Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta (44 page)

Jon scrambled to his feet, coldly aware of the enormous drop right at his
back. Quickly he drew the combat knife sheathed at his waist. He crouched
lower, holding the blade at his side.

Undeterred by the sight of the knife, the big man stalked toward him. His
huge hands moved in small, deceptively lazy circles as he came forward, ready
to strike out, to maim, and then to kill. His smile grew wider.

Through narrowed eyes, Smith watched him come closer. Just a bit nearer, you
son of a bitch, he thought. He swallowed hard —fighting down a growing sense of
fear at the other man's implacable approach. He did not have any real illusions
about the likely outcome of sustained close-quarters combat against this man.
Even half-blinded, this foe was much taller, stronger, and undoubtedly far more
skilled in hand-to-hand fighting than he was.

The big auburn-haired man saw the fear on his face. He laughed and shook
more blood away before it dripped in his one good eye. “What? No stomach
for battle without a gun in your hand?” he asked softly in a cynical,
mocking tone.

Refusing to be goaded into premature action, Jon stayed still,
ready to react fast to any opening. He kept his own gaze fixed on the other
man's single eye—knowing that it would telegraph any real move.

The bright green eye flickered suddenly. There it was!

Smith came on-guard.

Moving with terrifying speed, the big man spun through a tight arc, aiming a
dazzlinglv fast elbow strike at Jon's face. He yanked his head to the side just
in time. The killing blow missed by a fraction of an inch.

Smith blocked another powerful strike with his own left forearm. The world
blurred red around him and he felt the stitches there rip loose. The massive
impact knocked him backward against the railing. Panting, he crouched lower
still.

Grinning hugely now, the green-eyed man closed in again. One of his hands
stayed ready to block any knife thrust. The other powerful fist drew back,
preparing yet another hammer blow—one that would either drive Smith back over
the railing to his death or crush his skull.

Instead, Jon threw himself forward, diving right under the taller man's
legs. He whirled around and scrambled upright just in time to meet another
series of attacks—rapid-fire blows that he narrowly parried with his own left
hand and both forearms. The force in them slammed him back against the wall,
driving the air out of his lungs. Desperately he slashed out with the knife,
forcing the other man back—not far, just a few short steps, just far enough to
put his back against the iron railing.

It was now or never, Smith told himself.

With a wild yell, he yanked the last flash/bang grenade out of his leg pouch
and hurled it with all his remaining strength straight into his foe's face.
Reacting instinctively, the big man batted the harmless grenade aside with both
hands, laying himself wide open for the first time.

In that single frozen moment of time, Jon lunged—striking with the point of
his combat knife. Only the very tip of the blade plunged into the middle of the
big man's remaining green eye. But that was enough. Blood and fluid poured out
of the new and terrible wound.

Blinded, the auburn-haired giant roared in mingled fury and agony. He lashed
out violently, knocking the knife from Smith's hand. He stumbled forward with
his arms spread wide in one last bid to trap his unseen opponent and crush him.

Moving fast, Jon ducked under those massive outstretched arms and punched
the bigger man hard in the throat—crushing his larynx. Immediately Jon jumped
back again, determined to stay safely out of reach.

Gasping, panting, straining frantically for the oxygen he desperately needed
but could no longer draw in, the giant slid slowly to his knees. Beneath the
dripping blood, his skin was turning blue. Despairingly he reached out one last
time—still trying to seize the man who had killed him. Then his arm dropped. He
slumped to the floor and rolled over onto his back, lying there with his empty
eye sockets staring blindly up at the ceiling.

Exhausted, Smith fell to his own knees.

From somewhere down below a new fusillade of gunfire thundered suddenly,
echoing noisily up the central staircase. Smith staggered upright, scooped up
his pistol from the floor where it had fallen, and ran toward the head of the
stairs.

He saw Peter trudging slowly up the staircase, limping painfully. “Took
a damned long, hard spill, Jon,” the other man explained, seeing his
concerned face. “Managed to hang on to my Browning,
though.” He smiled thinly. “That was just as well. You see, I
tumbled right into two more of those fellows coming up the other way.”

