30. Wired

Lieutenant Commander Blaze Robinson, DEVGRU, had led dozens of US Navy SEALs into perilous operations and sometimes led them out.

But nothing was grimmer than riding in the back seat of a black car through the hot streets of New York City, his ankles zip-tied together and his hands bound behind his back, with Sarah Bell in the seat next to him.

Sarah was defenseless, no matter what she thought. Though kittens have needle-sharp claws, they are still tiny, delicate, vulnerable kittens.

He had to get her out of her aunt's clutches alive.

Clutches,dear God, what was he thinking?

Mob bosses didn't have clutches. They had spheres of influence and operational opportunities.

They also had priorities.

Blaze needed to remove Sarah from Mary Varvara Bell's list of priorities.

A new set of mercenaries from the Koch Group had come to retrieve them from Logan's apartment, probably because Blaze had incapacitated a significant percentage of the previous squad.

One of the new guys was driving. He'd barely glanced in the rearview mirror at them because the asshole mercenary with the skull trim was riding in the passenger seat because he was one of the few guys who was uninjured, dammit.

Blaze should've shot that one through the eye.

The new guy turned the car into a parking garage under the downtown skyscraper where Bell's office was and parked next to the elevator.

When Skull Trim walked around to Sarah's side of the car and muscled her out, laying his foul hands on her upper arm, Blaze schooled his face to be neutral, though he was devising ways to murder him.

New Guy clipped the zip ties around Blaze's ankles and led him to the elevator, maintaining alertness as they walked.

This guy was smarter than Skull Trim and thus more dangerous.

The elevator ride was not the opportunity Blaze needed, and it was too early in the game, anyway.

He needed more evidence first.

The wired microphone and transmitter sewn into his shirt stiffened the seam under his left armpit and itched his side.

Again, the elevator opened into an office hallway, and the two mercenaries led them to the door at the very end of Mary Varvara Bell's elongated office.

Again, Blaze and Sarah made the long trek between white couches and conversation areas grouped on the pristine carpeting, ice chunks floating on a frozen sea.

This time, the mob boss herself sat at her desk, her long legs crossed under the icy glass edifice as she watched them approach.

Tristan King and Micah Shine stood behind her, hands held in front of them at ease.

Logan Bell stood beside them, also at ease, but his eyes were unflinchingly cold as green sea ice.

Twist blinked as he looked down from the pedestal at Blaze and Sarah, a flicker of nerves.

Micah was absolutely unaffected, as blank as the white-decorated room.

He might have sold them out. Fifty-fifty chance.

Or maybe Twist's twitches were guilt.

Fifty-fifty chance.

Black-clad mercenaries, new ones, lined up behind them, silhouetted against the bright skyscraper glass like the stiles of a razor-wire fence at sunset.

Blaze and Sarah reached the end of the trek through the office.

This time, no chairs were placed before Bell's desk.

The New Guy mercenary laid a heavy hand on Blaze's shoulder, forcing him to his knees.

Skull Trim did the same to Sarah, and Blaze breathed evenly through his nose lest the frustration roaring through him escape.

Mary Varvara Bell regarded them with icy-pale eyes and ordered him, "Report on the status of our weapons acquisitions."

"Yes, Dr. Bell." Blaze mimicked what Logan and the other guys had been calling their boss. "The liquidation of my assets is proceeding according to plan now that Tristan King has reinstated them to my accounts. I have the previous list you provided. Are there any other items you'd like to add before I start final purchase agreements?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sarah's face crumple, and she hung her head and stared at the floor.

"No. I was complete the first time. Timeline?" Mary Varvara Bell asked, picking up a pen and glancing at a notepad on her desk.

"Deliveries should begin next week after the Fourth of July weekend. Some items must be shipped from overseas, especially the heavier munitions, and will take months to arrive."

Blaze wasn't lying. His backup plan was to give her the weapons, secure Sarah's safety, and let Bell kill him.

He'd had a good run. He'd done all he could to improve matters.

It was time to join his brothers-in-arms.

Bell's swift glance was piercing. "How many months will shipping take?"

"Four, most likely. They'll definitely arrive before Christmas."

"You're sure it will be before Christmas?"

"Yes, ma'am. If shipping goes as expected, they'll arrive before the end of November. If there are any delays, they will arrive in December but before Christmas."

"That will be acceptable." Her voice remained deceptively amiable. "You realize that Sarah Bell will pay the price if they don't arrive."

"I understand, and I have ensured that everything you wanted will arrive on time."

"Excellent. In that case—" She lifted her head and began a hand gesture to someone behind them.

"Those are a lot of weapons you ordered," Blaze said. "Enough to take over a small country."

Her amused look back at him confirmed what Sarah had overheard. "You don't have to go to war with a country to conquer it."

