The Moscow Vector

by Robert Ludlum

  “Order the staff to assemble in the lounge, Sepp. Everyone, without exception.” The former Stasi officer lowered his voice slightly. “Then tell Karl and the others that we have some necessary killing ahead of us. And ask Fyodor to bring his cases from the car trunk. We will need his explosives after all.”

  For the first time, the bodyguard’s dull eyes flickered to life. “It will be a pleasure.”

  Brandt nodded coolly. “I know. That is why I find you and your comrades so useful.” For a few seconds, he watched the man move away and begin herding the fatigued scientists and technicians out of the main lab.

  Renke came over. A slight tightening around his mouth betrayed his supreme irritation at seeing his assistants ushered away, leaving their work unfinished. “What are you playing at, Erich?” he demanded.

  “Read that,” Brandt told him flatly, nodding toward the message still displayed on Malkovic’s laptop.

  The scientist skimmed through the warning of an imminent American assault. One thin, white eyebrow slid up in mild, annoyed surprise. “Unfortunate,” he murmured. Then he looked back over his shoulder at Brandt. “We’re leaving?”

  “Correct.”

  “When?”

  “Within minutes,” the gray-eyed man said. “Retrieve what you need from your office as quickly as you can.” He nodded coolly toward Malkovic, still sitting slumped over in his chair. “Take him with you. And keep an eye on him, Herr Professor. His resources and connections are still of use to us.”

  With that, Brandt swung away, stalking toward the lounge with his pistol out and ready.

  Renke watched him go for a moment and then looked down at the shaken billionaire. “Come, Mr. Malkovic,” he snapped. “This way.”

  Numbly, the taller man got to his feet, grabbed his briefcase and laptop, and followed the weapons scientist down the central corridor.

  Inside his windowless office, Renke crossed quickly to the bookcases concealing his combination wall safe and freezer. After entering his code, he pressed his thumb to the built-in fingerprint scanner. Cold vapor puffed out as the door swung open.

  Gunfire erupted inside the building, muffled by thick, soundproofed walls. There were high-pitched wails and shrieks. When the quick fusillade ended, only a few agonized moans broke in the sudden, eerie silence, along with the sound of a man weeping in sheer terror. A pistol barked three times. The silence became absolute.

  “My God!” Malkovic groaned. “The Marines are here already!” He shrank back against the nearest wall, clutching the briefcase containing information on Dudarev’s military plans and the Russian leader’s involvement in HYDRA to his chest as though it would protect him from American bullets.

  Renke snorted. “Calm yourself. That was only Brandt eliminating my unfortunate assistants.” He donned a heavy glove and pulled out the rack of vials inside the freezer. Carefully, he lowered them into an insulated cooler.

  He smiled down at the rows of his specially crafted HYDRA variants in satisfaction. Labels on each clear glass tube bore different names, many of them Russian. In less than forty-eight hours, the material inside Malkovic’s briefcase would be useless as a means of pressuring Viktor Dudarev. Once Russian troops and tanks crossed the border, the Kremlin leader would no longer fear the exposure of his plans. He would be free to act against the trembling financier as he saw fit.

  Still smiling to himself, the scientist shut and sealed the container. Malkovic was doomed, whether or not he realized it yet. But the undetectable and incurable weapons in those vials would give Wulf Renke a firm grip on Dudarev and his cronies for the rest of their lives.

  Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith crouched low behind the front end of the car rented by Randi Russel, a dark green Volvo four-door. It sat sideways across the two-lane road, blocking the main route running around the base of Orvieto’s rugged volcanic plateau. The road, the Strada Stratale No. 71, split here, with one fork heading toward the train station, the lower town, and then on eastward toward the foothills of the distant Apennines. The other climbed gradually up the side of the massive rocky outcropping and entered the cliff-top city of Orvieto itself.

  Smith looked to his left. The plateau loomed there, a huge black shadow against the starlit sky. Just beyond the intersection, the ground rose steeply in a grassy slope dotted with stands of small trees and withered bushes. It ended abruptly in a sheer wall of cracked and crumbling tufa, a type of limestone, and basalt.

