by Will Jordan
A muted thumping sound from behind told him that at least one of their pursuers had circled around behind them and was spraying fire indiscriminately down the corridor. Instinctively Alex threw himself to the floor as several rounds whistled overhead, impacting the far wall and gouging deep holes in the concrete. As he landed, his injured ribs blazed with pain.
Once more Anya reacted. Swinging around, she dropped to one knee and opened fire into the chemical fog.
‘Alex, get out of here!’ she hissed, loosing another shot. ‘Get outside.’
Alex ducked down as another burst whistled by so close that he could feel the change in air pressure as the rounds passed him. ‘What about you?’
‘I’ll hold them here.’
The look in her eyes told its own story. She wasn’t planning to leave this place.
‘Fuck that! I—’
Suddenly she turned to look at him, her eyes blazing with fierce anger and, most of all, desperation. She needed him to do this. ‘Trust me, Alex,’ she pleaded. ‘Go now!’
There was no time to argue, no time to ponder the alternatives and reach a compromise. It was do or die.
Gritting his teeth, Alex stumbled to his feet and rushed headlong for the door. His last sight of Anya before she faded into the mist was of her rising to her feet and snapping off another shot, keeping their enemies at bay, buying him the time he needed to escape.
At the cost of her own life.
Slipping through the door and into the stairwell beyond, Alex knew he could do nothing to help her now. Nothing except survive.
*
Crichton was already in a foul mood after his failure to recapture Mitchell, but as he sprinted into the lobby of the ISS building and heard the distinctive blare of fire alarms, he sensed things were rapidly going from bad to worse.
Pausing by the reception desk, he keyed his radio. ‘Foxtrot to all units. Sitrep?’
The reply, when it came, was garbled and inaudible. Too much interference, probably from the subterranean vault in which the building’s servers were stored. That told him everything he needed to know about his comrades’ position, if not their situation.
Wasting no time, he abandoned the desk and sprinted through a set of double doors into a service corridor beyond. The corridor seemed to encircle the core of the building, giving access to offices and repair rooms along each side. A sign for stairs pointed to a door about halfway along, and straight away he made for it.
However it seemed someone else had the same idea. Crichton skidded to a stop as the door flew open and a man stumbled out into the corridor. A young man of slender build, holding something in one hand.
Yates.
For a heartbeat the young man stood rooted to the spot, staring at him as if failing to comprehend what he was seeing. Crichton had no such difficulty. Instinctively he dropped into a firing position and raised his weapon, taking aim at his target’s centre mass while his body readied itself for the recoil.
In a flash, reality seemed to snap back into place for Yates, and he stumbled backward into the stairwell, the door swinging shut just as Crichton squeezed off a shot. The round tore through the door’s wooden veneer before ricocheting off the steel frame beneath.
‘God damn it,’ he hissed, jumping to his feet and taking off in pursuit.
He covered the fifteen yards to the door in mere moments, kicking it open and advancing into the stairwell with the weapon up and ready. The clatter of feet on the metal stairs above told him that Yates was heading up, which made sense. He couldn’t go back down without running into Hawkins and the others.
But even this desperate course of action was nothing but a temporary respite. This was the only stairwell, and with no other way down Yates was effectively trapped.
Realizing he had the young man trapped, Crichton leapt up the stairs in pursuit. As he did so, he keyed his radio again. ‘Foxtrot has Tango in sight. It’s Yates. He’s heading for the roof. I’m on him!’
Having made his report, he tightened his grip on the handgun and pounded up the stairs. Mitchell might have eluded him, but no way was Yates leaving this building alive.
Chapter 45
Gripping the M1911 tightly, Anya edged along the wall, her senses painfully alert as she strained to discern any movement in the red-tinted haze around her. The warning klaxons had ceased now, as had the vents spewing out Halon gas into the server room, but visibility was still severely limited.
At least here the odds were even, and her opponents’ superior numbers counted for little. It was just as well, because she was almost out of ammunition. By her count, only two rounds remained in the M1911 – one in the mag and one in the chamber. Not much to take on a heavily armed Agency kill team.
She was running out of time. The fire alarm had undoubtedly triggered some kind of automated request for help, and it wouldn’t be long before emergency services arrived. She could only hope Alex had used the time she’d bought him and made good his escape, because he was beyond her help now.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the hiss of hydraulic pistons, followed by the buzz of an electronic lock engaging.
‘You’re not going anywhere, Anya,’ a male voice called out. American, smooth, confident and arrogant. Not the voice of a man fighting for his life at all. ‘I’ve sealed the door and destroyed the lock. It’s just you and us now.’
She continued edging along the wall, sticking to the outer edge of the room so there was less chance of being taken from behind.
‘Real heroic of you to sacrifice yourself for Yates, by the way,’ the voice taunted. ‘I’m impressed. The Anya I used to know wouldn’t have given him a second thought.’
Anya said nothing to this. She knew far better than to give away her position by rising to such bait, though she felt her heart rate increase. What did he mean by ‘the Anya he used to know’? Who was this man who had been sent to kill her?
