Nosferatu

CHAPTER 15

It had taken three phone calls for Petrov to get all the information he needed on Pashenka. Within an hour Petrov had managed to assemble a dossier complete with photos on the man. He was high-level FSB who made more money selling information to the Mafia than he did from the government. He’d even had dealings with some of Adrik’s organization at midlevel.

The Mafia connection meant that Petrov could most likely get the information he needed from the FSB official with a bagful of money. However, while that would be the easiest way, Petrov decided not to take that path. Everything he had learned so far had gotten his mind working and he knew he was on the trail of something more valuable than cash.

Petrov was seated in a panel van across Lubyanka Square from the FSB headquarters, waiting. According to his informants, Pashenka left work every day exactly at 1600 hours, crossed the square and went to a trendy bar next door to the Mir store. Such predictability indicated that Pashenka had long ago lost his tradecraft, something Petrov kept in mind as he watched the man exit the front doors of Lubyanka at 1602 and head across the square.

Pashenka wore an expensive suit, far beyond the means of even a high-level FSB official. The clothes, however, did little to hide the thuglike body they covered. The FSB man was built like a slab of beef, large, but softening around the edges. His face was red, indicative of heavy drinking, but the eyes were those of a man who enjoyed wielding power and inflicting pain.

“Go,” Petrov said, the mike wrapped around his throat transmitting the sound to the driver in the front of the bulletproof van. There were two other men in the rear of the van with Petrov, his most trusted subordinates, both dressed in black fatigues, with body armor covering their backs and chests. They pulled black balaclavas down over their faces as the van moved across the square on an intercept course with the FSB agent.

Petrov leaned back in a captain’s chair that was bolted to the floor, a pistol held loosely in one hand. They had done this many times and he anticipated no trouble, but it never hurt to be ready. The van slid next to Pashenka, the driver tapping the brakes lightly to slow it to about five miles an hour, slightly faster than walking pace, as the two men across from Petrov slid the side door open. One jabbed Pashenka with an upgraded cattle prod, sending an incapacitating jolt of electricity through the FSB man’s body, while the other looped a length of thick rope over Pashenka’s head, then jerked it tight as it settled just below his shoulders.

Both men hauled on the rope, lifting the flopping body off the cobblestones of the square and into the van in less than two seconds, sliding the door shut. The driver accelerated and they were moving along an alley off the square within ten seconds. Behind them a small cluster of pedestrians stared at the escaping van in shock, but by the time an alarm was raised, it was long gone.

Petrov looked down at Pashenka as one of his assistants took a syringe and injected the FSB man with a very strong muscle relaxant that guaranteed the captive would be conscious but incapable of any action stronger than breathing, talking, shaking his head, and wincing with pain for several hours.

Pashenka blinked his eyes as the effect of the electric prod wore off and he tried to focus on his immediate surroundings. By the time they pulled into the warehouse that Petrov was working out of, Pashenka was fully conscious but the drug was also fully functional and he was unable to move his limbs.

“I am a senior member of the FSB,” Pashenka sputtered. “You have made a very large mistake.”

“If you answer the questions I pose truthfully, I will let you live,” Petrov said. “One lie, no matter how small, and you will never be seen again.”

He gestured to his subordinates and they grabbed the FSB agent, dragging him to a heavy wooden chair bolted to the floor. They threw Pashenka into it and secured him with leather straps around his chest, legs, and arms.

Pashenka’s eyes shifted, moving about the warehouse, taking in the armed guards and their top-of-the-line equipment. “Who do you work for?”

Petrov shook his head. “I said I would be asking you questions, not the other way around.”

“The FSB will be looking for me. I am due at a meeting in—”

Petrov rolled a stool to a spot five feet in front of Pashenka and sat on it. “The FSB will miss you, but they have no idea where you are, and frankly, let us accept that they will not search that hard for you. Your only option if you want to live is to answer my questions.”

“What do you want to know?” “What do you know of Adrik?”

