The Bourne Ultimatum, Page 71

  “My word—”

  “But you were right about one thing. Carlos has a contact inside that armory—the man in the sling. He may only be an innocent Russian with a brother or a sister living in Paris, but the Jackal owns him.”

  “Dimitri!” shouted the metallic voice in Russian. “The car is speeding out of the parking lot!”

  Krupkin pressed the button on his microphone and gave his instructions. Essentially, they were to follow that automobile to the borders of Finland if necessary, but to take it without violence, calling in the police if they had to. The last order was to pass the armory, blowing his horn repeatedly. In the Russian vernacular, the agent named Orlov asked, “What the fuck for?”

  “Because I’ve had a vision from St. Nickolai the Good! Also, I’m your charitable superior. Do it!”

  “You’re not well, Dimitri.”

  “Do you wish a superb service report or one that will send you to Tashkent?”

  “I’m on my way, comrade.”

  Krupkin replaced the microphone in the dashboard receptacle. “Everything proceeds,” he said haltingly, partially over his shoulder. “If I’m to go down with either a crazed assassin or a convoluted lunatic who displays certain decencies, I imagine it’s best to choose the latter. Contrary to the most enlightened skeptics, there might be a God, after all.… Would you care to buy a house on the lake in Geneva, Aleksei?”

  “I might,” answered Bourne. “If I live through the day and do what I have to do, give me a price. I won’t quibble.”

  “Hey, David,” interjected Conklin. “Marie made that money, you didn’t.”

  “She’ll listen to me. To him.”

  “What now, whoever you are?” asked Krupkin.

  “Give me all the firepower I need from this trunk of yours and let me off in the grass just before the armory. Give me a couple of minutes to get in place, then pull into the parking lot and obviously—very obviously—see that the car is missing and get out of there fast, gunning your engine.”

  “And leave you alone?” cried Alex.

  “It’s the only way I can take him. The only way he can be taken.”

  “Lunacy!” spat out Krupkin, his jowls vibrating.

  “No, Kruppie, reality,” said Jason Bourne simply. “It’s the same as it was in the beginning. One on one, it’s the only way.”

  “That is sophomoric heroics!” roared the Russian, slamming his hand down on the back of the seat. “Worse, it’s ridiculous strategy. If you’re right, I can surround the armory with a thousand troops!”

  “Which is exactly what he’d want—what I’d want, if I were Carlos. Don’t you see? He could get away in the confusion, in the sheer numbers—that’s not a problem for either of us, we’ve both done it too many times before. Crowds and anxiety are our protection—they’re child’s play. A knife in a uniform, the uniform ours; toss a grenade into the troops, and after the explosion we’re one of the staggering victims—that’s amateur night for paid killers. Believe me, I know—I became one in spite of myself.”

  “So what do you think you can do by yourself, Batman?” asked Conklin, furiously massaging his useless leg.

  “Stalk the killer who wants to kill me—and I’ll take him.”

  “You’re a fucking megalomaniac!”

  “You’re absolutely right. It’s the only way to be in the killing game. It’s the only edge you’ve got.”

  “Insanity!” yelled Krupkin.

  “So allow me; I’m entitled to a little craziness. If I thought the entire Russian army would ensure my survival, I’d scream for it. But it wouldn’t—it couldn’t. There’s only this way.… Stop the car and let me choose the weapons.”

  39

  The dark green KGB sedan rounded the final curve in the sloping road cut out of the countryside. The descent had been gradual. The ground below was flat and summer-green with fields of wild grass bordering the approach to the massive brown building that was the Kubinka Armory. It seemed to rise out of the earth, a huge boxlike intrusion on the pastoral scene, an ugly man-made interruption of heavy brown wood and miserly windows reaching three stories high and covering two acres of land. Like the structure itself, the front entrance was large, square and unadorned except for the dull bas-relief profiles above the door of three Soviet soldiers rushing into the deadly winds of battle, their rifles at port arms, about to blow one another’s heads off.

