“Never miss a party,” Peter said softly. “How many have you left us?”
“One for sure,” Smith replied. He nodded toward the far side of the room. “He’s in cover somewhere off that way. Another guy, their leader, I think, already hightailed it out through the door.”
Peter looked at Randi. “Shall we show our medical friend here how professionals flush game?” Peter turned to Smith. “You cover the door, Jon.” Then he took a flash/bang grenade out of the pouch on his thigh, pulled the ring, and held the safety spoon closed. “On five. Four. Three. Two …”
Peter popped up briefly and lobbed the grenade over the table. It sailed through a long, low arc, dropped out of sight, and exploded. A new cloud of smoke boiled across the room, lit from within by blinding, strobe-like flashes.
Randi was already in motion, running fast and bent low. She caught a glimpse of a darker shape moving in the smoke and dived for the floor. The surviving gunman staggered toward her. She fired her Beretta twice and watched him go down. He shuddered once and then lay still, staring back at her with lifeless eyes.
For a moment longer Randi stayed prone, waiting for the smoke and haze to dissipate. “All clear on this end!” she called out when she could see well enough to be sure.
“Check around to see if you can find anyone else still alive,” Smith suggested, rising painfully to his feet. He glanced at Peter. “Meanwhile, I think we should go after that other big bastard I saw.”
“The one you say scarpered out the door?”
Smith nodded grimly. “That’s right.” He explained the uncanny resemblance between the tall green-eyed man he had seen here and the terrorist leader he had watched die in New Mexico.
Peter whistled softly. “Now, there’s a nasty coincidence.”
“That’s just it,” Smith said slowly. “I don’t think it is a coincidence at all.”
“Probably not,” Peter agreed. He looked troubled. “But we’ll have to be quick, Jon. The French may have most of their police deployed outside Paris at the moment, but all this racket is bound to attract their attention.”
Weapons drawn and ready, the two men moved cautiously toward the narrow arched doorway. Smith pointed silently at the smeared bloodstains on the floor. The large red drops led straight toward the open door. Peter nodded his understanding. They were tracking a wounded man.
Smith stopped just inside the room. He stared out through the doorway, seeing part of a black-and-white-tiled landing enclosed by a waist-high wrought-iron railing.
The spatters of blood continued on, heading right for the wide marble staircase that led down to the building’s lower floors. The big man they were hunting might be getting away! Determined not to lose him, Jon impulsively darted forward through the arch, ignoring Peter’s startled warning.
Too late Jon realized that the blood trail ended abruptly just two steps down. His eyes opened wide. Unless he had somehow learned to fly, the green-eyed man must have doubled back. …
Smith felt himself hurled violently to the side. Knocked completely off his feet, he slid across the landing and slammed shoulder-first into the iron railing. His SIG-Sauer skittered away across the tile floor. For a moment he stared through the bottom of the railing out into a dizzying void.
Sickened and dazed by the impact, he heard a sudden muffled cry and then saw Peter thrown past him. The Englishman tumbled head over heels over the wide lip of the staircase. He disappeared out of sight in a diminishing clatter and rattle of loose equipment.
Smiling cruelly, the auburn-haired giant swung back toward Smith. His face, flayed by razor-sharp shards of glass, was a mask of bright red blood. One ravaged socket was empty, but a single green eye gleamed fiercely out of the other.
Jon scrambled to his feet, coldly aware of the enormous drop right at his back. Quickly he drew the combat knife sheathed at his waist. He crouched lower, holding the blade at his side.
Undeterred by the sight of the knife, the big man stalked toward him. His huge hands moved in small, deceptively lazy circles as he came forward, ready to strike out, to maim, and then to kill. His smile grew wider.
Through narrowed eyes, Smith watched him come closer. Just a bit nearer, you son of a bitch, he thought. He swallowed hard—fighting down a growing sense of fear at the other man’s implacable approach. He did not have any real illusions about the likely outcome of sustained close-quarters combat against this man. Even half-blinded, this foe was much taller, stronger, and undoubtedly far more skilled in hand-to-hand fighting than he was.