Pashenka’s red skin went pale. He began shaking his head ever so slightly, a movement Petrov mimicked. Pashenka stopped shaking his head and swallowed hard before answering. “Adrik is a very dangerous man. I have never seen him, but that is what I have heard. He runs many businesses and is also connected with organized crime.”

“I can read the newspaper and know that,” Petrov said. “I want to know what the classified FSB file on him says.”

“That file was most likely destroyed.” “Why?”

“It was at Section IV.”

Petrov had never heard of that agency and he had worked countless missions in concert with the KGB and FSB during his time in the service. “What is Section IV?”

“You mean what was Section IV,” Pashenka said. “It was the branch of KGB, then FSB, that dealt with the alien issue.”

Petrov felt a surge of excitement. He’d known this was big. “You said ‘was.’ What happened to Section IV?”

“Its headquarters were in a large underground bunker on Novata Zemlya. It was attacked and severely damaged recently by one of the alien factions during the war.”

“Why would Adrik’s file be with Section IV?”

“It was suspected he was one of the Ones Who Wait. Half-human, half-Airlia clones who worked for Artad.”

Petrov thought of the dark office in which he always met his boss. The white skin. The rumors. “You use the past tense — so he isn’t?”

“No. He’s something different.” “What?”

“An Undead.”

Petrov leaned forward. “And what is that exactly?”

“We don’t know,” Pashenka admitted. “All we know is he has been alive for a very long time thanks to access to some aspect of the alien technology or biological or chemical material of the aliens. Some say he actually is part Airlia. His file dates from the very beginning of Stalin’s secret police — and there were notes in there that predate that, from the time of the tsars. There is even one report that speculates that he was a tsar — Ivan the Terrible, no less. The fact is that no one knows how old he is or who he has been over the years.”

Petrov abruptly switched the subject. “The tunnels under Moscow. I was told you know much about them.”

Pashenka blinked. “The archives are my responsibility and they lie under the city.”

“Is there a place in the archives where blood is stored? Blood taken from the Germans at the end of the Great War.”

Pashenka hesitated. Petrov pulled back the hammer on his pistol, the sound echoing across the hangar. “Yes,” Pashenka said. “There is a room where blood is stored.”

“You will take me there this evening.”

“I have never seen anything like this.” The words were barely audible, ripped from Namche’s mouth by the brutal wind and dashed apart over the deep gorge to their right. As soon as he finished speaking, Namche slipped the full face mask back on, leaving not a single speck of his skin exposed to the elements. He could tell Tai was laboring in the thin air. The Chinese was half-doubled over, staring down at the climbing garments frozen into the ridgeline. The fact that there was no sign of the body inside the garments had been the cause of Namche’s comment.

Namche had seen many bodies on the mountain. It was virtually impossible to bring one back down, so the over two hundred who had died in the past century trying to reach the summit all lay where they had fallen, or, at best, covered with a cairn of rocks piled on by their climbing companions. The freezing temperatures preserved the dead, but here there was no sign of whoever had worn the clothes.

Namche looked up to the southwest, toward Everest. A plume of snow blew off the peak, but it wasn’t bad, perhaps winds of twenty to thirty miles an hour. Strong anywhere but there. They’d choppered up to 17,000 feet at first light. The helicopter had labored in the thin air, but it had gotten them a good way toward this spot.

Tai stood and followed Namche’s gaze upward. “We must go to the other two.” “And if they are the same as this?”

“Then we have failed.”

Namche frowned. “I do not think you will be able to go any higher.”

Tai reached inside his jacket and pulled out the carved flask. He unscrewed the lid, pulled aside his mark, and drank deeply, draining it. Namche was shocked to see the blood around his lips as Tai pulled the flask away. Tai blinked several times and his chest heaved for a few moments, then he nodded. “I can make it to the bodies.”

Besides his conditioning, the other thing that concerned Namche was the bulky pack on Tai’s back. He didn’t know what was in it, but it was large with a six-foot-long piece of eight-inch-thick PVC pipe secure on either side, not making for easy climbing. The pipe had already become entangled in the safety line several times.

