Chapter 4
Abramova was working on Nikitin’s neck wound; Nikitin sat without a sound and without flinching. He’d been hurt before, and whining and flinching didn’t help anything, so he didn’t.
Titov had gone back out to the Jeep to get his laptop: “I have to go online. Research.”
“You won’t become a doctor fast enough,” Nikitin said.
“I don’t need to be a doctor. I need to find the right one,” Titov said. He asked, and Nikitin and Orlov said their blood types were O-positive and A-positive.
Orlov was nearly as pale as the sheet he was lying on, and said, “For me, you need this doctor soon. God damn those American shooters.”
“We need some pills,” Abramova said to Titov. They had ten opiate tabs. She gave Orlov three, with a bit of water; and asked Nikitin what he needed: “I’ll try one. We should save them for Mat.”
Abramova patted him on the shoulder: “Good man.”
“Let me search for a hospital,” Titov said.
· · ·
Titov was looking for a nearby but out-of-the-way hospital with an emergency room.
He found it in the small city of Bison, twenty miles to the north, explaining what he was doing as he reviewed Google photos of the emergency room exterior.
He’d never done what he was about to recommend, but he’d talked through the possibility with his Russian trainers, in case one of his on-the-run clients needed help.
Abramova had cleaned the wound in her ear as best she could, washing it with alcohol and wrapping a piece of QuikClot around it.
As she pulled her hair down to cover the bandage, she noticed that she actually had a kind of hole in her hair, where the slug had gone through.
Four inches to the left, and she’d have been dead.
When she’d done as much as she could, she went into the bedroom to the gear bag and removed two Beretta 93R machine pistols.
They were older weapons, but effective. They didn’t look much like ordinary pistols—there were two thirty-round extended magazines for each pistol, with a foregrip under the muzzle.
The accessories added to their apparent threat, as anyone who’d seen a John Wick movie would know.
Along with the Berettas, she picked up the roll of gaffer tape and carried it all out to the living room. Titov said, “Look at these pictures…”
She bent over him to look at Google satellite images of a lakeside hospital with its parking lots and entrance to the emergency room, and more images taken from the ground, and two taken from inside the room.
“I don’t see cameras,” she said.
“They will be there, they always are,” he said.
“Not as bad as London, yet, but it’s getting there.
They will get pictures of you, but we can’t have pictures of the Jeep.
Both Minneapolis and the local sheriffs use license-plate readers, both fixed and mobile, and the sheriff’s department has facial recognition tech. We need to keep our faces covered.”
“You are correct.”
By the time they were ready, Orlov was sleeping, snoring, or perhaps was simply unconscious, and Titov said, “Good. We go thirty-two kilometers north, to a place called Bison. We should be back in an hour and a half.” He was poking an address into his iPhone. “We are programmed.”
“Luck,” muttered a sleepy-eyed Nikitin, as he sank back on the sheet and tried to get comfortable. And, “Good speed.”
· · ·
The two of them walked out to the Jeep, each one with a gun, heavy in their hands; the cold wind like a slap on their faces. A dark starless bitter night. A weather app said temperatures would drop below zero, with wind to fifteen miles an hour.
“Watch for ice,” Abramova said, when they’d settled into the Jeep. She pulled on a ski mask, rolled up as a watch cap. “We don’t need to fall into a ditch.”
“When we get there, you will walk in, look for cameras,” Titov said, pulling on his own cap.
“Yes.”
“And we keep the phones live, all the time that we are there,” Titov said.
“Yes. Crazy American shooters. This should not have happened.”
“Shit happens,” Titov said. “I once had a tee-shirt that said this.”
“I have to say, you have been very good, Melor. I was not certain of you,” Abramova said.
“It’s what I do for a living, but this shooting—not so much,” Titov said. “I can pretend, but you have to be the operator at the hospital. You have to be the frightener.”
“This is what I do for a living,” she said, smiling across at him. She was a stress-seeker, and she knew it.
