scrambled upright just in time to meet another series of attacks — rapid-fire blows that he narrowly parried with his own left hand and both forearms. The force in them slammed him back against the wall, driving the air out of his lungs. Desperately he slashed out with the knife, forcing the other man back — not far, just a few short steps, just far enough to put his back against the iron railing.
It was now or never, Smith told himself.
With a wild yell, he yanked the last flash/bang grenade out of his leg pouch and hurled it with all his remaining strength straight into his foe's face. Reacting instinctively, the big man batted the harmless grenade aside with both hands, laying himself wide open for the first time.
In that single frozen moment of time, Jon lunged — striking with the point of his combat knife. Only the very tip of the blade plunged into the middle of the big man's remaining green eye. But that was enough. Blood and fluid poured out of the new and terrible wound.
Blinded, the auburn-haired giant roared in mingled fury and agony. He lashed out violently, knocking the knife from Smith's hand. He stumbled forward with his arms spread wide in one last bid to trap his unseen opponent and crush him.
Moving fast, Jon ducked under those massive outstretched arms and punched the bigger man hard in the throat — crushing his larynx. Immediately Jon jumped back again, determined to stay safely out of reach.
Gasping, panting, straining frantically for the oxygen he desperately needed but could no longer draw in, the giant slid slowly to his knees. Beneath the dripping blood, his skin was turning blue. Despairingly he reached out one last time — still trying to seize the man who had killed him. Then his arm dropped. He slumped to the floor and rolled over onto his back, lying there with his empty eye sockets staring blindly up at the ceiling.
Exhausted, Smith fell to his own knees.
From somewhere down below a new fusillade of gunfire thundered suddenly, echoing noisily up the central staircase. Smith staggered upright, scooped up his pistol from the floor where it had fallen, and ran toward the head of the stairs.
He saw Peter trudging slowly up the staircase, limping painfully. “Took a damned long, hard spill, Jon,” the other man explained, seeing his concerned face. “Managed to hang on to my Browning, though.” He smiled thinly. “That was just as well. You see, I tumbled right into two more of those fellows coming up the other way.”
“I guess the}- won't be bothering us any longer?” Smith suggested.
“Not in this life, at least,” Peter agreed drily.
“Jon! Peter! Come here! Quick!”
Both men turned at the sound of Randi's voice, urgently summoning them. They ran back into the room.
The CIA officer was kneeling beside one of the bodies. She looked up at them in amazement. “This guy is still alive!”
Chapter Forty-Three
With Peter right on his heels, Smith hurried to Ranch's side and knelt down to examine the lone survivor. It was the younger man he had seen through the window, the one who had been listening to signals sent over a satellite communications relay. He had been shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in the chest.
“See what you can do for the poor fellow,” Peter suggested. “Find out what he knows. Meanwhile I'll take a quick prowl around to see what else I can uncover in this shambles.”
Peter moved off to begin a systematic search of the bodies and any equipment and electronics that might be left undamaged in the bullet-riddled room. Meanwhile, Smith stripped off one of his gloves and felt for a pulse in the wounded man's neck. The pulse was still there, but it was very weak, fast, and fading. The young man's skin was also pale and cold and wet to the touch. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing in shallow, labored gasps.
Smith glanced at Randi. “Elevate his feet a few inches,” he said quietly. “He's pretty deep in shock.”
She nodded and lifted the injured man's feet slightly. To hold them in place, she grabbed a thick computer manual from the nearest table and slid it carefully under his calves.
Working swiftly, with gentle fingers, Smith carefully probed the young man's wounds, pulling away clothing to get a good look at the various bullet entry and exit points. He frowned. The shattered left shoulder was bad enough. Most surgeons would urge the immediate amputation of that arm. The other injury was far worse. His face darkened as he traced the extent of the massive exit wound high up on the young man's back. Moving at the speed of sound, the 9mm round had inflicted enormous damage as it tore through his chest — shattering bone, shredding blood vessels, and pulverizing vital tissue across an ever-wider area.
Jon did what little he could. First, he shook out a field dressing kit from one of the pouches on his assault vest. Among other things, it contained two rolled-up sheets of plastic in a sealed bag. He tore the bag open with his teeth, unrolled the pieces of plastic, and then firmly pressed them into place over the two holes in the wounded man's chest — making the injury airtight. With that done, he taped sterile gauze dressings over the plastic in an effort to control the bleeding.
He looked up to find Randi watching him. She raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question.
Smith shook his head slightly. The wounded man was dying. His efforts would only slow the process, not prevent it. There was simply too much damage, too much internal hemorrhaging. Even if they could get him to an emergency room in the next few minutes, the effort would be wasted.
Randi sighed. She stood up. “Then I'll go take another look around myself,” she said. She tapped her watch. 'Don't wait too long, Jon. By now someone in the neighborhood will have called the cops about all the noise. Max will give us a heads-up if he hears anything definite on the scanner, but we need to be long gone before they get here.'
He nodded. Coming right on the heels of Burke and Pierson's secret war against the Lazarus Movement, the arrest of a serving U.S. Army officer and a CIA agent inside the Movement's shot-up Paris headquarters building would only confirm every paranoid conspiracy theorist's worst fears and suspicions.
Randi tossed him a bloodstained wallet. “I found this in one of his pockets,” she said. “The ID could be a fake, I suppose. But if so, it's a top-notch job.”
Smith flipped it open. It contained an international driver's license made out in the name of Vitor Abrantes, with a permanent address shown in Lisbon. Abrantes. He spoke the name out loud.
The dying man's eyes fluttered open. His skin was ashen.
“You're Portuguese?” Smith said.
“Sim. Yes. Eu sou Portuguese.” Abrantes nodded faintly.
“Do you know who shot you?” Smith asked quietly.
The young Portuguese shivered. “Nones,” he whispered. “One of the Horatii.”
The Horatii? Smith puzzled over that. The word, which sounded Latin, rang a bell somewhere in the back of his mind. He thought it was something he had seen or heard here in Paris in the past, but he couldn't pin it down — at least right away.
“Jon!” Randi called in excitement. “Take a look at this!”
He glanced up. She was standing at the computer where he had seen the older white-haired man working. She swung the monitor toward him. Caught in some kind of programming loop, the computer was playing the same piece of digital imagery over and over again — footage of pedestrian-filled streets, apparently captured and transmitted by an aircraft flying low overhead. Three words blinked in red in the lower right-hand corner of the imagery: NANOPHAGE RELEASE INITIATED
“My God!” Smith realized suddenly. “They hit La Courneuve from the air.”
“Looks that way,” Randi agreed grimly. “I suppose that's easier and more effective than setting these horrible weapons loose on the ground.”
“A lot more effective,” Smith said, thinking it through fast. “Deploying the nanophages at altitude avoids relying solely on the wind or internal pressurization to spread the cloud. You get more control that way, and you can blanket a much larger area with the same number of devices.”
He turned back to Abrantes. The wounded man was drifting on the edge of death, barely aware of his