"That's true," Blaze said, keeping his gaze steady on her eyes. "But you need a military strategy to launch a successful coup."

Mary Varvara Bell flipped her fingers at Skull Trim and the other mercenaries. "I have plenty of muscle."

"You need more than muscle. You're planning better this time, aren't you? Last time, the amateur pipe bombs didn't detonate, so that's why you want military-grade weapons for this attempt, right?"

She raised one eyebrow.

He jutted his chin toward Twist, who was standing behind her. "Looking around, I'd say that this time, you have computer technical support to impede the military and civilian police response."

She was watching him closely.

Blaze indicated Micah with a nod. "And you have certain criminal elements who will round out the crowd, but you don't have institutional knowledge. You've never launched a coup before."

"I did four years ago," she said.

There it was. "My mistake. You ran a failed coup. Did your nephew Logan run that one? Because it has all the hallmarks of an amateur operation."

Standing beside Micah and behind Dr. Bell, Logan lowered his chin and glowered at Blaze.

He pressed on. "Did Logan put together the plan to incite violence in a mob of racist Americans cosplaying revolutionaries?"

She was watching him more closely. "The rough plan was devised with my lawyers. Logan interfaced with the white supremacist militia groups to provide muscle for the attempt. And next year, we will have professional troops in the crowd."

And there. She'd implicated both herself and Logan.

If Blaze could get Logan to confirm it, that would be perfect.

Either way, he had to get them both downstairs to the building's lobby, which seemed impossible, on his knees in Bell's stark-white office in the Manhattan clouds.

He asked, "Professional troops? Do you mean the Koch Group mercs? They couldn't even take over Ukraine, a tiny country with barely a standing military, and that was with the entire Red Army at their backs. I'd hardly call them professional troops."

Skull Trim glared at him, and Blaze did not give a fuck.

Mary Varvara Bell tilted her head. "What are you suggesting?"

Blaze had to be careful not to entrap Bell. She had to say it.

He lifted his chin, indicating his three best friends standing behind her. "You've almost got a full set. Twist is tech support. Micah will provide civilian cover. Logan has international criminal connections. Together, the four of us are the Coup Starter Pack."

Her testy tone indicated Blaze only had minutes left to win her over. "Yes, thank you for explaining my organizational structure to me."

"But I, Dr. Bell, I am Lieutenant Commander Blaze Robinson, DEVGRU. I was trained at the US Naval War College in Newport and the National War College at Fort McNair in DC. I have the professional acumen and skills to launch this coup. I've taken down democratically elected governments multiple times when ordered to do so. You don't have anyone else here who has successfully overthrown a government."

"We have military advisors," she said.

"Not like me."

"Yes, but we'll manage."

"Vladimir Lvov hasn't successfully orchestrated a coup in decades. He's tottering. If you want to rule the US from behind the throne, you need better support than Lvov."

Mary Varvara Bell's eyes narrowed at him. "How do you know all this?"

If he admitted that Sarah had overheard it on the plane and told him, Bell might not let her go, and she might eliminate Sarah as knowing too much.

He said, "The Koch Group are Lvov's personal shock troops, and you have their support. The firehose of falsehoods propaganda on social media is obviously from the Trolls from Olgino, the Russian ‘Internet Research Agency.' It's blindingly obvious who was behind the first coup attempt."

She tilted her head, still examining him. "If it were so obvious, the FBI would be here."

Blaze shrugged as best he could, his hands still tied behind his back. "Laws. Plus, they didn't even figure out who made or placed the pipe bombs last time. The FBI seems off its game, or maybe they're in someone's pocket."

"Interesting. You seemed reluctant to join my team before."

He shrugged. "We both know why I will join you. Let Sarah go back to her farm and leave her alone. I give you my word that I'll run your coup and succeed."

"Yes, interesting offer." She turned to Sarah and asked her in Russian, "Do you want to return to your little farm?"

Sarah nodded and answered in Russian. "Yes, of course. The farm is all I know."

Skull Trim went rigid, and his furtive glance at Sarah spoke of guilt. He asked her, also in the language, "You speak Russian?"

Sarah mocked him, saying the equivalent of, "What, like it's hard?"

Blaze watched him, and he saw the moment that Skull Trim realized he'd compromised operational security by discussing Vladimir Lvov's long-term goal in front of someone who'd understood Russian, and then the next moment when terror entered the mercenary's eyes as he glanced back at Mary Varvara Bell, who was still watching Sarah.

Mary Varvara Bell set her pen on the table precisely above her notepad. "Yes, well, your offer certainly is tempting, Blaze, but it's time to end these lies."

She raised one finger in a signal behind her.

Mercenaries seized Micah and Twist, disarming them with quick pats. They looked first at each other and then at him.

"Dr. Bell, I assure you—" Blaze began.

