Devil's Keep (34 page)

He stayed low and crawled a few yards along the ditch. There was no fuel in the ditch: he checked the ground to make sure.

He pulled the rifle in close and removed the thermal scope. It was mounted with a quick-release mechanism, designed so that it could be swapped with an ordinary telescopic sight in daytime. He pulled a small lever on the side of the mount, and the scope popped free. He put it aside. He was done with it. In a few seconds it would be useless.

Then he balled the fuel-soaked paper, wadding it tight in his hands.

He took the lighter from his pocket and lit the wad. It caught right away. He tossed the flaming ball out of the ditch, toward the helicopter and the pool of fuel beneath it.

The fiery wad of paper flew up into the dark sky, then started back to earth.

And now Favor was up and running like hell.

Up in the window, Vladimir almost got off a shot in that instant when the scuttling man emerged from
behind the chopper. But the move surprised him, and the pale white figure disappeared into the ditch an instant before Vladimir could get the crosshairs on him.

But before the interloper vanished, Vladimir did get a look at the rifle slung behind him: a Dragunov. He knew it was probably Yuri’s weapon and that it was supposed to be with him up at the top of the hill, but he didn’t waste time thinking about how it had gotten down here.

He just thought:
Ah, a sniper duel. This should be fun
.

Then the flaming wad of paper flew out of the ditch, hot white in his scope.

Fucked,
he thought.

The wad of paper never reached the ground. It ignited the fumes that hung over the helipad, and was instantly consumed in the fireball it had created.

The helicopter had a jet turbine engine and burned Jet A fuel, more stable than gasoline. It is a kerosene-like fluid, and in open air it usually burns like kerosene on a wick, sooty and not very hot.

But the oxygen that spewed from the tank changed all that. It created a volatile mixture that burned hot and bright as a blowtorch, feeding off the fuel that had soaked into the ground and off the fluid that continued to gush from the tank.

The sudden inferno lit up the entire island, and it overwhelmed the heat sensor on Vladimir’s thermal scope. He was slow to pull back from the eyepiece, and for an instant the screen was as bright as if he
were staring straight into the sun.

Favor was about fifty feet away when the fuel ignited. The concussion nearly knocked him to the ground as he ran, and it came with a tsunami of heat that felt as hot as a candle’s flame held to the palm. He continued to run, not away from the fire but around it, skirting the edge of the helipad, swinging around until he was clear of it, with a view of the hillside again. Then he dropped to the ground, into the classic prone position of the marksman.

The hillside was lit almost as bright as day, and Favor quickly spotted each of the four targets he had seen through the thermal scope.

He sighted along the barrel.

The Dragunov was a weapon of the old Red Army, intended for hard use in primitive conditions. To keep it useful even without the delicate optics of a sniper scope, its designers had given it basic iron sights.

As Favor sighted along the barrel, his eye found the blade and notch from the first rifle he had shot when he was a boy.

He knew what to do now.

He sighted first on the window with the half-open shutter. Someone inside reached for the shutter, closing it. Favor put a shot into the shutter at the spot where the head had appeared an instant earlier.

He swung over to the first of the three men standing around the building as if dazzled by the fireball.

Favor notched the blade on the guard’s chest, going for center mass. He fired, and the target dropped.

Favor swung fluidly, and the front sight came to rest on the second guard, center mass. He fired and the target went down.

The third man reacted. He ducked and disappeared into the doorway where he had been standing.

Favor had no more targets—none that he could see. He wondered how many were left. He knew where he could find more: the second building up on the hill seemed to be the center of activity. That was where he wanted to be.

He reloaded, stood, and ran back the way he had come, behind the burning helipad, keeping the flames between him and the hill. He ran toward the dock, to the body of the guard he had just shot there. He crouched at the body, looking up at the hill—still no movement—and took the AK-47 and spare clips of ammunition.

Favor ran to the dock and put down the Dragunov and the ammo that he had been carrying. He thought that Mendonza would know what to do with it.

The noise from the fire grew suddenly louder. Favor glanced over and saw that fuel was gushing from the helicopter’s tanks. He threw himself down on the dock, and an instant later the chopper exploded, flinging body panels and mechanical pieces in every direction.

A fireball rose into the night sky. Favor waited for pieces of the helicopter to stop falling around him,
then picked up the AK and started up the hill.

Banshee
at that moment was four miles from Devil’s Keep and closing fast.

When Favor left the boat, Mendonza had dropped back and circled to the south until he was about six miles southeast of the island, looking toward its low front side. He wanted to stay out of sight but close enough that he could catch whatever signal Favor might send. He figured that Favor would start a bonfire or maybe get his hands on a flashlight.
Ray will figure out something,
he thought, but he didn’t expect anything like the bloom of flame that erupted to the northwest, illuminating the island against the dark horizon.

“That’s our boy,” he said. Stickney and Arielle scrambled for seats. Mendonza looked back just long enough to see that they were fastening their harnesses. Then he turned the engines over and shoved the throttles all the way forward.

Anatoly Markov was the target who ducked inside the doorway of the main building. Markov heard shots and saw one of the guards fall—hit—before he dropped and crawled inside, an instant before Favor could line up his sights for another shot.

Markov found the hallway empty. He opened the door of the ops room on his right and found Andropov and the radioman Vladimir Raznar both down on the floor. The rear wall was splattered with gouts of blood and brain tissue, and Markov knew that it must have come from the ex-sniper; the back of Vladimir’s head
was gone. Andropov was beneath Vladimir, and when Markov pulled the body away he saw that Andropov was in bad shape. The side of his cheek had been ripped open, exposing the shattered hinge of his jaw.

