Page 89 of Nightfire

Nikitin was a soldier, and a good one. He’d been Spetsnaz for 14 years, in the Vympel, the best of the best.

He’d been in combat, fought numerous firefights in Africa and Chechnya. But going into combat, if you were good—and he was—you had a chance of survival.

Not here. If he was not able to produce the thumb drive when the vory came over for the auction, he was a dead man. And his death would be long and lingering.

It wouldn’t even be personal. The vory knew they’d have to make a lesson out of him for others who might be careless with several million dollars’ worth of information. The lesson would be a death with an epic amount of pain, every minute filmed, as an object lesson.

He was developing a plan on the fly with very little intel, in a foreign country, with one operative. All because of that bitch up there in her fancy condo, talking rebellion to the prostitutes.

Nikitin kept a close control on his emotions at all times. He had moved in dangerous circles all his life. His father had been shot for sedition when he refused to take his men in on a suicide mission in Afghanistan.

Nikitin knew how dangerous the world was, knew it in his bones and his blood. That he now found himself on the knife’s edge of a horrible death because of the meddling of some fucking woman made him shake with rage.

If it were up to him, he’d fucking walk into that apartment and blow her head apart and for a second, for one uncontrollable second, he wanted to do that so badly he trembled with it.

But then a lifetime of discipline descended upon him once more, enclosing him in its hard embrace. It was like his brain had had static for a moment, bad reception, but now was back in tune.

He saw clearly what had to be done and how he would do it and saw that if he did it clean and fast there might be a way out of this. With some luck, which had to begin turning his way again, the vory would never know what had happened.

He could, perhaps, explain away the disappearance of the two men assigned him by reporting the loss of a considerable sum of cash. The two men had embezzled the money and disappeared, probably south to Tijuana. Nikitin could promise the vory that as soon as the new transaction was over he’d track them down and get the money back.

But for now, he had to get his hands on Chloe Mason.

Dmitri was parking about 500 meters away. Nikitin carefully scanned the horizon, 360°. There was no one observing him, no one on the balconies of the luxury condo, no one out for a walk. This was a residential neighborhood and most of the inhabitants were at work.

The binoculars went into his backpack, then he rose and strolled out to the beach, just a man taking a morning break and getting some exercise.

He walked past Dmitri, watching carefully for onlookers, then doubled back, knocking on the driver’s side window. It buzzed down.

“Did you get everything?” Nikitin asked, voice low. In answer, Dmitri unlocked the back of the vehicle.

Nikitin made a quick inventory. He prepared two backpacks, for him and Dmitri. A GSh-18 with suppressors, three magazines each. No rifles, not now, that would come later. Two gas masks, a canister with fitted tube, high speed drill, small amount of C-4 with detcord.

He tucked the pistol in the small of his back, the rest fit into his backpack. He hefted it and signaled to Dmitri.

Dmitri closed the trunk and fell into step beside him. “Easy,” Nikitin murmured. “Nice and slow.”

They ambled toward the end of the peninsula, two men in sports clothes, out for a walk. Without hesitating, they walked through the huge two-story glass doors of La Torre.

His luck was holding, Nikitin thought. About time. They had encountered no one, not one car was on the road. The huge atrium was deserted except for one guard behind a U-shaped console.

Nikitin looked around with a faint smile on his lips, a connoisseur appreciating a well-designed building. Four security cameras in the corners, angled to cover the entire footage of the atrium. And two more vidcams over the elevators.

“Help you folks?” The security guard had a polite smile on his face, but he was young, fit and alert. He rose as Nikitin and Dmitri approached, one hand on the counter, the other loose at his side, right next to the Beretta in a holster.

An array of high-resolution monitors glowed on a shelf below the countertop.

Nikitin leaned on the chest-high counter with a smile, making sure he didn’t touch anything with his hands. The guard couldn’t see him reaching behind his back. “Yes,” he said, shaking his head ruefully, “I’m looking for a Mr. Darren Smith. He said he lived in Coronado Shores, in the La Torre condominium. Am I in the right place?”

“Yes, sir, you are,” the guard replied. “But I’m afraid we don’t have anyone living here by that⁠—"

In a smooth practiced move, Nikitin brought the GSh up, firing point-blank at the bridge of the nose, straight through the neocortex. Pink and gray spray shot out behind his head and the guard slumped boneless to the floor, already dead.

“Name,” Nikitin finished the sentence.

They didn’t need to talk. Both of them donned latex gloves that were in Dmitri’s backpack. Nikitin disconnected the monitors while Dmitri disposed of the body beneath the shelf. There was some blood spatter on the floor but you’d have to come right up to the security desk to see it. Nikitin nodded at Dmitri who walked briskly across the huge atrium, boot heels echoing on the marble floor. He threaded plastic restraints around the inside door handles and tightened them. The restraints were almost invisible from the outside. It would take 500 pounds of pressure to break them. The building would be cut off from the outside world for the short time it would take them to snatch Chloe Mason.

Anyone visiting or returning to the condo would see a missing security guard and locked doors and assume there’d been trouble and probably call 112.