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The drive from the airport to police headquarters took less than twenty minutes. Once they had arrived, the two senior police officers escorted Kornev into the building. The trio walked through the department, eventually ending up at a closed door with the name Sardar Mehsud affixed to it. Directly under the name was the title Inspector General.
One of the officers opened the door and Kornev stepped inside. The door was immediately drawn shut.
Sardar Mehsud was sitting behind his desk. Mehsud was a short man of average build with a protruding belly, a thick salt and pepper mustache, and a graying beard. Other than the military-like ribbons and insignia, the black uniform looked old and worn. The police chief typically wore a black beret which now lay on his wooden desk.
The big Russian sat down across from Mehsud in a hardback wooden chair.
“How have you been, my friend?” the inspector general asked Kornev, although he made no effort to shake his hand.
“I’ve been doing fine, Sardar,” Kornev lied. He had endured a crappy few weeks. It had begun at gunpoint and being forced to work for Hail and the CIA. Oh, and he couldn’t forget being hogtied and left to die from thirst and rot under his home. Yeah, he certainly had experienced better months. However, it would be bad business to let one of his best customers in on all that drama. What goes on under his home in his dark and smelly tunnel, stays under his home in his dark and smelly tunnel. In terms of his customers, it was strictly business as usual. Kornev was no longer a CIA informant or asset or under Hail’s thumb. He had successfully made a clean break from them, and it was now time to get back to his business—back to his wonderful life.
Each of the Russian’s passports were excellent fakes. Only one passport had been used. He had left nothing short of an ice-cold trail to follow.
“Well, I have some news for you,” Mehsud continued. “Both caretakers came to me and reported that a white female is staying in your homes.”
This news didn’t come as a surprise to Kornev. He had provided Kara with the location of his safe houses; specifically, he directed her to this city in hopes that she would give herself away. If not for the large cache of weapons and a bag of Pakistani rupees, the tunnel that connected the homes in Peshawar were of little value to him other than providing him a method of infiltration. One would tend to think that a person with that much weaponry at her disposal could be very dangerous, but Kara was just one person. Even if she fired a gun from each hand, she was still just one person who could be put down with a single bullet.
“Is she still there?” Kornev asked.
The inspector responded, “We are not sure. If she is staying there, she has not been returning until very late at night. There was no activity at the properties over the last two days. The car you store in the barn is missing.”
Kornev said nothing. He would give the situation some serious contemplation. Since the inspector hadn’t mentioned the death of their money-laundering banker friend, Zain Shallah—the man who facilitated the purchase of his weapons, Kornev suspected that the CIA agent had not yet vacated the area. She wouldn’t leave until Zain Shallah, and probably his brother Naveed, had been exterminated. Of that, he could be positive.
Kornev smiled appreciatively but just as quickly allowed his disarming smile to collapse in on itself. The Russian was thirsty, but he didn’t like the taste of water in Peshawar. He also knew the inspector didn’t drink alcohol, which to Kornev was a peculiar contrast to the fact that the man sitting in front of him was corrupt to his core yet socially, in true Muslim tradition, straight as an arrow. A true conundrum in the world of unbridled depravity and terror.
The inspector general was waiting for Kornev to say something. An uncomfortable silence filled the room.
Kornev was taking his time to decide what actions he should take next. On one hand, he wanted to confront Kara alone; on the other hand, she had proven to be somewhat crafty. If he was in her shoes, he would have set up several booby traps surrounding the property. A reasonable precaution would be to place a few tripwires in the tunnel, as well as at some of the main doors of both homes. If she had indeed done this, having a few disposable men could be useful. Once the inspector’s men had sprung all the traps, Kornev could then enter and track down the woman and then... then... and then do whatever he wanted to her. He wasn’t necessarily into torture. He never really considered it civilized, and this was coming from a man who sold weapons that could potentially kill thousands of people with a single click. Clicks of weapons included: triggers, pressure-sensitive switches, pins pulled from grenades, cell phone buttons that triggered explosive devices, and levers that released missiles.
The inspector allowed his friend time to think over his options. He waited patiently for the Russian to make a request of some type. He owed this man much. Just a few years ago, Sardar was a common street cop. His small family had been barely getting by on his small salary, even factoring in the bribes he was taking. He had met the Russian in a warehouse, a location that the former police chief had sent officers to guard and yet look the other way. The only other instruction provided to the Pakistani officers was to protect the big Russian.
