Smith risked a quick glance around the bole of the tree. He caught a glimpse of a man in a brown overcoat and fur hat moving cautiously downhill toward his position. There were bandages plastered across the man’s narrow face.
He ducked back into cover. Hell. The range was about a hundred meters.
Too far for a pistol ?especially one with only three rounds left in its magazine. He would have to keep running, trying to stay out of the gunman’s sights long enough to break clear or find a better fighting position. Frowning, he looked back over his shoulder, rapidly considering his options. None were especially good.
Below, the ground fell away even more suddenly, plunging down a steep, iort-degree incline all the way toward the distant floor of the Sarka gorge.
Smith shook his head. Trying to move fast in that direction meant risking another wild, rolling tumble. And he couldn’t afford that, not with an enemy close behind him and in hot pursuit.
That left only one real alternative.
Smith took a deep breath and then exploded out from behind the tree he had been using for cover, sprinting fast across the slope to the left. Caught off-guard by this sudden move, the gunman who had been advancing downhill stopped in his tracks and swore aloud. Then lie opened up again with his MP5K, firing a series of rapid, aimed, three-round bursts at the American crossing his front.
Smith saw the ground ahead of him kicking up, ripped apart by 9mm bullets. He angled left again, dodged another tree, hurtled over a small boulder half-buried in the ground, and kept going.
The man hunting him stopped shooting.
Jon ran on through the woods, zigzagging wildly between trees and around little clumps of saplings to avoid giving the gunman a steady target.
The downhill slope on his left grew ever steeper. Soon it fell almost vertically to the valley floor, well over forty meters below. There were fewer trees and the ground near the edge of this cliff was rockier, dotted here and there by cracked and weathered slabs of limestone spearing up through the soil.
He raced on, straining to draw enough air into his lungs. He stumbled once, forced himself upright again, and kept moving. The spot right between his shoulder blades tingled as he anticipated the sudden agonizing impact of a 9mm round fired at close range.
Suddenly Smith came out into a large clearing, a wide, open meadow carpeted in winter-browned grass and tufts of taller weeds. Another copse of sheltering trees beckoned on the far side, but those woods were at least three hundred meters away. To his right, the meadow stretched all the way to the distant upper rim of the valley. On the left, the clearing ended abruptly in the craggy limestone cliff he bad been following, which plummeted toward the bottom of the gorge.
He grimaced. Trying to cross that open space would be a fatal error. Long before he could possibly make it back into cover, the gunman pursuing him would have a clear shot. He had run right into another damned kill zone.
Good move, Jon, he thought wryly. He’d managed the difficult trick of leaping out of a frying pan straight into a nuclear furnace.
Smith spun around, looking back the way he had come. The forest there, a mix of widely scattered evergreens and small, leafless saplings, was too thin to offer real concealment. Nor were any of the rock slabs poking through the earth big enough to provide decent cover.
That left the cliff.
Heart pounding, Smith turned again and moved out into the clearing.
With his pistol in hand, he loped along the edge of the precipice, trying to spot a path?or even just a series of handholds and ledges?that he could use to make his way down to the forested valley floor. He craned his head over the side, peering intently down the jagged, jumbled rock face. Up close, he could see that there were clumps of brush and even a few small trees growing out of the cliff, clinging somehow to narrow fissures and outcroppings in the angled layers of gray limestone. In other places, rivulets of water seeped from cracks, trickling slowly down the rock wall.
He stopped, again considering his chances. They narrowed down awfully fast, ranging from pretty damned slim on that cliff face to none at all up here out in the open. Sighing, Jon made sure the pistol’s safety was on and then shoved it into the waistband of his jeans. He leaned farther out over the precipice, breathing deeply now, mentally preparing to lower himself over the edge. The trees and moss-covered broken boulders at the base looked tiny, as though they were miles away. His mouth went dry. Go on, Smith told himself angrily. There isn’t much time left.
And then, quite suddenly, there wasn’t any time at all.
Another sharp, staccato burst of gunfire rang out, shredding the earth and air all around him in a sudden hailstorm of lead.
From fifty meters away, Georg Liss heard the American cry out, and saw him spin round and topple over the edge of the cliff. He bared his teeth in a vicious, satisfied grin. So much for Dr. Smith, he thought coldly.
Slowly, very slowly, the dark-eyed man lowered the smoking muzzle of his MP5K and rose from behind the shallow slab of limestone he had used for cover. He moved forward cautiously, stripped the nearly empty clip out of his submachine gun, and slapped in a full magazine. Then he brought the weapon back up, slowly swiveling from left to right, scanning the open ground before him over the MP5K’s front and rear sights. He kept his finger poised on the trigger.
There was only silence?and then, still far off in the distance, the sound of s’rens drawing nearer.
Liss scowled. He would have to break away soon, before the Czech police arrived and began searching the woods. The American must be dead, he thought. No one could survive a fall from that height. Nevertheless, it would be best to make sure. If nothing else, Moscow One would insist on a confirmation of the kill.
Still grinning in cruel satisfaction, the man code-named Prague One prowled closer to the precipice. He leaned out over the rim, peering straight down that jagged wall of rock, eager to see Smith’s corpse lying broken at the foot of the cliff.
]on Smith lay sprawled on a shallow ledge only a few meters down the cliff face, with his back wedged against the trunk of the small evergreen that had helped brake his rapid, nearly uncontrolled descent. Through narrowed eyes, he stared up through the sights of his own weapon, holding it extended in a two-handed marksman’s grip?waiting, just waiting.
Then he saw the dark-eyed man’s head and shoulders appear over the edge.
This close, he could even see the faint dried bloodstains on the bandages covering the man’s broken nose.
Say good-bye, Smith thought grimly. He pulled the trigger twice, holding the pistol down firmly as it kicked back after each shot.
The first 7.62mm round hit the bandaged man in the throat, shattered his spine, and tore out through the back of his neck. The second blew a neat hole right between his eyes.
Already dead, the dark-eyed man dropped to his knees and then tumbled headlong off the rim of the cliff. His limp body thudded onto a rock outcropping, bounced off, and plunged downward, cartwheeling and spinning in eerie silence all the way down the jagged wall.
Smith lay quietly for several seconds, staring up at the cloud-covered sky.
Every bone and muscle in his bodv ached, but he was alive. When that last submachine gun burst had ripped through the air around him, he had taken the biggest chance of his life so far, allowing himself to fall backward toward the tiny shelf of rock he had just marked as the start of a relatively safe path down. By some miracle, his wild-eyed gamble had paid off, using up every ounce of luck he could reasonably expect in any one lifetime.
Slowly, he lowered the pistol, flipped the safety on, and tucked it inside the pocket of his windbreaker. His hands shook slightly as the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream ebbed away.
Still feeling weak and with his nerves twitching, Jon turned over, sat up, and then looked carefully over the side of the narrow shelf of rock. There, forty meters below, the body of the man he had killed lay twisted and broken atop a large boulder. Blood smears around the corpse marked the final point of impact.
In the distance, he heard sirens, still faint, but growing steadily louder. It was way past time to get out of Dodge, Smith thought wearily. NATO allies or not, there was no way the Czech government was going to look kindly on an American military officer involved in a murderous, gangland-style shootout on the outskirts of its national