  He glanced to his right. Kirov was a couple of meters away, kneeling behind the Volvo with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun gripped in both hands. The Russian saw him looking and gave him a cool nod to show that he was ready. Beyond the road there, the ground descended in a gentle slope covered in barren fruit trees and vines. Small lights from distant farmhouses glowed here and there across the valley.

  “Here they come,” Randi Russell whispered over the radio. The CIA officer was stationed in cover a little bit farther down the road, on a low rise that offered a view of the well-lit ECPR compound, roughly a kilometer away. She was their forward observer. “I count two cars. Both black Mercedes, moving fast.” She hesitated and then went on. “Looks like you were right, Jon. Maybe you’re getting better at this soldier stuff.”

  “Understood,” Smith said softly.

  Despite the knowledge that he was facing imminent action, part of him relaxed slightly. Randi had argued vehemently for setting up their ambush much closer to the Center. She had wanted to make sure that Malkovic, Renke, and their subordinates couldn’t slip past them by taking one of the other, smaller country lanes that crisscrossed the valley. But Jon had vetoed her idea, pointing out that hitting the enemy too close to that fortified lab building only offered them the chance of retreating back into its impenetrable protection. And then, once Malkovic and the others realized the U.S. Marine assault they had been warned about was only a gigantic bluff, they would be free to follow their original scheme and fly out to safety.

  Instead, Smith had gambled that Brandt would lead his employers this way, since this road offered the fastest means of putting distance between them and the ECPR. And once they crossed the north-south autostrada near the Orvieto train station, the fugitives would be able to cross the Apennines on little-used secondary roads and make for Italy’s Adriatic coast.

  He tensed, hearing the noise of powerful car engines drawing nearer. He yanked back on the cocking handle of his MP5, forcing a 9mm round into the chamber. One hand made sure that the weapon’s firing selector was set for three-round bursts. He crouched lower, staying out of sight behind the heavy Volvo.

  The approaching engines grew louder.

  Headlights suddenly washed over the Volvo, throwing its strangely distorted shadow farther up the slope. Tires squealed sharply as the lead Mercedes braked hard to avoid crashing into their improvised roadblock. A second later, more brakes squealed as the second black sedan swerved abruptly and stopped in the middle of the road to avoid slamming into the first.

  Immediately, both Smith and Kirov stood up from behind the Volvo, leveling their submachine guns at the lead car, just fifteen meters away. There was more movement higher up the slope. Fiona Devin jumped up from her own hiding place, a half-buried limestone boulder that must have tumbled from the cliff face centuries before. Peering intently through her Glock semiautomatic’s front and rear sights, she took careful aim at the second car.

  “Come out of the car!” Smith shouted, with his eyes narrowed against the glare of the headlights. “Now! With your hands up!”

  His pulse roared in his ears. This was the critical moment. Their need to take prisoners if possible outweighed every other consideration, even their own safety.

  The two Mercedes sedans just sat there, angled awkwardly across the road. He could not see any movement through their darkly tinted windows.

  “This is your last warning!” Jon snapped loudly. “Get out of the damned cars! Now!” His finger tightened on the trigger.

  One of the lead car’s back d
oors popped open. Slowly, a man, one of Malkovic’s bodyguards, climbed out and stood facing them. He kept his empty hands spread carefully apart at shoulder height. “I am unarmed,” he said, speaking in heavily accented English. “What is it that you want? Are you with the police?”

  “No questions,” Kirov growled. “Tell Malkovic and the others to get out! They have ten seconds before we open fire!”

  “I understand,” the other man said quickly. “I will tell them.”

  The bodyguard half-turned, just as though he was going to lean back in through the open door and talk to those inside. But then, moving with incredible speed, he whirled back around. One hand darted inside his heavy wool coat and came out gripping a pistol-sized Uzi submachine gun.

  Smith and Kirov fired at the same time.

  Hit by several rounds that tore right through him, the bodyguard toppled backward. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  But in that same instant, the driver of the lead Mercedes stamped down hard on the accelerator. The black sedan roared ahead, aiming straight for the front end of the Volvo. The second Mercedes swung back behind the first and accelerated, too.

