Through his binoculars, he saw the flames start at multiple locations around the safe house at once. Kareem had seen the fires start in the downstairs garage, the upstairs front bedroom and the side entrance. He assumed that there would be more little pockets of fire at other strategic points around the building that were burning away.
He knew what they were doing, it was exactly the same as what his commander would do when they left their operating base; they would destroy everything and leave no evidence behind. By the morning, the whole structure would be a pile of ashes; all that wood would burn quickly and fiercely.
Kareem was about to put down his binoculars to take out his cell phone to alert his commander when he saw the two figures emerge from the side of the building, the flames illuminating the details of their bodies and faces. One was of medium height, young and fit-looking. It was the younger man who was the leader, the guide. But it was the other man – taller, older and scared-looking – who he had seen leave the building earlier that evening. But that was impossible… how could it be?
It was their target, the scientist.
He held the binoculars on the face of the scientist for as long as he could; reading the details, trying to satisfy his mind that what he was seeing was true and wasn’t in fact an optical illusion or trick of the light. A few more moments confirmed it in his mind before the two men began to walk away at a steady pace towards the forest.
Kareem quickly picked up the cell phone and began to send a message to Azrael…
Tom Lyth stepped out of the Lexus, closely followed by the disguised Wolf Beckwith. He had parked the car directly opposite the van that he knew held Sabina and Azrael. They were less than a hundred feet away in the distance, further down the track.
The espionage romantic in him wondered if it had been this way for the handlers and agents of the legendary ‘Spy Swaps’ during the Cold War. Had Abel, Powers, Wynne and Molody and all the others at Checkpoint Charlie or Glienicke Bridge felt the same knot of anxiety in the pit of their stomachs as they had faced off against each other?
Lyth savoured the moment, staring across no-man’s land at his enemy. He checked his watch 12.05. It was time. He held a hand up to signal and was relieved when the van opposite flashed its headlights twice. Moments later, three figures emerged; the short and stocky Azrael, the slim figure of Sabina and finally another younger man. Lyth guessed that he was there to act as Sabina’s guard… or executioner if things went wrong.
“Are you ready?” asked Lyth, his eyes locked forward, never leaving the people opposite.
Wolf nodded. “As I’ll ever be. Let’s just hope that you’re as clever as you think you are.”
“Good luck,” said Lyth and patted Wolf/Pavel on the shoulder, giving him his cue and watching him walk away into the distance.
Azrael turned to her and said, “You go now. Walk towards your people.”
She turned to him confused, as if she hadn’t understood him.
“Walk,” he said. “Go cautiously, nothing haphazard and no sudden movements. Now go.”
Sabina turned and looked at the men down the track, recognised the unmistakable figures of her brother and the Fisherman. Then slowly, cautiously, her legs began to move as if she was in a trance. At the back of her mind she knew that there were unseen figures from both sides hiding in the darkness. She couldn’t see them but she sure as hell could sense them.
Sabina had her eyes locked onto her brother along the full length of the train track. The linear route of the steel rails would inevitably lead them on a direct collision course. But even as she moved, her legs felt sluggish as her feet crunched against the stones that pitted themselves between the sleepers and rails. There was a surreal, almost other-worldly quality to the proceedings. At first, the distance between them and the glare from the vehicle headlights had given only a superficial quality to her brother’s outline; he was nothing more than a generic silhouette.
But now, as their trajectory was on a direct path with each other, she could start to make out the details of his face. But there was something else… the gait… the size… the shape of his body… it was Pavel and not Pavel at the same time. How could this be?
The face was his definitely, the same lean features, the unruly mop of hair that peeked out from underneath the hat that he was wearing. But the body, while tall, was not as she remembered it being. Pavel was always lean and lanky, had always been that way. But this version of Pavel was strong and powerful in build.
The fiction must play, she kept reminding herself.
She didn’t know exactly what was happening, didn’t know yet the details of the deception, but she had been involved in this strange world long enough now to know that even when things seemed askew or counter-intuitive, you must absolutely not react and that, if you wanted to survive in any way, that you must play it straight and for real.
She was getting nearer to him now, counting the distance in her head. Ten more steps, six more steps, three more steps…
Sabina saw the face of her not-brother. It looked so realistic, almost accurate, but not to someone like her, someone who had known his features since they were children.
