Endgame

41

Ames stood about sixty feet behind Fisher and Hansen, and he knew they’d have no time to react before he tossed the grenade. It was glorious. Just glorious.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said in a slight rasp. “Don’t even turn around. I go down, so does the grenade.”

With that, Ames darted forward for the ramp railing, moving to within forty feet.

And then he emerged from the shadows and watched as the entire group turned to face him.

He’d told them not to move, but what did he expect? Compliance from a group of misfits? “Not another step,” he warned.

Ames hung his arm over the railing, prepared to drop the grenade down to level 4, where it would explode and set off alarms throughout the facility. He was sure they wanted to know what he was doing there, how he’d arrived, and what he wanted, but it was quite nice just letting them hang for a few moments — after what they’d done to him.

“What do you want?” asked Fisher.

Ames snorted, told Fisher that, yes, he was a survivor, and that was all he really wanted — just to say that. Fisher probed him about how he’d escaped, and Ames gave him the condensed version, said he’d flagged down the helicopter that had been pursuing them and had convinced the boss man that he was working for a mutual friend.

That left Hansen puzzled. If Ames had spilled his guts, why wasn’t the facility on high alert?

Fisher must’ve been thinking the same thing and asked, “Do they know we’re here?”

Ames shook his head. “I told him you were still in Irkutsk.”

“Him?” Fisher asked. “Who?”

This was the part where Ames laughed. “You’ve met him. In fact, he told me you had him in your hands and let him go.”

Fisher’s expression soured, and his mouth moved, almost forming the name.

“Yep, that’s him,” Ames confirmed.

“Who?” asked Hansen.

“Zahm,” Fisher replied.

Hansen frowned. “You’re kidding me.”

Fisher shook his head and sighed.

Ames’s smile broadened. Good old Sam Fisher couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The damned bad guy had been right in front him. The same guy who’d pulled off the weapons heist in the first place was the guy orchestrating the auction. No brainer, Sammy boy. It was the introduction of the banker that made the plot seem larger, when, in fact, it was all quite simple. And Zahm was just the kind of maniac to push things over the top. He never knew when to quit, and never, ever, had enough… of anything.

“Where is he now?” Fisher asked.

Ames grinned and shrugged. “Around.”

Hansen glanced at him emphatically. “You can still do the right thing.”

“I could,” Ames agreed, “but I won’t.”

He’d already pulled the pin on the grenade and let it slip from his hands. In the same instant, he sprinted back up the ramp, even as he knew they were swinging around, bringing their rifles to bear on him.

The explosion echoed up from the level below, and Hansen, along with the others, was on his belly as the corridor reverberated and a sulfurlike stench wafted their way.

“We gotta tag the last of the cases,” cried Fisher, which meant they were going down, not up, to escape.

“Gonna be trapped,” Hansen told him.

Fisher answered in a deadpan: “Bad luck for us.” Then he turned to Noboru. “You have the ARWEN?”

“Yeah.”

Fisher spoke in a rapid fire. He told Noboru that the initial counterattack would come from the medical zone, where Hansen had spotted the attendees. Zahm had most assuredly placed some of his guards near and around them. As soon as Noboru heard them moving, he was to put two gas canisters downrange. Valentina and Hansen would back him; then they would leapfrog down to level 4, split up, and make a last sweep of the zones for the rest of the arsenal.

With wide eyes, Fisher wished them all good luck, then took off with Gillespie. They would hold the ramp intersection, while Hansen, Noboru, and Valentina made their sweep.

Once they reached the medical zone, Noboru set up about fifty feet from the twin main doors leading to the makeshift barracks. He clutched the ARWEN tightly and gave Hansen a quick nod: good to go.

One door shifted open and Noboru fired, the gun echoing with a fwump. The gas canister arced through the gap in the door and clattered on the floor inside. Shouts in Russian and a few other languages announced the attack as the hissing canister spewed a thick funnel of smoke.

Hansen, who had tucked himself tightly against the wall, steadied his rifle, ready to unleash his first salvo, while Noboru stood ready once more with the ARWEN. He had a five-shot capacity in the weapon’s rotary drum.

The doors slammed open, and through the smoke, a pair of gunmen appeared, AK-47s held high. With a grunt and thump, Noboru express-mailed another gas canister.

At the same time, Hansen and Valentina sent their first wave of automatic fire punching through the veils of smoke. The two guys dropped like drunken frat brothers. He and Valentina couldn’t see much after that, but they didn’t need to because Fisher’s plan was already working. They kept firing, and farther back, Hansen stole a second’s glimpse of two more men hitting the floor. Four down.

Valentina abruptly charged toward those doors and took cover on the left side. Hansen gave her a look that said, What the hell are you doing? She ignored him and drew a fragmentation grenade from her web gear, pulled the pin, then extended her arm and pitched it inside.

With bug eyes, she came racing toward them, screaming, “Time to rock and roll!”

Hansen exchanged a look of surprise with Noboru as they dropped in behind her. Call that the Valentina Day Massacre. A heartbeat later, one of the doors blew off its hinges behind them. But what was worse, somewhere down below echoed the sound of more gunfire. As he ran, Hansen spoke into his headset, telling Fisher they were on their way.

They were out of the corridor in thirty seconds and reached the main ramp to head down. Below they spotted Fisher, who nodded to Hansen, then jammed his rifle around the corner and fired two shots.

Hansen led them down to Fisher’s position, and there Noboru dropped to a knee and aimed the ARWEN back up the ramp.

There was a sudden change of plans. Fisher now wanted Hansen and Valentina to clear medical. Noboru would hold the ramp. Fisher and Gillespie went charging off to ballistics, where Gillespie thought she’d heard Ames shouting at someone.

