The Fall of Moscow Station (40 page)

Grigoriyev nodded. “We will move him to our best hospital. Our surgeons there will examine and treat him until an arrangement for a medical flight can be made,” he said. “If you are satisfied, I need to find General Lavrov.” He stared at Kyra. “And you are coming.”

“No, she's not,” Barron objected.

“I need her there,” Grigoriyev said. “Lavrov ordered her execution because she is a witness to his illegal arrests of Russian citizens. When he sees that she is with me, he will know that I have the evidence to remove him from command of the GRU. If she is not there, he might not believe that she lives and will resist arrest.”

“He might resist anyway,” Barron told him.

“He might,” Grigoriyev conceded. “But if she comes, he might surrender.”

“I'll go with her,” Barron replied. “That's not a request.”

“That will be acceptable.”

“Clark, I'll stay here with Jon,” Cooke said. “Director Grigoriyev, I do not speak Russian. I will need an officer who speaks English to help me coordinate the medical flight and other arrangements.”

“I believe Colonel Sokolov speaks English. He will help you.” The FSB director put his hand in his coat and felt the sidearm he was carrying. “Now, we go to Khodynka.”

Khodynka Military Airfield

One quarter mile northeast of GRU headquarters

The hour had passed and Sokolov still had not called. Had the man forgotten? Lavrov doubted that. Even if a soldier could forget a direct order so easily, the colonel had always been an efficient officer, a man who paid attention to the details. He would have remembered. Something was amiss at the Aquarium, but there were no sirens, no alerts. The general stepped outside the hangar and looked past the line of barracks to the old headquarters. The skyline of buildings looked like they always had in the dark.

Lavrov pulled out his own cell phone and dialed the number to Sokolov's office. There was no answer. He tried the GRU operator and had him connect the call to the interrogation room. That phone stubbornly continued ringing until Lavrov disconnected.
What is going on over there?

“General Lavrov.” The crew chief approached, saluted, then nodded toward the Mi-26 helicopter. “Maintenance is finished, the tank is full, and the cargo loaded. We will tow it out and it will be ready to travel once your pilot arrives and performs his preflight check”

“Very good.” Lavrov said. “The pilot . . . he should have been here by now, correct?”

The crew chief wiped his greasy hands on a rag. “He was due five minutes ago. No one has called to explain the delay—” He stopped, looked out into the darkness, and pointed. “Maybe that is him.”

Lavrov twisted his head, following the imaginary line from the crew chief's finger out onto the tarmac. A line of cars was crossing the runway in front of the boneyard. “No,” Lavrov said. “There are too many cars.” He stared at the approaching convoy, then turned back to the hangar. Whoever was coming was no friend.

I have friends of my own here
, he thought.

•  •  •

“There.” Grigoriyev's driver pointed to the open hangar. “There is a transport still inside.”

Grigoriyev answered nothing. The driver accelerated a bit, closed the distance to the metal building, and finally stopped, parking the car to block the Mi-26 from being towed outside. The other four cars fanned out, parking in a staggered formation behind the director's vehicle.

•  •  •

Lavrov looked out through the helicopter's windshield and counted a dozen men stepping out of the cars, none wearing a military uniform.
Grigoriyev
. He saw the old FSB director dismount and stand, hands in his overcoat, his breath visible in the cooling air.

There was a woman with them. Lavrov cursed.
Stryker
. Grigoriyev had stopped the colonel from carrying out his orders. This would be a problem.

The general turned to the Spetsnaz squad standing behind him, carbines suspended from their vests. “You understand the orders?” he asked. The Special Forces soldiers nodded in silent agreement. “Very good.” Lavrov turned and walked down the cargo ramp.

•  •  •

“Arkady!” Grigoriyev called out. “We must talk.”

There was no answer before the GRU chairman came around from behind the transport. He approached the FSB chief and stopped, making a show of counting the men behind him. His eyes lingered on Kyra. “Why are you here, Anatoly?”

“I am here to arrest you.”

“I think not.”