Then, from somewhere behind her, she heard the voice of the man who had mutilated her, who had cut off her fingers, shout something. But she couldn’t make out the details of the words, only that it sounded like an order and that he was angry.
She turned her gaze back to her brother, to Pavel, or whatever this doppelganger was… and then he did the strangest thing. He seemingly was not interested in saving himself or honouring the deal. Instead, he leapt over to her, big and broad, and grabbed her arm, pulling her into him. His arms embraced her and then hugged and controlled her as their bodies clashed and then he brought them both down to the ground.
She was flat on her back and whoever the fuck this was, certainly not her brother, covered her body with his, protecting her as much as he could with his physicality and she heard him scream into her ear, “Sabina, stay still and stay down!”
And that was when the gunfire started.
They were both nearly at the point of no return when Azrael felt the phone vibrate in his pocket. He lifted it out, expecting it to be the American, and was surprised to find that it was not. It was Kareem, his watcher and his eyes on the ground.
Azrael swiped open the message and read it: THE SCIENTIST IS HERE AT THE SAFE HOUSE. IDENTITY IS CONFIRMED!
Azrael glanced down at the message, confused and then he looked back along the train tracks to the girl and her brother. The two were almost within touching distance of each other, like strangers passing each other on a pavement, each conscious of their own spatial awareness.
His confusion quickly turned to enlightenment and he saw clearly that he had been set up. The two siblings seemingly had embraced and then they did the strangest thing of both falling to the ground, like children playing a game, one on top of the other.
It was a trap! Azrael knew that it was now or never. He turned to look over his shoulder and brought his hand down in a chopping motion, roaring at the top of his voice to his assassins. “Kill them all!”
When he heard the scream from the other end of the track, the order to kill, Tom Lyth called into his open channel covert comms: “Take out the Targets!”
The order was given and he had set in motion a chain of events that could now not be reversed. Then, everything happened both fast and slow at the same time. If he had planned it right, they would all walk out of here in one piece. If not, then there would certainly be casualties. Pavel, the real Pavel, was safe and hopefully on the run with Luca, far from this killing ground.
Sabina was contained and under the protection of Wolf Beckwith and the overwatch of the snipers Jax and Tanner.
But he had a bigger target to go after. While all the chaos swirled around him, his main focus was to go after and capture his once long-dead nemesis, Azrael. Because Azrael would have information about who was behind this new threat and in real terms that was more important than anything else.
The Fisherman looked over to where Azrael was standing and the two men locked eyes. Then the Fisherman drew the knife concealed at his waist from the sheath and ran to his prey.
Jax heard the Fisherman shout through the open radio channel in her earpiece to, “Take out Targets!”
That was all the information she needed.
Jax pulled the rifle butt firmly into the crook of her shoulder, levelled up the tripod legs and centred the suppressed muzzle though the gap in the wall of the tower. She picked out the centre of mass for her first target; an assassin holding a silenced pistol who emerged from the side of an abandoned train carriage.
She centred the crosshairs on his chest as he started to run forward, trying to get to the girl. Jax took the trigger pressure, not much give in it, and pulled gently, not snatching at it. She felt the Steyr buck minimally against her shoulder, was only half aware of the faint brush of noise dampened down by the attached suppressor, and then she watched as the assassin dropped to the ground.
The round had taken the figure in the chest and it had spun him. She felt nothing. If she had a preference, it would have been to have been down on the ground armed with nothing but a metal baton to do the work, but she understood that she was a part of something bigger and had to adapt.
Just to be sure, she aimed a second shot, this time at the head of the prone figure lying on the ground.
“Target one down,” she said into the radio.
Tanner had seen the first assassin who had emerged from the side of the train carriage drop and knew that Jax was as lethal as usual.
Tanner’s target was nowhere near as dramatic or indeed a difficult shot. One of the targets was trying to conceal himself behind a telegraph pole, a thick wooden post. From his position, he could not be seen by the Fisherman or even Jax up in her sniper’s perch.
Unfortunately for him, the back of his head was an available target for Tanner. Through the scope, the assassin’s head, wearing a baseball cap, loomed large.
