The Fall of Moscow Station (25 page)

Finally, she saw it.
This is a supermarket
, she thought.
Where is everyone?

Kyra's gut twisted.

In that instant, Kyra knew that Major Elizaveta Igoryevna Puchkov was a dead woman.

•  •  •

Puchkov slowed on the sidewalk and turned her head, looking away from the market doors toward the corner where the store met the apartment building. There was no line.

Puchkov was seventy-five yards from her car now, too far to make it back when the trap sprang closed. The Spetsnaz soldiers erupted out of the market, nearby cars, two other buildings. There were at least two dozen of them, maybe more. Every direction in which Puchkov might have run had been identified and blocked off. The Russian woman would have no chance to fight her way out against any one of the men in the circle collapsing around her position.

Kyra wanted to scream at Puchkov, tell her to run anyway, but she knew it was futile. There was no help for the GRU officer now. She would be detained, interrogated, and executed. Kyra could see it, as though it had already happened.

One soldier was moving in a different direction, away from Puchkov—

—toward her. He was yelling in Russian, probably commands to stop, she was sure, but her mind refused to focus on the man's orders. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the Russian woman, watching as the dragnet shrank around her.

The soldier running in her direction was fifty yards away, her car two hundred yards behind her. Kyra's legs refused to move.

•  •  •

Her mind tore the world around her apart, time slowing down for the few seconds she had before the soldier reached her position.

The Spetsnaz had cordoned off the area earlier, before either she or Puchkov had arrived. How was that possible? Even if they had followed her, they couldn't have known where she was going.

There was only one answer. The Russians had known where the CIA would leave a mark to signal Puchkov. Maines had given that to them. The locals had seen the Spetsnaz arrive and known enough to stay away.

Puchkov had been expected, but Kyra's arrival had surprised them, just a stroke of bad timing for her and good for them. Whether she was a random Russian shopper or had some connection to Puchkov, they wouldn't know, but they would detain her for questioning to find out.

It would take them exactly one question to figure out that she couldn't speak Russian and that would settle the issue. They wouldn't accept that it was a coincidence that an American had blundered into their raid site. They would search the airport customs files and security footage to identify her. Eventually, they would know that she was not who her passport claimed she was and whatever had happened to Jon would happen to her.

•  •  •

The first Spetsnaz soldiers reached Puchkov and knocked the woman onto the sidewalk, her face smashing into the concrete, tearing the skin from her cheek. Two men pulled her arms up behind her back, like the spread wings of a chicken, while another forced a rope into her mouth. Two others began stripping her coat and shirt off to remove any means of suicide she might have hidden away. The rest drew their sidearms on the woman, approaching more slowly, ready to put her down in case she had some way of resisting they couldn't see.

The other soldiers circled around her and Kyra lost sight of the GRU major.

Another yell in Russian ripped Kyra's focus away from the arrest and back to the man running at her. He was thirty yards away now.

Kyra's legs finally moved.

She spun around and ran for her car, but she knew that she wouldn't make it. She'd seen how fast the soldier was. By the time she could get up to a full sprint, he could only be a few yards behind her and could run her down on foot, even if he didn't shoot her first. Kyra had no Glock concealed in her waistband under her coat, and it would have been no help anyway. Even had she won a gunfight, which was unlikely, the report of a shot would draw the attention of the soldier's team. With Puchkov down, the rest would be free to lay down fire on her position and she would die. They were a hundred yards from the raid site now. The distance would make for a very long pistol shot, but some of the men would have rifles, and even two hundreds yards wouldn't be a long shot for a Special Forces soldier.

She turned her head to look behind and saw that the soldier had cut the distance in half.

Kyra had trained in Krav Maga, knew how to disarm an attacker, but the man ten yards away had combat training of his own, equal to hers at least, and he was surely at least twice as strong as her if not more. She couldn't take him hand-to-hand. He would put her down like Puchkov and the outcome would be the same.

He was ten yards back and still picking up speed. He was drawing his gun. There was no good cover between her and the car. A few parked cars, some trees, nothing truly defensible.