It was not his problem. Namche turned into the wind and tugged on the rope connecting the two of them. “Follow me.”

Nosferatu was the only occupant in the cabin of the Gulfstream jet. He had all the shades pulled and the lights. off. Despite the darkness, he could easily read the latest report from the team he had hired in the United States. They were ready to move as soon as he landed.

The Americans had excavated a large part of the Dulce underground complex, but then work had ceased during the Third World War and had yet to be resumed. According to the report there were guards, a platoon of infantry, working in shifts at the site; but other than that, nothing to stand in his way.

He also had reports from Tian Dao Lin and Adrik. The two were still in the process of accomplishing their tasks, but all seemed to be going according to plan.

Despite his well-honed capacity for patience, Nosferatu could not stop a small surge of adrenaline from coursing through his veins. After so many millennia of waiting, what he had dreamed about could become a reality in just a few short days. Nekhbet would be back at his side. And they would be immortal.

Nosferatu realized that the hand that was holding the reports was shaking. He blinked, feeling a stinging in his eyes, and when he brought his hand up to wipe his face, it came away with a faint red smear. He realized he was crying tears of blood.

Petrov had his assault and recovery teams loaded into three vans marked with proper insignia indicating they were part of the SVD fleet. That would ensure that the police would ignore them no matter what they did and also precluded interference from the SVD as most agents would assume the vans belonged to another section and were on legitimate operations. Petrov loved turning bureaucracy against itself. They drove along the Moscow River until they reached the base of the hill on which the Kremlin crouched.

“Here,” Pashenka said.

With a flick of a finger, Petrov indicated for the driver to stop the van. He looked about. The streets surrounding the Kremlin were practically deserted this late at night. Petrov put a small earpiece in and wrapped a mike around his throat. He did a comm check and was immediately rewarded by the sound of all twelve members of his teams succinctly checking their mikes in order as he had trained them.

He wore unmarked black fatigues, over which he had strapped black Kevlar body armor and on top of that was a combat vest. He had an AK-74, the upgrade of the venerable AK-47, but chambered with a higher velocity, smaller 5 .45 mm round, for his primary weapon. He would have preferred something else, perhaps a German HK-95, but he knew they had to keep the appearance of being SVD as long as possible and the AK-74 was the armament of that organization.

“Let’s go.”

Shoving Pashenka ahead of him, he went out the side door of the van. Four of his men moved up the slope toward the wall of the Kremlin, spreading out, weapons at the ready. Two more covered each flank and the last four covered the rear. The drivers stayed with the vans, armed with proper papers to deflect anyone stupid enough to inquire why they were parked right outside the Kremlin so late at night.

They arrived at a portal in the redbrick wall, blocked by a steel gate. Petrov assigned two of his men, both armed with sniper rifles with night-vision scopes to take up flanking positions, covering both the portal and the vans.

Pashenka fumbled with his wallet, finally producing a plastic card that he pushed into the electronic lock. He then entered a sequence of numbers. The light went from red to green, and the gate slid open.

Petrov entered a small alcove with him, to be faced by another door. Pashenka used a different card and a different code on its lock, and the door rumbled open, revealing a descending stairway. Petrov put out a hand as Pashenka started to enter. He tapped the side of his head, then slid down a set of night-vision goggles. The rest of his team did the same. Then he signaled with two fingers and gestured down. Two of his men slid past, descending into the darkness. “Clear to another door,” his lead scout reported. “It’s sealed with a retinal scanner to one side.”

Petrov grabbed Pashenka and guided him down the stairs, the rest of the team following. Overhead Petrov could see lines of fluorescent lighting, but the power was off. They reached a solid steel door. Pashenka leaned over the retinal scanner and the laser projected a beam across his eyes, reading the pattern. Petrov thought the presence of such a sophisticated device was indicative that he was on the right track. Even at Lubyanka they still relied on name badges with photos for access, each checked by some old, about-to-be-retired agent who could barely read the names.