She waved his protests away. "After the surveillance equipment in Logan's apartment stopped transmitting, we became suspicious, no matter how much Tristan King assured us that our receiving equipment was malfunctioning and he could view everything."

She raised a hand, signaling to someone in the wings behind her desk, where she'd entered from the last time Blaze had been in her office.

"So we took precautions," she said.

More of those damned Koch Group mercenaries shoved two women through the doorway, a raven-haired woman and a petite blonde. Both were stumbling, their hands tied behind their backs.

Blaze recognized Twist's wife, Colleen Frost, and Micah's, Kylie Miller.

Colleen looked confused, even indignant, as befitted the CEO of a tech company, but Kylie took the measure of the situation and went still, recognizing a mafia execution in progress.

She also picked Blaze out, as he'd helped rescue her sister from a French warehouse the year before, and frowned.

The mercenaries frog-marched Twist and Micah around Bell's desk to kneel beside Blaze and Sarah.

More mercs manhandled Colleen Frost and Kylie Miller, forcing them to kneel beside their husbands.

Logan, the only one of them still standing behind Mary Varvara Bell, had his mouth set in a grim line.

"Daniil, take care of them," Mary Varvara Bell said to Skull Trim, picking up her pen as if she had more important things to do than watch them die.

"Stop!" Blaze shouted, confident that an excellent argument was just about to come out of his mouth.

His throat dried up.

"Oh, my word, Aunt Mary," Sarah announced, her voice loud above all their shouts. "You're going to kill us here, in your office? How cliché. Just like my grandfather used to kill people."

Blaze swiveled his head to look at Sarah.

Logan frowned at her.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "My dad used to talk all the time about how his father executed people on the floor of his office, in front of his desk. I'll bet you have a carpeting guy in your contacts, too, right? Rip up the carpet and bleach the concrete underneath before you get back from lunch?"

Wow, interesting tactic.

Blaze nodded. "Oh, yeah. The Malefactor used to talk about it all the time. Carpet company. Bleach."

Sarah continued, "And then you have the bodies taken out with the building's trash. Yep, just like your father. Not original at all."

Mary Varvara Bell glared at Sarah, her knuckles whitening where she held her pen.

Sarah shrugged, popping off, "Because that's how my grandfather got people to fear him and stayed in power for as long as he did. He put the fear of execution into them, of being whacked, because he liked the Italian word for it. He ruled with an iron fist, with terror, just like Vladimir Lvov."

Skull Trim, whose name was evidently Daniil, said, "We don't need to talk about Vladimir Lvov. He has nothing to do with these people."

"I agree. We're done talking," Bell said. "But I don't want these traitors to sully my carpet. Drive them to Rockland County or New Jersey. It is hunting season in the summer, right? No one will look into a few more gunshots in the woods."

The mercenaries wrestled the six of them to their feet and started dragging them out when Blaze yelled over his shoulder, "Classic Evil Overlord mistake!"

"I'm getting tired of your comments," Bell said without looking up.

"Yet another classic Evil Overlord mistake," Blaze said. "I mean, it could've been worse. You could've set up a needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg machine and then walked away to complete your fiendish plan while we escaped."

Mary Varvara Bell sighed. "I've already rejected your application. You're not going to work for my organization."

"As an officer and leader in the US military forces, it pains me to see mistakes made. You're going to rely on your henchmen—"

She raised an eyebrow. "Henchmen?"

"—to drag us out into the woods and murder us. I guess that's actually a classic Snow White's Evil Stepmother mistake. Even a preteen girl can get away from an unsupervised murder."

Her grim amusement turned to anger. "Logan, go with them and make sure it's done properly."

That was one, but Blaze needed them both in the lobby.

"Can you trust Logan?" he asked.

Her dismissive wave and return to the papers on her desk worried Blaze. "He is my nephew."

"Logan knows Vladimir Lvov better than you do. When we were at Le Rosey together, he spent every summer in the Russian dachas with his bratva friends' parents."

She didn't look up. "Yes, that's how I got to know Logan, too."

"But he didn't spend much time with you. Logan was always chasing bigger and better things. He didn't sit at your feet to learn how to run White Russian Holdings. He learned from the master, your father, and Vladimir Lvov." Blaze didn't want Logan to end up on the wrong end of the gun, just in prison. "Can you really trust Logan to execute his friends, the guys he was trying to place within your organization as trusted allies?"

Angry tremors fluctuating in Logan's body finally erupted as he stepped forward and laid his hands on Mary Varvara Bell's desk. "Are you really listening to the people you are about to kill?"

"He makes good points. If his points were any better, you and he would switch places, but they aren't." She set the pen down and stood, smoothing her white pantsuit. "Yet again, I have to do everything myself. We'll both go and make sure the job is done properly."

Yes.