Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition) (23 page)

Avery squeezed
off four shots that bounced off the Kombat’s armor plating. He spun around and
faced the second Kombat coming right at him, lining him up between its
headlights. Avery fired a couple more rounds, but the Kombat’s bullet-proof
windshield easily deflected the 9mm rounds.

Avery
sidestepped left, and the driver swerved and adjusted his course, pointing the
bumper at him. Avery stood his ground, visualized his next moves in his head,
and dived to the right, onto the grass, at the last possible second. He felt
the big Kombat whip past. The front left fender missed clipping him and
pulverizing his hip by mere inches. Avery smacked against the grass and rolled
down the slant of the short hill.

The Kombat came
fast around, reacquired him, forty feet away, and the driver hit the gas once
more as Avery stumbled back up onto his feet. The Kombat barreled down on him,
but this time the driver tapped the brakes within a couple meters and swerved, tapping
the bumper into Avery’s thighs doing 30 mph. Avery cried out, and the next
thing he was aware of was the sensation of going over the top of the hood and flailing
through the sky with the grass and pavement spinning around him at a dizzying
rate, and then the ground finally collided hard against his face.

For the first
few seconds, Avery couldn’t even move, and he wondered if he’d broken his back.
Then he became gradually conscious of a tingling sensation coursing through his
entire body, especially up his back and neck and in his legs, followed by the
gradual onset of immense pain. He realized he’d lost the Glock somewhere along
the way, and the world around him was blurry and out of focus when he lifted his
head up. The nearest Kombat was a hazy, blotchy wash of gray. He heard the low
rumbling of the V8s, and then there came the sound of car doors opening and
voices speaking Russian.

Avery tried to
sit up, but went right back down when the steel-capped toe of a boot struck him
in the breastbone. Another foot kicked him in the side of his femur, and more
feet continued striking his shoulders and chest. Two men grabbed onto him and
hauled him up onto his feet. When they let go, Avery weakly stumbled around,
trying to gather his bearings, but then his legs gave out and the pain in the
small of his back was overpowering. He toppled back over and hit the ground
again.

From where he
lay, Avery saw two men opening the passenger door of the demolished Volvo. They
peered inside, and one of them said something, sounding surprised that Aleksa
was still alive. She wouldn’t be had she been on the driver side of the car
when the Kombat hit.

Not that it
mattered.

Avery didn’t
imagine that either of them would be alive much longer. The Krasnaya Mafiya was
a small, close-knit organization, a brotherhood. Having just killed two of them
in Minsk the night before, Avery knew he and Aleksa had earned a slow, bloody,
and agonizing death. He thought of the things they’d likely do to Aleksa, and
that gave him the determination to keep fighting.

The Russians’
attention was fixated on Aleksa now. They pulled her out of the wreck, and one
of them punched her in the gut when she stabbed a pen through his friend’s
neck.

Avery tried once
more to stand up, and was kicked from behind. He fell forward, catching himself
on all fours, and another kick to his side knocked him over. Three Russians
converged on him, laughing and exchanging vulgarities. They battered him, used
his head as a soccer ball until he finally blacked out.

“Nick?”

It took a few
seconds for Aleksa’s voice to register with Avery as he returned slowly and
painfully to consciousness. When he opened his right eye—the left was swollen
shut—he saw the expanse of an aircraft hangar, and he felt the smooth, glossy
surface of the epoxy floor against his face. It stung badly where his right
cheek was split open. When he moved to rub his eye, sensitive to the intensity
of the bright lighting overhead, he found his hands restrained behind his back.
The steel cuffs were fastened tight, cutting off blood flow to his hands and
scraping bone. There was the iron taste of blood in his mouth.

From the
dizziness, blurred vision, and the ringing in his ears, he figured he’d
suffered a concussion. In addition to which, breathing too deeply sent a sharp,
stabbing pain through his side. That worried him. He’d suffered fractured ribs
before, and those were always to be taken seriously.

Aleksa’s voice
came from somewhere behind him. He tried to respond, to let her know that he
was alive, somewhat, but the words became caught in his parched throat and he was
seized by a coughing fit instead. There were approaching footsteps and
soft-spoken conversation. There was something familiar about one of the voices.

He started to
roll over onto his other side, in the direction of the oncoming footsteps. He
didn’t move far before the stabbing pain in his side hit him again, a hundred
times worse now, agonizing, stopping him in his place and eliciting an
involuntary gasp from his lips and confirming his self-diagnosis. Hopefully the
rib was just cracked, not broken. At least blood hadn’t come up when he
coughed.

Aleksa was
likewise slumped on the floor, twenty feet away, and Avery hoped she wasn’t in
the same condition he was. He didn’t want to contemplate the things they could
have done to her.

“Nick?” she
called out again. “Are you okay?”

“I’m alright.”
He wanted her to be quiet, so he could focus on the new arrivals, and he didn’t
want to appear vulnerable and weak, affected by her, in front of them, whoever
they
were.

“They drugged
us, gave us injections,” Aleksa said. “Ketamine, I think.”

