“Into the vehicle, please,” the sallow-faced man said quietly. “Ms. Devin first.”
Numbly, Fiona climbed into the ambulance. The stretcher occupied the central aisle, leaving two narrow benches, one on either side. She scooted down the left-hand bench, going all the way to the end. One of the burly paramedics crowded in after her, dropping heavily onto the bench on the far side. Once seated, he drew his own pistol to keep her covered.
“And now you, Colonel.” The white-coated man nodded inside. “Sit next to Ms. Devin. But make sure you keep your hands in sight at all times. Otherwise, I fear Dmitri might get jumpy and then, sadly, you would end up as dead as poor Dr. Vedenskaya there.”
Still coldly furious with himself, Jon obeyed. He slid down the bench toward Fiona. The dark-haired woman glanced at him with an unreadable expression in her blue-green eyes. She still held the binder containing Vedenskaya’s notes.
“No talking,” the paramedic growled in thickly accented English, emphasizing his order with the muzzle of his pistol.
She shrugged slightly and looked away, saying nothing further.
Smith winced inwardly. Their predicament was largely his fault. If he had not stayed so long in his futile effort to save Elena Vedenskaya’s life, they might have been able to evade this trap before it snapped shut on them.
The slender, sallow-faced doctor scrambled up into the cramped interior and sat down facing the two Americans, squashed up next to his much bigger subordinate. With a slight, cynical smile, he kept his own pistol aimed at Jon’s chest.
The second paramedic and the big, hard-eyed driver slammed the doors shut, sealing the four of them inside.
Moments later, the ambulance lurched into motion. They were pulling out from the curb. The siren and flashing blue light came on again, clearing a path through the light evening traffic. Slowly, the emergency vehicle swung through a wide U-turn, evidently heading back toward the much-busier Sadovaya Ring road.
Smith could feel ice-cold sweat trickling down his ribs. Somehow he had to find a way to break them out of this moving prison—and soon. He had no illusions about their fate if he failed. Once they arrived wherever they were being taken, he and Fiona Devin were as good as dead.
Chapter Eighteen
Not far down Povarskaya Street, the tall, silver-haired man sitting hunched over behind the wheel of a boxy dark blue Russian-made Niva 4×4 utility vehicle cursed softly as he watched the two Americans being bundled unceremoniously into the back of the ambulance. His jaw tightened.
Sighing, he made sure his shoulder belt was tightly fastened, and then reached down to turn on the ignition. There were said to be patron saints for fools and madmen. If so, he earnestly hoped they would look down with favor on him, because there was certainly no time left to do anything subtle or sensible.
The Niva’s powerful engine roared to life. Without hesitating any longer, he shoved the vehicle into gear, stamped down on the gas pedal, and accelerated away from the curb, aiming straight for the front side of the ambulance just as it turned across Povorskaya Street.
Inside the ambulance, Smith sat rigidly still, carefully eyeing the pistol aimed in his direction. His mind raced, rapidly concocting and then discarding a series of wild-eyed schemes to escape from their captors. Unfortunately, every plan he came up with only seemed likely to get them killed sooner rather than later.
Suddenly the driver up front shouted something in alarm. Jon felt Fiona Devin tense up.
An engine roared close by, growing ever louder. Brakes squealed piercingly. Car and truck horns blared out panicked warnings. And then Smith felt an enormous, jolting bang as some other vehicle slammed into the ambulance at high speed. The impact hurled him right off the bench. He fell forward across Vedenskaya’s body. There were more startled shouts from the others around him.
Hit broadside, they were sliding across the road, spinning out of control amid an ear-splitting shriek of tearing metal and the tinkling crash of shattering glass. First-aid kits and other medical gear tumbled out of storage compartments. A sharp, stinging reek of spilled gasoline and the acrid stench of torn and burning rubber rolled through the cramped interior.
Still spinning, the ambulance crashed into the side of an old, rust-eaten Volga sedan parked along the street and rocked to a stop, lying canted over at an odd angle with its blown front tires propped up high on the curb. The deafening noise died away.
Smith looked up.
