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IT WAS JUST AFTER FIVE A.M. when the alarm clock in the small visiting officer’s quarters room started to beep. Alexei rolled over and hit the snooze button as he tried to get a few more minutes of sleep. Just five more minutes, he thought. His first brief wasn’t until seven A.M. and the student was an experienced MiG-29 pilot transitioning to the SU-30.
Alexei drifted back to sleep. Ten minutes later, the beeping started once more. Before he could roll over to silence the alarm, it suddenly stopped. He wasn’t sure if he had dreamed it or not, but he didn’t really care. He kept his eyes closed as he drifted in and out of sleep.
As he debated whether to check his alarm, Alexei suddenly felt something cold and hard pressed against his forehead. He slowly opened his eyes and saw a dark figure standing over him.
Alexei was suddenly wide awake as his adrenaline surged.
“Get up,” a female voice said in Russian.
Alexei shot up in the bed, pushing himself backward until he hit the headboard. The woman tracked him with the suppressed handgun as he desperately looked for an escape path. His heart raced as he squinted to see the woman in the darkness.
“Who are you?” Alexei asked. “What do you want?”
“Put your clothes on,” the woman ordered. He was wearing only a pair of boxers.
“What is the meaning of this?”
The woman fired a round into the bed next to his leg. Alexei jerked away, curling up against the headboard as his eyes darted between the woman and the handgun.
“Do it now,” she ordered.
Alexei held up his hands and slowly swung his legs around to the other side of the bed. He stood and walked to the closet where his flight suit had been hung the night before. As he grabbed it off the hanger, he looked back and saw the woman watching his every move with the weapon pointed at him.
“Hurry,” the woman said.
Alexei put on the flight suit and then sat on the bed with his boots and socks. He put them on one at a time. As he stood, he slowly drew his boot knife from its sheath and prepared to face his attacker.
Before he could turn to face her, she shot him in the side of his left knee, causing him to collapse and drop the knife. He screamed out in agony as he rolled to his side clutching his wound.
The woman casually walked to him, picking up the knife and tossing it aside before she drove her heel into the fresh wound.
“Imbecile,” she said.
“Who are you? What do you want?” he cried out.
“Fine,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “Answer my questions and I may allow you to live.”
“Anything! I’ll tell you the truth. I swear!”
“The Americans. You remember them, yes?”
“Yes! Of course I do!”
“You were on your phone when they left. Who did you call?”
“I didn’t-”
Before he could finish the lie, the woman shifted her weight onto her heel, driving his blood-soaked knee into the carpet.
“We have video,” the woman said as Alexei grunted. “No more lies.”
“Sergei! I called Sergei Asminov!”
“Bratva?” she asked.
Alexei nodded as he grimaced. “Minsk Bratva.”
“Why? What did you tell him?”
“Please...”
“Please?” the woman put the warm barrel of her suppressed CZ P10C handgun against Alexei’s temple. “Do you wish to end our chat?”
“No! Please don’t kill me! But you don’t understand. He will torture and kill me if he finds out I talked.”
“And what do you think we will do?”
“We?” Alexei asked.
She sidestepped as the lights suddenly came on. Two burly men were standing by the door, dressed in suits. They appeared uninterested in Alexei’s current state of distress.
“You are FSB!” Alexei said as he realized what was going on.
“Why did you call Asminov?”
“I was just trying to make some extra money for my family, that’s all. I swear!”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that there were Americans here. I put a tracker on one of the vehicles when they left and called him to let him know that they were leaving. That’s it! I swear!”
“What does Asminov want with them?”
“I have no idea. I met his men in a bar. They told me if I saw anything worthwhile, to give them a call and they would pay me handsomely. I thought the fact that Americans were flying our fighter jets would be something he might be interested in. He was!”
“You were warned about discussing the Americans with outsiders, yes?” the woman asked angrily.
“Yes,” Alexei replied like a scolded child.
“And yet you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what the Americans were here for?”
Alexei looked up at the woman, knowing that she was seconds from pulling the trigger and splattering his brain matter all over the closet.
“Please...”
“Answer the question,” one of the burly men said with his booming voice.
“To learn how to fly the Advanced Flanker,” Alexei answered.
“Do you know why?”
Alexei shook his head slowly. “I only know what I was told.”
“None of the pilots told you anything?”
“No!”
“You are sure?”
“I swear!”
“How much were you paid?”
“Five thousand.”
“Where is it?”
“In the nightstand.”
She nodded and one of the men walked over to the nightstand. He opened the top drawer and retrieved an envelope full of cash. He nodded to the woman as he stuffed it into his coat.
“That’s for my family!”
“They will get it,” the woman said. “Goodbye.”
Alexei’s eyes widened. The woman squeezed the trigger, killing Alexei at point blank range. As his body fell limp, she unscrewed the suppressor and holstered her weapon.
“Clean this up and then we will find Asminov,” she said as she stepped over Alexei’s body and headed to the door.
Natasha pulled out the encrypted satellite phone that Kruger had given her and dialed his number as she stepped out of the room.
“I found the source,” she said in English. “I will have an answer for you by the end of the day.”
“I love you,” Kruger replied.
“I love you too,” she said as she ended the call.