Tanner centred the crosshairs just at the base of the neck. He fired just one shot and the Steyr barely moved. One moment the target was filling his NVG scope, the next minute he had fallen to the floor dead.
“Target two down,” said Tanner and moved his scope around to find his next target.
He heard Azrael shout to kill them all and it was then that Yusuf pulled the pistol from the concealed holster on his hip.
The girl had passed by her brother and then the scientist had dived on her, knocking her to the ground, covering her frame with the bulk of his body. There was the sound of suppressed gunfire and he became aware of at least one of his team, his brothers, going down in a hail of gunfire over to his right. A sniper, he thought, perhaps more than one. In truth he didn’t care, he was fixated on the girl. He would get her back or kill her, there was no other option. He ran forward, dodging and weaving, hoping to divert the sniper’s aim.
“Yusuf, no!” Azrael shouted, but Yusuf was too blinded now, too committed and too keen to draw blood.
When he was within range, Yusuf aimed the Glock at the back of the figure that covered the girl. He fired in quick succession and watched as the rounds impacted into the man’s body. Somewhere in the distance, he was aware of Samir falling to the ground and he knew that there were now definitely two snipers. Time was against him and he knew it.
His heart pounded as he threw himself forward and lifted the big bulky man off the girl. She was underneath him, a look of horror on her face.
You thought you were safe, you bitch, thought Yusuf. No, you are far from safe.
Yusuf grabbed her by the hair and dragged her away from the seemingly unconscious figure that had tried to protect her, flinging her to the ground once more.
He turned his attention to the prone, bullet-ridden man on the floor, ready to finish him off with a bullet to the back of the head. He checked the Glock and then advanced on his target.
In those few brief moments, Sabina knew that she had to react and she had to do it now. She pulled the weapon free from the bandage sheath so that it protruded from the bottom of her fist and then she ran at Yusuf, attacking from his rear.
Her focus was his exposed neck, that fleshy part that was just wide open for attack. Sabina guessed that she had one good shot, perhaps two at the most, and then he would either be dead or he would turn on her. She didn’t count the steps, but she supposed it could have been no more than five, and then she was bringing the vicious, jagged metal down in a short arc.
She felt the resistance as it cut through the flesh and saw Yusuf spasm, his body tensing and arching, before she brought the weapon down once more just for luck, this time penetrating the side of his neck. She barely had time to watch the blood spurt free in a geyser before he had twirled and lashed out with his gun hand, the side of the pistol smashing into her face and knocking her back to the ground. She could feel the blood seeping into her eyes from a cut from the pistol-whipping and could only stare at the scene of horror before her.
Yusuf held the wound in his neck with his free hand and advanced on the new threat of Sabina. The pistol was shaking in his hand, but he seemed determined to kill her once and for all.
And then her seemingly dead doppelganger brother began to move and come back to life. He suddenly did two things simultaneously. With his left hand, he reached up to his face and began to claw at it, as if he was ripping his mask of skin and beard away to reveal something underneath. At the same time, his right hand came out from the pocket of his overcoat and began pointing in Yusuf’s direction; a metal finger of battle aimed at him and ready to fire.
The heavy rounds from the Colt 1911 took Yusuf in the head, the force of the impact sending him flying backwards and crashing to the ground dead, his face a mangled bowl of flesh and bone. When the shooting was done, Wolf Beckwith forced his battered body to a crouch, ripping open the jacket to reveal a heavy ballistic vest underneath. He held out his hand and beckoned to the girl.
“Sabina… come to me quickly.”
For an instant, there was a surge of mistrust and then she scurried over to him in a low crouch.
“We need to make it to the car,” he said.
“Where… where is my brother?” called Sabina.
“He’s far from here and he’s safe. That’s for later, but now we have to get to the car!” yelled Wolf and then he grabbed her arm, his body protecting her from the assassins at the other end of the track as he half pulled and half dragged her to the relative safety of the Lexus.
They moved fast and low in the manner of the protector and the protected and it was when they were nearly within spitting distance of the security of their vehicle that Sabina noticed, from somewhere in her peripheral vision, her spymaster and former lover running at full speed, shining blade in hand, past them and heading towards the killers that had taken her.