Love Is for Tomorrow (21 page)

“Form up on me.” Khabib’s voice whispered over Antoine’s helmet speakers.

The signals began to move, converging on their leader at the edge of the park.

Antoine aimed his weapon. “Hostile on the right, he has an assault rifle.”

“Weapons hold,” Khabib said.

They sneaked past him and crept around the last tree line separating them from the street and walkway.

Khabib pointed forward.

“Another hostile to the front, assault rifle.”

On the opposite street side, in front of the Kremlin Presidium a guardhouse with another watchman awaited them.

Behind it, across the whole length of Ivanovskaya square, lay the Senate. A line of parked cars sat between them, providing some cover on the way.

“Where are you, friends?” Antoine said in a whisper.

Khabib gave the sign for moving out, only visible because they were close and Antoine knew where Khabib was.

“We’re moving.”

They spread out into a wide line, spanning the width of Ivanovskaya square and made ready. On his word they got up and broke into a stride, crossing the sidewalk and the broad street. Even then, it took longer than Antoine wanted.

The parked cars would offer some protection. Ahead was a field of black diplomatic vehicles with tinted windows and light delivery trucks. They’d nearly made it to them, when one of the vans’ doors slid open.

CHAPTER TWENTY

SHOWDOWN

“Grasp all, lose all.” - Russian saying
 

Moscow, Russia

“Contact front,” Khabib said.

Out of the blackness of the van’s hold, two workers emerged in blue overalls, except that they weren’t workers. Star shaped muzzle flashes illuminated the interior and the faces behind them. The staccato sound of automated weapons rang in the square.

Antoine’s agency didn’t care about the silence and stealth the Spetsnaz were bringing to the table. They knew they were there. They saw them.

“They’re onto us, open fire!”

A Spetsnaz beside him went to the ground.

Antoine threw himself on the ground and rolled over to a car. He saw Khabib and three or four others skid on their knees to the cover of parked cars.

“Ugh, I’m hit,” one said.

Two of their team were struck down while crossing the street, one of them seeming fatal. Antoine could see from their response that they were pros. They moved with near superhuman speed.

“Get everyone into cover,” Khabib said. “Suppressive fire, go.”

Khabib got out of cover and opened up on the van. Two of his squad mates followed suit. Only the click clack of breech locks and the patter of brass cartridge casings betrayed the location of their silenced weapons. Bullets clanked against the van’s door as they tore holes into its sheet metal.

A shot hit the window of a car close to Antoine. Another hit a wheel. The car went lopsided as the tire lost air.

A red splash covered the car’s windscreen. A Spetsnaz fell against it, his limbs going limp.

“Sniper. Unknown position.”

“Frag out,” Dzhalal said.

He lobbed a grenade over the car roof. Abukhan and Abdulbek took precision shots at the guards they’d left behind them.

“Six o’clock, threats neutralized.”

The watchmen in the park and the guardhouse slumped to the ground.

Antoine heard shouts from the back of the van. Its driver hit the pedal. The wheels spun and smoked as it started to move. Dzhalal’s grenade exploded in a gust of black smoke and splinters, in front of the van, showering the windshield with debris.

“Flank them left,” Khabib said. “Get that van.”

Two of Khabib’s team broke out and redeployed to the left flank, near Ivan the Great’s bell tower. The old bell was big enough to grant cover for two men.

The two appeared only as blurred shapes on Ivanovskaya square, but the van was chasing them. They sprinted their last steps to the bell and threw themselves into cover, bridging the last meters in a slide.

“Goddamn, they see us,” Antoine heard their voices.

Assault rifle fire rained down over their heads, ricocheting off the huge bell with brassy clanks.

***

Priya saw the fire exchange as a blur of muzzle flashes. Every few seconds bullets raced past the square.

“Watch your fire, friendlies,” Priya said. “Jason is at that position. Get him out of there.”

She steered the drone around to get a view on the Tsar Bell. The two Spetsnaz stragglers were close behind but too occupied with the fighting to notice. They were on the back foot.

Jason came out of the bell. He shot one in the back. He knifed the second, pulling the man back into the bell with him.

As he turned, a grenade dropped at the entrance of Tsar Bell. Jason dove headlong into the shadows of the bell.

Priya’s breath stood still. A bright flash and a supernova rang out in front of the bell.

“Jason!” she gasped.

Nothing.

Her eyes fell to her cup filled with coffee as black as the feeling in her heart. She would have to speak the words she had hoped she would never say: agent down.

“I’m fine,” Jason replied, coughing hard. “Still in one piece.”

As the dust settled, he crawled out of the bell, taking up his weapon and re-joining the fight.

***

The van zoomed past Antoine towards the red-brick gatehouse beneath Borovitskaya Tower.

It was not the Vostok’s presence that had caused their retreat. Looking over the field of wrecked and blackened cars, Antoine could see guards running towards them, storming out of the Arsenal.

“Multiple hostiles, twelve o’clock,” Khabib said.

The building opposite of the Senate was home of the Presidential Guard. Its members wore the traditional full dress uniform in blue.

“Riflemen.”

They opened up with their ceremonial SKS rifles from across the square.

The Spetsnaz advanced into the parking lot. Antoine rolled under a car and aimed his Kalashnikov at the heels of the closest Spetsnaz. It was Abukhan. He fired.

Another sniper shot brought a Spetsnaz down. Its echo lingered in the air. Antoine looked around to locate the source.

It had come from the top of Building Fourteen to their east. Khabib saw it too.

“Three o’clock, sniper.”

