The Equalizer (46 page)

“You're calling Control? Can you do that?”

“I'm calling someone I pray is still alive. Don't let anyone in unless it's me.”

With her hand still cupping his cheek, Serena drew him farther down to her and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then she slid back down again and closed her eyes.

McCall stood up. He crossed back to the window, closed it, and locked it. Then he picked up the overcoat. He shrugged it on and took the Kedr submachine gun out of the big pocket. He set it on the foot of the bed.

“I'm leaving you the sub.” He walked to the door and unlocked it. “I won't be more than a few minutes.”

She didn't open her eyes.

“Got it.”

He opened the door. There was no sound out in the corridor. Just the creaks and low moans of an old building and the rush of the wind grasping to find a way in. He closed the door and locked it. He walked fast down the narrow staircase. Met no one on the stairs. He half expected to find the innkeeper in an armchair with his feet up on the scarred low table drinking hot sweet tea and reading Dostoyevsky. Or maybe
Fifty Shades of Grey
. But the lobby was deserted. McCall moved through it out into the night.

He remembered seeing the phone booth in the small square off the promenade along the Volga River. He jogged through the deserted streets. Then he slowed. A dark figure was walking along the promenade. He was tall, wearing dark clothes. He was smoking. He leaned against a railing and looked out. McCall stood still. The man smoked for a moment, then walked on. McCall waited until he was lost to sight.

He found the small square. There were shops and restaurants, all of them deserted. The phone booth he had seen through the trees was on the east end of the square, outside the Café Teatralovnoye, which McCall remembered meant “Theatrical.”

He was taking a chance the phone had not been vandalized. In the era of cell phones, most pay phones in Russia, like in every other country, had been either removed or destroyed.

McCall lifted the receiver. There was a dial tone. He took Gredenko's gold AMEX card out of the interrogator's wallet. It was a risk, but he didn't have enough change.

He knew the number by heart and dialed it.

A hundred and twelve kilometers away, Granny was walking out of the International Clinic MEDSI, moving between two of the white posts out into the street. The white building was lit up behind him. His cell phone rang. He took a Samsung Galaxy S 4 Red Aurora out of his pocket. There was no caller ID. But only three people in the world had the number of a secure second line he had had installed in the phone. Control was one and his teenage daughter no one knew about was the second.

“Hey, McCall,” he said into the phone. “Where are you?”

McCall shivered a little in the intense cold and stepped farther inside the phone booth. Its swinging door had long since been ripped off its hinges.

“In a little town called Tver Oblast on the Volga.”

“How the hell did you get that far?”

“By train. Too long a story for this call. What happened to you?”

“I had to land the AH-64 in a field about fifteen miles from the automobile plant. It was touch and go. I blew it up. I had my orders.”

“I know that.”

“Half an hour later I got extracted by another chopper. Took it to the International Clinic MEDSI, used to be the American Medical Center, in Grokholsky Pereulok, outskirts of Moscow.”

“You're okay?”

“Yeah, but my copilot took a bullet. Kid named Hastings? I don't think you ever met him. He's looking forward to shaving. But he did good. Can you stay at this location?”

“I can come back to it.”

“Give me half an hour to reach Control. I have to find him. What kind of a phone is it?”

“Pay phone in a square by the river.”

“They still have those?”

“You can still get a cup of coffee in the Café Teatralovnoye for a dollar and change.”

“I'll call you back in one hour. Give you a meet point. How is she?”

“Psychologically damaged, physically abused.”

“No, I meant before you got to her.”

McCall smiled. “She's okay. She's going to be just fine if I can get her somewhere safe.”

“It's not safe where you are?”

“I don't know. A bad feeling.”

“One hour. I don't call you, call me.”

“Copy that.”

“And McCall,” Granny said. “Good to hear your voice, dude.”

“Yours too.”

McCall hung up and stepped out of the phone booth.

