Her eyes locked on Trish’s and the woman gestured to hand the child back to her mother. Liliya’s chest tightened as she flashed back to the moment she’d shot the Colonel in cold blood. She hadn’t hesitated even though she was holding her daughter in her other arm. She recalled Rose’s terror from the loud noise. How could she have done that before her child’s eyes? She shook her head to Trish then looked back inside the briefcase as she blinked away her tears.
In the doorway, Ben waved to Nikolai to hurry and the older man entered with a massive sniper rifle in his hands. Ben stepped outside to look for Dan who was the last of their group to show.
He finally spotted the man sprinting for the helicopter. Ben waved at him to hurry. Just as Dan’s foot touched the cement of the helipad, one of the Russian soldiers lying on the ground leapt up and grabbed him from behind. The soldier had a wicked blade in his hand and was frantically trying to drive it into Dan’s throat. The attack caught Dan unprepared, and he barely managed to block it. The tip of the knife began to draw blood.
Ben launched himself across the helipad, running to Dan’s side to grab the soldier’s arm. He wrenched it away from Dan’s throat with a savage crack of splintered bones, and seized the soldier’s throat in his left hand, squeezing until he heard it pop. Gurgling, the man fell onto his back, unable to scream. Dan looked down at him in surprise then put a single round through his forehead.
“Thank you,” Dan said, looking into Ben’s eyes as he touched the shallow wound on his neck.
Ben just nodded and tugged him to the helicopter where they climbed in and Dan closed the door behind himself.
Everyone took seats and the helicopter lifted into the air. Headphones with mics went onto everyone’s heads.
Shortly after they left the ground, there was a whoosh sound and a flash of light as two missiles were fired into the window of Yuri’s study, incinerating everything in the room. Then Wally banked the helicopter to the right and got them moving away, skimming over the treetops.
Ben was watching Liliya and saw the sadness in the woman’s eyes as she watched her daughter sleep in a stranger’s arms. He didn’t know what to say.
They were only in the air for a few minutes before they began their descent. Ben looked at Dan. “We’re landing? Already?”
“Can’t take this bird back to Moscow. Our lift is waiting for us below,” Dan answered.
The moment they touched down, Dan popped the door and climbed out to reach back and assist the others out. Nikolai rushed away to the edge of the field as Dan helped Trish and Rose outside.
Liliya reached out and caught Ben’s arm. “Take Rose with you.”
He looked back at her in confusion. “What?”
“I must finish this. Rose will be safe with you. I will come to you when I finish,” Liliya explained.
“What are you talking about? Your daughter needs her mother!” Ben asserted.
“She needs me to keep her safe, and only way to do this is to kill other members of my team before they come for us. Please Ben!” she begged.
He was flustered and looked to Dan who was waving at them urgently to exit the helicopter. He looked back to her.
“Take her where? To Nikolai’s?” Ben asked.
“No, take her home. I will come to you when I have killed them all. Please!” She reached into the briefcase and extracted the envelope of passports. She quickly went through the small bundle and separated the passport for Rose Sokolov. The others went back into the case. “Use Sokolov passport.” She pulled a notepad and a pen from the case and quickly wrote out a note giving Ben permission to travel with Rose and signed it. It was the best she could do.
She thought for a second then pulled the dockets for the assassins from the case and put everything else back into the briefcase. Then she pushed it into Ben’s hands. “You must go, now!”
With a hesitant look back, Ben stepped out of the helicopter as Dan steadied him then Liliya who turned and closed up the doors. Ben and Dan moved a short distance away as Liliya waited for Wally to climb down from the pilot’s cockpit. She then climbed up as Wally stared at her in surprise. He barely managed to rush to Dan’s side before the big machine leapt skywards once more, Liliya now at the controls.
Nikolai’s brother Andrei sat behind the wheel of the large SUV waiting for them on the country lane next to the field in which they’d landed. Everyone rushed to climb into the truck. Dan and Wally were in the rear seats, Nikolai sat up front next to his brother, Trish took one bucket seat in the middle with the girl on her lap as Ben settled into the last middle seat.
