At this point, Brandt suspected, the only way he could win back his own life from the hard men in the Kremlin would be to eliminate Malkovic for them and then hand over the briefcase and all of its contents. He raised his Walther pistol, then stopped himself. Not here, he decided. The square was too open and the sound of a shot would echo across the city. No, he would kill the older man later, Brandt thought grimly, when they were safely away from this damned medieval maze. Once they were high up in the Apennines, it would be a simple matter to hide a bullet-riddled body where it might never be found.
Bending down, he roughly yanked Malkovic back to his feet. “Come on!”
he snarled. “There’s another road down, just around the corner of that fortress.”
Trembling both with fear and fatigue, the older man obeyed.
In that instant, one of his two remaining men crouched lower, hissing, “Herr Brandt! The Americans! They’re here!” He raised his submachine gun, using the Uzi’s short black barrel to point toward the entrance to the Piazza.
Startled, Brandt spun round with his pistol ready. In the dim light, he could just make out three black-clad figures entering the square. The}’ were less than a hundred meters away. “Kill them!” he snapped.
Smith saw a sudden flurry of movement near the funicular railway station, a small, modern building, on the eastern edge of the square. There were four men there. Two were in cover behind a row of terracotta planters, with their weapons out. Brandt, taller and blond-haired, crouched behind them. The fourth man, Konstantin Malkovic, was turning to flee, scuttling wildly away from the station. He disappeared into the darkness, heading for the tall arched gateway leading into the papal fortress.
“Down!” Jon roared, trying to warn Kirov and Fiona. He dove for the pavement. “Get down!”
And then Brandt’s gunmen started shooting, firing on full automatic.
Bullets ripped through the air all around Smith, cracking past low over his head. Others ricocheted off the paving, spinning wildly away in every direction. Chunks of concrete and torn strips of asphalt spattered across the square.
He rolled away, frantically trying to throw off their aim.
A few meters away, Fiona Devin cried out suddenly and went down. She lay curled up, with her teeth tightly clenched, clutching at her right thigh.
Blood welled up between her locked fingers. Grim-faced with worry, Kirov hurled himself toward her, ignoring the 9mm rounds screaming around him.
The two Uzis fell silent. Both gunmen had expended their full twenty-round magazines in just a couple of seconds. Each man crouched low, desperately slapping in a fresh clip.
Smith stopped rolling. Either they started fighting back or they were dead.
His eyes narrowed and he took rapid aim at the row of planter boxes. He pulled the trigger, firing as quickly as he could while swinging the barrel from one end of the little train station to the other. The MP5 stuttered loudly, punching rounds toward Brandt and his men. Hit by one of his bursts, a terracotta planter exploded, sending pieces of shattered pottery, dirt, and bits of shredded bark and leaves swirling through the air.
The gunman crouching behind that planter toppled backward and lay still. His Uzi clattered to the pavement.
One down, Smith thought grimly. He shifted his aim again, swiveling toward Brandt’s second gunman. Brandt himself was next to his subordinate, down on one knee with his semiautomatic pistol out.
The three men opened fire at the same time.
Again, bullets hammered the paving and the air around Jon. One round tore a line of fire across the top of his right shoulder. Another near miss ripped through his assault vest, sending a torn equipment pouch tumbling away across the Piazza. Bits of broken plastic and glass littered the ground in its wake, all that was left of a handheld laser surveillance kit. A ricochet punched off the pavement and slammed into his left side, hitting with enough force to crack one of his ribs.
Deliberately, Smith fought down his fear-laced instincts to duck or to dive away from the incoming fire. Instead, his finger tightened again and again on the trigger. The MP5’s barrel jumped and bucked against his grip. Jon clenched his jaw against the searing pain from his cracked rib, and kept shooting, forcing the submachine gun back onto his targets.
Multiple 9mm rounds smacked into the funicular station, shattering glass, punching through the locked doors, and gouging huge craters in the brown basalt walls. The rest of the planter boxes blew apart. Brandt and his gunman crumpled and fell, one heaped on top of the other.
The cocking handle slammed forward as Smith fired the last of the thirty rounds in his magazine. Reacting swiftly, he snatched out the old clip, tugged a new magazine out of his ammunition pouch, and slid it into the MP5. Then he yanked back on the handle, chambering a new bullet.
He scanned the front of the station, finger on the trigger, looking closely for any sign of movement from the three bodies littering the torn pavement.
Nothing stirred. There was only a sudden strange silence ?the total absence of noise after the staccato, clattering roar of so much gunfire.
“Jon!” Kirov called to him. The Russian was crouching over Fiona Devin, working frantically to staunch the bleeding from the wound in her thigh. “I need your help,” he said bleakly.
Smith rolled back to his feet, staggering slightly as a new wave of pain from his cracked rib ripped through him, and then hurried over to the wounded woman. Fiona was still conscious. But she was pale and shivering, starting to go into shock.
He glanced across at Kirov. The Russian was just as pale. “Go after Malkovic, Oleg. He ran into the fortress over there,” Jon said softly. “I’ll take care of her.”
Kirov shook his head angrily. “No, I ? “
“I’m a doctor, remember?” Smith said urgently. “Let me do my job. Now you go and do yours. If Malkovic escapes, everything we’ve done has been in vain. Now move!”
Kirov stared back at him for a second longer. He scowled darkly, but then he nodded. Without saying anything more, he bent down and touched Fiona’s forehead gently. Then he grabbed his submachine gun, jumped to his feet, and loped away, heading for the fortress gate.
Smith went down on his knees beside Fiona and began examining the in-jury, pulling the torn cloth of her jeans away carefully to get a good look at both the entry and exit wound. He felt around her leg with his fingers, pressing hard in places to check for any pieces of broken bone. She hissed sharply through gritted teeth.
“Sorry,” Jon told her quietly. He tore open a field dressing kit and shook out a pressure bandage. Then he began wrapping it tightly around her wounded leg. She winced again. Next, he stripped off his assault vest, balled it up, and used it to elevate her wounded leg.
“How bad is it?” Fiona asked softly.
“You were lucky,” Smith replied flatly.
She forced a smile. “That’s the second time tonight you’ve told me that, Colonel. Somehow I don’t feel quite as fortunate this time around.”
Jon smiled back at her. “All luck is relative, Ms. Devin.” He turned serious.
“Somehow the bullet that hit you missed every major blood vessel and the bone itself. Your thigh muscle is torn to hell, but it should heal nicely?once we’ve got you in a decent hospital.”
Once he had finished stabilizing Fiona, he shook open another field dressing, pulled up his sweater, and then used pieces of adhesive tape to strap his cracked rib, holding it in place. With that taped down, Smith used another length of bandage to form a sling for his left arm and looped it around his neck.
Randi Russell’s excited voice suddenly came through his headset. “Jon,” she said quickly. “Renke’s dead, but I’ve got some of his materials. I’m heading up the hill now. What’s your situation?”
Smith keyed his mike. “Brandt is dead, too. But Malkovic slipped away and Ms. Devin is wounded.” Speaking quickly, he briefed her on the rest of the situation, including their location in the Piazza Cahen. “How soon can you get here?”
“Give me five minutes,” she promised.
“Understood,” Smith said. “Come as fast as you can. And whistle up the Pave Low helicopter using the codes I gave you. Tell them to stand by to extract us.”
“Where will you be?” Randi asked.
