Vital Force (3 page)

Jake helped him into a cab and patted the top as the car drove off. As he walked down the cobblestone in the cold darkness, he couldn't help but think of the missile test earlier in the day. A laser. Man, the world was changing, he thought. Would it make the thousands of ICBMs in both the Russian and U.S. arsenals obsolete? More than likely. It was too much for him to think about with all the alcohol.

●

The dark Volkswagen sedan pulled away from the curb, its lights off, as it crept along the road a block and a half behind the man on the sidewalk.

In three blocks, the man stumbled up into the lobby of the Shevchenko Hotel, and the car pulled over to the side of the road.

Inside the car, the bald driver tapped his chopsticks lightly against the steering wheel. The Asian woman, her eyes having a hard time staying awake, tried her best to block out the tap tap tapping. If she could find a way out of this, away from this crazy man, she would. But was she really that different from him? Probably not. Not as annoying, she knew that much. Just finish the task at hand, she thought, and then back to America.

There was no way for Jake to tell how long he had been sleeping before it happened. In the darkness of the hotel room, the shades pulled tight against the city lights, his first recollection of anything out of the ordinary came in the form of a slight sound. A clicking noise. But strange hotels always had strange noises, so he closed his eyes again and tried his best to stop the pain in the back of his skull from the vodka.

Next came a struggle, and his spinning mind reeled about as he lashed against the arms and legs that enveloped him. What was that smell? He knew then that he was in trouble.

●

When he woke again, Jake was cold and shivering in only his underwear and a T-shirt, and obviously in a cramped space. His eyes tried to adjust to the darkness. No way, Jake knew. The odor was unmistakable. Rubber, dirt, oily rags. A car trunk. A car with bad shocks, he thought, as a sudden jerk bounced him up and then back onto the hard surface.

His arms were strapped to his back and something was stretched around his mouth to his neck.

He tried to shift and stretch his legs, but they had run a line from his neck to his hands and then on to his ankles, which were also lashed and wrapped back toward his bound wrists. Someone knew what they were doing, Jake thought. He had done the same to others in the past, and there was no escaping from that kind of binding.

The car turned, rolling him toward his back. A right turn. Then the shocks really started working overtime. A dirt road? A frozen road.

This was no good. What in the hell was going on?

Music and singing. Muffled. Coming from the front. Then the voice was louder. Screaming.

“Back in the U.S.S.R.,” the accented voice screeched above the car's engine and the bouncing shocks.

The Beatles? Great. A sadistic Beatles fan.

Suddenly, the car came to a stop. Jake could hear two doors open and the mumbling. What language? Impossible to tell.

When the trunk opened, Jake expected to see light, but all he saw was a dark sky with the occasional star poking out from the swirling clouds.

Both of the dark figures that pulled him out of the trunk wore black ski masks and dark clothing. He noticed they weren't that large, as they struggled to drag him across the snow and set him against the base of a large pine. Jake tried to see the make of car, but it was impossible in that lighting.

“You tell me about missile launch today.”

The language was broken and somewhat effeminate.

“You've got me mixed up with someone who gives a shit,” Jake said, shifting his body up against the sharp edges of the tree bark. He worked his fingers around the knot in the binding. It wasn't rope. What was it?

The one who had spoken swiftly struck his right foot into Jake's chest, nearly taking his breath away and knocking Jake against the tree.

As Jake recovered, he said, “What the hell was that for?”

“We have all night, Mister Adams. You don't.”

Damn, they knew who he was.

“The missile launch. Tell me now.”

“Tell you what?” Jake said, shifting his body up again and trying to shove the material wrapped around his wrists against the sharp bark.

“Tell me about missile.”

The clouds spread out and Jake could finally see more stars and more of his two captors.

“What about it? You want a lesson in physics?”

The foot came again. This time from the other person. The boot made contact with his right shoulder, knocking him back against the tree again. An unexpected benefit was that the shot loosened the binding between his feet and hands. He rolled over and started sliding his hands up and down against the bark, trying to cut the line from his hands to his feet.

