The Bourne ultimatum (98 page)

“I’m going with
you
!” shouted the young Soviet, grabbing the edge of the door.

“Sorry, Junior,” cried Bourne, gunning the engine and swerving the army vehicle back into the open gate, sending Benjamin sprawling onto the gravel. “This is for grown-ups.”

“What are you
doing
?” screamed Benjamin, his voice fading as the jeep sped across the border.

“The fuel truck, that lousy
fuel
truck!” whispered Jason as he raced into “Strasbourg, France.”

It happened in “Paris”—where else but
Paris
! The huge duplicate of the Eiffel Tower blew up with such force that the earth shook. Rockets? Missiles? The Jackal had stolen
missiles
from the Kubinka Armory! Seconds later, starting far behind him, the explosions began as the streets burst into flames.
Everywhere
. All “France” was being destroyed in a way that the madman Adolf Hitler could only have envisaged in his most twisted dreams. Panicked men and women ran through the alleyways and the streets, screaming, falling, praying to gods their leaders had forsworn.

“
England
!” He had to get into “England” and then ultimately into “America,” where all his instincts told him the end would come—one way or another. He had to find the truck that was being driven by the Jackal and destroy both. He could do it—he
could
do it! Carlos thought he was dead and that was the key, for the Jackal would do what he had to do, what
he
, Jason Bourne, would do if he were Carlos. When the holocaust he had ignited was at its zenith, the Jackal would abandon the truck and put into play his means of escape—his escape to Paris, the
real
Paris, where his army of old men would spread the word of their monseigneur’s triumph over the ubiquitous, disbelieving Soviets. It would be somewhere near the tunnel; that was a given.

The race through “London,” “Coventry” and “Portsmouth” could only be likened to the newsreel footage from World War II depicting the carnage hurled down on Great Britain by the Luftwaffe, compounded by first the screaming and then the silent terror of the V-2 and V-5 rockets. But the residents of Novgorod were not British—forbearance gave way to mass hysteria, concern for all became survival for self alone. As the impressive reproductions of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament crashed down in flames and the aircraft factories of “Coventry” were reduced to raging fires, the streets swelled with screaming, horrified crowds racing through the roads that led to the Volkhov River and the shipyards of “Portsmouth.” There, from the scaled-down piers and slips, scores threw themselves into rushing waters only to be caught in the magnesium grids where sharp, jagged bolts of electricity blazingly zigzagged through the air, leaving limp bodies floating toward the next metal traps above and below the angry surface. In paralyzed fragments, the crowds watched and turned in panic, fighting their way back into the miniaturized city of “Portsea”; the guards had abandoned their posts and chaos ruled the night.

Snapping on the jeep’s searchlight, Bourne drove in sudden spurts down alleyways and the less crowded narrow streets—south, always south. He grabbed a flare from the army vehicle’s floor, pulled the release string, and proceeded to thrust the spitting, hissing, blinding burst of fire into the hands and faces of the hysterical racing stragglers who tried to climb on board. The sight of the constantly pulsating flame so close to their eyes was enough; each screamed and recoiled in terror, no doubt thinking yet another explosive had detonated in his or her immediate vicinity.

A graveled road! The gates to the American compound were less than a hundred yards away. ...
The graveled road
? Soaked with fuel! The plastic charges had not gone off—but they would in a matter of moments, creating a wall of fire, enveloping the jeep and its driver! With the accelerator pressed to the floor, Jason raced to the gate. It was deserted—and the iron barrier was down! He slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop, hoping beyond reasonable hope that no sparks would fly out and ignite the gravel. Placing the spewing flare on the metal floor, he swiftly removed two grenades from his pockets—grenades he was loath to part with—pulled the pins, and hurled both toward the gate. The massive explosions blew the barricade away and instantly set the graveled road on fire, the leaping flames immediate—enveloping him! He had no choice; he threw the hot flare away and sped through the tunnel of fire into Novgorod’s final largest compound. As he did so the concrete guardhouse at the “English” border exploded; glass, stone and shards of metal shot out and up everywhere.

