9. Italy, Germany, Brazil…Again
italy, germany, brazil…again
Lash
" L et them get close," I say.
Lorenzo nods, steering wheel gripped in both hands, jaw tight at the pain of using his wounded arm. He backs off the accelerator, allowing us to slow without the use of brakes. The BMW closes on us even faster; the front windscreen is illegally tinted. Half-turned in my seat, I watch the car approach.
"How do we know they're after us?" Tatiana asks.
The timing of her answer is comically perfect: the moment the question leaves her lips, a hand emerges from the passenger window, wielding a pistol.
“That's how," Scarlett answers, glancing at me. "Ready?"
I eject the magazine of my gun, tap it back in, and nod. “Ready. Windows down." We both roll the windows all the way down. "On three. One…two…three!"
In unison, as if we’ve practiced it, Scarlett and I both twist to lean up and out the windows, facing backward with our torsos half-out of the vehicle. Our pistols crack in synch, and holes sprout in the hood and windshield. The BMW shimmies, the engine billows smoke, and then flat spins ninety degrees and rolls, bouncing. One of the other cars dodges it, but the third car back doesn’t, and I glimpse flying wreckage before we speed out of view of the crash. The third car is now fifty-some yards behind us and closing—the powerful roar of its engine is audible with the windows down.
"Two for one," Solomon says, "Good work."
No one celebrates, however; there's still one left. A figure emerges from the passenger window, wielding an assault rifle.
"Fuck," Scarlett snarls. "Down!”
The three of us in back throw ourselves down, and I hear the rattle-crack of an assault rifle; metallic thuds echo as a few bullets smack into the body of the car, although most go wide.
I snarl a curse in Romani and then switch to English. "Fucking idiot. Did no one teach you anything?"
I lean out the window, steadying my pistol in both hands, aim, and then cracks off a single shot. Blood sprays, and the shooter slumps to hang half out the window. The body twitches, and then topples out of the window, splatting across the concrete as it tumbles and rolls, rag-doll limp.
Another figure emerges, and, with an annoyed sigh, I repeat the feat, putting a slug through the would-be shooter's skull.
Scarlett eyes me as I sink back into the seat. "Alright then, Annie Oakley."
I frown at her. "I do not know this reference."
Scarlett waves a hand dismissively. "Famous sharpshooter from the American Old West."
I shrug. "Oh. Bah. You could do this. So could either of them," he says, gesturing at the men in front.
"Yeah, sure," Scarlett answers, "But we'd need more than one shot."
I grin. "It helps that I used to practice it."
"How do you do that?" she asks.
Another shrug. "A dummy secured partly out the window of a car. My unit and I practiced it at a remote proving ground."
Scarlett snickers. "That sounds super safe."
I laugh. “It wasn't exactly an approved practice. That was how we filled our free time. Bored soldiers, especially elite ones, will do idiotic things to entertain themselves."
Lorenzo and Solomon both laugh.
"You are not lying, my friend," Lorenzo says. "Wait, they're trying again, the idiotas ."
With an annoyed roll of his head, I prove that the first two shots were not flukes, nailing the shooter before he can get a shot off.
"How can we get our hands on that car?" Solomon asks. "Without broken windows or bloody seats, preferably. This thing is not gonna get us over the fucking mountains, Ren."
Lorenzo eyes him. "I don't know how I feel about you calling me that—only Sophia ever did." he muses thoughtfully. "I could pull over and try to get the driver to come after us. It is quite risky, though."
Solomon watches the side mirror for a moment. "Alright, let's try it. Gun it, Ren. Like we're trying to outrun him."
"And then brake hard," Lorenzo says, finishing the unspoken part of Solomon's plan.
"I don't like this," Scarlett says. "Someone's gonna get shot."
"Gotta better plan, sweet tits?" Solomon asks, winking at her.
She glares at him. “I hope you enjoy your own hand, Sol, because if you keep calling me sweet tits, you’ll never get to fuck me again.”
