Page 62 of Air Force One (Miranda Chase #16)

Holly hunkered behind the corner of the main terminal at Nalchik Airport.

Thirty meters long, it was the best building of the place, which wasn’t saying much.

All the airport boasted were a pair of rusting Quonset huts without ends, presumably for servicing planes, and a scattering of job trailers that were probably leftover from the tsar.

They broke into one of the trailers—not locked, just fighting the rusty hinge—that hadn’t been used in forever.

There they dumped their gear bags and pulled on orange work vests so that they’d look at least somewhat official.

Back outside, it was a mild January dawn: calf-deep snow, seven degrees below zero, and enough wind chill to turn a polar bear into a giant vanilla freeze pop despite being dressed in a cozy white rug.

“I requested somewhere warm.”

“We’re invading Russia in midwinter.” Mike laughed. “Get a grip, Hol.”

Not something she expected to happen anytime soon.

Tad had flown them through a low pass in the Caucasus Mountains that separated northern Georgia from southernmost Russia, landing them at a remote farm fifteen kilometers east of Nalchik.

The farmer, a friend of someone or other in Pavle’s Georgian Intelligence Service, had given her, Mike, and their gear bag a ride into the city.

The Toyota wasn’t that old, but the heater was on the fritz.

It had trapped the midnight chill inside, far colder inside than the dawn outside.

Parts, the farmer sounded very annoyed. Since himself, he jerked his head to the north apparently indicating the Kremlin in Moscow, invades Ukraine, nothing foreign keeps running.

As if my car knows he is asshole, it breaks out of spite because it knows the parts now require the chernyy rynok to buy.

More money in his pockets and his cronies’ pockets as they are the ones who run the black market.

I should have bought Russian car. Then I would not be so surprised when it breaks; I would be expecting it.

The farmer rolled down a window to spit out his distaste, which briefly raised the temperature inside the car but also increased its windchill.

If he noticed, it didn’t show; he hadn’t bothered to zip up his parka.

He was glad to talk the whole way without asking any questions, which saved her from making up a bunch of lies.

It also let her hear the local accent so that she could shift her own.

Mike’s Russian had improved over these last years, but even when he didn’t mangle the syntax, he’d always sound like a Muscovite with a broken nose, so she’d told him to keep quiet whenever possible.

It had also given her a chance to watch the land emerge in the predawn light.

Nalchik was a Russian city of a quarter of a million people, mostly Muslim.

She’d never been in one like it before. It lay in a curved cradle of foothills leading to the Caucasus Mountains rising five hundred meters all around the city.

But the mountains beyond the foothills, like Seattle’s Cascade Range, kept striving skyward in sharp crags.

And like Mount Rainier’s abrupt quiescent volcano, which rose for fourteen thousand feet out of almost nothing, the icy twin peaks of the dormant Mount Elbrus punched up to eighteen thousand.

Catching the first sunlight, the peaks shone like white beacons that defined the skyline to the southwest.

Holly forced herself to look away, but her thoughts didn’t turn.

Eighteen thousand feet high made it the tallest mountain in both Europe and Russia.

Perched at forty-three degrees north latitude also made the peak one of the coldest spots in either.

For every thousand feet higher up a mountain, it was like moving three hundred miles north.

That placed the peak climatically about two thousand miles north of the North Pole.

Knowing what lay in their future didn’t quite rise to a level of panic, but she seriously considered freaking out in Russia as the safer option compared to what they’d cooked up in The Bunker last night.

Nalchik city was also strange because it didn’t have the gray Khruschevian concrete projects that every other city in the USSR had succumbed to.

It had gotten its start as a resort town for spas, mineral baths, hiking, and skiing.

For once, Nikita had left something alone.

Instead of dismal gray, it boasted row upon row of white buildings with interesting and varied designs.

But she saw more businesses closed than open, and restaurants were few and far between.

The airport was almost a relief as it made few pretensions.

A peek through the front windows of the still-closed terminal building revealed fifty or so steel seats bolted onto a white linoleum floor that had seen better days.

A pair of vending machines stood in the back corner, one with no lights showing.

There was no electronic arrivals-and-departures board.

Instead, there was a curling poster that had the days of the weeks and a handwritten list of flight schedules that hadn’t been changed in a long time.

One every day from and to Moscow, two a week from Kazan.

By the schedule, neither spent much time in Nalchik.

Bits of paper with a large red X on them were tacked along one edge of the board.

One of these had been moved to X out tomorrow’s flight. Or was it today’s?

“What day is this?”

“Doomsday.”

She elbowed Mike in the ribs, but his parka, down vest, sweater, turtleneck, and long johns layers made it strictly symbolic.

Except he wasn’t looking through the window of the only decent building there was. He was looking up at the sky.

A sleek bizjet overflew the airport before entering the pattern and coming in to land.

“No flights today,” Mike whispered. “That means—”

“We aren’t ready yet. She needs to be seen here in Nalchik. I’ll take care of it.”

The jet landed cleanly and within a minute had pulled up to the terminal and was cycling down its engines.

“No, Holly. No. No! NO!”

“What?”

“You are not doing it to me again.” He stabbed a finger at the jet.

She slapped his arm down as the pilot was looking at them strangely. “I’m not doing what?”

“That isn’t Miranda’s nice little six-seat Citation M2.”

“You flew that bigger jet just—”

“Two years ago. I did it once to help you save Miranda and Andi. The miracle was that I didn’t kill us. And that was a Citation 700, like a tenth the size of that thing.”