He had been so filled with anxiety on their way to the crossing into “Spain” that he barely recalled the diminutive replicas of the “American” cities and towns, much less the fastest routes that led to the tunnel. He had merely followed young Benjamin’s harsh shouted commands, but he did remember that the California-bred trainer kept referring to the “coast road—like Route One, man, up to Carmel!” It was, of course, those streets closest to the Volkhov, which in turn became, in no order of geographical sequence, a shoreline in “Maine,” the Potomac River of “Washington,” and the northern waters of Long Island Sound that housed the naval base at “New London.”

The madness had reached “America.” Police cars, their sirens wailing, sped through the streets, men shouting into radios as people in various stages of dress and undress ran out of buildings and stores, screaming about the terrible earthquake that had hit this leg of the Volkhov, one even more severe than the catastrophe in Armenia. Even with the surest knowledge of devastating infiltration, the leaders of Novgorod could not reveal the truth. It was as if the seismic geologists of the world were forgotten, their discoveries unfounded. The giant forces beneath the earth did not collide and erupt in terrible swift immediacy; instead, they worked in relays, sending a series of crippling body blows from north to south. Who questions authority in the panic of survival? Everyone in “America” was being prepared, primed for what they knew not.

They found out roughly ten minutes after the destruction of a large part of the diminutive “Great Britain.” Bourne reached the compressed, miniaturized outlines of “Washington, D.C.” when the conflagration began. The first to plunge into flames, the sound of its detonation delayed only by milliseconds, was the wooden duplicate of the Capitol dome; it blew into the yellowed sky like the thin, hollow replica it was. Moments later—only
moments
—the Washington Monument, centered in its patch of grassy park, crumpled with a distant boom as if its false base had been shoveled away by a thunderous ground-moving machine. In seconds the artificial set piece that was the White House collapsed in flames, the explosions dulled both audibly and visibly, for “Pennsylvania Avenue” was awash in fire.

Bourne
knew
where he was now. The tunnel was between “Washington” and “New London, Connecticut”! It was no more than five minutes away! He drove the jeep down to the street paralleling the river, and again there were frightened, hysterical crowds. The police were shouting through loudspeakers, first in English and then in Russian, explaining the terrible consequences if anyone tried to swim across the water, the searchlights swinging back and forth, picking up the floating bodies of those who had tried in the northern compounds.

“The tunnel, the
tunnel
!
Open the tunnel
!”

The screams from the excited crowds became a chant that could not physically be denied; the underground pipeline was about to be assaulted. Jason leaped out of the surrounded jeep, pocketing the remaining three flares, and propelled his way, arms and shoulders working furiously, often fruitlessly, through the crushing, crashing bodies. There was nothing else for it; he pulled out a flare and ripped the release from its recess. The spewing flame had its effect; heat and fire were catalysts. He ran through the crowd, pummeling everyone in front of him, shoving the blinding, spitting flare into terrified faces, until he reached the front and faced a cordon of guards in the uniforms of the United States Army. It was crazy,
insane
! The world had gone
nuts
!

No!
There
! In the fenced-off parking lot was the fuel truck! He broke through the cordon of guards, holding up his computerized release card, and ran up to the soldier with the highest-ranking insignia on his uniform, a colonel with an AK-47 strapped to his waist who was as panicked as any officer of high rank he had ever seen since Saigon.

“My identification is with the name ‘Archie’ and you can clear it immediately. Even now I refuse to speak our language, only
English
! Is that understood? Discipline is
discipline
!”

“
Togda
?” yelled the officer, questioning the moment, then instantly returning to English in a maddeningly Boston accent. “Of course, we know of you,” he cried, “but what can I
do
? This is an uncontrollable riot!”

“Has anyone passed through the tunnel in the last, say, half hour?”

“No one, absolutely,
no
one! Our orders are to keep the tunnel closed at all costs!”

“Good. ... Get on the loudspeakers and disperse the crowds. Tell them the crisis has passed and the danger with it.”

“How
can
I? The fires are everywhere, the explosions
everywhere
!”

“They’ll stop soon.”

“How do you know that?”

