Chapter Fifty
Smith slid quietly through the shadows thrown by a row of tall pine trees. He came out on the edge of a small public park dominated by the foundations of an Etruscan templenot much more than a few stone steps, a raised, grass-covered platform, and the circular bases of what must have once been towering columns. The main road up had turned sharply as it climbed and entered Orvieto and now he was facing south.
He dropped to one knee, signaling Kirov and Fiona to come ahead. They ghosted through the trees and joined him.
The bulk of the medieval city loomed on their right, a maze of little, twisting streets and low, irregularly shaped stone houses that were mostly between eight and nine hundred years old. Arches crossed the streets in many places, linking the ancient houses, and turning the narrow lanes into alternating pools of wan silver moonlight and Stygian darkness.
The eastern end of the plateau fell away on their left, plunging steeply toward the lights of Orvieto Scalo, the lower town. A wide terrace ran along this edge, all the way to the tall, round, open-topped bastions and massive outer stone walls of the Fortezza dell’Albornoz, a papal fortress built in the four-teenth and fifteenth centuries.
“Which way would Brandt and Malkovic go?” Jon murmured. “West into the old city?”
“Not into the old city,” Fiona said flatly. “That’s a dead end for them. The only real way out from there leads straight back toward the Center compound, and that road will be swarming with Italian police and emergency crews.”
“Ahead,” Kirov said firmly. He pointed to a small sign with an arrow, pointing the wav south along a tree-lined avenue to the Piazza Cahen and the Stazione Funicalorethe station for the funicular railway connecting Orvieto with the lower town. “Their only realistic hope of escape is to beg, buy, or steal another car, and the only place to do that safely is down below, near the main train station. That funicular railway is probably closed for the night, but there must be other roads or tracks down from this side of the city.”
Smith nodded tightly. “Sounds reasonable.” He stood up. “Okay, I’ll take the left flank. Oleg, you take the right.”
“And I’ll tag along like a good little girl, safe in the middle,” Fiona said, smiling slightly to take the sting out of her words.
Spread apart in a skirmish line, the three of them crossed the little park, skirting the raised platform of the ruined temple, and kept moving south, sticking close to the left edge of the wide road leading into the open square called the Piazza Cahen.
* * *
“But where is Professor Renke?” Konstantin Malkovic forced out between panting gasps, still clutching his briefcase to his heaving chest. He was sitting propped up with his back against the locked doors of the funicular station.
Sweat matted his thick mane of white hair and ran in rivulets down his terrified face.
“Either dead or a prisoner,” Brandt snapped. “He should have kept up with us.”
Coldly furious with himself and with his panic-stricken employer, Brandt contemplated his options. They were increasingly limited. With Renke gone and the HYDRA lab destroyed, his usefulness to the Russians would last only so long as the Americans were kept in the dark about the invasion plans for Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics. The gray-eyed man glanced sidelong at Malkovic’s briefcase. It contained information that must not be allowed to fall into American hands. And the financier himself was rapidly becoming a liability.
At this point, Brandt suspected, the only way he could win back his own life from the hard men in the Kremlin would be to eliminate Malkovic for them and then hand over the briefcase and all of its contents. He raised his Walther pistol, then stopped himself. Not here, he decided. The square was too open and the sound of a shot would echo across the city. No, he would kill the older man later, Brandt thought grimly, when they were safely away from this damned medieval maze. Once they were high up in the Apennines, it would be a simple matter to hide a bullet-riddled body where it might never be found.
Bending down, he roughly yanked Malkovic back to his feet. “Come on!”
he snarled. “There’s another road down, just around the corner of that fortress.”
Trembling both with fear and fatigue, the older man obeyed.
In that instant, one of his two remaining men crouched lower, hissing, “Herr Brandt! The Americans! They’re here!” He raised his submachine gun, using the Uzi’s short black barrel to point toward the entrance to the Piazza.
Startled, Brandt spun round with his pistol ready. In the dim light, he could just make out three black-clad figures entering the square. The}’ were less than a hundred meters away. “Kill them!” he snapped.