‘Waste of time, of course. We nailed the little bastard the minute he tried to leave the building.’ She heard a snort of amusement. ‘You really think you could get by us? You tried the same thing in Iraq, as I remember. Didn’t work out so well.’
Despite herself, despite everything she’d been taught, everything that had been drilled into her about never losing focus, Anya let out an involuntary gasp of shock.
For an instant she found herself in that winding river valley near the border, injured and beaten down, surrounded by the strike team sent to capture her. Once more she felt the pain and the despair of knowing that her hastily conceived mission, her last chance at redemption, had failed.
Back then she could scarcely have imagined the ordeal that awaited her. Four years of imprisonment in a Russian fortress deep within the icy wastes of Siberia. Four years of torture, beatings, deprivation, isolation and most of all, the utter, agonizing knowledge that no one was coming for her. She had endured many hardships in her life, but that was the only experience that had truly come close to breaking her.
And it had all started the day they captured her.
How could he know about Iraq?
She could hear movement off to her left, snapping her mind back to awareness. One, possibly two operatives moving to outflank her.
Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew the empty magazine she’d ejected from her weapon earlier, took aim and hurled it against the far wall. In the deathly silence following the shutdown of the alarms, the clatter of the magazine against the concrete wall sounded like a bucket of scrap metal falling off a shelf.
More movement, closing in on the source of the disturbance, two men covering each other. They were too professional to give away their position by speaking. More than likely they’d operated together enough times to guess each other’s intentions.
Taking a deep breath, Anya pushed herself off the wall and rushed straight at them. Sure enough, the first figure materialized out of the red haze just a few yards away. Hearing her approach, he swung his weapon around to open fire.
Bu
t Anya was ready. Shifting her balance, she threw herself to the ground, her momentum causing her to slide across the smooth concrete floor just as he squeezed off a round.
Raising her own weapon, she took aim just as she passed beneath him and fired upward, putting a round straight through his head. Good kill – no way could he survive that.
Leaping to her feet, she spotted the barrel of an assault rifle emerging from the mist, its muzzle coming to bear on her. Reaching out with her free hand, she grasped it and jerked it upwards just as its owner opened fire. The first round missed her head by mere inches, and she could feel the heat on her face from the excess gasses escaping the muzzle.
Keeping her grip on the weapon that was now spitting fire into the ceiling, she thrust her own sidearm upward, felt the silencer make contact with something hard, and pulled the trigger. There was a dull crunch, a burst of warm fluid that coated one side of her face, and suddenly her opponent was falling away, his weight and momentum finally yanking the assault rifle from her grasp.
Anya let out a breath, trying to calm her wildly beating heart. Two rounds, two men dead. By her reckoning that left only their leader to deal with now.
No sooner had she thought this than a fresh burst of gunfire erupted from the far end of the room. Instinctively she twisted aside and threw herself behind the nearest server rack, but the long sustained burst was throwing a lot of rounds in her direction, and inevitably one of them found its mark.
Anya’s first impression was of a giant fist slamming into her chest, knocking her backward as surely as if she’d been hit by a freight train. Caught off balance, she landed on the floor in a painful heap, barely managing to crawl behind cover as more rounds ricocheted off the ground around her. The gas was slowly clearing, but visibility wasn’t yet good enough for her attacker to take proper aim. That was likely the only reason she was still alive.
Her Kevlar vest had stopped the round, barely, but the sheer kinetic energy of the impact would have caused severe bruising and perhaps even cracked a rib or two. Grimacing against the pain and trying to draw the breath that had been knocked from her lungs, Anya tossed aside her now useless weapon.
Nearby, she heard the distinctive clatter of a spent magazine falling to the floor, followed by the click as a fresh one was inserted and locked in place. Clearly her opponent had no shortage of ammunition, and he would expend every round of it to take her down.
Even now she could hear his footsteps on the floor, slow and measured, heading in her direction. He was closing in to finish her off.
*
Alex pounded up the stairs, gasping for breath, adrenaline coursing thick in his veins as he took the steps two at a time. He almost didn’t care where he was running to, couldn’t think about anything but the next flight of steps.
His pursuer was somewhere below him, tackling the ascent with both greater determination and greater ability. He was gaining, despite the frantic burst of speed that fear had imparted.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was only delaying the inevitable, that sooner or later he would either run out of stairs to climb or find himself shot in the back by his opponent. But fear and panic drove him onward, forced him to keep climbing even as his muscles ached and his lungs burned.
And then, sure enough, he found himself at the top of the stairwell, confronted by a door leading out onto the building’s rooftop. Barely breaking stride, he hit the release bar to open the door and staggered out.
Straight away the breeze hit him, cool and refreshing compared to the sterile air in the stairwell, and carrying the faint tang of sea salt. The rooftop, like those of most office buildings around the world, was crowded with air vents, aerials and satellite dishes, none of which provided much cover.
Rushing over to the nearest aerial, he yanked it free from its fixture and wedged it in place against the door. The sturdy metal rod was enough to hold it closed, for now at least. He had no idea how effective a barricade it might be, but perhaps it would buy him the time he needed to act.
