The Fall of Moscow Station (15 page)

Jon picked up the padlock from the cement ramp where Kyra had laid it and turned his back to the base. He hooked the shackle over the entry doorway latch—

“Jon!” Kyra yelled.

Jon looked up.

Five men were talking toward them. They were dressed in plainclothes, short haircuts, with pistols drawn. They saw the Americans and shifted from a slow walk to a dead run, guns raised. The man on the far left fired and Jon heard the round strike concrete.

Jon dropped the lock, and the analysts ran for the woods, just to the south. More rounds hit the bunker, closer than the first. The men behind them yelled.
Russian
, he realized. He couldn't understand their commands, but the cadence and guttural sounds of the language were unmistakable.

He heard their pistols fire over the sounds of his own boots tearing through the grass and leaves. The rounds cracked the air open as they passed by the running analysts faster than sound. Kyra sprinted ahead of him, her breath already getting heavy. She looked back, saw she was outpacing her lumbering partner, and slowed up to let him close the distance.

They reached the woods and crashed into the undergrowth at full speed. The brush and weeds slowed them, and the trees forced them to run in anything but a straight line. Three hundred feet into the forest, Kyra ran up to one of the larger trees and stopped for a second, looking back. Jon caught up with her and looked back. He couldn't see their pursuers, but their voices carried well enough as they cursed and yelled at the scrub pines and low bushes tearing at their legs and arms.

“Still coming,” Kyra said, her breathing rapid. She pulled her backpack off and tore open a Velcro pocket on the outside. “Which way?”

Jon looked up, and picked out the sun's direction through the green canopy. “We're running south. That means the road is that way.” He pointed left. “The truck is a mile down, there.” It would be at least a fifteen-minute run through these woods.

“A mile,” Kyra muttered. She pulled out a Glock 21, the clip already locked in. She racked the slide to chamber the first round. “Maybe we can slow them down.”

A Russian shouted in the distance, not quite so far away now, and the analysts started to run again. “We're on friendly soil,” Jon yelled. “You're not supposed to be carrying!”

Kyra leaned around the oak and sent three rounds back at the men behind. “Are you complaining?”

“Nope,” Jon told her. “Just don't tell the Germans.”

“You keep telling me that.”

•  •  •

The woods were pulling on them, trying to slow them down. Surely it was doing the same for the men behind, but every shout seemed closer than the one before. Bullets whined through the trees around them. He could hear them tearing into the trees, dull thuds and hard cracks, but he could not see where they were hitting. Kyra broke stride, turning and firing as often as she dared, but there were far more rounds coming in their direction than she was sending back.

Jon looked left and saw the concrete wall that bordered the open road. They could jump it, get into the open, and put some distance between them and the Russian hunters before the men realized they had left the woods—

He saw movement beyond the wall. The Russians had seen the road and come to Jon's own conclusion. Two of their pursuers had moved out to the road on the other side of the wall, flanking them. If they were Lavrov's men, then they were Spetsnaz, he thought, and they had a clear path to run all the way to the truck. They would certainly reach it before he or Kyra would.

Five soldiers and five guns at least . . . two analysts and one gun
, Jon thought. The odds weren't hard to calculate. Even if he and Kyra turned west and moved deeper into the woods, the men would almost certainly run them to ground. There wasn't enough distance between them and their pursuers, and the men behind were in better shape than he was. Kyra was young and fast, but Jon was past his prime.

He saw Kyra go down hard in the dirt ahead of him, stumbling over some growth in the brush. Jon thought for a moment that one of the Russians had finally drawn close enough to be accurate with his sidearm, but the girl scrambled to her feet and pushed off, trying to recover the speed she had lost. He was hardly fast enough to catch up before she was back at her full speed—

—no, not her full speed, he realized. Kyra was running slow so she wouldn't lose him.

Run faster, old man
, he told himself. His body refused to obey. He didn't have more speed in him to give.

He looked at the young woman, the world moving in slow motion around him.

