behind, and they roared off to the north, the crowds stunned into inaction, hardly able to believe what they were witnessing. Their savior was deserting them for some unknown reason.
Pocketing the scanner radio, but leaving the now useless sniper rifle behind, McGarvey climbed out of the arched cupola, and scrambled down the scaffolding to the gallery level seventy-five feet below and started for the rear of the church where Jacqueline was waiting at the garden door. He was sick at heart for his daughter, because he didn’t know how he would make it in time to save her.
He reached the rear of the main onion dome, when the church doors crashed open below him.
“McGarvey,” a man shouted, the same man from the storm sewers. Chernov!
McGarvey slipped back into the shadows as he took out his Walther and removed the silencer. There was no longer any need for stealth, and the silencer seriously degraded the accuracy of the gun. From where he stood he could see the arch leading to the outer vestibule.
“It’s all over, McGarvey,” Chernov shouted. “There’s no way out for you now, but if you give yourself up you’ll live to stand trial, and your daughter will be released unharmed. You have my word.”
McGarvey eased a little closer to the rail so that when Chernov came out of the vestibule he would have a clear shot. At this point the Russian had to believe that McGarvey was still somewhere up inside the onion dome.
“I have him! I have him! But there’s too many civilians up here!” McGarvey’s radio blared.
He reached in his pocket to shut it off as a man in uniform darted out from the vestibule and fired four shots up at the gallery, two of them ricochetting off the rail inches from where McGarvey stood.
McGarvey returned fire, one of his shots catching the man in the torso, driving him backward, at the same moment Jacqueline opened fire from the rear of the church.
McGarvey sprinted the rest of the way along the gallery to one of the corner domes and rushed downstairs to the main floor.
Jacqueline was crouched just inside the corridor leading back to the garden exit thirty feet across the open floor from where McGarvey pulled up.
She spotted him and started to rise, but he held up a hand for her to stay put, and she dropped back.
The man in uniform was down, his body half in and half out of the vestibule. McGarvey didn’t think it was Chernov, but the church was silent, nothing moved.
McGarvey took a few kopeck coins out of his pocket and tossed them toward the opposite side of the church, sending them clattering across the stone floor.
Two shots were fired from the vestibule.
Jacqueline returned fire, and McGarvey sprinted across to the corridor, firing over his shoulder back toward the vestibule as he ran.
Several shots ricochetted off the floor just behind him, but then he was around the corner. He grabbed Jacqueline’s arm and together they raced to the garden exit at the rear of the Cathedral.
“As soon as we get outside, lose yourself in the crowds, you’ll be safe,” McGarvey told her urgently.
They heard Chernov’s footfalls as he crossed the length of the nave behind them.
McGarvey fired the last couple of shots in the Walther’s magazine down the corridor, and then he and Jacqueline emerged into the garden.
“Now go,” he ordered.
“There’s a van waiting for us,” she said, out of breath. “It’s from my embassy.”
McGarvey hesitated for just a second.
“I brought a cellular phone. I called them,” she explained. “They’re here. They got through.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” McGarvey said, and he followed her across the garden. He ejected the spent magazine from his gun, and put another one in, releasing the ejector slide, as the sounds of heavy weapons fire and screams came from the north end of Red Square.
FORTY-FOUR
Something slammed into the APC with a loud clang, nearly knocking them over, propelling Elizabeth out of her bucket seat and slamming her painfully into the bulkhead next to the hatch.
They were in the middle of a fierce fire fight, the noise utterly deafening, hot shell casings falling all around her from the heavy-caliber machine guns above.
Tarankov was strapped into the command position above and behind the driver and the two weapons officers, calmly issuing orders over his headset.
Elizabeth clawed her way up to her knees so that she could see out the thick glass of the narrow port in the hatch as the lead APCs suddenly turned to the right, directly into the wall of human beings lining the Square and Okhotny Ryad.
The people tried to fall back out of the way, but it was impossible because of the confusion and press of bodies behind them.
Horrified, Elizabeth watched as the first of the people were bowled over or pushed aside, but then the lead APC gave a mighty lurch and climbed up on top of the bodies, blood and gore flying everywhere, spitting out from under the huge tracks. The second APC climbed atop the carnage directly behind the first one, plowing and smashing its way across the broad street toward Ploshchad Revolyutsi.
Elizabeth fell back, unable to do anything else but brace herself from being tossed around as the APC she was in followed the first two, climbing and bucking and heaving over the bodies. She could imagine that she was hearing the screams, hearing the bones crunch, seeing the blood oozing up through the steel plating of the floor. And still it went on.
She looked up at the same moment Tarankov glanced down at her, and she almost screamed in horror, because the look on his face and in his eyes was absolutely devoid of any human emotion. What they were doing, what he had ordered, the people they killed and whose bodies they were driving over, none of it had any effect on him. She had never seen that lack of feeling on any human being’s face, not even Chernov’s. And until this moment she had not even imagined that such a monster could possibly exist in the real world.
The shooting stopped and then Elizabeth could hear the people screaming, and she screwed her eyes shut as if she could block out the inhuman shrieks.
They lurched sharply to the right, came back onto the pavement and accelerated, but still Elizabeth could hear the screaming.
The shooting had stopped, but pandemonium had broken out as panicked people tried to get away, climbing over each other, pushing, screaming, shoving the Militia and military barricades and soldiers out of the way.
Chernov emerged from the garden gate and flattened himself against the wall at the corner. There was no sign of McGarvey or the French woman, but he knew that he was just seconds behind them, and they could not have gotten very far in this mob. Something had gone wrong with Tarankov’s triumphal entrance. He didn’t think that McGarvey had taken his shot, because Tarankov’s commandoes would not have fought back if their leader was dead. For some reason General Vashleyev had ordered his troops to surround Red Square and box Tarankov in. But they had not counted on Tarankov fighting back in the middle of the mob. They had made the same mistake sending helicopter gunships to stop the train outside Nizhny Novgorod.
Chernov stepped away from the wall. North or south, they could have gone either way, and once they reached the French or American embassy they would be out of his reach.
On instinct he headed north, pushing people out of his path until he came to an abandoned Militia radio car, its lights flashing. He leaped up on the hood of the car and just caught a glimpse of McGarvey, the woman and a third person as they reached Ilynka Street and disappeared around the corner.
He jumped down and yanked the driver’s door open when a dozen men rushed up, pushed him aside and started rocking the squad car on its springs to tip it over.
McGarvey was getting away. It was all Chernov could think of as he fought his way up to Ilynka Street where his own car was parked. Getting across Red Square and inside the Kremlin where the SVR helicopter was waiting for him made the most sense. Once airborne he could direct the pilot to take him out of the city, and head up to St.
