Blowback (25 page)

Vanessa lengthened her stride
to gain on the blue raincoat. If it was the Chechen, she needed to make the identification now.

But crowds had thickened here, and rain made the oily street slick and slowed everyone. She slipped once but caught herself and kept moving. Staying parallel and gaining on him a bit at a time.

What the hell would she do if she verified it was him? Should she call Chris? Her almost-numb fingers reached for speed dial. Had he gotten through to the COS London?

She hesitated when he turned away suddenly, down a small alley.

Damn.
It looked like a dead end, but it might cut through.
Follow?

She did for roughly half the block—until he raised his head, as if to check his surroundings, and then he pivoted abruptly in her direction.

It's not the Chechen—not him—

Adrenaline ripped through her, trailed instantly by knife-sharp frustration and a deep sense of relief.

So maybe she was wrong about all of this, and that was fine, that was good . . .

She turned, checking for Chris, retracing her steps along the alley. But at the intersection, all she saw was another map shop down the street—number 121, windows smeared with a film of dust and rain that made it impossible to see anything or anyone inside, at least from this angle.

She started toward the faded blue doors, inset with frosty glass panes, stopping mid-street to pull up abruptly as a skateboarder raced past.

Someone yelled, “Get off the street!”

Someone else—“
Cuidado!”

Vanessa turned her head, drawn toward the voices.

That's when she saw him.

The Chechen.

Standing beneath an umbrella at a food-stand, maybe two hundred meters from her.

He wore a dark green overcoat, his right sleeve tied off as if he only had use of his left arm—so he was holding his weapon in ready position under the coat. He'd tugged his hat low across his brow. As he surveyed the scene, apparently casually, his attention kept returning to the blue shop door down the street.

The moment froze for her, the world reduced to a triangle with the Chechen at one point, the door to 121 at the other, Vanessa in between, at the apex.

Also present—the ghostly sense of Arash and Sergei and Penders pulling the air from her lungs.

Chimes rang out, and Vanessa caught the flash of movement as the faded blue shop door pushed open—roughly seventy meters to reach it.

•   •   •

The door opened,
and Pauk readied himself for the unfolding. The black-suited bodyguard glanced out the doorway, checking the street, while the woman who ran MI5 waited a few paces behind, still sheltered in the shop. Pauk's target.

Beneath his coat, his right hand gripped the Dragunov's trigger frame, his right index finger on the trigger. As soon as his target stepped into the doorway, he would swing his rifle up and onto his shoulder in firing position.

But he froze when he spotted the dark armored Range Rover inching down the street toward the shop. The privileged head of MI5 getting door-to-door service, and she and her bodyguard had slowed and were now waiting inside the shelter of the shop and out of his clear sight.

He almost stopped breathing while the vehicle approached the doorway. But the Range Rover slowed a good five meters before the shop. Pauk felt eyes on him, believed he'd been made by the driver. He raised his rifle swiftly through the front slit of his coat to his shoulder—heard someone cry out, “Gun!”—and he fired through the windshield of the Rover and into the driver's head.

•   •   •

Vanessa was
closing the distance—only twenty-five meters more—at the same time she noticed the black Range Rover advancing slowly through the rain toward the shop. And then she saw movement in her periphery and turned just as the Chechen raised his rifle through the front of his coat.

“Gun!” Vanessa shouted, flinching at the sharp sound of gunfire. The Range Rover's windshield exploded.

As the Chechen sighted on the doorway of the shop for his next shot, Vanessa made a dash to reach the cover of the still rolling Range Rover. Because the Dragunov was a semiautomatic, the Chechen had no need to shift position and he could fire continuously until he used up his magazine.

Crouched and moving with the car, she peered around the rear wheel and caught a glimpse of Hall's bodyguard in the doorway as he pushed the director of MI5 down to the floor with one arm—the map sliding from one end of the document tube in Hall's hands.

When she looked back to the street she saw the Chechen's rifle gleaming in the rain. And about twenty meters beyond him, Chris crouched behind a wall.
Trying to catch the fully armed Chechen off guard
and from behind.
As Vanessa watched, he managed to close the distance by a few steps. What he was trying to do was insanely risky. If the Chechen spotted Chris, he could slice him to pieces in a matter of seconds.

The Chechen fired again, and Hall's bodyguard groaned, falling back into the doorway, hit. Vanessa stayed low, lunging around the inside of the still coasting Range Rover, hunching as she moved with the vehicle, shielded by the front-left tire. As far as she could tell, the Chechen had his focus on the wounded bodyguard and hadn't seen her yet. The bodyguard was down, but he still seemed capable of firing his weapon—as soon as the panicked clutch of pedestrians cleared enough so he could fire without collateral damage.

Vanessa pressed her shoulder against the car and gripped the rain-slicked latch. Her fingers slipped off. Was it locked? She tried again, and this time the latch gave. Apparently the MI5 driver, a member of Hall's security team, or Protection Command, had unlocked it in preparation to pick Hall up in the rain.

Vanessa opened the door and leaned her body into the Range Rover, stretching the short length of the front seat to reach the driver.

Slumped behind the wheel of the idling vehicle, his foot still resting against the pedal, he was obviously dead. She slid one hand under the lapel of his jacket, around his left ribs. Her fingers closed around the butt of the weapon in his shoulder holster.

A Glock 19 high-capacity 9-millimeter pistol with a round in the chamber and a full thirty-magazine of Plus-P cartridges. The driver never even had a chance to fire. But she thanked God the Protection Command used high-performance ammunition. It would make up for the 9-millimeter's slow ballistics. It gave her a lethal range of one hundred meters—a fighting chance.