The enemy was too close, there were too many obstacles between them and the truck. Even without him plodding behind, every tree, every root, every dip in the ground would slow Kyra down. She couldn't run at full speed over this damp ground. At every step, the earth was pulling at her feet, forcing her to use her strength to pull her feet back up. The road was in better shape, but it was no escape route. If she jumped the wall, the men on the open road would be in her path and they would have a clear field of fire. If she stayed in the trees, the enemy behind her would get into pistol range long before she reached the truck. She would be forced to stop running and find cover, and then the men on the other side of the wall would climb back over into the woods, get in behind her, and that would be that.

For three years, he'd tried to give her, this broken girl, what little he had to offer. He'd been the best friend he knew how to be, which wasn't much, but she'd taken it and returned more than he'd ever given her.

Kyra needed more time, more space, and she didn't have it. Maybe he could give her that.

He dug deep and decided he might have enough energy for one more sprint.

•  •  •

Kyra turned and fired again. Jon ran up to her and put his hand on the Glock. “Give me the gun,” he ordered. His words were labored, his lungs wheezing hard.

“What?”

Jon didn't ask twice. He reached out and put his hand on the weapon. Kyra, confused, released it to him. “Keep running!” Jon yelled. Then he pulled away, running left for the concrete wall.

The Spetsnaz soldiers on the road were twenty yards ahead of them when Jon reached the concrete wall. He ran at the barrier at full speed, sprinted up, and pulled himself over. He hit the dirt on his feet, the mud absorbing some of the impact and the sound. He pushed off and ran after the Russians. The soldiers ahead hadn't heard the sound of his boots in the wet dirt, their ears filled with the sound of their own gasping breath.

Jon raised the Glock, lined up the sights as best he could with one hand on a dead run.

He'd shot men before, once in Iraq. The dreams had haunted him for years, driven him into depression, and left him unsure whether he could ever kill another person again, even in his own defense. He knew the answer to that question now and he was at peace with the answer. The Russians would probably kill him and the act wouldn't have a chance to torture him after.

Jon pulled the trigger.

The pistol kicked hard in his hand, the barrel jerking up. The shot was high, his aim thrown off by his own motion. He'd never shot anyone moving on the run before, but he was close enough. One of the soldiers went down as the .45 round punched into his shoulder, his body twisting and his legs collapsing under him.

The sound of the shot reached his companion's ears just as the man started to tumble to the ground. The second Russian spun around, trying to line up his weapon, but the advantage of surprise had allowed Jon to pull the Glock back down and line up his own. His second shot fired a fraction of a second sooner than his target's and the round struck the Russian's chest on the right side, knocking off the soldier's aim and spinning him as his Makarov pistol fired.

The Russian's bullet tore into Jon's right thigh, ripping his pants and spraying blood from the gory hole in his skin, and sent him into the dirt. His vision went blurry from the pain, fire burning in a straight line through his leg. Still, he tried to focus, scrambling to raise his gun and cover the two fallen Russians with the Glock in case one of them wanted to be persistent, but neither man was moving.

“Jon!” He heard Kyra's voice.

“Keep going,” Jon said. The pain in his leg was sharp and burning even hotter now. The femur was broken, he could tell that much. If the bullet had struck the deep femoral artery or the great saphenous vein, he would bleed out right there in the dirt maybe before the other Russians could reach him and their comrades. “Get to the truck.”

He looked at the Glock. The pistol's slide had locked open on an empty clip. He didn't know whether Kyra had another clip in her bag or not.

“No! You're—”

He couldn't see Kyra. She was on the other side of the concrete wall. His voice sounded weaker to his own ears now. He was going into shock. He fought it. There were two more pistols on the ground ahead of him. Jon dropped the useless Glock and tried to stand and his leg collapsed under him. He started to crawl through the dirt toward the closer weapon. “Get moving. You have to go.”

