He was thirty yards behind the van, and he could see the top of it above the heads of the people, not moving any faster than he was, so for the moment there was little danger that he would lose them. Once they were in the clear he would speed up and run them off the road before they could reach either embassy, and kill McGarvey and the two with him.
Only then would he leave Russia, because his brother was wrong, revenge was everything.
Moscow
McGarvey looked out the back window, but if Chernov had followed them there was no sign of him. In any event he would be on foot.
“Are you okay?” he asked Jacqueline.
She nodded. “I think so, but what happened to Tarankov? Did you get a shot?”
“No, Liz was with him. I saw her.” He leaned forward to the driver. “As soon as we get clear head out to the Garden Ring Road. I want you to take me up to Leningrad Station as quickly as possible.”
“What?” Jacqueline screeched.
“He’s got Liz—”
“The authorities will stop him! His coup didn’t work!”
“I’m not willing to take that chance,” McGarvey said harshly.
“Merde,” Jacqueline said. She turned to the driver. “Take us back to the embassy, Nikolai. Right now!”
McGarvey switched to Russian. “Yeb vas, but if you don’t take me to Leningradski Station you’re going to get your nine grams.” It was a Russian euphemism for a 9mm bullet in the base of the skull.
The driver glanced at McGarvey’s stern-faced reflection in the rearview mirror, hesitated a moment, but then nodded.
“You can’t do this,” Jacqueline cried.
“I missed him, and now he doesn’t need her.”
“I know how you feel, my darling. I promise I do—”
“No you don’t,” McGarvey cut her off savagely. “You were sent to spy on me in Paris. You’ve done your job, now leave.”
“I love you—”
“Not now!” McGarvey shouted her down.
The van shot across the normally busy broad boulevard Staraya Ploshchad in Kitay-Gorod, the bulk of the crowds now behind them. What traffic there was all seemed to be heading away from Red Square, but Moscow suddenly seemed deserted, as if everyone had either left or was hiding behind locked doors waiting to see what was going to happen. It lent a strange war-zone feel to the city.
Liz had fought back. She had tried to get away, even in the middle of Tarankov’s commandoes, even in the face of the hundreds of thousands of people and soldiers crammed into Red Square. And Tarankov had swatted her aside like he might swat an irritating insect.
McGarvey’s jaw tightened, and his muscles bunched up, his face tightening in pain. He forced himself to calm down. To act rationally. To think out his options.
Five minutes later the van turned north on the Garden Ring Road just past the Ural Hotel, and traffic picked up though most of it was going in the opposite direction. In the distance they could see the twenty-six-story Hotel Leningradskaya west of Komsomolskaya Square which contained the Yaroslavl, Kazan and Leningrad Stations.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Kirk,” Jacqueline said. “I want to save her life as badly as you do.”
“As soon as you get back to your embassy have your people try to find out who’s in charge of the government. Call my embassy and tell them that I’m not going to kill Tarankov. I’m just going to get my daughter out of there. Whoever is in charge in the Kremlin will have to understand that I want nothing more.”
“You magnificent fool,” Jacqueline said quietly. “You’re going to get yourself killed, aren’t you?”
“I can’t leave her. She’s all I’ve got. All I’ve ever really had.”
“I know, mon cher. I know.”
“There’s a roadblock up ahead,” the driver called back.
A T-80 tank and several army trucks were parked across the road a quarter-mile ahead. Barricades had been put up, and soldiers were turning cars away.
“Take a side street, I have to get closer than this,” McGarvey ordered.
The driver turned at the huge Agriculture Ministry Building, but the street was barricaded just behind the Kazan Station two hundred yards from the square, across which they could see Leningrad Station. Thousands of people were milling around in the square, but it was impossible to see if Tarankov’s train was still there. The driver made a left turn, then right again toward the Hotel Leningradskaya.
This time the barricades had been shoved aside by people streaming away. The street was littered with tarantula banners, and in front of the hotel something was going on in the middle of a huge crowd.
The driver was forced to stop fifty yards away.
“For God’s sake don’t go, Kirk,” Jacqueline pleaded one last time.
“Go back to your embassy and get the word out,” McGarvey said.
He jumped out of the van, and took off in a dead run.
Up on the square there was a broad path of bodies and blood, as if something had mowed its way through the crowd. Some people were helping the wounded, but for the most part everyone was trying to get away.
McGarvey entered the station, and raced across the vaulted arrivals hall filled with people who seemed to be in a daze. Trackside he pulled up short. There were three trains, none of which was Tarankov’s.
But in Nizhny Novgorod he’d not pulled into the station. The train had stopped outside where the APCs could be off-loaded and make their way up to the streets.
McGarvey rushed to the end of the loading platform, jumped down to the tracks and emerged from the station in time to see the last of the APCs being loaded into the train fifty yards away.
He could see where the APCs had come down from the street, across the tracks to the west. Only a few stragglers were up there now, but the trail of blood led directly across, pointing a damning finger at what had been done.
A skirmish line of a dozen commandoes had taken up a rear guard position, but their attention was directed back the way they had come.
