by JT Brannan
At any rate, he doubted anyone would be able to keep up with him. They could take the lift, sure, but how would they know which floor he was getting off at?
They wouldn’t, and Gorchakov knew that meant that he still had the advantage.
Cole knew he wouldn’t – couldn’t – make good time on the stairs, not with his injuries, and so he ran straight for the elevator.
He pressed the call button and waited impatiently for the car to arrive; by the time it did, two more agents had arrived, and got on with him.
Normally, Cole knew, these elevators had staff members in them, operating them; as he’d been waiting, he’d been running through in his head how to say thirty in Polish. But when the car arrived, he saw that it was empty.
He shouldn’t have been surprised; the entire complex was closed to the public today, and there would have been no point in having an operator there.
He jumped inside with the other two agents and hit the button for 30, glad that he didn’t have to risk getting the number wrong. But then one of the agents turned to him, and Cole knew he wasn’t going to get away with it for long.
‘Skąd wiesz, gdzie zniknął?’ the man asked, and the only word that Cole understood was ‘gdzie’, which meant ‘where’.
Cole guessed that the agent was asking him how he knew where the man had gone, and – wanting to keep it simple – he replied with a single word. ‘Przypuszczenie,’ he said, hoping he’d pronounced it correctly.
A guess.
The two agents looked at each other, but shrugged their shoulders as if to say, Why not? It’s as good a reason as any.
But the truth was that it wasn’t just a guess, there was some education, some experience, behind it.
They knew the man was heading upwards – they could hear his feet on the stairs as they passed. And what went up must come down, so Cole figured the man had planted some sort of equipment up there to help him escape, maybe an abseiling rope or other mountaineering gear.
From checking the place out, Cole knew that the thirtieth floor offered plenty of anchor points for such equipment, and wouldn’t take so long to get to; about three minutes for a very fit man, which he assumed the assassin was. The higher levels would take longer to get to, and were a lot narrower – so if security personnel managed to get there in time, it would be much easier to find him.
But, Cole had to admit, perhaps he had been right the first time; it was just a guess, and he could be wrong.
‘Wszystko w porządku?’ the second agent asked him.
Are you okay?
At the man’s words, Cole suddenly realized that he was clutching his side, he was almost bent double, and blood had started to seep through his clothing, his wound reopened.
‘Czy byłeś po strzelony?’ asked the first man, concern across his face.
Have you been shot?
Cole shook his head, took two more pills, hoped they would be enough.
‘Nie,’ he said, ‘u mnie w porządku.’
No, I’m okay.
He straightened up, just as the bell gave a sharp ting, letting them know that they had arrived.
‘Chodźmy,’ he said.
Let’s go.
5
Gorchakov burst out onto into the lobby of the thirtieth floor, waving his pistol at the palace staff who were still working there, putting everything away and clearing up after the leaders’ lunch that had been held there only a short while before.
He moved quickly to the far side of the lobby, and he was gratified to see the men and women shrieking, taking the opportunity and running for the stairwell he had just cleared; with any luck, the crowd would seriously impede anybody trying to follow him up the stairs.
He raced through the hall, and out of the doors that led to the wrap-around terrace that made the viewing gallery. The high stone walls were punctuated every few feet by massive open archways, eight feet wide by twenty-five feet high, protected by low stone railings and metal grills that reached nearly to the top of each arch.
Each of the twenty-eight arches, seven on all four sides of the building, looked the same, and yet Gorchakov knew exactly where he was going, which one he wanted, and he sprinted toward it faster than he’d ever moved in his life.
Cole heard a shot coming from the viewing gallery, then another, and another, and he ran forward, his .40 Sig Sauer pistol at the ready.
It occurred to him, as he moved through the thirtieth-floor lobby toward the exposed viewing area, that he didn’t really have to be there, chasing this man.
He’d stopped the assassination after all, had saved Emelienenko’s life; surely that was enough to disrupt Dementyev’s project? And there were these other agents, both younger than him, perhaps fitter. Couldn’t he let them handle it? The pain in his side told him that delegating responsibility at this stage would have been a good idea.
But Cole couldn’t let go, just as he couldn’t let go of being operational within Force One, even when he was the unit’s commander and should have been at Forest Hills, organizing things instead of still being out in the field, playing soldier.
But he knew he couldn’t take the chance that the assassin would escape; Cole needed the man to prove that the hit was a put-up job. Out of the Polish team, it was only Ostrawski’s file that raised questions, and Cole was sure he was a member of Russian intelligence. Capturing the man would help prove it, would help expose Project Europe, Dementyev’s perverse plan.
And even more than that, Cole knew he couldn’t give up, couldn’t let the man go; there was the scent of blood in the air and – once he was on it – Cole found it impossible to let it go.
Gorchakov had found the archway he’d wanted. There’d been people in his way, two men and a woman that had obviously been too stupid to follow their colleagues into the stairwell, but he’d shot them dead and leapt over their twitching corpses.