As luck would have it, Kornev’s deal had gone bad. Mehsud didn’t know the specifics of the disagreement, but when Kornev’s customer had raised a gun toward Kornev, Mehsud had shot a well-placed bullet into the side of the man’s head thereby saving the arms dealer’s life. Kornev had been appreciative and impressed with Mehsud’s decisive action. From that point on, the men had informally pledged an allegiance to one another. Mehsud would do whatever the Russian asked of him. In return Kornev would campaign to get Mehsud elected as the next inspector general.
Peshawar, Pakistan, was not exactly the safest place in the world. Therefore, it hadn’t been met with a great deal of suspicion when the next two inspector generals had died by the hands of assassins Kornev had hired. Horrified by the violence, the men and women of Peshawar elected Mehsud when he vowed the killings would stop. The violent killings indeed came to an abrupt stop. Considering how he rose to become the top lawman in Peshawar, Mehsud fully understood the importance of keeping Kornev happy.
Up to this point, Kornev had no cause to remove Mehsud from office, as long as the man continued to be of value to him.
Kornev finally said, “I will need four of your worst men.”
“Worst men?” repeated Mehsud, sure he hadn’t heard Kornev correctly.
Kornev confirmed, “Yes, men you dislike or maybe distrust, because they will probably not make it back alive from this mission.”
The inspector had not expected such a proclamation and couldn’t believe that a single female could put up such a formidable front.
“Who is staying at your home? CIA? Mossad?”
“It doesn’t matter. I will deal with her,” Kornev said, waving off the inspector’s questions.
Sardar said, “It does matter. I don’t need an international incident taking place in my little city. I think it’s in both of our interests to stay below the radar, as they say in American films.”
Kornev looked annoyed, as if explaining himself to the little man was beneath him. “If you must know, the woman is operating on her own. No special forces will magically come to her rescue. After tonight, it will be over. You will get a message from me, and I will leave town.”
“And if I don’t hear from you again?” the inspector asked.
Kornev gave a little laugh, as if he didn’t want to dignify the question with an answer, but he did anyway. “If you don’t hear from me by midnight tonight, you need to hit my compound and hit it hard. Brute force attack. You will probably find me dead in one of my homes or in one of the tunnels. I fully intend to contact you before midnight.”
The inspector absorbed the information and said nothing.
Kornev added, “Besides the men, I will also need some weapons and five dual-purpose 200cc or better motorcycles. They must have knobby tires so they can drive cross-county.”
“Will the motorcycles be coming back?” Mehsud laughed.
Kornev smiled at the joke and said, “You can pick them up in the woods behind my property when IT is over.”
“Do I want to know what IT is?” the inspector asked.
“Have you ever wanted to know was IT is?” Kornev asked.
The inspector smiled, shaking his head while picking up his phone to issue orders.
*-*-*
Milky Way had ridden into the police station’s underground garage attached to the top of the patrol car.
Knox pressed an icon on his monitor labeled RELEASE, and the magnets on the drone withdrew from the car’s ferrous surface. The roof of the garage was low so Knox brought the drone into a hover inches above the car and allowed the vehicle to drive out from under it. Once clear, he immediately banked the drone to the left so it couldn’t be seen in the police car’s rear-view mirror. Knox kept the drone’s camera focused on the vehicle until it turned into a parking space nearest the elevator in the corner of the garage.
Alex set the drone down gently on the top of a police van and kept recording video to replay it later for Hail.
Three men exited the vehicle and walked over to the elevator, pressed a button, and less than a minute later, they were gone. Knox did a quick 360° scan with the camera to make sure the garage was empty. He then flew Milky Way over to the elevator hoping to get a glimpse of where the elevator was headed. From experience, Knox knew providing Hail with as much information as possible was useful so he continued recording. The fifth-floor button was lit, and Knox made sure the camera recorded that information. Knowing his drone could be spotted, he retreated into the garage and settled back atop the van where he could observe the elevator.
Nolan pulled in across the street, and the men kept a loose watch on the police station. Outside, Hail, Renner, and Nolan watched the police car go into the secured garage. They understood this was the end of the line. Kornev was somewhere inside the station doing only God knew what and with whom.
“What’s the plan now?” Nolan asked, understanding there was really no time left to execute a plan. Kornev had been their only lead to finding Kara. The chances of missing Kornev emerging from the garage, considering that all police cars had heavily tinted windows, only increased with the passage of time. Unless they saw Kornev get into a car, there was no way to track him.
“Hopefully Knox will spot Kornev when he comes out and let us know what car he gets into.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Nolan asked.
“Then we are officially screwed,” Renner said.