  Too late, Smith realized his mistake. Those bastards had sacrificed a man to decoy him out of position. He swung the barrel of the MP5 through a short arc and fired again, this time aiming straight into the first oncoming car’s engine compartment. His bullets punched huge holes though the hood. Sparks and pieces of shredded metal danced up under the series of impacts.

  Beside him, Kirov started shooting, aiming for the tires. Further uphill, Jon could see flame jetting from the muzzle of Fiona Devin’s Glock as she fired at the second sedan, pulling the trigger as fast as she could. Like the Russian, she was aiming for its wheels, trying to immobilize their enemies before they could break past the roadblock and race off into the night.

  Jon stood his ground behind the Volvo for a split second longer, seeing the speeding Mercedes loom up out of the darkness in front of him like a maddened elephant. He fired one more three-round burst. More torn metal flew away from the black sedan’s engine compartment.

  But then it was time to go.

  Smith dove away from behind the parked car, landed on the hard surface of the road with a teeth-rattling jolt, and then rolled frantically off into the grass. Behind him, the Mercedes slammed into the Volvo’s front end with an earsplitting crash. Locked together for a brief moment by the impact, the two cars slid up the road in a grinding spray of broken glass, shattered fiberglass, and crumpled metal. Slowly, the Volvo spun away from the crash, opening up the right-hand fork of the Y-intersection.

  With a scream of rending steel, the first Mercedes scraped past and rattled away, heading uphill toward Orvieto. Chunks of torn tread from three blown tires scattered behind it, bouncing and tumbling across the road in what looked like slow motion. Sheets of glowing sparks whirled across the gravel and asphalt surface. And then the second black sedan, also running on its metal wheel rims roared past the mangled Volvo, grinding slowly after the lead car.

  Smith rose to one knee. He opened fire again, walking bursts up the road toward the fleeing vehicles. Kirov stood close by, shooting calmly, still aiming low. Fiona came sliding down the slope toward them, snapping a new magazine into her pistol. Her face was a mask of frustration.

  “They’re getting away,” she yelled.

  Kirov fired another burst, holding the submachine gun on target as it sprayed copper-jacketed rounds uphill. Then he shook his head. “No,” he told her. “Look.”

  With a final, coughing roar from its dying engine, the first Mercedes sputtered to a stop about two hundred meters up the road. Four men scrambled out and sprinted uphill, still fleeing toward Orvieto. One of them had a shock of thick white hair and ran awkwardly, clutching a briefcase in both hands. Another, taller, had hair that glowed pale blond in the moonlight. “Malkovic and Brandt,” Smith realized. He jumped up. “Let’s go!”

  Ahead of them the second sedan careened off the road, trying to pass the stalled first car. Instead, it bottomed out in the soft soil, lurched forward a few more meters, and then ground to a halt. Four more men jumped out of this one. Two fanned out across the road, weapons in hand, evidently intending to act as a rearguard for their retreating comrades. The last two, one of them a slender man with a white beard carrying another case, hesitated for a moment while looking up the long, open stretch of road leading to Orvieto. Then they turned instead and faded uphill off the road, moving in among the trees and bushes growing at the base of the cliffs.

  Jon heard footsteps pounding up the road behind him and whirled around, raising his MP5.

  Randi Russell came loping out of the darkness, pistol in hand. “That was Renke!” she growled, pointing to where the two men had disappeared among the shadowed trees. “You and Kirov and Devin take the rest of them. I’ll go after Renke!”

  Smith nodded quickly. “Good luck.”

  Randi clapped his shoulder as she ran past him. “You, too!” Then she turned and began climbing the slope.

  Jon stripped the spent magazine out of his submachine gun and slapped in a fresh clip. He turned to Kirov and Fiona. “You ready?”

  They nodded, eyes alight—gripped, like him, by the strange exultation, verging on madness, of combat.

