Full Black - Brad Thor [115]
He was negotiating again, but Ralston listened anyway. “How?”
“The portable drive you took from my safe.”
“What about it?”
“It has copies of my communications with him,” said the Russian.
“Really?” Ralston said sarcastically. “An MI5 operative was that careless. What do you have? Copies of the personal check he scribbled out for the hit?”
“Everyone slips up. Everyone makes mistakes at some point.”
“My mistake has been listening to you. I think you’re full of shit.”
Yatsko shook his head. “When you’ve been at this game as long as I have, you learn to protect yourself. Listen, you don’t want me. I’m just the middleman in all of this. You want Ashford. But to get him, you need what’s on that drive. The file is encrypted, though. If you want access to it, you’ll need a password.”
“Give it to me.”
The Russian smiled. “Once I’m safe and away from you, I’ll provide you with it.”
Ralston turned and began walking back to the car.
“Where are you going?” asked the mobster.
“To find some more matches.”
“Cobb 2-2-4-6.”
“Say that again,” Ralston instructed as he turned and came back.
“Cobb 2-2-4-6. Cobb has two b’s, as in Ty Cobb.”
Without a computer, Ralston had no way to know if the man was telling the truth or not. Bending down, he pried off the tire.
Once it came free, he gave it a shove and rolled it the rest of the way down into the wash.
“So what happens now?” asked Yatsko. “You take my car and make me crawl? I’ll eventually need some of that money you took from me.”
This guy really did have balls. Ralston looked at him and shook his head. “There’s still the matter of the two filmmakers at Salomon’s house who your Spetsnaz guys whacked.”
The Russian looked at him. “You.”
“What about me?”
“You’re the one Salomon was at the restaurant with. You drove him home. Who are you?”
“I told you,” replied Ralston. “I’m nobody.”
“You killed them. Didn’t you?”
Ralston didn’t respond.
“You’re not going to let me walk away from here, are you?”
“You couldn’t walk if you wanted to.”
“You know what I mean,” said the Russian.
“Yeah,” said Ralston, pulling out his revolver.
Yatsko’s face changed. There was nothing but hate in his eyes. “Fuck you,” he yelled. “Fuck you!”
He was about to yell it again, but the sound of Ralston’s weapon discharging drowned it out.
Ralston pulled the trigger once for each of the murdered filmmakers, Chip and Jeremy. He then fired a third time for the homeless man in the trunk of the car and kept pulling the trigger until the weapon was empty.
The Russian deserved much worse. He deserved to have been necklaced. Ralston, though, wasn’t the kind of man who could torture another man to death, not even one as evil as Yaroslav Yatsko. Ralston was, after all, still a man of principle.
CHAPTER 49
The house Nicholas had found for Harvath had been foreclosed on and would be going to auction at the end of the month. “It should be coming up on your right,” he said over Harvath’s earbud.
“I see it,” Harvath replied as he rolled past. The house was located in Monterey Park, just east of downtown Los Angeles.
“How’s the line of sight?” Nicholas asked from back in Reston.
“I’ll let you know in a minute.”
Harvath maintained his speed as he passed Tariq Sarhan’s house. It was three houses up on the left. Harvath had seen it before arriving by using Google Street View. It was a single-story ranch with a high wooden privacy fence that ran the length of the front. There was no light from inside.
“It’s going to be tough,” he said to Nicholas once he had driven past. “We’re not going to see anything over that fence. Not unless I can plant one of the remote cameras somewhere.”
“You’ve got two with you. You could put one on the front and another on the back.”
Harvath looked at his watch. It was already after 4:00 a.m. The sun would be coming up in less than three hours. He didn’t want to get near the target house until he had had a chance to study it better. “I think I’d better get set up at my new digs first.”
Making a right turn at the end of the street, Harvath drove several blocks