Smith stopped rolling. Either they started fighting back or they were dead. His eyes narrowed and he took rapid aim at the row of planter boxes. He pulled the trigger, firing as quickly as he could while swinging the barrel from one end of the little train station to the other. The MP5 stuttered loudly, punching rounds toward Brandt and his men. Hit by one of his bursts, a terracotta planter exploded, sending pieces of shattered pottery, dirt, and bits of shredded bark and leaves swirling through the air.
The gunman crouching behind that planter toppled backward and lay still. His Uzi clattered to the pavement.
One down, Smith thought grimly. He shifted his aim again, swiveling toward Brandt’s second gunman. Brandt himself was next to his subordinate, down on one knee with his semiautomatic pistol out.
The three men opened fire at the same time.
Again, bullets hammered the paving and the air around Jon. One round tore a line of fire across the top of his right shoulder. Another near miss ripped through his assault vest, sending a torn equipment pouch tumbling away across the Piazza. Bits of broken plastic and glass littered the ground in its wake, all that was left of a handheld laser surveillance kit. A ricochet punched off the pavement and slammed into his left side, hitting with enough force to crack one of his ribs.
Deliberately, Smith fought down his fear-laced instincts to duck or to dive away from the incoming fire. Instead, his finger tightened again and again on the trigger. The MP5’s barrel jumped and bucked against his grip. Jon clenched his jaw against the searing pain from his cracked rib, and kept shooting, forcing the submachine gun back onto his targets.
Multiple 9mm rounds smacked into the funicular station, shattering glass, punching through the locked doors, and gouging huge craters in the brown basalt walls. The rest of the planter boxes blew apart. Brandt and his gunman crumpled and fell, one heaped on top of the other.
The cocking handle slammed forward as Smith fired the last of the thirty rounds in his magazine. Reacting swiftly, he snatched out the old clip, tugged a new magazine out of his ammunition pouch, and slid it into the MP5. Then he yanked back on the handle, chambering a new bullet.
He scanned the front of the station, finger on the trigger, looking closely for any sign of movement from the three bodies littering the torn pavement. Nothing stirred. There was only a sudden strange silence—the total absence of noise after the staccato, clattering roar of so much gunfire.
“Jon!” Kirov called to him. The Russian was crouching over Fiona Devin, working frantically to staunch the bleeding from the wound in her thigh. “I need your help,” he said bleakly.
Smith rolled back to his feet, staggering slightly as a new wave of pain from his cracked rib ripped through him, and then hurried over to the wounded woman. Fiona was still conscious. But she was pale and shivering, starting to go into shock.
He glanced across at Kirov. The Russian was just as pale. “Go after Malkovic, Oleg. He ran into the fortress over there,” Jon said softly. “I’ll take care of her.”
Kirov shook his head angrily. “No, I—”
“I’m a doctor, remember?” Smith said urgently. “Let me do my job. Now you go and do yours. If Malkovic escapes, everything we’ve done has been in vain. Now move!”
Kirov stared back at him for a second longer. He scowled darkly, but then he nodded. Without saying anything more, he bent down and touched Fiona’s forehead gently. Then he grabbed his submachine gun, jumped to his feet, and loped away, heading for the fortress gate.
Smith went down on his knees beside Fiona and began examining the injury, pulling the torn cloth of her jeans away carefully to get a good look at both the entry and exit wound. He felt around her leg with his fingers, pressing hard in places to check for any pieces of broken bone. She hissed sharply through gritted teeth.
“Sorry,” Jon told her quietly. He tore open a field dressing kit and shook out a pressure bandage. Then he began wrapping it tightly around her wounded leg. She winced again. Next, he stripped off his assault vest, balled it up, and used it to elevate her wounded leg.
“How bad is it?” Fiona asked softly.
“You were lucky,” Smith replied flatly.
She forced a smile. “That’s the second time tonight you’ve told me that, Colonel. Somehow I don’t feel quite as fortunate this time around.”
