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Kornev spent two long days flying from his home in Termez, Uzbekistan, to Peshawar, Pakistan. He almost felt like a tourist, having changed planes in Moscow where he got a connecting flight to Dubai on Emirates Air. Due to a massive dust storm, he was forced to stay overnight in Dubai. The next day he boarded an Airbus A320 flown by Pakistan International to Peshawar. He regretted flying commercial because he could avoid all the hubbub by flying on his plane. But taking several connecting flights would increase the difficulty for either Hail or the CIA to tail him.
His mood wasn’t elevated with the first-class service and wide seats. He couldn’t shrug off the feelings of humiliation he had undergone in his tunnel in Termez. Not only had he suffered a great blow to his ego knowing the CIA agent had gotten the drop on him, but she also had left him in the tunnel alone, putting his life in peril. Compounding that indignity was having been discovered by Hail and his team.
Eventually, he’d had no other choice except to soil himself—an act he found repulsive and which scared him more than any harrowing event he’d experienced. His hopes of rescue had diminished each day. He had come close to death before, but those were short-lived narrow escapes like gunshots or stabs from a knife. What he experienced in the tunnel had been a slow and prolonged death while his body consumed its water reserves. Now that Kornev had come through the other side, he knew the horror of dying from dehydration.
The Russian understood basic biology, for example the human body is composed of 65% water. Water is the basic chemical that allows the brain to think, blood to flow, and the muscles to move. The first stage of dehydration he experienced began with his brain telling him he was thirsty, and hours later, the first physical sensation was having cottonmouth. The sensation of thirst had persisted throughout the next two days until it had driven him crazy. He had thrashed on the floor like a snared hog as he attempted to break his plastic bindings. He then tried to scooch his way down to the other end of the tunnel thinking he might be able to make it up the stairs. After a few feet he realized he was unable to get anywhere; even if he reached the end. Having his hands bound to his feet would have made climbing the ladder impossible. Adding to his frustration, the physical exertion only exacerbated his thirst.
In that tunnel he’d been hot, but to his dismay realized he wasn’t sweating. That couldn’t be a good thing. He understood that sweating was the way the body cooled itself. Without the help from his body’s natural radiator, it took him hours to cool down which used up even more precious H2O. The typical water loss for a man of Kornev’s size was about five pounds per day, and by the third day, he went to sleep. He hadn’t drifted off because he was tired; this was an agonizing slumber caused by low blood pressure. His blood was beginning to thicken, making his heart work overtime to move the red sludge through his veins and arteries. During times of wakefulness, he felt his skin begin to shrivel, and he could no longer think clearly. In the days prior to his rescue, his body had given up. While unconscious, his bowels had emptied and the little fluid remaining in his bladder was also excreted. When he awoke, his liver hurt like hell and he realized he was getting very close to organ failure—and then everything had gone black.
The next time he awoke, one of Hail’s men was pouring water on him. He would never tell Hail his rescue had been the best moment of his life. Kornev fully understood he would have died if he had remained in that condition for one more day.
It took him days to recover from the ordeal, and even as he sat there in a first-class cabin, he had forgone the complimentary glass of champagne in exchange for the cool bottle of water sitting next to it. Kornev took a refreshing sip, having a newfound appreciation for the colorless and odorless liquid that sustained life. He would never think about water in the same way. Alternatively, would he always think about water in a new way?
Now that thirst was no longer paramount in his mind, that physical longing had been replaced by a seething anger festering inside his gut. This new emotion consumed his thoughts, which he found disconcerting, because anger got in the way of reason. Anger is when you take a gun and shoot your wife. Reason is when you take the time to plan a little trip to the Grand Canyon where she accidentally falls off a cliff. Kornev had never had a wife, but he still had a big woman problem. He suspected he would find the CIA agent, Kara, staying at his safe house in Peshawar. Back in Termez, he’d prayed for the chance to get revenge. He knew that if he escaped the tunnel to live another day, he would track her down. At this point, the Russian didn’t know what he would do with Tonya or Kara, or whatever name she was using now. Once he had her in his sights, none of the scenarios bouncing around in his head would be anything the woman would enjoy. Kornev wanted to see her in pain. He wanted to shred the confidence she had flaunted in his face. He wanted to take her life—slowly.
Victor assured himself by reciting: “This puts a wrench in Hail’s ability to go after Victor Kornev.” Invisibility is a hard target to track given that his drones were flown remotely. You can’t track a ghost, let alone kill one. Kornev was no one-trick pony. If nothing else, he was a great planner, and planning for this situation was no different. He was confident that once he had killed the woman, he would return to the business of selling arms.