“We could use lesson in anatomy,” the man said, as he pulled out a butterfly knife and flipped it open.

“Hey,” Jake said. “Put away the cutlery. What exactly do you want to know about the missile?”

The man kept the knife pointed at Jake. “What happened to missile?”

“Listen. I was just a civilian observer.”

Both of them laughed, and Jake finally heard that the second one was more than likely a woman. With the dark bulky clothes, he had not noticed.

“Jake Adams. Air Force Intelligence. CIA. Opened security service in Portland, Oregon. Now operate out of Innsbruck, Austria. Major operations in Italy and Germany. Killed Hungarian agents. Stopped Kurdish plot. Helped Austrian company with new heart disease cure. Want me to tell more?”

“Yeah, you forgot to tell me the last time I got laid.”

“Toni Contardo. Six months ago. Just before she was called back into service with the Agency.” The man burst into a hearty guffaw.

Son of a bitch. They had done their homework. He had thought only the Agency knew about his relationship with Toni. He worked harder on his binding now, struggling cautiously.

“So, who the hell are you?” Jake asked them, stalling.

“Tell us about missile and we might let you freeze to death. Otherwise.” He waved the knife in the air.

Why should he hold back anything? Jake thought about what Yuri had told him only hours ago. Would it matter if he told these people?

“The missile failed,” Jake said. He could have made up any bullshit story. One was as good as the next. “It started to go haywire and the Russians thought it might head toward Kamchatka. They were forced to destroy it.”

Two things happened almost simultaneously. The man swished his knife toward Jake and Jake flipped around to his right. The knife slit the binding on his back, freeing his feet, and, unexpectedly, the tie that ran up to his neck. Jake rolled over again and again in the snow as if in pain. Then he sent his right foot into the knee of the approaching man. He heard a crack and the man collapsed in pain, dropping the knife in the snow.

By now, Jake had gotten to his knees. The woman was on him in a hurry, though. Her right foot caught him in the sternum and sent him flying to his back. As she got closer, he caught her legs with a sweep of his leg and sent her to her back. Then he scurried toward her, grabbed the mask covering her head, and, with one smooth motion, pulled it from her head, her long, black hair flopping out in a ponytail.

Damn. A Chinese woman. Gorgeous but shocked. He chopped her in the throat and she rolled over, out of breath.

He had to move now. Jumping to his feet, Jake ran into the forest. His bare feet were freezing, yet he knew he couldn't stop. And those feet would occasionally stumble onto unseen branches under the two feet of snow. He continued on, branches whipping his face as he leapt over deadfalls. Expecting to hear gunshots, he slowed to a jog and then stopped behind a large pine tree, his breath nearly out of control.

He listened now. Nothing.

Then he saw it. A single light shone from where he had just come. The two of them had hesitated long enough to go back to the car for a flashlight, and now they were simply following his tracks. Who knew what else they had gotten at the car. Guns?

Standing idle, the cold caught up to him in a hurry, and he shook uncontrollably now. Move Jake. Move. He glanced about the forest. There was only one thing he could do. Back track to the road.

He ran off again, his arms trying to protect his face from branches. How far had he run? The road had to be soon, he thought, his feet and legs lifting high out of the snow with each step, trying his best to keep from gouging the souls of his bare feet again.

Shortly he saw an opening ahead, the swirling clouds offering a slight view of a meadow or field.

Coming to the edge of the opening, he hesitated among some smaller pines. If he entered, he knew he would be one big target, picked off like that airborne laser had dropped the Russian missile. Instead, he worked his way around the outside of the field.

There. The road. On the far end of the field, the road ran along the edge.

Out of breath and his extremities freezing, Jake stopped and glanced behind him. He couldn't see the light, and that wasn't particularly comforting.

He would have to run along the road for a hundred meters of open area, fully exposed to anyone to see, as he worked his way back toward the car. And then what? Could he reasonably expect them to have left the keys there?