The big auburn-haired man saw the fear on his face. He laughed and shook more blood away before it dripped in his one good eye. “What? No stomach for battle without a gun in your hand?” he asked softly in a cynical, mocking tone.
Refusing to be goaded into premature action, Jon stayed still, ready to react fast to any opening. He kept his own gaze fixed on the other man’s single eye—knowing that it would telegraph any real move.
The bright green eye flickered suddenly. There it was!
Smith came on-guard.
Moving with terrifying speed, the big man spun through a tight arc, aiming a dazzlingly fast elbow strike at Jon’s face. He yanked his head to the side just in time. The killing blow missed by a fraction of an inch.
Smith blocked another powerful strike with his own left forearm. The world blurred red around him and he felt the stitches there rip loose. The massive impact knocked him backward against the railing. Panting, he crouched lower still.
Grinning hugely now, the green-eyed man closed in again. One of his hands stayed ready to block any knife thrust. The other powerful fist drew back, preparing yet another hammer blow—one that would either drive Smith back over the railing to his death or crush his skull.
Instead, Jon threw himself forward, diving right under the taller man’s legs. He whirled around and scrambled upright just in time to meet another series of attacks—rapid-fire blows that he narrowly parried with his own left hand and both forearms. The force in them slammed him back against the wall, driving the air out of his lungs. Desperately he slashed out with the knife, forcing the other man back—not far, just a few short steps, just far enough to put his back against the iron railing.
It was now or never, Smith told himself.
With a wild yell, he yanked the last flash/bang grenade out of his leg pouch and hurled it with all his remaining strength straight into his foe’s face. Reacting instinctively, the big man batted the harmless grenade aside with both hands, laying himself wide open for the first time.
In that single frozen moment of time, Jon lunged—striking with the point of his combat knife. Only the very tip of the blade plunged into the middle of the big man’s remaining green eye. But that was enough. Blood and fluid poured out of the new and terrible wound.
Blinded, the auburn-haired giant roared in mingled fury and agony. He lashed out violently, knocking the knife from Smith’s hand. He stumbled forward with his arms spread wide in one last bid to trap his unseen opponent and crush him.
Moving fast, Jon ducked under those massive outstretched arms and punched the bigger man hard in the throat—crushing his larynx. Immediately Jon jumped back again, determined to stay safely out of reach.
Gasping, panting, straining frantically for the oxygen he desperately needed but could no longer draw in, the giant slid slowly to his knees. Beneath the dripping blood, his skin was turning blue. Despairingly he reached out one last time—still trying to seize the man who had killed him. Then his arm dropped. He slumped to the floor and rolled over onto his back, lying there with his empty eye sockets staring blindly up at the ceiling.
Exhausted, Smith fell to his own knees.
From somewhere down below a new fusillade of gunfire thundered suddenly, echoing noisily up the central staircase. Smith staggered upright, scooped up his pistol from the floor where it had fallen, and ran toward the head of the stairs.
He saw Peter trudging slowly up the staircase, limping painfully.
“Took a damned long, hard spill, Jon,” the other man explained, seeing his concerned face. “Managed to hang on to my Browning, though.” He smiled thinly. “That was just as well. You see, I tumbled right into two more of those fellows coming up the other way.”
“I guess they won’t be bothering us any longer?” Smith suggested.
“Not in this life, at least,” Peter agreed drily.
“Jon! Peter! Come here! Quick!”
Both men turned at the sound of Randi’s voice, urgently summoning them. They ran back into the room.
The CIA officer was kneeling beside one of the bodies. She looked up at them in amazement. “This guy is still alive!”
Chapter
Forty-Three
With Peter right on his heels, Smith hurried to Randi’s side and knelt down to examine the lone survivor. It was the younger man he had seen through the window, the one who had been listening to signals sent over a satellite communications relay. He had been shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in the chest.
“See what you can do for the poor fellow,” Peter suggested. “Find out what he knows. Meanwhile I’ll take a quick prowl around to see what else I can uncover in this shambles.”