  Armed with an authentic Russian AK-47 and five standard thirty-round magazine clips, Bourne jumped out the far side of the silent coasting government car, using the bulk of the rolling vehicle to conceal himself in the grass directly across the road from the entrance. The armory’s huge dirt parking area was to the right of the long building; a single row of unkempt shrubbery fronted the entrance lawn, in the center of which stood a tall white pole, the Soviet flag hanging limp in the breezeless morning air. Jason ran across the road, his body low, and crouched by the hedgerow; he had only moments to peer through the bushes and ascertain the existence or nonexistence of the armory’s security procedures. At best, they appeared lax to the point of being informal, if not irrelevant. There was a glass window in the right wall of the entrance similar to that of a theater’s box office; behind it sat a uniformed guard reading a magazine, and alongside him, less visible but seen clearly enough, was another, his head on the counter, asleep. Two other soldiers emerged from the immense armory door—double doors—both casual, unconcerned, as one glanced at his watch and the other lighted a cigarette.

  So much for Kubinka’s security; no sudden assault was anticipated nor had one taken place, at least none that had set off alarms reaching the front patrols, usually the first to be alerted. It was eerie, unnatural, beyond the unexpected. The Jackal was inside this military installation, yet there was no sign that he had penetrated it, no indication that somewhere within the complex he was controlling a minimum of five personnel—a man impersonating him, three other men and a woman.

  The parking area itself? He had not understood the exchanges between Alex, Krupkin and the voice over the radio, but now it was clear to him that when they had spoken of people coming outside and running to the stolen car, they were not referring to the front entrance! There had to be an exit on the parking area! Christ, he had only seconds before the driver of the Komitet car started up the engine and roared into the huge dirt lot, circling it and racing out, both actions announcing the government vehicle’s arrival and swift, calamitous departure. If Carlos was going to make his break, it would be then! After waiting for the standard radio backup, every moment of distance he put between himself and the armory would make it more difficult to pick up his trail. And he, the efficient killing machine from Medusa, was in the wrong place! Further, the sight of a civilian running across a lawn or down a road carrying an automatic weapon within a military compound was to invite disaster. It was a small, stupid omission! Three or four additional words translated and a less arrogant, more probing listener would have avoided the error. It was always the little things, the seemingly insignificant that crippled gray to black operations. Goddamn it!

  Five hundred feet away the KGB sedan suddenly thundered as it swerved into the dirt parking area raising clouds of dry dust while crushing and spitting out pieces of rock from its spinning tires. There was no time to think, time only to act. Bourne held the AK-47 against his right leg, concealing it as much as possible as he rose to his feet, his left hand skimming the top of the low hedgerow—a gardener, perhaps, surveying an anticipated assignment, or an indolent stroller aimlessly touching the roadside shrubbery, nothing remotely threatening, just a sign of the commonplace; to the casual observer, he might have been walking down that road for several minutes without being noticed.

  He glanced over at the armory’s entrance. The two soldiers were laughing quietly, the one without a cigarette again looking at his watch. Then the object of their minor conspiracy came out of the left front door, an attractive dark-haired girl, barely in her twenties. She humorously clapped both
her hands over her ears, made a grotesque face and walked rapidly to the time-conscious man in uniform, kissing him on the lips. The threesome linked arms, the woman in the center, and started to their right, away from the entrance.

  A crash! Metal colliding with metal, glass shattering glass, the loud harsh sound coming from the distant parking area. Something had happened to the Komitet car with Alex and Krupkin; the young driver from the assault squad had either smashed or skidded into another vehicle in the dry dirt of the lot. Using the sound as an excuse, Jason started down the road, the image of Conklin coming instantly to his mind, producing a limp in his own rapid strides the better to keep his weapon in minimum view. He turned his head, expecting to see the two soldiers and the woman running down the armory path toward the accident, only to realize that the three of them were running the other way, removing themselves from any involvement. Obviously, precious breaks in a military schedule were jealously protected.

