The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(53)

He came to another stone fence, this one just a couple feet high, but it slowed him as he struggled to get over it. Wearing booties, he felt every rock and branch he stepped on. He crossed another yard and came to a house under construction. This was the house at the turn in the road. The path to the beach was across the street and about fifteen yards west. Jenkins moved along the side of the house to the front yard. He paused, looked left and right, saw no one. As he was about to move forward, the bushes rustled. Jenkins took aim. A dog came out of the brush, startling him. It briefly considered him, then curled its tail between its legs and scurried down the road.

Jenkins moved forward, sweat dripping down his face and burning his eyes, blurring his vision. With his hands occupied, he had no ability to wipe the sweat away.

He crossed the road. Now he was exposed. He picked up his pace, feeling the tank bouncing against his back, the weight belt digging into his hips. He cleared the bend in the road and slipped down the path. Another ten yards and he was on the rocky beach. Again, the bottom of his feet felt every stone as he picked a path to the water’s edge. Reaching it, he dropped his fins, mask, and gun, and pulled the hood of the dry suit over his head. It snapped tightly into place. He felt along the edges, tucking in stray strands of hair.

He picked up the rest of his equipment and walked knee-deep into the blackened water. The calm night air had stilled the surface and the waves were minimal, helping his balance. He had no use for the gun now and tossed it, hearing it splash somewhere in the darkness. He lifted his left leg, struggling to balance on the rocks, and slipped on the long fin, then repeated the process and pulled on the second fin. He tried to spit in his mask but his mouth had gone dry.

He spotted the headlights of a car on the road that looked to be accelerating toward the path to the beach.

Again, Jenkins tried to spit, this time producing minimal saliva. He rubbed it against the glass until it squeaked, rinsed it, pulled his mask over his face, and adjusted the snorkel. The approaching car came to a stop. Men got out quickly.

Jenkins stuck the regulator in his mouth and fell backward into the frigid water.



Federov walked down the road to meet with Alekseyov and the other FSB agents but came to a sudden stop when he heard the gunshot. The shot came from the end of the block—from the house he’d just inspected. He’d left an officer at the shed.

He turned and ran, at first a jog, his knee painful, but he swallowed that pain and lengthened each stride until he was sprinting. He heard a car engine and watched as the Hyundai burst from the shed. It fishtailed, corrected, and accelerated. One of the police cars, the officers no doubt alerted by the sound of the gunshot, sped toward it, a high-stakes game of chicken. The police car flinched and veered suddenly to its right, barely missing the Hyundai, and plowed through bushes and hit a tree.

Federov didn’t stop or raise his weapon to shoot, knowing it more important that he get to the roadblock as quickly as possible. He watched the Hyundai take aim at the two cars parked across M27 and heard a rapid succession of gunshots. The car did not decrease its speed. If Matveyev’s men had returned fire, they’d missed their mark.

The Hyundai smashed between the gap in the two cars, causing a horrific crunching of metal and shattering of glass. Federov thought for a brief moment that the crash would disable the car, but the force of the impact separated the two cars enough for the Hyundai to push through. The back end again fishtailed, but the driver corrected and collected speed, driving south.

Federov was losing them, again.

When he reached the two police vehicles, now damaged, Federov raised his weapon and unloaded his clip. The Hyundai never slowed.

Federov considered the police cars, their front ends smashed so badly he knew they could not be driven. Down the road, however, headlights approached. Federov stood in the middle of the road waving his arms. Alekseyov skidded to a stop. Federov hurried around the hood to the driver’s side.

“Get out! Get out!” He yanked Alekseyov from the car.

The young officer stumbled from behind the steering wheel, fell to his knee, and scrambled out of the way. Federov got behind the wheel and accelerated before the officer who’d escaped from the passenger seat had time to close the door. The velocity caused it to snap shut.

He maneuvered around the two damaged police cars, punched the accelerator, and increased speed as he ascended the slope in the road. He figured he was a mile or two behind the Hyundai, but the Hyundai had hit two cars at a high rate of speed. The damage to its front end had to be significant. He could only hope the engine would give out sooner rather than later.

Three-foot stone walls and heavy brush bordered the narrow two-lane highway, which made it difficult to pass, and dangerous to do so where M27 intersected cross streets. Having studied the map, Federov knew those cross streets led to housing tracts, but they provided no discernible way out of Russia and were therefore dead ends as far as Jenkins and Ponomayova would be concerned. Federov was more convinced than ever that the two were desperate and making a futile run for the border.

He quickly came up on the bumper of a white commercial van, swerved into the adjacent lane to pass, and just as quickly retreated when headlights appeared around a bend in the road. When the oncoming car passed, Federov swerved again. Seeing an opening, he pressed down on the accelerator and passed the van just as the road veered to the left. He braked and pulled the steering wheel hard into the turn, though not hard enough to keep the right side of the car from scraping against the metal guardrail that had replaced the stone wall. Sparks flew, and the side mirror violently snapped off.