23. Almost to the Minute

Planning housework while tied up before her impending murder felt ridiculous.

Plastic bands cinched Sarah's wrist and ankles as she lay face down on the rug between her couch and the TV.

Grains of grit lodged in the furrows between the cords of braided rags. Vacuuming wasn't getting it clean enough. Sarah needed to take this rug outside, hang it from the line, and beat out the dirt.

She called out, "Blaze, are you okay? Are you—" Saying hurt or dying might make it true. "—okay?"

Blaze's voice spoke from near the computer desk behind the couch, though he was uncharacteristically breathy. "I'm okay. The bullet went through the meat of my leg. It must have missed the femoral artery. Otherwise, I would have already bled out."

"I'm sorry," Sarah started, but he interrupted her.

His response was quick. "Never say you're sorry after a fight. We both did all we could and what we thought was right. I really wish you would've run, though."

"But they would have killed you!"

"You should have let them. She's only targeting you because she wants me to work for her. If I were dead, there'd be no reason to threaten you."

"You can't mean that!"

"The Russian Mafia is efficient. They won't allocate resources for unneeded tasks. You'll be safe."

She didn't need to argue with him about saving his life. She hadn't actually saved him, anyway. "I'm still sorry that I didn't stop them."

"No saying sorry. These are the cards we're dealt now. I should've thought about farm tools. That one-handed sledgehammer was an excellent weapon. Not to mention using the chickens as a distraction. That was a stroke of genius."

Sarah stared at the dark wooden beams crossing the ceiling. "It didn't work, though."

"The operation isn't finished yet. Success or failure is not determined until the operation is finished."

They were both captured and waiting to be executed. The operation felt pretty over to Sarah. "What are they doing?"

"The mercenaries are dragging the bodies outside. Considering how quickly they're coming back, I suspect they're dumping them in the cornfield, not even burying them in shallow graves."

The year before, the scuttlebutt around the auction barn was that a farm on the other side of town had a cow go down and hadn't properly disposed of it. "The coyotes and vultures will take care of them within a few weeks."

"That's good to know," Blaze muttered, his tone dry.

"But that won't happen to us. If they kill us and drag us into the cornfield, Remi will go to one of the neighbors and lead them to us. We'll at least get a proper Christian burial."

"That's better than I'd anticipated and probably more than I deserve."

His resigned tone alarmed her. "But we're going to get out of this. We can figure something out."

"That's the spirit," Blaze sighed.

Sarah wiggled backward toward the coffee table and began sawing the plastic zip ties around her wrists against the wooden leg. The wood splintered, thin shreds peppering her hands. "These guys are mercenaries, you said?"

"Yeah." He sounded even more flat.

"Are they the same mercenaries who came to your house in Chicago?"

"No. I called an outfit called Rogue Security. Rogue goes gray hat sometimes, but they're not like those guys."

Of course these were the really bad guys. Not the somewhat bad guys. Not the kinda-sorta bad guys. The really bad ones. It figured.

Blaze said, "Micah texted me that these guys are from Koch Group, a private mercenary company out of Russia. They recruit from Russian prisons and guys thrown out of the military for war crimes or insubordination, but it's usually war crimes. They're the worst of the worst."

At least it had taken the worst of the worst to bring her down. Getting beat up and captured by the middle of the middling bad guys would've been downright embarrassing. "Well, they were obviously Russian, right?"

"Yeah, and about how they were speaking Russian, we shouldn't—" He trailed off.

"Oh, I wouldn't."

"Good."

The sneering, shaved-head mercenary stomped into the room. "We take you to Dr. Bell in New York now. You be quiet in car, or else we punch you in the head."

"We'll be quiet," Blaze answered him.

One of the other guys, his arm hanging in a sling and one eye swelling shut, followed him in. The two mercenaries grabbed Blaze by the shoulders, wrestling him to his feet.

Sarah craned her neck, looking over the couch to see him.

Red blood bubbles clung to Blaze's battered face, and black scabs had dried under his swollen lower lip.

Sarah tried to reach toward him, to wake herself up because this must be a nightmare.

The two mercenaries dragged Blaze to the doorway to the kitchen, where the one with the injured shoulder told the other in Russian that he couldn't carry Blaze this way, that he would have to walk to the car on his own two feet.

The skin-headed mercenary pulled a knife out of his boot.

Horror jumped in her veins. "Don't hurt him!" Sarah called out.

He glared at her and popped the zip tie around Blaze's ankles with the knife, then he grinned horribly at her. "You wiggle funny when I cut off your air. We'll have fun with that."

Blaze glared at the guy through blood-swollen eyelids, a laser-sharp glance that should have combusted him on the spot.

The guy didn't burst into flame, though. The two mercenaries shoved and yanked Blaze out of the living room, and the kitchen door slammed a moment later.

Sarah flopped back on the floor from where she'd been holding a curl to watch Blaze be taken away. This was insane. No one in Kalona got kidnapped by mercenaries sent by the Russian mafia.