The square was still deserted and layered with moonlight. McCall walked to the river end of it. The stroller had disappeared. No one had taken his place. McCall jogged back to the Hotel Medici. The lobby door was still unlocked. The lobby was as he'd left it.

Something was wrong.

McCall climbed the stairs two at a time. His heart started to hammer in his chest. He reached the door to Room 412 and thrust the key in the lock.

He opened the door.

Serena was asleep, still under the covers of the bed. She was so exhausted she did not hear him enter. The Kedr submachine gun was still at the foot of the bed. McCall shrugged off the big coat and laid it over the rocking chair. He walked over to the window, unlocked it, and opened it. He sat on the edge of the open window and looked out at the Volga River sparkling with scattered pinpoints of moonlight.

He waited.

 

CHAPTER 33

They came for them forty minutes later.

McCall saw the silhouetted figures running low over the roofs, jumping lightly from one to the other, making no sound, like wraiths. He climbed up above the open window and lay flat. He could not be seen there. He waited until the first assassin was within six feet of the window. He was carrying a silenced Glock 17. McCall inched forward. The assassin's full attention was on the open window.

McCall leaped down onto him, both of them sprawling onto the roof. The Glock 17 went flying out of the man's hand, skittering down the slanted roof to a stop a few inches from the edge. The assassin got his hands around McCall's throat. McCall viciously head-butted him. Ripped the hands from his throat. Saw in his peripheral vision the second assassin running fast, over the hotel roof, raising another silenced Glock 17. McCall heaved the first assassin's body around. There was a soft cough in the night. McCall felt the bullet hit the first assassin in the back. The man shuddered and went slack in his arms. McCall used him as a shield, dragging his body down the sloping roof to the edge. He reached for the fallen Glock 17, fingers scrabbling on the rust-red slates, finding the gun, turning it over in his hand. The second assassin was aiming again, trying to get a shot at McCall's head.

He fired.

The bullet was so close to McCall's face he felt the sting of it on his cheek.

McCall fired the Glock 17, at an awkward angle on the roof with the body of the first assassin crushing him, but hit his target. The second assassin slid down the roof and plunged over the edge. McCall heard him crash down below into the street outside the side entrance to the hotel.

The third assassin jumped onto the roof next to the hotel roof.

McCall was maneuvering to get out from under the first assassin when the man suddenly came alive, jabbing two fingers into McCall's left eye. He was momentarily blinded. The assassin's hands clawed at McCall's face, drawing blood.

McCall smashed a fist into the assassin's face. Shattered his cheekbone. He heaved and the first assassin went sliding down the slanted roof. He hit the edge and hung, not falling off yet, balancing there.

The third assassin was right on top of McCall. The silencer on the Glock 17 in his gloved hand touched McCall's forehead. The man was heavyset and grunted, as if the run across the roofs had been tougher than he'd anticipated.

One moment the cold barrel of the silencer was against McCall's right temple.

Then it wasn't.

The gun and silencer were skittering down the roof.

It slid into the second assassin hanging on the edge.

McCall and the third assassin went after it, sliding down the slate roof. McCall couldn't stop the slide. They both hit the second assassin hanging on the edge and sent him over. McCall slammed the side of his open hand into the third assassin's throat. Heard the sickening thud as the second assassin hit the ground below.

The third assassin kneed McCall in the balls. The pain was excruciating. McCall folded in on himself. The assassin grabbed McCall's hair and dragged his body right to the edge of the precipice.

McCall felt himself going over.

Then part of the hair the third assassin was holding came away in his hand.

The Gredenko hairpiece with the balding spot.

The third assassin looked comically startled.

McCall broke his hold on him, grabbed the third assassin's head, and slammed it down onto the slate. Out of the corner of his eye McCall saw the shape of the fourth assassin reach the open hotel room window. He completely ignored the fight going on at the edge of the roof. He had his own silenced Glock 17 raised in his hand.

McCall surged up with adrenaline propelling him. He slammed the third assassin's head against the slate a second time. He slumped down. He might have been unconscious. McCall wasn't sure and didn't care.

