Page 33 of One Last Stand
Her mouth tightened. “Listen, Tomas might not be alone?—”
“Agreed. So that’s why we’re going to be smart about this. You and Flynn head to the cabin. I’ll go to the Tooth and get the chopper. We’ll run reconnaissance over the area, and if you get into trouble, we can swoop in and help.”
Right.
“And in case this does go south”—he pointed to the terrain and a blue line at the base of a mountain—“this is the Rabbit River—not a small one, but it has a hiking path, and right here is a falls. Should you end up on foot, follow the river. I’ll pick you up at this lookout area above the falls.”
“How big are the falls?” Flynn asked.
“Not big—thirty feet maybe. And this time of year, it’s not running strong. But it’s cold, so don’t go in.”
London looked at Flynn. “I don’t think?—”
“I’m going.”
London drew in a breath. The last thing she wanted—please—was for someone to die because of her. “We need to move, then, because Tomas is waiting.”
Hazel had come to the top of the stairs, wearing pajamas, her hair wet. “Are you leaving, Uncle Moose?”
He looked up. “I’ll be back in a couple hours. I’ll see you in the morning, pumpkin.”
She grinned, and Tillie appeared, her mouth grim. So maybe she’d heard them talking. But she met London’s eyes and nodded.Be safe, she mouthed.
Just like that, London knew it would be okay. Tomas, she could handle—she knew him. And if that’s all who was waiting for her, then she had high hopes she could hand over the bio card without bloodshed.
The sky had started to sift snow from the darkness as she climbed into her Bronco, Flynn beside her. Moose got into his SUV with Axel, and she followed them out of the driveway.
“So, sort of like Sydney Bristow?”
London looked over at Flynn. “Not even a little. First, yes, I have hand-to-hand combat skills, but put a three-hundred-pound man against me, and I can at best inflict enough damage to run.”
Flynn smiled. “Yeah, I get that. Body weight almost always wins.”
“But I can handle myself. Mostly, however, our tactics were in the area of infiltration and subterfuge.”
“Recruited in college?”
They turned onto the highway.
“First year of university, actually. I went to school in Lauchtenland, roomed with a woman named Pippa. She left for the Marines about the same time I left to join the Swans. I’ve never felt like I had a country—yes, I’m American, but I grew up mostly overseas—so being a Swan gave me a place, a purpose. Maybe even a sorority.”
“Who is this Russian group?”
“The Petrov Bratva?” She turned on the windshield wipers as the snow dampened her windshield. She followed Moose’s red taillights, the darkness encompassing, no stars out.
Could be tricky trying to find Tomas if he’d set up an ambush for her.
“They’re a faction of the Russian mob, headed by General Arkady Petrov, who sits in the Russian parliament. They’ve been at work for years trying to draw the US into a war—first by attempting an assassination of our president, then by trying to infect the happiest place on earth with the smallpox virus, and most recently, an attempt to bomb a NATO-affiliated country. They sponsor terror throughout the world, and my job was to break into their crypto wallet and change the code, making their funds inaccessible.”
She got off the highway and took the bypass through Anchorage, south, leaving Moose to continue on to the Tooth.
“Tomas was the accountant, this branch led by a man named Drago Petrov, and I knew if I could get close to Tomas, then I could get the seed code. I also needed the bio card, which I already mentioned is encrypted with a bio lock. I knew Tomas had access to it, because he was the one who transferred money in and out of the crypto exchange.”
“Where they can change money into different currencies.”
She glanced at Flynn, impressed. The woman wore a thick jacket, sturdy boots, a wool cap—prepared for the Alaskan winter. Then again, she’d originally worked on a police force in Minnesota, so she knew how to brave the weather. Her auburn hair poked out of the back of her hat, her profile serious.
She’d have made a good Swan.