“You are a traitor to the
Rodina
, Arkady. You have sold yourself to the CIA for money and you killed Stepan to cover your perfidy. I do not care that you tried to extort the Americans for more money, but you made illegal arrests and executions of Russian citizens to prove your leverage. Your CIA ‘source' was actually a dangle that you swallowed. The people you expelled were just common diplomats. The CIA cadre here in Moscow remains intact, while you have given the U.S. government an excuse to expel our officers from Washington, including our ambassador, and move against every intelligence operation we are running on their soil. You have left us at a severe disadvantage that will cripple us for years and the price you paid for this failure was the blood of loyal Russian citizens. Therefore, you are charged with treason and murder,” Grigoriyev said.

“The president will not agree—” Lavrov began. He shook his head slightly, a laugh of derision escaping him.

“I saw the letter, Arkady . . . the letter which you burned. And he will see it.”

Lavrov's eyes narrowed. “It was a falsehood, created to implicate me. I burned it so that would not happen.”

“Or so there would be less evidence of your treason.”

“
Less
evidence?”

“Your Colonel Sokolov tells me that you took the quarter-million euros that were recovered with the note, which Miss Stryker admitted under questioning was meant for you. Why would you do that, Arkady, unless you considered it payment due for services rendered?”

“Money recovered from spies is put to other purposes. You know that,” Lavrov protested.

“Indeed. So I presume you took it directly to your chief of staff and ordered him to account for it and have it deposited?”

Lavrov pursed his lips and said nothing for several seconds. “No,” he finally admitted.

“I know,” Grigoriyev told him. “We asked the man. If my men search your jeep and this helicopter, will they find it?”

“I presume she told you those lies?” He nodded at Kyra.

•  •  •

Lavrov's eyes turned on Kyra, hatred visible on his face now. “What are they saying?” she asked Barron.

“Grigoriyev is twisting the shiv,” the NCS director replied. “Nice work on the setup. Everything he did has two explanations and our friend here is running with the one that makes him look like a sellout.”

“They hate each other,” Kyra said, her voice a whisper. “It's easy to think the worst about someone when you've already primed.”

•  •  •

“You are under arrest, Arkady. You will surrender—”

“I will not,” Lavrov told him. He raised his hand.

A thunderous avalanche of boots on metal echoed inside the hangar, sounding like a battalion of soldiers storming in from all sides. A squad of Spetsnaz officers exploded out from behind the helicopter, moving to covered positions behind the Mi-26, carbines raised. Grigoriyev's men began yelling, fanning out, and pulling their own sidearms. Barron grabbed Kyra's arm and pointed toward Lavrov's jeep, still parked a few dozen feet from the help. “Go!” he ordered. She sprinted for the vehicle, the senior officer and a pair of FSB officers behind. The Russians knelt at the corners of the vehicle, handguns raised.

Grigoriyev and Lavrov stood unmoved in the middle of it, staring at each other.

“What now, Arkady?” Grigoriyev asked.

“You are outnumbered and outgunned,” Lavrov told him, explaining the obvious. “I would think the wiser choice would be apparent.”

“And what would you have me do? Let you leave here with a fortune in euros and technology for sale to anyone ready to pay your prices?”

“I would have you believe that I am not a traitor.”

“Threatening to have me shot is no argument in your favor,” Grigoriyev noted. “You will surrender yourself and order the GRU to cooperate with my investigation. If you are innocent, you will be freed—”

“You will ensure I am proven guilty, Anatoly. What I have actually done will not matter—” Lavrov said.

•  •  •

The Spetsnaz officer crouching on the extreme left of the his team's firing line was the youngest man on the squad, new to the Special Forces and the least experienced. He had not intended to position himself on the flank, preferring to leave that to one of the more senior officers, but there had been little time to coordinate their movements before Lavrov had raised his hand to call them out. There was little space behind the helicopter and several men were bunched together, almost pushing him out from behind cover. It would not take much to find himself exposed here.

He scanned the hangar. Most of the FSB officers had managed to find good cover behind equipment and other cargo stacks, but the helicopter denied them any good line of fire. The two who had moved behind Lavrov's jeep were a problem. They were far enough over so that they would be able to flank his team's position. That needed fixing.

