LITMIR.BIZ

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Colt was one of Orson’s longtime poker buddies. They played twice a month, usually at the home of a mutual friend in Santa Fe. It was a long drive for a low-stakes game, but Orson liked the action as well as the camaraderie.

      Colt was calling for another reason, however.

      “Are we still on for tonight?”

      “Sure thing,” Orson said. “I just need to load the truck and take Ranger for a walk and I’ll be on my way. Your friend’s due in at midnight, right?”

      “Thereabouts. Turns out he’s got a couple friends flying in with him.”

      “I’ll meet you at the airport,” Orson said. “You think those guys might be into playing a little Hold ’Em?”

      “Dunno,” Colt told him. “I’ll ask when they get in.”

      “Great.” Orson wrapped up the call, then walked over to scratch his terrier behind its ears. “What say, Ranger? A quick lap around the track so you can do your business?”

      Ranger seemed in no hurry to leave his bed. Before Orson could try any further coaxing, however, the dog suddenly turned its head and growled low as it stared past the boxes stacked near the door.

      “I hear ’em, too,” Orson said. “Easy, boy. Shh.”

      Orson flicked off the main overhead lights and moved to the nearest window overlooking the driveway. He parted the blinds and peered out.

      “Good, they fell for it,” he whispered.

      Orson moved from the window and grabbed a shotgun racked on a wall illuminated by the dull glow of a nearby bench lamp. It was another Mossberg, identical to the one he’d bought for his groundskeeper a few days earlier after coyotes had killed his other terrier.

      “Payback time, Ranger,” Orson told his dog.

      The inventor was thumbing the rifle’s safety when he heard the other Mossberg fire. Ranger bounded from his bed and began to yelp. Orson ventured back for another look out the window. The coyotes had fled the Dumpster and were scurrying down the driveway. None of them appeared to have been hit.

      “He missed ’em!”

      Orson headed for the doorway. Ranger beat him there, still barking,

      “Sit!” Orson commanded. When the dog obeyed, he gently pulled it back from the door. “Don’t worry, if I get those critters in my sights they’re toast.”

      The bespectacled inventor slipped outside and was closing the door behind him when he detected movement to his immediate right. Turning, he caught a brief glimpse of someone pointing a gun at his head. It was an image he would take with him to his grave.

      THE MOMENT HE SAW Orson drop at Vladik Barad’s feet, Petenka Tramelik made a quick call on his cell phone.

      “It’s done,” he whispered. “Get up here, quick!”

      Tramelik was slipping the phone back in his pocket when Barad jogged over, holding the small Raven Arms MP-25 he’d just used on Orson. “Those damn coyotes almost ruined things.”

      “Never mind that,” Tramelik said. “Give me a hand.”

      Barad stuffed the handgun in his waistband, then took hold of Donny Upshaw’s ankles. Tramelik grabbed the groundskeeper by the armpits and together they hauled him across the grounds to the stables. Ranger was barking wildly behind the closed door. Once they’d set Upshaw on the ground a few yards from Orson, Barad drew the Raven again and threw the stable door open. The terrier backed away momentarily, then was about to charge when Barad put a bullet through its chest, dropping the dog in its tracks.

      “There’s been enough racket here without having to listen to that,” he told Tramelik.

      Tramelik nodded. “It’ll be a nice touch once we’re finished. Let’s do it.”

      Upshaw had begun to groan slightly but was still unconscious when Barad crouched beside him and put the Raven in the groundskeeper’s right hand, then clasped his own hand over it and guided Upshaw’s index finger onto the trigger. Tramelik helped Barad aim the weapon at Orson, who lay on his side facing them, blood draining from his left temple where he’d been shot.

      “Okay, Donny,” Tramelik whispered to Upshaw. “Put one through his heart for good measure.”

      Barad gently pressed his index finger against Upshaw’s and the Raven fired once again. Orson’s body stirred slightly as it absorbed the round.

      Far down the driveway the men heard the crunch of tires on gravel. It was the Dodge Caravan, heading up toward the garage with its lights out.

      “I already got his keys,” Tramelik told Barad. “Get Orson’s, then we’ll wrap things up here so we can go take care of the chief.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      Antwerp, Belgium

      Evgenii Danilov thanked his valet for bringing him the evening edition of the International Tribune and took the paper to his study, a lavish room that, like much of the small centuries-old castle, had been painstakingly restored to its medieval origins. Through the large stained-glass window he could see night falling over his secluded upscale neighborhood. It had snowed earlier, and downhill from Danilov’s two-acre front lawn there was still a light frosting on Grote Steenweg, the ancient Great Stone Road that had once been the main thoroughfare linking Antwerp and Brussels. This stretch of the road had been historically presevered every bit as much as Danilov’s home and strategically planted trees blocked his view of neighboring homes as well as any other sign of modern civilization.

      There were times, like now, when Danilov could stare out the window and imagine himself transported back to the age of his forefathers, specifically Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignan, one of Europe’s greatest military commanders and mentor to Frederick the Great, whose Prussian Empire included the land upon which this, one of Danilov’s six homes, stood. Over the past fifty years the silver-haired St. Petersburg native had carved out a financial empire of his own that was impressive in its own right. But for all his success, to Danilov the world of commerce, in the end, didn’t hold quite the same allure as military or political conquest. Yes, he’d made a lifetime of negotiating shrewd investments, but how could that compare with the visceral passion his ancestral hero had to have taken with him to the battlefield when crushing Ottoman Turks in the Battle of Zenta? If he had it all to do over, Danilov wouldn’t have bought his way out of military service, because in the years since, in his heart of hearts, he’d come to know that his greatest yearning was to be more like his namesake: a true warrior.

      Little wonder, then, that while known to the world as the billionaire founder and CEO of Global Holdings Corporation, Danilov’s preferred renown was that of a covert financial backer of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. It was a position that allowed him, without fanfare, to be a party to decisions geared toward returning his motherland to a state of global prominence surpassing even that of Frederick the Great’s empire or the once-formidable juggernaut that had been the Soviet Union.

      It was in this warrior’s state of mind that Danilov turned from the window and eased into his favorite chair facing the fiery hearth that staged a battle of its own, fending off the unseasonal chill outside the castle. The financier read with fervor the Tribune’s front-page headlines, many of them devoted to America’s ongoing preoccupation with the forces of radical Islam. The U.S. was still bogged down in Iraq and was repeating Russia’s grand mistake of thinking it could impose its influence in Afghanistan. And these were just two fronts on which Washington was distracting itself. There were also headlines about threats posed by North Korea, Iran and China. Danilov had to turn to the fourth page before he came across any mention of U.S. concern over Russia, and that was with regards to Moscow targeting missiles at Eastern Europe. As it had been for some time, there was no mention in the entire paper that America so much as considered the idea that its one-time greatest rival might be silently working on the means by which to launch a preemptive strike that would make

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