* * *
Smith saw a sudden flurry of movement near the funicular railway station, a small, modern building, on the eastern edge of the square. There were four men there. Two were in cover behind a row of terracotta planters, with their weapons out. Brandt, taller and blond-haired, crouched behind them. The fourth man, Konstantin Malkovic, was turning to flee, scuttling wildly away from the station. He disappeared into the darkness, heading for the tall arched gateway leading into the papal fortress.
“Down!” Jon roared, trying to warn Kirov and Fiona. He dove for the pavement. “Get down!”
And then Brandt’s gunmen started shooting, firing on full automatic.
Bullets ripped through the air all around Smith, cracking past low over his head. Others ricocheted off the paving, spinning wildly away in every direction. Chunks of concrete and torn strips of asphalt spattered across the square.
He rolled away, frantically trying to throw off their aim.
A few meters away, Fiona Devin cried out suddenly and went down. She lay curled up, with her teeth tightly clenched, clutching at her right thigh.
Blood welled up between her locked fingers. Grim-faced with worry, Kirov hurled himself toward her, ignoring the 9mm rounds screaming around him.
The two Uzis fell silent. Both gunmen had expended their full twenty-round magazines in just a couple of seconds. Each man crouched low, desperately slapping in a fresh clip.
Smith stopped rolling. Either they started fighting back or they were dead.
His eyes narrowed and he took rapid aim at the row of planter boxes. He pulled the trigger, firing as quickly as he could while swinging the barrel from one end of the little train station to the other. The MP5 stuttered loudly, punching rounds toward Brandt and his men. Hit by one of his bursts, a terracotta planter exploded, sending pieces of shattered pottery, dirt, and bits of shredded bark and leaves swirling through the air.
The gunman crouching behind that planter toppled backward and lay still. His Uzi clattered to the pavement.
One down, Smith thought grimly. He shifted his aim again, swiveling toward Brandt’s second gunman. Brandt himself was next to his subordinate, down on one knee with his semiautomatic pistol out.
The three men opened fire at the same time.
Again, bullets hammered the paving and the air around Jon. One round tore a line of fire across the top of his right shoulder. Another near miss ripped through his assault vest, sending a torn equipment pouch tumbling away across the Piazza. Bits of broken plastic and glass littered the ground in its wake, all that was left of a handheld laser surveillance kit. A ricochet punched off the pavement and slammed into his left side, hitting with enough force to crack one of his ribs.
Deliberately, Smith fought down his fear-laced instincts to duck or to dive away from the incoming fire. Instead, his finger tightened again and again on the trigger. The MP5’s barrel jumped and bucked against his grip. Jon clenched his jaw against the searing pain from his cracked rib, and kept shooting, forcing the submachine gun back onto his targets.
Multiple 9mm rounds smacked into the funicular station, shattering glass, punching through the locked doors, and gouging huge craters in the brown basalt walls. The rest of the planter boxes blew apart. Brandt and his gunman crumpled and fell, one heaped on top o
f the other.
The cocking handle slammed forward as Smith fired the last of the thirty rounds in his magazine. Reacting swiftly, he snatched out the old clip, tugged a new magazine out of his ammunition pouch, and slid it into the MP5. Then he yanked back on the handle, chambering a new bullet.
He scanned the front of the station, finger on the trigger, looking closely for any sign of movement from the three bodies littering the torn pavement.
Nothing stirred. There was only a sudden strange silence the total absence of noise after the staccato, clattering roar of so much gunfire.
“Jon!” Kirov called to him. The Russian was crouching over Fiona Devin, working frantically to staunch the bleeding from the wound in her thigh. “I need your help,” he said bleakly.
Smith rolled back to his feet, staggering slightly as a new wave of pain from his cracked rib ripped through him, and then hurried over to the wounded woman. Fiona was still conscious. But she was pale and shivering, starting to go into shock.
