Jack Ryan 5 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin (54 page)

He heard a sound. His left hand went up, and all four men dropped behind cover. Something was moving . . . over to the left. It kept going left, away from their path. Maybe a kid, he thought, a kid playing in the woods. He waited to be sure it was heading away, then started moving again. The shooter team wore standard military camouflage clothing over their protective gear, the woodland pattern's blend of greens and browns. After half an hour, Paulson checked his map.

“Checkpoint One,” he said into his radio.

“Roger,” Werner answered from three miles away. “Any problems?”

“Negative. Ready to move over the first ridge. Should have the objective in sight in fifteen minutes.”

“Roger. Move in.”

“Okay. Out.” Paulson and his team formed line abreast to get to the first ridge. It was a small one, with the second two hundred yards beyond it. From there they'd be able to see the trailer, and now things went very slowly, Paulson handed his rifle to the fourth man. The agent moved forward alone, looking ahead to pick out the path that promised the quietest passage. It was mainly a question of looking where you walked rather than how, after all, something lost on city people who thought a forest floor was an invariably noisy place. Here there were plenty of rocky outcroppings, and he snaked his way among them and reached the second ridge in five minutes of nearly silent travel. Paulson snuggled up next to a tree and pulled out his binoculars—even these were coated with green plastic.

“ 'Afternoon, folks,” he said to himself. He couldn't see anyone yet, but the trailer blocked his view of where he expected the outside man to be, and there were also plenty of trees in the way. Paulson searched his immediate surroundings for movement. He took several minutes to watch and listen before waving for his fellow agents to come forward. They took ten minutes. Paulson checked his watch. They'd been in the woods for ninety minutes, and were slightly ahead of schedule.

“Seen anyone?” the other rifleman asked when he came down at Paulson's side.

“Not yet.”

“Christ, I hope they haven't moved,” Marty said. “Now what?”

“We'll move over to the left, then down the gully over there. That's our spot.” He pointed.

“Just like on the pictures,”

“Everybody ready?” Paulson asked. He decided to wait a minute before setting off, allowing everyone a drink of water. The air was thin and dry here, and throats were getting raspy. They didn't want anyone to cough. Cough drops, the lead sniper thought. We ought to include those in the gear . . .

It took another half hour to get to their perches. Paulson selected a damp spot next to a granite boulder that had been deposited by the last glacier to visit the area. He was about twenty feet above the level of the trailer, about what he wanted for the job, and not quite at a ninety-degree angle to it. He had a direct view of the large window on its back end. If Gregory were there, this was where they expected him to be kept. It was time to find out. Paulson unfolded the bipod legs on his rifle, flipped off the scope covers, and went to work. He grabbed for his radio again, fitting the earpiece. He spoke in a whisper lower than that of the wind in the pine branches over his head.

“This is Paulson. We're in place, looking now. Will advise.”

“Acknowledged,” the radio replied.

“Jeez,” Marty said first. “There he is, Right side.”

Al Gregory was sitting in an armchair. He had little choice in the matter. His wrists were cuffed in his lap—that concession had been made to his comfort—but his upper arms and lower legs were roped in place. His glasses had been taken away, and every object in the room had a fuzzy edge. Thai included the one who called himself Bill. They were taking turns guarding him. Bill sat at the far end of the room, just beyond the window. There was an automatic pistol tucked in his belt, but Gregory couldn't tell the type, merely the unmistakable angular shape.

“What—”

“—will we do with you?” Bill completed the question. “Damned if I know, Major. Some people are interested in what you do for a living, I suppose.”

“I won't—”

“I'm sure,” Bill said with a smile. “Now, we told you to be quiet or I'll have to put the gag back. Just relax, kid.”

“What did she say the crates were for?” the agent asked.

“She said that her company was shipping a couple of statues. Some local artist, she said—a show in
San Francisco
, I think.”

There's a Soviet consulate in San Francisco
, the agent thought at once. But they can't be doing that . . . could they?

“Man-sized crates, you said?”

