The Milestone Protocol by Ernest Dempsey (best books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

combat and warfare. I’m confident you made the right decision. And from the sound of it, you might well have been taken out along with your team if you’d acted differently.”

“I surmised the same, sir.”

Odin paused, and Niki imagined the man considering what to say next somewhere in another land, perhaps in a deep leather chair or at his lavish desk.

“Proceed as you have suggested,” the old man commanded. “Follow them and find out where they are going next. As long as you have them within reach, that’s all that matters. Once they have the gem and the location of the control center for the machine, you can eliminate them all.”

“As you wish.”

Niki ended the call and looked down the driveway and back toward the city. The tracking device he’d installed on Wyatt’s rental car would keep the Americans and their MI6 friend from getting out of reach.

For now, he already knew where they were going. They were returning to Moscow. That much was obvious. He would hang back and wait until the group found what they were looking for; then he would move in for the kill.

He felt no concern regarding being outnumbered. He’d faced more difficult odds before. And while his team had probably ruined any element of surprise, essentially putting Sean Wyatt on full alert, there was no way for the American to know when the attack would come. When it did, Wyatt wouldn’t see it coming.

36

Moscow

Sean stared at the gates of the Savior Andronikov Monastery. The walls that wrapped around the inner confines on the left bank of the Yauza River made him think more of an old German town he’d visited long ago; a lifetime ago now that he thought of it. The memory stirred old emotions, dragging him back to a much different time in his life. Feelings of joy, wonder, mystery, and love flooded him, only to be replaced with a sense of loss—both of time and of those friends who’d already taken their last step in life’s journey.

He immediately shook away the sadness, as he always did. Those thoughts would not serve him now, and would only take away vital concentration from the task at hand.

The others huddled close to him on the snow-covered sidewalk and followed Sean’s gaze to the monastery’s entrance.

Snowflakes, heavy and fluffy, floated down from an overcast sky.

Sean brushed a layer of flakes from his head and pulled up the hood of his overcoat. The covering blocked part of his peripheral vision, which he relied on heavily, but staying dry was of greater importance at the moment.

“See anything unusual?” he asked, tossing glances at the others.

“No,” Adriana answered first, her head on a swivel. She peered through the falling snow, checking cars for signs of someone watching them. The only people she saw were the few brazen tourists brave enough to weather the cold to pay a visit to the old monastery.

After Tommy and Sean had a quick look around and agreed with Adriana’s assessment, Sean reminded them to stay alert.

“Out here we’re exposed,” he said. “And based on the images we checked of this place, there are some good spots for cover, but we will be out in the open at the gravesite.”

Sean had considered dumping the weapons of the men he’d killed at the restaurant. His plan was to ditch them in a river or creek, or at the very least a dumpster once they got back into the city. When he inspected the pistols, however, he realized that they lacked serial numbers, which meant even when the ballistics reports gave the answer as to the type of gun used in the slayings, the weapons would be untraceable.

Ghost guns were something Sean had invested in back in the States as a way to keep additional firearms on hand that could not be traced by the federal government. He had no nefarious reasons for such a practice; it was completely legal as long as he didn’t sell the guns to someone else. For Sean, milling and assembling some of his own firearms was a meditative act. It was simple in practice and straightforward—a stark contrast to much of his life.

Realizing the pistols couldn’t be traced back to him or the killings at the restaurant, he’d decided to keep them just in case, and distributed one to each of his group. Tabitha, predictably, had been the sole protestor to such a notion, but then again, she still had her MI6 Glock 9mm.

Sean stuffed his hands in his pockets and trudged through the accumulating snow toward the gate, with the others trailing close behind.

Just through the gate and hanging on an exterior wall was a map of the monastery grounds. The rudimentary display didn’t give a ton of details and didn’t include the gravesite they were looking for, but it did show the location of the museum dedicated to Rublev.

“You think the grave might be next to the museum?” Tommy asked. He tugged the zipper all the way up on his coat. Snowflakes landed on his shoulders and slipped off the waterproof surface.

“As good a place as any to start,” Sean agreed.

The visitors made their way down the path between the old buildings. Dormitories that housed the monks for centuries dotted the property. The lack of uniformity in their design was evident. Some featured green roofs. Others had black-tiled roofs, or pinkish clay colors topping the structures. Ahead, in the center of the monastery grounds, was the Cathedral of the Savior—a gray structure with a sloping, domed tower in the middle of the building, and topped by a cross. The old stone had been well cared for throughout the years. Built in the 1400s, it had been refurbished in 1959, an odd move by the Soviets, who’d initially destroyed many of the religious buildings in Russia or simply turned them into museums.

The Saint Michael the Archangel Chapel stood next to the cathedral. Distinct architectural differences contrasted the older building. Having been constructed in the 1690s, the sharper