The Handler Read online

  ***

  The Volga

  Alexi was lounging in the Volga’s infinity hot tub when Petenko, the ship’s communications officer, came to tell him that Lazar was on the line. Alexi got out of the bubbling water. He took a few steps on the deck then grabbed the phone from Petenka.

  “Alexi speaking,” he mumbled into the receiver.

  “I need you here. Now!”

  “Where?”

  “Mika screwed up again. Chuck Brandt got away.”

  “At your hacienda?”

  “Where do you think? Nikolay is getting the chopper ready. Get moving. I want Brandt terminated immediately.”

  Ten minutes later, a Eurocopter X3 tilt-rotor aircraft was soaring up the coast at an unbelievable 280 m.p.h., a pair of 2270 HP Rolls-Royce Turbomeca RTM322 turbo-shaft engines driving all four rotors. Buckled into his seat, Alexi fed shells into extra magazines. He glanced at the two killers seated across from him, war-hardened Chechen mercenaries. They wore tan combat vests over the Kevlar. Their kit bags carried expandable batons, MP5K machine pistols, stun grenades, and other goodies, including MP5SDs, the full-time suppressed variant of the MP5 submachine gun.

  “Gentlemen,” Alexi said, “relax and enjoy the ride. When we land, we will hunt down Brandt and terminate him.”

  They nodded slightly, their tanned, leathery faces betraying no emotion.

  CHAPTER 18

  Warm wind blew through Chuck’s hair. He was impressed that the horse was giving him everything it had, but he wasn’t surprised. This was no race horse, but it was an animal that had been forced to sustain the blows of a charging bull for the twisted entertainment of its cruel master. Now suddenly the animal was free and running away from the bull ring. Of course he was going to give it his all just like Chuck was. The stallion galloped across the broad, verdant valley.

  Tears of pain thigh filled Chuck’s eyes. He was losing a lot of blood from his freshly gored thigh. He urged the horse on past the olive orchards and vineyards of the hacienda towards the rugged Pyrenees Mountains. The magnificent peaks rose high above the foothills of the Catalonian forest. Chuck hungered for those foothills because once he got to them, no one would find him. Out here on the road he was an easy target for a shooter’s bullet. The horse galloped on. The stallion’s dappled grey coat was now stained red from Chuck’s oozing wound. A mile distant, Chuck spotted a Romanesque village clinging to a steep hillside. He considered whether he should take cover among its rustic walls. No, he’d put its inhabitants at risk if he stopped there. He would go through it quickly and head straight to the tree line in the foothills just beyond the town. In the forest it would be just him and Lazar’s men. Guerilla style. He could handle that.

  When the horse came to the village, Chuck cantered the stallion up the main street past the ancient buildings. He figured the view hadn’t changed much from what a wandering Moor would have seen scouting Northern Spain in the tenth century. Crumbling rocks framed the windows, and gothic-style wood doors marked the entrances to the dwellings that clung to the hill. The small medieval village had sprung up around a castle and appeared to still be the home of a few hardy souls. Chuck knew that most men on the run would be tempted to seek shelter here. They’d find a vacant building and prepare for a gun battle, but he had no gun, and he figured that with a truckload of Lazar’s assassins on his tail, he wouldn’t stand a chance if he did. No matter. He didn’t believe in last stands anyway. He preferred to be on the offensive—hunting and attacking. That was the way he operated, but only if absolutely necessary. There was nothing about killing that he liked. He had killed men before, and if he could help it he wouldn’t do it again. Unfortunately, the enemy understood nothing but violence and death. To get through to them, Chuck would have to speak their language.

  Once he was beyond the medieval village, he angled the horse off the main road and up the side of the hill. Chuck squeezed his legs, and the stallion began to run again. Chuck smiled because he knew no trucks or cars could follow him where he was going. The horse was heaving with exhaustion, but they were now within sight of the scrub forest. A little further on, the horse ran into the spotted shade of the oak trees. The stallion pressed on for a hundred more yards before Chuck brought him to a halt and slid off its back. Pain shot through his leg when his foot made impact with the ground. He took a deep breath, removed the stallion’s bridle, and let the panting beast go free. He separated the reins from the bridle and tied the soft leather above the wound on his thigh.

