The undertow chose that moment to tumble him upwards. His head popped through the surface. For a moment McClain thought of nothing but filling his starving lungs as he sucked in great gulps of air. The lights that marked the trawler bobbed some three hundred feet away. Instead of cruising a straight line between where they had lost him and shore, or
heading on out to sea where Yuropov would be handed over to a ship that would carry him back to Russia, the trawler seemed to be traveling in concentric circles. He was just to the north of its epicenter.
Rostov must have seen the flash of his face against the water when he had surfaced before. They were zeroing in on him with characteristically systematic efficiency. Rostov would not rest until he was sure that his target was dead.
Overhead the moon peeped from behind a moving mass of dark clouds. McClain instinctively lowered his face to the water, knowing that his skin would reflect the light and be visible to anyone who happened to look in his direction. Though being shot to death was preferable to some other deaths he could think of.
Suddenly a wave rolled over his head and he simultaneously felt the weight of a smooth, sleek body as it hurtled past his thigh.
“Oh, God,” he prayed, unable to form a more coherent plea as he was sucked down into the ocean’s belly again. The sharks would be near, he knew. The scent of blood would keep them from losing him despite the undertow’s machinations. The pass of that body had doubtless meant that they were circling him, closing in for the kill. …
He felt one brush his leg, and would have screamed if he had been anywhere else. Frantically he twisted about, trying to keep the aggressor in his view. Five or six of the black hulking shapes were circling him. He tried to swim away, knowing that it was useless, that he was as helpless against these predators of the deep as he had been against Rostov and his thugs earlier. At any moment one would attack. Those razor sharp teeth would tear off an arm or leg.
They were drawing closer together, sandwiching him between them, but made no move to hurt him as they
carried him along with them. McClain’s head burst through to the surface even as the truth dawned on him: He was not being menaced by sharks. They were dolphins, and, miracle of miracles, the creatures seemed to be intent on helping him.
Although he had never really believed them, he had heard tales of dolphins bearing drowning swimmers to shore. Still disbelieving, he grasped a shiny dorsal fin as a sleek powerful body surged past him, and was carried with it. Great rolling waves of salty seawater threatened to drown him anew as they engulfed his mouth and nose. Would the creature head for the depths again? But no, it was skimming along the surface, speeding away from where the trawler still bobbed in that pattern of ever widening circles, with its mates jumping and diving beside it and McClain being towed in its wake. Locking both hands in a death grip around the slippery fin, he concentrated on staying conscious and keeping his mouth and nose above water.
The saltwater burned like kerosene in his eyes. He closed them and entrusted himself to God. And the dolphin.
Hours could have passed. Or days. Or centuries. What brought McClain out of the trancelike state he had entered was the feel of the fin slipping through his hands as the dolphin unexpectedly dived. One moment he was being pulled through the water at what felt like light speed. The next he was floundering, sinking, swallowing what seemed to be half the ocean as he fought to keep his head above the waves.
Dog paddling, he saw a flash of light as the moon hit an arching, leaping curve already several hundred feet away. Then there was only a phosphorescent trail on the ocean’s surface that shimmered like green wildfire in the moonlight.
They were leaving him, he thought, panicking, leaving him to drown as they headed back out to sea. …
“Hang on, buddy, we’ll have you safe in a minute.”
Something hit his back as he thrashed, then landed with a splash beside him. Turning his head, he saw the white doughnut shape of a life preserver bobbing in the water a few feet away. For a moment he thought that Rostov had found him after all. Then he realized that this was not the trawler. It was much smaller, perhaps a three-man fishing vessel. In any case, Rostov would certainly not be throwing him a life preserver. Narrowing his eyes into the beam of the flashlight, he saw that the two men leaning over the side were strangers. One was fair-haired, young, dressed like all the young in jeans and a flannel shirt. The other was older, grizzled. But they were almost certainly not Soviet, or any other kind of, agents.
Breathing a wordless prayer of thanks, McClain managed the short swim to the life preserver. They hauled him to the side of the boat, dragging him over the side. Then he fainted.
