The Hidden Vector: A Spy Thriller Read online

  The one called Rezo responded coldly. “Prey.”

  “Yes, prey. Let us hunt our prey before she gets into the mountains. We have two cars, and two of you who know her face. We can hunt two times.”

  Maria pocketed her phone. “He’s right. Looks like you’ve got a temporary reprieve. You and Wade are the only ones who can identify her. You ride with me. Wade, you go with Giorgi.”

  Ethan wanted to object, but splitting with Wade now became part of the plan. They would play along and keep in contact however they could. Still, despite his aching cheek—or maybe because of it—he felt better with Wade around.

  ◆◆◆

  Ethan sat in the back of the silver Toyota alongside Maria as they scoured the outskirts of Telavi with their Georgian counterparts in front. Ioseb drove, Levan twisted his head looking for the dark blue Mercedes. Telavi was a scenic mountain town. Manicured shrubs sprouted between the quaint little houses with broad roofs—much like the safe house he’d just left, though better kept. They passed the train station but found only arriving morning travelers. Row after row of grape vines passed by his window as they drove past rustic stone chateaus on the far side of town.

  Maria spoke some with Ioseb and navigated from the back seat. Levan joked with her about it, but Ethan couldn’t follow. Georgian was impossible for him. He spoke Russian well enough. Georgian sounded nothing like that, and he understood almost none of it. They drove on, scanning the roadways.

  “I’m sorry about Eldridge,” Maria said.

  Ethan stared out the window at the passing vineyards and side roads half-heartedly looking for the Mercedes. “So am I.”

  “Alan isn’t happy about last night. You three really kicked a hornet’s nest. He had some choice words about the whole idea. He doesn’t like this situation any better. We can’t afford to lose this asset.”

  “I don’t work for him,” Ethan said. “I don’t need the lecture.”

  “I wasn’t lecturing you. Trust me, you’d know if I was. Call it a suggestion.”

  Ethan looked at her askance. The gold-rimmed shades concealed her expression, but he read her anyway. She and her sharp jawline were all business. She provoked every man around her, in every way a confident and attractive woman could. He knew women like her. He’d married one. At home she was someone else. She had something to prove every minute on this job.

  “You’re never wrong, are you?” he said.

  She huffed. “Are you?”

  “Not usually.”

  “I’ll bet. Look, it wasn’t a good day. Now is your chance to fix it.”

  On that count she was right. Still, he didn’t trust GIS enough to admit they were tracking Seda electronically. He had to think through this. He closed his eyes and thought of Seda. What would she do? She was too smart to use the phone. Maybe once to call for help, then she’d toss it. She’d probably do the same with the car as soon as she could find another ride. This wasn’t just a deal gone wrong for her. She couldn’t lay low and let it all blow over. He saw it in her face in the bedroom. Seda knew this changed her whole scheme. She had to disappear. She had to know Kagirov and the others were up to something drastic. Why take the risk? He doubted it was the money. Maybe she was closer to these men than she let on. Or closer to one of them.

  “I need a map,” he said to Levan and Ioseb. “You guys have a map of the area?”

  They handed him a folded roadmap from the glove compartment. The map was older, the paper brittle, but all he needed were highways. Mountains forced Seda into only a few options. He studied the serpentine lines and the curling Georgian script.

  She wouldn’t use her regular routes up through Chechnya, he reasoned. Seda had to leave the country or face the wrath of the men in the car with him and the rest of their comrades. The downed airliner was a black mark on their country. They would have no patience with her and less kindness. His eyes scanned the snaking roadways of the north country. She needed money, a new vehicle, and a route that no one would expect. He found a little airplane icon on the map just north of Telavi. He showed Ioseb the map. “Here. Go north.”

  He couldn’t call it a plan, really. The trick was staying on Seda’s trail without putting her in the hands of GIS. He could send them north, somehow, so he could pursue his best guess on her actual direction. It wasn’t a plan, it was a gamble with too few cards left to play.

  Within a half-hour, they approached a lone airstrip barely a mile long where it shot out to the west from a cluster of small buildings and a rust-eaten metal hangar. A bulky Soviet biplane with a broad yellow stripe poked its nose into the air outside the hangar. Several trucks and a handful of cars were parked near the hangar entrance, but he saw no sign of the Mercedes.