  On foot now, Chuck limped into the woods. He’d been walking only a few minutes when he heard the buzzing sound of an engine. He climbed a weathered tree and gazed back towards the valley. There he saw three men on dirt bikes roaring down the same dirt road he’d just come down, leaving a dusty plume in their wake. At least he had a head start.

  Chuck figured that they were going to try and outflank him. If that was the case, then regardless of which way he went, he’d run into one of the assassins sooner or later.

  Wincing in pain from his gored thigh, Chuck climbed down the tree, one branch at a time. Near the bottom he jumped, executing a standard skydiving landing. When his feet touched the ground, he collapsed his legs and rolled. Normally, he’d have no problem with this maneuver, but with his freshly speared thigh and crushed ribs, he felt an explosion of agony, followed by a burst of pain across his recently-whipped back. He quivered on the ground for a minute. Then he slowly climbed onto his feet, his heart throbbing with adrenaline. His head spun as he staggered up the hill.

  He was in no condition for a long distance flight through the mountains. He’d lost a lot of blood, and hiking over the Pyrenees to France with his gored leg would be difficult at best. Not only that, he knew that he had problems to deal with right here. He wasn’t going to run away from this one. He wasn’t going to flee and leave Maria behind. He would deal with his problems.

  These men had killed a United States ambassador. Maybe nobody in Washington D.C. cared, but he did. Not only that, their leader was planning on robbing America blind. Maybe nobody in Washington D.C. cared about that, either, but Chuck did and he figured that millions of hard-working, patriotic Americans who had no voice in the matter cared about it as well. There wasn’t much they could do about the situation, but Chuck was here, and he knew what was going on. He was the one man who could do something about it at the moment…and he would. Or he’d die trying.

  “Yeah, I could run,” he told himself, “but then I’d have to live with myself and my cowardly actions for the rest of my life.”

  Chuck also thought about Maria. She was back at the ranch and she needed him. He wouldn’t let her down, either. Who knew what her dad had planned for her. She had said he would kill her for taking his priceless artifacts. Chuck wasn’t going to let that happen. He would help her and her mother.

  Normally Chuck was a peaceful man. He hated bloodshed, but he wouldn’t abandon Maria or America. He would fight back. There was nothing else left for him to do. He took the shirt off his back and tore it in two. He dabbed his wound with one of the strips of cloth and wiped up the blood that was dripping down his leg. He tied the bloody rag to an overhanging branch. The other he wrapped around his head to keep the sweat that was accumulating on his forehead from dripping into his eyes. He would need clear vision for what was to come.

  CHAPTER 19

  Mika and his men blazed down the road on their motorcycles. They barreled through the old Romanesque village. Just before they entered the forest, Mika halted his posse. “Men, I want you to run Brandt down like a dog. When you catch him, bring him to me. I want the pleasure of killing him. Boris, you go left; Uri, you cover the right. I’ll flush him out of the middle.”

  Mika was hungry to find Brandt. He was eager to find the wounded man and kill him before anyone else could. He’d enjoyed it last night when he’d whipped and humiliated Brandt in the barn. He took immense pleasure watching Brandt getting gored by the bull today; in fact, he’d cheered for the bull wh
en it happened. And now he would make sure that Chuck did not get out of the forest alive. Who was Chuck Brandt to think that he could have Maria? Maria was his. Lazar had promised her to him.

  Mika rode up the first foothill summiting on the spine of the ridge. Stopping his bike, he let it idle for a moment, the smell of exhaust pluming around him in the still air, his dead eyes darting around looking for signs of the man. He turned his bike off. He got out his gun, racked the slide, and held it in front of him. Still astride the bike, he stood still and watched. He watched carefully.

