Текст книги "Conviction (2009)"
Автор книги: David Michaels
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
"Clear," Fisher called.
"Clear," she replied.
Fisher heard Hansen's voice in his headset. "We're coming down. Four tangos down."
"Roger," Fisher replied
In unison, he and Gillespie turned right, checked the medical corridor for targets, then kept moving, following the curve of the railing. Fisher slowed their pace, taking slow, measured steps, controlling his breathing. He checked Gillespie; she was doing the same. They reached the head of the weapons zone corridor, paused, and saw nothing moving. Fisher turned to check their right flank and saw a figure charging at them from medical.
"Target!" he said, and squeezed off two rounds. The figure went down. "Moving." Groza still at his shoulder, he paced forward. Gillespie followed, turning in a half circle as she covered their flanks and rear. Fisher reached the corner at the corridor, paused, peeked around. A muzzle flashed in the darkness.
"Fire at the bottom of the ramp," Fisher advised Hansen.
"Roger. Coming down now."
Fisher saw the three of them appear down the ramp. He gave them a nod, then stuck the Groza around the corner and fired two shots down the corridor. Hansen, Noboru, and Valentina rushed forward and pressed against the opposite wall. Noboru dropped to one knee and aimed the ARWEN back up the ramp.
"How many?" Hansen asked Fisher.
"One that we know of."
"We'll take care of him."
Fisher nodded, and he and Gillespie backed away and kept circling around the ramp until they reached ballistics.
"Target!" Gillespie called. Fisher turned with her. They fired together. The figure went down.
"Are these Zahm's?" she asked.
Fisher nodded. "Unless he expanded his crew, he's only got three left."
From medical rose a double pop from a Groza. Valentina called over her radio, "Target down."
Fisher replied, "Hansen, you and Valentina clear medical."
"Roger."
"Noboru, can you hold the ramp?"
"Bet your ass."
From down the corridor to ballistics they heard a shout. Fisher stopped and crouched down. Gillespie did the same. "That's Ames," she said.
"You're sure?"
"Yeah."
Fisher radioed to Hansen, "Moving to ballistics."
H Eand Gillespie headed out. A hundred yards down the corridor they heard Ames's voice again: "Shouldn't have left it sitting here alone, Chucky."
"Ah, bloody hell, you little weasel! Come down here so I can put a bullet in your brain."
"Can't do that, Chucky–"
"Don't call me Chucky!"
Fisher and Gillespie kept going until they were within sight of the main door. Pressed against the near wall, with Gillespie behind him, Fisher slid ahead until he could see inside. Like the ballistics zones above, this one was wide open, measuring several football fields in length, and filled with engine test stands and workbenches.
Fisher peeked through the door, then pulled back and said to Gillespie, "Zahm's at the far end of the room with his last two men. They're standing at the mouth of the middle blast funnel. Right inside the door there's a double row of workbenches running down the right hand wall. Keep your eyes sharp for Ames. He's hiding somewhere. Ready?"
She nodded.
Fisher eased back to the door, lifted the Groza, and braced the barrel against the jamb. He nodded. Hunched over, Gillespie stepped around him and crept to the nearest bench. She took up a covering position, and he trotted forward to join her.
Zahm yelled, "Give it up, Ames. You ain't going to get 'em open."
"Don't want to!" Ames shouted back.
Gillespie whispered, "What's he doing?"
Fisher shook his head. "Don't know."
Hansen said over the headset, "Medical clear." "Move on to weapons."
"Roger."
"Noboru?"
"All okay. I can hear them moving around up there but no action. I think they're trying to call the elevator. Should I–"
"No, leave them. We've got Zahm and we've got the arsenal. Not exactly the original plan, but it'll do. Hansen, once you're done clearing weapons and electronics, backtrack to Noboru and hold. As soon as we wrap up Zahm, we'll be there."
"Roger. And Ames?"
"He's dumb enough to have stayed. We'll take him, too."