When he woke again he was in an ambulance, bouncing up and down as it rushed toward a hospital. Bending over him were the intent faces of paramedics. As his eyes opened, one of them fastened a clear plastic bag half full of liquid to a hook over the bed. McClain saw that the tubing led down to a needle that disappeared into his arm. His head felt like it was about to explode. Attempting to lift a hand toward it, McClain was surprised to find that he was restrained by a strap that crossed over his arms and chest and held him to the bed.
“What,” he began.
“Just lie still, man.” The paramedic was black, with dark brown eyes that gleamed at him over a white surgical mask.
McClain could barely hear him over the screaming of the siren, “You’re going to be okay. You got lucky. The bullet wound’s just a graze. What you’re suffering from is basically exposure, but it won’t kill you. Can you tell us your name, give us the name of somebody to call? You know, next of kin?”
An answer was on the tip of his tongue. Then a lifetime of caution and training asserted themselves. No one in the agency, not even Hammersmith, knew of the existence of his mother and sisters. They were safer so, and he would not compromise them now. Rostov clearly had a strong suspicion that he was not dead; an all-out search and destroy effort would be mounted. Of course, Rostov might think he was at the bottom of the ocean, but Rostov was a careful man. He would do his utmost to make sure. And the fishing boat that had picked him up had very likely summoned an ambulance with a ship-to-shore radio. Being the man he was, Rostov had probably been monitoring the air waves.
“Where…” Funny, he couldn’t seem to talk. His tongue felt like it was swollen to about three times its normal size, and he couldn’t manipulate it well enough to form words. The paramedic frowned. McClain could see the deepening of the creases between his brows.
“Lie still, man,” he said again, impatiently. Since he could do nothing else, McClain lay still as the man taped a gauze pad to the wound behind his ear. His mind worked, he was glad to discover. Slowly, painfully, but it worked. And what it was telling him was that there was every chance that Rostov was even now hot on his trail.
McClain knew he had to survive, had to get the word back. It was a matter of national security—and personal pride—as well as a way to make up for the blunders he had made. And a matter of his life, which he was kind of
surprised to find he valued so greatly. But McClain also knew that Rostov would give his own life to stop him. Rostov was more machine than man; he let nothing stand in the way of getting the job done.
The ambulance screeched to a halt. Immediately the doors were jerked open from the outside and McClain, in his mobile bed, was bundled out. He could just make out the words Bethesda Naval Hospital Emergency Room on the brick wall as they wheeled him toward it. Just before he disappeared into the bowels of the emergency room, a nondescript brown Volvo screeched to a stop behind the ambulance. McClain craned his neck in time to see two men get out. Men in ill-fitting suits and bulky overcoats who stared after him as he passed through the hospital’s brightly lit portals.
There were only a few people in the emergency room. A mother with her child in fuzzy, footed pajamas cuddled on her lap, an old couple, a man clutching his arm. McClain was wheeled straight on through another set of swinging doors. Doctors in white coats and nurses in white uniforms bustled around him as he was pushed into the treatment area.
“Shit!” McClain was glad to find that his tongue was functioning again. As he was wheeled into a curtained cubicle, his escort dropped off until he was attended by one intern and one nurse. Which made what he had to do that much easier, he thought. He’d been in the game long enough to recognize
KGB
men when he saw them, and his still sluggish brain had finally picked up on what had bothered him about the two men in the Volvo: they were vintage
KGB.
Just as he had hypothesized, Rostov must have been monitoring the ship-to-shore air waves in case another
boat picked him up. Unless he got out of the hospital fast he would be dead.
The nurse unfastened the straps that held him to the stretcher.
“Thank you,” McClain said politely, sitting up and pulling the
IV
needle from his arm.
“You mustn’t!” The nurse tried to push him back, but he shoved her aside. “Doctor!”
There was no time to be polite. As the young intern came to the nurse’s aid, McClain socked him in the jaw. Under normal circumstances the man would have dropped like a stone. As weak as McClain felt, he was relieved to see the fellow go staggering back, then lose his footing and fall.
