‘I don’t think they’ll make a move straight away,’ Grainger had said some hours earlier. ‘They’ll wait to see what we do.’
She’d explained to Logan that the Russians had planted a tracking chip in her right shoulder. Having felt around inside his jumper, she’d found a similar lump on his shoulder too. They had both been tagged by the FSB.
‘They did it the first day I arrived in Russia,’ Grainger said entirely casually, the emotion and sadness she’d expressed earlier replaced with a steely determination. ‘Lena said it was for my own protection. So they’d know where I was even if the Americans tried to take me away.’
‘Yeah, she’s full of kindness that one,’ Logan said.
He was surprised he hadn’t found the chip in his shoulder before, but then he had been held captive by the Russians for three months. For much of that, his mind had been distant and detached from his body. The chip could have been planted in him at countless points during his ordeal without his being any the wiser.
‘Why didn’t you tell me at the apartment?’ Logan had asked. ‘We could have removed the chips then.’
‘I wasn’t sure we’d have time. I saw the look on your face. I knew we had to leave immediately.’
She was right, but the answer wasn’t quite good enough.
‘Then why not tell me as soon as we were away from there?’ Logan asked.
‘I wanted to wait and see what their response would be.’
Logan frowned, perturbed that she seemed so nonchalant about the whole thing.
‘And was their response what you expected?’
‘Absolutely. They’re tailing us – I have no doubt about that. Remember, if what you told me is right, it’s not the Russians who want me dead. It’s the CIA. So perhaps the FSB still think I, or even both of us, have value to them. Or maybe they just want to see what we’ll do next.’
Logan mulled over her words. Despite his wariness, it made sense. The fact the FSB agents hadn’t shown themselves spoke volumes. Maybe they were simply awaiting a command to kill from their superiors. But more likely they were stalking, waiting for an opportune moment to recapture their prey. Killing Grainger was of no benefit to them – nor was them killing him, for that matter, now that he was a wanted man himself – unless revenge was the only thing on their minds. They wanted both of them back under their control.
‘We should just cut the chips out and be done with it,’ Logan said. ‘It would only take a few minutes.’
‘You want to run forever?’
‘No. I want to stand and fight. But on my terms. Right now, it wouldn’t be an even fight. We don’t know where they are, how many of them there are.’
‘Then I say we lure them in. Let them think they’ve won the race.’
Logan considered the idea. ‘They’ll have weapons. Money. IDs,’ he said.
‘My thoughts exactly.’
He had forgotten just how savvy Grainger could be. She was an experienced agent after all. At a moment when most people would be panicking about how to lose the tail, wanting to run as fast and as far as they could, she was plotting a way to tackle the hunters in order to strengthen their own hand.
‘Okay, we’ll have to stop soon anyway,’ Logan said. ‘Whenever we see the next petrol station, I’ll make myself busy and you keep a lookout for them. As long as we’re on the move, it’s unlikely that anything will happen. When we stop, they may take the opportunity to confront us. Much easier for them to do it then than tackle a moving target.’
‘Unless their only interest is in tailing us. To see where we’re going and what we’ll do.’
‘Maybe. But they won’t do that forever. And there’s only one way to find out.’
Logan reached down.
‘You have this,’ he said, handing Grainger his gun. ‘I want them to think they’ve caught us by surprise. You keep that in the car, out of view.’
And that was why when the man stepped out of the black BMW, weapon drawn, Logan didn’t panic. He stood and waited.
Logan didn’t recognise the man at all. He was dressed in a thick black overcoat and shiny black boots, a hollow look on his hard and weathered face, the hand pointing the handgun unwavering.
A moment later, the rear door opened and a woman stepped out, gun in hand. Logan didn’t recognise her either. The steely, calculating look in her eyes reminded him of Lena, though with her pointed features she wasn’t nearly as attractive.
As she moved aside to shut the door, Logan managed a glimpse inside the vehicle. There were no other occupants in the rear. So a total of three people to contend with. The driver was the only one not yet joining the party.
‘Put your hands in the air,’ the man said in heavily accented English. ‘Then slowly move down onto your knees.’
Logan did as he was told. He was pretty confident these people didn’t want to kill him here. But he didn’t want to test that theory. Nor did he want to risk them shooting him in the leg or somewhere else non-fatal.
The woman began to move forward.
‘Is she in there?’ she said to Logan.
‘Who?’ Logan said.
‘Angela Grainger.’ The woman gave Logan a stern look. ‘She belongs to us now. Is she in the car?’
Her words sent a cascade of thoughts through Logan’s mind. Grainger was still of value to them – that was clear. Maybe the Russians thought they could do another deal for her life with the Americans. But what about Logan? Was he simply expendable? Maybe the fact he had caused them so much trouble already had brought them to that conclusion.
‘Yes. She is,’ Logan said.