Now he was up on the metal service gantry that let out over the top of the twenty-two-foot-high metal grill, the only arch that had such easy access. The gap between the top of the grill and the bottom of the stone arch was about three feet, plenty of space for him to crawl through; and then he would climb onto the narrow ladder that led down the solid stone wall next to the arch, to the ledge below.
And then he would be on his way.
Cole rounded the corner, saw the three dead bodies sprawled across the hard stone floor; saw, just moments later, the assassin atop a steel gantry, crawling out over the top of one of the steel grates.
He pulled away just as the man opened fire, chips flying off the stonework next to him.
He popped back out a moment later, ready to fire, but the man was already out of the archway, blocked by the stone wall.
The other two agents raced to the archway, trying to angle a shot at the man, but Cole chose a different approach and ran to the viewing arch right in front of him. He pocketed the Sig and jumped onto the top of the stone railing, then started to climb up the metal grill, hands and feet jamming into the tight gaps, hauling himself up like a man possessed.
Despite the pain in his side, the wound opening with every move he made, Cole was at the top with incredible rapidity, hauling himself through the narrow gap between the grill and the bottom of the arch and then starting his climb back down the other side.
He pulled back in as Ostrawski – or whoever he really was – opened fire with the FiveSeven, and felt the chips of stone hitting him all over; but the wall protected him, and in the next moment he was swinging out from the grill, hundreds of feet above the snow-covered streets of Warsaw, the Sig in his hand once again; and as he reached the widest point, his body over nothing at all – secured to the grill with just the fingers of one hand and the tip of one boot – he let loose with shots of his own, and watched in satisfaction as one of his rounds hit home, blood spraying from the man’s arm, his pistol flying over the side of the building, lost in the clouds misty clouds below.
Cole heard a yell of pain, of anger, but the man wasn’
t out if it yet and pulled himself further across the face of the palace.
He’d been hit. Damn it, he’d been hit!
He’d lost his weapon, and his arm hurt like a sonofabitch, blood pumping steadily out of the damaged flesh, but he knew it wasn’t a fatal injury; he could carry on, could still do what needed to be done.
He could see the package now, right where he’d left it days before, covered in grey canvas to camouflage it against the stonework of the palace exterior.
Yes, he thought to himself, if I can just get to that package . . .
Cole slid the rest of the way down the grill, landing with his feet on the narrow ledge, slick with snow and ice.
Keeping the pistol steady in one hand, Cole edged slowly along the ledge, barely wide enough to fit his feet on fully, but more confident in his movements now that the assassin had lost his weapon.
But then he felt the wind whip at him, threatening at any moment to tear him from the building and hurl him into the misty abyss below, and the confidence was lost in an instant. His pistol fell from his grasp as he was forced held on tight as he felt his feet slip uncontrollably on the ledge, and he was glad that the cloud cover obscured his view, made it impossible to see how high up he really was.
He breathed deeply, got his balance back, and moved from the grill of the archway – the Polish agents shouting unintelligibly at him through the steel mesh – to the next expanse of wall, reluctant to change his grip from the relative security of the grid-like metal cross-sections of the grill to the smooth, much more problematic stone blocks beyond.
He could see the man now, bent over the ledge past the next archway along, trying to open some sort of wide grey bag, surely the mountaineering equipment that Cole suspected had been hidden there.
Cole pulled himself along the ledge inch by hideous inch, fingertips freezing cold and trying to fit into any tiny crack or crevice that they could find, until eventually he made it to the next archway.
He sped up immediately, gripping hold of the metal bars so easy now compared to the stone.
And then moments later, Cole was there, on the other side, and the man looked up at him from his half-open bag, his face a mask of both rage, and fear.
Bastard! thought Gorchakov as the man reached him.
Taking the equipment out of the bag had been harder than he’d thought, the gunshot wound had slowed him down badly, along with the snow and the ice which had made his fingers less responsive. And then there had been the challenge of opening the bag and staying on the ledge, in the face of the howling wind, with only one fully functioning arm.
And what was that man even doing out here in the first place? Gorchakov had never even considered the fact that someone would be crazy enough to follow him out here; it was nearly suicidal for most normal people.
But the fact remained that the man was here, right next to him, balanced precariously on the same ledge as he, and Gorchakov knew there was only one thing left that he could do.
Cole saw the leg scything out toward him too late; by the time he realized what the man was doing, his heavy boot had already made impact, slamming into Cole’s shin and toppling him sideways off the ledge.
Cole felt his stomach give a violent lurch as he fell, gravity forcing him downwards fast; but at the last moment his fingertips found purchase on the edge of the parapet and gripped tight, cinching closed through the snow and ice and digging hard into the tar-lined ledge itself.
The wrenching impact of saving himself from the fall threatened to rip his side wide open, and his eyes bulged wide with the pain, worse than getting shot in the first place.
He gagged, was nearly sick, but ignored the agony as he saw the assassin moving toward him on the ledge, raising his foot to stomp down on Cole’s hands.
