decent head start.
More shots rang out and the Skoda rocked sharply, hit several times in rapid succession. More glass shattered. More metal tore. Ricochets spanged off the engine block and frame and whirred off into the trees, splintering branches and twigs.
Smith breathed in. One. Two. Three. Now.
With his pistol held ready in both hands, he reared up over the back of the taxi. His narrowed eyes flickered rapidly from side to side, hunting for the men who were trying to kill him. There! One of the fake cops, the older man, was standing just meters away, steadily squeezing off aimed rounds from his sidearm, methodically shooting up the taxi from front to back.
Smith whirled toward him, moving fast. Both the front and rear sights of his Czech-made pistol settled on the other man’s chest. He squeezed the trigger and the pistol barked once, bucking upward as the slide slammed back, reeding in another round. Quickly, he brought the weapon back down on target and fired again.
Blood splashed high in the air. Hit twice, the gaunt-faced gunman spun toward the American who had shot him. His mouth fell open in stunned disbelief. Then, slowly, he fell to his knees and pitched forward onto the road. More blood pooled red on the black asphalt.
His colleague, a younger, heavier man, dropped prone. Grim-faced, he ?immediately fired back at Smith without bothering to aim carefully. He was Nearly shooting wildly in an effort to drive the American back into cover.
One bullet from the Makarov whipcracked through the air close to Smith’s ear. Another ripped across the top of the taxi’s trunk, tearing a fiery crease through the rusting metal and cracked and peeling paint.
He ignored them. Instead, he swung his own pistol through a short arc, zeroing in on the prone gunman. He squeezed off two more rounds. The first missed narrowly, sending broken chunks of asphalt and bits of gravel spinning away. But the second 7.62mm bullet tore off the top of the younger gunman’s skull.
An eerie silence fell across the little clearing.
Smith breathed out slowly, scarcely able to believe he was still alive. He could feel his heart beating at an incredible tempo, only gradually falling off as his pulse settled. Now what? he wondered.
Suddenly he heard car doors slamming open. The people inside that black Mercedes were coming out, he realized. Still kneeling behind the bullet-riddled taxi, he swiveled. He caught a quick glimpse of two men, both of them wearing thick brown overcoats and fur hats, dropping into cover on the other side of the big luxury sedan. They were heavily armed. Each carried a compact Heckler & Koch MP5K submachine gun cradled in his gloved hands.
Smith grimaced. One of those men had bandages plastered across his narrow face ?no doubt covering the mangled remains of the nose Smith had crushed yesterday on the Charles Bridge. So he was facing two more enemies, and there was no chance whatsoever of surprising them.
He glanced down at the pistol he held in both hands. Four rounds. He had just four rounds left in the magazine. He shook his head. That was not enough. Not against two high-powered automatic weapons that could easily shred the taxi he was crouching behind into a smashed heap of mangled metal.
Staying here meant dying. It was time to go.
He dropped back behind the ruined Skoda. Then, staying low, he loped away, sliding right over the edge of the steep slope leading down into Divoka”
Sarka, the shadow-filled valley of the Wild Sarka.
Chapter Seven
Georg Liss rose slowly from behind the Mercedes, sighting carefully along the short barrel of his MP5K submachine gun. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Nothing moved anywhere on the narrow stretch of road or behind the bullet-torn taxi slewed awkwardly across the shoulder. His face darkened. Two of his best field agents lav sprawled on the ground. They were both dead, gunned down by this damned American. The corners of his mouth turned down in frustration. First the near- catastrophe on the Charles Bridge, and now this disaster. The ambush he had planned should have been perfect, a mere matter of killing an unarmed man, like a sheep led to the slaughter. Instead, it had come apart in sheer bloody ruin. Where had that devil Smith gotten his hands on a weapon?
Still peering intently at the wrecked cab, Liss stood motionless, waiting for something, for anything, to shoot at. Suddenly, he heard the distant sound of dead leaves crackling somewhere in the woods bevond the road. The American was already running, heading straight down into the rugged Sarka valley.
What would the men in Moscow say to him if Smith escaped now? More to the point, he thought grimly, what would they do to him?
Dragomir!” he snapped to his driver. “Signal Eugen and get him up here from the main road.” He nodded toward the two dead men wearing Czech police uniforms. “Shove those bodies into the trunk and take the American’s luggage. Then both of you clear out. Head for the airport. If you see Smith arrive, kill him if you can. Otherwise, make for the safe house. I will contact you there later.”
“What about our other vehicles?” the Romanian asked.
“Leave them,” Liss growled through gritted teeth. “They are clean. Nothing inside can link them to us.”
“Understood.” Ilionescu nodded. He hesitated. “But what will you do?”
The man code-named Prague One glared back at him. “Me?” He nodded down at the compact submachine gun gripped in his hands. “I am going …….”
Jon Smith bounded down the steep, wooded slope, skidding and slipping across patches of loose soil and damp rock. He was running all-out now, letting gravity work in his favor, narrowly dodging tree trunks and low- hanging branches as they loomed up suddenly in front of him. He knew he was going too fast, much too fast, but the danger he sensed somewhere behind kept him moving at top speed.
And then his feet slipped out from under him as he raced through a pile of dead leaves. He came down hard and started sliding, completely out of control now. Swearing silently, Smith rolled and tumbled downhill, clawing frantically with his hands, stabbing his fingers into the dirt in an effort to slow his descent. Instead, he slammed shoulder-first into the trunk of an old gnarled oak. Pain flared across the whole left side of his bodv. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs.
For several endless seconds, he lay right where he had fallen, groggily trying to reclaim his scattered wits. Get up, his mind demanded at last. Get up if you want to live.
Still winded, Smith sat up slowly. He winced as muscles driven well beyond their natural limits protested wildly, sending sharp flashes of agony spik-ing all along his nerves and into his brain. Ignoring the pain with an effort of will, he pushed himself back to his feet. He flexed his dirty, cut, scraped, and aching fingers, and then stopped.
His pistol! Where was it?
Smith spun around, staring back up the steep slope he had just come tearing down. Heart pounding, he started climbing, closely examining the swathe 0f torn and gouged earth and the scattered drifts of fallen leaves.
There! He spotted the pistol beside the base of another tree, a towering beech still dappled with a few red, orange, and brown leaves. He leaned down, scooped it up, and checked the weapon over, quickly brushing away t clumps of dirt caked around the muzzle and the hammer.
Then a submachine gun chattered, firing a short, three-round burst from somewhere up the hillside. Nine- millimeter rounds snapped past him and | smacked into the tree trunk at waist-level, spraying jagged chunks of bark across the forest floor. Reacting instantly, Smith threw himself flat and rolled behind the trunk.
Another burst tore the ground just to his right.
With the pistol extended out in front of him, Jon rolled back out to the left, squeezed off a single shot, firing blindly uphill, and kept rolling across the slope. He ended up crouched behind another tree. The submachine stuttered again. More bullets hissed past, tearing at the forest around him. Smaller tree boughs and branches shattered. Other rounds whirred away, bouncing off boulders farther down the gorge in showers of rock splinters and fragments.
