The Lone Patriot

by JT Brannan

  Vinson wondered why a general alert hadn’t been given, decided that it was because whoever had been running the surveillance op on Galushka – because that was the only explanation for how fast these men had been mobilized against Cole – was worried about losing face with his superiors, probably wanted to deal with it all in-house.

  That gave Force One a window of opportunity, but still he debated about whether to give Barrington the order to move in. He sighed. Could it be done?

  ‘There!’ he heard Michiko shout, and his head snapped down to another screen on the wall in front of them, this time showing what looked like a CCTV feed from a vantage point somewhere on Tverskaya.

  ‘Where’s this from?’ he asked as he removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and quickly replaced them. In the distance, further down the street, he could see the unmistakable flashes of gunfire.

  ‘Traffic camera,’ Michiko said, ‘their system was the quickest to get into. Let me zoom in.’

  Vinson watched as the camera moved in toward the carnage outside the Ritz-Carlton, felt Michiko tense in the chair next to him as she also saw what was happening there.

  People were running across the streets, terrified, while four men took cover behind a large SUV, firing submachine guns over the top toward the colonnaded entrance to the hotel.

  There were several bodies strewn across the street; from the way they were positioned, two of them looked as if they’d been hit by shots fired from the hotel – perhaps FSB officers – while others looked like they’d been caught in gunfire coming the other way. Unfortunate civilians, Vinson supposed.

  Then he saw a figure emerge from behind one of the hotel’s grand columns, firing off two quick shots before racing out onto Tverskaya.

  One of the men behind the SUV went down and the others ducked for cover; at the same time, the figure – Vinson could now see it was Cole – leapt toward a man passing close by on some sort of scooter.

  Vinson watched as the rider flew sprawling across the snowy street, then as Cole jumped onto the vehicle and accelerated away, east on Tverskaya. He felt Michiko tense in her seat, heard her let out an involuntary gasp as the men behind the SUV opened fire after Cole; but the scooter had left the frame, and it was impossible to tell if he’d been hit.

  But the tracker was still moving across the other screen, even as quickly-plotted lights – representing FSB and police officers – maneuvered themselves into position, ready to give chase.

  ‘Go,’ said Vinson, the secure phone by his ear without him consciously having picked it up, Barrington and her team on the other end of the line. ‘Go, go, go!’

  That was it; the decision had been made.

  Vinson only hoped that it hadn’t been made too late.

  Dmitri Petrenko slammed his fist against his forehead, biting his lip as he toyed with the radio in his hand, desperately deciding whether to give the order.

  His third section were on their way but – now that the target had a scooter – it was agonizingly conceivable that he might get away, if Petrenko didn’t issue a general alert.

  Nine of his men were already down, along with an unknown number of civilians who had been caught in the crossfire. He suspected it was from the spray of his own men’s submachine guns, but – if it ever came to court – Petrenko was sure this collateral damage could be blamed on the target.

  But before that happened, the man had to be caught; if Petrenko allowed him to get away, then his own days were numbered.

  And so it was, with heavy heart, Petrenko put the radio to his lips and spoke.

  ‘All agencies,’ he said over the open network, ‘all units. This is Major Dmitri Petrenko of the FSB. Listen to me.’

  8

  The rounds whistled around Cole as he gunned the scooter’s tiny engine and tore past the sporadic traffic on Tverskaya.

  The chaos from the gunfight was helping him – the people trying to escape the crossfire were running in all directions, causing vehicles to swerve this way and that to avoid them. In the winter conditions, with ice on the roads and snow falling on car windshields, it wasn’t long before cars started to crash into one another, leaving a trail of devastation across Tverskaya.

  The scooter wasn’t fast, but it was maneuverable; and Cole took advantage of its agility, swooping in and out of fleeing pedestrians and wildly uncontrolled cars to make himself less of a target.

  Traffic was merging northeast onto Mokhovaya Street, but Cole didn’t follow; instead, he gritted his teeth, prayed, and accelerated across the oncoming traffic, heading for the pedestrianized zone on the other side which led to Red Square. He figured that it might just be possible to get the scooter across, but the agents behind him would never make it in their big SUV; or if they did, it would take them too long.

  Cole raced out onto Mokhovaya without stopping, passing through two cars driving dangerously close together; through one lane, he had to brake suddenly to avoid another vehicle, before accelerating off again, nearly losing traction on the icy road but getting grip and moving just before he could be hit by an oncoming bus. He had no time to breathe a sigh of relief though, as he was already entering the next lane, right into the path of a black Mercedes sedan. He swerved, and other the driver swerved, and they missed by less than an inch; Cole felt the rush of wind against his leg from where the large car almost hit him. And then he was threading the scooter between two more vehicles, heart rate steady now, until he was clear of the sweeping arc of traffic and mounting the curb, bouncing up onto the flat concrete expanse that led past the Four Seasons Hotel in the direction of the massive, red-brick building that was the Russian Revival-style State Historical Museum.

  He knew that Red Square, which lay beyond, was closed off to civilian traffic, and hoped that – if a general alert hadn’t been issued – he might be able to get all the way across and lose himself on the other side.

