Someone had taken a picture of me.
Not knowing what to make of it, Tucker e-mailed the photo to his own phone, then deleted the original. He scrolled to the phone’s address book and found it empty; same with the recent calls. It had been sanitized. Frustrated, Tucker removed the phone’s battery case and SIM card and crushed them both with his heel. He crossed the road and threw the remains down into the ditch.
He took a moment to consider the meaning of the photo. Clearly someone had been covertly following them. But how? And who? He glanced to the overturned SUV. Could there have been a hidden tracer planted on the Marussia?
He didn’t know . . . couldn’t know.
In fact, there were far too many unknowns.
He faced Utkin. “Have you shown the others this photo?”
“No.”
“Good. Let’s keep this between us for now.”
A few minutes later, they were again racing south along the Volga River.
Aside from a desire to get off the main road and put some distance between themselves and the ambush site, Tucker had no immediate plan. After ten miles, he turned off the highway and onto a dirt road that led to a park overlooking the Volga. He pulled in and everyone climbed out.
Utkin and Anya helped Bukolov to a nearby picnic table.
Tucker walked to the rocky bluff above the thick-flowing river. He sat down, needing to think, to regroup. He let his legs dangle over the edge and listened to the wind whistle through the skeletal trees. Kane trotted over and plopped down beside him. Tucker rested his hand on the shepherd’s side.
“How’re you feeling, buddy?”
Kane thumped his tail.
“Yeah, I’m okay, too.”
Mostly.
He had cleaned the gash on Kane’s head, but he wondered about any psychic damage. There was no way of knowing how the shepherd felt about killing that man on the road. His partner had killed in combat before, and it seemed to have no lasting impact on him. While for Tucker, that particular onion was more layered. After Abel’s death, after leaving the service, Tucker had come to appreciate certain parts of the Buddhist philosophy, but he knew he’d never match Kane’s Zen mind-set, which, if put into words, would probably be something like Whatever has happened, has happened.
As he sat, he was torn between the instinct to run hard for Volgograd, and his desire to take it slow and cautious. Still, many things troubled him. It was why he had stopped here.
Four men, he thought. Why only four?
Back at the ambush site, he had checked them for identification and found nothing but driver’s licenses and credit cards. But the tattoos they bore confirmed them as Spetsnaz. So why hadn’t the enemy landed on them with overwhelming force? Where were the platoon of men and helicopters like back at Nerchinsk?
Somehow this current action reeked of rogue ops. Perhaps someone in the Russian Ministry of Defense was trying to snatch Bukolov without the knowledge of their bosses. But for now, that wasn’t the most pressing question concerning Tucker.
He knew the ambush couldn’t have been a chance accident.
So how did the enemy know where to find them?
He pictured the photo found on the phone.
What did that mean?
Utkin joined him, taking a seat at the bluff’s edge. “Good view, yes?”
“I’d prefer to be staring at the Statue of Liberty.”
That got a chuckle out of Utkin. “I would like to see that, too. I’ve never been to America.”
“Let’s hope I can get you there.”
“So have you figured out a plan? Where to go from here?”
“I know we have to reach Volgograd.”
“But you’re worried about another ambush.”
It didn’t require an answer.
Changing the subject, Utkin waved an arm to encompass the river and region. “Did you know I grew up around here?”
Actually Tucker did. He’d read it from the man’s dossier, but he remained silent, sensing Utkin wanted to talk, reminisce.
“It was a tiny village, along the river, about fifty miles south. My grandfather and I used to fish the Volga when I was a boy.”
“It sounds like a nice childhood.”
“It was, thank you. But I meant to make a point. You wish to reach Volgograd, yes?”
Tucker glanced over to him, crinkling his forehead.
“And you wish to stay off the highway,” Utkin said.
“That would be good.”
“Well, there is another way.” Utkin pointed his arm toward the river below. “It worked for thousands of years. It can work for us now.”
11:01 A.M.
Tucker had one last piece of business to address before moving on. He asked Anya to stay with Bukolov at the park. He instructed Kane to guard them. For this last chore, he needed Utkin’s help.
Climbing back into the Peugeot, Tucker headed out into the tangle of the remote river roads. He followed Utkin’s directions. It took less than an hour to find the abandoned farmhouse tucked away in a forest.
“This was once part of an old collective,” Utkin explained. “It’s at least a hundred and fifty years.”
Tucker used the remote to pop the trunk.
They both stared down at the bound figure inside, his mouth secured with duct tape. He was the last of those who had ambushed them, the boy of nineteen or twenty.
“Why did you let him live?” Utkin whispered.
Tucker wasn’t exactly sure. He simply couldn’t execute someone in cold blood. Instead, he had clubbed the kid with the butt of his gun, bound him up, and tossed him in the trunk.
The boy stared at Tucker and Utkin with wide eyes. They pulled him out and marched him toward the farmhouse. Utkin opened the front door, which shrieked on its hinges.
The interior was what Tucker had imagined: knotty plank walls and floors, boarded-up windows, low ceilings, and layers of dust on every surface.
Tucker pushed the boy inside and sat him down on the floor. He peeled the tape from the boy’s mouth.
“Can you translate?” he asked Utkin.
“Are you going to interrogate him?”
Tucker nodded.
Utkin backed up a step. “I don’t want to be a part of any—”
“Not that kind of interrogation. Ask him his name.”
Utkin cooperated and got an answer.
“It’s Istvan.”
Tucker took the boy through a series of benign personal questions designed to massage his defenses. After five minutes, the kid’s posture relaxed, his rat-in-a-cage expression fading.
Tucker waved to Utkin. “Tell him I have no plans to kill him. If he cooperates, I’ll call the local police and tell them where to find him.”