LEAPFROGGING,Fisher and Gillespie made their way down the row of benches until they were within a hundred yards of Zahm and his two men. Fisher gestured for Gillespie to take the man on the left. She nodded and set up for the shot. Fisher fired first. His target went down. Zahm spun that way, then heard the second man collapse and turned back.
"Hi, Chuck," Fisher called.
Zahm turned around. He was holding a 9mm semiautomatic in his right hand.
"Lose it," Fisher ordered.
Zahm dropped the gun. "Fisher!" he called back with a wide grin.
"You just couldn't sit still, could you?" Fisher replied. "Couldn't have stayed in Portugal, enjoyed your villa and your mojitos and your boat."
"Boring. Too damned boring."
"Then you're going to hate prison," Fisher called.
"You can put me in, but you can't keep me there."
From somewhere in the space, Ames yelled, "You're both wrong!"
Fisher looked at Gillespie. "He's not in here."
"What?"
"The echo's wrong. He's above us–ballistics, second level. He's yelling down the exhaust shaft."
And then Fisher realized what was happening. He keyed the radio, "Ben, say position."
"Electronics. Just finishing."
"Move now, back to the ramp. You, Valentina, and Noboru get topside as fast as you can."
"What's going on?"
"Do it. Blast your way through whoever's up there, but don't slow down."
"Roger."
Gillespie asked Fisher, "What's–"
Ames shouted again: "Okay, Chucky, here it comes...."
Fisher told her, "We're leaving. Move!"
From the far end of the space they heard a crash. They turned back to see an Anvil case bounce off the middle exhaust funnel and slam into the wall behind it.
Zahm spun around and stared at the case. "Son of a bitch! Ames, I'm gonna–"
A second case fell, this one the size of a closet. It struck the floor upside down and split open. Fisher saw a couple of dozen cylindrical objects skitter across the floor. Another case fell, then another, and then they were raining down the exhaust vent until the mound was taller than the funnels. Over the din, Zahm was shouting unintelligible curses. He stopped suddenly and stared at the debris.
Ames called, "Missed one. Here it comes."
A brick-sized white object dropped down the vent and disappeared into the pile.
"Ah, bloody hell!" Zahm called.
Gillespie said, "What?"
"Semtex," Fisher replied. "Run."
THEYwere sixty feet from the door when the charge went off. A split second later a grenade detonated, then another, then rose a thunderous whoop.
Fisher felt a wave slam into his back. The air was sucked from his lungs. He tumbled end over end and slammed into a wall. He rolled over and looked around.
"Kimberly!"
He heard a groan near the door. She lay on her back, with her torso in the corridor and her legs lying across the threshold. Fisher pushed himself to his knees and stumbled toward her. He looked left. The back wall of the space was gone, along with the concrete blast funnels. Water gushed through the hole and surged across the floor toward them. Fisher reached Gillespie, grabbed her by the collar, and ran, dragging her out the door and down the corridor.
Hansen was on the radio. "What the hell was that?"
"Level four is blasted open," Fisher replied. "The lake's coming in. Where are you?"
"Near the top of the first-level ramp. There are about a dozen bad guys here. They're putting up a fight. The rest went up in the elevator."
"Hold on, we're coming. Gillespie's hurt. Can you spare Valentina?"
"She's on her way."
Fisher was halfway down the corridor. The ramp intersection was in sight. He glanced over his shoulder and saw debris and litter swirling through the ballistics door as if blown by a giant fan. The first of the water boiled through at knee height, but within seconds it rose over the top of the jamb and began climbing toward the ceiling.
He heard Gillespie mutter, "God Almighty . . ."
He looked down at her. Her eyes were open and she was blinking rapidly.
"Can you walk?" Fisher asked.
"The hell with that! I can run!" she shouted.