Keeping his eye on the rear guard, he pulled out his pistol, and staying low, raced for the right side of the armored train.
An Army truck screeched to a halt up on the road, and Tarankov’s commandoes opened fire, cutting the troops down as they hit the street.
McGarvey reached the lee of the diesel-electric locomotive as its huge engines roared into life. Almost immediately it began moving backward.
Holstering his gun, he sprinted the last fifty feet to the first armored car, grabbed the access ladder and clambered to the roof.
Above Moscow
Captain Anatoli Trofimo touched off his forward looking radar as he swung his MiG-29 Fulcrum around in a tight loop at the southern edge of Moscow’s inner defense ring. His wingman Captain Aleksandr Lopatin was ten meters off his port wing tip, and gave him the thumbs up sign.
Nothing was in view yet, but after the debacle up at Nizhny Novgorod nobody was taking any chances, though shooting down a few slow moving helicopters was a different proposition than shooting down a pair of high performance fighter/interceptors. Still, Tarankov was a wily old bastard, his troops were the best in all of Russia, and the defense systems aboard his son-of-a-bitch train were state-of-the-art.
The original plan was to make a surgical strike against Tarankov as he stood on the reviewing platform atop Lenin’s Mausoleum. They’d been told that Lenin’s body had been removed to a safe place underground, but that didn’t matter as much to Trofimo as getting his shot right the first time. If they missed they’d be firing into a crowd estimated above one million people.
They’d turned inbound, armed their R85 air-to-surface missiles, and started their attack run when they were ordered to stand down less than forty seconds to target because Tarankov was on the move. Trofimo was damned glad for the reprieve. He and his wingman were ordered to keep station at the southern inner defense ring, where they had remained for the past fifteen minutes, mushing at ten thousand feet to conserve fuel.
“Orlov units, prime time has reached his secondary objective. You are authorized to go hot, and take out the target. Repeat, you have weapons release authorization.”
“Roger, we’re inbound now,” Trofimo radioed. “Do you have vectors to target?”
“Roger. Relative bearing zero-four-seven, changing slowly to the north. The target is on the move and accelerating.”
Aboard Tarankov’s Train
Keeping low so that he wouldn’t be thrown off balance as the train continued to accelerate backward through the switching yards, McGarvey leapt from car to car. The APCs had been loaded aboard the lead twelve units, leaving the rear eight for personnel. At Nizhny Novgorod Tarankov had gotten off from the rear car, which McGarvey figured was his personal quarters, and possibly the unit’s operations center.
Several of the car tops contained long narrow hatches set flush into the roofs, probably concealing the missile launchers. Domes rose from the four corners of every fourth car, Phalanx Gatling gun barrels protruding from the radar-guided deadly close-in weapons systems. Other domes probably contained combat radar systems.
He’d seen the train’s defensive measures in action at Nizhny Novgorod, and they’d been nothing short of awesome. It wouldn’t take long for Tarankov’s commandoes to realize that the government forces would be following them, and to get their act together after their hasty retreat from Red Square. That defeat had to sting, but their confusion wouldn’t last.
The roof on the rear half of the last car was raised about four feet, and bristled with radar dishes and antennae. Armored viewing ports were set in the thick steel plates.
McGarvey dropped flat on the roof of the next to the last car, screwed the silencer on his gun, then swung over the edge and climbed down the ladder to the connecting platform door. The train was moving at fifty miles per hour now and still accelerating as he pulled open the door and jumped inside.
The corridor in the forward car was deserted, but peering in the window of Tarankov’s car he was in time to see a commando disappear up the stairs to the upper level.
When the man was out of sight, McGarvey slipped inside, his heart pounding, the wound in his side throbbing from his exertions.
As he hesitated, a woman’s voice raised in anger screamed something from the rear of the car. The words were indistinct but he recognized Elizabeth’s voice, and he rushed down the corridor.
The last ten feet of the railroad car was fitted out as a comfortable sitting room, couches, easy chairs, bookcases, even a built-in entertainment center. McGarvey took all this in as Tarankov raised a fist to strike Elizabeth who was defiantly standing face-to-face with him.
Her eyes went wide as she spotted her father. “Daddy!” she cried triumphantly.
McGarvey crossed the intervening space before Tarankov could fully react, and he bodily shoved the man aside, sending him sprawling onto the couch.
Tarankov fumbled for the pistol at his hip, but McGarvey pointed his gun at the man’s face and he stopped.
“Are you okay, Liz?” McGarvey asked, without taking his eyes off Tarankov.
“Now I am.”
“Find the emergency stop cord or button, we need to slow down.”
“There is no such mechanism aboard this train,” Tarankov said calmly.
Someone rushed down the stairs from the command center. “General, I’m painting two incoming jets—” he shouted.
McGarvey turned and fired two shots, hitting the commando in the chest, driving him backwards.
Tarankov clawed his gun from its holster and he was raising it, a wicked gleam in his eyes, as McGarvey turned back and fired one shot at nearly point blank range into the Tarantula’s forehead just above the bridge of his nose, killing him instantly. His body, suddenly limp, slid off the couch and landed in a heap on his side.
