Assassin km-6

by David Hagberg

  At that moment the helicopters suddenly broke formation. An instant later three contrails rose up from the ground, and in seconds three of the helicopters exploded in mid-air. The other three turned away from the action.

  The man in the blue coveralls got the attention of the people around him, and excited shouts began to spread outward like ripples in a pond as others spotted the battle in the sky to the southwest.

  For a minute or two it looked like the three remaining helicopters had broken off for good, but then they swung around in a large arc and headed back.

  Now Tarankov’s train came into view between the low hills that swept down to the river. It was moving very fast, and the crowds on the south side of the station who could see the action shouted back what was happening. Tens of thousands of people tried to push their way to the back of the terminal building so that they could see what was unfolding, but they were blocked by the press of bodies.

  One of the helicopters fired a pair of missiles that streaked directly toward the locomotive, but at the-last second they exploded in mid-air short of then-target.

  An instant later another of the helicopters went up in a ball of flame on the tail of a rocket launched from the train.

  A cheer rose up from the crowd.

  This time the remaining two Hinds turned tail and headed off. For a full ten seconds it seemed as if they would make good their escape, when a pair of rockets were launched from the train, and blew them out of the sky.

  Another huge cheer spread across the vast mob, people hooting and shouting and whistling and clapping. The Tarantula had been tested and he’d proved himself. He was invincible. He had power and justice on his side. He was not only for the people, he was of the people. He was father to the Rodina — to Mother Russia — and the crowd was delirious with excitement.

  People were everywhere. On the streets, along the tracks, on the roofs of every building for as far as McGarvey could see. And still more people streamed out of the city to catch a glimpse of the first hero Russia had known since Papa Stalin. But the Tarantula was even better than Stalin, because he was coming from adversity: Moscow and the entire world were against him.

  McGarvey continued searching the sky to the west and southwest, but nothing else was up and flying, and within minutes Tarankov’s train would roar into the outskirts of the city. If the military wanted to stop Tarankov they’d either badly underestimated the firepower aboard his train, or overestimated the skill of their helicopter pilots and the effectiveness of the Hind’s weapons. It seemed more likely to him that whoever had ordered and engineered the attack had done so only for show, which placed them on Tarankov’s side. It would have been relatively easy for a pair of MiG-29 Fulcrums to stand well off, illuminate the train with their look-down-shoot down radar systems, and accurately place a half-dozen or more air-to-surface anti-armor missiles on the target before the train’s radar systems had a chance to react to the attack. But the Tarantula had spun his web very well. He had friends in high places.

  The people began to fall silent, until in the distance they could hear the distinctive roar of Tarankov’s incoming train, its whistle hooting in triumph.

  McGarvey slowly edged his way through the crowd along the south side of the square until he was in position about thirty yards from where the eight prisoners stood shivering in the frigid wind that funneled down the hills and across the broad river. They looked resigned. All the fight had gone out of them. Tarankov was coming, and they were being held captive not only by their armed guards, but by the tens of thousands of people surrounding them, and by their own fear. Nizhny Novgorod had become a model for free enterprise over the past half-dozen years, and within the next half hour or less they were going to pay the price for their successes with their lives, and they knew it.

  A broad section of the loading platform about fifty yards west of the terminal had been cleared of people, and McGarvey realized what he’d suspected all along. Tarankov had his front men here. The demonstration was too well organized, the boulevard had been kept clear for too long, and now the loading platform free of people, bespoke good planning. Yet if Tarankov’s people were here they were well blended with the crowd, because McGarvey was unable to spot them, or any unified or directed effort.

  The armored train came around the last curve before the depot, and sparks began to shoot off its wheels as it slowed down, its rate of deceleration nothing short of phenomenal, the roaring, squealing noise awesome.

  Even before it came to a complete halt, big doors in the sides of some of the armored cars swung open, hinged ramps dropped down in unison with a mind numbing crash and a dozen armored personal carriers shot off the train, their half-tracks squealing in protest as their treads bit into the brick surface of the loading platform.

  Within ten seconds the APCs had taken up defensive positions around the depot and the square, leaving a path from the rear car of the train to the prisoners who stood frozen to their places by the sheer spectacle of Tarankov’s arrival. Two hundred well-armed troops, dressed in plain battle fatigues, scrambled out of the troop carriers, and moments later a collective sigh spread across the crowd.

