24: Deadline (24 Series) (40 page)

His words were cut off as his would-be executioner cracked him hard across the temple with the butt of his pistol. Pain lit pinwheels of light behind Jack’s eyes, but he deliberately allowed the powerful impact to knock him over. The chair tilted under him and he went down to the floor on his side.

The blow rang through his skull like a bell, but it let Jack put the left arm of the office chair right beneath him. Out of sight beneath his body, he crushed the tiny block of plastic that acted as the zip-tie’s lock between his weight and the hard concrete floor. He felt it fracture, and the binding on one wrist loosened, blood rushing back to his fingers with a sharp prickling sensation.

From the floor he saw Lenkov, the SVR operative with the blond hair, the one he had struck in the throat, draw a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver and move toward the door as it opened.

Paying no heed to Jack’s warning, Stephen rushed into the same trap that Jack had fallen into only moments ago. Lenkov caught Kim’s husband by surprise as he entered, and used his free hand to punch him squarely in the face. A fan of blood spurted from Stephen’s nose and he cried out in pain. Before he could react, Lenkov grabbed a handful of the doctor’s overcoat and dragged him deeper into the basement room. He shoved him to one side and stepped back, aiming with the revolver.

Bazin made a disappointed noise. “Dr. Wesley. You are being very foolish.” He walked toward the other man. “What is it about you Americans? You seem to think that you can be the hero of the story just because you wish it to be so? Did you think you would come in here and save him?” He pointed back toward where Jack lay. “
You?
” He released a bark of laughter, then shook his head. “No, no. You could have kept clear of this ugliness, Doctor. Now you will be a part of it.”

From the corner of his eye, Jack could see that the woman had ended the call. She had become very still, watching events unfold. He considered her status as a combatant—no visible weapons deployed, out of range. She wouldn’t be his primary threat vector. The others, Bazin and Lenkov, the ones with pistols in their hands, those were the enemies Jack had to deal with. The third one, Ekel, was still panting, nursing his broken rib.

Jack eased his hand around, getting ready. He would only have one shot at this.

“Sir,” said Ziminova. “We have new orders. The situation has changed.”

Bazin ignored her. “Put him up,” he said, and Lenkov swaggered over, a smirk forming on his lips as he kneaded the grip of his revolver. He wanted some payback for the pain Jack had inflicted on him, and saw this as an opportunity.
That was good
. It would make him sloppy.

“
Sir,
” Ziminova repeated with more force. “Moscow wants us to abort.”

“I will address their lack of will when this is over,” Bazin snapped. “We have come too far to falter now.”

The woman continued. “The kill order on Bauer has been suspended by the Duma. He is to be taken into custody instead. Pending an official trial into his crimes.”

“This is his courtroom, right here,” said Lenkov. “And the sentence has already been passed.” He reached down with one hand and yanked hard on the arm of the cheap plastic chair, putting his strength into hauling Jack back to a sitting position.

What he didn’t count on was Jack slipping his feet across the floor and pushing off against the concrete as he came up. Still tethered to the chair by his right wrist, Jack struck out violently with his off hand, grabbing at Lenkov’s weapon before he could bring it to bear. In the same motion, he swept around with the other arm outstretched, and the chair came up and around. He broke it across the torso of his adversary and Jack felt the other zip-tie snap off with the force of the impact. The pieces of the chair clattered to the floor and the two men went into a frantic back-and-forth with the pistol between them.

“Stephen, get down!” Jack wrestled with the SVR agent, and the revolver discharged at the low ceiling over their heads. The bullet shrieked as it sparked off hanging pipes. Lenkov was strong, and he tried to push the gun back down and into Jack’s face, but he twisted, wrestling the muzzle away. As they turned in place, Jack saw Ekel struggling to draw his own weapon.

He mashed the grip of the revolver and Lenkov could not stop his finger from contracting on the trigger. More shots rang out again and again, deafening in the tiny concrete space of the basement, rounds flashing brightly as they ricocheted from storage racks. Jack forced the gun to aim in the direction of a dozen medical oxygen canisters, and a bullet clanged into the side of one of the pressurized cylinders.

