by JT Brannan
It was dark between the trees, but Cole saw light ahead and sprinted as fast as he could, rounding one corner and then another before he found a service alley heading in the direction of the larger buildings he’d seen from outside Duma.
He could hear voices behind him, feet pounding the street as men raced to catch up to him. There were shouted orders, telling him to stop; information given over a radio net, back to their headquarters; words exchanged between the men themselves about which way their target had gone. But Cole ignored it all as his legs pumped for all they were worth, until he emerged into a small, brightly lit parking lot that seemed to belong to the big building he’d been heading for.
It was as he’d hoped, remembering it from his study of the city’s maps – the service entrance at the rear of the Ritz-Carlton hotel. If he managed to get inside and work his way through, he could emerge out the other side onto Tverskaya Street and – if he was fast enough – hit the Metro station at Okhotny Ryad on the other side of the road before anyone had the chance to see where he’d gone.
There were a couple of small delivery trucks in the lot, along with a few old cars that Cole presumed belonged to staff members, but the only people visible were the two drivers smoking and having a chat between their vehicles. Cole ran straight past them and down the stone steps to the double doors at the rear of the large, impressive neoclassical building and barged through them.
He found himself in a dark corridor that led further into the building and continued running.
He heard shouting from outside, close now, and he knew he just had to hope that he was running fast enough.
Major Dmitri Petrenko cursed through gritted teeth. What the hell was happening over there?
He worked in the basement of the monumental Lubyanka Building, in Lubyanka Square. It had once been a feared dungeon, the KGB’s notorious prison and interrogation center; now, it housed the Directorate of Special Activities, that part of the FSB’s Counterintelligence Service which provided trained agents for surveillance operations within Russia.
Petrenko himself headed the unit which was watching Veronika Galushka, that damned whore. Welcoming a foreign agent into her bed, then telling him who knew what? It was enough to make a man sick, although that was the business Petrenko was involved in; without Galushka, and others like her, he would soon be out of a job.
When the foreign agent had been captured at the SVR facility in Yasenevo, those bastards had wanted to investigate the matter themselves. But a few sharp words from the FSB Director over the correct procedure for internal matters had soon put paid to that, Petrenko remembered. The FSB was not only responsible for counterintelligence within Russia’s borders; it also had a much bigger budget, tens of thousands more staff, and a great deal more political influence than its rival agency. And because these things were still important in Russia, responsibility for the investigation was handed – rightfully – to the FSB.
The agent himself was being held in a secure facility of the SVR though – on the orders of President Emelienenko, no less – and the FSB were denied direct access to him, which was still the source of some tension between the two intelligence services.
Initial investigations into the man known as Aleksandr Petrushkin revealed that he had been having an affair with the private secretary of Boris Manturov, and Veronika Galushka had been brought in for immediate questioning.
It was Petrenko who had suggested letting her go, keeping her under close surveillance in the hope that whoever the agent had been feeding information back to would wonder what had happened to their man and come over to find him. At the very least, they might wish to follow up the contact with Galushka, to see if it was still viable.
Petrenko had assigned eighteen men to the job, sections of six rotating in eight hour shifts – one active, one on standby, and one resting. But everything had been quiet, for weeks now. In fact, the chief of the counterintelligence service, Piotr Illyn, had only warned him yesterday that he was growing impatient for results; if something didn’t happen before the month was out, he’d said, then Galushka was going to be brought back in, for more ‘intensive’ questioning.
And then all this chaos had erupted within minutes, and Petrenko was still struggling to get a grasp on what had happened. From six men, he was apparently now down to just two, the pair who had been waiting in the car on the main road outside the bar Galushka had been drinking in. Radio communications were unclear, but it seemed as if at least one of his men was dead.
Petrenko had alerted the standby unit, who were now en route, as well as blasting out a quick description of the man involved to local police units. But he was hanging fire on issuing a general alert. So far, there just wasn’t enough information to justify it.
Isn’t there? his mind insisted. One of your men is down, isn’t that enough?
Perhaps, he realized, he just didn’t want to admit to his superiors that his men had not been up to the job; their failure was his failure, and whereas the consequences were perhaps not as brutal now as they would have been for his Soviet forebears, they would still certainly be less than pleasant.
But then, if he didn’t issue an alert, and the man got away . . .
He knew the result would be even worse, if that were to happen.
But to give up control . . .
He was still undecided when the call came through from one of the men he already had in pursuit. ‘He’s entered the Ritz-Carlton,’ the voice said, ragged from the chase, ‘through the rear service doors.’
Petrenko’s mind performed some quick calculations. If he alerted hotel security, directed his reserve unit to the front entrance, he could perhaps still salvage this thing without it having to go any further.
‘Dead or alive,’ Petrenko told the officer, his confidence renewed, ‘do not let him leave that hotel.’
7
Cole moved more slowly now that he was within the main section of the hotel, careful not to draw attention to himself from the guests. He knew it would be quicker to run, but he didn’t want to be seen; in an ideal world, he would make his way through the lobby and out of the front doors without being noticed, allowing him to get across to the subway undetected.