Solomon just cackles, monitoring the car in the side mirror. "Okay, Ren. On three, brake and swerve so he misses us. Last thing we need is to get rear-ended.”
"I understand the plan, Sol," Lorenzo snaps. "Scarlett, Lash, be ready. The moment that asshole shows his idiot face, kill him."
I look at Tatiana. "When we stop, get into the footwell."
Looking pale and frightened, she only nods, licking dry lips.
“Ready?" Solomon asks the car at large.
"Ready," Lorenzo answers.
"Ready," Scarlett echoes.
"Ready," I say.
Tatiana doesn't answer, just slides down into the footwell and shrinks herself into the smallest ball possible, hands over her head. I glance down at her and she gives me a shaky smile and a thumbs-up.
"Now!" Sol barks.
Lorenzo slams on the brakes; tires squeal and the car lurches and fishtails, swerves, and then momentum goes haywire as we go into a spin. Tires squeal again—not ours, but our pursuer's. I feel our car tip precariously as we come to a stop, nearly toppling over, and then we come to a rocking stop, facing backward.
Silence.
“Not yet," Lorenzo murmurs.
I can't hear past the slam of my pulse in my ears.
"There—he's getting out," Lorenzo says. "Now! Go! Go!"
I shove open my door and kneel in the opening, aiming through the V of the door and the car body. Scarlett does the same. The BMW driver shoves open his door and scrambles out, leveling an assault rifle at us. He doesn’t even have time to get off a shot though—Scarlett and I light him up, blasting round after round at him. He jerks and twitches as the bullets smash into him, and his shirt spreads red. He staggers, drops his rifle, and then hits his knees, frowning in confusion. Topples forward and plants face first on the road.
I grin down at Tatiana. "Got him, Lovely One. It is safe to sit up now."
“Lash, you're bleeding!" Tatiana says, panicked.
I touch the side of my face.
She dabs at the side of my face, and I make a huh, weird expression when her fingers come away bloody.
"He must have nicked me,” I say. “It is nothing."
"You are lucky," she tells me, touching the side of my head near the top of my ear. "Very, very lucky. A hair's breadth more and it would have gone through your brain. "
I pull her into my arms, kissing her forehead. "I am well, Tatiana. Are you hurt?" I touch a few red dots on her face. "You are scratched."
"The glass," she says.
I nod, twirling a finger at her. "Turn your head upside down and shake."
She swiftly unbraids her hair and flips upside down, shaking her head; when she’s done and flips back upright, there's a sprinkling of glass shards on the ground at her feet.
"Do not touch your head until you have washed your hair," I say. "There will still be some tiny pieces against your scalp."
"Here," Scarlett says. "Let me re-braid it for you." She makes quick work of a tight braid, and Tatiana thanks her, gingerly smoothing her hand over her scalp, wincing and yanking her hand away.
Solomon drags the corpse off the shoulder and into the vineyards that line the highway for mile after mile, rifling through the dead man's pockets. He comes up with the key fob for the BMW and another handgun with a pair of spare magazines.
Blood paints the outside of the car, long sprays of it in overlapping Rorschach patterns, but the vehicle is otherwise undamaged.
"Not much we can do about the blood," Solomon says. "But at least this thing won’t die on us halfway up the fucking Alps."
Lorenzo shakes his head with a disgusted sigh. “Let’s see you find a better vehicle at six o'clock in the morning in a city you do not live in for only a few thousand euros."
Solomon just laughs. "Buddy, I'm not shitting on you. I couldn't have done better. I just do not want to push a thirty-five-year-old car across the goddamn Alps."
Lorenzo mutters something under his breath in what I assume is Portuguese, and Solomon responds in the same language.
"I forgot you speak Portuguese," Lorenzo says, finally laughing.
Solomon claps Lorenzo on the shoulder. "Ren, buddy, we're in a high-stress situation. Tempers flare, we both know that. It's all good. Let's get this shitshow on the road so we can find Lash's contact and get our asses across the pond."