The shot didn’t cause an explosion; that would have needed a naked flame, and in these close confines it would have been death for all of them. But the round was enough to pierce the steel tube and vent the gas inside, a jet of compressed oxygen abruptly turning it into an unguided missile. The cylinder leapt out of the rack in a wild, spinning trajectory that threw it straight at Ekel as he tried to duck away. The head of the canister struck him in the back of the neck with an ugly crack of breaking vertebrae. The man went down and did not move again.

Against the hissing, screeching chorus of escaping gas, Jack shouted with effort, digging deep to find the strength to wrench the revolver around. Dimly, he saw Bazin raising his pistol to shoot toward the two combatants, ignoring Stephen where he had dropped to the ground nearby.

Jack deliberately let himself go off-balance, pivoting into a half-turn that spun the blond Russian about just as his commander opened fire. Bullets from the silenced Makarov slammed into the back of the gunman with angry chugs and the man danced as they punched through his spine and his lungs.

Lenkov’s death grip slackened and Jack let him go, still holding tight to the burning-hot metal frame of the Smith & Wesson. Stepping over the body, he pointed the revolver at Bazin’s chest. In his haste to take Jack down, the big, craggy-faced Georgian had emptied his own firearm, and now the Makarov’s slide was locked back, the magazine dry.

Weary with the effort of it all, Jack didn’t offer any last words to the man. He pulled the revolver’s trigger.

The hammer fell on a spent cartridge with a hollow, echoing click. Jack cursed inwardly.

Bazin grinned. “Lose count, did you?”

“Don’t move!” Stephen scrambled toward something on the floor and in the next second he had shot to his feet. “Stay where you are!” Jack saw he had grabbed Ekel’s gun from where it had fallen, and now he was brandishing it before him, moving the thickset pistol back and forth between the two remaining SVR agents.

Ziminova raised her hands slowly, but her commander only cocked his head, his grin widening.

“Stephen,” said Jack. “Give me the weapon.” He held out his hand.

“I wouldn’t do that just yet!” Bazin barked. Tossing his useless pistol aside, he produced a small black rectangle from his jacket pocket, no larger than a pack of cigarettes. A short, flexible antenna extended from the top of the device, and on the face of it was an illuminated flip-switch. “Bauer knows what I have here, don’t you? You’ve seen them before.”

“Yes.” All of Jack’s rage, all his energy, drained from him in a brutal rush, as if it were water flowing out and soaking into the stony floor. Suddenly the dense, cordite-stinking air of the basement storeroom was stifling him, clogging his throat with dust and the odor of blood.

Bazin was holding a narrow-band, long-range radio detonator, the same kind that the Russian
Spetsnaz
special forces used in ambush attacks and denial missions.

“What is that?” Stephen asked, not understanding.

“I think your father-in-law sees where I am going with this.” Bazin shot a look toward the woman, who remained motionless, her face unreadable.

“Major, you must stand down,” said Ziminova. “You cannot proceed. We have our orders.”

“To hell with those vacillating fools!” Bazin snarled. “I will finish what I started. This is my contingency plan.” He went on, gesturing with the detonator. “I only have to push this button and that spacious sedan you own, Dr. Wesley, will become a mass of torn metal and burning flesh spread out across some stretch of freeway.”

“Bauer is the only target!” retorted the woman, appalled at her commander’s words. “We are not here to murder innocents!”

Jack felt himself turning to stone, his mind unable to grasp the horror of that appalling image, knowing at once that it was no bluff. He remembered the words he had spoken to the assassin back on the freight train.
You know how the SVR works. They don’t like loose ends
.

“I had Ekel place a charge on the vehicle just after your wife arrived at the hospital,” added Bazin.

“No!” Stephen shouted, and he went pale, clutching at his stomach almost as if he were about to vomit. “Dear god, you can’t be so callous…”

“I will give you this.” Bazin wiggled the remote between his fingers. “Truly, I will. In return, all that I ask of you is that you take that gun you are holding, point it at your father-in-law there and shoot him dead.” His tone shifted as he spoke, from casual and conversational to hard and unyielding. “A new agreement between us. Same as the old one, in point of fact. Bauer’s life in trade for that of your wife and daughter.”