There weren’t many house lights around—they were on a side road—and the night didn’t get brighter until they got on the highway. A highway they soon left, heading north on more back roads.
The navigation system directed them through a thick, ice-fog gloom, and Titov had to be careful not to outrun his headlights.
Individual houses and even small subdivisions were visible through the fog at some points, but with long stretches of stygian dark farmland between isolated lighted windows.
The roads were clear, but narrow; Titov had chosen a back route because he could drive faster.
He was good behind the wheel, but the fog was a problem.
The navigation showed the trip as taking thirty minutes; they took thirty-five.
All along the way, they talked about the raid. This was not a specialty of the Unit, but they had enough training to have some confidence. If what Titov had read on the Internet was accurate, the hospital had only a small, limited emergency room, though it was open all night.
Ten minutes out, Abramova said, “When we do this again…”
Titov laughed and said, “I pray we should live so long.”
Abramova didn’t laugh: “When we do this again, we have local police radios in the gear bag.”
“Ah. Yes. Next time.”
And: “They cannot see our faces,” Abramova said. “If we get a doctor, he cannot see our faces. If he does…”
“I don’t want to do that,” Titov said. He didn’t want to kill the doctor.
“I don’t either, but if we must. You are the concierge, I don’t expect you to do the shooting.”
· · ·
They talked about the missed hit: “Lev said Sokolov tripped as he pulled the trigger, stumbled. He thinks he hit Masha. I don’t know what to think,” Abramova said.
“You might have to go back after him,” Titov said “The marshals will probably evacuate them to Washington, now that Minneapolis is blown. Then, they’ll be out of reach, at least for the time being.”
“The marshals—they were fast. They didn’t seek protection,” Abramova said. “They attacked. Their reaction was excellent, as was their marksmanship. Good technique. I didn’t have time to look at them carefully, but it’s possible that one of them was a woman.”
“You sound as though you approve.”
“Well, you know…they are in the same business as we are.” After another moment, she asked, “Is there more heat on the floor? My feet are freezing.”
“Let me…” Titov reached over and adjusted a vent to blow heated air down to her feet.
“I would prefer to hit them again, if we can do it with a reasonable risk profile,” Abramova said, resuming the discussion. “You know…for reasons of status.”
“Not up to us,” Titov said. “We can’t do anything without intelligence.”
“The intelligence so far has been very good. Very good. One stumble has kept us from completing the mission.”
“One stumble and five bullets,” Titov said. “How is the ear?”
“Bearable. Nothing, really.”
· · ·
The city of Bison was a satellite of the Twin Cities, fifteen or twenty thousand people in a growing suburban area.
Though not large, it had a regional hospital built on the shore of Casimer Lake.
The town was diffuse, built around two lakes, large lots and small jumbled together, older homes around the lakes, newer houses scattered across the rolling countryside, all of it heavily wooded.
They had to drive through a densely populated area to get to the hospital, where they followed road signs off the highway, and along side streets to the emergency room. Titov stopped on the shoulder of the closest side street, behind a clump of evergreens, and said, “Call me now.”
Abramova did that, and when they were both live on the phones, Titov said, “Look for cameras. I will come as soon as you summon me.”
“Don’t forget the tape,” Abramova said.
Titov patted his jacket pocket. “Got it. You go.”
· · ·
Abramova checked her Beretta, pulled the ski mask down, so nothing showed but her eyes, and climbed out of the Jeep.
On the short walk up the street to the driveway that led to the emergency room entrance, she may have spent five seconds wondering what crooked path had gotten her here, in the middle of the United States, on a night as cold as Moscow, with a gun in her hand.
If she did have that five seconds of introspection, it didn’t linger with her, because what had gotten her here, out of the Army and into the Unit, was the ability to focus on the critical problems.
The emergency room was located at the top of a gentle rise, which was occupied by an expansive parking lot.
A cube-shaped glass entry area protruded out from the main entrance doors, with a separate ambulance entrance several meters to the left.
Near the emergency entrance, two dark-glass camera housings hung from a corner of the building, looking like suspended eggplants.