McGarvey checked out one of the windows. They were accelerating through an industrial section of the city, and going far too fast for them to jump.
He snatched Tarankov’s gun from the dead man’s hand and gave it to Elizabeth. She was badly shaken, and an angry red welt had formed on her cheek, but she had a determined look in her eyes.
“What about the jets?” she asked.
“They’re going to attack, which means we have to get off. I’m going upstairs to see if I can get the engineer to slow down. In the meantime if anyone comes through the door, shoot.”
McGarvey checked the corridor, then stepped over the body of the dead commando, and cautiously took the stairs two at a time. At the top he swept the cramped nerve center left to right with his gun, but the compartment was empty.
The radar screen on one of the consoles showed the two incoming jets, but he ignored it as he desperately studied the electronic panels, finally finding the handset that connected with the locomotive.
He yanked it off its cradle. “This is the command center!” he shouted in Russian. “Stop the train now! Emergency stop! Emergency stop!” Several gunshots were fired from below.
McGarvey tossed down the phone as the train gave a huge lurch, sending him sprawling, the brakes on the locomotive and all twenty armored cars locking up simultaneously.
Before he could recover, a hatch in the ceiling clanged open and a figure dropped down on top of him, smashing his head against the bulkhead, knocking the wind out of him
“McGarvey,” Chernov snarled. He batted the gun out of McGarvey’s hand, and smashed a roundhouse blow into McGarvey’s jaw, snapping his head back again against the bulkhead, his vision momentarily dimming.
Chernov swung again, but McGarvey ducked the blow and Chernov’s fist smashed into the bulkhead.
With a mighty heave, McGarvey shoved the Russian away, and scrambled to his feet.
Chernov recovered almost instantly, and he stepped back as he snatched his pistol from the shoulder holster, a look of victory in his eyes. But McGarvey was on him before he could fire, smashing his shoulder into the man’s chest, sending him back against one of the electronic panels. He held Chernov’s gun hand off with his left, and smashed a fist into the man’s chest with every ounce of his strength. Chernov grunted in pain, and McGarvey hit him in the same spot again and again and a fourth time, until the Russian’s eyes fluttered, and his body went slack.
McGarvey snatched the gun from his hand, shoved him aside and bounded drunkenly down the stairs, the train still decelerating at a terrific rate.
“It’s me,” he shouted as he hit the bottom. He fired four shots down the corridor and then dove into the sitting room, answering fire tearing into the bulkheads and furniture.
The moment he was clear, Elizabeth raised her gun hand up over the back of the couch and emptied Tarankov’s pistol down the corridor.
McGarvey made it to where she was crouched, grabbed her arm, and together they crawled to the rear platform door.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
He popped back up and emptied Chernov’s gun down the corridor at the same moment Elizabeth hauled the door open, and they scrambled outside.
Above Moscow
“Orlov leader, do you have visuals yet?” the controller said.
They had come in low directly over the top of Leningrad Station, the square still busy with people. The train was about three kilometers ahead, and was definitely coming to a stop.
Captain Trofimo dialed up two R85 air-to-ground missiles and armed them.
“We have the target in sight. We’re starting our attack run now.”
“We’re showing no enemy weapons radars,” said his controller circling high over the city in an AEW&C Ilyushin Mainstay-B.
“We’re showing no response either,” Trofimo responded. “Do you wish us to abort?”
“Nyet,” the controller said. “You have final weapons release authorization.”
“Roger,” Trofimo said, and he glanced over at his wingman, nodded, then turned back to his look-down-shoot-down sy
stem, fired both rockets, and peeled off to the right.
At the last moment he thought he’d seen two people jumping from the rear car, while a third person was climbing up on the roof, but he wasn’t sure.
By the time he made his turn and lined up with his wingman for a second attack run, it wasn’t necessary. The train had literally blown itself apart at the seams, probably from ammunition and ordnance stored aboard. Every single car was burning furiously, and the locomotive was lying on its side in an embankment below an abandoned factory, flames and greasy black smoke shooting two hundred feet into the sky.
“Mission complete,” Trofimo radioed. “We’re returning to base now.”
“Roger,” his controller responded tersely.
Trackside
McGarvey and his daughter crouched in a ditch less than fifty yards from the furiously burning wreckage spread out on both sides of the railroad right of way, as the two jet fighters that had caused the destruction screamed off to the south. The heat was so intense it made their eyes water.
“Time to go home, Liz,” he said.
Elizabeth looked at her father, and smiled. “I bet Mom won’t believe a word I tell her.”
McGarvey had to smile back. “I don’t think she will. This one will be our little secret.”
“And Jacqueline’s too. She’s in love with you, and I have a feeling she’s not the type who’s going to let you simply walk away.”
“Maybe you’re right, Liz,” McGarvey said as he heard the first of the helicopters coming up from the south. Time to get out? he wondered. Maybe. But then he’d been asking himself that same question for the past few years.
NOVELS BY DAVID HAGBERG
Twister
The Capsule
Last Come the Children
Heartland
Without Honor*
Countdown*
Crossfire*
Critical Mass*
Desert Fire
Assassin Page 48