He released her collar. She rolled over, scrambled to her feet, grabbed Fisher's outstretched hand, and together they sprinted to the ramp, around the railing, and started up the incline. Behind them, the wave surged into the intersection, crashed over the railing, and slammed into their legs, shoving them sideways. Fisher went down. His nose shattered on the concrete. His vision swirled. He tasted blood. He spit, pushed himself to his knees. Ahead of him, Gillespie had stopped on the ramp. She saw him fall and turned back.
"No! I'm okay. . . . I'm up!" he shouted. "Keep going!"
Valentina came sprinting down the ramp, and Fisher shouted, "Take her!" and together she and Gillespie turned and kept going. Fisher gathered his feet under him, then slipped and skidded back down the ramp. The water crashed over his head, enveloping him. The world went muffled. Then he was sliding again. In the froth he glimpsed a straight line . . . a piece of steel. The railing!He slapped at it with his hand and missed. Tried again and, this time, managed to hold on. He reached up with his opposite hand, grabbed the next railing, and heaved. His head broke into the air. Behind him, the fourth level was gone, flooded up to the ceiling.
"Sam!"
Fisher looked up. Noboru was leaning over the railing with his hand extended and Hansen holding on to his legs. "Grab on!"
Fisher put his foot on the railing. It slipped off. Pain shot up his leg. He gasped. Something wrong with my left foot,he thought. Broken.He tried again, this time using his knee, and managed to climb halfway from the water. With both arms braced on the railing, Fisher lifted his right leg from the water, pressed it against the top rail. Noboru's hand was eighteen inches away. Fisher took a breath, coiled his leg beneath him, and pushed off. His palm touched Noboru's; then he was falling again. He curled his fingertips into claws. Noboru did the same. Fisher jerked to a stop. Noboru's other hand was waving before his eyes. Fisher latched onto it with his free hand. Hansen began hauling them upward.
Together, they sprawled backward onto the ramp. They'd gained only a temporary advantage, he saw: The water was already rising around the curve.
"You okay?" Hansen asked, helping Fisher to his feet. "You're bleeding."
"I'm fine. Let's go."
Hansen and Noboru charged up the ramp and around the next turn. Fisher hobbled after them. "Sam?" Hansen called.
"Keep going!"
Hansen reappeared on the ramp. "Your foot."
"Fell asleep."
The water lapped over his ankles. Fisher stopped and looked down. His toes were almost pointing backward. The pain thundered in his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, then forced them open again.
Hansen started back down toward him.
"Ben."
The tone of Fisher's voice stopped Hansen in his tracks. "I can help you, Sam."
"Get everybody topside. I'm right behind you."
"Your foot's broken."
"I'm not going to argue with you. Go now, or the next time I see you I'm going to shoot you."
Hansen held his gaze for a few moments, then nodded, turned around, and disappeared.
THEwater was shockingly cold. Fisher stood perfectly still, letting it surge over his calves, then his knees. The throbbing in his ankle tapered off. From the level above came the sound of Grozas firing. It went on for fifteen more seconds; then there was silence.
Fisher radioed: "Ben, where are you?"
"First level. Bad guys are either gone or dead. Elevator's out of commission. We're heading back the way we came in."
"Good."
"As soon as everyone's out, I'll–"
"No need. I'm coming up on the first-level ramp," Fisher lied. "I'm a minute behind you. Leave the rope for me."
Silence.
Fisher hobbled forward a few feet until the water level retreated to his knees
"Leave the rope for me," Fisher repeated.
"Roger."
He felt a wave of relief. Hansen and the others would make it. Knowing that, he steeled himself for what he had to do. He had no intention of standing on this ramp and waiting for the water to overtake him.
He took a deep breath, then a step forward. Pain burst behind his eyes. Another breath, another step forward. Each one got easier until he was clear of the water and twenty feet from the top of the ramp. He paused and patted his sides, looking for his Groza. It was gone. At the top of the ramp he saw a discarded AK-47. He fixed his eyes on it and kept going. Ten feet . . . five feet . . .
Pause. Breathe. Go.
Behind him the water had gained some ground, now lapping at his heels.