That explained
the foggy haze clouding his thoughts and his dulled senses, Avery thought. He
didn’t mind if they beat the shit out of him, but toxic impurities coursing
through his blood, further hindering his body’s functional capacity and
recovery, was particularly odious to him.

He started to
say something, but the sudden roar of very near jet engines drowned out all
sound. The noise receded as the aircraft lifted off, and when it was gone, he sensed
a presence hovering over him.

 “Avery, you
stupid fuck, is that you?”   

When he opened his
eye again, he stared up at a pair of hiking boots and khaki pants belonging to
Robert Cramer. Standing a few feet behind Cramer, Avery recognized the second
man by his shaved head and spider tattoo. The man stared straight at Avery with
dark, penetrating eyes, trying to look menacing and instill fear, and doing a
good job of it. Avery stared right back at him for several seconds before
passing his gaze onto Cramer. The man looked like he’d aged fifteen years since
the last time Avery had spoken to him, four years ago in Afghanistan.

“Shit, Avery, if
I knew that was you I would have told them to take it easy on you. When I heard
they picked someone up at Sosny, I assumed you were just another one of this
cunt’s reporter friends. God, I hate reporters. Still, you got off lucky.
Better than that fat fuck Romanchuk.”

He paused, as if
waiting for Avery to speak, but Avery gave him nothing.

Avery considered
his options, none of them good. He could play dumb and act surprised to find
Cramer alive and well and in the middle of a nuclear smuggling pipeline. He
could try to spare Aleksa and insist that she knew nothing, was unwittingly
dragged into this, and say he was only using her to gain access to Yuri
Dzubenko.

But there was no
point in doubting Cramer’s intelligence. Plus, Avery didn’t know what, if
anything, Aleksa had already told them, and he didn’t feel like getting the
shit beaten out of him again if he was caught in a lie. The best thing he could
do was to keep quiet and volunteer nothing. However it played out, he knew this
wasn’t going to end well. He just hoped they made it quick for Aleksa.

“Last I heard
from my sources in Tajikistan the mission was over and you were heading home,”
Cramer said.  

Sources
, Avery thought.
“So how did you manage to pin Dagar on me?”

“That was just a
happy coincidence, really. Bad luck for you, though. He’s always been my agent,
my eyes and ears over there. I had no idea the Agency would send you. But it’s
a small world, and lucky for me, a mutual friend set you up with him. The
Agency’s long believed that Dagar was their asset, and I figured they’d turn to
him, but he was mine the whole time.” Cramer shook his head, genuinely pitying
Avery for his current circumstances. “You really should have gone home.”

“And what the
hell are you doing here, Bob?” Avery glanced back at the man standing behind
Cramer. “And what are you doing with that piece of shit?”

 Cramer swung
his foot back and kicked Avery hard in the side. Avery wasn’t expecting it,
making it that much worse. He coughed and gagged as he gasped for air, the pain
in his chest amplified. Cramer patiently waited for him to settle down before he
resumed.

“Listen to me
closely. I’m not going to repeat myself. You know how this works, so I’m not
going to waste time making threats, trying to instill the fear of God into you.
I need to know everything you’ve told Culler. It is Matt who sent you, isn’t
it? There’s nobody else at Langley that would be stupid enough to go to you,
and he’s still heading up GRS last time I checked.” He meant CIA’s Global
Response Staff.

 “Yeah, I know
what you’re thinking,” Cramer said, reading Avery’s eyes. “You’re dead anyway,
and in the meantime you can take another beating. Sure, but how about before
these guys finally end you, I turn them loose on that bitch over there and let
you watch? You’re right, Avery, however this goes, you are a dead man, but you
can still spare her an extremely vicious, violently pornographic ordeal.”

Avery felt
Aleksa’s eyes on him, becoming more terrified by the minute, but he couldn’t
bear to look at her. He didn’t want her to make him weak. He shut his eyes and
tried to clear his head.

“Don’t even
think about lying to me. We recovered the USB from her. That gives me a pretty
good idea of what you two already know and what you can piece together.
Unfortunately for you, Avery, I also know you were at Ayni a couple nights ago.
I’m even pretty certain you had something to do with the missing arms convoy,
but I don’t really give a shit about that right now. So, again, what have you
told Langley?”

“I haven’t
spoken to Culler since Tajikistan, before Ayni.”

 Simple lies
were always the easiest to make convincing, and the fact that Avery wasn’t
trying to deny working for Culler wouldn’t be lost on Cramer.

Cramer nodded
thoughtfully and asked, “And the convoy?”

Avery knew what
Cramer was thinking.  If Langley had taken out Mullah Arzad’s trucks, then that
indicated Avery had been in contact with Culler
after
the Ayni op, which
meant Avery could have reported seeing Cramer at the airfield. Cramer knew from
the data on the USB drive that the Taliban’s processing facility wasn’t
compromised. He was mostly worried about whether he was about to become the
subject of an international manhunt.   

