by Larry Bond
Ferguson ducked down toward the floor, avoiding the worst of the smoke as he got his bearings. The lights shut off; the flames behind them tinged the darkness red.
A face loomed out of the blackness.
“This way,” said Nathaniel Hamilton, holding a handkerchief to his mouth and nose. “Out the side.”
“I hate going out the servants’ entrance,” said Ferguson.
“Suit yourself,” said Hamilton, raising the pistol in his hand.
~ * ~
36
NORTHEASTERN SUDAN
Rankin put his foot down on the gas, accelerating as the first bus in the convoy started to move. The road was wide enough for two cars to pass; the shoulders were deep with sand. If he could crash into the bus before it got too far from the others, he could jam them up temporarily, slow them down long enough for the soldiers to arrive. But he was a hundred yards away, much farther than he’d hoped. Not only might the lead bus separate from the others, but it would have plenty of time to pick up speed.
Ferg would just plow right into the bus, and somehow walk away. That was Ferg, larger than life, completely invincible. The luckiest SOB on the planet.
Unlike me, thought Rankin. He pushed his head down closer to the wheel. The truck bounced on the hardscrabble road, threatening to jerk out of control. His left arm was worse than useless, throbbing with pain.
The bus driver began to veer to the left, toward the soft dirt at the side of the road. But he was too late—Rankin yanked the wheel hard, spinning the truck into a one-eighty and piling into the front quarter of the bus.
Behind him, Guns spun his truck ninety degrees across the roadway, skidding into the bus immediately behind the one Rankin hit. The bus’s back end fishtailed across the road and tipped down, wedged against the pickup.
Rankin, stunned by the impact, sat dazed in his truck, his whole body now wrapped in pain. I have to get out of here, he thought to himself, but he couldn’t move.
Guns jumped from his truck, the AK-47 in his hand. In the flickering torchlight he saw two men running toward him. Something blinked red from near their midsections. They were shooting at him.
He fired a burst from the gun and both men went down.
Rankin couldn’t move, and couldn’t figure out why. Finally he realized he still had his seat belt on. He pulled it off, then reached for the door. It wouldn’t open.
It would open for Ferguson, wouldn’t it?
Rankin was obsessed with him; they all were. That’s why Rankin was so pissed off at Ferguson—he was lucky and sarcastic but, most of all, good at what he did. Better than Rankin would ever be.
Better.
So what?
Rankin wasn’t used to anyone being better than him, that’s what. The officers he served under—they weren’t better than him, not at what he did.
But Ferguson was better.
He was going to have to live with it.
Rankin pushed at the door again. The only way to get it open was to use his left shoulder. He gritted his teeth together, closed his eyes, and pummel ed against it. The door flew open and he tumbled onto the ground.
Guns kept firing to keep people back, sending short bursts into the ground near them. He didn’t see any other weapons, but couldn’t take too many chances. He backed toward Rankin, who was lying on the ground near the truck, cursing and moaning all in one breath.
~ * ~
D
r. Hamid had just started mixing a new batch of the infected juice when he heard the crash. He secured the bacteria cultures, then ran from the hut. People were pointing toward the buses, crying, wailing.
“What is this?” he said, starting to run past the tables where the juice was being given out. He saw that some of the buses had crashed into each other, and into a truck—two trucks.
There were gunshots.
Hamid looked up, and saw a wedge-shaped shadow in the sky. It was hard to see in the dusk, and at first he didn’t know what it was. Then he saw another, and another.
Parachutes.
He turned and ran toward the lab building.
~ * ~
W
atch it!” yelled Rankin, spotting one of the camp guards running toward them with a rifle. Rankin fired his pistol at the man, who threw himself down. Before the guard could bring his rifle around to fire, Rankin fired again. This time he hit the guard square in the head.
About time I hit something, Rankin thought to himself.
“Parachutes!” said Guns. “Van’s here.”
“We should find the lab,” said Rankin, starting forward.
Guns grabbed him. “They’re full of poison, remember? We can’t touch them.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I wasn’t thinking.”
One of the cottages blew up in a tremendous explosion.
“Trying to destroy the evidence,” said Guns.
“Too late for that,” said Rankin, looking at the people standing forty yards away in the dim light near the wrecked buses.
~ * ~
37
TRIPOLI, LIBYA
Ferguson threw himself into Nathaniel Hamilton’s midsection as the MI6 agent fired. The two fell backward, rolling against one of the half walls that separated the bar area from the tables. Hamilton, shocked that he had missed, tried to push his gun closer to fire again. But Ferguson was too close to him.
Rostislawitch saw the gun in Hamilton’s hand and froze. Ferguson and the British agent wrestled themselves against the half wall, each man trying to pummel the other as the smoke curled around them. A piece of the ceiling dropped down, burning. It just missed them.