Gillespie was about a hundred yards down the corridor, running just ahead of Fisher, when she heard Ames’s voice again: “Shouldn’t have left it sitting here alone, Chucky.”

And then came another voice, presumably Zahm’s, given the British accent: “Aw, bloody hell, you little weasel! Come down here so I can put a bullet in your brain!”

“Can’t do that, Chucky!”

“Don’t call me Chucky!”

They reached sight of the main door into ballistics, level 4, then peeked around the corner. Similar to the zones above, the level was cavernous, like a stadium with a stone roof, and lined with engine test stands and ancient-looking tractors and treads for moving the heavy motors. Fisher raised his binoculars and saw that Zahm was at the far end of the zone with two men. They were near the mouth of the center blast funnel, near the last collection of Anvil cases. He told Gillespie to keep her eyes sharp for Ames. He was in there somewhere, and, she figured, had probably been double-crossed by Zahm, which was why he was still around and possibly about to exact his revenge on the self-appointed auctioneer as well as his best buddies in Third Echelon.

She and Fisher moved past the door and crept over to the nearest workbench. She took point and immediately found a covering position, while he eased in beside her. She got her first look at Zahm, a tall and stocky character with a thick shock of wavy hair. He was probably about Fisher’s age, though his hair was suspiciously devoid of gray. He wore a dark green turtleneck with suede patches on the shoulders.

Zahm lifted his voice. “Give it up, Ames! You won’t get ’em open!”

“Don’t want to!” Ames answered, his voice emanating from somewhere above.

“What’s he doing?” she whispered to Fisher.

“Don’t know.”

The others checked in over the headset. Noboru had heard the remaining guys moving around, trying to call the elevator. Fisher told him to hold position and that they had Zahm and what was left of the arsenal. This wasn’t exactly the original plan, but they’d take it. Hansen would clear weapons and electronics, ensuring no surprise attacks for their escape; then he would rally back at Noboru’s position. Valentina would do likewise.

With that, Fisher gestured to Gillespie, and they hustled off, working their way between the shelves and equipment, the vehicles and engine parts, keeping low and tight to the corners, advancing fluidly like two lethal components controlled by a single brain.

The strangest sensation washed over Gillespie, and she found it hard, for a moment, to concentrate. There was something incredibly sexy, even erotic, about darting through the shadows with him, the threat of being caught reinforced by every footfall. When they paused at the next bench, she just looked at him, in awe, and he looked at her: What? She just shuddered and mouthed, “I’m okay.”

No, Sam, I could never have shot you. Who was I kidding?

They came within a hundred yards of Zahm and his two men. He gave her the hand signal to take the man on the left. She nodded. Set up. Took aim. The Groza felt perfect in her hands. Groza means “thunder.” Oh, yeah, she was about to deliver her thunder…

They would do it just like training. She waited for his shot. The instant she heard it, she squeezed the trigger. Her target could not react in time.

Both of Zahm’s men dropped. One, two. Textbook head shots.

The man himself spun away, but Fisher was already running toward him. “Hi, Chuck.”

Gillespie dropped in beside Fisher.

Zahm whirled to face them, a 9mm semiautomatic clutched in his right hand. He looked at Fisher, then at Gillespie, and she could almost hear the ticking of his thoughts: If I shoot Fisher, then the woman kills me.

You can bet on it, Gillespie thought.

Fisher ordered Zahm to lose the gun.

Zahm set down his weapon. “Fisher,” he cried, as though to a long-lost friend.

Fisher shot Gillespie a look, then motioned her to the exhaust vents ahead to search for Ames. She rushed forward, past Zahm, and began her search, while behind her, the conversation continued:

“You just couldn’t sit still, could you?” Fisher asked. “Couldn’t have stayed in Portugal, enjoyed your villa and your mojitos and your boat.”

“Boring. Too damned boring.”

“Then you’re going to hate prison.”

“You can put me in, but you can’t keep me there.”

From somewhere in the space above, Ames yelled, “You’re both wrong!”

“He’s not in here,” Fisher called to her. “The echo’s wrong. He’s above us — ballistics, second level. He’s yelling down the exhaust shaft.”

Gillespie glanced up into the exhaust shaft, but she couldn’t see a thing. She switched on her flashlight, aimed it up, and still nothing but piping covered in a thick layer of carbon.

Fisher was suddenly on the radio to Hansen: “Move now, back to the ramp. All of you get topside as fast as you can.”

“What’s going on?” Gillespie asked.

“Do it. Blast your way through whoever’s up there, but don’t slow down.”

“Roger.”

Gillespie was about to question Fisher when Ames shouted again: “Okay, Chucky, here it comes… ”

Fisher screamed to her, “We’re leaving. Move!”

She was still confused but wouldn’t argue and began jogging back to him.

From the far end of the space came a crash. She turned back to see an Anvil case about the size of a footlocker bounce off the middle exhaust funnel and slam into the wall behind it.

Zahm craned his neck and stared at the case. “Son of a bitch! Ames!”

A second case dropped, this one so big that Ames must’ve used all his might to push it over the side. It was as large as a gun safe, Gillespie guessed. It struck the floor so hard that it broke open. Dozens of cylindrical objects spilled out and rolled across the concrete. And yet another case dropped. Then another, while Zahm continued shouting at the top of his lungs. He even screamed for Fisher to go up there and shoot the bastard.

Ames shouted, “Missed one. Here it comes!”

Gillespie stole a look over her shoulder at the exhaust vent, just as a white object about the size of a brick plummeted out of sight to the bottom of the tube.

“Aw, bloody hell,” cried Zahm.

Gillespie shouted to Fisher, “What?”

He had two words for her. “Semtex! Run!”