Holly looked at the hundred feet of the sleek Bombardier Global 6000. “More like half. Besides, you have to give the woman points for style; that’s a very nice jet. I have faith in you, Mike.”

“I don’t!”

“Shape up and keep quiet. Here we go.”

The door’s locking mechanism clunked, then lowered gently outward to make a set of stairs.

Inessa Turgeneva stepped out like the Queen on a visit to Australia, all regal and smiles.

A huge smile. One threatening to turn into a burst of tears.

Holly tapped her worker-guy vest. She’d only intended to blend in, but no one else was here to greet the unscheduled flight.

So they’d be taken for airport workers and that could work.

Inessa gave them an infinitesimal nod before schooling her face and continuing down the eight stairs.

Holly didn’t waste time in greetings. “We need you to have high-visibility. Do your planned day in Nalchik. Be back here by midafternoon, at least an hour before sunset. Take the pilot with you.”

“Pilots.” Inessa didn’t even blink, instead waving a hand toward the rear of the plane and raising her voice imperiously. “Fetch my blue sample case from the rear luggage.”

Mike headed around the wing and Holly grabbed his arm before he could get away. “Inside access only, glopyy chelovek.” She’d pay for calling him a stupid man later but turned to Inessa. “You simply can’t get good help these days.”

“I never seen this plane model before.” The tone of Mike’s complaint clearly called her a bitch.

“Not so much with the bad speaking,” she reminded him to keep his mouth shut. Inessa’s smile struggled to stay hidden.

“Pilots. Plural,” he whispered in panicked English.

“Yeah, I caught that,” she answered in lazy local Russian. They definitely hadn’t planned on that.

“Kakogo chyorta!” Mike never swore, but he nailed What the Hell! in Russian just fine. Except he wasn’t looking at her, the plane, or the pilots.

An evil-looking jet-black passenger minivan rolled up to the jet in a big hurry.

It looked evil even discounting the huge square grill designed like a prison door.

Big enough for six or eight agents. The windows were tinted and the weight must be at least five thousand kilos based on how it shifted on the shocks as it came to an abrupt stop—definitely up-armored.

“We’re screwed,” Mike said in English.

It was Holly’s worst nightmare on four wheels. Their cover was blown, and the FSB was about to grab them all. The driver stayed in the vehicle, but the passenger clambered down. He was a classic Russian bruiser of a guy, big even discounting his immaculate Russian greatcoat.

“Ms. Turgeneva?”

She nodded.

“I am Ivanovich, your bodyguard for the day. Do you have any bags you need?”

She covered Holly and Mike’s gasp of relief by raising her voice. “You two. Wake up. Go and fetch my blue bag. Make sure you get the right one with the dress samples inside.”

The bruiser nodded and moved back to the van and opened one of the side doors. No phalanx of FSB agents poured out to arrest them. Instead, he waved for Inessa to step into the luxury interior.

“I like to be comfortable.” Inessa whispered then turned to the pilots even now descending the stairs. “You boys have been so nice about my whims. We will be here until the afternoon. Why don’t you come and keep me company in the city rather than spending the day at this dreary airport?”

She didn’t have to ask twice.

Mike and Holly climbed aboard the jet.

“Wow, not just style.” The interior came right out of some luxury bizjet magazine.

They entered into a galley complete with a marble counter and glass-fronted cabinets loaded with crystal and china.

In the main cabin, a group of four executive leather chairs were split into two pairs by a deep-pile carpeted central aisle.

Pairs of seats faced each other over shining mahogany tables adorned with lovely fresh flower arrangements despite it being midwinter.

An identical four seats came next. The aft third of the cabin boasted a long sofa to one side and a big screen television to the other.

The rear lavatory was done in dark stone and bright brass.

The back wall, more mahogany, had a small brass handle that opened a tall door to the luggage compartment.

“She doesn’t travel light.” Six large suitcases were lined up in the rack along one side of the plane’s rear luggage compartment. In the vertical wardrobe, a range of coats and dresses hung in suit bags. “She can’t think we can take all this with us.”

“We can’t.” Holly shook her head. “Besides, if she takes her wardrobe with her, that would be a huge alarm that she didn’t die.”

“You two!”

Holly resisted jumping in surprise—barely.

The plane was so big that she hadn’t felt it shift when the bodyguard boarded.

Rather than bothering to come down the aisle, he shouted from the front.

His pleasant tone to Inessa had gone walkabout.

“Hurry the fuck up. And now she says not the blue sample case, bring the black one and the brown one. And she wants the red and gold suit bags. Woman has some goddamn dresses she wants to show to the shitty local clothing shops that even my girlfriend thinks are crap. Shit but it’s a good thing this job pays well.

” Then he turned and stomped back off the plane.

While Mike extracted the suit bags, Holly snapped open the blue case as they’d initially been instructed.

Inside was a fine selection of top-quality cold-and-foul gear, including a small knapsack.

She showed it to Mike who smiled with relief, then she followed him off the plane toting the brown and black ones.

Maybe she should lift weights more often, these things were seriously heavy. Inessa sure knew how to put on a show.

They did their best to look as uncaring as the bodyguard when they loaded everything into the van’s rear compartment. Then, just as they were about to pull away, Holly rapped on the bodyguard window’s glass.

He rolled it down and scowled at them.

She looked past him into the rear. “Hey, idiot pilot. I need the damned key to set up ground power and turn on the heater. Unless you want the nice lady to have to sit in a giant freezer when she comes back? Eh?”

He patted his pockets, then, “It’s in the cup holder by the right-hand seat. Do not damage my plane.”

“Da. Da.” She waved them away as bored as could be.