  Bourne abandoned the limp, crashed through the hedgerow and raced to the concrete path that stretched to the corner of the huge building, gathering speed and breathing heavily with increasing frequency. Jason’s weapon was now in plain sight, slashing the air as he gripped it in the hand of his swinging right arm. He reached the end of the path, his chest heaving, the veins in his neck seemingly prepared to burst as the sweat ran down his skin, drenching his face, his collar and his shirt. Gasping, he steadied the AK-47, his back pressed against the wall of the building, then spun around the corner into the parking area, stunned by what he saw. His pounding feet, coupled with the anxiety that caused his hair-soaked temples to throb, had blocked out all sound up ahead. What he observed now, what sickened him now, he knew had to be the result of multiple gunshots muted by a weapon equipped with a silencer. Dispassionately, Medusa’s Delta understood; he had been there many times many years before. There were circumstances under which kills had to be made quietly—utter silence was the unreachable goal, but at least minimal noise was crucial.

  The young KGB driver from the assault squad was sprawled on the ground by the trunk of the dark green sedan, the wounds in his head certifying death. The car had swerved into the side of a government bus, the sort used to haul workers to and from their places of employment. How or why the accident had happened, Bourne could not know. Neither could he know whether Alex or Krupkin had survived; the car’s windows had been pierced repeatedly and there was no sign of movement inside, both facts suggesting the worst but nothing conclusive. Above all, at this moment, the Chameleon also understood that he could not be affected by what he saw—emotions were out! If the worst had happened, mourning the dead would come later, vengeance and taking the killer came now.

  Think! How? Quickly!

  Krupkin had said there were “several dozen men and women” working at the armory. If so, where the hell were they? The Jackal was not acting in a vacuum; it was impossible! Yet a collision had occurred, its violent crash heard over a hundred yards away—well over the distance of a football field—and a man had been shot dead at the site of that crash, his lifeless body bleeding in the dirt, yet no one—no one—had appeared, either accidentally or intentionally. With the exception of Carlos and five unknown people, was the entire armory operating in a vacuum? Nothing made sense!

  And then he heard the muffled but emphatic strains of music from deep inside the building. Martial music, drums and trumpets predominating, swelling to crescendos that Bourne could only imagine were deafening within the echoing confines of the huge structure. The image of the young woman emerging from the front entrance returned; she had playfully clapped her hands over her ears and grimaced, and Jason had not understood. He did now. She had come from the armory’s inner staging area, where the decibel level of the music was overpowering. An event was taking place at the Kubinka, a decently attended affair, which accounted for the profusion of automobiles, small vans and buses in the vast parking area—profusion at any rate in the Soviet Union, where such vehicles were not in oversupply. Altogether there were perhaps twenty conveyances in the dirt lot, parked in a semicircle. The activity inside was both the Jackal’s diversion and his protection; he knew how to orchestrate both to his advantage. So did his enemy. Checkmate.

  Why didn’t Carlos come out? Why hadn’t he come out? What was he waiting for? The circumstances were optimal; they couldn’t be better. Had his wounds slowed him to the point that he had lost the advantages he had created? It was possible, but not likely. The assassin had gotten this far, and if escape was in the offing, it was in him to go further, much further. Then why? Irreversible logic, a killer’s survival logic demanded that after taking out the backup the Jackal had to race away as fast as humanly possible. It was his only chance! Then why was he still inside? Why hadn’t his escape car fled from the area, speeding him to freedom?

  His back once again pressed against the wall, Jason side-stepped to his left, closely observing everything he could see. Like most armories the world over, Kubinka had no windows on the first floor, at least not for the first fifteen feet from the ground; he presumed it was because the occasional wildly galloping horses and glass did not go together. He could see a window frame on what appeared to be the second floor but close enough to the slain driver to afford maximum accuracy for a silenced high-powered weapon. Another frame on ground level had a knob protruding; it was the rear exit no one had bothered to mention. The little things, the insignificant things! Goddamn!

