Commander-In-Chief Read Online Free PDF Page A

unfastened only two buttons below her breasts, then peeled up a black square of fabric held to her skin with electrical tape.She raised it up under her handbag, and she pressed it over the camera’s lens.
    Once done, she lowered her purse and glanced up at the floor-number readout.
“Vijftien,”
she said. Fifteen. She turned, watching Braam as he stood up from collecting the casings.
    She said, “One in each guard, three in the target.”
    Martina said nothing else. Quickly Braam realized what she meant. He’d collected only four shell casings. He knelt again and found a fifth. It had rolled under the right forearm of the principal target. He pocketed it while Martina stepped in front of him to shield him from view of anyone waiting for the elevator when it reached their floor.
    It opened at seventeen, which was undergoing renovations and therefore empty. Braam pulled a small wedge-shaped doorstopper from his coat pocket and propped the door open, then they exited and moved quickly to the stairwell, with Martina slipping off her pumps as she did so.
    They hurried down the stairs and made it to the underground parking garage in less than six minutes. Martina put her shoes back on and they walked naturally through the lot, until Braam folded himself behind the wheel of their parked Audi A8, and Martina climbed in next to him.
    They left the Parque Cristal one minute and four seconds before the first alarm bells rang.
    They drove north along the Caracas–La Guaira highway in the direction of the airport, and most of the trip was conducted in silence. The pair had done this sort of thing before, so even though the fight-or-flight chemicals coursing through their central nervous system increased their heartbeat and blood pressure, they remained outwardly cool and calm.
    The Audi pulled into the parking lot of the Playa GrandeCaribe Hotel and Marina, on the shoreline of the Caribbean Sea. Braam parked and each of them grabbed a rolling duffel from the trunk, and with the luggage trailing behind them they walked through the hotel’s entrance. Passing the reception counter, they strolled through the large facility, until finally they exited the back and continued down a winding sidewalk that led them to the marina itself.
    Here they climbed into a small gray dinghy, Braam started the engine, and they motored out to a forty-two-foot sailboat moored in the marina.
    Braam started the engine while Martina unhooked the line from the mooring ball, and in moments they were churning out of the marina and into open water.
    Braam kept one eye on the sea in front of him and the other on his laptop. Open in his browser was a weather forecast for the southern Caribbean. The conditions looked fair for the next twenty-four hours, which was crucial if they were going to make it to Curaçao by three a.m. There was a six-forty a.m. direct flight to Amsterdam the next morning, and the Jaegers had tickets and every intention of being home by tomorrow night.
    Twenty minutes after setting sail, Martina stepped up to the bridge with two glasses of champagne in her hands. She passed one to Braam, seated at the helm, and with it she gave him a high five.
    No one was around to see this, they were miles out to sea, and if anyone had been, they would have adjusted their show of affection to tie in better with their cover for status: that they were husband and wife.
    Braam and Martina Jaeger were not, in fact, married. They were brother and sister, and they were contract killers working for Russian intelligence.

3
    T hree days after the explosion of the liquefied natural gas facility in Lithuania, two well-dressed businessmen sat together at a café table in a little restaurant attached to the main hall of Warsaw’s Centralna station. The older of the two was nearing fifty, short but powerfully built, with curly dark hair flecked with a significant amount of gray. The younger was in his thirties and of average height, with short brown hair and a trimmed