Five feet . . .He stopped, leaned down, and snagged the AK's sling with his fingertip and lifted it up. As a cane it was too short, but it took a portion of the weight off his ankle. He walked into the next level's intersection.
One more to go.
Hansen's voice: "We're out, Sam. Where are you?"
"Almost there."
Fisher pulled off his headset and tossed it away and kept walking.
The last ramp seemed to take hours. Hundreds of steps, but Fisher knew it couldn't have been more than minutes. The water dogged him, surging and retreating as it filled the level behind him, then finally rolling over his legs and staying there.
He reached the top of the ramp. Level 1. He took another minibreak, then turned right and started down across the intersection toward the utility-room corridor. He was twenty feet away when the floor trembled, then heaved upward. A crack shot threw the floor, splitting the corridor down the middle. Fisher started backpedaling. A geyser of water burst from the floor, and the concrete began falling away into the chasm.
Fisher turned around, looked around. Directly ahead of him lay the elevator. Out of service,he thought numbly. He turned back. The utility corridor was gone; in its place a ravine filled with white water. It boiled up the walls and started rushing into the intersection.
No choice, Sam.
He started hobbling toward the elevator. He heard the wall of water approaching and could feel on his back the rush of cool air being pushed ahead of the surge, but he ignored it and kept his eyes fixed on the elevator.
He was ten feet from the door when the wave slammed into him.
EPILOGUE
PORTINHO DA ARRABIDA , PORTUGAL
HEfelt a vague pang of guilt for not being excited at the prospect of having company, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that if he told them the truth, they would probably understand and even forgive him for it. They were friends, certainly, but not in the pure sense of the word. Of course, that predicament wasn't uncommon in a business where friendships were usually forged in the fire of hardship and tragedy. It was a strong, almost instantaneous bond, one that most people rarely took time to examine. The proverbial elephant in every room. He was cynical, that much he could admit, but whether that was his permanent mind-set or simply a bad habit that would fade with time, he didn't know. He would find out.
Fisher stepped away from the sunlit floor-to-ceiling windows and walked to his nearby leather armchair. He propped the cane against the arm and took a test lap around the room. The limp was almost gone and would eventually disappear altogether. Thanks to pins and screws and plates, the bones in his ankle were almost as good as new. His only reminder of the injury would be an uncanny knack for predicting rain. Given the alternatives, he considered it a fair trade.
The wave that had slammed into his back drove him headfirst into the side of the elevator-shaft wall, momentarily stunning him. When he opened his eyes, a second or half second later, he saw the partially open elevator doors sweeping past him. Acting on instinct, he shoved his arm into the gap, then made a fist and did a bicep curl until his shoulder was wedged between the doors. Having had no time to take a breath before the wave hit, Fisher found himself under five feet of water without an ounce of air in his lungs. He squirmed deeper into the elevator, his one good leg crabbing at the floor until he popped through the gap and he was able to stand. The water boiled at his chin. He looked up. His headlamp illuminated the ceiling escape hatch. He reached up. It was just out of reach, so he steadied himself, breathing deeply, oxygenating his blood as the water rose over his mouth, his nose, his eyes, and then he was submerged.
His headlamp flickered and went dark.
His fingertips touched the escape hatch, then his palms. He drew his knife and stabbed around the edge of the hatch, hacking away at the thin metal until it fell away and disappeared in the swirling water. He stuck both arms through the hatch, braced his elbows on the roof, and levered himself up and out. Water bubbled up behind him and began flowing over the elevator car's roof.
He tested the cable: It was thick with grease and grit. Half-a-decade old or not, the lubricant made the cable unclimbable. He looked around for a maintenance ladder. There wasn't one. Fisher knew what this meant: a ride up the shaft like a piece of flotsam. The trip took only a few minutes, but in the narrow confines of the shaft the water roiled and whooshed as air from the complex below sought escape through one of the few exits left.
