eyes faded, replaced by horror as he looked down and saw the knife buried up to the hilt in his own stomach.
Suddenly, a single shot rang out, echoing across the bridge.
And a small, red-rimmed hole opened in the middle of Petrenko’s forehead. Pieces of shattered bone and brain matter flew out the back of his skull, driven by a 9x18mm round fired at pointblank range. His eyes rolled up.
Then, still clutching his briefcase, the dying Russian staggered and fell backward over the parapet, toppling into the river below.
Out of the corner of his eye, Smith saw the first attacker scrambling back to his feet. Blood ran red across the man’s face, dripping off his unshaven chin.
His dark eyes were hill of hatred and he held a pistol, an old Soviet-model Makarov. One spent cartridge rolled slowh across the uneven pavement.
The American tensed, knowing already that it was too late. The other man was too far away?well out of his reach. Smith whirled around and threw himself off the bridge, diving headfirst into the fog. Behind him, more shots crashed out. A bullet tore right past his head and another ripped through his jacket, sending a wave of white-hot pain searing across his shoulder.
He struck the surface of the Vltava in a white burst of spray and foam, plunging deep into its icy, ink-black waters. Down and down he slid into a freezing void of absolute silence and utter darkness. And then the river’s swift current caught him in its grip, tugging at his torn jacket and his arms and legs, sending him tumbling and rolling as it dragged him north, away from the bridge’s massive stone piers.
His lungs were on fire, screaming for air. Grimly, Smith kicked out, clawing his way up through the frigid, turbulent water. At last, his head rose above the rippling surface and he hung there tor a long moment, gasping and panting, straining to draw in the oxygen his body craved.
Still caught in the current, he swung around. The Charles Bridge was invisible in the sw filing fog, but he could hear shouts and panicked voices re-verberating across the river. The sounds of gunfire seemed to have roused Prague’s citizens from their late afternoon torpor. Smith spat out a mouthful of water and turned away.
He struck out toward the eastern bank, angling across the current sweeping him downstream. He had to get out of the river soon?before the hitter cold sapped his strength completely. His teeth began chattering as the chill penetrated his waterlogged clothes and bit deeply into his bodv.
For a long, despairing moment, the mist-shrouded shore seemed to hang just beyond his rapidly tiring reach. Aware that his time was running out fast.
Smith made one last desperate effort. He kicked out again and this time felt his flailing hands touch a bank of mud and small pebbles at the water’s edge.
Straining, he hauled himself out of the Vltava and onto a narrow strip of withered grass and neatly trimmed trees, apparently part of a small riverside park.
Shivering and wracked by pain in every muscle, he rolled over onto his back and lay staring up at the featureless gray sky. Minutes slid past. He drifted with them, too exhausted to go any further.
Smith heard a startled gasp. Wincing, he turned his head to the side and saw a small, elderly woman bundled up in a fur coat staring down at him in mingled fear and amazement. A tiny dog peered out from behind her legs, sniffing curiously. The air around them seemed to be growing darker with every passing second.
“Policii,” he said, forcing the words out past his chattering teeth.
Her eyes opened wide.
Summoning up the last of his broken Czech, Smith whispered, “Zavolejte policii. Call the police.”
Before he could say anything more, the fast-gathering darkness closed in around him and swallowed him whole.
Chapter Two
For hundreds of years Chernihiv had been called “the princely city,” serving as a fortified capital for one of the princedoms at the heart of the Kievan Rus, the loose confederation of Vikings who had made themselves the masters of what would later become Russia and the Ukraine. Several of its beautiful cathedrals, churches, and monasteries dated back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and their golden domes and spires lent a quiet elegance to the little city’s skyline. Every year, busloads of tourists made the short journey from Kiev itself, one hundred and forty kilometers to the south, to gawk at Chernihiv’s ancient sites and artwork.
Few of those tourists ever noticed an isolated complex of Soviet-era concrete and steel buildings on the city’s outskirts. There, behind a barbed-wire perimeter fence guarded by heavily armed soldiers, lay the administrative center for one of the three major combat organizations of the Ukrainian military?the Northern Operational Command. The sun had long since set, but lights were still on throughout the complex. Staff cars bearing flags from every major unit in the command filled the parking areas surrounding a floodlit three-story central headquarters building.
Inside the building, Major Dmitry Polyakov stood off to one side of a crowded briefing room. He had carefully chosen a position that gave him a good view of his boss, Lieutenant General Aleksandr Marchuk, the man in charge of the army’s Northern Operational Command. The tall young major checked the folder under his arm yet again, making sure that it contained every report and draft order the general might need for this emergency military conference. Polyakov was well aware that Marchuk was a hard-charging, thoroughly professional soldier, one who expected his senior military aide to be ready to respond instantly to any need or order.
Marchuk, his senior staff officers, and Northern Command’s division and brigade commanders sat around three sides of a large rectangular conference table. A detailed map of their operational zone stood on an easel set up at the head of this table. Each high-ranking officer had his own briefing folder, an ashtray, and a glass of hot tea set out before him. Cigarettes smoldered in most of the ashtrays.
“There’s no doubt that both the Russians and Belarussians have dramatically tightened security along our joint border,” the briefer, a full colonel, continued. His pointer tapped the map at several places. “They’ve closed every minor crossing point from Dobrjanka here in the north all the way to Kharkiv in the east. Traffic is only being allowed across at checkpoints set up on the major highways?and then only after intensive searches. Moreover, my counterparts at both Western and Southern Command report similar measures being taken in their areas.”
“That’s not all the Russians are doing,” one of the officers sitting at the far side of the table said grimly. He commanded a Covering Force brigade, a new combined-arms formation made up of armored reconnaissance troops, scout and attack helicopters, and infantry units heavily armed with anti-tank missiles. “My forward outposts have observed company-strength and battalion-strength reconnaissance forces operating at several points along the frontier.
They appear to be attempting to precisely locate the duty stations of our border security detachments.”
“We should also keep in mind those troop movement rumors passed to us by the Americans,” another colonel added. The crossed hunting horns on his shoulder tabs identified him as a member of the Signals Branch, but that was only a cover. In reality, he served as the head of Northern Command’s military intelligence section.
Heads nodded around the table. The American military attache in Kiev had been distributing intelligence reports suggesting that some of Russia’s elite airborne, tank, and mechanized infantry units had vanished from their bases around Moscow. None of the reports could be confirmed but they were disturbing nonetheless.
“So what is Moscow’s official excuse for all of this unusual activity?” a heavyset tank division commander sitting next to the intelligence chief asked. He was leaning forward, and the overhead lights gleamed off his bare scalp.
“The Kremlin claims these are merely precautionary antiterrorist measures,” Lieutenant General Marchuk answered slowly, stubbing out his own cigarette. His voice was hoarse and sweat stained his high uniform collar.
Major Polyakov hid a worried frown. Even at fifty, the general was ordinarily a strong, healthy man, but now he was ill ?quite ill. He had not been able to keep any food down all day. Despite that, he had insisted on calling this evening conference. “It’s only the damned flu, Dmitry,” Marchuk had rasped.