  The tiny tires of his scooter bit into the snow beneath him and he swerved in and out of the crowds of people, who were innocently enjoying their evening strolls around the city, far enough away from the carnage on Tverskaya that most didn’t even know that something was going on. When Cole blasted past them on his scooter, therefore, many of them were unprepared and Cole was sure that some of them looked as if they might faint; but he kept on riding, in and out of the startled onlookers, straining to see through the falling snow as he looked for agents moving in on him.

  He heard sirens just a moment later, turned to see two patrol cars entering the plaza from the northeast, the noise and flashing lights sending the crowds scattering in all directions.

  Damn!

  Had the general alert been given? Or had they just seen him riding the scooter through the plaza, and thought they were just dealing with a traffic offence?

  As the crowds moved, leaving Cole dangerously exposed on his small scooter in the middle of the plaza, the cars screeched to a halt, officers jumping out and aiming their pistols at him, screaming at him to stop in Russian, firing their weapons after him when he failed to do so.

  Moscow cops could be heavy-handed, but the response was a bit severe for riding a scooter in an undesignated area, and Cole’s heart sank as he considered what it meant.

  The alert had been issued; now every armed law enforcement and intelligence officer in the city would be after him.

  But Cole quickly ignored the thought, knowing that there was no time for worrying about it now; the situation had been thrust upon him, and he would just have to deal with it as best he could.

  The shots went high, and Cole realized that perhaps they weren’t trying to hit him; too many civilians had already been hit, and there were still a lot of people here, most of them tourists. Cole took advantage of this and rather than try to zig-zag across the plaza to throw off their aim, instead he simply pressed hard on the accelerator and tried to drive forward as fast as he could.

  He flew across the brightly-lit piazza, hunched down over the handlebars just in case they did try and shoot him, and
headed for the left-hand side of the State Museum, where a large red-brick archway led through to the much larger expanse of Red Square beyond.

  ‘Pereyekhat'!’ Cole yelled at the top of his voice as he raced for the archway, and he was glad when people started to move out of his way, clearing a path through for him. He didn’t know if it was shouting ‘Move!’ in Russian, or the high-pitched wail of his scooter that got their attention, but either way, Cole was soon sailing through underneath the archway, missing people by inches on the left and right; but he was missing them, and after he was past them, the gaps filled in again, blocking him off from the police who followed.

  He knew it wouldn’t last, that the police would soon clear the way again, but for now he was through and clear, and he had to make it count.

  Julie Barrington was re-checking her Beretta ARX100 assault rifle as Kurt Hejms – an operator from Delta Force, seconded to Force One for the duration of this mission – took another Moscow street corner at just over sixty miles per hour.

  It was getting to be a habit, she thought with dark humor, racing about foreign cities trying to rescue Mark Cole. The last time had been Iran, when she’d flown in with a team on Blackhawks to extract him from the Grand Bazaar. He’d made it then, and she was pretty damn sure that he’d make it now.

  But a lot of it, she knew, would be down to her and the team. According to Vinson, directing her from Force One headquarters back in Washington, Cole was being pursued by three men from the direction of Tverskaya, with another six en route from the north of the city.

  Nine people wasn’t too bad, she figured, although the presence of civilians – residents and tourists alike – was going to make things more difficult. And that wasn’t to speak of the fact that – according to his tracker – Cole had just entered Red Square and was now only a stone’s throw from the Kremlin. Citywide alert or not, if a gun battle started erupting there, it would only be a matter of minutes before half the Russian army was involved, and even Barrington didn’t fancy her chances against those odds.

  But they were close now, and the time to back out was gone; it was time for action, and –

  ‘Where are you?’ she heard Cole’s voice transmitted to her earpiece, barely audible over the high-pitched whine of what sounded like a lawnmower.

  ‘Heading southwest on Ilyinka,’ she answered automatically, ‘we’re nearly with you.’

  ‘Stand down!’ Cole yelled over the noise of the engine. ‘Do not, I repeat, do not, come for me! General alert has been given, there’s nothing you can do. But stay on the net, keep driving, I may need you for something else.’

  Barrington was moving her hand up and down, giving Hejms the signal to slow down. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, suddenly afraid for him; if an alert had been given, there wouldn’t be anywhere for him to run.

  ‘What I’m best at,’ Cole said calmly. ‘I’m going to improvise.’

  Cole put away his cellphone, both hands back again on the handlebars as he took in the scene around him.

  Red Square was just as massive as he remembered it, over five acres of open space with only Lenin’s Mausoleum between the main square and the imposing walls of the Kremlin. A sound similar to a World War II air raid warning siren reverberated around the square, filling the huge area with deafening sound; and although the people within it may not have known what it meant, they reacted anyway. At first there was confusion, then panic. Some started running, while others stood stock-still, unable to move a muscle as adrenaline overloaded their systems; a situation not helped by the sudden emergence of armed troops from the Kremlin gates, armed police blockading all sides of Red Square.

  Cole took it all in, but ignored the armed men. They were too far away to pose a real threat, especially with so many civilians in the way – for the next few vital seconds at least, and Cole hoped that would be all he needed.