Lorenzo nods, rubbing his face. "You must forgive my temper. I am not a patient man under the best of circumstances, but right now I am exhausted, wounded, and most of all worried about Sophia. I am not myself."
"Like I said, it's all good. Nothing to forgive." Solomon climbs behind the wheel. "I'll drive. You can navigate."
Scarlett slides into the seat behind Solomon, Tatiana takes the middle again, and I’m on the right side. This car is brand new, a top-end 8-series with luxurious leather seats and every amenity.
"I see how it is," Lorenzo jokes. "I drive the shit box, and you drive the Bimmer."
"Yup," Sol says, putting it in gear and nailing the accelerator; the powerful motor sends us rocketing forward, fishtailing wildly before he gets it under control. "Jesus. This is what I'm talking about. Ride to Germany in style, motherfuckers."
Scarlett reaches forward and touches Solomon's shoulder. "Are you good to drive?"
He glances back briefly. "I'm good. Why?"
She shrugs, sitting back. "I mean, it's been a bit of a whirlwind. What was it, just a few days ago you were a prisoner in the fucking jungle? And we've been on the run ever since."
Tatiana looks from Solomon to Scarlett with interest. "The jungle?"
And such is how we pass the time on our drive—Solomon and Scarlett relating their wild, hair-raising adventure in the jungles of South America, with occasional input from Lorenzo.
Solomon drives for three hours, and we stop for fuel and food, at which point Scarlett takes the wheel for another stretch. We make another stop to stretch our legs, and then I take the last stretch of driving into Germany; my contact is at the Ramstein Air Force Base.
It's the middle of the night by the time we get to Ramstein; I know my contact lives on base, but whether or not I'm able to get in touch with him is another story.
We approach the gate and are stopped at the guardhouse by an eager young American private. We have no active military ID, no paperwork, and no official business, so getting in to see my contact is going to require some finagling.
I've always been able to find him because I was either stationed there myself or was active military with high enough clearance that I could just drive onto any base in Germany.
It's a different story, these days.
"I need to see Oberstleutnant Nils Weissmann," I say. “Find him, wake him up, and tell him that Leutnant Nicolae Dragos is back from the dead and here to collect. Use exactly those words. Repeat them back to me please, Private Larimer." LOYT-nahnt.
He blinks at me “Um."
I put the snap of authority into my voice. "Repeat the message, Private— now .”
He blinks, stammers, and then goes to attention. "Find Oberstleutnant Nils Weismann and tell him Leutnant Nicolae Dragos is back from the dead and here to collect. Sir." OH-burst-LOYT-nahnt.
"Very good, Private. Get moving—we do not have all night."
He double-times it back into the guardhouse, dials a number, and lets it ring. A transfer, and a second, and then a long wait. I hear him speaking, passing along my message in a mix of English and halting German, and then he hangs up and returns to my window.
“He is on his way, Leutnant Dragos," he says. "You'll have to wait here—I'm not authorized to allow you in, sir."
"I understand," I say, using the imperious tone of dismissal common among officers and noncoms. "That will be all."
The private salutes, I salute back, and then he goes to stand outside the guardhouse at attention.
"What is it you're here to collect?" Solomon asks me.
"An old debt," I answer. "Nils got himself into trouble—gambling and drinking. He was a talented young noncom on a bad downward spiral. For reasons that were never entirely clear to me at the time, I stepped in and helped him get out of debt, helped him quit both drinking and gambling, and he soon got promoted above me. We were in different units—I was in counterintelligence, and he's in transportation and logistics, which is why he will be able to help us. He is, last I knew, a liaison between NATO, the US Air Force, and the German Air Force. He should be able to get us on a flight out of Germany on a C-130 or something."
Fifteen minutes later, an SUV with bright white LED headlights halts on the other side of the gate; the driver's door opens, and a tall, slender figure emerges and strides with confident, military precision toward us.