She walked straight over to the cameras and fired a burst of three shots into each housing. The shots were loud, but not as loud as an unsuppressed gun. As the glass shattered, she ran over to the cubicle. No cameras. She said into the live phone, “Come now.”
Two seconds later she was inside the emergency room with the gun up, scanning for signs of resistance. Three women in tan scrubs stood open-mouthed behind a counter and she said, not loud, but loud enough, “Nobody should move or call for help. If you do, I will shoot you.”
Another woman came in from a back hall, didn’t see Abramova at once, asked, “What was—”
Then she saw Abramova, who waved the pistol at her and said, “Come in here. If you don’t, I will shoot you.”
One of the women behind the desk said, “Take the drugs.”
Abramova said, “You must listen to me. If you have a way to alert the police, do not do it. We will kill the police.” She held up the machine pistol.
“You will see that this is a machine gun, and your police will have no way to defeat it. Also, some of you will die in the shooting. We will be gone in ten or fifteen minutes and you will all be safe again.”
Titov came in then, masked, gun up, and said, “Stay,” and went down a hallway into the back. A moment later, he returned, herding two women and a man, all in scrubs. He flicked a finger at one of the women and said, “Doctor, I am told.”
“Good,” Abramova said. “Everybody but the doctor, behind the counter, and sit on the floor. Doctor, we need operating instruments, we need O-positive and A-positive blood, painkillers, anesthetics, and antiseptics, for a trauma operation. Gather them.”
“I’m not a surgeon…and we don’t have any A-positive.”
“Do you have a surgeon here?”
“No, we could call one.”
“No time,” Titov said. “You are what we have.”
Abramova pushed the doctor into the back room at gunpoint, careful not to get too close. Although she was female, the doctor appeared to be strong, and even tough, with a square chin and high blunt cheekbones. “You will be dealing with two men, both with gunshot wounds…”
Five minutes: three fridge packs of O-negative—universal donor blood—plus surgical instruments jumbled in a stainless operating pan, a sack full of drugs, packs of syringes and bandages and needles, a rack to hang the blood on, all scooped into an oversized plastic garbage bag.
Back out front, Titov had six people sitting on the floor. He had awkwardly bound their ankles together with the duct tape. When Abramova and the doctor returned from the scavenger hunt, he handed the doctor the roll of tape and said, “Tape their hands behind their backs.”
“Don’t hurt us…” One of the woman on the floor began to sob.
“If we were going to hurt you, we wouldn’t be taping you up,” Abramova said impatiently.
The doctor bound the hands of the six people on the floor, with Titov supervising.
When that was done, Titov grabbed a parka that was hanging on the back of a chair and said, “Put this on. It’s cold out there.
Hurry. Hurry.” When she had it on, he taped her hands behind her back and Abramova pulled a ski mask over her head, backwards, so she couldn’t see.
“I will lead you outside,” she said. “Behave and you will be safe.”
· · ·
When the two women were out the door, Titov said to the people on the floor, “Our car is coming in one minute, maybe two, maybe three. I will be in the glass shelter, watching and waiting. If I see people get up, I will shoot them in the head. Lay there for five more minutes, maybe ten, and we will be gone.” He spoke with a deliberately heavy Russian accent.
A minute later, Abramova waved him out and Titov called to her, so the people inside could hear, “Tell him to hurry. We have been here too long. Tell him to drive faster…” He turned and called inside, “Please use patience. Our vehicle will come soon.” More Russian accent, thinking about the future.
Then he slipped out the door, into the Jeep, and they were rolling silently backward, the engine off, down the sloping driveway to the street.
There, he started the engine, and Abramova, looking at a map on her phone, said, “Go that way…and go that way…” Pointing with a finger, no hints for the doctor lying on the floor of the back seat.
Thirty-odd klicks back to the safe house. They passed one police car as they were passing through a small town. The patrol car was going in the opposite direction in the night; the cop saved his own life by continuing on.