The steel door slid open, revealing a descending corridor. The floor was gray and the walls were painted the same flat color. Petrov pulled up the night-vision goggles as the corridor was dimly lit by recessed lighting. As soon as the last member of the team was in the corridor, Pashenka turned to the control to shut the door behind them.

“No,” Petrov said. “Never close an escape route.” He detailed a pair of his men to stand guard, then looked ahead. The corridor went straight as far as he could see. From the papers he had perused and Kokol’s briefing, he’d learned that the first tunnel built under the Kremlin had been finished during the time of the tsars as an escape route in times of extreme trouble. Obviously it had not been used when they really needed it, Petrov thought as he gestured for his two point men to move ahead. He followed right behind, with Pashenka at his side.

Kokol had described how during World War II, Stalin had begun by building a large bomb shelter directly under the Kremlin as the Nazis approached Moscow. He’d also had bunkers dug under other government buildings and connecting tunnels bored out.

However, the rudimentary bunkers, designed to provide survival against Stuka dive-bombers, were obviously inadequate against nuclear weapons. So the government dug deeper and deeper, burrowing into the earth below Moscow in the foolish hope that perhaps the government could survive a direct nuclear attack. That there would be nothing on the surface to govern had not seemed to occur to anyone.

Pashenka paused before a side door. “We are under the palace.”

“How deep?” Petrov asked, as it appeared to him they had been moving relatively level.

“Eighty feet or so.” Pashenka opened the door. The tunnel beyond was older and smaller. Beads of moisture glistened, illuminated by naked lightbulbs attached to an electric cord bolted to the ceiling.

They moved about one hundred meters before reaching another door. Unlike the previous ones, though, this door was wooden, with metal bands across it. Petrov noted an electronic eye to the left and above the door.

“Who is watching?” he demanded of Pashenka.

“One of my people,” Pashenka said.

“You did not tell me this.” Petrov signaled to his men that they should be at the ready.

“He can be trusted. I just hope the repairs have been completed.”

Petrov wanted to laugh, but held it in. No one could be trusted in Russia these days. “Repairs?”

“The bottom of the elevator shaft and the tunnel at the bottom were destroyed recently by traitorous activity.”

Pashenka waved at the camera and the door opened with a click, followed by the hiss of the hydraulic jack.

Petrov’s first two men dashed through, moving to covering positions inside on either side. Petrov shoved Pashenka through, staying behind him, AK-74 at the ready. They faced a sheet of bulletproof glass that bisected the room. A door, also made of bulletproof glass, was to the right. A man sat behind a desk on the other side, a video monitor in front of him. He had an AK-74 in his hands.

“Sir, who are these people?” the man demanded of Pashenka. “Section IV,” Pashenka said. “They have authorization.”

“May I see the papers, sir?”

Pashenka stepped closer. “You know better than that. This comes directly from the Chairman. I take full responsibility.”

The man shrugged. “I had not heard they reconstituted Section IV. I am surprised, that is all.” He pressed a buzzer. The glass door swung open. Pashenka walked through, followed by Petrov.

“Is the elevator fixed?” “Yes, sir.”

“The tunnel at the bottom?”

“Most of the debris has been removed. It is passable.”

“Good,” Pashenka said, pulling a key on a chain from inside his shirt. The man did the same. They walked to opposite sides of the room to two boxes, where they inserted the keys. Pashenka counted to three and they both turned.

Steel doors in the back of the room opened, revealing a freight elevator. Pashenka walked onto it. Petrov signaled for two of his men to stay behind, then entered the elevator with the rest.

With a jerk, the elevator began descending. Petrov felt his ears pop. “How deep?”

“A half mile.”

“Are the archives there?”

Pashenka shook his head. “No. They are very, very deep. This is just the first step.”

The elevator halted with a slight jar. The doors rumbled open. A dank corridor, lit with hastily rigged work lights beckoned. There were piles of rubble dotting the pitted floor here and there.

“Who tried to gain access?” Petrov asked as they got off the elevator. “The Ones Who Wait.”