I recognize Nils' gait as he approaches my side of the BMW.
He leans into my open window. “This is illegal tint, Leutnant Nicolae Dragos." He’s a very tall man, almost as tall as Rev, with a shaved head, a short, neat blond beard, and brown eyes.
"It's a…loaner, Oberstleutnant Weismann," I answer .
He grins, tapping the insignia on his uniform. "It is Hauptmann, now, as a matter of fact." HOWPT-mahn.
"Ooh, very fancy," I say. "Hopefully that shiny metal on your collar means you can help me and my friends."
Nils peers into the car, assessing my companions. "I can help, but you'll have to tell me the truth, Nicolae," he says in German. "What do you need, and why is it so important that you show up here in the middle of the night, especially after disappearing the way you did?"
"Let us in, give us somewhere to rest, and I'll explain everything," I tell him. "But you know damned well I wouldn't be here like this if it wasn't important."
Nils nods. "Very well," he says, switching back to English. "It is good to see you, Nicolae."
I shake his hand. "Truly, Nils, it is good to see you, too."
He waves at Private Larimer. "Let them in, please, Private." He turns to me. "Follow me. You can stay with me for now.”
A few minutes later, we're parking outside the DRC and following Nils inside. At this hour, all is still and quiet. His quarters are small and spartan.
"It's this or pay for lodging," he explains. "But I assume you're contacting me because you need to get out of the country undetected, and I've got a flight leaving tomorrow. Once I know more about your situation, I can arrange logistics for you."
We find seats wherever we can, which mainly means the floor, although Nils insists Scarlett and Tatiana take seats on the bed.
Once again, we find ourselves relating the events of the past few days—I know Nils well and I trust him, so I explain the situation with Roberto Pugli, and thus our need to get to Brazil quickly and off-book.
Once the whole convoluted, multi-faceted story has been related, Nils spends a few minutes thinking. "Quite a situation you've gotten yourself into, Nicolae. My girlfriend is a senior intelligence officer. Obviously, there's much she cannot share, but I do know she has been investigating reports of a corrupt official within Interpol—that's all I know, but it is likely the same person."
"I have evidence, Nils." I look down, struggling with my emotions. "After…what happened, what he did, I…I took the warning. I let him think he'd destroyed all the evidence I had against him—and I did give him all my original copies. But I am no fool—I have backups hidden. But I lost my appetite for justice. I was so…" I let out a shuddering breath, and Tatiana rubs my back, “so broken that I just didn't care anymore. But now, I care. Get me in touch with your girlfriend, Nils. If she is investigating Roberto, then my evidence could be vital."
He nods. "I will tomorrow. Now that you’ve gotten me up, I might as well get to work putting together your trip to Brazil. I assume Manaus will be acceptable?"
"Of course, my friend. Wherever you can get us. We are all rather resourceful."
"Well then, I'll get to work," he says. "Please, however, stay here. I cannot have you five wandering the base. You know this."
"We have been traveling for a very long time, Nils. We are ready to rest. We drove straight through from Ancona."
"What is that, twelve hours?"
"More, with stops."
He pushes on his knees to stand up. "I'll let you rest, then. I'll come back for you in a few hours, get you some food, and go from there."
I stand up and embrace him. "I cannot thank you enough, Nils."
He grins, slapping me on the back. "Nico, my friend, you saved my life and my career. I will be in your debt forever. This is just a down payment.”
"You've made good on it, Nils. I am proud of you."
He ducks his head, grinning, and then bids us all goodbye and heads out.
Within minutes, we are all asleep, crashed out on the floor and bed and wherever we can stretch out. So tired are we that even the floor feels comfortable.
Nils' girlfriend is several years older than him and of a higher rank—she's attractive, a short woman with dark brown hair and pale blue eyes and a no-nonsense demeanor. Nils introduces us, explains to Major Lisel Neufeld my connection to and experience with Pugli.