  A man of moderate height and build, also dressed in battle fatigues, appeared on the rear platform of the last car. He paused a moment, then raised his right fist in the air. “COMRADES, MY NAME IS YEVGENNI TARANKOV, AND I HAVE COME TODAY TO OFFER MY HAND IN FRIENDSHIP AND HELP.” His amplified voice boomed across the crowds from powerful speakers mounted on the train, and on each of the APCs.

  The people went wild, screaming his name, raising their right fists in salute, waving banners and posters with his picture. Old women and men, tears streaming down their cheeks, pressed forward, calling his name, begging for him to see them, to hear then-pleas. It reminded McGarvey of a revival tent meeting his sister had taken him to when he was a boy in Kansas. He half expected to see people on crutches and in wheelchairs making their way to Tarankov’s side so that he could heal them with his touch. In effect that’s what they were asking him to do here today. Heal the nation with his touch. Right the wrongs they’d endured for so many difficult years.

  Tarankov was joined by a dark haired woman and a tall man, both dressed in plain battle fatigues. The three of them stepped down from the train, and headed through the ranks of APCs and commandoes into the square.

  “OUR COUNTRY IS FALLING INTO A BOTTOMLESS PIT OF DESPAIR. OUR FORESTS ARE DYING. OUR GREAT VOLGA AND LAKES HAVE BECOME CESSPOOLS OF WASTE. THE AIR OVER THIS GREAT CITY OF GORKI IS UNFIT TO BREATHE. THE ONLY FOOD WORTH EATING FILLS THE BELLIES OF THE APPARATCHIKS AND FOREIGNERS HERE AND IN MOSCOW. OUR CHILDREN ARE DYING AND OUR WOMEN ARE CRYING OUT FOR HELP, BUT NO ONE IN MOSCOW CAN HEAR THEM. NO ONE DM MOSCOW WANTS TO HEAR THEM.”

  A silence descended over the people, as Tarankov strode into the square, his amplified voice continuing to roll over them.

  “OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS BANKRUPT. OUR MILITARY HAS BECOME LEADERLESS AND USELESS. HOOLIGANS AND PROFITEERS EAT INTO US LIKE A CANCER GONE WILD. AIDS AND DRUGS AND MINDLESS MUSIC ROT THE BRAINS OF OUR CHILDREN.”

  As Tarankov and his group approached the prisoners, McGarvey worked his way closer to the edge of the crowd so he could get a better look. The Tarantula was not a very imposing figure. He could have passed as any ordinary Russian on the street, or in a factory, except that his fatigues were well pressed, his boots well shined, and his face alive with intelligence and emotion. It was obvious, even at a distance, that Tarankov was no charlatan revival preacher. He was a man who truly believed that he had the answers for his people, and that he was the one to lead them out of what he was calling a cesspool of hopelessness imposed on them by the western powers.

  “MOSCOW… HOW MANY STRAINS “ARE FUSING IN THAT ONE SOUND, FOR RUSSIAN HEARTS?”

  A cheer went up from the crowd.

  “WHAT STORE OF RICHES IT IMPARTS! I WILL GIVE YOU MOSCOW! I WILL GIVE YOU RUSSIA!”

  The crowd roared its approval, chanting his name over and over.<
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  “I WILL RETURN YOUR PRIDE, YOUR HOPE, YOUR DIGNITY. I WILL RETURN THE SOVIET UNION TO YOU!”

  Again the crowd cheered wildly. They held up his picture and posters with his name or the tarantula symbol, and chanted his name.

  The attractive woman beside him was his East German wife Liesel. Rencke had come up with one photograph of her taken while she was at Moscow University. She had held her good looks, and her figure was still slight. She was beaming at her husband with such a look of open admiration and adoration that whoever loved Tarankov, had to love her.

  “IT IS BETTER TO LOSE A RIVER OF BLOOD NOW THAN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY LATER, EVEN IF IT IS RUSSIAN BLOOD,” Tarankov shouted. He stopped a few yards in front of the prisoners, unbuttoned the flap of his holster and pulled out his Makarov pistol. “WE WILL ONLY SPILL THE BLOOD OF TRAITORS.” His voice boomed across the square.