“You could put two people in the big ones, easy, and a bunch of little ones.”

“How long?”

“You don't need special tools. Half an hour, tops.”

Half an hour . . . ?
One of the agents left the room to make a phone call. The information was relayed by radio to Werner.

“Heads up,” the radio earpiece announced. “We got a U-Haul truck—make that a small van—coming in off the main road.”

“We can't see it from here,” Paulson groused quietly to Marty at his left. One problem with their location was that they couldn't see all of the trailer, and could only catch glimpses of the road that led to it. The trees were too thick for that. To get a better view meant moving forward, but that meant a risk that they were unwilling to run. The laser range-finder placed them six hundred and eleven feet from the trailer, The rifles were optimized for two-hundred-yard range, and their camouflage clothing made them invisible, so long as they didn't move. Even with binoculars, the trees so cluttered the view that there were simply too many things for the human eye to focus on.

He heard the van. Bad muffler, he thought. Then he heard a metal door slam and the squeak of another opening. Voices came next, but though he could tell that people were talking, he couldn't make out a single word.

“This should be big enough,” Captain Bisyarina told Leonid. “I have two of these and three of the smaller ones. Well use these to stack on top.”

“What are we shipping?”

“Statuary. There's an art show three days from now, and we're even going to make the crossing at the point nearest to it. If we leave in two hours, we'll hit the border at about the right time.”

“You're sure—”

“They search parcels coming north, not going south,” Bisyarina assured him.

“Very well. We'll assemble the boxes inside. Tell Oleg to come out.”

Bisyarina went inside. Lenny was stationed outside since he knew more about working in the wilderness than the other two officers. While Oleg and Leonid carried the crates inside, she went into the back of the trailer to check on Gregory.

“Hello, Major. Comfortable?”

“I got another one,” Paulson said the moment she came into view. “Female, that's the one from the photos—the Volvo one,” he said into the radio. “She's talking to the hostage.”

“Three men now visible,” the radio said next. Another agent had a perch on the far side of the trailer. “They're carrying crates inside the trailer. Say again, three male subjects. Female subject inside and out of sight.”

“That should be all of the subjects. Tell me about the crates.” Werner stood by the helicopter in a field several miles away, holding a diagram of the trailer.

“They're broken down, not assembled. I guess they're going to put 'em together.”

“Four's all we know about,” Werner said to his men. “And the hostage is there . . .”

“That ought to tie up two of them, assembling the crates,” one of the assault team said. “One outside, one with the hostage . . . sounds good to me, Gus.”

“Attention, this is Werner. We're moving. Everybody stand by.” He gestured to the helicopter pilot, who began the engine-start sequence. The HRT leader made his own mental check while his men boarded the helicopter. If the Russians tried to drive him away, his men could try to take them on the move, but that kind of van had windows only for the driver and passenger . . . that meant that two or three of them would be out of sight . . . and perhaps able to kill the hostage before his men could prevent it. His first instinct was right: They had to go now. The team's Chevy Suburban with four men pulled onto the main road leading to the site.

Paulson flipped the safety off his rifle, and Marty did the same. They agreed on what would happen next. Ten feet from them, the machine-gunner and his loader readied their weapon slowly, to mute the metallic sounds of the gun's action.

“Never goes according to plan,” the number-two rifleman noted quietly.

“That's why they train us so much.” Paulson had his crosshairs on the target. It wasn't easy because the glass window reflected much light from the surrounding woods. He could barely make out her head, but it was a woman, and it was someone positively identified as a target. He estimated the wind to be about ten knots from his right. Applied over two hundred yards, that would move his bullet about two inches to the left, and he'd have to allow for that. Even with a ten-power scope, a human head is not a large target at two hundred yards, and Paulson swiveled the rifle slightly to keep her head transfixed on the crosshairs of his sight as she walked about. He wasn't so much watching his target as the crosshair reticle of the sight itself, keeping it aligned with the target rather than the other way around. The drill he followed was automatic. He controlled his breathing, positioned himself on his elbows, and snugged the rifle in tight.