•  •  •

“No!” Kyra yelled at him. She'd seen his head go down behind the wall, hadn't seen it come back up. The Russians behind her were getting closer. She could hear their shouts. If she ran back a few feet, she could sprint up the wall as Jon had and get to the other side. But he was wounded . . . she could tell that much from his shaky voice. He'd been shot, but where she didn't know. She couldn't help him walk and handle the Glock at the same time . . . and the pain of whatever wound Jon had sustained would wreck his aim. In a few moments, he might not even be conscious.

It didn't matter. She backed up a few feet to get her running start—

—something arced over the fence and landed in the dirt, skidding toward her. Kyra looked down.

It was a pistol . . . not the Glock. A Makarov.

Jon had taken out the soldiers on the other side of the wall.

Kyra picked up the Russian firearm.
I'm coming, Jon—

She heard another sound, more feet in the dirt on the other side of the wall. The Spetsnaz soldiers had heard the gunshots from the road and jumped over. There was more shooting from Jon's position. A different sound from the Glock. Jon had shot two men, which meant there had been two Makarovs. Jon had thrown her one and gotten to the other. The Russians fifty yards behind her on the other side of the wall returned fire. She couldn't see what was happening.

“Go!” Jon said from the other side of the wall. His voice was hoarse now, weak.

Kyra ran to the wall, jumped, and tried to pull herself over with her one empty hand. A bullet hit the stone, sending small shards into her cheek, and Kyra's reflexes forced her to let go. She fell into the dirt behind the wall, landing hard on her side.

“Jon!” she yelled.

He didn't answer and she heard no more firing from his position. More shouts in Russian came from the road, closer now. She couldn't make it over the wall. The Spetsnaz would reach Jon in seconds and they would kill her if she came over the wall, Makarov in hand.

Her training finally took over, crushing her emotions and forcing her to move, her legs refusing her order to stop, instead determined to carry her to safety.

I'm sorry, Jon.

Kyra ran. It was what he wanted her to do, and she hated him for it.

•  •  •

She heard the Russians' voices grow quieter as she moved farther away. There were no sounds of men crashing through the woods behind her now, no sign they were trying to flank her on the road, no more gunshots. Perhaps the Russian soldiers had contented themselves with capturing one American . . . or had they killed him? Kyra's mind rebelled at the thought, trying to force God or the universe to keep it from being true.

Her legs kept moving of their own accord, her body flying over and around the obstacles in her path without the help of her mind, which was still focused on the place behind her where her friend was lying.

She reached the end of the wood line, where the concrete road turned at a right angle to the east. Kyra ran up the wall, pulled herself over, and landed on her feet in the grass on the other side. The truck was down the road another half mile. Her lungs were wheezing, her legs weak rubber.
Don't stop.
She heard the order in her head but didn't know from where it came . . . certainly not her own conscious mind.

Kyra looked around the corner of the concrete wall back up the road. The sun was behind the trees now, and the shadows had melted into each other. The light would be gone in minutes. She could see no more than an eighth of a mile down the road and there was no one in sight. No yells, no shouts. Kyra pushed herself onto her feet and ran as hard as the adrenaline allowed.

She saw the truck after another three minutes of running, and she didn't stop until she was standing by it. She fumbled for the keys, almost dropped them. Her hands were shaking harder than she could ever remember. She got the door open, threw her pack and the Makarov onto the passenger seat, then managed to push the key into the ignition. She locked her shoulder belt and fired up the engine.

Kyra sat in the seat, hands on the wheel, and looked up the road. Jon was up there, somewhere, dead or alive she didn't know. She thought for a moment that she might go after him, drive the truck at full speed, and run over anyone in her way.

Perhaps she could drive back up the road. She wanted to hunt the Spetsnaz, shoot them or run them over. Then she could help Jon crawl into the truck. The nearby village surely had some kind of medical facility, a first-aid kit if nothing else—

Fool
, the thought came.
Idiot.
The Russian men on the road were trained Special Forces soldiers. They outgunned her, and they could simply jump back over the wall if she tried to run them over . . . no, she wouldn't even get that close. She'd have to turn the headlights on, to keep from running Jon over on the off chance he was still alive and lying in the road. The Russians would see her coming long before she would see them. One shot into the truck cab and she would be finished.