The first sudden impact had tossed the doctor backward, smashing his head hard against the metal interior. He looked dazed. Rivulets of blood dripped down the side of his lean, pale face. But he still held onto his Makarov PSM.
Reacting fast, Jon shoved himself upright onto his knees.
The doctor’s eyes widened. Snarling, he raised the pistol. His fingers curled around the trigger, already starting to squeeze it.
And then Smith lashed out, chopping down with the edge of his right hand to knock the barrel away just as the Makarov fired. At such close quarters, the sound was shattering. In a spurt of flame, the small-caliber 5.45mm bullet punched a hole in the floorboards, smacked dully into the road below, and ricocheted away.
In that same instant, Jon drove his left fist into the other man’s face.
The punch slammed the Russian doctor’s skull back against the wall with tremendous force. More blood spattered across the metal. The white-coated man groaned in agony. His eyes rolled up into the back of their sockets and he slumped forward, starting to lose consciousness. The small pistol thudded onto the bench beside him.
Smith reached for it and then froze.
With the back of one big hand, the burly paramedic had already knocked Fiona Devin sprawling. She lay curled up at his feet, with the red mark left by his hand plainly visible on her pale cheek. Now he sighted carefully down the barrel of his own pistol, a larger, 9mm Makarov. He was aiming right at Smith’s face.
And then the dark-haired woman moved, uncoiling with astonishing speed.
While rising to her knees, she yanked a slender, black-handled switchblade out of a sheath concealed in one of her elegant leather boots. At the touch of a button on its hilt, a four-inch stainless-steel blade flicked out, glinting cruelly in the light. Acting with cold determination, she stabbed the big man in the neck. The long, narrow blade plunged deep, severing his trachea and one of his carotid arteries in a single powerful thrust.
Horrified, the Russian paramedic dropped his pistol. His hands pawed frantically at the terrible wound. Jets of bright-red blood spurted across the ambulance, pulsing wildly at first with every heartbeat but diminishing fast as his life force ebbed away. Still clutching desperately at the gaping hole in his neck, the dying man slid slowly sideways. He sagged to the floor beside Elena Vedenskaya’s blanket-wrapped corpse. The blood stopped pumping from between his locked fingers. He quivered once and then at last was still.
White-faced herself, Fiona quickly wiped her knife on the back of the dead man’s coat. Her hands shook slightly as she retracted the blade and slipped the knife back into her boot.
“You’ve never killed anyone before?” Smith asked quietly.
She shook her head. “No.” She forced a sickly smile. “But I’ll worry about it later…assuming, of course, that we live through the next few minutes.”
He nodded. The doctor and one of the two paramedics were down, but they were still facing at least two more enemies. “Can you handle a gun?”
“I can.”
Smith scooped up both pistols and handed her the smaller Makarov PSM. Quickly, he checked the 9mm pistol, making sure the safety was off and that it had a round chambered. Fiona did the same with hers.
There was a loud rap on one of the closed rear doors. “Fiona?” a deep voice boomed from outside the wrecked ambulance. “This is Oleg. Are you and Dr. Smith unharmed?”
Jon whirled around with the Makarov raised, ready to open fire. But the dark-haired woman laid a hand gently on his wrist, pushing the weapon down. “Don’
t shoot,” she said quietly. “He’s a friend.” Then Fiona raised her own voice. “Yes, we’re fine. And free.”
“What of the others? Those who took you captive?”
“They’re out of commission,” Fiona reported shortly. “One permanently. The other is still alive, but he’ll have the devil of a headache later on.”
“That is good!” The doors were yanked open. A tall, broad-shouldered man with a full head of silver hair stood there. In one hand, he held a pistol fitted with a silencer. With the other, he motioned them out. “Come! Quickly! We have very little time before the militia arrives.”
Smith stared at the other man in astonishment. There was no mistaking that haughty, large-nosed profile, one that could easily have appeared on an ancient Roman coin. “Kirov. Well, I’ll be damned,” he said quietly. “Major General Oleg Kirov of the Russian Federal Security Service.”