He glanced across at Kirov. The Russian was just as pale. “Go after Malkovic, Oleg. He ran into the fortress over there,” Jon said softly. “I’ll take care of her.”
Kirov shook his head angrily. “No, I “
“I’m a doctor, remember?” Smith said urgently. “Let me do my job. Now you go and do yours. If Malkovic escapes, everything we’ve done has been in vain. Now move!”
Kirov stared back at him for a second longer. He scowled darkly, but then he nodded. Without saying anything more, he bent down and touched Fiona’s forehead gently. Then he grabbed his submachine gun, jumped to his feet, and loped away, heading for the fortress gate.
Smith went down on his knees beside Fiona and began examining the in-jury, pulling the torn cloth of her jeans away carefully to get a good look at both the entry and exit wound. He felt around her leg with his fingers, pressing hard in places to check for any pieces of broken bone. She hissed sharply through gritted teeth.
“Sorry,” Jon told her quietly. He tore open a field dressing kit and shook out a pressure bandage. Then he began wrapping it tightly around her wounded leg. She winced again. Next, he stripped off his assault vest, balled it up, and used it to elevate her wounded leg.
“How bad is it?” Fiona asked softly.
“You were lucky,” Smith replied flatly.
She forced a smile. “That’s the second time tonight you’ve told me that, Colonel. Somehow I don’t feel quite as fortunate this time around.”
Jon smiled back at her. “All luck is relative, Ms. Devin.” He turned serious.
“Somehow the bullet that hit you missed every major blood vessel and the bone itself. Your thigh muscle is torn to hell, but it should heal nicelyonce we’ve got you in a decent hospital.”
Once he had finished stabilizing Fiona, he shook open another field dressing, pulled up his sweater, and then used pieces of adhesive tape to strap his cracked rib, holding it in place. With that taped down, Smith used another length of bandage to form a sling for his left arm and looped it around his neck.
Randi Russell’s excited voice suddenly came through his headset. “Jon,” she said quickly. “Renke’s dead, but I’ve got some of his materials. I’m heading up the hill now. What’s your situation?”
Smith keyed his mike. “Brandt is dead, too. But Malkovic slipped away and Ms. Devin is wounded.” Speaking quickly, he briefed her on the rest of the situation, including their location in the Piazza Cahen. “How soon can you get here?”
“Give me five minutes,” she promised.
“Understood,” Smith said. “Come as fast as you can. And whistle up the Pave Low helicopter using the codes I gave you. Tell them to stand by to extract us.”
“Where will you be?” Randi asked.
“I’m going after Malkovic myself. I’ll keep you posted. Out.” He picked up his weapon, stood up, and looked down at Fiona. “Randi will be here soon.
Will you be all right until then?”
Still pale, she nodded. “I will. Now go help Oleg run that bastard down.”
“And you sit tight. No trying to walk on that wounded leg of yours,” Smith said firmly. “That’s an order.”
Then he turned and sprinted away across the Piazza.
* * *
Erich Brandt swam up through the darkness, fighting against the pain that threatened to drown his senses. His eyes blinked open as he came back to full consciousness. He was lying on the pavement with a dead weight pressing down across his legs. The hot, copper)- smell of fresh blood filled his nostrils.
He turned his head slightly, wincing at the agony that caused him. More blood dripped onto the Piazza.
One of his men lay heaped on top of him, plainly deadshot multiple times.
Brandt carefully raised his own hand, gingerly touching his forehead. A crease torn there stung like fire. He felt broken bone grate beneath the loose flap of skin. His vision darkened and he jerked his bloodstained fingers away hastily. It would not do to think too closely about what this head wound might mean.
He heard footsteps racing toward him and closed his eyes until thev were only narrow slits. Breathing shallowly, he watched a lean, dark-haired man go running past, with one arm in an improvised sling and the other holding a submachine gun.
It was Smith, Brandt saw in amazement. Somehow the American had escaped from Russia, and now here he was in Orvieto, hot on Malkovic’s heels.