“Who are you?” Gregory asked.

“Tania Bisyarina.” She walked about to work the stiffness out of her legs.

“Are your orders to kill me?” Tania admired the way he'd asked that. Gregory wasn't exactly the image of a soldier, but the important part was always hidden from view.

“No, Major. You will be taking a little trip.”

“There's the truck,” Werner said. Sixty seconds from the road to the trailer. He lifted his radio. “Go go
go!” The doors on the helicopter slid back and coiled ropes were readied. Werner crashed his fist down on the pilot's shoulder hard enough to hurt, but the flyer was too busy to notice. He pushed down on the collective and dove the helicopter toward the trailer, now less than a mile away.

They heard it before they saw it, the distinctive whop-whop-whop of the twin-bladed rotor. There was enough helicopter traffic over the area that the danger it brought was not immediately obvious. The one outside came to the edge of the trailer and looked through the treetops, then turned when he thought he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Inside, Leonid and Oleg looked up from their half-assembled crate in irritation rather than concern, but that changed in an instant when the sound of the helicopter became a roar as the chopper came into a hover directly overhead. In the back of the trailer, Bisyarina went to the window and saw it first. It was the last thing she would ever see.

“On target,” Paulson said.

“On target,” the other rifleman agreed.

“Shoot!”

They fired at nearly the same moment, but Paulson knew the other shot had gone first. That one broke the thick window, and the bullet went wild, deflected by the breaking glass, The second hollow-point match bullet was a split-second behind it, and struck the Soviet agent in the face. Paulson saw it, but it was the instant of firing that was locked in his mind, the crosshairs on the target. To their left, the machine-gunner was already firing when Paulson called his shot: “Center-head.”

“Target is down,” the second rifleman said into the radio. “Female target is down. Hostage in view.” Both reloaded their rifles and searched for new targets.

Weighted ropes dropped from the helicopter, and four men rappelled down. Werner was in front, and swung his way through the broken window, his MP-5 submachine gun in hand. Gregory was there, shouting something. Werner was joined by another team member, who threw the chair on its side and knelt between it and the rest of the structure. Then a third man came through, and all three trained their weapons the other way.

Outside, the Chevy Suburban arrived in time to see one of the KGB men firing a pistol at an agent who'd landed atop the trailer and was caught on something, unable to bring his weapon around. Two agents leaped from the vehicle and fired three rounds each, dropping the man in his tracks. The agent atop the trailer freed himself and waved.

Inside, Leonid and Oleg were reaching for their weapons. One looked back to see a constant stream of machine-gun bullets chewing through the metal sides of the trailer, clearly to keep them from approaching Gregory. But those were their orders.

“Hostage is safe, hostage is safe. Female target is down,” Werner called over the radio.

“Outside target is down,” another agent called. From the outside. He watched another team member put a small explosive charge on the door. The man backed up and nodded. “Ready!”

“Machine-gunner, cease fire, cease fire,” Werner ordered.

The two KGB officers inside heard it stop and went toward the back. The front door of the trailer was blown off its hinges as they did so. The blast was supposed to be sufficient to disorient, but both men were too alert for that. Oleg turned, bringing his weapon up in two hands to cover Leonid. He fired at the first figure through the door, hitting the man in the arm. That agent fell, trying to bring his weapon around. He fired and missed, but drew Oleg's attention to himself. The second man in the door had his MP-5 cradled in his arm. His gun fired two rounds. Oleg's last impression was one of surprise: he hadn't heard them shoot. He understood when he saw the canlike silencers.

“Agent wounded and bad guy down. Another bad guy heading back. Lost him turning the corner.” The agent ran after him, but tripped on a packing case.

They let him come through the door. One agent, his torso protected with a bullet-resistant vest, was between the door and the hostage. They could take the chance now. It was the one who'd gotten the rent-a-car, Werner knew at once, and his weapon wasn't pointed at anybody yet. The man saw three HRT members dressed in black Nomex jump suits and obviously protected with body armor. His face showed the beginnings of hesitation.