He’d received some curious looks from the chefs and restaurant workers in the huge basement kitchens as he’d run through them just moments before, but he figured that by the time they could report anything to anyone who could do anything about it, he’d be long gone.
After the kitchens, he’d raced up the service stairs to the restaurant, narrowly avoiding a waiter carrying a huge tray of gourmet food; he’d also made his way quickly thorough the restaurant itself, only slowing as he pushed through the large double doors into the bar area, from where he could finally see the large, marble-clad entrance lobby ahead of him.
He didn’t know how close the men were behind him, but he could finally see light at the end of the tunnel. If fate was kind, he figured, he just might make it.
But then he saw men moving toward him, eyes boring in on him, already warned to his presence here. They wore Ritz-Carlton livery, but Cole could see they weren’t bellhops; under the svelte jackets, they were uniformly athletic and well-built, their bodies hard and muscular. He saw earpieces nestled into their ears, and knew they were hotel security, and must have been made aware of his presence via radio.
As he approached them – first just a single pair, but then another man, and another, and then two more, coming into the lobby from different directions – he checked other avenues of escape, but quickly discounted them.
No, he knew he had to get to the front doors, to make the run for the Metro opposite.
He was just going to have to go through these guys in front of him.
And as they moved toward each other on a fatal collision course, Cole realized that they might be armed; in which case, distance would be his enemy. He could try and shoot them with his second gun, of course, but he wanted to avoid it if possible. After all, these men were civilians,
armed or not, and Cole couldn’t bring himself to kill them unless he absolutely had to.
And yet, Cole thought briefly as the men converged on him from different directions – two of them, just as Cole had feared, pulling pistols from concealed shoulder holsters – he wondered whether he would be capable of fighting off six men with his bare hands.
But then time ran out, and he found himself face-to-face with the first man; this guy hadn’t gone for a weapon, but had drawn back a huge, ham-sized fist in the hopes of catching Cole on the run. If the oncoming fist met Cole’s head, the combined forces would put his lights out for sure.
But Cole read the man’s intention and – still running – ducked low under the blow, blasting the guard in the groin with the tip of his thumb, once more using that natural body weapon to startling effect. It crushed one of the testicles and Cole heard the savage exhalation of air from the man’s lungs as the pain hit him.
Cole turned, seeing one man already had his pistol out and was bringing it up toward him. The gunman was only a few feet away and Cole skip-stepped toward him, lashing out his right foot in an arcing crescent-kick which impacted the guard’s wrist.
The arm swung wide as the guard pulled his trigger, the blast from the weapon sending the other hotel patrons – many of whom hadn’t quite understood what was going on, the whole thing had erupted so fast – into a blind panic. Just like at Duma, there was sudden chaos and people started flying for the exits.
The bullet narrowly missed one of the guard’s own colleagues, hitting instead a huge marble pillar with a puff of rock-dust, and Cole saw two of them duck for cover; that gave him a little breathing space, and Cole leapt at the gunman, hands reaching out to control the pistol. The guard resisted and Cole – his hands still tying up the weapon – drove the point of his elbow into the guard’s sternum, driving the air out of him. Cole saw the second gunman bringing his pistol up into the aim, just across the lobby, and Cole immediately swung the first man into the path of any bullets. But the second man held his fire, realizing his friend was in the way, and Cole used the hesitation to rip the handgun out of the first man’s hand and fire his own shot at the man across the hall.
The bullet took the guard in the shoulder, in what Cole hoped wasn’t a fatal shot. The man dropped to the tiled floor, and – just as Cole was about to threaten the rest of the guards with the gun – he felt a heavy impact that knocked him off his feet.
Another guard had tackled him to the ground, and – as Cole fell – he understood that the man intended to fall right on top of him, using his weight as a weapon. But Cole reacted instantly, dropping the pistol and seizing the man’s jacket with both hands, slipping his leg between the guard’s and turning him up and over his hip in a judo uchi mata, a massive inner-thigh throw which upended the bigger man, using his own energy against him.
The guard’s heavy body was slammed hard into the marble floor, the shock of the impact knocking him out cold. But there was no time for satisfaction, as Cole felt a rush of air as a heavy boot lashed out toward his face, which was low to the floor after finishing the throw. It was nothing more technical than a massive soccer kick, but the damage it would do if it contacted Cole’s head would be severe enough anyway; and Cole slipped the shot by falling to the floor on his back, firing his own foot hard up into the man’s groin.
The guard doubled over, and Cole was forced to take evasive action again as another man swung down toward him with an extendible metal baton. Cole rolled out of the way, kicking his attacker in the knee as he went, in a bid for more time.
Cole used the brief opportunity as the man staggered back to regain his feet, taking in the scene around him as he did so.
He was in the center of the lobby now, among the armchairs, sofas and huge marble-topped coffee tables that lay between the reception desk and the front entrance.
He’d only managed to permanently take out three of the men so far – the first man he’d encountered, the one he had shot, and the one he had thrown – which left three more. He’d hurt two of them, but not enough to stop them.
