad Ukrainian soldiers who were watching from beside their vehicle, mouths open. She didn’t know what they’d been told on the radio, but their instructions clearly hadn’t included any mention of an attractive, athletically built female sniper who was kitted up and ready to kick ass.

Pulling herself tight against the rungs to keep her sniper rifle from getting hung up on the metal safety cage, she followed Martin up the ladder. The former Marine climbed swiftly, like a damn spider monkey, and she forced herself not to overexert in an effort to keep up with him. She needed her heart rate in the green zone and her arms not burning with lactate to do her job.

Martin rolled over the ledge and moved left, and she followed seconds later, moving right, clearing the roof through the holosight of her Rattler, then surging forward.

“Clear,” she said.

“Clear,” Martin echoed. “Go! I got your back.”

She hustled across the expansive flat roof at a slow jog, still aware of her breathing and heart rate, unslinging the sniper rifle as she did and snapping out the attached tripod. Seconds later, she took a knee at the three-foot raised ledge along the flat roof, set the tripod on the ledge, and pressed her cheek into the side of the stock.

“Yankee Four is Zeus,” she said into her hot mike, announcing to everyone listening that she was set.

She started her scan through her scope: The Embraer bizjet sat on the ramp, still attached to a generator box on a trailer behind a parked service vehicle. The plane’s two fuselage-mounted engines had their intake fans spinning at speed, creating a strobe effect on the guide vanes behind. She saw no security personnel on the ramp—no shooters scanning rooftops and no bodyguard beside the open clamshell-style airstair door. She watched a ground crewman and the pilot walk around the nose of the jet conversing, and then continue talking as the worker set about disconnecting the generator. She shifted her scan to the cockpit, and through the windscreen sighted the other pilot in his seat, presumably running the preflight checklist.

They’re leaving any minute.

She raised her head, looking over her optics for a wide-angle survey of the tarmac. She had no view of the corporate passenger terminal entrance, but from what she could see of the ramp, there was a fifty-meter walk to the jet—a fifty-meter killing zone that Zhukov would have to cross. Plenty of time and space. She decided on a headshot taken at the midway point, equal distance from cover at the terminal and the jet. Doing so would leave time for a second shot if needed. Noting her distance, elevation, and the light breeze, she clicked in her adjustments.

Satisfied, she exhaled and rolled her head one last time.

Come on, asshole . . . come on out and play with me.

Ghost images of Shane Smith, Simon Adamo, June Latif, and Dale played like snapshots in her mind, but the instant she felt the heat rise in her cheeks and her pulse began to quicken, she chased them away. She would visit them later—when the deed was done and the score sheet was balanced. Right now, she needed to be cold. Right now, she needed to be a machine.

She exhaled, slow and controlled.

“Alpha Zulu is on the move,” Wang said.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then opened them and pressed her cheek more tightly into the buttstock of the sniper rifle. A paradoxical calm spread over her like a warm blanket.

Zhukov emerged from the shadow of the building, alone and carrying only a brown leather satchel. He had the slumped shoulders of an old man but walked with a young man’s energy and confidence. Despite the fedora-style hat he wore low on his head and the shadows created under the brim by the high afternoon sun, she knew without a doubt it was him.

“I have him,” she said, her voice a breathy whisper.

Her adjustments already made, she placed the center of the red crosshairs directly where his temple would be under the hat, then moved it forward slightly, correcting for his forward pace. Ten more yards and she would take him.

A soft, subtle hum suddenly sounded in her earpiece, but she ignored it, her finger slipping inside the trigger guard. Five more yards . . .

The voice in her ear was much harder to ignore. “Zeus, this is Kilo Juliet—hold.”

The urge to lift her head from her sight nearly overpowered her, but she kept the crosshairs just ahead of the target’s temple, her brain scrambling to make sense of the transmission. Had she really heard it, or was she losing her shit?

“Zeus—acknowledge,” the voice commanded, and now her brain processed it as belonging to Kelso Jarvis.