When he drew level with the door, he found it closed, but ten seconds of levering with his knife opened a gap wide enough for him to squeeze both hands through; another twenty seconds and he was lying on the concrete floor of the hut. Water gushed after him and sloshed across the floor.
Bad to worse, Fisher thought. The hut was made of cinder block, the door of thick steel secured by a virtually indestructible lock. Fisher looked around. The inside was barren, just a floor, four walls, and a roof. Fisher caught himself. Not just walls–five-decade-old walls. He didn't need to find an exit; he needed to let the water make him an exit.
As the water rose past his ankles and then his knees, he hobbled from wall to wall, using the tip of his knife to test the grout between the cinder blocks. It wasn't until the water had reached his waist that he found the spot he wanted. He began chiseling at it, concentrating the knife's point on a quarter-sized spot. He stopped, stuck his finger into the hole. Halfway there.He jammed the knife back into the hole and hammered at it with his fist until his skin split and blood ran down his forearm. He switched hands and kept pounding.
The tip punched through. He pressed his eye to the hole. He saw bright sun.
The water reached his shoulders.
He thrust the knife back into the hole and began levering the haft in a circle, grinding away at the grout. A thumb-sized chunk of cinder block popped free, then another, and another. And then, with a sucking sound, the water found the hole and surged through. The water lapped at his chin and into his mouth. He sputtered and kept chopping at the block. The fifty-year-old grout began disintegrating. Horizontal and vertical gaps appeared, revealing daylight. The water level dropped an inch, then bubbled up again.
Fisher clamped the knife between his teeth, shoved both hands into the hole, and, using them as leverage, rammed his knee into the wall. Then again, and again, until his leg was numb.
A whole cinder block broke free and tumbled out. Fisher adjusted his aim and drove his knee into the neighboring block until it shifted sideways and slid halfway out. He drew his knee back, set his jaw, and–
A three-by-three section of the wall gave way and Fisher tumbled out onto the snow-covered ground and lay still. Hansen found him ten minutes later. Not content to sit on his hands at the entrance vent and wait for something that might never come, he'd left Gillespie to stand watch and taken the other team members on a perimeter search. Their first stop had been the hut.
FISHERwatched the car pull down the driveway and stop beside the flagstone path leading to the front door. Fisher got there before either of them could ring the bell. Having left Washington two weeks after returning from Russia, Fisher had seen neither Hansen nor Grimsdottir for three months. He'd stayed around only long enough to recover from the surgery on his ankle and sit through three days of debriefing.
Fisher invited them in. "Mojito?" he asked.
"Sure," said Grimsdottir, and Hansen nodded.
"Head down to the deck. I'll meet you there."
Ten minutes later they were sitting beneath an umbrella overlooking the water. Hansen took a sip of his mojito and smiled. "It's good."
"They've grown on me," Fisher said.
"So this is it," Grimsdottir asked, "the villa of the late, great Chucky Zee?"
Fisher nodded. "Thanks for that, by the way."
Through her contacts at Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, Grimsdottir had enlightened the Serious Organised Crime Agency, or SOCA, about Zahm's nonliterary endeavors. From there Zahm's now-defunct criminal empire unraveled. Surprisingly, most of the jewelry and art and gems Zahm and his Little Red Robbers had stolen had never been fenced. SOCA found the bulk of the loot in a storage unit outside Setubal. At her encouragement, the British Home Office had given Fisher a free, one-year lease on Zahm's villa.
"The least I could do," Grimsdottir said. "I see they took his yacht, though."
Fisher smiled. "A few days after I got here some very polite gentlemen from the Home Office came and asked for the keys. It's okay. I've had enough of water for a while. Besides, if I change my mind, I've still got the rowboats."
"How's the ankle?"
"Getting there. How's Kovac?"
Two hours after his arrest for treason, Kovac had tried to hang himself in his cell but was saved by an alert guard. As it turned out, Ames's insurance cache had been more than enough to break the deputy director.
"Pliable," Grimsdottir replied. "Officially, he retired after discovering he had colorectal cancer. Unofficially, he spends in his days in an FBI safe house answering questions and naming names."