  “What’s that you said about not being wrong?” Maria asked.

  As they passed the hangar, the dusty Mercedes came into view parked next to a stand of beech trees, its trunk wide open. Two men inspected the vehicle. One wore coveralls splotched with oil.

  Ethan tapped Maria’s thigh and smiled at her as they pulled up alongside. She shook her head in disbelief and exited the car.

  Levan and Ioseb accosted the men, and the two mechanics waved their hands and shouted back as the argument grew. Ethan paid them little attention while he inspected the car. There was no sign of Seda. She left nothing behind. At least she took the bag. Ethan wandered around the car, kicking the dirt and grass. Behind him, Maria joined in on the argument. Ethan looked in the nearby trees. There, on the ground, he caught a glimpse of silver-gray—Seda’s phone. Ethan picked it up and walked back to the group.

  “They’re saying she traded the car for an old truck. She woke them up and gave them 200 Lari. Then she took off,” Maria said.

  “Found her phone. I’ll see if I can get any recent calls. My money’s on her heading north for the border.”

  “Of course she is,” Maria said. “She’s a smuggler who knows the terrain up there. Let’s go.”

  Except Seda wouldn’t go north. Not if his hunch was close to right.

  “I’ll stay here and wait for Wade. He’s got our gear and can help me with the phone. Hopefully, we can get something useful out of it. Then we can catch up with you.”

  “What? Not going to happen. Get in. Sanger will send us both home if I let you out of my sight. Besides, you have to identify the target, remember?”

  She called for Levan and Ioseb, and they climbed in the Toyota.

  Ethan crawled in the back seat and tinkered with Seda’s phone, careful not to reveal what it held. Ioseb turned the ignition. Ethan looked out the window at the mechanics who ran away from the car, their eyes wide with alarm. Ethan followed their gaze. The exact twin of their Toyota charged directly at the left side. For a fleeting second, he stared at the oncoming driver and recognized Rezo’s face.

  Glass exploded around him. Ethan slammed into Maria and his vision went black. Maria screamed. He tasted blood.

  Ethan lay staring at the car’s ceiling. A horn sounded steadily, faintly, as though it were miles away.

  “Rezo?” he heard someone say. “Rezo ratom?” They were shouting.

  A shot rang in his ears. Two more, and another. Then silence.

  He couldn’t move.

  Chapter 4: Other Plans

  Telavi, Georgia

  8:22 a.m., Thursday, May 9

  Ethan lay across the Toyota’s back seat with Maria twisted awkwardly beneath him. She moaned, but he couldn’t hear her words over the buzzing in his ears and head. Pain surged up his left arm into his shoulder. Move, damn it. He brushed pebbles of glass from his chest and tried to lift his head to look outside. His vision narrowed. Dark blurs swam outside a pinprick of light. Move.

  Out the windshield he spied Levan’s body in the dirt. He looked for others. He wondered about Wade for a moment, then fumbled for the Beretta. Faster. He saw another body close to the hangar’s side door and thought it might be Ioseb.

  Maria opened the car door. With a quick lunge she collapsed to the g
round, rolling away as she hit the dirt. She grunted something he still couldn’t hear. With his left hand he flicked the Beretta’s decocker. He could do that in the dark without thinking. Now the motion came clumsy and slow with the pain and numbness in his arm.

  Ethan focused on the hangar door as he scooted out the vehicle. Rezo appeared, his face like a stone. He ejected a spent magazine from his pistol and placed it carefully into his pocket as he walked toward the car, then loaded a second magazine.

  From behind, Ethan heard his name. He shielded himself behind the car door and looked to Maria. She kneeled behind the car. A smear of red spread from her cheek to her neck where she had wiped at a bleeding cut from the collision. She pointed to the far side of the car where the second Toyota still honked and steamed.

  Ethan nodded. He leaned out and fired. Rezo returned a volley of jacketed lead that shattered the glass above his head. Another round slammed into the steel door. He had slowed Rezo’s advance, but it couldn’t last. He shuffled to the rear of the car then lay on his belly, wincing from the effort.