The moment the last door closed Andrei got them underway.
Trish suddenly jerked in her seat as she looked at the passengers in the truck. She stared at Ben in shock then glanced to the blinking light in the sky moving away rapidly. “Liliya?” she whispered to Ben with large anxious eyes.
Ben gave her an equally nervous look. “She’s going after that assassin, Maksim, and the others in her group. She said they wouldn’t be safe until she… dealt with them.”
“What about her daughter?!?” Trish said, struggling to keep her voice low.
“She wants me to take her home,” Ben replied. “She’ll meet us there… when she’s done.”
Trish fell quiet, stunned. She held the sleeping girl in her arms as they drove along the country road.
Thirty minutes later, they slowed and cautiously drove past a car in the ditch which was burning ferociously. It was riddled with bullet holes and the trunk looked like it was blown off.
“Fuck! Isn’t that our rental car?” Trish asked.
Ben nodded as he saw the man folded over the steering wheel, engulfed in flames.
“Yes. I guess Liliya caught up to Maksim,” Ben responded.
“One down, how many to go?” Trish asked, glancing back at the flames in the night.
“No idea. She didn’t say.”
They rode on in silence. Seeing Trish shift uncomfortably, Ben gathered Rose in his arms to give Trish a chance to catch some shuteye. The small girl cuddled in against his chest. Only Andrei and Ben remained awake.
The drive was long, but eventually Ben recognized a few signs that they were in Nikolai’s neighborhood. When they didn’t pull off at the expected turn, Ben caught Andrei’s eye in the mirror.
“I’m taking you directly back to the airport. Your bags will already be there. It would be best if you left the country as soon as possible,” Andrei said quietly.
Ben nodded. That made good sense.
The sun was beginning to crest the horizon when they saw the private airport. Andrei reached across to nudge his brother awake.
When they got to the gate, Nikolai did the talking with the guards, and they were soon allowed to proceed onto the grounds. Andrei drove them to the hanger where they could see the jet waiting for them, the pilot standing by the stairs.
Ben woke Trish and she exited the truck to walk around to Ben’s side. She opened his door and plucked Rose from his lap. Ben got out with Dan and Wally following. Everyone met in front of the truck.
Trish gave each of the four men a kiss on their cheeks and smiled as she walked Rose over to the plane.
Ben turned to Nikolai. He handed the man Yuri’s tablet. “Yuri’s access code is 1999. Yuri didn’t even try to hide it from me when he activated it. I suppose he was sure I’d be a prisoner in the Colonel’s lab for the rest of my days.” Nikolai accepted the tablet with an eager smile.
Next, Ben handed him the memory stick, the blasted thing that started the whole mess. “I’d like to see some justice for the young man Yuri killed, shown in these pictures. I believe his family deserves the closure as well.”
Nikolai held out his hand. “I can do that for you.” Ben dropped the stick into his hand.
Then Ben shook their hands. “You are always welcome in my home. Drop by any time!”
“Thank you,” Dan said, looking him in the eye. There was a white bandage on his neck. Ben just nodded to him in return.
“I’d like to take you up on that offer for a visit. We should continue our discussion about your radiation filter,” Dan said with a little smile.
Ben nodded with an eager smile. “That would be great!”
“Shit! You’re bleeding! You were hit?” Wally exclaimed as he saw blood on the torn right shoulder of Ben’s dark sweater.
He glanced down at his shoulder. “Just a flesh wound,” Ben said, channeling his inner Python.
Dan and Wally burst into laughter while Andrei and Nikolai gave them puzzled looks. A fifty percent success rate. Ben felt extraordinarily pleased. Lifting the Colonel’s case with his left hand, he waved and walked over to the plane.
“Ready to leave?” the pilot asked.
“As soon as we can,” Ben replied and the pilot gestured for him to board.
“Bandages are in the first aid kit in the galley,” the man quietly said as Ben passed. “What’s our destination? I need to file a flight plan.”
“Oh, right.” Ben stopped on the stairs. “We’re going home, but I need to make a quick stop in Berlin. No more than two hours. Can you work with that?”