  He was wearing a lapel mike, which broadcast his voice back to a central amplifier probably aboard the train, which in turn sent it out to the loudspeakers. It was a clever bit of stagecraft.

  “LOOK AROUND AND YOU WILL SEE WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO YOU. IT IS TIME FOR A CLEAN SWEEP BEFORE WE ALL CHOKE ON THE FILTH.”

  The man beside Tarankov stood a full head taller than his boss, and unlike Liesel he wasn’t looking at Tarankov with adoration. Instead his eyes continually swept the crowd. It was obvious that he was a professional who had no illusions about Tarankov’s safety. No one was immune from assassination, and he knew it.

  His gaze landed on McGarvey and remained for a moment. McGarvey raised his right fist in salute, and shouted Tarankov’s name with the chanting crowd, and the man’s eyes moved away.

  McGarvey had no doubt that he was Leonid Chernov. And in the brief moment that Tarankov’s right hand man had looked at him, McGarvey had the uneasy sensation that an old enemy of his had come back from the pauper’s grave in Portugal. His name was Arkady Kurshin, and he’d been General Baranov’s right hand man a number of years ago. Because of Kurshin” McGarvey had lost a kidney, and had nearly lost his life. No man before or since had been as dangerous an enemy. But at this moment, McGarvey thought he’d just looked into the eyes of Kurshin’s equal, and a slight shiver played up his spine, a little tingle reached up from his gut chilling him like a fetid breeze coming from an open grave.

  “WHEN OUR STRUGGLE IS OVER, I PROMISE THAT I WILL RAISE A BRONZE STATUE WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS IN DZERZHINSKY SQUARE OF A YOUNG RUSSIAN SOLDIER, HIS RIFLE RAISED OVER HIS HEAD, AND HIS FACE TURNED UP TO HEAVEN IN HOPE.”

  McGarvey moved a few yards away, and a little deeper into the mob. When he caught a glimpse of Chernov again the man was looking directly at the spot where McGarvey had been standing. Chernov suspected something. But he didn’t know yet, he couldn’t know.

  “TRAITORS TO THE PEOPLE,” Tarankov shouted. “ALL OF YOU.” He raised his pistol and shot one of the prisoners in the forehead, driving the older man dressed in a business suit backward, his head bouncing off the pavement, blood splashing behind him.

  One of the women screamed, and Tarankov shot her twice in the chest, knocking her off her feet.

  In the next seconds a half-dozen of Tarankov’s commandoes opened fire on the remaining prisoners who madly tried to scramble out of the way, cutting them down before they could get more than a step or two.

  When the firing stopped, the crowd went totally wild, cheering and hooting in a frenzy of bloodlust, that seemed as if it had the power to continue unabated for hours if not days.

  Tarankov bolstered his pistol, then turned to his people and raised his hands. Almost immediately the crowd fell silent.

  “I HAVE A VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF THE RODINA WHICH I WILL SHARE WITH YOU TODAY, COMRADES,” he began.

  McGarvey glanced over at Chernov who was staring at him, and he let all expression drain from his face except for one of love and admiration. Tarankov was his hope too.

  But one thing was certain. Tarankov was not going to wait until the general elections in June to take over the government. He would almost certainly make his move much sooner than that, and McGarvey had a good idea exactly when that would be..

  EIGHTEEN

  Chevy Chase, Maryland

  Pulling into the driveway of her mother’s two story colonial across from the country club at 9:00 a.m.” Elizabeth felt like death warmed over, yet she was more alive than she’d ever been. She was working for Operations, and if everything went right she’d soon be working with her father. It couldn’t have been better, though she had to find him first, and keep Ryan’s goons away from him until they figured out what their next moves would be.

  It had been after midnight by the time she was able to go home and then she hadn’t got much sleep. They’d set her up with a false passport and a complete legend under the name Elizabeth Swanson, from New York City. Her contact procedures were direct to Tom Moore on a blind number. When she went to France she was supposed to report to the COS Tom Lynch.