Peter moved off to begin a systematic search of the bodies and any equipment and electronics that might be left undamaged in the bullet-riddled room. Meanwhile, Smith stripped off one of his gloves and felt for a pulse in the wounded man’s neck. The pulse was still there, but it was very weak, fast, and fading. The young man’s skin was also pale and cold and wet to the touch. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing in shallow, labored gasps.
Smith glanced at Randi. “Elevate his feet a few inches,” he said quietly. “He’s pretty deep in shock.”
She nodded and lifted the injured man’s feet slightly. To hold them in place, she grabbed a thick computer manual from the nearest table and slid it carefully under his calves.
Working swiftly, with gentle fingers, Smith carefully probed the young man’s wounds, pulling away clothing to get a good look at the various bullet entry and exit points. He frowned. The shattered left shoulder was bad enough. Most surgeons would urge the immediate amputation of that arm. The other injury was far worse. His face darkened as he traced the extent of the massive exit wound high up on the young man’s back. Moving at the speed of sound, the 9mm round had inflicted enormous damage as it tore through his chest—shattering bone, shredding blood vessels, and pulverizing vital tissue across an ever-wider area.
Jon did what little he could. First, he shook out a field dressing kit from one of the pouches on his assault vest. Among other things, it contained two rolled-up sheets of plastic in a sealed bag. He tore the bag open with his teeth, unrolled the pieces of plastic, and then firmly pressed them into place over the two holes in the wounded man’s chest—making the injury airtight. With that done, he taped sterile gauze dressings over the plastic in an effort to control the bleeding.
He looked up to find Randi watching him. She raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question.
Smith shook his head slightly. The wounded man was dying. His efforts would only slow the process, not prevent it. There was simply too much damage, too much internal hemorrhaging. Even if they could get him to an emergency room in the next few minutes, the effort would be wasted.
Randi sighed. She stood up. “Then I’ll go take another look around myself,” she said. She tapped her watch. “Don’t wait too long, Jon. By now someone in the neighborhood will have called the cops about all the noise. Max will give us a heads-up if he hears anything definite on the scanner, but we need to be long gone before they get here.”
He nodded. Coming right on the heels of Burke and Pierson’s secret war against the Lazarus Movement, the arrest of a serving U.S. Army officer and a CIA agent inside the Movement’s shot-up Paris headquarters building would only confirm every paranoid conspiracy theorist’s worst fears and suspicions.
Randi tossed him a bloodstained wallet. “I found this in one of his pockets,” she said. “The ID could be a fake, I suppose. But if so, it’s a topnotch job.”
Smith flipped it open. It contained an international driver’s license made out in the name of Vitor Abrantes, with a permanent address shown in Lisbon. Abrantes. He spoke the name out loud.
The dying man’s eyes fluttered open. His skin was ashen.
“You’re Portuguese?” Smith said.
“Sim. Yes. Eu sou Portuguese.” Abrantes nodded faintly.
“Do you know who shot you?” Smith asked quietly.
The young Portuguese shivered. “Nones,” he whispered. “One of the Horatii.”
The Horatii? Smith puzzled over that. The word, which sounded Latin, rang a bell somewhere in the back of his mind. He thought it was something he had seen or heard here in Paris in the past, but he couldn’t pin it down—at least right away.
“Jon!” Randi called in excitement. “Take a look at this!”
He glanced up. She was standing at the computer where he had seen the older white-haired man working. She swung the monitor toward him. Caught in some kind of programming loop, the computer was playing the same piece of digital imagery over and over again—footage of pedestrian-filled streets, apparently captured and transmitted by an aircraft flying low overhead. Three words blinked in red in the lower right-hand corner of the imagery: NANOPHAGE RELEASE INITIATED
“My God!” Smith realized suddenly. “They hit La Courneuve from the air.”
“Looks that way,” Randi agreed grimly. “I suppose that’s easier and more effective than setting these horrible weapons loose on the ground.”