The town would gossip about her for decades.

Although now that she'd told Katie who her father was, they would probably nod and indulge in magical thinking so they could believe it couldn't happen to them and feel secure in their beds at night, because their ancestors were not bad people.

Actually, that was exactly why it would never happen to them, because their ancestors had lived here for generations and weren't on the run from the Russian mafia.

Yeah, it was unfair, but farming was unfair. The weather was unfair, corn smut was unfair, and declining seed generation rates were unfair.

Everything was unfair, so she might as well get used to it.

She sighed, not that she was going to have time to get used to anything.

The two of them came back and jerked Sarah to her feet, the one guy getting a little gropey around her backside, but they seemed to be in a hurry to shove her in the back seat of an SUV.

The awful one who wanted to suffocate her asked, "Why your phone make so much sound all the time."

Notifications from people seeking tarot card readings, most likely. "Because I have friends who love me and will notice I'm missing and will call the cops!"

"Yeah, whatever."

In the SUV, the guy sitting next to her was one of the mercenaries, a sallow skinhead type who moaned and clutched his shoulder.

The dweeb who'd been her nemesis this whole time skidded into the front seat beside the driver and slammed the door.

Terror clutched her heart. "Where's Blaze?"

That jerk angled his head slightly as if she wasn't worth the effort of fully turning around. "Blaze Robinson is in other SUV. We separate you so you can't work together. Fucking chickens."

Driving to the airport took almost an hour, and Sarah didn't flippin' talk to any of those jerks the whole time.

They talked to each other in Russian, though. Mostly directions on getting to the terminal.

Sarah was certain of rescue at the Cedar Rapids airport because Iowa folks would not mind their own business when two tied-up people were being hustled through security to one of the seven gates. Iowans were brave, fair people. Even strangers would intervene because it takes a village, and they were the village.

Not like the East Coast, you know?

The SUVs spun away from the airport's low terminal building and drove to a hangar where a turboprop plane with a spiky black KG painted on the tail slowly rolled onto the tarmac.

A private plane.

They weren't going through the airport.

Dang it,these mercenaries had thought of everything.

The propellers whined and sucked the wind into their blades, blowing Sarah's bangs around her face as the jerks poked and prodded her to climb the short staircase to the plane.

The plane had twelve seats, six rows of one on each side of the center aisle.

The sneering mercenary, a living example of your-face-will-freeze-like-that, duct-taped Sarah to the seat, winding the silver bands around her body and the seatback like a mummy, even though one of the others was complaining in Russian that the upholstery was going to be gooey afterward.

So much for her secret weapon of being able to speak Russian to gather information. They were talking about gooey seats and the lack of alcohol in the plane's snack cabinets.

Sarah sat near the back of the plane, and Blaze was strapped to his chair in the front row, presumably where it was easier to keep an eye on him.

The engines' drone ascended in pitch, the whine becoming a scream.

Outside her porthole window, the ground slid backward as the plane rolled, coasting toward the runway.

Dang it, dang it, she'd let them kidnap her.

Maybe she should have thrown herself head-first over the side of the stairway and broken her neck on the tarmac rather than allowing them to get her on the plane.

She was about to find out.

An hour into the flight, when the mercenaries had eaten all the chips and peanuts and chugged the soda, some of them slept. One snored so loudly she could hear his snorts over the plane's droning engines.

At the front of the plane, Blaze was leaning his head against the plane's wall and looked to be asleep.

Conserving her energy was probably a good idea.

Sarah leaned her head against the fuselage and rested her eyes.

She couldn't say she slept, but the three hours until the plane's nose tipped down to land in New Jersey went faster.

But she still listened to those jerks talking in Russian.

Even though her brain was screaming No-no-no-Jesus-save-me-no inside her echoing skull, she listened.

And they talked because they thought she couldn't understand them.

"Taking them alive was too much trouble. We will charge White Russians double for losing four soldiers and two more going to infirmary."

Served them right.

"I'm not sorry to see Vasily dead. He punched me last week for cheering for wrong football team."

Soccer.The guy said football, but Sarah had watched the Olympics enough to know he meant soccer.

"Blaze Robinson is the guy who was supposed to get us weapons to do job next year. I don't think he'll be getting them for us now."

That voice was the throaty growl of the sneering guy who'd grabbed her, probably. Sarah squeezed her eyes closed and concentrated on their voices speaking Russian like she was turning her ears all the way around like a cat.

"What do we need more weapons for? We have plenty of guns," another voice said.

"We need better weapons. Drones. Bombs. Distance munitions. Those amateur pipe bombs didn't go off last time, and the mob was a disaster. This is what happens when we let amateurs plan the strategy. They were incompetent, unable to plan even an uprising and coup. It was embarrassing."

"Trying the same exact strategy again is predictable. I don't like it."

"Same, but better. This time, we will be in the crowd and finish the job, and our soldiers on the buildings will make sure no one stops us."