"Is it going to do any good?"
Hansen answered, "Eventually. Lambert was right. This goes very deep. The good news is, the Laboratory 738 Arsenal is sitting at the bottom of a sinkhole near Lake Baikal. It's out of circulation. Permanently. Turns out Zahm leased the complex from one of the men I saw in Korfovka–Mikhail Bratus, former GRU. As for the other two, Yuan Zhao and Michael Murdoch, we're working on it. The auction guests didn't fare very well. Only six made it out of the complex, and all of them were scooped up by the FSB."
"Ernsdorff?"
"About a week after Baikal he disappeared, and he took a few hundred million in investors' money with him. Ten days ago they found in him a St. John hotel with his throat cut. Someone didn't appreciate his accounting methods."
"What about our old friend Ames?"
"No sign of him. If he's dead, somewhere in the sinkhole, we'll never know."
"And if he's alive?" Fisher finished. "He's not the kind of guy to hide forever. You and the others watch your backs."
"You, too."
"How are they, by the way–Nathan, Maya, and Kimberly?"
"All good. They send their regards."
They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the ocean, before Grimsdottir said, "Sam, if you want to come back, I can arrange it."
Fisher shook his head.
"Is that a no?"
Fisher looked around the deck for a few moments, then turned his face into the sun and took a deep breath. "That's an 'ask me again when my lease is up.' "
Turn the page for a sneak peek at the other side of the story . . . Coming December 2009! TOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL ENDGAME Follow Ben Hansen's team in their desperate race to corner Sam Fisher.
PROLOGUE
KORFOVKA, RUSSIAN FEDERATION NEAR THE CHINESE BORDER EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO
THEfirst blow loosened one of Ben Hansen's molars and sent his head wrenching to one side.
Captured . . . killed . . .
He never saw the second blow, only felt Rugar's pointed knuckles drive into his left eye.
Captured . . . killed . . .
Hansen's head whipped back, then lolled forward as warm blood spilled down his chin.
Now Rugar's screams grew incomprehensible, like panes of glass shattering across the hangar's concrete floor.
Make no mistake. If you're captured, you will be killed.
Hansen tugged at the plastic flex-cuffs cutting into his wrists and binding him to the chair. He finally mustered the energy to face Rugar, who loomed there, a neckless, four-hundred-pound, vodka-soaked beast crowned by an old Red Army ushankatwo sizes too small for his broad head. He was about fifty, twice Hansen's age, and hardly agile, but at the moment that hardly mattered.
The fat man opened his mouth, exposing a jagged fence of yellowed teeth. He shouted again, and more glass shattered, accompanied by the rattling of two enormous steel doors that had been rolled shut against the wind.
Hansen shivered. It was below freezing now, and their breaths hung heavy in the air. At least the dizziness from the anesthetic was beginning to wear off. He tried to blink, but his left eye did not respond; it was swelling shut.
And then–a flash from Rugar's hand.
Captured . . . killed . . .
The fat man had confiscated Hansen's knife.
BUTthis wasn't just any knife–it was a Fairbairn Sykes World War II-era commando dagger that had once belonged to the elusive Sam Fisher, a Splinter Cell few people knew but whose exploits were legendary among them.
Rugar leaned over and held the blade before Hansen's face. He spoke more slowly, and the words, though still Russian, finally made sense: "We know why you've come. Now, if you tell me what I need to know, you will live."
Hansen took a deep breath. "You won't break me."
For a moment Rugar just stood there, his cheeks swelling like melons as he labored for his next breath. Suddenly he smiled, his rank breath coming hard in Hansen's face. "It's going to be a long night for both of us."
Rugar's left ear was pierced, and the gold hoop hanging there caught the overhead lights at such an angle that for a moment all Hansen noticed were those flashes of gold. He realized only after the blood spattered onto his face that Rugar had been shot in the head, the round coming from a suppressed weapon somewhere behind them.