“I guess the}- won't be bothering us any
longer?” Smith suggested.

“Not in this life, at least,” Peter agreed drily.

“Jon! Peter! Come here! Quick!”

Both men turned at the sound of Randi's voice, urgently summoning them. They
ran back into the room.

The CIA officer was kneeling beside one of the bodies. She looked up at them
in amazement. “This guy is still alive!”

With Peter right on his heels, Smith hurried to Ranch's side and knelt down
to examine the lone survivor. It was the younger man he had seen through the
window, the one who had been listening to signals sent over a satellite
communications relay. He had been shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in
the chest.

“See what you can do for the poor fellow,” Peter suggested.
“Find out what he knows. Meanwhile I'll take a quick prowl around to see
what else I can uncover in this shambles.”

Peter moved off to begin a systematic search of the bodies and any equipment
and electronics that might be left undamaged in the bullet-riddled room.
Meanwhile, Smith stripped off one of his gloves and felt for a pulse in the
wounded man's neck. The pulse was still there, but it was very weak, fast, and
fading. The young man's skin was also pale and cold and wet to the touch. His
eyes were closed, and he was breathing in shallow, labored gasps.

Smith glanced at Randi. “Elevate his feet a few inches,” he said
quietly. “He's pretty deep in shock.”

She nodded and lifted the injured man's feet slightly. To hold them in
place, she grabbed a thick computer manual from the nearest table and slid it
carefully under his calves.

Working swiftly, with gentle fingers, Smith carefully probed the young man's
wounds, pulling away clothing to get a good look at the various bullet entry
and exit points. He frowned. The shattered left shoulder was bad enough. Most
surgeons would urge the immediate amputation of that arm. The other injury was
far worse. His face darkened as he traced the extent of the massive exit wound
high up on the young man's back. Moving at the speed of sound, the 9mm round
had inflicted enormous damage as it tore through his chest—shattering bone,
shredding blood vessels, and pulverizing vital tissue across an ever-wider
area.

Jon did what little he could. First, he shook out a field dressing kit from
one of the pouches on his assault vest. Among other things, it contained two
rolled-up sheets of plastic in a sealed bag. He tore the bag open with his
teeth, unrolled the pieces of plastic, and then firmly pressed them into place
over the two holes in the wounded man's chest—making the injury airtight. With
that done, he taped sterile gauze dressings over the plastic in an effort to
control the bleeding.

He looked up to find Randi watching him. She raised an eyebrow in an
unspoken question.

Smith shook his head slightly. The wounded man was dying. His efforts would
only slow the process, not prevent it. There was simply too much damage, too
much internal hemorrhaging. Even if they could get him to an emergency room in
the next few minutes, the effort would be wasted.

Randi sighed. She stood up. “Then I'll go take another look around
myself,” she said. She tapped her watch. "Don't wait too long, Jon.
By now someone in the neighborhood will have called the cops about all the

noise. Max will give us a heads-up if he hears
anything definite on the scanner, but we need to be long gone before they get
here."

He nodded. Coming right on the heels of Burke and Pierson's secret war
against the Lazarus Movement, the arrest of a serving U.S. Army officer and a
CIA agent inside the Movement's shot-up Paris headquarters building would only
confirm every paranoid conspiracy theorist's worst fears and suspicions.

Randi tossed him a bloodstained wallet. “I found this in one of his
pockets,” she said. “The ID could be a fake, I suppose. But if so,
it's a top-notch job.”

Smith flipped it open. It contained an international driver's license made
out in the name of Vitor Abrantes, with a permanent address shown in Lisbon. Abrantes. He spoke the name out loud.

The dying man's eyes fluttered open. His skin was ashen.

“You're Portuguese?” Smith said.

“Sim. Yes. Eu
sou Portuguese.” Abrantes nodded faintly.

“Do you know who shot you?” Smith asked quietly.

The young Portuguese shivered. “Nones,” he whispered. “One of the Horatii.”

The Horatii? Smith puzzled over that.
The word, which sounded Latin, rang a bell somewhere in the back of his mind.
He thought it was something he had seen or heard here in Paris in the past, but he couldn't pin it
down —at least right away.