“A lot more effective,” Smith said, thinking it through fast. “Deploying the nanophages at altitude avoids relying solely on the wind or internal pressurization to spread the cloud. You get more control that way, and you can blanket a much larger area with the same number of devices.”
He turned back to Abrantes. The wounded man was drifting on the edge of death, barely aware of his surroundings. With luck, he might now answer questions that he would certainly have refused earlier. “Why don’t you tell me about the nanophages, Vitor?” he suggested carefully. “What is their real purpose?”
“Once our tests are complete, they will cleanse the world,” the dying man said, coughing. Bubbles of blood flecked the side of his mouth. But his eyes held a fanatical gleam. With an effort, he spoke again. “They will make all things new again. They will rid the Earth of a contagion. They will save it from the plague of untamed humanity.”
Smith felt a shiver of horror run through him as the full impact of just what Abrantes was talking about hit home. The massacres at Teller and La Courneuve had only been trial runs. And that, in turn, meant the deaths of tens of thousands had been planned right from the start as field experiments—as tests to evaluate and further refine the effectiveness of these murderous nanophages outside the sterile confines of a laboratory.
He stared blindly at the images repeating over and over on the screen. The nanophages were more than just another weapon of war or terrorism. They had been designed as instruments of genocide—genocide planned on a scale unmatched in history.
Jon felt enormous anger welling up inside him. The thought of anyone rejoicing in the kind of cruel, inhuman butchery he had seen outside the Teller Institute triggered a feeling of fury beyond anything he had felt in years. But to extract the information they needed it was vital that this young Portuguese hear the voice of a friend—of someone who shared his warped beliefs. With that in mind, Jon fought to regain control over his rampaging emotions.
“Who will control this cleansing, Vitor?” he heard himself ask gently. “Who will remake the world?”
“Lazarus,” Abrantes said simply. “Lazarus will bring life out of death.”
Smith sat back. A terrible and frightening image was taking shape in his mind. It was an image of a faceless puppeteer coolly staging a drama of his own maniacal creation. In one moment, Lazarus denounced nanotechnology as a danger
to mankind. In the next, he perverted that same technology for his own vicious purposes—using it to slaughter even his own most devoted followers as though they were laboratory mice. With one hand, he manipulated officials of the CIA, FBI, and MI6 into conducting a covert war against the Movement he controlled. With the other, he turned that same illegal war against them, rendering his enemies blind, deaf, and dumb at the critical moment.
“And where is this man you call Lazarus?” he asked.
Abrantes said nothing. He drew in a single short breath and then began coughing uncontrollably, retching, unable to clear his lungs. He was literally drowning in his own blood, Smith knew.
Quickly he turned the young man’s head to the side, momentarily clearing a passage for the air he needed. Scarlet rivulets of blood spattered from Abrantes’ twitching mouth. The coughing fit eased.
“Vitor! Where is Lazarus?” Smith repeated urgently. Randi left the computer she had been examining and came back to his side. She stood listening closely.
“Os Açores,” Abrantes whispered. He coughed once more and spat more blood onto the floor. He drew in another short, shallow breath. “O console do sol. Santa María.” This time the effort was too great. He jerked and spasmed suddenly, convulsed by another long, wracking paroxysm. When it passed, he was dead.
“Was that a prayer?” Randi asked.
Smith frowned. “If it was, I doubt he’ll get any credit for it.” He looked down at the twisted body on the floor and then shook his head. “But I think he was trying to answer the question I asked him.”
Forty feet away, Peter stooped beside the corpse of the gunman Randi had shot. He rifled through the dead man’s pockets, collecting a wallet and a passport. Quickly he flipped through the passport, mentally noting the most recent entry stamps—Zimbabwe, the United States, and France, in that order, and all within the last four weeks. His pale blue eyes narrowed in calculation. Most revealing, he thought coldly.
He pocketed the documents and moved on to inspect a bulky pack he had noticed earlier. The plain green cloth satchel stood off on its own in the nearest corner. And now that he thought back, it was identical in appearance to two other packs he had seen dumped in other parts of the room.