The rocks that lined the club’s wall were not actual rocks, but rather Styrofoam imitations. The fire had reached a point where they began to incinerate. When the flames first touched them, they caught with a fizzle, the painted skin literally boiling. Then the interior of the “stone” would burst with a pop. Finally, the mastic that held them in place caught on fire and blue flames consumed the wooden structure of the wall.
Rostislawitch shook off his shock. He had to do something, he knew, or he and the American would be killed. Rostislawitch saw the gun in Hamilton’s hand and thought he could pull it away. Jumping up, he grabbed the man’s arm, wrestling it away from Ferguson’s body. But the British agent was considerably stronger than the scientist had thought, and continued flailing at Ferguson.
“I hate you, Ferguson, you bastard,” said Hamilton, pushing against him. Hamilton fired the gun again, though something was clamped to his arm.
The gun’s loud report shook Rostislawitch, and once more he froze, petrified, his arm hooked around Hamilton’s forearm.
For Ferguson, the second shot was a catalyst, a call for the last reserves of his strength. He pivoted his right leg down and drove himself harder into Hamilton, pushed his weight against the Brit’s arm. Then Ferguson saw Hamilton’s jaw a few inches from his head. He tried to bring his right arm up to smash it, but Hamilton had it pinned to his side. So Ferguson did the next best thing—he tucked his head down and then butted full force into the not-so-solid English jaw.
Hamilton felt a shock of pain run from his chin through his molars to his tongue and skull. The side of his tongue had gotten caught between his teeth and began bleeding. He tried to fire another shot, but before he could the wall behind him gave way and his whole body felt as if it were on fire. He tried to wriggle from Ferguson’s grip. To Hamilton’s surprise, it worked; he rolled to his stomach to crawl away.
Instead, he felt himself being dragged backward. Ferguson had grabbed him by the legs.
“You bastard,” Hamilton shouted. He twisted to fire at Ferguson, then realized the scientist was still wrapped around his arm.
Ferguson saw Hamilton’s arm starting to move and let go of his legs. He leapt up into the smoke and fire, aiming his heels toward the Brit’s wrist. Ferguson’s left heel missed in the smoke, but his right snapped five bones in the Englishman’s hand. Hamilton’s yowl was louder than the siren
s outside.
“Side stairs,” Ferguson told Rostislawitch. He grabbed Hamilton’s feet again. The fumes from the fire were a putrid, toxic mix that took his breath away, and he began coughing so badly his stomach turned.
Rolling on the floor, Rostislawitch saw Ferguson and Hamilton moving toward a small blue square. The scientist started crawling after them, swimming on his hands and knees in the haze. They went through the bar into a service area. A whiff of fresh air revived him, and he began scrambling forward.
Ferguson pulled Hamilton, still shrieking, up the four steps to a small patio area at the side of the building. He let go of the renegade MI6 agent and collapsed against a chain-link fence, gulped the fresh air. He was about to go back inside when Rostislawitch came crawling up the steps.
Writhing in pain, Hamilton cursed Ferguson. “You’re a cool son of a bitch, aren’t you, Ferguson?” he said over and over.
“Who paid you to kill me?” said Ferguson, still trying to clear his head.
“Three million pounds, Bob Ferguson, for screwing the Syrians out of their nuclear material. Three million fuckin’ pounds.”
“I would have thought more,” said Ferguson.
One of the waiters from inside had been trapped by the flames. Ferguson heard him calling for help near the door. He looked at Hamilton, curled into a ball, then leapt back down the stairs. A large piece of the bar, fortunately not on fire, had collapsed on the man’s legs as he tried to crawl out. Ferguson wrenched it away, then picked the man up and took him out over his shoulder. He was so woozy when he hit the stairs that he began to trip. He pirouetted around, managing a semi-soft landing with the man against the chain-link fence surrounding the patio.
Ferguson looked up and saw Hamilton pointing a cell phone at him.
“What are you going to do, quick-dial me to death?” said Ferguson.
“Hardly. You bastard.” Hamilton pulled himself to his feet. He extended the disguised gun toward Ferguson. He was unsteady; he’d have to shoot for the heart.
But it would feel good, very, very good, killing him.
“I’d do this for free,” Hamilton told Ferguson. He looked down at the cell phone’s number pad, moving his thumb to the space button to fire.
Before he could, a bullet from a Baikal MP-445 compact struck him in the side of the temple. Fired at close range, the bullet not only shattered his skull but pushed him over, sending him crashing into the fence next to Ferguson.
Kiska stood behind him. She moved her pistol in Ferguson’s direction.
“I want the scientist, Bobby,” she said.
“He gets to make that decision, Kiska.”
“I can just shoot you and take him.” She pointed her gun at Ferguson’s head.
“You could,” he said.
Rostislawitch, remembering the pistol in his pocket, started to reach for it.