She scrutinizes me and then nods; we're in a conference interview room somewhere in the bowels of an administrative building. "Your evidence," she asks. "What is it?"
“Footage of interviews with eyewitnesses, documents showing the paper trail connecting Pugli to payments, bribes of government officials, and an audio recording of Pugli himself giving an order for the assassination an upper level admin at an American embassy—the individual in question had stumbled across Pugli's interference in some kind of operation that would have exposed him."
"The unsolved murder of Jeffery McCann," she guesses. "You have evidence of this?"
"And much else besides."
She frowns at me. "And you have been sitting on this for this long?"
I glare at her. "He burned my family alive in front of me, Major Neufeld. What would you have done?"
She sighs. "I cannot say—who could guess how they would react to such trauma?" She taps the table with a pen. "You have access to this trove of evidence?"
"I can tell you how to. It is in a storage locker in a train station in Berlin." I give her instructions on how to retrieve the evidence. "All I ask is that you make damned sure that monster is brought to justice. You have to be absolutely certain your case is airtight, Major Neufeld. If it isn't he will weasel his way out of it, and if that happens, you and everyone you care about will be dead within seventy-two hours.”
She nods, seeming unfazed by my warning. "Believe me, I am well acquainted with how Pugli does business, Mr. Dragos." She rises and we shake hands. "If the evidence is what you claim, it should be the nail in the coffin for Mr. Pugli. I am only one member of a multi-country, multi-agency task force investigating his operation. We have enough evidence as it is to put him away, but we have been looking for that one thing to make sure there is no possibility of error or escape."
"Well then, my evidence should be that," I say. "And I can guarantee you, all of it will be admissible. I made sure of it."
Nils arrives at the god-sized hangar in his personal SUV a few minutes after the rest of us, his uniform crisp and perfectly creased.
I shake hands with him, and then I gesture at the huge aircraft. "So. All is arranged?"
He nods. “Yes. You will land in Manaus, and the next day, a helo will take you wherever you need to go. You will make one stop en route.”
I arch an eyebrow at him. "Oh?"
"I have a contact just outside Manaus. He is not always on the right side of the law, but he is a good man. He will provide you and your friends with weapons. I cannot supply personnel—that would attract attention I do not think you want, but I can provide transportation and weapons." He claps me on the back. "I owe you, Nicolae. My life and my career, I owe you."
I return the back-slap. "We are even now, Nils."
A snort. “No, my friend. We will never be even. But this is a start."
I shrug. "If you say so. I am grateful. My friends are grateful."
He embraces me. "I'll go over things with the pilots once more, and then I have a meeting to get to." He hesitates. "It's good to see you back among the living."
I return his embrace. "It is good to be back. Take care of yourself. Visit me in Las Vegas."
"How will I contact you?" he asks.
"I will get word to you."
He nods, waves, and goes to speak to the pilots.
Thirty minutes later, we're strapped into jump seats of a C-130J headed across the Atlantic. It's another long, boring, uneventful leg in our crazed trip across the globe. The C-130 takes us to Manaus, Brazil. We're bleary-eyed, jet-lagged, and disoriented. Only a few days ago—how many? I can’t remember—I was on a jet leaving Las Vegas. Since then, I’ve been to Zagreb, taken a train to Split, a ferry across the Adriatic, drove to Germany, and now flown back across the Atlantic to Brazil; Solomon, Scarlett, and Lorenzo’s adventure has been similarly complex, so by the time the C-130 touches down at the AFB in Manaus, we’re nearly zombies. Nils’ arrangements include off- base lodging under some very thin fake identities for all of us, but a little palm-greasing of the right people and judicious use of Lorenzo's contacts in the Brazilian military gets us to our rooms without issue.
Scarlett and Solomon have one room, Lorenzo another, and Tatiana and I have our own.
Which means we are alone together at long last.
My exhaustion burns away the moment Tatiana shuts the door, and the look in her eyes tells me everything I need to know about her state of mind.