The woman took another two paces forward, craning her neck to try to get a view into the front of the car. The man was also moving forward, toward Logan.
‘Miss Grainger,’ the woman said, not shouting but louder than before, ‘please come out of the vehicle.’
There was no movement from within the car.
‘Do it now or I’ll shoot your companion,’ the man shouted.
He was now just three steps from Logan.
The lady took one more step toward the car and then a gunshot rang out, loud and clear, the sound travelling and echoing off the mass of concrete of the raised highway behind where Logan was kneeling.
Logan didn’t need to look to see what had happened. But the man pointing the gun at him did. That was his fatal mistake.
Logan leaped up and, using his momentum, thrust a knee hard and fast into the man’s groin. The man recoiled, shouting out in surprise and pain. Logan grabbed the man’s gun arm and twisted it around. He thrust it down at the same time as hauling up his other knee, crashing the man’s arm down against his thigh and snapping both the radius and the ulna.
The man screamed and reflexively released his grip on the gun. Logan grabbed it, turned it around and fired three quick shots, each hitting the man in his chest only an inch apart in a neat cluster.
As the body was still falling to the ground, Logan heard screeching tyres and looked up to see the BMW reversing, swinging around to head back where it had come from. Clearly the driver didn’t fancy his chances on his own.
Logan quickly readjusted his aim as the driver righted the car and it began to veer away. Before he got the chance to fire, another two gunshots blasted. Logan looked on as one of the vehicle’s back tyres exploded, shards of rubber flying into the air. The car careened left and right, the driver unable to keep it under control. It plunged through a mound of snow, which burst into the air, then came to a crashing halt in a ditch at the side of the road.
Logan looked over and saw Grainger, standing up out of the car, gun resting on its roof. A few feet away lay the body of the woman, entirely motionless. There was a black hole, seeping blood, where her left eye used to be and where the bullet from Grainger’s gun had penetrated her brain.
‘You take the left side, I’ll take the right,’ Grainger said, moving her gun off the roof. Crouching down, she moved toward the stricken vehicle.
Without saying a word, Logan immediately followed suit, moving out toward the left to come around the BMW on the driver’s side. As he approached the crumpled heap, steam rising from the bonnet, he saw the driver’s door was already open.
His first thought was that the driver may have already bailed out and was either running or hiding. As he moved closer, though, he saw the man’s arm hanging down, flailing around by his leg, which was trapped in the crumpled footwell.
Logan kept his gun out as he moved right up to the man. When Logan reached him, the man turned his head to face him.
The airbag had deployed in the collision and was draped over the man’s waist. He had a gash on the side of his head from which a thick trail of blood was working its way down his face. It looked as though he had cracked it against the side of the car at impact, the airbag ultimately providing little protection.
The man was alert but panting heavily. He looked to be in pain. Logan stared past him and spotted Grainger through the passenger side window. She opened the door, gun held out toward the man.
‘Are you armed?’ Logan asked him.
The man nodded and looked down at his chest, indicating that his gun was there. Logan reached out and undid the man’s coat, then took the handgun out of its gun strap.
‘I’ll stay on him,’ Logan said to Grainger. ‘You check the car.’
Without saying a word, Grainger put her gun away and quickly searched the car, opening each of the doors, checking the glovebox and boot, taking away anything that was of use. When she was finished, she headed back to the two bodies on the petrol forecourt and searched them too. She called over to Logan when she was done and he took two cautious steps backward, his gun still pointing toward the driver, before he turned and ran back to the car.
When he reached it, Grainger was already inside. He jumped into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine. As he drove off, he looked at the petrol station window, where the worker had been standing when they first arrived. There was no sign of him now. No doubt he was hiding somewhere. And no doubt he had called the police. That didn’t overly worry Logan, though: he was already a wanted man.
Grainger rummaged through the takings as they sped away down the dark single-track road. As expected, the FSB agents had been armed. Logan and Grainger had now acquired three more handguns together with numerous magazines.
Although the agents had been thin on personal items, they did have on them some cash and two credit cards. Grainger had also found passports stuffed in the glovebox of the BMW, but no other identification such as driving licences or documentation to say whom the agents worked for.
Logan could guess why. He generally travelled with little ID unless it was necessary. The passports the Russians had been carrying would be fakes. They were to allow the FSB agents to track Logan and Grainger over the border of Russia, to wherever they were heading. They would all be cover identities.
What the possessions did suggest was that the Russians had been willing to play the long game if necessary, travelling across countries to keep on Logan and Grainger’s tail. He didn’t know why they would do that, or why the trackers had taken the opportunity to confront them at the petrol station.
Logan did know one thing, though: the passports the agents had been carrying were exactly what he and Grainger needed.
‘So what now?’ Grainger asked.
‘We need to get these chips out,’ Logan said.
‘And then?’
Logan smiled. ‘And then we’re leaving Russia for good.’