  Maria ran to the other car, crouching low for cover. Rezo fired again and again at her. The bullets ripped into the ruined car and shattered glass. She raised the Toyota’s trunk, giving herself a little cover as she ducked inside.

  Ethan waited, both hands gripping his pistol tightly. Too tightly, he worried. His vision brightened bit by bit. It had to be enough. He heard the crunch of Rezo’s cautious steps on gravel and dirt. Rezo’s boot appeared between the tires. One more step. Step by step, Rezo fired again at Ethan, coming ever closer.

  Ethan squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet through Rezo’s ankle that shredded blood and bone. Rezo collapsed as his ankle buckled, firing in a rage. Ethan shot again but missed as his hands shook from too much pressure. His target scrambled away, moaning in pain as he limped.

  Ethan lost sight of him and pushed himself up to peek through the car windows. He saw Rezo approach the hangar door. Once inside, he’d have the advantage. Ethan stood at the rear of the car and fired in rapid succession, each shot wilder than the last. He had lost any sense of focus. Adrenaline coursed through his body. His vision narrowed, darkness crowding in. His hands shook. He didn’t have time to think. Rezo ducked instinctively at the flurry of gunfire, then fired back twice.

  The slide on Ethan’s Beretta stuck open—empty. He ducked down and reached to his belt line for another magazine, but there was nothing to grab. Both magazines were in the car. He swore quietly. He had to get around to the car’s open door, which put him in Rezo’s line of fire. Rezo tilted his head and sneered at him. He moved toward the car, limping as he came. There was no route to the car door now. He could run or launch himself at Rezo. He didn’t like either desperate option.

  Rezo rounded the end of the car and stared at Ethan. The Georgian sneered. “Scorpio send its regards.” He raised the slim-nosed Makarov pistol toward Ethan’s head.

  A shot exploded much louder than the pop and crack of their pistols. It reverberated from Ethan’s left, off the metal hangar, rolling away in every direction like a distant storm. Rezo fell to his knees with a hole blown in his sternum. He struggled to raise his pistol once more as another booming shot fired into his chest. He toppled forward onto the dust and gravel.

  Ethan turned to see Maria shouldering Wade’s Dragunov rifle. She had pulled it from the trunk.

  “You all right?” she said. She lowered the rifle and rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand, leaving another thin smear of blood on her chin and lips.

  He panted and let out a low whistle. “Thanks. Wade will be jealous you actually hit him with that thing.”

  He ran to the other Toyota and opened the rear door. The seats were empty. He dove in, looking for any sign of his partner. In the front, he found spent casings on the floor from the Makarov and a stain of wet blood in the seat. On the backseat floor, he found Wade’s phone. Where the hell are you, buddy? He inspected one of the casings.

  “What did he say to you?” asked Maria.

  “I don’t know. I thought he said something about Scorpio. Does that mean anything to you? Maybe something in Georgian?”

  She shook her head. “Ethan, what the hell is going on?”

  “What do you know about this guy? Did you work with him before?”

  “Never saw him before this morning. Same for the other two. I don’t have any reason to doubt Giorgi, but he vouched for these guys. What a mess. I mean …” Her voice trailed as she leaned against the car, her arms at rest on the rifle.

  Ethan flicked the casing back in the car and moved to the other wrecked Toyota. From his bag he pulled a full magazine and reloaded the Beretta. Then he lugged the bag over his shoulder and moved to the old Mercedes.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  She jogged after him. “What? We can’t leave it like this. Stop. We’ve got to stay here and wait for Georgian police. I’ve got to call this in. Sanger’s going to lose his fucking mind.”

  He spun around and gripped her arm. “Look, you’re smarter than this. Last night, our guy is shot dead at a couple hundred yards by someone who knew about the meet. The asset knows more than she lets on. Now, Rezo here is cleaning up the trail. I don’t know who’s behind this, but I’m sure as hell not standing around here to get shot at by the next hired gun who shows up. Let’s go.”

  “Sanger was right about you. Damn it, Ethan, you’re making this worse.” She shook off his grasp.