Petrov had read of the various alien groups. “Why were they trying to infiltrate the archives?”

“I do not know,” Pashenka said. “My boss, Lyoncheka, went with them and was killed. A Section IV operative named Yakov and an American escaped with something.”

Petrov knew the name Yakov. It had been all over the news. “The Yakov who went to Mars and helped defeat the aliens?”

“Yes.” They reached an intersection and Pashenka halted, then consulted his handheld. “This way.” They turned right.

Petrov considered putting a bullet in Pashenka’s brain, taking the handheld, and leading the men there himself, but he knew that might be precipitous. If Pashenka retained any of his tradecraft he would have a cutout built in, where he would be needed for an important leg of the journey that wasn’t programmed into the handheld.

They made three more turns at the same level, then suddenly they were at the head of a wide tunnel that slowly curved clockwise and descended. It was large enough to drive a truck down and off to the left a long ramp ascended, just as large. He left one man at the intersection, then they began to go down.

Petrov noted what appeared to be air shafts spaced along the inner wall. He assumed there was a central vertical shaft that supplied air to these lower levels. Pashenka was counting to himself, then suddenly halted before the first door they had encountered on the right. By his pace count, Petrov estimated they’d walked over a mile in a descending circle.

“This is it,” Pashenka said. Then he cursed.

Petrov looked over his shoulder and saw the reason: The outer edges of the door had been welded shut.

Petrov snapped an order and one of his men ran up. He tossed off his backpack and pulled out a welding torch and fired it up.

The silent alarm brought a squad of soldiers running into the courtyard of the Kremlin, under the command of a senior captain, where they were met by a senior FSB colonel on the premier’s protection detail. The colonel was standing there in full battle gear as if he had anticipated the alarm. Colonel Kokol was an old man, but still in good shape. The cane he had used when he visited Petrov was no longer visible and the limp was gone.

“What is it, sir?” the FSB captain demanded, still struggling to put on his combat vest.

“Infiltrators in the tunnels, sir.” “Where?”

“They tripped an alarm on Level Six, Section Eight.” “What’s there?”

“Old KGB archives,” Kokol said.

“Strange,” the captain said. “They didn’t trip any alarms getting into the tunnels. How can that be?”

“Because someone let them in,” Kokol said. “One of our men, Pashenka, was kidnapped yesterday afternoon right out of Lubyanka Square. He has access to the tunnels.”

“Any idea where exactly he’s going?” the captain asked without much hope. Colonel Kokol smiled broadly. He brought his small handheld device and showed it to the captain. It had a six-inch oval display and there was a glowing dot with some numbers next to it. The dot was almost exactly in the center. “Pashenka’s bugged?”

Kokol nodded as he read the data. “I was prepared for this. They’ve moved since they tripped the alarm.” He pointed down. “Just about right below us and over eighteen hundred meters down.”

The captain turned and pointed at an eight-foot-wide column that came out of the ground and extended up about fifteen feet. “Main ventilation shaft for the Kremlin underground complex. Goes straight down just about two thousand meters.”

“We’d need an awfully long rope to rappel down that far,” Kokol said, as they walked over to the shaft. Several soldiers were already unscrewing plates from the outer surface. Another was opening a small chest bolted to the ground nearby.

“There was concern about a swift way to get deep if all power was cut and missiles were inbound,” the captain said. “Elevators wouldn’t work, and taking stairs or even the ramp would be too slow.”

Two panels came off the side of the tube, revealing two brass poles bolted to the side of tube. The captain went over to the chest and reached in, pulling out two devices. They had handholds with straps that wrapped securely around the wrist. Facing outward were clamps that would go on the brass poles and levers controlled by the hands determined how much pressure they applied to the pole.

“Jumars,” the captain said as he held them up. He wrapped the straps around his wrist, making sure his hands were secure inside the devices. Colonel Kokol hesitated only for a moment, then got his own set.

Together they walked over to the tube and looked down. Lonely lightbulbs lit the tube every fifty feet or so, leaving sections of darkness between.

