The Hydra Protocol (41 page)

He didn’t, though. He had one magazine of thirty rounds, and he was going to need all of them. So as the assassins spread out through the streets, covering doorways and starting their search, Chapel could only watch and hope.

A little voice in the back of his head kept nagging at him.
She’s a terrible shot
, it said.
She’s outgunned, and she doesn’t have any body armor. Bogdan will slow her down.

He tried to ignore that voice. He’d seen her fight before, and he knew she was dangerous. The Spetsnaz training she’d received would have to see her through.

Once they were clear of the helicopter’s rotor wash, Chapel could see that the assassins were a different breed than they’d faced before. These wore heavy kit, ballistic vests and helmets with neck protection. They carried short-barreled carbines, probably the AKS-74U variant of the rifle Chapel held. Those stumpy little weapons sacrificed a lot of range, but they made up for it by being easier to use in urban warfare scenarios—just like this one. At least one of the assassins had grenades hanging from his harness, and another one was carrying some kind of tactical shotgun.

They broke into teams of two so they could cover more ground. One group approached the statue—and the truck that was parked next to it. If they thought to shoot out the truck’s tires, or its engine block, Chapel’s plan would be ruined. Luckily the thought didn’t seem to occur to them. One of them climbed inside the truck and looked around while the other covered him. After a few seconds, the assassin climbed back out of the cab and gave a hand signal that had to mean the truck was all clear. The two of them moved on.

The second group of two headed for the dormitory buildings near the mouth of the canyon. They disappeared through a doorway and Chapel lost sight of them.

The third group headed for the factories at the end of the canyon, their weapons tracking the broken windows. They moved fast, but they didn’t leave themselves exposed—wherever they went they kept a wall at their back, or one of them twisted around to cover their rear. These guys were professionals, and they weren’t going to take any chances.

At the entrance to one of the factories, one of them readied a grenade—probably a CS tear gas grenade, by the look of it—while the other covered the intersection with his rifle. They gestured back and forth, not making a single sound, then stepped inside the factory together.

The second they were through the empty doorway, into the darkness of the factory building, Nadia appeared in the door of an administration building across the street. She glanced up at Chapel where he hid on the rooftop.

He looked around for the other groups. Both of them were inside buildings, out of sight. Chapel risked a quick wave at Nadia to let her know it was momentarily clear.

Nadia ducked low and ran across the street, to press herself up against the outside wall of the factory.

For a long, tense minute nothing happened. Chapel had an idea of what Nadia had planned, and he also knew that if either of the other two groups emerged from their buildings in that time, they would see her in a second. Nadia stood perfectly exposed to anyone watching from the street.

Then the group in the factory came back out into the light. It would take them a second for their eyes to adjust to the light, Chapel knew.

Nadia didn’t give them the chance. She swung around in one fluid motion, raising her pistol and holding it in front of her in both hands.

She was a terrible shot. The assassins were wearing body armor.

It didn’t matter.

She knew they would kill her if she didn’t kill them, so she went for the best possible shot. Her pistol was only inches from the lead assassin’s face when she fired. Even from the other side of the intersection Chapel could see the man’s eye explode in a cloud of blood.

He dropped his grenade and brought his hands up to his face, but he was already collapsing, already dying. The grenade hit the ground and bounced away from the door, and for a second Chapel thought Nadia was diving to catch it. But she had something else in mind. The dead assassin’s carbine was on a strap around his neck. It would have taken too long for her to get it loose so she just slid in under his falling body and used him as a shield, grabbing the carbine and twisting it upward to fire into the body of his partner. At that range she couldn’t miss, and the carbine was powerful enough to tear through his body armor.

It also made one hell of a racket, clearly audible all over town, even with the noise of the helicopter. Chapel saw movement in one of the dormitory buildings, a flash of dark fabric in one of the second-floor windows. The other assassins had heard Nadia’s shots, and it wouldn’t be long before they ran over to investigate.