  Then Mika heard another motorcycle coming up around the other side of the hill. It was Uri, still in search of Brandt. He realized that their plan to flush out Brandt on motorcycles only alerted the man to their location. Mika put his gun in its holster and kick-started his bike. He took off in the opposite direction of the whining engine. He figured Brandt would flee the sounds of his assassins, and now, so would Mika. That was how he was going to flush out the famed assassin.

  Some people believed Brandt was a myth created by the CIA. Was the man that Mika had whipped and humiliated last night really Chuck Brandt? Or was he an imposter? Mika had his doubts, but it didn’t really matter. One thing was for sure: Mika was going to do the job he was hired to. Killing the motorcycle’s engine, he dismounted and lay it down next to the trail. He removed the bike’s spark plug and set off on foot. He held his pistol out in front of him like a businessman wanting to shake hands. He would greet the bastard alright—with a stream of bullets in his face.

  He followed the trail for fifty yards, then stopped and listened. Unfortunately, Uri and Boris were still hunting for Brandt on their noisy motorcycles. That kind of tactic worked fine in the city when you were in a position to surprise your quarry, gun him down, and make a fast escape through blaring traffic and the city’s maze. Out here, the sound of the bikes only drew attention to your location. It also deprived the rider of his sense of hearing. Sure, you might eventually come upon your man, but Mika didn’t like that approach. It assumed you were dealing with an amateur. On the other hand, now that Mika was on foot, the other riders were providing sound cover that he could use to his advantage. He could move quickly and not worry about making noise. He would track Brandt on foot.

  Mika clung to his pistol. He spun around.

  Nobody there.

  He wiped away the sweat from his brow. He moved slowly through the woods, ready to kill, certain that today, Chuck Brandt was going to die a dog’s death.

  ***

  The Eurocopter X3 soared north up the Costa Brava at 275 m.p.h.

  “What’s the ETA?” Alexi asked.

  Nicolay didn’t look at him, but his voice crackled into his headset: “Eleven minutes.”

  Alexi glanced at his watch. He picked up the mic. “Hacienda de Toro, over.”

  “Lazar, here.”

  “Our ETA is 10 minutes. Where’s Brandt?”

  “There’s an old village a few miles north of here. He’s in the foothills beyond it. Rappel your ass out of that chopper at the base of the mountains. Then hunt him down. He’s on a horse. Mika and his men haven’t been able to find the unarmed bastard yet. I want him dead within the hour. I know you will not let me down. Over.”

  Alexi adjusted his headset. He had heard the legends about Brandt, about the man that was called the Ghost in the underworld. Working alone, the man had made dozens of hits against America’s enemies. But Brandt’s reign was about to end. The man was on the run and unarmed. Alexi would soon rise to the top of the trade. He checked his watch again. Five minutes to go.

  ***

  A helicopter swooped down and hovered over the field. Three armed men slid down a rope and ran for the tree line.

  Alexi quickly found horse tracks in the dirt and he and his men followed them. The tracks were easy to follow for a man who learned to hunt in Siberia. His uncle had taught him to hunt bear when he was just a kid. “You need to hunt an animal that can hunt you back,” his uncle had said. “That way when you hunt a man, you’ll know what to do.” Alexi had been adopted by his uncle after his drunken mother abandoned him when he was just a child. His uncle took him hunting in Siberia every year after that and taught him everything he knew about life on those hunting trips. “If you’ve got money, you will be a target,” he warned. “So you have to learn how to protect yourself, and the only way to do that is to get them before they get you.”

  His uncle always had money and spent it like nothing. He taught Alexi to do the same. “Live high and fast. Dominate and rule,” he preached. “Then you live like a free man while all the other poor suckers work for a living.” He’d said that right up until the day he was gunned down on the street in Kiev.

  Alexi thought of these things as he walked slowly along the dirt trail. Brandt would be an easy kill, he thought to himself. He would be easier than a Siberian grizzly in spring.

  Alexi continued walking up the hillside until the horse tracks disappeared and were replaced with those of a man. The hunt continued. It was a boring thing to hunt an unarmed man. A black bear was more dangerous than that. Alexi realized that his uncle’s words were ringing true as he followed Brandt’s foot tracks on the soft forest floor.

