Authors: Dan Pollock
Duel of Assassins (34 page)
He decided to pay the price.
He leaped forward onto the back of a kneeling photographer
and then dove up and over the ropes, landing heavily and awkwardly on the red
carpet in front of the crowd, right between the TV camera and the oncoming
Soviet and U.S. leaders.
The next instants tumbled at him in a series of frozen,
horrific tableaus:
The astonished faces of Ackerman and Rybkin, their hands
flying up like Oswald’s had when he’d tried to ward off the bullets from Jack
Ruby’s revolver...
Then Taras’ own gun sweeping past the two leaders to target
the assassin leaning and pointing the little camera at the Soviet President...
“Cowboy!” Taras’ voice, bellowing...
Marcus spinning around, his eyes suddenly agleam like a
cornered animal as he saw Taras—and the leveled .45 automatic that would
finally settle all scores between them.
Then someone stepped in front of Marcus, saving his life.
It was Pavel Starkov, his little Makarov pistol looming like
a cannon, spitting fire. Taras was punched back and flung sideways like a
puppet, hitting the carpet in a sliding heap.
He’d been shot in the neck, he knew, and somewhere high in
the chest. He would surely die—but despair engulfed him now for another reason
entirely. He’d been stopped, thwarted on the threshold of his vengeance.
Now he stared up at a swimming white ceiling, at silly
stucco filigree-work encircling a crystal chandelier. There was a roaring
cacophony all around him, echoing high off the white walls, men and women
screaming in a babel of languages, stampeding and trampling one another.
“Gott in Himmel!”
“Rybkin is shot! My God, he’s been shot!”
“Slava Bogu!”
Taras fought against a surging tide of pain, clung to
consciousness, struggled to comprehend. Rybkin? Who had shot Rybkin? But, of
course, Marcus had fired some damn projectile from his camera, probably some
variation of the old Bulgarian umbrella poison. Except nobody had seen that.
Rybkin must have felt the sting and faltered, and everyone assumed Taras had
been the assassin. He’d not only failed to kill the Cowboy; he provided a
perfect diversion for his escape.
Marcus would slip away. Game over.
Taras felt hands on him, not helping, but holding him down,
making sure
he
didn’t escape. Then his suit jacket was pulled back.
“Shoulder and neck. The bastard may live. Don’t let him
move. Hey, we need a doctor over here too. The bastard’s alive.”
The bedlam went on. But Taras tuned it out, closed his eyes,
forgot even his hammering pain in the swamping bitterness of having failed.
Then he opened his eyes and saw Marcus.
The Cowboy was smiling down, his masculine features
blatantly obvious under the grotesque makeup and elaborate hairpiece. Christ,
what was he doing? Then Taras realized his old comrade must have just stopped
by to gloat, before making his escape.
Taras tried to shout Marcus’ name, but could produce no
sound. Of course. He’d been shot in the throat. It must be gorily obvious, or
the Cowboy wouldn’t be standing there.
Marcus’ victory, then, was complete. The assassin smiling
behind his mask—a comic-opera travesty of Taras’ last beloved, whom Marcus had
slain as he had slain Taras’ first beloved. And any second now, having glutted
himself on his triumph, Marcus would turn and walk away, leaving Taras bleeding
to death and Eva and Charlie unavenged.
In a last ebb of rage, Taras tried to feel for his gun,
realized the hand was now empty. Of course they’d taken it away. But in his
vain attempt, his thumb had brushed against another and forgotten weapon—the
thick steel ring on his forefinger that had once been Marcus’.
One shot. A last chance.
Holding off the advancing tide of numbness, Taras moved his
hand slightly, hoping no one would notice, trying to rotate his forefinger so
the side of the ring would point upward. He’d have one shot, right into that
grinning face. Then someone blocked him. Christ, no! Pavel Starkov again.
He’d
kill that bastard, too
. But he had only one shot. Then Starkov stepped
back. Taras shut his eyes, hit by a sharp wave of pain, opened them, praying
Marcus would still be there. And he was. Looking down now with an odd
expression—almost one of compassion. But Taras didn’t care about that. He asked
God for guidance and depressed the firing button.
The tiny capsule shot upward.
It missed. Taras saw only that, and, ready now for
blackness, closed his eyes.
But an explosive whoosh opened them.
The flame gel had shot high, missing the Cowboy’s face but
striking and igniting the hairspray-lacquered wig, which promptly erupted into
flames.
Marcus let out a high, piercing scream, both hands tearing
at his flaming hair, finally ripping the wig off and hurling it away—revealing
himself.
“Marcus Jolly!” It was Bob Strotkamp’s voice. “Jesus, stop
him, somebody!”
Taras saw Marcus writhe out of his field of vision, heard
him running, still screaming from his burns. Then he heard the thudding sound
of bodies falling, chairs toppling. And still the screams went on.
Again Taras lost consciousness. Came around seconds later to
find Pavel Starkov and Bob Strotkamp kneeling over him. Starkov was apologizing
in Russian, or at least coming very near to an apology.
“I had to shoot, you understand? I could not hesitate. But
you did it, Major. We got the
Spetsnaz
bastard. I think you burned half
his forehead off. Good work.”
“Taras?” Strotkamp was looking at him with a kind of fierce
tenderness. “Listen to me. You’re going to be all right. I’m not bullshitting
you, man, you’re going to make it. Now just hang in there.”
Taras blinked in acknowledgment. Maybe he would live, since
Strotkamp seemed so damn sure about it. But it didn’t seem to matter. He
couldn’t think of anything particular left to live for.
Still, he thought, as he finally yielded himself up to
insensibility, he hadn’t done too badly there at the end.
He wondered if the Cowboy had appreciated it.
*
Only a little ways from Taras, the security personnel
clearing the room herded people around a second body sprawled on the carpet.
Marcus Jolly lay back, his chest heaving, his arms pinioned. He had just
stopped screaming, clamping his teeth against the agony of his burns and
shutting his eyes on the hovering faces of his enemies.
He realized now that he had been vanquished by his old
rival, the Cossack. And yet, despite his fierce helmet of pain and the
humiliation of that defeat, and the long ignominy to come, the Cowboy felt a
strange relief. And after a moment he realized why.
The duel was over.
THE END
Dan Pollock was born in New York City to a family of writers and grew
up in Laguna Beach, California. A former syndicate editor with the Los Angeles
Times, Pollock is the author of three thriller novels in addition to
Duel of
Assassins
—
Lair of the Fox, Orinoco
and
The Running Boy—
and a
specially commissioned “logistics” thriller,
Precipice
.
With his wife, Constance, he has edited and published three
literary, inspirational volumes:
The Book of Uncommon Prayer
;
Gospel:
The Life of Jesus as Told by the World’s Great Writers;
and
Visions of
the Afterlife: Heaven, Hell and Revelation as Viewed by the World’s Great
Writers
.
The Pollocks live in Southern California with their two
children.
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