“I
know
! Do as I say!”

“Do as he
says
!” roared a voice behind Bourne; it was Benjamin, his face and shirt drenched with sweat. “And I hope to hell you know what you’re
talking
about!”

“Where did
you
come from?”

“Where you know; how is another question. Try scaring the shit out of Capital HQ for a chopper ordered by an apoplectic Krupkin from a hospital bed in Moscow.”

“ ‘Apoplectic’—not bad for a Russian—”

“Who
gives
me such orders?” yelled the officer of the guard. “You are only a young man!”

“Check me out, buddy, but do it quick,” answered Benjamin, holding out his card. “Otherwise I think I’ll have you transferred to Tashkent. Nice scenery, but no private toilets. ...
Move
, you asshole!”

“Cal—if—fornia, here I—”

“Shut
up
!”

“He’s
here
! There’s the fuel truck. Over there.” Jason pointed to the huge vehicle that dwarfed the scattered cars and vans in the fenced parking area.

“A fuel truck? How did you figure it out?” asked the astonished Benjamin.

“That tank’s got to hold close to a hundred thousand pounds. Combined with the plastics, strategically placed, it’s enough for the streets and those fake structures of old, dried wood.”

“
Slushaytye
!” blared the myriad loudspeakers around the tunnel, demanding attention, as indeed the explosions began to diminish. The colonel climbed on top of the low, concrete gate house, a microphone in his hand, his figure outlined in the harsh beams of powerful searchlights. “The earthquake has passed,” he cried in Russian, “and although the damage is extensive and the fires will continue throughout the night, the crisis has
passed
! ... Stay by the banks of the river, and our comrades in the maintenance crews will do their best to provide for your needs. ... These are orders from our superiors, comrades. Do not give us reason to use force, I
plead
with you!”

“
What
earthquake?” shouted a man in the front ranks of the panicked multitude. “
You
say it’s an earthquake and we are all
told
it is an earthquake but your brains are in your bowels! I’ve lived through an earthquake and this is
no
earthquake. It is an armed attack!”

“Yes, yes! An attack!”

“We are being
attacked
!”

“Invaded! It’s an
invasion
!”

“Open the tunnel and let us out or you’ll have to shoot us down! Open the
tunnel
!”

The protesting chorus grew from all sections of the desperate crowd as the soldiers held firm, their bayonets unsheathed and affixed to their rifles. The colonel continued, his features contorted, his voice nearly matching the hysteria of his frenzied audience.

“
Listen
to me and ask yourselves a question!” he screamed. “I’m telling you, as I have been told, that this
is
an earthquake and I know it’s true. Further, I will tell you
how
I know it’s true! ... Have you heard a single gunshot? Yes, that is the
question
! A single gunshot! No, you have not! ... Here, as in all the compounds and in every sector of those compounds, there are police and soldiers and trainers who carry weapons. Their orders are to repel by force any unwarranted displays of violence, to say
nothing
of armed invaders! Yet nowhere has there been any gunfire—”

“What’s he shouting about?” asked Jason, turning to Benjamin.

“He’s trying to convince them it is—or
was
—an earthquake. They don’t believe him; they think it’s an invasion. He’s telling them it couldn’t be because there’s been no gunfire.”

“Gunfire?”

“That’s his proof. Nobody’s shooting at anybody and they sure as hell would be if there was an armed attack. No gunshots, no attack.”

“
Gunshots
... ?” Bourne suddenly grabbed the young Soviet and spun him around. “Tell him to stop! For God’s sake,
stop
him!”

“What?”

“He’s giving the Jackal the opening he wants—he needs!”

“Now what are
you
talking about?”

“Gunfire ... gunshots, confusion!”

“
Nyet
!” screamed a woman, breaking through the crowd and shouting at the officer in the center of the searchlight beams. “The explosions are bombs! They come from bombers above!”

“You are foolish,” cried the colonel, replying in Russian. “If it was an air raid, our fighter planes from Belopol would fill the sky! ... The explosions come out of the earth, the fires out of the earth, from the gases
below
—” These false words were the last words the Soviet officer would ever speak.