They’d thrown everything else—the rifles, body armor, helmets, and night vision gear—into the water, as far off the shoreline on the other side of the lake as possible. Why give investigators a sense of their true numbers? Whoever combed through the property would eventually find Oksana and Valerie, unless the camp’s residents cleaned up their bodies. He’d provided their general location to Pichugin’s contact after the helicopter exploded. Let them deal with it.
“Five minutes. Don’t forget to drain your pistols and work the action a few times. Hold your magazines upside down until they stop dripping. We might not be done using them tonight.”
PART VI
CHAPTER 57
Devin opened his eyes to a dark, unfamiliar room. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly where he’d woken up and why. They’d driven through the night to Nashville, passing through the city and checking into the most nondescript motel he’d ever seen—basically, a two-story rectangle with evenly spaced doors and windows. About as inconspicuous as he could imagine, which was almost as big a selling point as the Cracker Barrel restaurant next door.
They settled into three sets of adjoining rooms, clearly a big coup for the mostly unoccupied motel, since an “exception” was made regarding the usual checkin time. Everyone got their own bed to rest, Rich insisting the team needed to take a time-out before going any further. All Devin really remembered after that was ordering three times the amount of Cracker Barrel he could possibly eat and putting himself into a food coma.
He glanced over at the other bed, finding the blankets rumpled but empty. A quick look at the open, dark bathroom doorway told him Marnie had slipped out at some point to join the team. They’d probably taken a few hours off and gone back to work. How long had he been out? The light peeking through the shade told him he hadn’t slept into the night. His watch said he’d given it his best effort: 6:48 p.m. He’d been out for more than ten hours. Rich and Karl probably had the next operation planned by now.
Devin rolled off the cheap mattress and reached for the ceiling to give his stiff body a quick stretch. He noticed a fresh pair of jeans, a few T-shirts, socks, and underwear on the dresser. Someone had been busy. He grabbed the jeans and checked the inside of the waist, finding them a few sizes too large—but not big enough to slide off. The shirt was a large, which would hang off him but otherwise work just fine for now.
He took everything into the bathroom and changed out of the swampy outfit he’d been wearing, before indulging in a quick shower to wash away the grime of last evening’s mission. Feeling deceptively refreshed, he tucked his wallet and satellite phone into his pockets and stepped into the crusty boots next to his bed. The sort-of-human feeling the shower and new clothes had loaned him took a hit when his feet sank into the damp boots. More than just damp. He stood up, and they squished—not that he was complaining.
He swiped the old-school metal key from his nightstand and headed out to find the team. His search didn’t last long. A pizza-delivery car idled in the parking lot below, where a teenager was unloading about a dozen pizza boxes between Scott and Alex.
The past week didn’t feel real. From setting off to follow his mother’s clues to the apartment to the forty-eight-hour whirlwind tour of violence across three states, none of it seemed possible. But here he was—watching a mercenary who had easily killed a half dozen or more people over the past three nights dig into his pocket to pay a pizza-delivery kid. An entirely unremarkable transaction to an outside observer. It made him wonder how many times he’d witnessed something this extraordinary before without even knowing it. Devin met them a few rooms down.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” said Scott.
“You didn’t have to let me sleep that long,” said Devin, opening the door for them.
“Marnie said you were snoring like a sawmill,” said Alex, pausing in the doorway. “You didn’t miss much. Most of us crashed well into the afternoon. Except for Rich and Karl. I have no idea how those two are still upright and talking in complete sentences.”
“Seriously,” said Devin, following him into the crowded room and closing the door.
Everyone was dressed in jeans and plain gray T-shirts. The only way it could look more comical was if all the T-shirts had the same pattern.
“There he is,” said Berg, standing in the doorway between the adjoining rooms. “Did they tell you that the Russians surrendered while you were asleep? It’s all over.”