  The muted music inside swelled again, but now the swelling was different, the drums louder, the trumpets more sustained, more piercing. It was the unmistakable ending of a symphonic march, martial music at its most intense.… That was it! The end of the event inside was at hand and the Jackal would use the emerging crowds to cover his escape. He would mingle, and when panic spread through the parking area with the sight of the dead man and the shot-up sedan, he would disappear—with whom and with what vehicle would take hours to determine.

  Bourne had to get inside; he had to stop him, take him! Krupkin had worried about the lives of “several dozen men and women”—he had no idea that in reality there were several hundred! Carlos would use whatever firepower he had stolen, including grenades, to create mass hysteria so that he could escape. Lives meant nothing; if further killing was required to save his own, nothing. Abandoning caution, Delta raced to the door, gripping his AK-47 laterally in his arm, the safety unlatched, his index finger on the trigger. He grabbed the knob and twisted it—it would not turn. He fired his weapon into the plated metal around the lock, then a second fusillade into the opposing frame, and as he reached for the smoking knob, his personal world went mad!

  Out of the line of vehicles a heavy truck suddenly shot forward, coming straight toward him, wildly accelerating as it approached. Simultaneously, successive bursts of automatic gunfire erupted, the bullets thumping into the wood to his right. He lunged to his left, rolling on the ground, the dust and dirt filling his eyes as he kept rolling, his body a tube spinning away.

  And then it happened! The massive explosion tore apart the door, blowing away a large section of the wall above, and through the black smoke and settling debris, he could see a figure lurching awkwardly toward the semicircle of vehicles. His killer was getting away after all. But he was alive! And the reason for it was obvious—the Jackal had made a mistake. Not in the trap, that was extraordinary; Carlos knew his enemy was with Krupkin and the KGB and so he had gone outside and waited for him. Instead, his error was in the placement of the explosives. He had wired the bomb or bombs to the top of the truck’s engine, not underneath. Explosive compounds seek release through the least resistant barriers; the relatively thin hood of a vehicle is far less solid than the iron beneath it. The bomb actually blew up; it did not blow out on ground level, sending death-inducing metal fragments along the surface.

  No time! Bourne struggled to his feet and staggered to the Komitet sedan, a horrible fear coming into focus. He looked through the shattered windows, his eyes suddenly drawn to the front
seat as a heavily fleshed hand was raised. He yanked the door open and saw Krupkin, his large body squeezed below the seat under the dashboard, his right shoulder half torn away, bleeding flesh apparent through the fabric of his jacket.

  “We are hurt,” said the KGB officer weakly but calmly. “Aleksei somewhat more seriously than I am, so attend to him first, if you please.”

  “The crowd’s coming out of the armory—”

  “Here!” interrupted Krupkin, painfully reaching into his pocket and pulling out his plastic identification case. “Get to the idiot in charge and bring him to me. We must get a doctor. For Aleksei, you damn fool. Hurry!”

  The two wounded men lay alongside each other on examining tables in the armory’s infirmary as Bourne stood across the room, leaning against the wall, watching but not understanding what was being said. Three doctors had been dispatched by helicopter from the roof of the People’s Hospital on the Serova Prospekt—two surgeons and an anesthesiologist, the last, however, proving unnecessary. Severe invasive procedures were not called for; local anesthetics were sufficient for the cleansing and suturing, followed by generous injections of antibiotics. The foreign objects had passed through their bodies, explained the chief doctor.

  “I presume you mean bullets when you speak so reverently of ‘foreign objects,’ ” said Krupkin in high dudgeon.

  “He means bullets,” confirmed Alex hoarsely in Russian. The retired CIA station chief was unable to move his head because of his bandaged throat. Wide adhesive straps extended down across his collarbone and upper right shoulder.

  “Thank you,” said the surgeon. “You were both fortunate, especially you, our American patient for whom we must compile confidential medical records. Incidentally, give our people the name and address of your physician in the United States. You’ll need attention for some weeks ahead.”