"January is coming soon," the second one said.

"Too soon. There is too much to do. If we kill Robinson and need to find another source for weapons, there may not be time. Lvov will not be pleased."

Lvov?

Sarah caught her breath.

Good thing there was no way they could hear her over the screaming buzz of the turboprop engines just feet away from their heads on the wing.

Vladimir Lvov was the President of Russia.

They didn't mean that Lvov, right?

Surely they weren't plotting to overthrow Vladimir Lvov. He was known to be a nasty guy who sent political rivals to prison where they "died unexpectedly," and he invaded other countries to be in the Russian history books as expanding their conquered territory to the old Soviet Union borders.

The other guy said, "That was very bad time, when Babanin fell out of the window. It is bad to lose a commander. I did not like the new rules afterward."

"None of us did. Africa is too hot this time of year."

"Too hot any time of year. Lvov should ship us the weapons. Finding an American source is a pain in the ass."

But if the mercenary wanted Vladimir Lvov to ship him the weapons, then the coup couldn't be to overthrow him.

"Lvov cannot be seen to have a hand in this, which is why Koch Group and White Russians are handling the logistics. Lvov only wants to install a meat puppet government, not start World War Three."

So Lvov controlled the mercenaries, so they couldn't be against him.

"A mob takeover didn't work last time," the other mercenary said.

"White Russian Bratva was not involved last time, just amateurs. Dr. Bell is a professional."

"Bah, just a woman."

Sarah didn't like that Russian guy talking about her aunt like that.

The Nemesis said, "Dr. Bell is formidable. After a bloodbath between them and the Philly Mob, she broke up Chekhovskaya bratva and installed her man as head of Genovese crime family. Dr. Bell has computer hacker who will hack US government communications."

Wait, the US government? What the heck!

The other guy said, "Italian mafia criminals won't help us. They're Italian. They don't even let someone whose ancestors aren't from their city in Italy into their organization, let alone become Vor. That's why bratvas are outcompeting them."

"The Italian mafia will be our people in the crowd. We will need only fifty or so of the useful-idiot fat Americans as camouflage for our professionals. This time, we'll take it all."

"And then?" the other guy asked.

"And then Lvov will tell us to assassinate Dr. Bell. Can't have someone so disloyal to one's superiors in charge. Sets bad precedent. She will be taken down, then one of Lvov's loyal staff installed as head of her operation."

"White Russians will never follow an outsider. You saw them. Her nephew is her second, and he has installed his school friends as his lieutenants."

"School friends? Bah. What are school friends?" the other guy spat.

"Supposedly, Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, and the battle for democracy in United States will be won or lost in the dormitories of Le Rosey boarding school. Thus, we make sure we can control all four of them, or we kill them."

"They will not follow an outsider."

"The nephew, Logan Bell, met Vladimir Lvov many times when he visited friends' dachas for school breaks, I have heard say. Lvov likes him. Lvov feels comfortable with him as head of White Russian bratva," Nemesis mused.

"Always these connections. All that matters in this world is billionaires giving jobs to their friends."

"The czars run the world. They go by different names now."

"It's enough to make someone a communist again."

"I would not let one of Lvov's men hear you speak like that," Nemesis said.

"You know a lot about this."

"I was there, standing guard against a wall before I was thrown out of Russian Army for fighting. We proletariat are always there, watching the czars rule the world."

"The nephew will kill the aunt. Sounds like Russian novel," the other guy said with a sneer.

"Our art reflects our politics. Logan Bell has positioned himself to be head of White Russians. We will report to him by spring, next year. He will be good leader."

Sarah fought to keep her eyes closed and breathe evenly because her eyeballs were trying to bug out of her head.

After they landed, the Nemesis cut the duct tape around her arms and thighs and jerked her out of her seat, dangling her from his hold on her upper arm. "Time to go."

Her head was buzzing, and the American soil under her feet—under the tarmac under her feet—seemed fragile, so easily destroyed.

Nope. Nope. Not on her watch.

Outside, the sun hung at its apex, showering blinding light over the airport as the Russian mercenaries hustled her and Blaze down a staircase to yet more black SUVs waiting on the tarmac.

The White Russian organization must get a fleet discount. Sarah should ask her aunt if she could get in on that. Her old pickup truck was on its last legs and was going to need a ring job soon. Fleet discounts got really good rates.

Two mercenaries shoved Blaze into the SUV behind the one they steered her towards.

Drat,Sarah needed to tell him what she'd heard.

The guy pushed her into the SUV's back seat and climbed in after her, grinning his stupid sneer.

The dashboard clock read 11:48.

Sarah had been kidnapped, flown to New York, and was about to be murdered, all before noon on a Tuesday.

It had been a week almost to the minute since Blaze Robinson had broken into her Iowa farmhouse and threatened her with an unloaded gun and a dull machete.

She hadn't known then that it would be the last week of her life.