“Help!”
The frightened nurse called for reinforcements, lunging for the call button beside the bed. McClain lurched to his feet and staggered toward the rear of the treatment ward, shouldering past hospital personnel who were running to the aid of the nurse. The nurse emerged from the cubicle, shrieking and pointing after him, just as he burst through the door that led from the emergency room into the hospital proper. Immediately to his left was an open elevator. It was empty, McClain was relieved to see. He stepped inside, sagging against the wall and pushing the button for the top floor. The doors closed just as two white-coated interns, the nurse he had run out on and the
KGB
men erupted into the hall.
The elevator began to ascend with a speed that made his stomach lurch. Halfway up, he pushed the emergency stop button. With any luck the goons from the
KGB
would imagine him, hurt and panicking, thinking he could hold them at bay while marooning himself in an elevator. While they waited for the elevator to be restarted and brought up,
he would have time to escape. Goons at the level his present pursuers appeared to occupy were not selected for their intelligence, in his experience. With luck, it should not occur to them that he might be able to escape from an elevator trapped between floors.
If only he weren’t so damned weak, McClain thought as he jumped up, once, twice, three times before managing to grab the edge of the trapdoor in the ceiling of the elevator. Wincing, panting, he nevertheless succeeded in pulling himself up and through it, dislodging the door at the same time. He caught the metal door just before it could go skittering over the edge of the roof. If it had fallen, it would have landed with a crash on the concrete floor four stories below, and that crash might clue an alert listener in on what he was trying to do.
Thank God it was a double shaft. Now all he had to do was pray he had the strength to catch himself and hang on. Trying not to think of the four-story drop below him, he peeled off his thick, soaking wet athletic socks and wound them around the palms of his hands. Then, taking a deep breath, he jumped from the roof of the car toward the concrete block wall. He fell like a stone, but managed to catch hold of the steel cable of the adjoining elevator as he did so. The pain in his hands was excruciating even with the meager padding of the socks, but he hung on, wrapping his body around the cable and using his blue-jeaned legs to stop his precipitate slide before his hands were sliced to the bone. The strategy worked, and his downward rush stopped abruptly.
Panting with the pain in his hands and his head, praying that loss of blood would not cause him to lose consciousness and fall, McClain clung to the cable with one hand and the entire rest of his body while he loosened his belt with the
other. Fastening the sturdy leather so that it encircled the cable as well as his waist, he grasped the cable again and stretched his legs out until his bare feet were braced against the rough cement block wall. He would catwalk down. Willing himself to ignore the terrible burning behind his ear, he gripped the steel cable with desperate strength, lowering himself down the shaft with an efficiency sprung from years of training and some weekend rappelling. If only he wouldn’t pass out—or the elevator belonging to this particular cable wouldn’t hurtle down from the heights before he could get out of the shaft. …
He made it. Opening the emergency access door, he staggered out into the deserted basement. His wet jeans left a trail of drips on the terrazzo floor. He could only hope that the trail would dry before anyone who could connect it to him found it. It was a short walk to an unlocked side door which led to a set of outside stairs. He climbed them and found himself on a sidewalk facing the hospital parking lot.
Unbinding his hands and tossing the soggy, lacerated socks behind a convenient bush, he examined his hands for an instant under the bright glare of the streetlights around the parking lot. He had suffered the equivalent of rope burns across both palms. Blood beaded slowly along a razor-blade thin slice in the exact center of the burns. Minor damage, was his assessment. He would live. He would definitely live. Wrapping his arms around his bare chest (the paramedic must have discarded his shirt in the ambulance, because he couldn’t account for its loss otherwise), McClain stood shivering in the cold night air as he weighed the possibilities.
He felt surprisingly good. An adrenaline rush, he supposed, that came from meeting danger and surviving. McClain discovered that he was whistling through his teeth, and
grinned as he recognized the tune “Ghostbusters.” Hammersmith and his ridiculous tapes.