Kyra had one option left.

She skidded to stop, her hand touching the ground for balance. He was six yards away.

The Spetsnaz officer got his Makarov clear of the holster. Running hard, he had trouble finding the safety. He glanced down at his sidearm. For a second, his eyes were off Kyra and on his weapon.

She rushed toward the soldier, trying to close the distance between them before the Russian raised his gun. Her hand was in her own coat pocket.

The soldier's speed running played against him now and he was unable to stop himself before Kyra got inside his firing arc. The safety was off, the first round in the chamber and the pistol came up, but Kyra was past the end of his outstretched arm. She was going to hit him running full speed.

Kyra pulled the Taser from her coat, flipping off the safety in the same motion.

•  •  •

Foolish woman
, the soldier started to think. He was twice her weight, would knock her backward, flipping her over and slamming her down on her spine, probably breaking vertebrae or cracking her pelvis. Either would leave her screaming in agony. He wouldn't even have to waste a bullet—

—the woman veered slightly at the last second before they hit. Her hand came up, something black and thin in her grip, and he heard the loud, machine-gun-clicking of an active electrical current.

•  •  •

Kyra touched the firing trigger on the Taser and raised her right arm the instant before they hit, both moving fast, left shoulders colliding. The soldier was solid muscle, granite in motion. He'd started to turn his shoulder into her. She felt him hit, her lighter body giving way to his solid mass—

—Kyra felt her right shoulder almost dislocate when she slammed into the bulky soldier and the impact sent her spinning, her right arm coming around as she spun left. She saw the dark outline of the soldier through her blurred vision, and she pulled the trigger.

The Taser fired less than a foot from the man's neck, two metal probes exploding from the plastic panel covering the barrel, both trailing thin wires. Kyra's aim was high. She'd meant to shoot him in the back. Instead, the barbs punched through the skin below the base of his skull, digging into the muscle underneath and completing the electrical circuit with the gun.

•  •  •

Five thousand volts arced through the soldier's nervous system, pulsing down his spine, and his body seized up in an instant. The man wanted to howl in pain, but what emerged from his paralyzed vocal cords sounded more like a long, loud grunt as every muscle contracted, his face contorting in agony.

•  •  •

The world blurred and Kyra hit the asphalt hard on the same arm that the man had nearly knocked out of its socket, the same one that a bullet had torn open three years before. She gritted her teeth against the pain, managed not to cry out, but the wind coming out of her forced a grunt from her anyway.

•  •  •

The soldier's inertia carried him forward at full speed but his legs had locked up and he pitched forward, his face slamming against the concrete, shattering his nose. His head bounced up from the hard surface, then gravity pulled him down again, his face connecting with the ground a second time.

His finger was already on his pistol's trigger. The muscles in his right hand contracted and the Makarov fired into the ground. The bullet ricocheted on the asphalt, flying off in some odd direction. It struck a tire, punching a hold in the rubber, and the sound of rushing air sounded in his ears.

•  •  •

The Spetsnaz team had the traitor on the ground. The rope was in her mouth and two men were holding her arms behind her back and stripping off her coat.

The team leader hadn't expected Puchkov to show. He'd thought for certain the primary team would detain her at her home, where Colonel Sokolov was commanding the detail. The other four teams, including his, were covering sites Sokolov had said were communication points used by the turncoat, but with all of the CIA officers in Moscow expelled, he hadn't expected any of the secondary units to act. But here she was, and the glory of Puchkov's capture belonged to his team.

Colonel Sokolov's information, whatever the source, had been accurate—

Somewhere, a Makarov fired.

The team leader's head jerked around. Puchkov was lying helpless on the cold dirt in front of him, so whichever of his men had fired had not been shooting at her.
Where? Who fired?

•  •  •

Kyra heard the gunshot. Pain erupted in her right shoulder again as she tried to push herself up. She ignored it and rolled over, trying to get her bearings. Her vision started to focus again.