  “Right, then,” Smith snapped, already starting to move up the road. “Let’s finish this!”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Smith ran up the left side of the road while Kirov and Fiona moved up on the right. Far ahead of them now, still illuminated by the moonlight, he could see Malkovic and Brandt and their two bodyguards hurrying away, straining to reach the top of the plateau before their pursuers came within range. Renke and one of the other gunmen had vanished up the slope to the right, disappearing among what looked like small orchards of peach and apple trees and rows of grapevines that were planted right up to the base of the cliffs. Small yellow signs by the side of the road pointed in that direction, identifying the area as Tombe del Crocifisso del Tufo, the site of an ancient Etruscan necropolis, a city of the dead.

  It was the men lurking up ahead who most concerned Jon now. Two of Brandt’s gunmen had stayed behind while the others fled, probably under orders to kill or at least delay the Americans chasing after them. One had dropped into cover among the bushes and trees on the downhill slope. The other was hiding somewhere to the right, in the rocks and brush higher up.

  Smith frowned. Charging straight up the open road toward those guys was a really good way to get killed. Courage under fire was one thing. Suicidal madness was quite another.

  He slowed down and then dropped to one knee, carefully scanning the tangled vegetation along both sides of the road over the barrel of his submachine gun. Kirov and Fiona went prone off to his right, peering ahead with their own weapons ready.

  “See anything?” Jon hissed.

  Kirov shook his head. “No.” He glanced over at the American. “But we have to keep moving, my friend, despite the risks. All this shooting will soon draw the police.”

  Smith grinned back at him. “You don’t think the Carabinieri will buy our story about being tourists out for a midnight stroll?”

  Kirov snorted. He hefted his MP5 and ran a quick finger over the dark camouflage paint smeared across his cheeks and forehead. “For some reason, Jon, I doubt it,” he said drily.

  “Then we’d best cut the chitchat and get going,” Fiona said, sounding both amused and irritated at the same time. She scrambled to her feet and started up the road again, staying close to the verge. “I’ll draw their fire. Then you two shoot them.”

  Startled, Kirov turned, putting out a hand to stop her. “No, Fiona. Let Jon and me handle this. We were trained as soldiers. You were not. The risk is too great.”

  “Oleg is right,” Smith agreed.

  She shook her head impatiently. “No, he’s not, Colonel. And neither are you.” Fiona showed them the pistol in her hand. “I can’t count on hitting anything with this at more than twen
ty or thirty meters. Those submachine guns you’re both carrying give you an edge at longer range. So let’s make use of that.”

  Jon grimaced. Reluctantly, he shrugged at Kirov. “She’s right.”

  The Russian, scowling himself, nodded heavily. “Yes. As she is so often.” He dropped his hand, though not without a gruff plea. “But please do not get yourself killed, Fiona. If you do, I—”

  His voice thickened and then fell silent.

  Smiling now, Fiona patted Kirov gently on the head. “Yes, I know. I’ll be as careful as I can.” Then she walked on ahead, crouching slightly.

  The two men waited a few seconds and then followed her, staying low, moving cautiously through the grass on the edge of the road and keeping to the shadows wherever possible.

  One of Brandt’s gunmen, Sepp Nedel, lay hidden behind a little pile of weathered, brush-covered rocks. He peered down toward the road, watching for any signs of movement over the sights of his Micro-Uzi. He settled the weapon’s folding stock firmly against his shoulder, waiting calmly. Shooting Renke’s unarmed scientists had been a pleasant enough diversion, but this duel against armed opponents was more to his taste.

  There was a faint stir among the bushes across the road. Nedel sneered. That was typical of Fyodor Bazhenov, nervous and twitchy as always when holding a gun. The onetime KGB man was competent enough with explosives. But he was a menace to himself and others in the field.

  Something flickered at the edge of his vision. Someone was coming up the road. The German tightened his grip on the Uzi and shifted his aim. Now he could see a black-clad figure drifting closer, crouching briefly from time to time to watch and listen. A scout, Nedel thought. The correct move was obvious. Let this one pass unharmed and then kill the others who would come later.

  The scout drew nearer.

  He held his fire. Something about the moving figure’s shape intrigued him. Then he realized what it was. The American scout was a woman! Nedel bared his teeth in the darkness, anticipating even more pleasure once he had eliminated her companions.