All four hundred pounds of the fat man collapsed onto Hansen, snapping off the chair's back legs as the knife went skittering across the floor. Hansen now bore the Russian's full weight across his chest, and he wasn't sure which would kill him first: suffocation or the sickly sweet stench emanating from Rugar's armpits.
With a groan, he shoved himself against the fat man's body and began worming his way out, gasping, grimacing, and a heartbeat away from retching.
He rolled onto his side and squinted across the hangar, toward the pair of helicopters and the shadows along the perimeter wall and mechanics' stations.
And then he appeared, Sergei Luchenko, Hansen's runner. The gaunt-faced man was still wearing his long coat and gripping his pistol with a large suppressor. An unlit cigarette dangled from his thin lips.
Hansen sighed deeply. "What happened? Why didn't you answer my calls?" He groaned over the question. "Strike that. I'm just glad you're here."
Sergei walked up to Hansen, withdrew a lighter from his breast pocket, and lit his cigarette.
"How about some help?" Hansen struggled against the flex-cuffs.
"I'm sorry, my friend. They sent me to kill you."
"Bad joke."
"It's no joke."
Hansen stiffened. "Not you, Sergei."
"I don't have a choice."
Hansen closed his good eye, then spoke through his teeth. "Then why did you save me?"
"I didn't. The kill must be mine. And . . . I didn't want you to suffer."
"This is not who you are."
"I'm sorry." Sergei withdrew a compact digital video camera from his pocket and hit the RECORD button. He held it close to Hansen. "You see, he is alive. And now . . ." Sergei raised his pistol.
Hansen cursed at the man.
There would be no life story flashing before Hansen's eyes; no images of his youth growing up in Fort Stock-ton, Texas; no scenes from his days at MIT, which he had attended on a full scholarship; no moments from that bar with the director, Anna "Grim" Grimsdottir, who had recruited him out of the CIA to join Third Echelon and become one of the world's most effective field operatives–a Splinter Cell. No, there would be nothing as dramatic or cinematic as that–just a hot piece of lead piercing his forehead, fracturing his skull, and burying itself deep in his brain before he had a chance to think about it.
The gun thumped. Hansen flinched.
And then . . . Sergei collapsed sideways onto the concrete, a gaping hole now revealed in the back of his head.
Hansen swore again, this time in relief. He squinted into the shadows at the far end of the hangar. "Uh, thank you?"
No reply.
He raised his voice. "Who are you?"
Again, just the wind . . .
He lay there a few seconds more, just breathing, waiting for his savior to show himself.
One last time. "Who are you?"
Hansen's voice trailed off into the howling wind and creaking hangar doors. He lay there for another two minutes.
No one came.
Tensing, he wriggled on his side, drawing closer to his knife, which was lying just a meter away. He reached the blade, turned it over in his hand, and began to slowly, painfully, saw into the flex-cuffs.
When he was free, he stood and collected himself, his face still swelling, the hangar dipping as though floating on rough seas. And then, blinking his good eye to clarity, he lifted his gaze to the rafters, the crossbeams, the pipes, and still . . . nothing. He turned back to the bodies and shook his head in pity at Sergei. Then he glowered at the fat man, who even in death would get the last laugh, since disposing of his body would be like manhandling a dead Russian circus bear.
There was still a lot of work to do, but all the while Hansen couldn't help but feel the heat of someone's gaze on his shoulders.
He shouted again, "Who are you?"
Only his echo answered.
1
HOLMES OFFICE COMPLEX HOUSTON, TEXAS PRESENT DAY
MAYAValentina saw it in the man's gaze, which flicked down from her low-cut blouse to her well tanned legs to her feet jammed into a pair of stilettos. She tossed back her hair, which fell in golden waves across her shoulders, then put an index finger to her lips, as though to nervously bite her nail. Oh, yes, he liked the shy schoolgirl routine, and Valentina could pass for a freshman, too, though she was nearly twenty-eight.