With this in mind, Alex sprinted across to the edge of the roof in search of another way down.
Built as it was in a heavily urbanized area, the ISS building was sandwiched in between two other structures, both of which were a floor lower and separated by perhaps ten or twelve feet. Enough to allow vehicles to drive along the service alleys between and make deliveries at the rear.
Sweating, heart pounding, Alex surveyed the yawning gap stretching before him, the terrible drop below and the cluttered rooftop that was now his only way out. Twelve feet of open air lay between him and salvation. Twelve feet that might as well have been twelve miles. Below, maybe seventy feet down, a narrow service alley ran between the modern office blocks.
It would be a rough fall if he reached the other roof, and there was a fair chance he’d break bones or even fail entirely and rag-doll all the way down to the street below.
But it had to be worth a try.
He backed up a pace, trying to draw on the mental and physical reserves he’d need to make the jump, to put aside the danger and just go for it.
He couldn’t do it, he realized straight away. He couldn’t do it in London several days earlier, and he couldn’t do it now. Even now with his life hanging by a thread, he just didn’t have it in him.
A rapid series of muted thumps followed by the crunch of shattered wood behind warned him that his makeshift barricade had just been blasted apart.
‘Freeze!’
And just like that, it was over. His one chance to escape, to justify the faith that had been shown in him, to prove he wasn’t completely useless; it all vanished in that moment.
‘Turn around!’
Letting out a breath, Alex reached up for the little USB memory stick hanging around his neck, and turned slowly to face his adversary.
Just as he’d expected, the man standing a few yards away was dressed in casual clothes that belied his deadly purpose. Jeans, hiking boots that had no doubt served him well on the frantic chase up the stairwell, and a loose blue shirt that didn’t quite hide the bulky body armour underneath.
He was breathing a little harder, and a faint sheen of sweat coated his forehead. That gave Alex some small measure of satisfaction, as if he had somehow scored a point by making his opponent work for the kill.
And killing was certainly what was on this man’s mind now. His weapon was trained on Alex’s head, his finger tight on the trigger.
‘Give me the memory stick,’ he instructed, his voice cold and commanding. He might have had to work a little harder than usual to catch his prey, but he was firmly in control of the situation now.
Yanking the memory stick free from his neck, Alex suddenly thrust it out behind him, dangling it over the gap by its plain canvas necklace. Such an innocuous little piece of technology – the kind of cheap storage device used by everyone from office workers to teenage music fans. But appearances could be deceptive. The information stored within its digital pathways, carefully coded and encrypted, was what really mattered.
That was what he had travelled five thousand miles around the world for. That was what he had risked his life for. That was what he was about to die for.
‘You shoot me, I drop this, the police recover it,’ he warned. ‘They’ll find the Black List. Everything you were sent to cover up. It’s all on you.’
His soon-to-be killer smiled. The fierce, predatory smile of one used to taking lives without mercy or hesitation. ‘The police? You think we can’t get to them?’ he taunted. ‘We can get to anyone. So do yourself a favour. Lay it down on the ground and back away, and we both walk. That’s it.’
Alex might have laughed if he hadn’t been so crushed by his failure. No matter what he did, no matter how compliant and cooperative he was, only one of them was walking away from this, and it wasn’t him.
Alex was just another target to this man. Just another loose end to be taken care of. A stupid, clueless civilian who had only made it this far becau
se he’d had someone far smarter and more capable watching his back. Someone who might well have given her life to buy him time to escape.
You fucked up, an accusatory voice in his mind told him. Just like everything else in life, you fucked this up. You might as well give him what he wants. Just back down and give up like you always do.
Then Alex did something; something even he didn’t expect until it happened.
‘No,’ he said, his voice surprisingly calm given the frantic pounding of his heart. ‘Not this time.’
Taking a step back, he mounted the low parapet encircling the perimeter of the building’s roof. A gaping, terrifying chasm lay beneath him. An armed man intent on ending his life stood before him.
And all around, lit by the orange glow of uncountable lights that glimmered off the dark waters of the Bosphorus Strait, was the ancient city of Istanbul.
Not a bad place to end up, Alex thought as he took a step back into the abyss.
The crack of a single gunshot caused him to flinch, and instinctively he tensed up, waiting for the gut-wrenching penetration as a bullet tore into his body.
But no such thing happened. Instead, he watched in disbelief as his adversary staggered forward a pace, blood leaking from the exit wound on the right side of his forehead, then crumpled to the ground in a lifeless heap.
Alex let out a breath, struggling to process what had just happened, hardly able to comprehend the reprieve he’d just been handed. It had to be Anya, he reasoned. Somehow she must have fought her way out of the server room and made her way up here to help him.
Watching his back even now.
His heart swelling with relief, he looked up from the body, expecting to see his companion looking at him, probably pissed off that he’d failed to escape by himself. If so, he could live with that.
But Anya wasn’t there. His brief surge of elation vanished as he found himself staring at a woman with dark hair and blood-stained clothes. The same woman who had tried to capture them in Norway.