“Not anymore, Doctor.” Kirov shrugged his powerful shoulders. “I have been retired, put out to pasture, as you Americans say,” he said drily. “The men in the Kremlin decided that I was not sufficiently loyal to their dreams of restoring the old order.”
Jon nodded tersely. A few years before he had worked closely with the tall, barrel-chested FSB officer, joining in a desperate hunt to track down a container full of deadly smallpox stolen from one of Russia’s biological weapons facilities. Since then he had often wondered how Kirov, so closely tied to his country’s political reformers, was faring under the rule of President Dudarev and his hard-line cronies.
Now he knew.
“Small talk and career news will have to wait until later,” Fiona broke in. “Right now we should be moving.” She waved a hand at the street. “As it is, we’re drawing a crowd.”
“True,” Kirov agreed, glancing briefly over his shoulder. Cars that had braked hard to avoid the crash he had caused were scattered randomly across the street. A few of the drivers were climbing out of their stalled vehicles to stare at the tangled wreckage. Others who had heard all the noise were spilling out of the neighboring apartment buildings, restaurants, and cafés. Several of the onlookers were speaking excitedly into their cell phones, presumably summoning the militia and emergency medical assistance.
Kirov looked back at the two Americans. “You have what you came for? Those notes Dr. Vedenskaya brought for you?”
“They’re right here,” Fiona said, gingerly retrieving the bloodstained plastic binder from where it had fallen during the crash.
Smith turned grimly toward the dazed white-coated man huddled in one corner of the ambulance. The doctor was groaning softly now, drifting right on the edge of full consciousness. “Let’s take that son of a bitch with us. I have a few questions to ask him. For one thing, just how the hell he knew my real name and rank.”
The former FSB officer nodded. “An excellent question. If nothing else, it would also be useful to learn who issued his orders and where he was taking you.”
Together he and Smith dragged the sallow-faced man out onto the street. Clotting blood matted the sparse hair on the back of their prisoner’s head. His eyes were half-closed and clearly unable to focus. Propping the injured man up between them, Smith and Kirov half-carried, half-dragged him around the side of the ambulance. Fiona walked beside them, still keeping a wary eye on the small, but growing crowd of the curious drawn to what must have seemed a terrible accident.
Jon whistled softly. The collision had smashed in the whole front end of the emergency vehicle, reducing it to a mangled mass of twisted steel and broken glass. Still tangled in their seat belts, the two men who had been riding in front were slumped back against the seat. Both held weapons in their hands. Both had been shot dead at point-blank range.
He glanced at Kirov. “Your work, I presume?”
The other man nodded somberly. “It was regrettable, but necessary. I had no time for half-measures.” He indicated the dark blue Niva slewed across the street beside the wrecked ambulance. “Come. Our chariot awaits.”
Smith stared at the small SUV, noting the 4×4’s smashed grill, dented hood, and broken headlights. He arched an eyebrow. “You think that piece of junk is still in good running condition?”
“Let us hope so, Jon,” Kirov said with a bleak smile. “Otherwise we could be in for a very long, cold, and conspicuous walk.”
The Russian propped their dazed captive up against the Niva’s side. He tugged the rear passenger side door open. “Let’s get him inside. Ms. Devin will sit up front by me. You take the back seat and keep your weapon aimed at our guest here. Make sure he stays down on the floor and out of sight.”
Smith nodded. He turned toward the bleary-eyed ambulance doctor. “In you go, pal,” he growled, using the barrel of his Makarov to prod the wavering man toward the open door.
Crack.
Their prisoner’s head exploded, torn open by a high-velocity rifle round. Blood and bits of shattered bone sprayed across the Niva’s upholstered interior. The dead man slid slowly down the side of the truck.
“Get down! Take cover!” Smith roared. He dived for the snow-covered asphalt just as another rifle bullet smashed the window right above his head. Splinters and shards of broken glass cascaded across the back of his neck and bounced off the street beside him.
Kirov and Fiona Devin raced for cover and dropped flat behind the boxy Russian-manufactured 4×4.
Panicked by the sudden burst of gunfire, the civilians who had been drawn to the accident scene fled, scattering in all directions like a flock of terrified geese. Some ducked out of sight behind the cars parked along the street. Others stumbled back inside the surrounding buildings.