Markov saw a hole in one of the window shutters, now half open, and realized that a single shot must have done all this: passed through the shutter and in and out of Vladimir’s head, striking Andropov in the cheek.

The slug had lost energy, otherwise Andropov would have been dead, but it still had kept enough punch to screw him up good. Andropov’s eyes looked uncomprehending as Markov pulled away Vladimir’s body. Andropov tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t move, and his right arm made flailing motions, but his left side looked strangely inert.

Markov dragged Andropov out of the room and into the hallway, where he could lay him out. The big orderly, Boris Godina, appeared at the door of the operating room and said, “Dr. Lazovic wants to know what the hell is happening here.”

“Tell Lazovic I don’t
know
what the hell is happening. Get Sasha Batkin and come here. We have to organize a defense.”

Godina hurried out, and Markov began calling names on the radio net, trying to get information.

He got no responses. He believed that there was a problem with the system.
Surely not everyone is down,
he thought.

The two orderlies, Godina and Batkin, came to the door.

To Batkin, Markov said, “Get an AK and go fetch the girl. Bring her here. Then secure the south door of the building.”

To Godina, Markov said, “See what you can do with Andropov, then secure the north door. I’ll guard this hallway.”

Markov tried the radio again.

He said, “Malkin. Malkin. Are you there, Malkin?”

No response.

“Gorsky? Report your situation, Gorsky.”

Only silence.

Surely not everyone
… Markov thought.

He tried one last name, almost as an afterthought. By now he was sure that the system must be screwed up.

“Karlamov, this is base,” he said. “Come in Karlamov.”

The quick response in his earpiece startled Markov.

“Karlamov here.”

Of the seven men who had been sent out to sentry posts that night, only Viktor Karlamov was still alive.

He had been sent to the far south end of the island. This post was more than three hundred yards from the dock, and when the fire exploded on the helipad, Karlamov saw it through the trees as vertical slivers of brilliant orange. He heard the barking of the sniper rifle that followed the explosion, and got down low behind some cover, but no shots came his
way. Karlamov couldn’t see what was happening, and he couldn’t be seen.

Remain at your post until ordered to leave
was a soldier’s fundamental. So was
Maintain radio discipline
. Karlamov knew that the island was under attack. He wanted a better idea of what was happening, and he was eager to join the fight, but his years of military training kept him rooted to his post and kept him silent as he listened to Markov calling to the other guards.

Then Karlamov heard his name called.

“Karlamov here,” he said at once.

“Karlamov! What is your status?”

“I’m at my post. Nothing to report. Ready for orders.”

“Nothing in your area?”

“Nothing,” Karlamov said, then he paused and added, “No. Wait a minute. I hear something.”

A hammering drone was drifting in from the ocean southeast of his position. It was faint at first but quickly getting louder. He moved to one side until he had a clear view out across the water.

Then he saw it.

He said, “It’s a boat. A fast one. Real fast. It’s headed for the dock.”

“Jesus, reinforcements,” Markov said. “You have to stop them.”

Karlamov considered the speed of the boat, the distance from his position to the dock, and the ground that he would have to cover.

“I won’t make it to the dock in time.”

“Then stop them where you can.
But stop them
.
Understood?”

“Understood,” Karlamov said.

He set off down the long slope toward the dock. Karlamov soon had a choice of two routes. To his right was a shallow gully that entered a grove of coconuts, long untended, choked with undergrowth. Karlamov knew that the gully led down to the dock: in fact, it was a more direct route, though slower, because of the tangled brush and fallen logs in the grove.

To his left, skirting the grove, was his usual route. It would bring him through the cluster of buildings to the main path that ran down past the helipad to the dock.

But the fire still glowed hot and bright. Karlamov knew that he would be illuminated on that open path—exposed and all lit up. He remembered the purposeful rifle fire he had heard from that direction a few minutes earlier, and he thought of the silence on the radio net as Markov ticked off the names of the other sentries. None of them had answered after that rifle quit booming.

The gully would be a pain in the ass, especially in the dark, but the trees and the brush would cover him as he worked his way down.

With his rifle in his arms, he turned to the right, moved down the gully, and entered the old coconut grove.

Stickney tightened his harness straps as Mendonza brought in
Banshee
, thundering hard. To Stickney it
seemed crazy fast. The island and the blazing fire loomed, growing larger, filling the windscreen.

But Mendonza held course and speed, then cut the engines back at the last moment. The hull settled deep into the water, digging in, as Mendonza swung the wheel and brought the boat in broadside against the dock.

It drifted in and thumped against the pilings. Almost before it had stopped moving, Mendonza was out of his seat, running forward. He threw a coil of rope that lay in a recess near the bow. He jumped up onto the dock, looked around, and snugged the line against a cleat.

Arielle unstrapped from her seat and went below. Stickney opened his harness, too, and joined Mendonza on the dock.

Stickney said, “Ray?”

“I don’t see him,” Mendonza said.

Stickney took in the hellish scene on the island, lit by the fire. He saw a body near the dock, then two more up on the hillside near the clump of buildings. The fire was still so intense that he could feel its heat across the length of a football field. He became aware of the stink of charred flesh and knew that at least one body must have been been burned in the flames.

He thought,
Ray
…this.
My God, all this
.…

Arielle came up onto the dock, carrying the shotgun and the pistol. She quickly took in the scene and pointed up the hillside to the buildings.