Jon smiled back at her. “All luck is relative, Ms. Devin.” He turned serious. “Somehow the bullet that hit you missed every major blood vessel and the bone itself. Your thigh muscle is torn to hell, but it should heal nicely—once we’ve got you in a decent hospital.”
Once he had finished stabilizing Fiona, he shook open another field dressing, pulled up his sweater, and then used pieces of adhesive tape to strap his cracked rib, holding it in place. With that taped down, Smith used another length of bandage to form a sling for his left arm and looped it around his neck.
Randi Russell’s excited voice suddenly came through his headset. “Jon,” she said quickly. “Renke’s dead, but I’ve got some of his materials. I’m heading up the hill now. What’s your situation?”
Smith keyed his mike. “Brandt is dead, too. But Malkovic slipped away and Ms. Devin is wounded.” Speaking quickly, he briefed her on the rest of the situation, including their location in the Piazza Cahen. “How soon can you get here?”
“Give me five minutes,” she promised.
“Understood,” Smith said. “Come as fast as you can. And whistle up the Pave Low helicopter using the codes I gave you. Tell them to stand by to extract us.”
“Where will you be?” Randi asked.
“I’m going after Malkovic myself. I’ll keep you posted. Out.” He picked up his weapon, stood up, and looked down at Fiona. “Randi will be here soon. Will you be all right until then?”
Still pale, she nodded. “I will. Now go help Oleg run that bastard down.”
“And you sit tight. No trying to walk on that wounded leg of yours,” Smith said firmly. “That’s an order.”
Then he turned and sprinted away across the Piazza.
Erich Brandt swam up through the darkness, fighting against the pain that threatened to drown his senses. His eyes blinked open as he came back to full consciousness. He was lying on the pavement with a dead weight pressing down across his legs. The hot, coppery smell of fresh blood filled his nostrils. He turned his head slightly, wincing at the agony that caused him. More blood dripped onto the Piazza.
One of his men lay heaped on top of him, plainly dead—shot multiple times.
Brandt carefully raised his own hand, gingerly touching his forehead. A crease torn there stung like fire. He felt broken bone grate beneath the loose flap of skin. His vision darkened and he jerked his bloodstained fingers away hastily. It would not do to think too closely about what this head wound might mean.
He heard footsteps racing toward him and closed his eyes until they were only narrow slits. Breathing shallowly, he watched a lean, dark-haired man go running past, with one arm in an improvised sling and the other holding a submachine gun.
It was Smith, Brandt saw in amazement. Somehow the American had escaped from Russia, and now here he was in Orvieto, hot on Malkovic’s heels. The realization jolted him into action. Slowly, he inched his way out from under the corpse. He found his pistol and then crawled away, staying low to the pavement until he reached the shelter of some trees and shrubs planted near the high arched gate that opened into the Fortezza dell’Albornoz. Once in cover, the gray-eyed man stood up and then staggered on, following in Smith’s wake.
Using both hands, Fiona levered herself up into a sitting position, being careful to keep her bandaged leg stretched out in front of her. The effort left her feeling dizzy. She waited a few moments for her head to stop whirling and then looked up, staring out across the moonlit square. Frightened voices were calling out to each other in the city behind her, as Orvieto’s citizens tried to make some sense of all the explosions and gunfire ringing through their ancient town.
Fio
na frowned. She looked down at her watch, wondering where Agent Russell was. If the local police got there before the CIA officer arrived to help her, she was in real trouble. Neither Klein nor President Castilla could break the Covert-One secret to explain her actions, and she suspected the Italian authorities would look severely on a supposed freelance journalist caught wandering around their country armed to the teeth.
She studied the bullet-riddled funicular railway station, noting the two corpses sprawled across the Piazza in front of its shattered windows. Her eyes narrowed sharply. Two corpses? There should be three.
For an instant, Fiona sat rigid, feeling ice-cold. One of Brandt’s men, maybe Brandt himself was on the loose…and without her radio, she had no way to warn the others. Painfully, she pushed herself to her feet and hobbled slowly toward the fortress.