He kicked him and sent him over the roof to the ground below.

Then McCall was crawling on hands and knees toward the top of the slanted roof.

Too late.

The fourth assassin was already through the open window.

There was a burst of gunfire from the room.

Then silence.

McCall crawled up to the window and climbed through into the hotel room.

The fourth assassin lay sprawled on the floor in front of the window. The silenced Glock 17 was still in his right gloved hand. Serena was kneeling on the bed, holding the PP-91 Kedr in her hands. The fourth assassin didn't move, the blood pool growing larger on the hardwood floor.

McCall jumped down. The sound of the gunshots still reverberated through the room. Serena was already climbing out of the bed.

“How many more?”

McCall held up three fingers as he moved, turned his thumb down three times. He picked up the overcoat from the rocking chair, took the Kedr sub from her trembling hands, shoved it into one of the big pockets, unlocked the door, and threw it open. He could hear stirring from the other rooms on the floor. Some movement on the floor below.

The gunshots had been very loud.

McCall and Serena ran down the narrow staircase to the lobby. It was deserted, but McCall noted a light on at the end of a short corridor to one side of the reception desk.

They ran through the lobby out into the night.

McCall led the way around to the side of the hotel. The bodies of the three assassins lay sprawled there. McCall threw the overcoat around Serena's shoulders and they plunged into a rabbit-warren of small streets that led away from the Volga River.

“We have to get off the streets,” McCall said.

“Where can we go?”

“Somewhere no one will look for us at this hour.”

There were no streetlamps. The only illumination was the moonlight, and streaming clouds were beginning to take that away. McCall tried to keep his bearings straight, so he knew where the small square was in front of the Volga River. They ran farther into the heart of the small town. Then McCall saw what he was looking for.

It was a one-story building, painted white with small wooden windows and a heavy wooden door below an arched doorway. It didn't even look like a church, but McCall had seen the sign:
CHURCH OF OUR LADY DERZHAVNAYA.
There was a concrete path in front of it and a short wooden fence, about four feet high, separating it from a two-story white house with high trees in a front yard.

McCall and Serena ran up to the church door. McCall tried it. Unlocked. Most church doors were. He pulled it open, creaking on rusty hinges. The sound was grating and explosive in the silence of the night. McCall stopped, putting a hand on Serena's shoulder to stop her moving. They listened. There was no movement inside the church. McCall stepped outside and looked at the house separated by the wooden fence. No lights came on. He looked back down the street. No shadows moved. He heard a distant clock tower chime three times.

McCall stepped back inside the church. They moved down the center aisle toward the altar. McCall could smell fragrances in the air. They were quite potent. They reached the altar where a statue of the Virgin Mary stood beside a large crucifix. McCall sat Serena down in the first wooden row before the altar.

“I'll be back in twenty minutes.”

She reached up and took his hand.

“Don't leave me.”

“If they come for you, just run. I'll find you. Stay quiet and use the sub if you have to.”

She nodded, let go of his hand. She was wrapped up in the big overcoat again.

McCall ran down the center aisle and out of the church.

He looked at Gredenko's Rolex Yacht-Master II on his left wrist.

His hour was almost up.

He ran through the tangle of narrow streets, keeping the location of the small square in his mind. He made one wrong turn, corrected it, squeezing into a passageway between two houses, ran out onto the next street, and smelled the river. He made two more running turns and the square was in front of him. It was still deserted. No lights were on in the Café Teatralovnoye.

The phone in the booth was ringing.

McCall ran to the booth and lifted the receiver.

At the other end, Granny said, “I was just about to hang up. Thought you'd be waiting for the call. What delayed you?”

“Had to change accommodations.”

“Bad guys with guns?”

“Four of them. I took three of them out, but Serena shot the fourth and it could have awakened the dead.”

“You've got to get out of there. Get to Moscow. Then take a bus to Yaroslavl. They might be expecting you to take a train, but probably not a bus. Here's the intel on the station and the bus times.”