Around them, the lobby was in uproar, customers running while hotel staff looked on in confusion. Cole couldn’t see the FSB men that had been tailing him yet, but he knew it was only a matter of time before they also appeared on the scene.
He saw the baton moving toward him again and angled his body to avoid the blow, trapping the guard’s arm between his hands, gripping it tight as he bent the arm at the elbow, crashing his own elbow into the man’s face at the same time. The guy staggered back and Cole took the baton from his hands, turning and smashing it across the face of the only man he’d not yet hit, who had been about to blindside him. The guard went down hard, and then Cole saw the man who’d had the first gun desperately reaching for the carpet, where the weapon had fallen when Cole dropped it.
Cole jumped passed an overstuffed armchair and lashed down with the baton, cracking the guard’s collarbone and making damn sure he didn’t get the gun. He slammed the base of the baton into the top of the guard’s head for good measure, taking him out of the picture entirely; and then he whipped it back across the top of the nearest coffee table, catching the baton’s owner in the side of the head with his own weapon.
Cole saw the back of the upholstered chair next to him explode in a burst of duck feather, and knew that – with all six hotel security guards finally down – the shot had to have been fired by one of the FSB men.
He looked through the running men and women, saw the two Russian intelligence officers aiming their pistols through the crowd from their position near the restaurant, looking for a clear shot at their target, angry that the first bullet had missed.
Cole pulled out the pistol from his belt and aimed it at the two officers, watched in satisfaction as they dove for cover and – using the distraction to his advantage – turned on his heel and raced across the lobby for the front doors.
In what seemed a recurrent nightmare, the huge revolving doors were blocked with hotel guests fleeing the scene, just as the exits had been blocked at Duma only minutes before; and just like at the bar, Cole decided to make a private exit of his own.
He aimed the Serdyukov 9mm at the glass panels next to the revolving door and fired again and again until they shattered, glass flying out into the brightly-lit, snow-covered street outside.
He felt more bullets piercing the air over his shoulder, saw them impact the wall next to him, heard the supersonic cracks of pistol fire, and clambered quickly through his hastily-created exit into the cold December night.
A private road ran in front of the hotel, packed with taxis and private hire cars for guests of the hotel, the much larger Tverskaya Street just beyond; and that was where Cole saw the black SUV heading at high speed for the hotel. Men’s heads were already peering out of two open windows and – when they locked eyes with Cole – their hands emerged, clutching wicked-looking SR-2 Veresk submachine guns, standard issue for FSB assault teams.
Cole threw himself to the icy concrete as the 9mm rounds erupted over his head. From his peripheral vision he could see bodies falling around him, and hoped the men had managed to take out their two colleagues back in the hotel with their wild firing.
Keeping his head down, Cole pumped off several shots in the direction of the vehicle as it screeched to a halt outside, calculating his rapidly-dwindling options.
He heard movement behind him and rolled through the snow, coming onto his back in time to see the two FSB men who’d been following him emerge through the shattered glass from the lobby, pistols scanning the area in front of them.
It looked like the assault team’s bullets had fortuitously missed them; but Cole’s didn’t, as he placed two rounds into each man’s chest, dropping them where they stood, eyes still wide in disbelief that their target had caught them.
Cole knew they were dead and quickly rolled back the other way, taking cover behind a stone pillar that comprised part of the Ritz-Carlton’s impressive neoclassical fa
çade as the sidewalk next to him was torn up by more rounds from the Veresks.
He breathed deeply, knowing that on the other side of the column was a team of well-equipped, highly-trained men sent to kill him.
Right, he said to himself as calmly as he could, realizing he only had about two rounds left in the Serdyukov, and his chances of escape via the Metro were now nonexistent.
What now?
‘How many?’ Vinson asked, studying the screen in front of him.
‘Looks like two FSB officers inside the hotel – we don’t know how many security guards – and six more FSB guys outside,’ Michiko replied, ‘with another back-up team of six on the way. Police have been asked to close off the nearest streets, but they’ve not been instructed to move in.’
The image on the screen was being constantly updated, as information was received into the Force One systems from hacked Russian communications; stolen by Michiko, they were translated by the team’s Russian language experts in near-real time, the results plotted on the computer.
Cole’s location was shown just outside the Ritz-Carlton on Tverskaya, while the possible position of Russian forces was estimated from those intercepted communications and plotted around him.
‘If Mark’s outside already, we can assume he’s taken care of the men inside the hotel,’ Vinson said, ‘which leaves six outside, six more on the way, not counting the police units which aren’t involved yet but soon might well be.’
He watched as Michiko furiously click-clacked away at her keyboard, his mind turning circles. Six men was a lot to deal with, even for Cole; twelve men would be almost insurmountable, and that was even before the police had been figured into the equation.
Should he send in the extraction team? He checked another screen, saw they were still ten minutes away. If they hit now, they could almost certainly deal with the six men outside the hotel and get Cole the hell out of there. According to FSB communications, it looked like the other six troops were also about ten minutes away – they’d been on stand-down, and were taking a while to get mobile. If they got there at the same time as Barrington . . .