Smith found Kirov and Konstantin Malkovic standing together on the upper ramparts of the fortress. The cliff face fell away sharply below the walls, plunging almost vertically through a tangle of scrub trees and bushes to the lights of Orvieto Scalo and the autostrada below. The financier had his hands high up in the air. An opened briefcase lay at his feet.
The Russian held his submachine gun pointed casually at the older, white-haired man. He glanced over his shoulder at Jon. “Mr. Malkovic has agreed to cooperate with us,” he said drily. “It appears that he bitterly regrets his unwise decision to assist President Dudarev in his various conspiracies.”
“I’m sure he does,” said Smith, equally drily. “What’s in the briefcase?”
“Important information for our government,” Malkovic said eagerly. “Everything that I’ve been able to learn about Russia’s military plans.”
For the first time in days, Jon felt some of the weight lift off his shoulders. With Malkovic alive and talking, and with evidence of Dudarev’s plans to invade his smaller neighbors, it was just possible that the United States might be able to fend off open hostilities with Russia.
“Drop your weapons,” a harsh, pain-filled voice said suddenly from behind them. “Do it now. Or I will shoot.”
Smith stiffened. He knew that voice. But Brandt was dead. He’d shot the bastard himself.
“You have three seconds,” Brandt said coldly. “One. Two—”
Drained by the sudden reversal of fortune, Smith let go of his submachine gun. It clattered against the parapet. Beside him, Kirov did the same, carefully setting down his own MP5.
“Excellent,” the German told them. “Now turn around…slowly. And keep your hands up where I can see them.”
They obeyed.
Brandt stood there, just a few meters away along the battlement. His face was a horrible mask of dried blood. Bone gleamed white from a jagged cut across his forehead. He held his pistol in a one-handed grip, constantly shifting his aim slightly to cover them each in turn.
“Erich!” Malkovic said gladly, starting forward. “Thank God!” He smiled broadly. “I knew that you would save me from these men.”
“Get back,” Brandt growled, jabbing his pistol at the financier.
The smile faded from Malkovic’s face. “But Erich, I—”
“You thought you would live through this night?” The former Stasi officer sneered. “Well, I’m afraid that your speculations were in error this time. One might even call it a fatal miscalculation.” He shrugged, still holding his weapon on the three men. “Dudarev may not reward me for killing you. But your death should at least protect me from the worst of his anger.”
“You intend to kill us all?” Kirov asked bluntly.
Brandt nodded. “Naturally.” He stepped back a few paces, widening the gap between them, making it impossible for any sudden rush to reach him before he shot them all down. “The only question is which one of you dies first.”
Again the Walther’s muzzle swung from one man to the other. Then it settled on Jon and stayed there. “You, Colonel,” Brandt said coldly. “You are the first.”
And then Smith saw a lithe, pale-faced shape loom up out of the darkness behind Brandt. He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said quietly. “Remember that I once promised that you were a dead man?”
Brandt smiled icily. “Yes, you did, Colonel.” He took careful aim at Jon’s head. “But you were wrong about that, as about so much else.”
A gunshot rang out, deafening at pointblank range.
Brandt’s smile froze. Slowly, very slowly, he twisted and then fell sideways, toppling over the edge of the parapet. There was a short silence, and then a dull, crunching thud.
Smith scooped up his submachine gun, walked toward the parapet, and looked over. There, about twenty meters below, he saw Brandt’s broken corpse splayed out across the gravel path running along the foot of the fortress walls. He shrugged. “I never said I would be the one who would kill you,” he murmured to the dead man.
He looked back over his shoulder.
Fiona Devin stood there, slowly lowering her Glock. The bandage wrapped around her right thigh was dark, stained with fresh blood.
“I thought I ordered you to stay put,” Smith said mildly.
She smiled at him, with a gleeful light dancing in her eyes. “So you did, Colonel. But I’m a civilian, and I never was much good at following orders.”
“Fortunately for us,” Kirov said gruffly, coming forward to take her gently in his arms. “Thank you, my dear, dear Fiona,” he said simply. He bent down to kiss her.
Grinning, Smith looked away to keep an eye on the trembling financier. In the distance, he heard the muffled clatter of rotor blades growing louder. Their ride home was on the way.
