“Roger, NCS,” she said, reaching for a silver locket around her neck, popping it open, and removing an earbud and affixing it inside her ear. “I’m commo, Bill.”

“We’re downrange in an operation near you, Christy,” said Polk. “I need you to move to a set of coordinates with tactical weapons and escape options. Coordinates will be on you in a few seconds. Move by car.”

Braga shut her laptop and moved to her office closet. She pulled out a steel weapons case and unbuckled it. Inside, held in place with Velcro straps, were several combat blades, a few suppressed handguns, and a pair of HK MP7A1 submachine guns. She removed a suppressed Colt M1991, a SOG SEAL Pup knife, and one of the MP7A1s, slamming a mag into it and then threading in a suppressor. She left her office and ran down the service stairs three at a time. In less than a minute, she was at the wheel of a red BMW M5, moving toward a steel gate at the back of the embassy compound.

“Can I get some intel, Bill?”

“This is an Emergency Priority recon,” said Polk. “Agent Maybank is in active pursuit of a known Al Qaeda operative and will likely need support.”

“What do we do when we get him?”

“Vernacular House,” said Polk, referring to a CIA safe house in Moscow. “This is a do not kill. He’s a tertiary to a planned terror attack we believe is now live. We need to talk to him.”

*   *   *

Maybank paid for the espresso, keeping Al-Medi in his range of vision. He stepped to the end of the counter and waited for his drink. He watched Al-Medi without looking.

Maybank took the espresso from the counter and left the coffee shop. He glanced in through the window. Al-Medi held the phone to his ear, then hung up. He scanned the coffee shop suspiciously.

Maybank crossed the street. He stood behind a parked car and waited. A little while later, Al-Medi stepped through the coffee shop door.

“He’s moving,” said Maybank. “He suspects something.”

“We have him on grid,” said Polk, “as long as he doesn’t throw the phone away.”

The street was crowded. The neighborhood was filled with students from Moscow Polytechnic University, a few blocks away.

Al-Medi went left. From a distance, Maybank watched him, gulping the espresso, then tossed the cup into a garbage can. He walked ten feet behind him, keeping pace, but on the opposite side of the street.

*   *   *

As Al-Medi walked down the sidewalk, his head swiveled slowly back and forth, searching calmly around him. His laid-back demeanor was an act. The chase was on and he knew it.

The call changed everything. Had it been Cloud, he would’ve called back. But he didn’t, and right now Al-Medi knew he was being hunted. He’d been thumbprinted the moment he answered the phone.

Al-Medi came to an abrupt stop. He peered into a storefront window, pretending to look at something. Instead, he studied the reflection for signs of a tracker. He studied each and every person as they moved past him. Nobody looked even remotely suspicious. Then, across the street, he saw a tall black-haired man staring at him from behind a Citroën.

Al-Medi started to walk casually down the sidewalk. He stopped at a mailbox, opened it, tossed the cell inside. He saw the man, moving now, running directly at him. Shielded by the mailbox, Al-Medi pulled out a gun—Helwan 9mm semiautomatic, made in Egypt.

*   *   *

“He tossed the cell,” said Maybank. “He’s moving.”

“Stay on him,” said Polk. “It’s imperative you stay with him, Johnny. He is our only connection at this point.”

Maybank charged back into the traffic-filled street, barely dodging a van whose driver didn’t see him. But as he came around the van, he was trapped in the crosshairs of Al-Medi’s gun.

“Oh, shit!” he groaned, lurching left just as the unmuted crack of gunfire ripped the streetscape. Al-Medi’s slug missed him, and Maybank pulled his right arm up, grabbing the butt of his P226, just as a second gunshot tore the air, hitting him in the thigh.

“Fuck!” yelled Maybank as he continued to sprint after Al-Medi, who had gone down a side street called Baku.

“Johnny?” asked Polk, urgency in his voice.

“I need support,” barked Maybank, still running, despite the slug lodged in his thigh. He glanced down. The bottom half of his left leg was drenched in blood.

“Almost there,” came a female voice.

*   *   *

Braga had the M5 weaving in and out of traffic as she drove through the narrow, clogged streets that surrounded Moscow Polytechnic University. She glanced between her wrist piece, which showed her position relative to Maybank on a small map, and the road, trying to navigate.

“Control,” she said, “I need third-party navigation.”

“Control, over,” came a voice. “Hold.”

She shot a quick glance at the speedometer: 77 mph.

“Take a sharp right in approximately one hundred feet. Get over.”

Braga ripped the BMW hard right, hit the brakes, then moved the car onto Baku.

“He’s coming right at you,” said CIA control in her earpiece.

*   *   *

At the corner of Baku, Al-Medi ripped off his jacket. He sprinted down the small side street. In two blocks, there was a metro station.

He looked back. The man now had a gun, which was swinging up and down in his left hand as he tried to catch up with him. But the shot to the man’s leg slowed him.

Al-Medi kept glancing back, at first fearful he might get shot but soon realizing that his tracker, whoever he was, wanted him alive.

*   *   *

Maybank was falling behind as the blood now sopped his running shoe and the pain became intense.

He saw Braga’s red sedan far in the distance, at the end of the street. Al-Medi was now between the two of them, running toward her.

“You need to stop him,” Maybank yelled.

*   *   *

Al-Medi moved as he’d been trained, in a zigzag, dragging in behind pedestrians, making it hard for his pursuer to catch him.

In less than a block was the metro station. He would lose the man there.

*   *   *

Braga stopped the car at the end of the street, watching in the distance as Al-Medi raced toward her. She could also see Maybank, well behind him, limping as he ran, his leg covered in blood.

Braga slouched down in the seat. Her head was just high enough to peer through the opening in the steering wheel.

Al-Medi came closer, sprinting along the line of parked cars. She put the car in reverse and cranked the steering wheel counterclockwise. Then she waited.

He was a dozen cars ahead, then ten, then just a few. A savage, angry look was in his eyes. When he reached the car in front of her, she glanced up, watching as he ran by her door, oblivious of her presence. He was drenched in sweat. She waited one last moment, then took her foot off the brake and floored the gas. The M5 burst left, its back end lurching into Al-Medi’s legs, slamming him violently, pummeling him to the tar. He landed, both legs broken, and started to scream.

Braga climbed out and opened the back door just as Maybank arrived. Maybank wrapped flex-cuffs around Al-Medi’s wrists as Braga handled his ankles. Maybank finished with a wrap about his head, muffling his screaming. They lifted him into the back of the car, then climbed in, Maybank in back, Braga driving.

Maybank unsheathed his combat blade and jammed it into Al-Medi’s mouth as Braga turned around, then floored it. Propping his mouth open, Maybank searched Al-Medi’s mouth. He found a fake molar and ripped it out. Inside was a small white pill: cyanide. He opened the window and tossed it to the street.

Maybank grabbed Al-Medi’s T-shirt and ripped it down the front, tearing it in half. He took the cloth and wrapped it around his thigh and tied it tight over the wound, creating a tourniquet.

Braga had the M5 scorching along Baumanskaya at 80 mph, weaving skillfully between cars and pedestrians as she sped toward the CIA safe house.