Suddenly, from the same direction he planned to head, a car approached slowly down the frozen, snow-covered dirt road, its lights off. Jake ducked deep into the snow behind a pine tree.

He closed his eyes and his head ached. Held his breath and slowly let out some air.

Just as he thought the car would pass, it stopped, and Jake looked up to see the red tail lights brighten the car before going out.

Now he knew he was in trouble.

Huddled in the deep snow, his legs numb, Jake heard a noise in the woods behind him. Slowly he glanced back and saw the light along the far edge of the meadow.

He was understandably confused. Had one stayed with the tracks while the other went for the car?

“Adams?” came a hushed voice from the car, an older Russian Volga sedan.

Jake shifted his head around. That wasn't the voice of the man or woman.

“Adams,” came the voice again. “You wanna live, get your ass in here. I'm American.”

He had no choice. His confusion would have to give way to survival and trust-the last of which was in short supply in his mind at the moment.

The driver's door opened, illuminating a man waving his arm to him.

Without further coaxing, Jake sprinted from the snow to the road and around to the front passenger seat.

Swinging the door open, he quickly assessed the driver, a man in his early forties, clean-cut and wearing a dark green parka.

“Get in, Jake. Let's go.”

He did just that. The car pulled away as soon as he closed the door. Jake peered back behind him, and in the distance he saw two figures appear on the road with the light.

Jake looked at the driver more carefully now. “Who the hell are you?”

“The guy who just saved your ass.” The driver turned up the heat and switched the fan to high.

“Thanks. But you didn't answer my question.”

Sitting on the seat next to the man was a high-end set of night vision goggles. So Jake reasoned the guy had been slowly driving down the road with the goggles on, watching for any movement.

“Agency,” Jake said. “Who sent you?”

The guy laughed. “Toni said you could be a brusque son-of-a-bitch.”

That was twice in the evening someone had mentioned his former girlfriend.

“Toni who?”

The guy shook his head. “This a test?” His eyes shifted toward Jake as he said, “Toni Contardo. Until six months ago, your live-in squeeze. Black hair that flows over strong shoulders, followed a bit lower by the nicest set of tits I'll never see. A New York Italian.”

“Those two back there knew that much,” Jake said. “You'll have to do better than that.”

Reaching inside his coat, the man started to pull something out, but Jake grabbed his hand before he could pull it out.

“Let me help you with that,” Jake said, as he put his hand inside the guy's coat and pulled out what the man had been reaching to retrieve. It was a passport. A dark burgundy U.S. passport. Jake flipped it to the back and found what he was looking for, an annotation that indicated this man had diplomatic immunity. Definitely a spook. Then he opened the passport to the front. It was official. Lance Turner. Born in Memphis, Tennessee.

The car came to the end of the road. The driver turned left toward Khabarovsk.

“All right?”

“Lance? Your parents must have wanted you to get your ass whipped in school.”

“Ha. Ha. Gimme that.” He took the passport from Jake and put it back in his pocket.

“So, you're an Agency spook. How do I know you know Toni?”

“Because she's probably the most gorgeous officer we have.” He hesitated and then said, “You two worked together in Italy years ago. Then, when you went private, you worked another case there with a Naval officer from a carrier. You took a bullet to the left temple on that carrier, and the hair still doesn't grow right there, from what I understand. You also had a little run-in with some Hungarians at her apartment, where you killed one and wounded another. Should I go on?”

His head ached even more thinking about that grazing shot he had taken in Italy. “That won't be necessary. How is Toni?”

The man's eyes shifted to the side as he gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “We haven't heard from her.”

When Toni had left him in Austria, she had done so with great hesitation, knowing she would be working undercover in the Middle East. Her Italian looks could have passed for Arab with a little work, and her language skills were impeccable.

“Understand,” Jake said. “What I don't understand, though, is how you found me.”

The car started to reach the outskirts of Khabarovsk, but the traffic was nearly non-existent at that early hour.