  ***

  When Chuck saw movement among the trees, he ducked down behind a fallen log and watched. What emerged was three men on foot each carrying handheld automatics, the type of which he couldn’t identify from a hundred yards, but they resembled SR-3 Vikhr “Whirlwind” compact assault rifles, which were popular with Russian Special Forces. The men were actually following his trail, which wasn’t a smart thing to do. Following his trail was dangerous. Nevertheless, in this case, it was working for them because the trail took them away from Chuck’s current location. He elected not to pursue for a simple reason: the victorious knew when to fight and when not to. He stayed down, and soon the killers faded from sight.

  Chuck knew that he was outnumbered and outgunned…but he was going to have to face the killers very soon.

  ***

  Alexi and his men continued to follow the trail. Alexi knew that if you want to win a battle, you’d better pick the battleground. Well, Brandt had picked the forest. And it was the perfect place for a ruthless bastard who was feared in the underworld. It was said that he was called the Ghost because he delivered cold justice and then vanished without a trace. When one hit man had finally killed him—or thought he had—Brandt somehow survived and delivered a visitation on the killer. It was also said that in most cases the man didn’t even need a gun. All he needed was surprise and a sharp hunting knife, but Alexi wasn’t worried. He only needed one clear shot of the man and the job would be done. Then he would be the most feared assassin in the world. He motioned for his two comrades to continue following Chuck’s tracks. Then he veered off by himself into the thickets of the wood.

  ***

  Chuck leaned against a tree and looked back across a deep chasm and past a narrow cliff-side trail that he had just crossed. To cross this area, a man had to either follow the trail or go a mile around. The trail itself was barely a hundred yards long, but it ran along a precipitous drop-off. The natural formation was that of a long shelf that clung to a steep cliff-side. Making matters worse, half of the shelf was covered with scrub foliage so thick that a man had to stay on the trail, meaning he had to walk near the edge. The trail itself was quite adequate, however, and any man who kept his senses could safely navigate it, either running, walking, or carrying a heavy load.

  Chuck faded back into the thick woods and sunk down, hiding in a patch of bushes and fallen trees. There he kept watch on the trail. He had waited less than ten minutes when the manhunters showed themselves. It was two of the three hardened mercenaries that he’d seen arrive in the helicopter.

  They moved stealthily through the woods, quietly, carefully, using the natural environment for cover. One of them studied the ground and followed Chuck’s tracks while the other kept his eyes alert for trouble. Both men carried assault rifles
.

  When Chuck’s tracks brought them to the narrow trail along the cliff, they paused and spoke to each other in hushed tones. Walking cautiously, they continued on with their assault rifles raised. Even from a distance, Chuck noticed that the two men moved with confidence. They moved with the kind of confidence that only came from a long track record of success in the killing game. Their faces showed no emotion, neither excitement nor worry. It was as if it was just another day at the office for them.

  Chuck stayed low. Peering between fallen logs and through a mesh of leaves, he watched as the two killers moved down the trail. It was because of men like these that patriots spilled their blood. Somebody has to stand in their way to protect the freedoms of those who simply want to live their lives in peace.

  When the two hunters were a third of the way across the thin and precipitous trail, they picked up the pace. It was then that the second man stepped on a branch hidden beneath a bed of leaves. The limb had been carefully placed there by Chuck. It supported a broken branch from a lightening shattered tree. Hidden in the bushes by the trail, the branch supported another bough which held up a thick log. When the man stepped on the pile of leaves, all the wood collapsed, releasing the heavy log, which barreled out of the bushes, slamming into the legs of the hunters. Bowled over and off the cliff, the two killers yelled as they fell sixty feet into the ravine below. Their bodies made impact on the steep, rocky slope and rolled another sixty feet. As they tumbled, their arms and legs flailed around. Their heads and torsos slammed against the sharp rocks that littered the slope as they pummeled down the hillside. The log fell with them. When it was done their bodies lay sprawled in grotesque and unnatural shapes in the ravine below.