Private Beijing

Chapter 99

I lowered my night-vision scope and saw him almost immediately. He was making his way along the edge of the command building. He looked back and fired a couple of wild shots in my direction before limping around the corner.

I sprinted after him. I knew he was heading for the vehicle pool, and that if I didn’t get him now, I might never have another chance. Back in Moscow, in normal circumstances, he’d be an extremely hard target to reach.

My legs pounded out the yards and my chest heaved with each gasping breath. I heard the roar of an engine being started when I reached the corner. I ran the short width of the crumbling old building and saw a gray UAZ Patriot SUV start to move away from the vehicle pool, gathering speed.

I dropped to one knee, stabilized myself, and raised the pistol. The shot was thirty yards and the distance lengthening. It would be asking a lot of me and the gun, but I didn’t have much choice. I squeezed the trigger again and again, but the bullets missed their mark and the Patriot kept going.

I was out of ammunition so I sprinted toward the vehicle pool to find something fast enough to catch Alekseyev’s SUV, but when I reached the corner of the building I was startled by the sudden appearance of a green mass in my night-vision scope. I lifted it to see Feo lit by the moonlight.

“Try this,” he said, handing me his ShAK-12.

I took it, raised it to my shoulder, and targeted the Patriot’s front left wheel as it headed along the base access road. Another fifty yards and I would lose it behind the thick forest.

“I’d take the shot myself, but you know, my arm,” Feo said. “I’ll be quiet now.”

I didn’t need his silence. I’d taken shots like this in the heat of combat, amid the noise of mortars, grenades, gunfire, and the screams of the wounded.

I squeezed the trigger and the first bullet travelled two hundred yards and blew out the front tire. I adjusted my aim as the Patriot started to shimmy uncertainly. This time I targeted the rear wheel. I took the shot, and an instant later the back tire burst and Alekseyev lost control of the vehicle completely.

It veered off the access road, ploughed through a field, and smashed into a tree at the edge of the forest.

“Not bad,” Feo said.

I looked past him to see Anna leaning against a wall. She smiled weakly. West and Dinara emerged from the main entrance.

“Get them to a hospital,” I said, nodding to Feo and Anna, then I ran toward the forest.

I rounded the badly damaged Patriot with my gun raised. Alekseyev, dazed and bloodied, was trying to get to his feet. He had managed to open the driver’s door but couldn’t get his legs to work.

I moved closer and saw he had his SR-2 Veresk in his hand. I kicked it and it dropped to the ground. He looked at me, his face covered in blood, eyes unfocused like a Saturday-night drunk.

“Well, go on,” he said. “Kill me. Avenge your friends.”

I stared at him down the barrel of my rifle and my finger curled around the trigger.

“Kill me,” he said.

I wanted to take the shot. I wanted to take it so badly, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t that man. I wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

“You’re just like me.” There was a note of triumph in his voice. “I see it in your eyes. I’ve read your record. I know death and destruction follow you everywhere. That’s because you like them. You seek them out.”

I was horrified by the thought I was anything like this twisted, evil man.

“No,” I replied, lowering my weapon.

It took him a moment to register what was happening.

“Why?” he asked. “I killed your friends. Kill me.”

“I’m not like you. I value life. Someone like you isn’t afraid of death, you welcome it, because you don’t value life,” I said. “Your punishment is going to be much worse. You won’t be given the easy way out, Director Alekseyev. You’re going to suffer.”