Covert One 6 - The Moscow Vector (21 page)

The doctor waved Smith aside with one dismissive hand and bent down beside the body to conduct his own quick, almost cursory, examination.

Wearily, Jon stood up, brushing the snow off his knees. He looked away from Vedenskaya’s contorted corpse, fighting down a sense of failure and abiding sorrow. Patients died. It happened. But it never got any easier. It always felt

like a defeat.

The sallow-faced Russian doctor felt for a pulse. Then he sat back on his heels and shrugged. “Poor woman. It’s much too late. There’s nothing I can do for her.” He nodded to the paramedics standing nearby with a portable stretcher they had pulled out of the ambulance. “Well, go ahead, boys. Get her into the ambulance. Let’s at least get her away from the prying eyes of the morbidly curious.”

The two big men nodded silently and clumsily bent down to begin preparing the body for transport.

Still shaking his head, the white-coated doctor climbed back to his feet.

He turned slowly, contemptuously surveying the small and rapidly shrinking crowd of onlookers. His gaze swung toward the two Americans. “Which of you can tell me what happened to her? A heart attack, I suppose?”

“I don’t think so,” Smith said flatly.

“Why not?”

“She collapsed quite suddenly, suffering convulsions and muscle spasms—within a second or so after experiencing what appeared to be complete respiratory failure,” Smith answered rapidly, running through the symptoms he had noted. “Her pupillary muscles also showed signs of extreme contraction. I tried mouth-to-mouth first, and then CPR when her heart stopped, but unfortunately neither technique produced any beneficial result.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow. “Cogently summarized. I gather you have medical training, Mr. — ?”

“Martin. John Martin,” Smith replied stiffly, mentally kicking himself for slipping so naturally and unconsciously into medical jargon that did not fit his cover identity. Clearly, Elena Vedenskaya’s horrifying death had rattled him more than he realized. He shrugged. “No, no medical training. But I have taken a couple of first-aid courses.”

“Only first-aid courses? Really? You show remarkable aptitude.” The doctor smiled in polite disbelief. “Still, it is fortunate that you are here.”

“Oh? In what way?” Smith asked carefully.

“Your training and your observations will be very helpful in filling out my report on this tragic incident, Mr. Martin,” the other man said calmly. He nodded at Fiona Devin. “That is why I must ask you and this charming companion of yours to accompany us to the hospital.”

Fiona frowned.

“Don’t worry, this is only a matter of routine,” the doctor said, holding up a hand to stifle any protests. “I assure you that any inconvenience will be temporary.”

The two paramedics finished strapping the dead woman onto their stretcher and heaved her up between them. “Watch out for her left leg,” Smith heard one of them mutter brusquely to the other. “You don’t want to get any of that stuff on your hands.”

Stuff? Jon felt his blood run ice-cold. He remembered the young “drunk”

who had collided with Vedenskaya, “accidentally” jabbing her with the tip of his rolled-up umbrella. Suddenly all the damning symptoms he had cataloged fell into place: respiratory collapse, convulsions, her constricted pupils,

and finally, complete heart failure.

Jesus, he thought grimly. She must have been injected with some kind of deadly, fast-acting nerve agent, probably a variant of Sarin or VX. Even a drop of either toxic compound on bare skin could kill. Pumping VX or Sarin directly into the bloodstream would be even more lethal. He looked up quickly and saw the sallow-faced doctor watching him with a cold, calculat-ing expression.

Smith took a step back.

With a slight smile, the white-coated man pulled a small, compact pistol out of his white coat—a Makarov PSM, a Russian-made knockoff of the Walther PPK. He held the weapon down low at his side, aiming straight at the American’s heart. Slowly he shook his head. “I hope that you will resist the temptation to act unwisely, Colonel Smith. Otherwise, we will be forced to kill both von and the lovely Ms. Devin. And that would be a terrible shame, would it not?”

Bitterly angry with himself for missing the warning signs of this ambush.

Smith grimaced. The other man was just outside his reach. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the ambulance driver, as big and hard-eved as the others, had climbed down out of the cab. This man now stood close behind Fiona Devin, holding a pistol pressed hard into the small of her back.

Her face had gone pale, either with anger or fear or a mixture of both emotions.

Smith forced himself to stand verv still. Carefullv, he showed his open, empty hands. “I’m unarmed,” he said tightly.