The realization jolted him into action. Slowly, he inched his way out from under the corpse. He found his pistol and then crawled away, staying low to the pavement until he reached the shelter of some trees and shrubs planted near the high arched gate that opened into the Fortezza dell’Albornoz. Once in cover, the gray-eyed man stood up and then staggered on, following in Smith’s wake.
* * *
Using both hands, Fiona levered herself up into a sitting position, being careful to keep her bandaged leg stretched out in front of her. The effort left her feeling dizzy. She waited a few moments for her head to stop whirling and then looked up, staring out across the moonlit square. Frightened voices were calling out to each other in the city behind her, as Orvieto’s citizens tried to make some sense of all the explosions and gunfire ringing through their ancient town.
Fiona frowned. She looked down at her watch, wondering where Agent Russell was. If the local police got there before the CIA officer arrived to help her, she was in real trouble. Neither Klein nor President Castilla could break the Covert-One secret to explain her actions, and she suspected the Italian authorities would look severely on a supposed freelance journalist caught wandering around their country armed to the teeth.
She studied the bullet-riddled funicular railway station, noting the two corpses sprawled across the Piazza in front of its shattered windows. Her eyes narrowed sharply. Two corpses? There should be three.
For an instant, Fiona sat rigid, feeling ice-cold. One of Brandt’s men, maybe Brandt himself was on the loose … and without her radio, she had no wav to warn the others. Painfully, she pushed herself to her feet and hobbled slowly toward the fortress.
* * *
Smith found Kirov and Konstantin Malkovic standing together on the upper ramparts of the fortress. The cliff face fell away sharply below the walls, plunging almost vertically through a tangle of scrub trees and bushes to the lights of Orvieto Scalo and the autostrada below. The financier had his hands high up in the air. An opened briefcase lay at his feet.
The Russian held his submachine gun pointed casually at the older, white-haired man. He glanced over his shoulder at Jon. “Mr. Malkovic has agreed to cooperate with us,” he said drily. “It appears that he bitterly regrets his unwise decision to assist President Dudarev in his various conspiracies.”
“I’m sure he does,” said Smith, equally drily. “What’s in the briefcase?”
“Important information for our government,” Malkovic said eagerly.
“Fvervthing that I’ve been able to learn about Russia’s military plans.”
For the first time in days, jon felt some of the weight lift off his shoulders.
With Malkovic alive and talking, and with evidence of Dudarev’s plans to invade his smaller neighbors, it was just possible that the United States might be able to fend off open hostilities with Russia.
“Drop your weapons,” a harsh, pain-filled voice said suddenly from behind them. “Do it now. Or I will shoot.”
Smith stiffened. He knew that voice. But Brandt was dead. He’d shot the bastard himself.
“You have three seconds,” Brandt said coldly. “One. Two “
Drained by the sudden reversal of fortune, Smith let go of his submachine gun. It clattered against the parapet. Beside him, Kirov did the same, carefully setting down his own MP5.
“Excellent,” the German told them. “Now turn around … slowly. And keep your hands up where I can see them.”
They obeyed.
Brandt stood there, just a few meters away along the battlement. His face was a horrible mask of dried blood. Bone gleamed white from a jagged cut across his forehead. He held his pistol in a one-handed grip, constantly shifting his aim slightly to cover them each in turn.
“Erich!” Malkovic said gladly, starting forward. “Thank God!” He smiled broadly. “I knew that you would save me from these men.”
“Get back,” Brandt growled, jabbing his pistol at the financier.
The smile faded from Malkovic’s face. “But Erich, I “
“You thought you would live through this night?” The former Stasi officer sneered. “Well, I’m afraid that your speculations were in error this time. One might even call it a fatal miscalculation.” He shrugged, still holding his weapon on the three men. “Dudarev may not reward me for killing you. But your death should at least protect me from the worst of his anger.”
“You intend to kill us all?” Kirov asked bluntly.
Brandt nodded. “Naturally.” He stepped back a few paces, widening the gap between them, making it impossible for any sudden rush to reach him before he shot them all down. “The only question is which one of you dies first.”
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