“Jon!” Randi called in excitement. “Take a look at this!”

He glanced up. She was standing at the computer where he had seen the older
white-haired man working. She swung the monitor toward him. Caught in some kind
of programming loop, the computer was playing the same piece of digital imagery
over and over again—footage of pedestrian-filled streets, apparently captured
and transmitted by an aircraft flying low overhead. Three words blinked in red
in the lower right-hand corner of the imagery:
NANOPHAGE RELEASE INITIATED

“My God!” Smith realized suddenly. “They
hit La Courneuve from the air.”

“Looks that way,” Randi agreed grimly. “I suppose that's
easier and more effective than setting these horrible weapons loose on the
ground.”

“A lot more effective,” Smith said, thinking it through fast.
“Deploying the nanophages at altitude avoids relying solely on the wind or
internal pressurization to spread the cloud. You get more control that way, and
you can blanket a much larger area with the same number of devices.”

He turned back to Abrantes. The wounded man was drifting on the edge of
death, barely aware of his surroundings. With luck, he might now answer
questions that he would certainly have refused earlier. “Why don't you
tell me about the nanophages, Vitor?” he suggested carefully. “What
is their real purpose?”

“Once our tests are complete, they will cleanse the world,” the
dying man said, coughing. Bubbles of blood flecked the side of his mouth. But
his eyes held a fanatical gleam. With an effort, he spoke again. “They
will make all things new again. They will rid the Earth of a contagion. They
will save it from the plague of untamed humanity.”

Smith felt a shiver of horror run through him as the full impact of just
what Abrantes was talking about hit home. The massacres at Teller and La
Courneuve had only been trial runs. And that, in turn, meant the deaths of tens
of thousands had been planned right from the start as field experiments—as
tests to evaluate and further refine the effectiveness of these murderous
nanophages outside the sterile confines of a laboratory.

He stared blindly at the images repeating over and over on the screen. The
nanophages were more than just another weapon of war or terrorism. I hey had
been designed as instruments of genocide—genocide planned on a scale unmatched
in history.

Jon felt enormous anger welling up inside him. The thought of anyone
rejoicing in the kind of cruel, inhuman butchery he had seen outside the Teller
Institute triggered a feeling of fury beyond anything he had felt

in years. But to extract the information they needed
it was vital that this young Portuguese hear the voice of a friend—of someone
who shared his warped beliefs. With that in mind, Jon fought to regain control
over his rampaging emotions.

“Who will control this cleansing, Vitor?” he heard himself ask gently.
“Who will remake the world?”

“Lazarus,” Abrantes said simply. “Lazarus will bring life out
of death.”

Smith sat back. A terrible and frightening image was taking shape in his
mind. It was an image of a faceless puppeteer coolly staging a drama of his own
maniacal creation. In one moment, Lazarus denounced nan-otechnology as a danger
to mankind. In the next, he perverted that same technology for his own vicious
purposes—using it to slaughter even his own most devoted followers as though
they were laboratory mice. With one hand, he manipulated officials of the CIA,
FBI, and MI6 into conducting a covert war against the Movement he controlled.
With the other, he turned that same illegal war against them, rendering his
enemies blind, deaf, and dumb at the critical moment.

“And where is this man you call Lazarus?” he asked.

Abrantes said nothing. He drew in a single short breath and then began
coughing uncontrollably, retching, unable to clear his lungs. He was literally
drowning in his own blood, Smith knew.

Quickly he turned the young man's head to the side, momentarily clearing a
passage for the air he needed. Scarlet rivulets of blood spattered from
Abrantes' twitching mouth. The coughing fit eased.

“Vitor! Where is Lazarus?” Smith repeated
urgently. Randi left the computer she had been examining and came back to his
side. She stood listening closely.

“Os Agores,” Abrantes whispered. He coughed once more and
spat more blood onto the floor. He drew in another short, shallow breath.
“O console do sol. Santa Maria.”
This time the effort was too great. He jerked and spasmed suddenly,
convulsed by another long, wracking paroxysm. When it passed, he was dead.