“A rational decision, Colonel,” the doctor said approvingly. “No one would benefit from any useless heroics.”

The first two paramedics roughly slid Elena Vedenskaya’s blanket-wrapped bodv into the back of the ambulance. They swung away and stood waiting for further orders.

“Into the vehicle, please,” the sallow-laced man said quietly. “Ms. Devin first.”

Numbly, Fiona climbed into the ambulance. The stretcher occupied the central aisle, leaving two narrow benches, one on either side. She scooted down the left-hand bench, going all the way to the end. One of the burly paramedics crowded in after her, dropping heavily onto the bench on the far side. Once seated, he drew his own pistol to keep her covered.

“And now you, Colonel.” The white-coated man nodded inside. “Sit next to Ms. Devin. But make sure you keep your hands in sight at all times. Otherwise, I fear Dmitri might get jumpy and then, sadly, you would end up as dead as poor Dr. Vedenskaya there.”

Still coldly furious with himself, Jon obeyed. He slid down the bench toward Fiona. The dark-haired woman glanced at him with an unreadable expression in her blue-green eyes. She still held the binder containing Vedenskaya’s notes.

“No talking,” the paramedic growled in thickly accented English, emphasizing his order with the muzzle of his pistol.

She shrugged slightly and looked away, saying nothing further.

Smith winced inwardly. Their predicament was largely his fault. If he had not stayed so long in his futile effort to save Elena Vedenskaya’s life, they might have been able to evade this trap before it snapped shut on them.

The slender, sallow-faced doctor scrambled up into the cramped interior and sat down facing the two Americans, squashed up next to his much bigger subordinate. With a slight, cynical smile, he kept his own pistol aimed at Jon’s chest.

The second paramedic and the big, hard-eyed driver slammed the doors shut, sealing the four of them inside.

Moments later, the ambulance lurched into motion. They were pulling out from the curb. The siren and flashing blue light came on again, clearing a path through the light evening traffic. Slowly, the emergency vehicle swung through a wide U-turn, evidently heading back toward the much-busier Sadovaya Ring road.

Smith could feel ice-cold sweat trickling down his ribs. Somehow he had to find a way to break them out of this moving prison —and soon. He had no illusions about their fate if he failed. Once thev arrived wherever they were being taken, he and Fiona Devin were as good as dead.

Not far down Povarskaya Street, the tall, silver-haired man sitting hunched over behind the wheel of a boxy dark blue Russian-made Niva 4x4 utility vehicle cursed softly as he watched the two Americans being bundled uncere-moniously into the back of the ambulance. His jaw tightened.

Sighing, he made sure his shoulder belt was tightly fastened, and then reached down to turn on the ignition. There were said to be patron saints for fools and madmen. If so, he earnestly hoped they would look down with favor on him, because there was certainly no time left to do anything subtle or sensible.

The Niva’s powerful engine roared to life. Without hesitating any longer, he shoved the vehicle into gear, stamped down on the gas pedal, and accelerated away from the curb, aiming straight for the front side of the ambulance just as it turned across Povorskaya Street.

Inside the ambulance, Smith sat rigidly still, carefully eyeing the pistol aimed in his direction. His mind raced, rapidly concocting and then discarding a series of wild-eyed schemes to escape from their captors. Unfortunately, every plan he came up with only seemed likely to get them killed sooner rather than later.

Suddenly the driver up front shouted something in alarm. Jon felt Fiona Devm tense up.

An engine roared close by, growing ever louder. Brakes squealed piercingly. Car and truck horns blared out panicked warnings. And then Smith felt an enormous, |oltmg hang as some other vehicle slammed into the ambulance at high speed. The impact hurled him right off the bench. He fell forward across Vedenskaya’s body. There were more startled shouts from the others around him.

Hit broadside, they were sliding across the road, spinning out of control amid an earsplitting shriek of tearing metal and the tinkling crash of shattering glass. First-aid kits and other medical gear tumbled out of storage compartments. \ sharp, stinging reek of spilled gasoline and the acrid stench of torn and burning rubber rolled through the cramped interior.

Still spinning, the ambulance crashed into the side of an old, rust-eaten Volga sedan parked along the street and rocked to a stop, lying canted over at an odd angle with its blown front tires propped up high on the curb. The deafening noise died away.