  Between photo sessions and briefings, Elizabeth had managed to get back down to her own computer console. Toivich was gone for the evening, and no one else in the section had been told yet that she no longer worked for the DI. With her new operational designation it only took fifteen minutes to get into the archival section for former personnel where she called up her father’s extensive file. Within the first five minutes of reading, her mouth had dropped open and stayed there until she was called back upstairs around ten.

  Her father was James Bond personified. He’d been everywhere, done everything, and had accomplished in spades every single assignment he’d ever been given. Four presidents had given him secret citations, and every DCI and DDO, except for Ryan, gave him glowing marks. If she’d read correctly between the lines, her father had literally saved the country from war in the Pacific eighteen months ago. Before that he’d saved Los Angeles and San Francisco from a nuclear attack by a Japanese terrorist. Although he’d not been on the Company’s payroll for years, it seemed that each time the CIA got itself into a jam, they called on her father to help them out.

  He’d been wounded numerous times, had lost a kidney in one operation, and Phil Carrara, a former boss who had himself been killed in the line of duty, had written that more than any other person in the CIA, McGarvey had done the most to help win the Cold War, a sentiment even President Lindsay wholeheartedly endorsed.

  Several times during her reading, she had to choke back tears. Her father had given his entire life to his country, but in public he was a nothing, and in private Howard Ryan, the third most powerful man in America’s intelligence community, despised him. On top of that he thought that his parents had been spies. A shame that he’d carried with him for all of his adult life.

  There was so much that she wanted to say to him, so many things she wanted to tell him, so much she wanted to know, but none of it mattered one whit to her. The only thing that mattered was that she loved him with all of her soul. More now than when she was a little girl and fantasized about him and her mother getting back together. So much that she could hardly “contain herself from bubbling over.

  Her mother, wearing a white bathrobe, her hair bundled up in a towel, opened the front door of the house and beckoned to her.

  Elizabeth got out of her car and hurried up the walk to her mother, and pecked her on the cheek. “Hi, Mother.”.

  “What are you doing here in Washington, and why didn’t you come right in? Why were you sitting there like a lump on a log?” Kathleen McGarvey demanded. She was almost as tall as her daughter, and even more beautiful in a classic sense. Her neck was long, her features sharply denned, her lips full, her high cheekbones delicately arched, and her eyes brilliantly green. Although she was nearly fifty, she could have passed for a haute couture fashion model anywhere in the world. Her beauty was timeless, like Audrey Hepburn’s and Jackie Kennedy’s had been.

  “I was trying to figure out the best way of telling you what I have to tell you. There’s so much of it, I don’t know where to start.
”

  They went inside, and Kathleen gave her daughter a sharply appraising look. “Good heavens you’re not pregnant, are you, dear?”

  “No, Mother, I’m not pregnant. But if I were I’d be at an abortion clinic, not here. I’m not ready to have kids.”

  Kathleen patted down a strand of her daughter’s hair. “No, I don’t expect you are ready,” she said wistfully. “Nor am I quite ready to become a grandmother. Now, when did you get into Washington?” she asked as they went into the kitchen.

  The coffee was ready, and Elizabeth got them a couple of cups. “About six months ago.”

  “Oh?” Kathleen said, pouring the coffee.

  Elizabeth perched on one of the stools at the counter across from her mother, and sipped her coffee. She could have used a cigarette, but that was something she definitely wasn’t ready to tell her mother. “I got a job here in town, but I wanted to wait until I was sure it was going to work out before I told you about it.”

  Kathleen sipped delicately at her coffee. “Would you care for something to eat, Elizabeth? I could warm up some cinnamon rolls, you like those.”

  “Just coffee, Mom.”

  “Mother,” Kathleen corrected automatically. She didn’t like abbreviations or diminutives. Elizabeth, not Liz. And Kathleen, not Katy. It was a habit she’d never been able to break her husband of.

  “Sorry,” Elizabeth mumbled, lowering her eyes.

  “I see,” Kathleen said. “Look at me please.”

  Elizabeth looked up.

  “I’m not going to like what you’re going to tell me very much, am I?”

  “Probably not. I’m working for the Central Intelligence Agency. In the Directorate of Operations, just like Daddy.”.

  Kathleen’s composure slipped a little, but she brought it back. “Your father has done very good, even great things for his country. I’m sure you know that. But do you know exactly what his job was?”

  “Yes, I do.”