“I can shoot you as well,” she told him, pointing her gun down at him.
“Actually, I don’t think you should shoot anybody,” said Ferguson. He moved his right hand out from behind his back, making the .45 more conspicuous. It was pointed at her head.
“Is it a standoff, Bobby? You kill me and I kill you?”
“Maybe,” said Ferguson. “But I’m going to guess Captain Heifers there is probably faster than both of us.”
Heifers was standing a few feet away, his Beretta trained on Kiska’s head.
“He’s a Russian citizen,” she told Ferguson. “He can’t escape justice.”
“Did you take the Iranian?” Ferguson asked.
“We have him. You want him?”
“No. I think he belongs with you. I think he was your target all along. When the smoke clears, I think it will turn out that the FSB actually set up the entire sting,” said Ferguson. “I think you used the scientist to lure the corrupt Iranian businessman here. I don’t think the CIA was involved at all. Or MI6.”
Kiska frowned, though she had a feeling that what Ferguson was proposing would, ultimately, make a lot of sense. It had in the past.
“Who is he?” she said, pointing to the man she had shot.
“Nathaniel Hamilton. Also known as T Rex. I wish you hadn’t shot him. But e’est la guerre.”
“If I hadn’t shot him, you’d be dead, Bobby.”
Ferguson, who’d had his gun ready, disagreed. But he didn’t like arguing with a lady.
“You’re probably right,” he told her.
“You owe me another one, Bobby,” said Kiska, lowering her weapon. “I expect to collect someday.”
“You know me. I always pay my debts.”
~ * ~
38
TRIPOLI, LIBYA
Thera felt her heart jump as Ferguson and Rostislawitch emerged from Laxy’s. She shouted to them. Rostislawitch ran to the car; Ferguson strolled behind, as if he had not a care in the world.
“Take us to the hotel,” said Ferguson, getting in the back. “My friend needs a shower.”
Rostislawitch reached into his pocket and took out the pistol to hand it back to Thera.
“Careful where you point that, Doc,” said Ferguson, grabbing it.
“I—thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
“There is something you could do for us,” Ferguson told him. “Tell us everything you know about the Russian germ program.”
“I don’t think I should. No. I don’t think I could.”
“Thing is, Doc, they’re going to assume you did anyway. They probably won’t prosecute you, because we’ll give Kiska the evidence to back up my version of the story, and they wouldn’t want to risk that coming out. Kind of make them look bad. But they won’t let you do anything important, either. They’re not completely stupid.”
“I’ll have to think,” said Rostislawitch.
“Totally up to you,” said Ferguson. “Don’t let the fact that we saved your life enter into your consideration at all. Because it is irrelevant.”
Ferguson started to laugh. The others couldn’t figure out why.
“What happened to Kiska Babev?” Thera asked. “Did you get the message?”
“What message?”
“Corrigan called, Thomas Ciello figured out she wasn’t T Rex.”
“Oh yeah, I knew that.”
“You did?”
“I’ve been telling you that. T Rex wasn’t after Rosty. T Rex wanted me.”
“You?”
“Sure.” He pulled off his coat and began undoing the bulletproof vest he’d been wearing. He hated wearing them, but then, he hated being shot even more. Hamilton’s first bullet had hit him square in the chest, right over his heart—he could still feel the pain. The bruise would be with him a long time, but it was considerably better than the alternative.
“Why was he hired to kill you?”
“I guess the Syrians are a little pissed off about the fact that the nuclear material they bought a few years back never made it to Damascus.”
“So who is T Rex?”
“It was Hamilton,” Ferguson explained. “Unfortunately, Kiska shot him in the head. It wasn’t her fault, though. She didn’t think I had a vest. Or a gun. If it were me, I would have preferred in the kneecaps so we could bring him home. Not going to bother Parnelles, though.” Ferguson pushed his legs out, trying to stretch. He was tired; he needed about twenty-four hours of sleep before he’d feel human again. “I knew Rosty wasn’t the target. Killing him isn’t that hard. He lives alone, lives in Russia. Piece of cake to kill him. No offense, Doc.”
Rostislawitch forced himself to nod.
“T Rex didn’t mind a lot of blood, but he always took the easy way out when he killed someone. He only used car bombs because the victims had bodyguards or were generally on their guard. Rosty was too easy. The trick was to make us think he was the target. That was pretty clever.”
“How long did you know it was Hamilton?”
Actually, Ferguson hadn’t been positive it was Hamilton until he showed up in front of him at the restaurant. He also
didn’t know how much of the Iranian plot Hamilton himself had known, and while he suspected that he had purposely set up his preparer to lure Ferguson here, he couldn’t be sure of that, either. But he just shrugged without answering, as if he knew the whole story, and had from the very beginning. Explaining things took away much of the mystery, kind of like a woman without any clothes.