Khabib pressed on to get out of its field of fire. Only a couple meters further into the parking lot, the angle would be blocked.

“Reposition, let’s get them,” Khabib said.

Four Spetsnaz would take on the onslaught of the Kremlin Guard, fed by an increasing stream of reinforcements from the Arsenal.

They emptied their magazines in controlled bursts into the rows of blue uniforms, standing calm against the storm like towers of strengths. Three shots per target, no more, no less. They brought them down like cutting wheat.

“Keep it up, we’re breaking them,” Khabib said.

Stealth-technology and modern weapons beat numbers and relics of the Second World War. Spetsnaz were always outnumbered, never outgunned. It was fear of the invisible what ran ahead of them. The guards ran and scattered over the square.

They left the way open for Khabib to reach the Senate.

Antoine came upon Dzhalal. The Spetsnaz was taking cover and reloading his magazine. He looked up at him.

An explosive detonated under a vehicle. It blasted the car into the air and flipped it toward them. Dzhalal was blown away in one massive shockwave.

Antoine fired on Abdulbek as the blast reached him. Windows all around him splintered and he was thrown against a vehicle door. When he lifted his head, he could see the Spetsnaz lying in front of him, riddled with bullets.

Abdulbek reached for his weapon.

Antoine drew his sidearm.

The Spetsnaz raised his gun to shoot. If Antoine pulled the trigger now, it was down to Khabib and him. He would know by now that Nazyr or whoever was behind his identity, was a traitor.

Time was running out. He had to pull the trigger. Another shot hit Abdulbek in the face and punched the back of his head against the car wreck. Khabib turned in time to see the muzzle flash out of Building Fourteen, second floor one of the windows. They had found the sniper, or the sniper had found them. Khabib opened up with his rifle, pinning the sniper down behind the window ledge. The wall was riddled with bullet holes.

“Now is the time to do what we came for,” Khabib said.

Antoine nodded. It was instinctive. However, no one could see him nod under the stealth gear.

“I’m with you,” Antoine replied.
Because I can’t let you disappear.

They pushed themselves away from the wrecked cars. Flying bullets, hurtling bodies, the whole air around them was in chaos. They chased through the eye of the maelstrom.

Behind him, Antoine could hear window glass splinter and rain down from Building Fourteen. A figure jumped out of the Presidio’s second floor, crashing into the roof of a vehicle below.

Khabib was up and running, closing the distance over the Senate. Antoine had to follow.

Khabib stumbled across the square. A stray round hit him in the ankle and brought him down onto the bomb in his backpack. The shots pinged off the concrete forming showers of sparks. They flew over his head from the entrance to the Senate. Khabib killed the guards that had made him bleed. Antoine had to catch up with him. Under the cover of his ghostly appearance, Khabib launched a solo assault.

Khabib started to scream. It defied the whole purpose of stealth technology, but it did one thing above all: inspire fear.

Only Antoine was his equal as he followed him. They were like ghosts, half material, half visible, with their voices echoing and booming into the hall of the Senate. It resembled the howling voices from the grave or the barking of wolves. And Antoine realized it wasn’t even his own anymore. Antoine saw the wooden door swing open with no one in sight.

It must be Khabib.

Antoine realized the Kremlin Guard hadn’t seen Khabib slip into the Senate building. He was already among them.

Antoine rushed towards the building. Khabib had reached his end goal and would be moments away from detonating the bomb. He reached the steps to the building. The wooden door wings swung open and spat out soldiers into the courtyard to stop the attack. Ironically, they stood in his way to prevent a devastating attack. A hail of bullets preceded him, meeting flesh, bones and gunmetal.

Antoine threw himself against the door, pushing it open with his shoulder. It splintered like cardboard.

He shook himself as he entered the lobby and looked around for Khabib. Chipped wood and dust ran down off his silhouette.

The air was filled with gunpowder. Smoke clouds lingered over the bodies at his feet like a shroud. Brass rolled over the marble floor. He crunched them under his boots as he entered deeper into the building.

“When you are at home, even the walls help you,” Khabib said. “You know what the man said who restored this place? Crushed walls, ripped air ducts and piles of two-hundred year old bricks remind me of wandering around ruins of
Berlin
‘s
Reich Chancellery
in nineteen forty-six.”

Khabib spat on the ground as they ascended the stairs.

“The people sitting inside here also remind me of someone,” he said. “On ninth May, Hitler’s Germany fell. On ninth May, the modern Russia shall fall.”

A deep clunk made Antoine turn around, heavy metal crashing on marble. Khabib had set his backpack down. He was looking up at him, the detonator in his hand.

“Tomorrow it will all be over. Moscow wasn’t built in a day, but it will go down in one and then rise from the ashes. It’s time. Like that mission in Georgia, Nazyr. Remember what we said. The church is near, but the road is icy; the bar is far, but we will walk carefully.”

“I remember,” Antoine said.

Khabib drew his weapon, lightning-fast.

“The scythe has hit a stone. You have never been to Georgia!”

Antoine lashed out, both his feet hitting Khabib in the chest. Khabib raked the air with shots, ripping out chips from the ceiling as he lost the detonator. Antoine landed on his back. 

The device tumbled down the stairway.

He rolled into the adjoining room, scrambling to find cover behind the door frame.

Khabib was gone. Even his squad readings had vanished.

Antoine pulled out the cables of his own suit to go blank as well. He switched the feed in his goggles to RFID signal, but he’d never put the tracker on Khabib. There was no signal.

Antoine could hear Khabib’s rifle falling into the lobby. Khabib was probably low on ammunition, but he still had his sidearm.