A gunshot echoed outside—the bodyguard's Glock.

Vanessa flinched at the unmistakable report of the Chechen's rifle as he returned fire. She raised her head just enough to look out at a blurry world through the shattered, rain-soaked windshield.
Fuck.
She'd never see anything if she didn't leave the shelter of the Range Rover. But she had to get closer to the Chechen before she could take a shot.

The Range Rover's engine hummed softly. Vanessa shook her head—what the hell, she would drive. She took a deep breath, waiting, sweat pouring off her now. She knew what she had to do. She wiped her hands dry as best she could, silently apologizing to the dead driver for the use of his jacket.

Peering out just above the dashboard, she pressed down on the dead officer's boot. She kept the pressure light and nothing happened at first. Then the Range Rover began to move again, very, very slowly.

She tried to count seconds and factor distance. She guessed she had only moments before the Chechen focused on the vehicle and mowed it to pieces with his Dragunov.

She released her hand from the dead officer's boot, and the Range Rover slowed to a stop.

If she had all the luck in the world she had only one chance to make her shot. Had she closed the distance enough so her target was within range? The momentary silence outside spooked her.

She slid back toward the door and readied herself to exit quickly. She almost sensed it was coming—another round from the bodyguard, who was a distance behind her now and apparently still trapped and injured in the shop doorway.

The Chechen fired.

And that's when Vanessa moved—propelling herself out of the Rover, crouching again just long enough to orient herself, the Glock gripped in both hands.

The Chechen had changed position, advancing another ten meters or so toward the map shop. He was within Vanessa's range, and she locked his forehead in her sights. She slowed her breathing, readying to stand and leverage herself against the vehicle and fire—all within a second or two. With the faint hope the element of surprise would work in her favor.

Without taking her eyes from the Chechen, Vanessa sensed Chris making his move. But if he tried to get closer, he would be completely exposed.

Vanessa saw the slight slackening of the Chechen's body and knew he'd sensed Chris. She stood to full height—aware of the gleam of the Chechen's rifle as he turned and fired at Chris. Then swung the rifle at her.

Almost at the same instant, she took her shot.

And missed.

Unconsciously, she braced for the impact of his bullets—

But nothing happened.

It took a very long moment to register—her bullet had struck the Dragunov's gas tube just above the barrel.

•   •   •

Just as the Chechen felt someone
behind him and twisted seventy-five degrees, the woman rose to standing next to the black Rover. He recognized her even with the hat and the rain slicker—her weapon raised and ready.

In that instant, he hesitated just a fraction of a second before firing at the man.

Just as he turned back to her, he felt the impact of her first shot. It missed him but hit his rifle.

Incredibly, she'd disabled the Dragunov's semiautomatic operating system. He could not fire without manually resetting the bolt's operating lever.

For those moments it seemed they were locked together, staring outside of normal time, each finally looking into the eyes of the other.

He saw the muzzle of her weapon flash. Heard her second shot. Felt nothing at all as her bullet entered his brain.

•   •   •

Vanessa slumped against the Rover,
but she had to move, had to get to Chris where he'd fallen. Was he alive?

She barely registered Alexandra Hall pulling her bleeding bodyguard back into the safety of the shop doorway.

“You okay?” she tried to call out to Hall. Her voice seemed trapped in her throat.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Hall answered in a stunned sort of way. “But you're bleeding.”

Vanessa refocused on Chris and crossed the distance toward him. She glanced at the Chechen—he was dead.

When she reached Chris, his eyes were open and he seemed alert. The blood seeped from his shoulder, turning his light gray rain slicker black.

“You got him,” Chris whispered as Vanessa knelt beside him. “And you're hit, you're bleeding.”

“No, Chris, that's your blood, but you'll be okay. We killed the bastard.”

A siren rose up sudden and sharp in the distance.

After what seemed like a very long time, she saw black leather boots.
Shit
—her left arm was beginning to burn like hell. Beneath her jacket her skin felt warm and wet. Best she could tell, she'd managed to reopen the gunshot wound from the Chechen's bullet on Cyprus.

“Stay down, we'll get you to hospital,” a male and very British voice commanded sharply. “You're okay, we've got you.”

The nightmare
invaded
her sleep again—the Kurdish children and their kitten sprawled dead where they had fallen after the cloud of white poison drifted from the sky. She wanted to save them. Still, the toxic snow drifted down, and Vanessa tasted the ripe sweet death on her tongue, felt the heat singe her skin. She dropped to her knees, crawling forward.

But the nightmare shifted to a familiar darkened hall filled with shadows and the murmur of voices. The soft, occasional croon of her mother, but mostly the harsh, broken whisper that she barely recognized as her father.
Home again to the base after one of his endless tours of duty.

Vanessa didn't call out—“Daddy!”—she knew instinctively that she wasn't supposed to overhear what he was telling her mother. So she crouched low, her fingers gripping her flannel PJs, making herself tiny in the hallway outside the door of her parents' bedroom. And she heard his words, and something terrifying in his voice she had never heard before:
helplessness
.

“—we saw so many bodies—children, women and the babies, old people—some of them frozen as if they'd died in the middle of a gesture or a word, others contorted, agonized, covered with their own vomit, men and women who died trying to shelter their children, their tiny babies. My God, Lois, some children were still alive, and we tried to help but it was too late—”

Her father broke off, and Vanessa heard the sound of choking and she pulled into a ball, wondering if her father was dying, too?

Now, these many years later, she knew it was the only time she'd heard her father weep.