the big German car. At the last possible moment the man, hearing something or sensing that someone was behind him, started to turn. At that instant, McAllister sprang up, smashing the butt of the heavy P38 into the side of theman’s head. He went down heavily, his shoulder glancing off the car’s bumper, but still semiconscious he tried to bring up his gun. McAllister grabbed a handful of his coat, pulled him half up and smashed the butt of his gun into the man’s face, opening his nose with a gush of blood and knocking him senseless. Working fast now, with one eye toward the slope of the driveway lest one of Potemkin’s people had heard something and was coming back to investigate, McAllister stripped the unconscious man of his belt and tie, trussing his arms and leg together behind his back. He jammed his handkerchief into the man’s mouth, holstered his own gun, and snatched the silenced weapon. It was a big, heavy 9-mm automatic. A proper mokrie dela weapon for destroying faces.
They’d left the Mercedes open. He popped the hood, yanked out the ignition wire and careful to make as little noise as possible, closed the hood again, before he scrambled back up into the woods.
Neutralizing the first of the Russians had taken barely three minutes. By now he figured the other four would have reached the clearing where they would be holding up to watch the cabin for signs that this was a trap. Potemkin would probably be dispersing his men left and right so that they could come up from behind the house. They would be moving through the woods, but well within sight of the clearing. No one wanted to get lost in these dark woods. It would take them several cautious minutes to circle the entire clearing and then cross at the back. It took him precious minutes to find the path he’d made through the woods this afternoon, and then follow it to a spot about ten yards from the clearing and an equal distance up from the driveway. He thought he might be able to hear someone talking off to his left, and someone else moving through the woods toward his right, but again the sounds faded.
Stuffing the big Russian gun in his belt, he climbed up the tree to the second set of large branches about fifteen feet off the ground where e had left one of Sikorski’s hunting rifles with a big light-gathering scope.
From his vantage point he had an open line of fire across the entire clearing.
He spotted the first man to the west, just emerging from the woods. Swinging the scope quickly across the clearing, he spotted a second man on the east side, working his way slowly toward the house. Potemkin and the other one were probably waiting on the driveway.
McAllister swung the gun toward the west again, catching then losing then catching the Russian who had stopped and was looking down toward the house.
Centering the cross hairs on the man’s chest, he hesitated for just a moment. Pulling the trigger would make him an assassin… no less of a killer than the men he was fighting.
And there it is, boyo, his father had once said. The time will come when you’ll have to make a decision. One of morals. When that happens think out your options, consider the alternatives, work out the consequences not only of your action, but the consequences of your inaction.
They were killers. He had seen what they’d done to Sikorski, and to Nicholas Albright. He had seen first-hand in Bulgaria and East Germany and a dozen other places what sort of animals they could be. Not all Russians were like that, of course. But the special ones they picked to work the KGB’s Department Viktor, the murder squad, they were the worst. They simply had no regard whatsoever for human life.
He squeezed off a shot, finished with his little morality lecture to himself, the heavy deer rifle bucking against his shoulder, the tremendous crack echoing off the hills, and the Russian went down as if he had been struck by a Mack truck. Quickly he brought the rifle around as he ejected the spent shell, pumping a live round into the firing chamber. The second Russian was racing back to the protection of the woods. McAllister led him and at the last moment squeezed off a shot, the man flopping down into the snow, his arms and legs splayed out.
Hooking the rifle’s shoulder strap on a cross branch, he scrambled down out of the tree and headed back the same way he had come, moving from tree to tree, keeping his eye toward the driveway and the spot he had fired from.
After twenty yards he angled toward the driveway, pulling out the Russian’s gun, making certain by feel that it was ready to fire. There was a noise behind him; cloth brushing against a tree trunk, the crunch of a booted foot in the deep snow, and he stopped.
“McAllister,” Potemkin shouted, his voice coming from farther right than the noise. It sounded as if he were still at the end of the driveway near the clearing.
McAllister moved cautiously down the hill behind the hole of a much larger tree where he again held up, searching the dark woods behind him.
There were two of them; Potemkin in the driveway and the one who had come up into the woods. This one would have followed McAllister’s footprints in the snow. Moving slowly just as McAllister had, from tree to tree. Testing each step, scanning the darkness ahead of him.
McAllister remained absolutely still.
“McAllister,” Potemkin shouted again. “I’ve come here to talk. I’ll send my people away. It’ll be just you and me.” There was the flash of movement to the left, about fifteen feet away, and then it was gone.
McAllister, his cheek against the rough bark of the tree, didn’t move a muscle.
“You’re making a big mistake,” Potemkin called. “You don’t know all the facts. I can help you. As strange as that seems, it’s the truth. Just talk. No more killing.”
A big man stepped out from behind a tree and started to move across a narrow open space when McAllister extended the silenced automatic, steadying his aim with his arm propped against the tree trunk.
“Stop and throw your gun down,” McAllister ordered. The man snapped off a single shot and dove for the protection of the trees. McAllister fired two shots in quick succession, the first striking the man in the left leg, and the second in his left side. He tumbled in the snow, thrashed around for a second or two, and then lay still.
McAllister watched him for a full minute before he stepped away m the tree and approached slowly. He was dead, his eyes open, big patch of blood staining the snow. There was something aboutthe man, perhaps his face, or the cut of his clothes, that was oddly familiar to McAllister, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Turning, he raced back up through the woods parallel to the driveway, making little or no noise as he ran, finally emerging from the woods at the parked cars, and just ducking out of sight behind the Mercedes as Potemkin, huffing and puffing, came into view, a big pistol in his right hand.
The KGB chief of station was obviously highly agitated. What had promised to be a relatively easy job of eliminating McAllister-the odds had been five to one-had somehow gone terribly wrong, and now he was running for his own life, looking over his shoulder every few yards.
McAllister watched him approach, passing the Taurus and then pulling up short when he saw the man lying trussed up in front of the Mercedes. He looked toward the woods on both sides of the driveway, and then did, to McAllister’s way of thinking, the most extraordinary thing possible. He raised his pistol and shot his own man in the head.
McAllister ducked back behind the car, his heart hammering, hardly able to believe what he had just witnessed with his own eyes. Why? It made no sense. Why would he kill his own man?
Potemkin came around to the driver’s side and climbed in behind the wheel of the Mercedes. He turned the ignition and the car’s engine turned over, but it wouldn’t start.
He tried again as McAllister crept around to the side of the car and rose up all of a sudden, yanking the door open and jamming the pistol into Potemkin’s temple.
The Russian nearly jumped out of his skin. He started to reach for his own gun which he had lain beside him on the seat.
“I’ll blow your head off, comrade,” McAllister spat. Potemkin froze, his eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets. “Zebra One was Donald Harman. You had him killed this morning. Who is Zebra Two?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Potemkin stammered. McAllisterjammed the silencer tube of the automatic harder against the man’s temple. “I don’t have the time to fuck with you. Zebra Two, who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
McAllister cocked the pistol, the noise very loud. “A name, comrade, and you may live.”
“I swear to you, I don’t know.”
“Why did you have Harman killed?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“You are either extremely brave or you are incredibly stupid. Why did you have Harman killed?”
“Because he was going crazy. He was out of control.”
“Out of whose control, yours?”