“I had SAD
backup in Tajikistan. We tracked the convoy from Ayni and hit it near the border.
We didn’t know about the weapons until after, when we searched the trucks,
though we had our suspicions. The target was Arzad.”

Cramer
considered this. The answer satisfied him.

“Don’t worry,
Bob. Your secret’s still safe. No one back home has any clue that you’re a
fucking traitor. Far as they’re concerned, you’re another star on the Memorial
Wall, and you’ll be forgotten within a couple weeks.”

“Traitor?” Cramer,
outraged, as if he couldn’t believe someone would have the audacity to apply
that label to him, kicked Avery again, this time low in the stomach. Avery
doubled over on the floor, gasping for breath. “I devoted ten years of my life
to fighting their dirty little war in Afghanistan, because I believed in it,
and I thought they did, too. After New York and the Pentagon were hit, I
thought they’d allow us to finally do what was necessary to protect the nation,
but I suppose a few years are the extent of their resolve. They’re willing to negotiate
with the Taliban and hand that place back over to the terrorists, fine. I’m
just expediting the process and forcing them to confront their failure.”

“Yeah, sure, and
how much money are you earning in the process?”

“Don’t give me
that shit,” Cramer snapped. “You’re the goddamned sell-out, Avery. How many
friends did you lose in Afghanistan? I’m a traitor? Who did I betray? These are
the same fuckers who were willing to cut you off and leave you to die in Waziristan.
You’d have died on that mountain, if I hadn’t broken the rules and intervened
to bring your ungrateful ass out. But you’ll continue taking their money and
doing what they tell you. You’re so goddamned pathetic.”

“Fuck you and
your excuses, Bob,” Avery said. “We’re just grunts. We get shit, and we do what
we’re told. But you, you’re a goddamned Russian agent. You deal in drugs and
weapons with terrorists in exchange for money. How many Americans are going to
die because of you?”

“How many
Americans died because of inept presidents and senators? Over two thousand in
Afghanistan alone. I’m not the traitor. Washington betrayed the trust of every
single man and woman they sent to these hellholes. They’re as much to blame for
the lives lost and families destroyed as the Taliban are.”

“Maybe try telling
that to Wilkes.” Avery flinched and braced himself for another kick, but it
never came. “But you didn’t pull the trigger in Khorugh, did you? That was your
friend over there.” Avery shifted his eyes onto the man with the spider tattoo.
“Speaking of which, didn’t I fucking kill you already?”

Nearly pushing
Cramer out of the way, Ruslan Kheda lost all control. His eyes flared. He
pounced forward and kicked the steel tip of his boot into Avery’s ribs, again
and again, until Cramer finally placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. The
Chechen relented, breathing heavily and balling his hands into tight fists in
an effort to control his temper. He backed off, to prevent himself from killing
Avery right then and there. 

“You’re nothing
special, Bob,” Avery said between gasps for air. Each breath was cut short by the
pain in the side of his chest.“Frame it however you like, but the reality is you
sold out to the Russians and the Taliban for some fucking drug money, and
that’s how everyone will remember you. The truth will come out at some point. It
always does.”

Cramer’s tone
became softer. “You know, I’d offer you a cut if I thought you’d take it. You
could get away from that little shithole shack of yours in Virginia. But that’s
not your style, is it? You hate them as much as I do, but you’ll continue taking
their shit jobs and their shit money. What the hell does that make you? I don’t
understand it. Too goddamned stubborn and sticking to your own principals,
whatever those are. You just don’t let shit go, do you?”

Avery didn’t say
a word. He grew tired of this. If they were going to kill him, he wanted them
to get it over with already. The man standing over him now wasn’t the same man
he’d known in Afghanistan. Something within Cramer had snapped or collapsed,
and Avery didn’t want to listen to his rants any longer.

“Yeah, that’s
what I thought.” Cramer shook his head again. “You know, I do miss the old
days, when you and I were fighting the war on the same side, but I suppose
nothing ever stays the same. I wish I could say I can at least make it easy on
you, but I’m going to turn you over to my friend here.” He indicated the big
Chechen standing behind him. “And he sure as hell is not about to go easy on
you. Ruslan, he’s all yours, but the bodies get dumped over the Caspian. I
reckon that gives you about five hours, so make the most of it. I’ll see you
around, Avery.”

Cramer walked
away and didn’t look back.

The next thing
Avery experienced was Ruslan Kheda’s boot against his chin, returning him to
unconsciousness.

___

When Avery came to several minutes
later, his head was spinning and the wide aircraft doors were open, filling the
hangar with warm sunlight and a cool, late afternoon breeze. Cramer was nowhere
in sight, but Ruslan Kheda was present, along with several Russians standing
about. Kheda glanced in Avery’s direction, noting that he was awake and
stirring, and looked away. Avery followed Kheda’s line of sight to Aleksa,
still on the floor.

 Kheda walked
over to her, grabbed a handful of her hair, and hauled her onto her feet. He
gave her a shove, directing her toward the open hangar doors. Handcuffs secured
her hands behind her back, too, but Avery thought she looked to be in far better
shape than he was at the moment.