A pallet of cargo boxes was stacked a few meters to his left, a forklift waiting next to it, the tines lowered to the ground. From there, he could hold them down if things turned unpleasant. It would be a short run. He might even be able to move farther over and gain a line of fire on some of the other hostiles. He could trade his current position for better cover and expose the enemy in the process.

He took a breath, released it, and pushed off, running for the forklift.

•  •  •

Kyra saw movement in her peripheral vision. The FSB officer to Kyra's right jerked his head, swung his pistol out of reflex, yelled, and fired.

The 9x19mm Parabellum round punched through the soldier's upper thigh, just missing the pelvic bone and breaking the femur near the upper joint. Blood spurted from his leg and the man went down with a scream. His teammates heard the shot's report, saw their colleague drop, and returned fire.

•  •  •

Kyra yelled as bullets tore into Lavrov's jeep, shattering the windows and spewing glass in every direction. The Spetsnaz were carrying AEK-919s, automatic submachine guns for which the FSB's pistols were a poor match. The volume of fire that erupted from behind the helicopter was deafening, streams of lead pouring out in every direction at once. Lavrov and Grigoriyev both fled for cover, the general around the side of the aircraft, the FSB director back toward a low wall of metal boxes.

The FSB unit fired their Grachs as fast as they could. The sound of metal punching through metal added an ugly melody to the fight, low thumps mixing with the higher-pitched whine of ricochets and the angry snapping of the guns.

The tires on Lavrov's jeep blew out, tilting the vehicle to one side. Barron pushed Kyra behind the front wheel well, then moved back and took up the same position to the rear, putting solid metal in front of her feet and his. The Russian to her right fired three more rounds, then screamed and pitched over, clutching at his shattered hand where a bullet had smashed into the fingers closed around his pistol's grip, nearly amputating one of his digits. Kyra lunged to the side, grabbed his coat, and pulled the man back to cover. He curled up in the fetal position, trying to suppress his own screams.

His Grach sat in the open where it had landed, ten feet beyond her reach.

•  •  •

Lavrov pushed himself up to a kneeling position behind a metal crate, drew his Makarov, and looked for a target. Grigoriyev gave him nothing, hiding as he was behind his own makeshift parapet of cargo boxes. Lavrov unloaded three rounds at an FSB officer who raised up to fire, the second bullet catching the man in the sternum and rendering him unable to scream as the air in his lungs flooded out through the hole in his windpipe.

•  •  •

Kyra picked up a piece of shattered mirror and used it to look around the jeep's hood. The Spetsnaz officer covering his team's flank fired his 919, and the weapon ran dry. She saw him raise it to eject the clip.

Kyra dropped the mirror, pushed off, and sprinted low to the fallen Grach, keeping her eyes focused on the gun.

•  •  •

“No!” Barron yelled, but the woman was already in motion. He started to move toward the front of the car she had just abandoned, but a shattering window above made him think better of it. The Russian beside him raised up in a half crouch, fired, then toppled back as a 9mm round tore through his head. The man's own Grach clattered onto the ground, still behind the vehicle. Barron scrambled over to retrieve it.

Kyra slowed just long enough to grab for the Grach, and felt the grooved handle of the pistol in her palm as her hand wrapped around it. She picked up speed again, closed the distance to the next pallet of cargo in less than a second, and threw herself behind the metal boxes.

She lowered herself onto one knee and looked around the crates. The Spetsnaz were behind cover, several in a line almost at a right angle to her position.

The soldier at the end of the line finished loading the clip into his weapon, looked up, and saw Kyra's head before she could pull back. He racked the slide on his carbine, loading the first round, and raised it—

—Kyra's rounds caught him high in the shoulder, smashing his collarbone and knocking him to the floor, his gun clattering on the concrete as he landed.

Kyra's pistol locked open. She stared at the Grach in disbelief?
Two rounds? I ran for a gun that had two rounds?
She was a sitting target if the Russian soldiers moved on her position.