“I am willing to allow your rank to proceed me,” the captain said.

Kokol demurred. “I would prefer to watch your expertise with the equipment first, so I might learn the proper way to do this.”

The captain laughed and stepped onto the narrow ledge around the inside top, sidling over to one pole. He clamped the jumars down on the pole and tested the pressure, squeezing his fingers against the pads they rested on. He glanced over at Kokol, no sign of laughter on his face now. The colonel nodded.

The captain carefully released the pressure and began to slide down.

Petrov checked his watch but displayed no sense of impatience, knowing it would do no good. The man was working as fast as he could. The flame went out and the welder stood. “It’s clear to open.”

Two mercenaries began unscrewing the door, which seemed to consist of a single large threaded metal disk, about five feet in diameter. It moved easily and they had it unscrewed in less than fifteen seconds. It slowly rotated away from the entrance on hydraulic arms.

It was dark inside. Petrov pulled down his night-vision goggles and turned them on. He waited until the green glow came alive, then poked his head in the opening. He saw a large chamber, the far end of which wasn’t visible in the night-vision goggles. Petrov blinked as he recognized the forest of vertical objects filling the chamber — human beings impaled on stakes set in the floor.

“Hold here,” Petrov ordered as he stepped over the threshold in the chamber. There were hundreds of mummified bodies dangling on stakes run up through the centers of their bodies within view. Directly in front, less than ten feet away, was a heavy wooden chair, bolted to the floor. Leather straps were looped over the arms and legs, indicating that whoever had occupied the chair had not done so willingly. The chair faced the forest of dead. Looking up, Petrov saw that rails lined the ceiling with small trolleys with chains dangling from them. He immediately understood that was the way each body had been conveyed to its stake, then lowered onto it.

Ingenious. Petrov had seen many horrible things in his time and he had watched much torture. He could envision the process here. A victim was interrogated in the chair, facing all the bodies, some probably still alive and writhing on the stakes, while the victim could witness his pending fate, probably with an offer of being spared if he spoke. Petrov imagined most spoke, even making up things if they weren’t really guilty, which was often the case. Regardless of what he said, the prisoner was lifted out on the chains and pulled to his final resting place and the next victim was brought in and strapped down.

How long had this been going on? he wondered. He looked at the closest body. The skin was stretched tight, the body mummified. The naked body was shriveled tight as if every fluid inside had been drained. Petrov felt a start as he remembered why he had come there.

He moved farther into the room, up to the chair. Directly on the other side was something he had not seen at first. A large wooden cart with a metal device on it and large glass bottles on the lower level. Rubber hoses led from the metal device to the cart. It took him a few seconds before he realized the device was a pump. And there were more thin rubber hoses on top with large-gauge needles on top. There was writing in German on both the bottles and the metal device. A swastika was stenciled on the side of the cart.

There was no mistaking the device’s purpose: to forcibly draw blood from a victim.

So where was the blood?

“Get in here,” Petrov ordered. His remaining commandos entered, all with night-vision goggles on. It was a tribute to their training that not a word was said.

“We need to find a cache of blood,” Petrov said. “Search the room.” The men spread out.

“Are we there yet?” Colonel Kokol hissed. His forearms were aching and the last halt had taken all his energy to compress the pads against the pole.

The captain glanced down at the tracking device hung around his neck, craning to be able to see the display. “Close.”

Kokol glanced at the small grate between the two poles. They’d passed one about every thirty feet on the way down. Each had a small six-inch-wide ledge in front of it. “Should we exit?”

Kokol waited for the captain’s answer as the junior officer tried to angle his head to get a better read on the screen. The colonel’s old forearms supplied the answer in the absence of anything from the captain. Kokol swung his feet over onto the ledge, then completely released his hold on the poles. His arms swung free and he used his teeth to release the wrist straps on the jumars.

“We are exiting, then?” the captain asked.

“Da” Kokol muttered as he tried to see through the grate. He saw the ramp, but nothing else.