Meanwhile the tear gas grenade went off in the street, a huge white cloud jumping out of it instantaneously. Nadia freed the carbine from its strap and cradled it to her chest as she rolled inside the factory building, away from the cloud.

Two assassins came out of an administration building that fronted on the intersection, just as the wind carried the cloud of tear gas straight at them. They wore gas masks and it didn’t affect them, but it did cut down on their visibility. They jogged toward the factory building, clearly intent on investigating what had just happened.

Surely Nadia would have expected that. Surely she would have moved on already, slipping out the back of the factory. The only way to win a fight like this was to move constantly, to maintain the element of surprise. Chapel was sure Nadia knew that—she’d been trained for this kind of fighting, just as he had.

He wanted to keep watching the factory, to see what happened next, to make sure she was okay. But he didn’t get the chance to see her next move.

Up at the mouth of the canyon, the helicopter was already lifting into the air. It was going to provide air support to the assassins on the ground. If it spotted Nadia, even for an instant, the jig was up.

Chapel had to make sure that didn’t happen.

The helicopter drifted slowly toward the center of town, toward the Lenin statue, staying low but not so low it risked colliding with any of the buildings. It moved through the air like a starving predator, hunting desperately for any sign of prey. Chapel kept his head down so the pilot wouldn’t see him, waiting for his chance.

Down in the intersection, the tear gas cloud was already beginning to disperse, shredded by the downward wash of air from the chopper’s rotor. One of the assassin teams moved through the thinning cloud toward the factory, their carbines swiveling back and forth in case Nadia showed herself.

Chapel couldn’t see the other team, the one that had gone into the dormitories. They must be holding back, as a reserve, or simply as spotters. The Russians weren’t taking any chances.

Time to give them something new to worry about. As the helicopter neared Chapel’s position, he readied himself, then jumped up and started firing. His rifle’s bullets tore through the thin metal skin of the helicopter, leaving bright holes in the dark paint of its fuselage. He didn’t hit anything vital—this was a military helicopter, and all its important equipment would be protected by armor plate—but he definitely got its attention.

Its beak-shaped nose started to swing around in slow motion, and he got a good look into the canopy. He cursed when he saw there were two people in there, a pilot and a copilot. The Ka-60 had a big rectangular front viewport, much like the windshield of a car. In Ranger school they’d taught Chapel just how difficult it was to snipe someone through a windshield—the curved glass distorted your view, and it also tended to refract the trajectory of any bullet that passed through it. He tried for a shot at the pilot anyway. That was one vital piece of equipment he could conceivably hit.

His bullets starred the viewport, sending a gentle rain of glittering glass cubes falling toward the street below. The helicopter jerked sideways and raised its nose, looking very much like a startled dragonfly. Chapel had time to see that he hadn’t hit either of the pilots, though the copilot had shed his safety webbing and was running back toward the main body of the aircraft.

Then the nose came up farther and he could only see the belly of the helicopter as it reared back and fell away from him, pulling out of range. Chapel let it go and looked down into the streets. Both members of the assassin team he could see were looking up at him, though their carbines were still aimed at street level. He desperately wanted to fire a burst into them, to make them jump, but he didn’t dare waste bullets. He’d already fired twelve rounds of his thirty into the helicopter and there was a long fight coming.

Nor, it turned out, did he need to shoot at them. Even as he watched them watching him, Nadia was sneaking up behind them, crouched so low she was nearly walking on her knees. She fired a quick salvo into their backs and then darted away, into the shadowy interior of an administration building.

Chapel wanted to cheer as he saw them dance and jump. One of them was bleeding from a wound at his hip as they ran for cover. Chapel ignored them and studied the dormitory buildings, looking for any sign of the third team. He was so intent on his search he almost missed what the helicopter was doing.

The Ka-60 had turned broadside to him, hovering over the statue fifty yards away. It bobbed slightly as it hung in the air there, then stabilized itself until it was motionless, seeming almost glued to the air.