Caught out in the open, on the wrong side of Kirov’s vehicle, Smith rolled away to the right, heading for the shelter offered by the wrecked ambulance. A third 7.62mm round slapped into the street only inches away. It sent chunks of torn asphalt flying and then tumbled away past his ear, buzzing loudly like a malevolent, lethal wasp.
Panting with fear and exertion, Jon threw himself off to the side, rolling even faster now. He made it back to the mangled emergency vehicle and stopped moving. A fourth rifle bullet punched through torn metal and caromed off the ambulance’s steel frame, showering him with sparks and tiny, jagged pieces of near-molten steel. Wincing, he brushed them away.
Smith thought fast, considering their options. Now what? So long as they stayed hidden behind solid cover, they were relatively safe from this unseen sniper. But that left them pinned down, unable to move or fight back effectively, and he could hear sirens closing in on them from several different directions.
He shook his head. Staying to surrender to the Moscow militia was not an option, not with Elena Vedenskaya’s case notes in their possession and four enemy agents sprawled dead across the street. He shifted his grip on the 9mm Makarov, mentally preparing himself to make a quick dash back to where Kirov and Fiona Devin were taking cover.
One hundred and fifty meters up Povorskaya Street, Erich Brandt knelt down beside the open door of his black Mercedes sedan. Another man lay prone on the road next to him, peering intently through the telescopic sight of a long-barreled Dragunov SVD sniper rifle.
“They’re all in good cover,” the marksman reported coolly. “But at least I managed to nail Sorokin.”
Brandt scowled. The “doctor,” an ex–KGB officer named Mikhail Sorokin, had been one of his most reliable agents, a coldly professional killer who had never muffed an assignment. Up until now, that was. Then he shrugged, pushing away the momentary sense of regret. Although it had irked him to order Sorokin terminated, he had not been given any real choice. He would not risk leaving any of his operatives alive in enemy hands. “Can you flush the Americans out into the open?”
The other man shook his head slightly. “Not soon enough.” He shrugged. “If they move anywhere on the street, I will kill them, but I cannot hit what I cannot see.”
Brandt nodded tightly.
The sniper pulled his eye away from the scope and looked toward his
superior. “Do we wait for the militia to arrest them? Their first squad cars will be here in a matter of minutes.”
Brandt pondered that. Thanks to Alexei Ivanov, he carried official credentials that would pass muster with the local police. If the militia took any prisoners, they could certainly be cowed into handing them over to him. But whatever the immediate outcome, the surly, suspicious chief of the Thirteenth Directorate would discover that he had been lied to, and that at least one American intelligence officer was already exploiting the Moscow-based breach in HYDRA’s operational security.
The blond-haired man grimaced. If so, it would be better by far to present the Russian spymaster with a fait accompli in the form of Smith, Fiona Devin, and their unknown accomplice—dead if necessary, alive and under interrogation if possible. He glanced down at the sniper waiting patiently for his orders. “We’ll cut off their first avenue of retreat,” he decided. “Disable their get-away vehicle.”
The other man nodded calmly. “Easily done, Herr Brandt.”
He put his right eye back against the telescopic sight, shifted his aim slightly, and squeezed the trigger. The SVD sniper rifle fired, barely kicking up as its long, well-balanced barrel recoiled gently against his shoulder.
Smith scrambled to his feet and crossed the short open space between the ambulance and Kirov’s all-wheel drive SUV at a dead run. Another shot rang out. Still running flat-out, he dived forward, rolled on his shoulder, and came up crouching behind the Niva’s battered front end. He held the Makarov in a two-handed shooter’s grip, ready to fire immediately if any target presented itself in range.
“Very acrobatic, Doctor,” Kirov called wryly. The silver-haired Russian and Fiona Devin were lying prone a couple of meters away. “I envy you your youthful agility.”
Smith forced himself to grin back, mainly conscious of the pulse pounding in his ears. The sniper zeroing in on them was too damned good. And he was close enough to put his rounds almost anywhere he chose with absolute precision.