“Then why bother with the spotting scope?”
“Maybe they didn’t know how thick it was, or how far back they would be, until they got there,” Lucas said.
“The snow’s been on the ground for what, two weeks?” White said. “If it wasn’t a drone, maybe they checked the spot from a satellite, even a Google satellite photo, so they knew the layout but not the specifics.”
Sherwood: “We need to go back to the house and see where they shot from. I want to look at the overhead.” He turned to Beard. “Unless the marshals have already located it?”
“No. My guys are clustered around Leonard and Bernie,” Beard said. He scratched his forehead, rubbed his nose. “Nobody—nobody—is going to see them or get close to them. When we get some authorities on the scene to lock it down, we’ll leave and keep moving until we have a secure spot to put them. Get them back to Washington. Minneapolis is burned to the ground. Gotta sell that house.”
“If there’s a drone, they could track your people as they move,” Lucas said.
“Not as far and fast as we’ll be moving,” Beard said.
“You have to understand that the Sokolovs are a major prize for us, and a major problem for the Russians,” Sherwood interjected. “It’s possible that the Russians have detailed a satellite to watch over the operation, like Miz White suggested. It would be better to put the two of them in a bunker somewhere.”
White: “You got bunkers?”
Sherwood nodded at her: “You know what I mean. An obscure concrete-block third-floor condo with marshals in the lobby and every hallway and on the roof with automatic weapons. Maybe a place without an outside-facing window.”
“We’ll find something,” Beard said. “Let’s get back.”
The cop who’d come in with Lucas and White had been on his radio and he came over to say, “We’ve got six guys here and crime scene from the BCA is on the way. We’ll lock everything down. Who do I talk to when we’re done?”
“That’d be me,” Beard said. “I’ll give you a card.”
• • •
On the wayout of the motel, they stopped to look at the Wagoneer. Lucas and White counted eighteen bullet holes in the back hatch and side, and more had gone through the broken-out rear window. A third row of seats was lying flat, but several slugs had gotten through to the second row, where the worst-wounded man, the one who had to be carried, had been sitting. Three or four had gone through the front passenger seat. At least one had drawn body blood, and another had gone through the headrest and drawn more, probably from a shoulder or neck.
“Should have had the third-row seats up,” Sherwood said. “That’s a miss.”
There was more blood on the windshield in front of the driver, but from what they’d seen in the video, the woman hadn’t seemed seriously wounded.
“Not bad,” Beard said. “Of course, it was a big target.”
“But eighty, ninety yards away, and moving,” Sherwood said. “I’m somewhat impressed.”
“You should be,” White said. “Me’n Lucas shot them full of holes.”
She put up a gloved hand and Lucas slapped it.
• • •
Sherwood rode withthem in the 4Runner, back to the hideout. Lucas asked, “Why are the Russians so hot to kill this guy? Seems like it might be a little late in the day.”
“Revenge,” Sherwood said. “To make a point to anyone else who might think about defecting. He was one of Vladimir Putin’s appointments, so it’s personal.”
“Can you tell us anything more about him, Leonid, or about the shooters?” White asked.
Sherwood thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t see why not. Quite a bit of it has been in one magazine or Substack or another. Including some Russian newspapers.”
Leonid Sokolov, he said, had been a colonel in the FSB, the Federal Security Service, focusing on counterintelligence. He was an investigator, interrogator, judge, and executioner, all rolled into one. If he found Russians working for Western intelligence services, he was brutal in his work, which sometimes, if not always, involved the torture of innocent witnesses.
“He would torture family members, friends, associates. He didn’t send the work out. Most of the time, he’d do it himself, along with acouple of his buddies. He would usually do the executions himself, as we heard it. He would have the accused person restrained in a chair and would shoot him or her in the head. Not in the back of the head, but in the forehead. He wanted the accused to see the bullet coming. He wanted to be looking into their eyes when they died. He apparently took a great deal of pleasure in the whole process.”
Lucas: “Christ. And we’re dealing with him?”
“We are. Anyway, he probably carried out a couple of dozen executions over the years and was widely hated, but appreciated by his superiors, including Putin. He was not being considered for elimination or even demotion, as far as we know. He was comfortable there in Moscow, but a long way from rich, with retirement not too far off. As it turns out, he’d been watching all those moguls and what a mogul’s lifestyle could get you. He decided he wanted that: the money. A retirement medal wasn’t good enough.”