  “I’d say this whole thing is getting worse without my help. Both of us just about got killed by an enemy we didn’t know we had yesterday. And thanks to you, I’m still breathing. I owe you my life. After this, I’d rather have you with me right now than playing negotiator with the locals.”

  “But we don’t know anything. The asset’s escaped, and we have nothing to show for it. We’re flying blind here.”

  “Not exactly.” He held up and wagged Wade’s phone while reaching for his own with a knowing grin. “We tagged the asset.”

  Her face tensed, her neatly shaped eyebrows arcing beneath a wrinkled brow. “You what? You mean we drove around for over an hour looking for her and you didn’t bother to tell me that?”

  “Let’s just say Wade and I had other plans. Now get in.” He sat in the Mercedes and turned the ignition. The car bleated its familiar screech. Ethan shook his head in disgust.

  Maria let out an exasperated moan, then sat in the passenger seat. “Don’t make me regret this.”

  “That’s up to you,” he said.

  “What about Wade?” she asked.

  For the second time in as many days, Ethan faced leaving an officer behind. Last night, he laid Marcus down in the yard seconds from death. He didn’t even have the decency to be with him as he died. Was it Wade’s turn now, somewhere down the road dying in the dirt? Wade told him to carry on with the chase last night. He’d want Ethan to do it again. But Wade wasn’t Marcus. He and Wade had history. Nine years of assignments together. This was his friend, and he couldn’t say that of many people.

  Ethan’s eyes steeled. “Wade can take care of himself.”

  The Mercedes swerved as he drove across a pockmarked highway and looked down at his phone’s screen where a tiny map and unsteady dot hinted at Seda’s location. She moved west, but she’d already passed the gorge. She wasn’t running for home. She was running away, leaving everything she knew behind. He knew the risk in letting her go, but he didn’t anticipate Rezo.

  Maria updated Sanger again just before her phone dropped the signal behind the low-slung mountains to the south. At least she avoided his rebuke for now. Ethan needed to do the same with Corso, but they had to gain ground first over the mountain roads and switchbacks.

  Once they veered south toward Tbilisi, she broke the concentrated silence.

  “I was out of line back there. Sanger’s wrong about you,” she said.

  “Forget it. I know what he thinks about me. I’ve got my job to do. He’s got his. That’s just how it is.�
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  Ethan sensed her watching him as the miles passed. He glanced her way, his gray eyes darting from her to her legs and down to navigate the phone’s map. It had been a long time since any woman looked at him like that.

  “You still have blood on your cheek,” he said. “There.” He brushed his own cheek, scratching away at five day’s growth of dark stubble.

  Maria blushed and rubbed her sleeve across her face. He locked his eyes back on the road.

  “You’re not ex-military. How’d you land here?” she said.

  “That’s your question after sizing me up for the last five minutes?” he asked.

  “I’ve got a job to do, too. I’m good at it.”

  “I never made it to the service. Wade never lets me forget it. It wasn’t for lack of trying. I did ROTC in college. Got into a little accident.” He rubbed his right knee. “Change of plans.”

  “That’s why I said Sanger’s wrong about you. You change plans. When you have to, I mean. You know how to improvise. You’re not afraid to.”

  The barrel of Rezo’s gun flashed in his head. “I never said I wasn’t afraid.”

  “But you aren’t. There’s a lot going on up there.” She tapped her temple. “But you really don’t worry about it, do you?”

  She was right. Somehow staring down Rezo’s barrel terrified him more now than it did in the moment. Nothing about Sanger or Corso or any of the road ahead troubled him. This was a thing for him to unravel, an ambiguous puzzle that he embraced. It excited his mind. He thrived on uncertainty. What he feared wasn’t the unexpected. It was an empty apartment back in Alexandria. It was getting lost within himself next to a woman he couldn’t reach. That was how he lost Sarah, and it drove him deeper into whatever Corso threw at him.

  “I guess I don’t,” he said with his gaze lost on the road.

  Just north of Tbilisi, Seda veered west, avoiding the capital altogether. It was the sign Ethan awaited. She headed for the coast almost 500 kilometers away. They stopped for fuel northwest of the city. Maria played the happy tourist with a gangly attendant who smiled and nodded at her. But he told her he hadn’t seen any woman driving a truck.