The captain joined him. Together they pushed out on the grate and it popped loose. Kokol stuck his head out and saw nothing either way, so he slid through.

However, when it was the captain’s turn, the weight lifter’s shoulders wouldn’t make it through, no matter how hard he tried. As the captain strained and twisted, Kokol cocked his head to catch a sound floating up the ramp. Voices.

“I’ve got contact just below,” Kokol hissed to the captain.

“I can’t get through,” the captain muttered, stating the obvious.

“There must be a maintenance entrance at the bottom,” Kokol whispered. “It’s not that much farther down. Get there, then come up the ramp. I’ll hold from above.”

The captain pulled back and looked up. “My strike team is on its way down. Wait for reinforcements before you do anything.” “Certainly,” Kokol said.

The captain clamped onto the pole and began heading down. Kokol turned back to the ramp and waited, AK-74 at the ready.

This had to be it — sixteen crates loaded on four-wheeled carts. There were faded swastikas stenciled on the outside and writing in German. Petrov used his knife to pry up one of the lids. Nestled in straw inside were rows of bottles similar to the ones on the lower level of the cart. Inside each was a dried, coagulated reddish mass that Petrov assumed had once been blood. He ordered his men to wheel the carts out.

Kokol heard the squeal of unoiled machinery coming his way. Then he spun to his right as he heard a muffled curse. A soldier was struggling to get through the air vent and join him.

Kokol put his finger to his lips, then turned to face, back down the ramp, the butt of his AK-74 tucked tight into his shoulder. The sound was getting closer and he couldn’t figure out what was making it. Having fought in many wars, from World War II to the present, he decided to make himself a smaller target and went down to one knee.

The soldier managed to make it through and joined him as a second one appeared in the grate. Kokol sighted in as the muzzle of a weapon appeared, followed by the man wielding it, dressed in black. He saw Kokol just as the soldier yelled out for the man to drop his weapon.

The man did neither, bringing the weapon to bear instead, and Kokol squeezed the trigger of the AK-74 twice in rapid succession. The first bullet hit the man in the cheek, ripping a gash along the side of his face while the second hit right between the eyes, sending him flopping back down the ramp.

The reply was instant and fierce as automatic weapons let loose and high-velocity rounds tore up the ramp, bouncing off the walls and ricocheting all about. A round hit the soldier coming out the grate in the back of his head, killing him instantly and leaving his body jammed in the hole. Kokol dived to the ground and fired several rounds even though he could see no targets, figuring the ricocheting would work just as well the other way.

He heard a strange grunt, a sound he had heard before — a last breath of air being expelled as a bullet tore through lungs — and glanced to his left to see the other soldier sink to his knees, then fall face forward, blood seeping out of a wound just under his armpit where his vest didn’t cover.

Kokol rolled twice, putting himself behind the man’s body and resting his submachine gun on top of him. Several more rounds hit the body and Colonel Kokol emptied the rest of his clip, silently counting to himself, so that when he fired the last round, his finger hit the release, the magazine fell and he slammed another home without making the mistake of firing on an empty chamber and wasting precious seconds.

Where the hell was the captain? The firing from below suddenly ceased and Kokol heard voices, someone issuing muffled orders. Were they retreating? Regrouping?

The answer came swiftly as three hand grenades came flying through the air. Colonel Kokol rolled, pulling the dead body on top of him as the first one went off less than ten feet away. The concussion hit him, followed by two more, like body blows from a mule, but the dead SVD man absorbed the shrapnel. The last wave slammed Kokol’s head against the inner wall, knocking him out.

Petrov jumped in the van with the blood, as his mercenaries fired back at the security forces on the outskirts of the Kremlin wall. He pressed a detonator, and two of his own people’s cars exploded, behind his van, taking out several police cars with them, blocking the way, and allowing enough of a diversion for his van to disappear into the warren of alleys.

He had the blood. The issue he had now was what exactly to do with it. He was not sure any longer that turning it over to Adrik was the most prudent course of action — at least not without a substantial finder’s fee.