The soldier was on the ground, still unable to control himself. The Taser was five seconds into a thirty-second cycle, and it was holding the Spetsnaz officer down, his body as hard as the ground it was lying on. His nose was gushing blood.

Kyra pushed herself to her knees and grabbed the Taser off the ground. She didn't know how long the man would need to recover once the weapon stopped disrupting his nervous system, but he was still able to grunt one unbroken, guttural cry of pain.

Kyra let the electrical current flow into him as she searched for the rest of the soldiers. She found them when she heard another shout in Russian. Several of the soldiers surrounding Puchkov were now pointing in her direction.

In a flash of anger, Kyra tried to rip the barbs out of the man's neck. One came out, tearing flesh and drawing more blood for the pavement, but the other probe was stubborn. Kyra ejected the cartridge connecting the probes to the pistol. The circuit broken, the man's body sagged like his bones had melted, muscles still twitching from the residual current firing through his nerves. Then he was still and silent.

Kyra picked up his Makarov. She shoved the Taser back into her pocket, then looked back toward the market where Puchkov had gone down.

More soldiers were now running her way, guns drawn. She heard one fire, then another, bullets hitting cars, the sound of metal punching through metal. They'd seen her.

Kyra pushed off, keeping her head low, running for the Tiguan fifty yards away. The men running toward her position were fast, but they were too far away to catch her now.

She heard more shots, hitting closer to her now. One round missed her by less than a foot, hitting a car as she ran by, a deeper sound than the Makarov rounds, a higher-caliber bullet. Someone had resorted to a rifle now.

Kyra skidded to a stop behind a car, a tiny red Lada Riva that was older than she was. She raised the Makarov and, for the first time on Russian soil, fired a weapon in anger. She sent five rounds downrange, shattering two cars windows and forcing the soldiers to move to cover. Kyra didn't stop. She couldn't spring now. She could only scramble low for the next car, five yards closer to her Tiguan, turn, and send three more rounds back to their original owners.

The Spetsnaz returned fire almost immediately, half shooting while the forward element moved up, then the lead group giving cover fire for the rear unit to catch up. Kyra saw it, and the rounds coming in on her position began to hit the cars around her in a constant rattle. She fired again, keeping low.

•  •  •

Just like Venezuela, Jon. Remember?
Kyra thought.
I was trapped against the fence, two hundred soldiers coming in. Then you showed up, on the hill with that big Barrett of yours, like a god with a gun, killing jeeps and lights.

Kyra was surprised at her own calm. Panic should have set in by now. Jon wasn't here to lay down cover fire for her this time.

The Tiguan was twenty yards away now, the soldiers almost a hundred in the other direction. Kyra fired the Makarov again. She couldn't have more than a few shots left now.

She was almost on her hands and knees, working her way around the last parked cars between her and the SUV. The Spetsnaz had lost track of her for the moment. They knew she was directly ahead, but she hadn't put her head up for almost thirty seconds.

Their target hadn't fired on them for just as long, and their firing grew sporadic as they saved their ammunition for a target they could see. They began to move forward in a low crouch, weapons raised to eye level.

Kyra finally reached her vehicle. She inhaled deep, filling her lungs, then aimed the Makarov and emptied the rest of the clip at the Russians. The soldiers ducked down, scrambling for cover again as their target reappeared.

Kyra pulled the Tiguan's door open, threw herself inside, and closed it up again, putting a layer of metal between her and the enemy. She slammed the keys into the ignition, ordered the truck to life, and it obeyed with a roar. She put it in gear, put the accelerator to the floor, and the wheels began spinning fast, trying to grab the asphalt. White smoke erupted from under the truck.

The soldiers heard the Tiguan come to life, then saw the smoke rising from the ground. They stood and began firing almost in unison.

The wheels finally took hold of the road and the SUV picked up speed, putting distance between Kyra and the soldiers now running in her direction. The sound of bullets perforating the tailgate sounded in the cab, like sharp thumps, rain on a metal roof. She kept her head down until she was at least three hundred yards distant.