Cole let go with one of his hands at the last instant, taking a chance and relying on the strength of a single arm to hold him as – with the other – he caught hold of the heel of the man’s boot and twisted it violently.
The assassin’s hands flew out to stop himself falling, and he just managed it, gripping tight to the brickwork with one hand as his knee hit the ledge hard. It stopped him going over the edge, but the impact jarred him, gave him pause, and Cole used that opportunity to haul himself back up to his feet, balanced once again on the narrow ledge.
He moved in swiftly, aiming a kick at the man’s side, to try and knock him off the edge, but the assassin was too quick and slipped out of the way; and Cole, who had overcommitted, spent a fraction too long trying to correct himself, an opportunity that the killer didn’t miss.
The man’s ruined arm reached out – and Cole, despite everything, had to admire his resilience – and grabbed Cole’s head, slamming it off the stone wall.
Cole, his head still slightly fuzzy from the medication, saw stars in front of his eyes, dazed by the attack.
And then Cole could only watch, barely understanding, as the man turned back to his bag and finally pulled out what was hidden within.
Gorchakov knew he only had a few moments before the agent recovered, and made the most of it.
In one fluid action, he pulled the ram-air aerofoil canopy out of the grey canvas bag, and – dispensing with the full harness – simply secured the clips to the front of his assault vest, an emergency measure he’d prepared if time was short.
Already, the twenty-five-foot-wide paragliding wing was filling with air as he threw it from the building, and then – in a flash – he was whipped from the ledge of the thirtieth floor, and out into the streets above midtown Warsaw.
Cole saw it, but barely believed it – the man was going to paraglide his way out of there.
It was a good idea too, Cole had to admit – with the perimeter of the palace sealed off, this gave the assassin about the only way possible to escape. Within minutes, he could be on a distant rooftop somewhere, lost forever.
Unless . . .
Cole was watching the man’s legs disappear into the cloud cover when he made his decision.
Made his decision, and jumped from the face of the building after him.
6
He’d done it; he’d managed to escape from the palace.
As the huge wing pulled him away from the side of the building and into the clouds beyond, the pain in his wounded arm was momentarily forgotten as he beamed with unbridled satisfaction.
He’d been an expert glider even before joining the military, having joined the aeroclub as a teenager in his hometown of Ryazan; and he’d continued to follow his passion during his leave periods, one of the only ways he still had of relaxing.
He had that feeling in spades now, the thrill of flight combined with the relief of escape.
But then he felt something on his legs – an impact, a weight . . .
A man’s arms?
And suddenly Gorchakov’s blood ran cold as he realized what the crazy asshole of an agent had done.
Cole wrapped his arms tight around the fleeing man’s lower legs, holding on as hard as he could, pulling the legs into his chest, securing his grip on his own forearms as he cinched everything in together with as much strength as he could manage, desperate not to let go or be shaken loose, knowing that certain death waited below.
Ostrawski had launched the glider with the prevailing wind, and Cole thought they must be flying east over the entrance plaza; and for just a moment, Cole’s sense of direction was confirmed as the clouds cleared a little and he saw the concrete expanse of the plaza beneath him, then the encircling parking lot. He heard shots being fired, knew that the security services were taking their chance while they could see them; and then he saw the traffic on the wide boulevard of Marszałkowska way below them, the cars like insects; and the clouds came in again and they were once more lost from vision, just the two of them, alone now in the low clouds above Warsaw.
But as the wind whipped them through the skies above Marszałkowska, Cole suddenly wondered what he was going to do now.
He’d had no plan –
he’d just seen the man escaping and been unable to resist the impulse to follow.
But he had to think quickly now, as Ostrawski began to squirm and kick, trying his best to dislodge Cole from his legs; the paraglider could travel miles on winds like this, and Cole knew there was no way that he could hold on forever.
Ostrawski twisted violently in his grip, and all of a sudden Cole’s hands loosened and came free, one arm flailing wildly in mid-air as the other held onto the assassin’s pants leg for dear life.
Cole felt the glider swoop fast to the left, and the force threatened to tear his last hand away; they came down below the clouds, and Cole could see the rooftops of the Palladium not far from his feet. For a moment, he wondered about letting go, falling to the safety of the roof; but, instead, his hand merely gripped hold tighter, and then his other hand was back on the assassin’s leg just as the glider caught another gust of wind that sent them higher, back into the clouds.
The pain in his side was blinding him now, a white-hot agony that threatened to consume him entirely, but he gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and started to climb.
Damn!
Gorchakov had thought he’d almost got rid of the bastard a moment ago – he’d broken the man’s grip, hit a hard left, banking turn, and could have sworn it would do the job, send the agent spiraling, helpless to the ground below.
But not only had the man clung on with a grim determination that Gorchakov thought inhuman, but now the maniac was actually climbing, pulling himself up Gorchakov’s body, hand over hand.