small open space glowed eerily.
“This will do,” Smith whispered to the others. “We’ll change into our gear here, before moving closer to the Center.” He lowered his duffel bag to the ground and knelt to unzip it. Swiftly, he started tugging out articles of clothing and equipment and handing them out to his companions.
Shivering in the cold night air, the three shifted out of the ordinary street clothes and shoes they had been wearing, rapidly donning dark-colored sweaters and jeans. Camouflage sticks blackened their faces and foreheads.
Comfortable hiking boots and thick leather gloves gave better protection and traction for their feet and hands. Night-vision goggles offered them the ability to see in the dark once the moon went down. Padded cases stuffed inside the duffel bags contained a collection of high-tech digital cameras, lightweight tactical radios, laser- surveillance equipment, bolt-cutters, and other tools.
“No body armor?” Kirov asked, pulling an assault vest studded with equipment pouches out of his duffel. He slipped both arms through the vest and zipped it up, checking the fit.
Smith shook his head. “Nope. Armor’s too heavy and too bulky for what we’re supposed to do. If possible, we want to get inside the Center, find out what the hell’s going on in there, and then get out without being spotted. But if we have to run, we’re going to want to run fast.”
“And if someone starts shooting at us?” Kirov asked drily. “What then?”
“Try very hard not to get hit,” Jon advised, with a quick grin. He handed the Russian a 9mm Makarov pistol and three spare magazines, then took a SIG-Sauer sidearm for himself, along with extra ammunition. Both men slung Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns across their backs. Spare thirty-round clips went into pouches on their vests.
Fiona Devin slid a lightweight Glock 19 pistol into the holster belted around her waist and then stood back, watching the two men finish checking their weapons. “That’s quite an arsenal you requested from Fred Klein, Colonel,” she said with a slight, impish smile. “Didn’t you just tell Oleg we were here to walk softly?”
Smith nodded. “Yep.” He patted the pistol at his side. “But frankly, I’m getting tired of being outgunned. This time, if someone starts shooting at us, I want enough firepower along to hit back hard and fast.”
Groves of age-bent olive trees and ancient vineyards surrounded the European Center for Population Research, running right up to the edge of the fifty-meter-wide clear space maintained all the way around its chain- link perimeter fence. Most of the compound’s modern steel-and-glass buildings were totally dark this late at night. The sole exception was a large laboratory set apart from the rest. Lights glowed behind the blinds on every window. And bright white arc lights and television cameras mounted on its flat roof covered every square centimeter of the approaches to the lab. Between the cameras and the complete absence of any cover, no one could hope to get across the fence and up close without being spotted first.
About one hundred meters from the lab, a slender woman wearing black from head-to-foot lay prone in a shallow drainage ditch bordering one of the old vineyards. Camouflage netting studded with leaves and twigs broke up her silhouette and concealed the pair of image-intensifer binoculars she focused on the building. Even in the silver moonlight, she was effectively invisible from more than a few meters away. Once the moon slid behind the horizon, the only wax anyone else would ever spot her was by walking right through her camouflaged hide.
Suddenly the black-clad woman stiffened, alerted by soft, dry, rustling sounds coming from somewhere behind her. Moving with extreme caution to avoid making any noise herself, she swung around and propped up her binoculars on the edge of the ditch, intently surveying the shadow-filled vineyard for any signs of movement. She held her breath, waiting.
There. One of the shadows changed shape, gradually becoming a man crouching near a row of bare and gray vines that had been pruned back to lie dormant for the winter. Seconds later, another man flitted across the vineyard and joined the first. Then a third figure appeared. This one was a woman.
She focused the binoculars, first on one man’s face and then on the other.
One of her eyebrows rose in utter disbelief. “Well, well, well … look who the cat dragged in,” Randi Russell murmured coolly to herself.
Sighing, she put down the binoculars and then slowly and carefully stood up, abandoning her concealed position. She kept her hands away from her sides, palms out. Startled by her sudden appearance, the three people crouching among the vines swiveled in her direction. The two men drew their pistols with lightning-speed.
“Please try not to kill me, Jon,” she said quietly. “It’s not like you have a surplus of friends as it is.”
Stunned, Smith eased off the trigger. “Randi?” he said in amazement.
“What the hell are you doing here?’
The slender CIA officer came closer, emerging from the darkness. She crouched down beside them with a grimly amused expression on her smooth, good-looking face. “Since I was here first, it seems to me that should be my question … not yours.”
Almost against his will, Jon grinned back at her. She had a point. He shrugged. “Fair enough.”
He thought fast, trying to come up with a plausible story, one that Randi could choose to believe. She was the sister of his dead fiancee, and an old friend to whom he owed his life several times over, but she also worked for the CIA?which meant she was not privy to the closely held Covert-One secret.
Until that changed, he was forced to find ever more inventive ways to dodge her awkward questions.
“Some people high up in the Pentagon have asked me to track down the origin of this mysterious disease,” Jon said at last. “The one that’s been killing our intelligence analysts and key leaders in the former Soviet republics. We’re sure now that the illness is man-made, a sort of genetically targeted assassination weapon.”
“But why you exactly?” Randi demanded.
“Because I was the one first approached by a Russian scientist, a colleague of mine, at a medical conference in Prague,” Smith told her. Quicklv, he briefed her on Valentin Petrenko’s claims and the murderous attack used to silence him. “When I passed the word back to Washington, they sent me to Moscow to check out his story, figuring that I had the contacts and the expertise to nail down the facts.”
Randi nodded reluctantlv. “That almost makes sense, Jon,” she admitted.
She looked skeptically at Kirov, whom she had gotten to know years before while working as a field officer in Moscow. “I assume this is where Major General Kirov of the Russian Federal Security Service comes in?”
The big, silver-haired man shook his head with a smile. “It’s just plain Oleg Kirov these days, Ms. Russell. I’m retired.”
Randi snorted. “Yeah, I just bet you are.” She waved a hand at the submachine gun slung across his back. “Most pensioners don’t go wandering around the Italian countryside at night while armed to the teeth.”
“Oleg has been working with me,” Smith explained. “As a sort of private consultant.”
“So who is this?” Randi asked pointedly, nodding toward Fiona Devin.
“Your secretary?”
Jon winced, seeing Fiona stiffen angrily. “Ms. Devin is a freelance journalist based in Moscow,” he said quickly. “She was already investigating the first disease outbreak when I arrived.”
“A journalist?” Randi said in disbelief. She shook her head. “Let me get this straight, Jon ?you actually brought a reporter along on a covert mission?
Don’t you think that’s earning this whole Pentagon media-embedding program a bit too far?”
“I am not exactly here as journalist,” Fiona said coldly, speaking for the first time. The trace of her Irish accent was stronger now. “Not anymore.”
“Meaning what?” Randi demanded.
Smith filled her in on the various attempts made by Erich Brandt, acting for Konstantin Malkovic, to kill them. He ended by telling her about the orders issued by the Kremlin for their immediate arrest. “In the circumstances, Oleg and I thought she should stick with us,” he finished lamely, realizing how improbable that all sounded.
There was a moment’s silence.
At last Randi threw up her hands. She stared hard at Jon. “Am I really supposed to believe this cockamamie story of yours?”
“As wild as it sounds, it is the truth,” he said stoutly, glad that the darkness hid his red face. Well, at least part of the truth, he told his abraded conscience silently.
“So I guess the three of you just waltzed out of Moscow, right under the noses of half the militia and the