Its side hatch slid open—the movement was enough to make Chapel look—and the copilot peered out for a moment, then ducked back inside. A second later the long narrow shape of a heavy machine gun rolled forward, four barrels sticking out through the side hatch to glint in the sunlight.

Chapel recognized the gun—a Yak-B Gatling gun that could pump out four thousand rounds every minute. Standard equipment on most Russian attack helicopters, though the Ka-60 normally didn’t carry one. The helicopter must have been modified to carry it at the expense of crew seats. It opened fire almost instantly with a grinding noise that made every muscle in Chapel’s body twitch.

He dove backward, under the short wall that screened the rooftop. His face hit the searing tar paper as bullets lanced over him, chewing up the roof only a few feet from where he lay. If the pilot ascended even a few dozen feet, the gunner would have a perfect view of Chapel, wherever he was on the roof.

It was definitely time to move.

He waited until he heard the Gatling gun start to spin down, then pushed himself up on his hands and dashed for the stairway that led down inside the building. The helicopter started firing again before he reached the stairs, but he managed to get down into cover behind thick walls, even as dust and shards of broken concrete rained down on him. Something hurt, but he didn’t have time to think about it. He hurried into the center of the building where he would be safe from the Gatling gun and pressed himself up against a wall, gaining just a little space to breathe.

Something really started to hurt by then. It didn’t matter—he could walk. And he had to find some way to deal with the helicopter. As long as it was airborne, there was no way to get away in the truck, no hope for him or for Nadia or Bogdan.

He checked his rifle, even though the pain was getting pretty intense. His clip was still half full, and everything looked in order . . .

Goddamnit, that hurt.

He realized he was being foolish. If he was really injured, he could bleed out in minutes. He just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that he was wounded. He looked down, then, and saw a huge oblong gash in his leg. It was bleeding profusely, but he didn’t think any arteries were pierced, and none of the bones were broken.

Still, it had to be taken care of. He tore off his shirt and ripped it into strips. He could barely manage a quick field dressing, but at least that would slow the blood loss. While he was tying off the bandage, he heard something, and he stopped rigid in place.

He’d heard someone whisper.

He grabbed his rifle and almost fired a burst into the shadows—

—before he realized it was Nadia, and she was calling his name.

He realized that he’d lost track of her, and that she must have run into his building as she moved around the intersection. She would have known he was still there, of course—she only had to look for the building currently being demolished by the helicopter. It was a terrible risk, though, for them to be in the same building at the same time. If the assassins had a bomb or even just more tear gas grenades—

“Jim,” she breathed. “Oh, thank God you are still alive!”

She came out of the shadows and rushed over to put an arm around him. He thought she was trying to embrace him and wanted to tell her there was no time for that, but then he realized he had been falling over and she was coming to support him.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“I’ll be fine. What’s the situation?”

“We are about to be killed,” she said.

Chapel grunted in frustration and pushed his back up against the wall. “That’s not what I meant. There were six of them on the ground. You got two over by the factories, then wounded another one when they spotted me. I’m pretty sure two of them are still holed up in the dormitories; they’re probably watching the entrance to the canyon, ready to gun us down if we try to run into the desert, and—”

“Eight,” she said.

He shut up and just stared at her.

“What?” he asked, when she didn’t elaborate.

“There were eight of them on the ground, by my count.”

Chapel wanted to close his eyes and sit down and just stop thinking then. He wanted to pretend like none of this was happening.

He couldn’t do that, of course.

“I counted six,” he told her. “I was planning on six.” But it had been hard to get an accurate count when they jumped out of the helicopter. The rotor had been kicking up so much dust, and he’d been far enough away he could have counted wrong. “Okay, there were eight. Now there are six and one is wounded. Then there’s this helicopter. The second we step out of this building, it’s going to mow us down.” He thought of something, then. Something that should have always been there, in the middle of his plans. “Where’s Bogdan?” he asked.