Smith looked up.

The first sudden impact had tossed the doctor backward, smashing his head hard against the metal interior. He looked dazed. Rivulets of blood dripped clown the side of his lean, pale face. But he still held onto his Makarov PSM.

Reacting fast, Jon shoved himself upright onto his knees.

The doctor’s eyes widened. Snarling, he raised the pistol. His fingers curled around the trigger, already starting to squeeze it.

And then Smith lashed out, chopping down with the edge of his right hand to knock the barrel away ]ust as the Makarov fired. At such close quarters, the sound was shattering. In a spurt of flame, the small-caliber 5.45mm bullet punched a hole in the floorboards, smacked dully into the road below, and ricocheted awav.

In that same instant, Jon drove his left fist into the other man’s face.

The punch slammed the Russian doctor’s skull back against the wall with tremendous force. More blood spattered across the metal. The white-coated man groaned in agony. His eves rolled up into the back of their sockets and he slumped forward, starting to lose consciousness. The small pistol thudded onto the bench beside him

Smith reached for it and then froze

With the back of one big hand, the burly paramedic had already knocked Fiona Devin sprawling. She lay curled up at his feet, with the red mark left by his hand plainly visible on her pale cheek. Now he sighted carefully down the barrel of his own pistol, a larger, 9mm Makarov. He was aiming right at Smith’s face.

And then the dark-haired woman moved, uncoiling with astonishing speed.

While rising to her knees, she yanked a slender, black-handled switch-blade out of a sheath concealed in one of her elegant leather boots. At the touch of a button on its hilt, a four-inch stainless-steel blade flicked out, glint-ing cruelly in the light. Acting with cold determination, she stabbed the big man in the neck. The long, narrow blade plunged deep, severing his trachea and one of his carotid arteries in a single powerful thrust.

Horrified, the Russian paramedic dropped his pistol. His hands pawed frantically at the terrible wound. Jets of bright-red blood spurted across the ambulance, pulsing wildly at first with every heartbeat but diminishing fast as his life force ebbed away. Still clutching desperately at the gaping hole in his neck, the dying man slid slowly sideways. He sagged to the floor beside Elena Vedenskaya’s blanket-wrapped corpse. The blood stopped pumping from between his locked fingers. He quivered once and then at last was still.

White-faced herself, Fiona quickly wiped her knife on the back of the dead man’s coat. Her hands shook slightly as she retracted the blade and slipped the knife back into her boot.

“You’ve never killed anyone before?” Smith asked quietly.

She shook her head. “No.” She forced a sickly smile. “But I’ll worry about it later … assuming, of course, that we live through the next few minutes.”

He nodded. The doctor and one of the two paramedics were down, but they were still facing at least two more enemies. “Can you handle a gun?”

“I can.”

Smith scooped up both pistols and handed her the smaller Makarov PSM.

Quickly, he checked the 9mm pistol, making sure the safety was off and that it had a round chambered. Fiona did the same with hers.

There was a loud rap on one of the closed rear doors. “Fiona?” a deep voice boomed from outside the wrecked ambulance. “This is Oleg. Are you and Dr. Smith unharmed?”

Jon whirled around with the Makarov raised, ready to open fire. But the dark-haired woman laid a hand gently on his wrist, pushing the weapon down.

“Don’t shoot,” she said quietly. “He’s a friend.” Then Fiona raised her own voice. “Yes, we’re fine. And free.”

“What of the others? Those who took you captive?”

“They’re out of commission,” Fiona reported shortly. “One permanently.

The other is still alive, hut he’ll have the devil of a headache later on.”

“That is good!” The doors were yanked open. A tall, broad-shouldered man with a full head of silver hair stood there. In one hand, he held a pistol fitted with a silencer. With the other, he motioned them out. “Come!

Quickly! We have very little time before the militia arrives.”

Smith stared at the other man in astonishment. There was no mistaking that haughty, large-nosed profile, one that could easily have appeared on an ancient Roman coin. “Kirov. Well, I’ll be damned,” he said quietly. “Major General Olcg Kirov of the Russian Federal Security Service.”

“Not anymore, Doctor.” Kirov shrugged his powerful shoulders. “I have been retired, put out to pasture, as you Americans say,” he said drily. “The men in the Kremlin decided that I was not sufficiently loyal to their dreams of restoring the old order.”