Renke watched him go for a moment and then looked down at the shaken billionaire. “Come, Mr. Malkovic,” he snapped. “This way.”
Numbly, the taller man got to his feet, grabbed his briefcase and laptop, and followed the w eapons scientist down the central corridor.
Inside his windowless office, Renke crossed quickly to the bookcases concealing his combination wall safe and freezer. After entering his code, he pressed his thumb to the built-in fingerprint scanner. Cold vapor puffed out as the door swung open.
Cunfire erupted inside the building, muffled by thick, soundproofed walls. There were high-pitched wails and shrieks. When the quick fusillade ended, only a few agonized moans broke in the sudden, eerie silence, along with the sound of a man weeping in sheer terror. A pistol barked three times.
The silence became absolute.
“ly Cod!” Malkovic groaned. “The Marines are here already!” He shrank back against the nearest wall, clutching the briefcase containing information on Dudarev’s military plans and the Russian leader’s involvement in HYDRA to his chest as though it would protect him from American bullets.
Renke snorted. “Calm yourself. That was only Brandt eliminating my unfortunate assistants.” He donned a heavy glove and pulled out the rack of vials inside the freezer. Carefully, he lowered them into an insulated cooler.
He smiled down at the rows of his specially crafted HYDRA variants in satisfaction. Labels on each clear glass tube bore different names, many of them Russian. In less than forty-eight hours, the material inside Malkovie’s briefcase would be useless as a means of pressuring Viktor Dudarev. Once Russian troops and tanks crossed the border, the Kremlin leader would no longer fear the exposure of his plans. He would be free to act against the trembling financier as he saw fit.
Still smiling to himself, the scientist shut and sealed the container.
Malkovic was doomed, whether or not he realized it yet. But the undetectable and incurable weapons in those vials would give Wulf Renke a firm grip on Dudarev and his cronies for the rest of their lives.
Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith crouched low behind the front end of the car rented by Randi Russel, a dark green Volvo four-door. It sat sideways across the two-lane road, blocking the main route running around the base of Orvieto’s rugged volcanic plateau. The road, the Strada Stratale No. 71, split here, with one fork heading toward the train station, the lower town, and then on eastward toward the foothills of the distant Apennines. The other climbed gradually up the side of the massive rocky outcropping and entered the cliff-top city of Orvieto itself.
Smith looked to his left. The plateau loomed there, a huge black shadow against the starlit sky. Just beyond the intersection, the ground rose steeply in a grassy slope dotted with stands of small trees and withered bushes. It ended abruptly in a sheer wall of cracked and crumbling tufa, a type of limestone, and basalt.
He glanced to his right. Kirov was a couple of meters away, kneeling behind the Volvo with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun gripped in both hands. The Russian saw him looking and gave him a cool nod to show that he was ready. Beyond the road there, the ground descended in a gentle slope covered in barren fruit trees and vines. Small lights from distant farmhouses glowed here and there across the valley.
“Here they come,”Randi Russell whispered over the radio. The CIA officer was stationed in cover a little bit farther down the road, on a low rise that offered a view of the well-lit ECPR compound, roughly a kilometer away. She was their forward observer. “I count two cars. Both black Mercedes, moving fast.” She hesitated and then went on. “Looks like you were right, Jon. Maybe you’re getting better at this soldier stuff.”
“Understood,” Smith said softly.
Despite the knowledge that he was facing imminent action, part of him relaxed slightly. Randi had argued vehemently for setting up their ambush much closer to the Center. She had wanted to make sure that Malkovie, Renke, and their subordinates couldn’t slip past them by taking one of the other, smaller country lanes that crisscrossed the vallev. But Jon had vetoed her idea, pointing out that hitting the enemy too close to that fortified lab building only offered them the chance of retreating back into its impenetrable protection. And then, once Malkovie and the others realized the U.S. Marine assault they had been warned about was only a gigantic bluff, they would be free to follow their original scheme and fly out to safety.
Instead, Smith had gambled that Brandt would lead his employers this way, since this road offered the fastest means of putting distance between them and the ECPR. And once they crossed the north-south autostrada near the Orvieto train station, the fugitives would be able to cross the Apennines on little-used secondary roads and make for Italy’s Adriatic coast.
He tensed, hearing the noise of powerful car engines drawing nearer. He yanked back on the cocking handle of his MP5, forcing a 9mm round into the chamber. One hand made sure that the weapon’s firing selector was set for three-round bursts. He crouched lower, staying out of sight behind the heavy Volvo.
The approaching engines grew louder.
Headlights suddenly washed over the Volvo, throwing its strangely distorted shadow farther up the slope. Tires squealed sharply as the lead Mercedes braked hard to avoid crashing into their improvised roadblock. A second later, more brakes squealed as the second black sedan swerved abruptly and stopped in the middle of the road to avoid slamming into the first.
Immediately, both Smith and Kirov stood up from behind the Volvo, level-ing their submachine guns at the lead car, just fifteen meters away. There was more movement higher up the slope. Fiona Devin jumped up from her own hiding place, a half-buried limestone boulder that must have tumbled from the cliff face centuries before. Peering intently through her dock semiautomatic’s front and rear sights, she took careful aim at the second car.
“Come out of the car!” Smith shouted, with his eyes narrowed against the glare of the headlights. “Now! With your hands up!”
His pulse roared in his ears. This was the critical moment. Their need to take prisoners if possible outweighed every other consideration, even their own safety.
The two Mercedes sedans just sat there, angled awkwardly across the road.
He could not see any movement through their darkly tinted windows.
“This is your last warning!” Jon snapped loudly. “Get out of the damned cars! Now!” His finger tightened on the trigger.
One of the lead car’s back doors popped open. Slowly, a man, one of Malkovic’s bodyguards, climbed out and stood facing them. He kept his empty hands spread carefully apart at shoulder height. “I am unarmed,” he said, speaking in heavily accented English. “What is it that you want? Are you with the police?”
“No questions,” Kirov growled. “Tell Malkovie and the others to get out!
They have ten seconds before we open fire!”
“I understand,” the other man said quickly. “I will tell them.”
The bodyguard half-turned, just as though he was going to lean back in through the open door and talk to those inside. But then, moving with incredible speed, he whirled back around. One hand darted inside his heavy wool coat and came out gripping a pistol-sized Uzi submachine gun.
Smith and Kirov fired at the same time.
Hit by several rounds that tore right through him, the bodyguard toppled backward. He was dead before he hit the ground.
But in that same instant, the driver of the lead Mercedes stamped down hard on the accelerator. The black sedan roared ahead, aiming straight for the front end of the Volvo. The second Mercedes swung back behind the first and accelerated, too.
Too late, Smith realized his mistake. Those bastards had sacrificed a man to decoy him out of position. He swung the barrel of the MP5 through a short arc and fired again, this time aiming straight into the first oncoming car’s engine compartment. His bullets punched huge holes though the hood. Sparks and pieces of shredded metal danced up under the series of impacts.
Beside him, Kirov started shooting, aiming for the tires. Further uphill, Jon could see flame jetting from the muzzle of Fiona Devin’s Glock as she fired at the second sedan, pulling the trigger as fast as she could. Like the Russian, she was aiming for its wheels, trying to immobilize their enemies before they could break past the roadblock and race off into the night.
Jon stood his ground behind the Volvo for a split second longer, seeing the speeding Mercedes loom up out