Zhukov was approaching the midpoint . . . She applied gentle pressure to the trigger to ensure a smooth pull.

“Zeus,” she barely whispered.

“Elizabeth, listen to me. There’s nobody on this frequency but us. It’s just you and me talking, and I need you to abort.”

“Say again?” she said, not trusting her ears.

“I need Arkady Zhukov to get on that plane alive. Do you understand?”

She blinked hard, then adjusted the crosshairs slightly forward as the target increased his pace toward the jet.

“You want me to let him go? Just let him get away after . . . after everything he’s done?”

She pulled more tension into the trigger, just barely feeling the rearward travel. She exhaled fully and watched the crosshairs begin to shudder slightly before stabilizing right where she wanted.

“Zeus, I’m ordering you to stand down. I promise, you’ll get your shot, but not today.”

How could he ask this of her? After Shane? After Simon and June? After seeing Dale in his bed with a tracheostomy tube snaking out of his throat? After everything . . .

But was there anyone on the planet, other than perhaps Dempsey and Munn, whom she trusted more completely than the man in her ear?

She relaxed the trigger tension.

“Acknowledge, damn it . . .”

“Zeus,” she whispered, and heard the break in her voice and felt her throat tighten. “Copy all.”

“No one can know we had this conversation. Not yet. Play it however you need to, but the party line is we did not let him go on purpose. Confirm you understand?”

“Check,” she said, the taste of the word traitorous and stomach-turning in her mouth.

The soft hum disappeared and Wang’s voice filled her earpiece. “Take the shot, Zeus. Do you read me? Jesus Christ, he’s getting away!”

“I don’t have it yet,” she lied, her body trembling with equal parts ire and disbelief.

She watched the Russian spymaster reach the plane. He stopped and turned, not looking back at her but off to his left. For the first time since the hunt began, she really saw him—his face large and clear in her scope. Arkady Zhukov, the head of Spetsgruppa Zeta—murderer of half the Ember task force and God only knew how many other American patriots.

Her finger tightened on the trigger.

What if the call was a ruse? What if it wasn’t Jarvis at all, but a Zeta impersonating him?

She pulled more tension into the trigger, now sliding the crosshairs back onto the Russian’s forehead.

Fuck it. I’m going to do it . . . I’m going to take the shot.

But despite her heart’s battle cry, her index finger refused to move.

A tear spilled onto her cheek.

“I’m obstructed. I don’t have the shot,” she choked out through a sob.

“Obstructed? Obstructed by what?” Wang said, shouting now. “For Christ’s sake, Zeus, take the shot!”

She picked up her rifle and hustled to her left, placing the tripod back on the ledge and pressing her cheek back into the stock. She lined up on the sight just in time to see the most elusive man in the world disappear through the door of the jet. The airstair pulled up, the door closed, and the ground crewman pulled the chocks.

“Damn it!” she exclaimed, her frustration real, but not for the reasons her teammates would think. “I missed him. I was obstructed and lost the shot. Do you want me to stop the jet?”

“Negative. We’ve been directed to let the jet go,” came Director Casey’s reply in her ear, his voice ripe with authority but, like her, frustratingly confused. “Signals will track it and hopefully get us another chance.”

“Copy,” she said, and wiped the tears from her cheeks with her shirtsleeve. Inhaling deeply, she collected herself. She couldn’t face Martin like this . . . so she watched the Russian’s private jet taxi across the ramp toward the main runway. Only once she’d regained her composure did she stand, shoulder the Sig 716, and jog back across the roof to where a wide-eyed Martin stood gobsmacked.

Jarvis was going to owe her a helluva lot more than just an explanation for this. He’d not only asked her to stand down from the kill shot on the man who’d assassinated her friends, but he’d also asked her to betray her team and lie about it.

“What happened?” Martin asked.

“I just didn’t have the line,” she said, and without meeting his gaze, shouldered past him to the ladder on the side of the building.

And so, the charade began.