Epilogue
February 23
Air Force One
Navigation lights blinking steadily, the 747-200B that served as Air Force One, the president’s official aircraft, flew steadily east through the night sky over Europe. The cloud cover below the aircraft was unbroken, but at this altitude the night sky was ablaze with stars. Relays of U.S. F-15 and F-16 fighters flew close by, providing continuous protection. More lights blinked in the sky some distance behind Air Force One. Two mammoth KC-10 tankers were on station there, making sure the escorting fighters were always fueled up and ready for immediate action.
“Our ETA is one hour, Mr. President,” the steward said, standing at the open door to the fully equipped cabin that served as his airborne office.
President Sam Castilla looked up from his desk. “Thank you, James.” When the door closed behind the steward, he turned to Fred Klein, who was sitting patiently on a small couch. “Ready for the big show?”
The head of Covert-One nodded. “Yes, sir.” He smiled. “Let’s hope your performance is appreciated.”
Castilla grinned. “Oh, I think it will be—though probably not in a friendly way.” He picked up the intercom phone on his desk. “General Wallace? This is the president. You may initiate that hot-line call to Moscow we talked about earlier.”
Both Klein and the president waited for several minutes while the communications staff aboard Air Force One made contact with the Kremlin. At length, an American voice spoke up, coming over the speakers hooked up inside Castilla’s office. “President Dudarev is standing by, sir.”
“Good morning, Mr. President,” Castilla said cheerfully. “I apologize for disturbing you so early, but the matter I’d like to discuss is fairly urgent.”
Dudarev’s smooth, calm voice came clearly over the secure circuit. “The hour is not a problem for me, Mr. President,” the Russian leader said politely. “I often work very late these days…an unfortunate fate which I am sure we both share.”
Castilla snorted quietly. Slick, very slick, he thought. But now it was time to drop the hammer. “Yes, I’m sure you’re extremely busy just now, Viktor,” he said coolly, deliberately deciding to use Dudarev’s first name. Bluntness could be just as much a weapon of statecraft as could subtlety and indirection. “Plotting unprovoked wars of aggression against your smaller and weaker neighbors is just so darned time-consumin
g, isn’t it?”
There was a moment’s frozen silence before the Russian replied. “I really don’t understand what you are driving at, Mr. President.”
“Let’s cut the crap, shall we?” Castilla said forcefully. He winked at Klein. “Hell, I’ve seen your mobilization schedules, operational plans, and target lists. I’ve even heard audiotapes with your voice on it discussing those same plans. And Ukrainian police units and bomb disposal squads have already found the explosives your agents rigged in Poltava, for your little piece of phony ‘anti-Russian terrorism.’”
“I do not know who could have provided you with these monstrous fabrications,” Dudarev said stiffly.
Castilla leaned forward in his chair. “Your good friend, Mr. Konstantin Malkovic, Viktor. That’s who.”
“Malkovic is a capitalist and a speculator who does business in my country,” Dudarev snarled. “Beyond that, I know nothing about him.”
Castilla shrugged. “That’s not a lie that’s going to stick, Viktor. I’d advise you to come up with some other story, real quick.” He glanced out the window, catching a brief glimpse of the blinking red and green navigation lights of his fighter escort. “Let’s talk instead about the fact that you’re going to turn around those three hundred thousand or so troops you’ve massed near Ukraine, Georgia, Kazahkstan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan and send them marching back to their peacetime barracks…and pronto.”
“Can I speak candidly, Mr. President?” Dudarev asked grimly.
“By all means,” Castilla told him, grinning across the small cabin at Klein. “I always enjoy candor. Especially since I hear it so rarely from you.”
“If I really did have so many tanks, soldiers, and aircraft ready for war, why would I abandon my plans so easily? Do you think your voice is so frightening?”
“Not in the least, Viktor,” the president said easily. “I just don’t think you’re ready for an all-out conflict with the United States—and with NATO. You’ve been thinking in terms of a lightning campaign against weak and disorganized local forces, not a slugging match with the most powerful alliance in history.”
The Moscow Vector Page 43