  He was riding adjacent to the GUM department store that took up most of the northeast side of the square, directly opposite the Kremlin. The colossal store was a combination of Russian medieval architecture with a steel framework and impressive glass roof, and during the Soviet era, queues for its goods had stretched the length of Red Square. Now the old ‘State Universal Store’ was privately owned, and housed a plethora of luxury boutiques across three opulent floors.

  As shots started to be fired, the supersonic cracks barely discernable over the sound of the wailing siren, Cole reached the main entrance – doors leading in from ground level, with an ornate split staircase circling around from either side to another entrance on the level of the second floor.

  Cole rode the scooter straight under the colossal stone archway that framed the double entrance, mounting the left-hand staircase and gunning the engine, forcing it to climb the wide steps up to the second floor. Wealthy shoppers, cloaked in Gucci and Armani and dripping with Bulgari and Dior, jumped left and right as he rode up the staircase, until he came to the revolving glass door at the top.

  Cole jumped off the scooter and pushed through the doors into the GUM second floor atrium, taking in the situation inside as he ran forwards.

  An alarm – not as organ-shaking as the siren out in the square, but loud in the enclosed space – was sounding, and a woman’s voice was announcing the evacuation of the center, first in Russian and then in English. The shoppers here were not aware of the troops gathering outside the Kremlin, or the dead bodies strewn around Tverskaya, and so their response to the alarm was not the same as their comrades outside; here there were only annoyed curses and mutterings that their late-night shopping was being disturbed. People looked at Cole with a look of surprise as he raced past them, but not suspicion.

  Then Cole heard screams from behind him, and turned to see armed soldiers entering the store through the revolving doors; and over the balcony he heard the same commotion below as troops forced their way through the first-floor entranceways.

  Cole ran for the nearest escalator, taking the moving stairs two at a time, pushing other guests to the side as he raced to the top floor, watching with a mix of fear and satisfaction as the soldiers followed, what seemed like dozens of armed men crashing past the evacuating customers on their way upstairs.

  Cole recoiled as bullets ricocheted off the moving handrail right next to him, the first troops firing their submachine guns upwards at him; but then he was at the top and he started to run across the stone-clad floor, pushing past men and women who were all headed for the exits. Cole ignored them, checking over his shoulder for his pursuers, seeing them just fifty yards behind him, rifles up and aimed after him. The occasional shot came, but they didn’t come close.

  He darted right into a small shoe boutique, ignoring the protests of the two young women who worked there, who were struggling to politely eject the clients they already had inside.

  Cole raced past the ornate displays of gaudy high-heels, jumped over the retail counter and kicked through the window that led through a stone archway onto a tiny balcony that overlooked one of the store’s atriums – huge glass roof above, ornately designed water fountain below.

  He heard noises behind him, the screams of women and the shouts of warning in Russian; knew that he was cornered, the iron railing of the balcony separating him from a fifty foot drop to the ground below.

  But Cole didn’t slow for a second; instead he jumped from the balcony, swinging down underneath as the air was ripped apart above him by the soldiers’ bullets, his vice-like grip secured around the decorative wrought ironwork that led down from the balcony to the floor below.

  He climbed down quickly from the third floor to the second, hearing the shouts as people saw him. He braced himself for the shots that he knew would come, heard several; but by the time he hit the next level, he was unharmed. However, he knew such a state would not last long – the evacuation was in full swing, and the troops would soon have a clear shot at him.

  For now though, he just carried on with his plan, his final destination never in doubt. He threw himse
lf from the second-floor balcony, grabbing hold of the top of one of the trees that surrounded the atrium fountain, his weight making the tree bend low until he let go and dropped heavily into the octagonal pool, the tree snapping back upright and covering the incoming shots that came from above.

  Knowing he was vulnerable in the pool, he used the fountain for cover as he moved to the far side and pulled himself out, dripping wet. He fell to the ground just as the lip of the fountain’s pool nearly disintegrated with concentrated small-arms fire above him.

  He was in a bad place, but he was nevertheless encouraged by the fact that all the rounds seemed to be coming from above; his plan to lead his pursuers to the higher levels before getting down quickly to the first floor had obviously worked, and he knew that – for a minute or two at least – he was clear to make a run for his target. The only trouble was, of course, that the gunmen’s elevated position gave them an advantage when it came to shooting.

  But the nearest store was only ten feet away, and the longer Cole left it, the more time his enemy would have to position themselves better or – worse – follow him down here.

  And so he threw caution to the wind, leapt forward into a low crouch, and monkey-crawled across the shining tiles, the floor ripping apart just fractions of an inch behind him as he made a final lunge for the safety of a luxury cosmetics store, jumping through the doorway as the Russian troops’ bullets found the glass frontage, destroying it in an explosion of shattering windows.

  Cole didn’t slow down, but got to his feet and moved quickly past the expensive displays, bursting out on the far side into the northern shopping aisle which was now all but deserted.

  He ran forward, past the last few remaining customers – hardcore shoppers who would probably refuse to leave for anything less than a full-scale nuclear alert – and entered a large café, empty of both staff and clients.