there like birds perched on Felix’s cold nose. Go rock their world.”
“Showtime,” he said to his boys.
The car slid to the side of the road, and two men slipped out. They’d hold a few seconds, the other two two-man subteams would get out at two other spots around the perimeter of the Park of Fallen Heroes, they’d coordinate the walk-in, and then they’d converge on the bench. All would go to guns, the shooting would be over in seconds, and in the stunned silence, they’d return to the patiently waiting limo, which they knew would go unseen by any of the hundreds of witnesses in the roadway, including Moscow police or militia.
The car deposited the second team, turned a corner, and drove fifty yards to deposit the third. The driver began the heavy labor of a U-turn meant to move him back and place him at the exit to the park closest to the bench, out of which, if all went well, the six shooters would soon emerge.
All did not go well.
Pistol up, two hands, front sight, front sight, front sight and press, the jerk of the recoil snapping the pistol up a bit, its slide in super-time hard back, a spent shell a blur as it spun away, and then Swagger found the front sight again and followed up with another to the midsection, cranked right a degree or so, and hammered two more nines into the partner, who was unlimbering his Krink, and watched that one blur spastically while his nervous system announced he’d taken hits and he staggered, the Krink dropping but not falling as the strap held it.
Swagger heard the reports behind him of Stronski, his own GSh-18 rapping as he fired a suppressive spray, having more targets and not being able to aim after the first.
Swagger’s old legs drove him off the bench and behind it, and he was stunned to see that though he’d hit and slowed them, the two on his side had not pitched to the earth. He fired again even as one of them, in a lurching move, jerked on the Krink’s trigger and chopped up a cloud of dust and debris at his own feet.
“Go, go, goddammit,” yelled Stronski over his own new dialogue of shots; Swagger was too excited to feel his age and ran like hell, low, with first a zig and then a zag and then a zig and was in seconds, it seemed, absorbed by the formation of Joes in Stalinland. He fell behind the nearest, went prone, and shooting with the earth as his sandbag, fired at the smears of men to the left moving and shooting, scattering as they looked for cover, their chopped-for-handling assault weapons jerking arcs of unaimed fire into the air to cascade wherever. Stronski ran, and Swagger held on the head of a man who’d wisely dropped to kneeling to steady his front sight for an aimed shot, but Swagger fired first, careful on the press, and saw a splat of gas-inflated shirtfront to mark a hit high in the chest; the man staggered to his knees, dropped his weapon, and seized it again. Swagger fired, and the man went sluggishly, reluctantly to earth. He seemed so disappointed.
Swagger looked back. One of the first two he’d hit was down, finished, but the other – though his black shirt, now wet and heavy, clung tightly to his chest – staggered ahead, weaving the Krink with one hand, bull-crazed by his job and meaning to finish before he bled out. Holding carefully, Swagger managed to press one off that blew a jet of mist from the man’s broad forehead. He fell like a toppled statue.
A strange ripping sound went stereophonic on Swagger as a spray of stone or marble frags lacerated his cheeks and hands. He turned and saw that two of the original four to the left had taken positions behind the bench and were laying out fire into the fleet of Stalins, ripping through nose and mustache and wavy Georgian hair, blowing out all-seeing eyes, ripping the comfy pudge of sanctimony that in some variations bunched the Boss’s cheeks. One Joe split radically in two, its lesser half dropping to Earth; another, of porous material, simply evaporated into a fog of dust as, hit centrally, it shattered.
“Go back, go back,” screamed Stronski from an adjacent Joe head, and Swagger, usually the yeller of orders in such situations, obeyed, crab-walking back a rank to find another stout stone Joe behind which to crouch even as he heard full-metal jackets hum through the air and was aware that, around and behind him, the whole world was dancing and crumbling to the jig of velocity. Situated and alive, he rose, and though he could see only flashes and that thin scrim of burned chemistry that accompanies multiple smokeless powder discharges screening the bench, fired the last five shots of his mag at the bench, hearing the protest of punctured wood as his bullets bore into the bench slats.
Stronski, under that distraction, scuttled backward, hooked behind a Joe, and slammed a new mag into his GSh. Swagger’s, similarly hors de combat, received the same treatment, and dropping the slide on a fresh eighteen, he hoisted it before him to hunt for targets. He heard Stronski yell in Russian.
“I call them fucking gutless Izzy dogs, tell them to come visit me in the Joes and I will kill the rest of them and fuck their asses when they are dead, hah!” he translated in the next lull.
A new fusillade ruptured the blasphemy, and more stone fragments sang as they pranced from the various Joes that the high-velocity bullets pockmarked.
“He’s coming around,” yelled Swagger, seeing that the two on the bench were covering for a brave guy, cutting right and hoping to ease among the Stalins from that flanking point of entry. Swagger rose, guessing the gun smoke, floating debris, and floating slivers of grass and brush would give him a little concealment, and set to intercept. He dropped back a row of Joes, cut right, ran low, paused as he waited for the shadow of the gunman, then stepped out on the diagonal and fired twice into the approaching killer’s heavy chest, then fired a finisher into center forehead. It was not pretty, but it was final. The gunner went down hard, headfirst, feet flying up with such force that a Gucci loafer popped off one. Swagger scurried, leaned forward, and retrieved the Krink, deftly unlinking the sling catch.
Swagger rose and, as steadily as possible, emptied the mag, about fifteen remaining rounds, into the bench where the last two bad boys hid, this time rendering it further useless under splinters and dust. One of them rose to run, and Stronski leaned into a sight picture to take him. He fired once and his pistol jammed, its slide stuck halfway back.
Swagger swung to take the runner down with the Krink, not remembering it was empty, and pulled on nothing. He dropped it, shifted the pistol to his right hand, and suddenly felt a horse kick in his hip as a pelting spray of frags and superheated dust flew upon him.
He rolled left into the fetal, locked his elbows between his knees, and found the man who stood over the defenseless Stronski and pressed just as that guy got another mag into his Krink and was about to massacre the sniper. Swagger hit him in the eye, blowing it out, and the man twisted like a dancer and corkscrewed earthward.
Swagger turned back on peripheral motion and settled in for a shot on the surviving gangster now fleeing, saw civilians across the street behind him, possible friendly-fire casualties, and opted not to shoot. The big guy, all athlete and amazingly fast, made it out an exit and dove into the open door of a sleek black limo, which burned rubber on the acceleration.
“Dump guns, get out of here,” commanded Stronski.
“You’ve been hit.”
It was true. The left side of Stronski’s white silk shirt bloomed the dark spread of blotted blood.
“It’s nothing, you go, get out of here. Do it now! I am fine. I cannot run much.”
Swagger dropped the pistol, pulled his watch cap low, and started to walk forcefully away, crossing a street, finding an alley, cutting down it, finding a broad boulevard. Police cars roared along it, looking for a turn to the park, which, as it developed, was not accessible from that thoroughfare. Two passed within feet of Swagger, but in them, youngish men seemed alarmed and unaggressive, unwilling to get any closer until they were sure the shooting had stopped.
Finding a small restaurant, Swagger tried to look cool. He said, “
CHAPTER 12
Reilly e-mailed her boss at Foreign. “Seems to be a big shoot-out downtown here. They say five dead in an assassination attempt. Some mafia deal. Interested?”
She heard back in a bit.
“Sounds routine. Happens here all the time. Pass, thanks. Stay on that Siberian gas thing for the time being. Maybe if Putin comments on shoot-out, set up a Sunday thumbsucker on Russian mafia-getting more violent? Think
