Page 73 of Savage Warrior

Tony nods. “Let’s finish up here, then go talk to Ethan.”

We go back into the interrogation room where Leanid appears to have lost consciousness. Fuck that. I pick up the full bucket and chuck the lot over him.

“Wakey, wakey.”

He splutters awake, cursing in Russian.

Tony goes to fill the bucket again while I start a new line of questioning.

“What are your plans for Arina Kovalyova?”

“Who?”

“Arina Kovalyova. The girl who was with me, the one your friend shot.”

“No plans. She is dead.”

I don’t contradict him. It doesn’t matter what he knows, or thinks he knows. “What about her family, in Belarus?”

“They are dead, too.”

“How do you know?”

“Sokolov will kill them.”

“Has he done it yet?”

“Perhaps. I do not know…”

I’ve heard enough. He’s confirmed they have the family in their sights, and we need to get over there as fast as possible if we’re to beat these bastards to it.

“Help me get him down from there.”

I unfasten the straps at his ankles, Tony works on his wrists. As soon as he’s free, he rolls off the table to land on the concrete floor.

“Saves us a job,” Tony mutters, setting the bucket down beside him.

We grab a shoulder each and haul his upper body off the floor.

“Take a deep breath,” I mutter.

We plunge his head into the bucket. There’s a lot more thrashing. Water splashes over the rim to run away down the drain, but we keep him submerged until the frantic struggles begin to die. Eventually, he goes still.

“There was more life in him than I thought,” Tony observes. “Oh, well.”

We brief Ethan on what we’ve discovered. He concurs with our strategy for the barn in Kinlochewe and agrees it will have to wait until we return from Belarus. Then, we can attack in force.

“In the meantime, Jack, you can organise the surveillance,” he instructs his second-in-command.

“Sure, boss.”

That settled, it’s back to the more pressing matter of rescuing Arina’s family.

While we were down in the dungeons, Ethan has been busy getting Marius Bival on board and finding a pilot prepared to join our team. By late afternoon, we have the Moldovans primed and Magda is preparing a helicopter for a lengthy flight. We’ll refuel in Brussels, then on to Bialystok on the Polish/Belarus border. We have the use of a private helicopter port belonging to an associate of Marius’. That’s to be our bolthole, and Marius will send soldiers there to act as our backup if needed.

Casey has been busy, too. We now know that until just over a week ago, young Yuryl was attending a primary school close to his home in Lida. His attendance record was sketchy at best, and staff had recorded concerns that he was turning up obviously hungry and unwashed. A report had been sent to the school authorities, but Casey could find no evidence of action taken.

As for the older girl, Natalija, she has not been at school for almost a month, pretty much all the time Arina has been away. It’s possible that she’s picked up some casual work in the area, but we have no way of discovering that since there will probably be no electronic records.

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