“Jack…” Stephen’s voice became a whisper. “I … I can’t…”

“Why hesitate?” Bazin barked the question. “Only minutes ago, you were willing to agree to this trade, but now you won’t? You, who put your hands in other people’s blood all the time, cannot get them dirty now, is that it?” He was losing his patience, and he spat on the ground. “Pitiful.”

“No.” Jack sneered. “You’re the weak one in this room, not him. He came down here to help me when he could have just cut and run. That’s not cowardice.”

“You’re right,” Bazin retorted. “It is
sentiment
. And you people are ripe with it.” He glared at Stephen. “Kill him. I won’t tell you again.”

Jack lowered his hands and turned to look his son-in-law in the eye. The doctor’s face was ashen. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Protect Kim and Teri. They’re worth more than I ever could be. I know you’ll keep them safe. Being here, now … That proves it.”

The pistol trembled in Stephen’s grip as he raised it. “I’m so sorry.”

“I forgive you.” Jack turned away to save the man the distress of having to see his face and pull the trigger.

Strangely, it didn’t seem wrong to him that everything would come down to a moment like this one. His life, being put on the line for those he cared for. After all, wasn’t that the bargain that he had
always
made?

Time to pay up, Jack,
said Nina’s voice, out in the distance. He backed away a step, bracing for the shot he knew would come.

But then another voice, another woman, spoke. “No,” said Ziminova, stepping forward and drawing her weapon. “This is not how we will proceed,” she said firmly.

Bazin’s glare turned on the other agent. “Do not interfere!” he snapped.

And in that second, Jack was ready to embrace death.

“
No!
” The shout came from Stephen, and he pulled the trigger twice. Jack flinched, his body instinctively tensing in anticipation of the searing, brutal impact of the bullets, but instead the rounds whistled past his ear and he caught a strangled cry behind him.

Bazin took both shots in the chest and collapsed over a storage crate, wheezing as they pierced his lungs. Stephen cried out in horror at what he had done, repulsed by the act, staring down at the gun in his hand as if it were a poisonous snake.

Still alive but dying by seconds, Bazin clutched at his bloody torso. The radio detonator was on the floor, lost as the impacts knocked him back, and Jack saw a flash of brutal malice in the man’s eyes as he came to the knowledge that he was already dead. Bazin lurched off the crate, clawing for the detonator.

Jack dove at him, landing hard atop the other man, fighting to get a grip. Coughing up spatters of crimson fluid, Bazin heaved himself toward the device, wanting nothing more than to commit one final act of hatred against a country, a people that he abhorred.

Hands grabbing at Bazin’s throat, Jack fought to crush it, strangling the last breaths of air from him. Face-to-face, the two men battled to make their kill, each as determined as the other.

“No,” Jack told him, inexorably tightening his grip. “
No
.” At length, Bazin stopped struggling, stopped moving, stopped breathing.

Jack pushed off him and gingerly gathered up the fallen detonator, finding the disarming switch. The trigger button went dark, and he took a shaky breath.

When Jack looked up, the woman was standing over him. She held her gun in a loose but ready stance, not quite aiming it at him.

“What happens now?” he asked, for the moment unable to gather the strength to stand.

“The call,” she explained. “It was a relay from Moscow. Yuri Suvarov has been forcibly removed from the office of president of the Russian Federation. He has been placed under arrest, pending an investigation into his involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate a foreign head of state.” She paused to let that sink in. “As such, all personal executive orders issued by Suvarov have been temporarily suspended. This … hunt…” Ziminova glanced around the room. “It should never have gone this far. Bazin knew that. He proceeded anyway.”

Jack watched her gather up anything from the dead men that could be used to identify them, stuffing wallets and fake IDs into a satchel. Stephen came to help him to his feet, and he winced at the pain as he got up. “Thanks,” Jack managed. He took the Makarov from the other man’s hands, and Stephen gave it up willingly.

Ziminova stood by the doorway, hesitating. She still had her gun drawn. Jack met her gaze, his finger touching the trigger of the pistol he held. “It’s up to you how this goes from here,” he told her.

Her eyes narrowed. “I follow my orders,” she said. “But be clear, Bauer. This is only a stay of execution. A temporary reprieve. You have killed Russians. Important men. My people will want that blood cost to be paid in kind.” Then, before he could find an answer, she slipped away into the basement corridor and was gone.