behind heat shielding. I count about thirty. There could be more.’ Alex ducked down lower behind the car. ‘They were expecting us — so much for Khamid’s theory on being invisible.’
‘And we led them right to the package.’
Alex nodded, glancing across at the package beside Kolchek’s body. ‘And we’re not going home without it.’
Stozer gave him a hard look. ‘That’s suicide.’
Alex seemed not to hear her. A hundred feet behind them, Bruda’s Gatling gun ceased its roaring, the shell drum whirring at the back of its barrel. Alex gestured, palm down, then whirled his finger once in a circle: suppressing fire, total area. Bruda nodded and pulled the remaining drums from his pack and fastened them to his belt. Each of the big double drums together held over a hundred rounds, and he had plenty.
Alex turned back to Stozer. ‘They’ve got thirty, maybe forty men. We’ve got Bruda with an AA12. I’d say we’ve got them outnumbered.’
As if to punctuate his point, Bruda stepped onto the street. A bullet smashed into his shoulder, making him grunt with annoyance. The big man didn’t falter. He planted his thick legs and pulled the trigger; the whirring boom started again.
The Spetsnaz Vympel ducked for cover as splinters of wood, broken glass and chips of concrete swirled around in the AA12’s hurricane of cordite and burning gunpowder.
‘Time to fly.’ Alex broke cover. Skidding to a stop beside Kolchek’s body, he looked at him briefly, but didn’t touch the fallen HAWC. He knew the small hole in the front of Kolchek’s skull would be nothing compared to the exit wound at the back.
Alex grabbed the package. He grunted — damned heavy. Clutching it to his chest, he stumbled back to Stozer. As soon as he reached her, she gave Johnson and Bruda a thumbs-up. Both nodded, and the big man ejected another empty drum from his gun. He didn’t have many left.
The Spetsnaz were staying down. Alex nudged her with his elbow. ‘Let’s —’
Before he could finish, a dark metal object, like a small hockey puck, landed on the car with a clank, and stuck there. A ring of red LEDs winked out one by one. Alex grabbed up the canister, sagging under its weight.
‘Limpet: move!’
Stozer and Alex made it twenty feet back up the street before the mine exploded. It knocked them both forward, and they crawled into cover behind another parked car.
Across the street, Johnson emptied his magazine, then dove behind a car parked opposite. Though he moved quickly, he couldn’t avoid the limpet that sailed down and attached itself to something metallic in his backpack.
Cursing, Johnson tried to shrug himself out of his pack. The limpet exploded and flung him with a crunch into a brick wall. He lay still.
‘Fuck, they’re grinding us down!’ Stozer fired at the rooftops: as one Spetsnaz was punched backward, another took his place.
Alex shook his head — a nagging thought wouldn’t leave him. ‘They knew about Khamid and knew we were coming here… right here.’ He looked at Stozer. ‘They might have found the package long before we did. What if…’
Stozer fired again, but then spun quickly. ‘Alex don’t you dare. Don’t even think about opening that freakin’ casing.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘What if it’s empty? What if there’s nothing but C4 and thermite packed in here — just waiting for us to jump on the chopper, or get it back to home base?’
‘You heard what Khamid said that shit will do to you…’ She looked at Alex’s face, and groaned, seeing that his decision was already made. ‘Fuck.’ Stozer leaned back and banged her head hard against the car door. ‘Does anything ever go to plan?’
Alex laughed softly. ‘If it did, they wouldn’t need us.’ He gripped the lid hard and spoke through his clenched jaw. ‘You might need to back up twenty.’ He looked up briefly to where Bruda stood, just in time to see the big man turn quickly, as if something or someone was coming up behind him.
With night falling fast, Bruda couldn’t have noticed the shadow looming up behind him; the whirring of his Gatling’s empty drum masked the whistle of the rifle butt that crunched into the back of his neck. As he pitched forward, an enormous hand wrenched his gun from his grasp.
A lesser man would have been knocked cold, but Bruda’s neck was a thick column of muscle. He wasn’t so easy to fell. As he struggled back up to his feet, his assailant tossed aside both guns and waited.
‘Who the fuck is that?’ Stozer’s mouth hung open.
Without Bruda’s suppressing fire, the bullets had started flying again. Alex pressed the stud in his ear — nothing but dead air. ‘Bronson’s not answering. We’re on our own.’
He turned back to Bruda, who was trading bone-crushing blows with the Russian giant. Each man struck the other with enough force to crush a lesser man’s skull or ribs. Avoiding the other’s wild, lunging punch, Bruda delivered a side kick that would have split an oak door. It caught the Russian in the ribs, but instead of staggering him, those enormous hands wrapped themselves around the HAWC’s leg.
In one swift motion he brought his elbow down on Bruda’s knee. The crack was loud, even louder than the sound of bullets tearing through steel, wood and concrete.
He released the leg, which now bent at an odd angle. Only adrenalin and his training kept Bruda upright. The Russian lunged at him then, and raised his arm to block the big HAWC’s blow. As he did so, he dropped down and swept Bruda’s good leg out from under him. Bruda tried to tuck and roll backward, but the Russian was too quick — so quick the knives seemed almost to materialize in his hands as he maneuvered himself behind the HAWC.
In one smooth motion, he buried both blades to the hilt in each side of Bruda’s neck.
This was what they called a fight-stopper — the six-inch blades had severed the lateral cord containing the long pectoral nerve, the median and the musculocutaneous nerve, as well as several layers of muscle tissue. Bruda’s arms hung uselessly.
Alex gritted his teeth.
Smiling over at them, the big Russian dragged Bruda to his feet. Pulling free one of the knives, he swung it with enormous force into the HAWC’s temple. Bruda shuddered, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
Alex roared as both he and Stozer fired. The Russian used Bruda’s corpse as a shield as he backed into cover behind a nearby building. When he stepped back out onto the street a few moments later, his shield was the much smaller, cringing figure of Denichen Khamid.
Stozer groaned. ‘Where the hell is Bronson?’
Alex shook his head. ‘No cavalry today.’
‘HAWCs! It is over.’ The big, bearded giant’s accent was thick and his words mushed together as though he wasn’t breathing through his nose properly.
‘I am Colonel Uli Borshov, and I am in charge here.’ He shook Khamid, making his legs dance in midair. ‘Your comrades are dead; do not make me also hurt this one.’
Reaching into his holster, he drew a gun and held it to the scientist’s head.
Stozer sucked in a hissing breath.
They both recognized the big gun. It was a Gryazev-Shipunov, or GSh-18. It had been developed by the makers of aircraft cannons, and had been designed to fire armor-piercing rounds. Russia claimed it was more powerful than the.45 magnum — Alex agreed.
‘Come out; there is nowhere else for you to go.’ He waited another few seconds, then yanked Khamid’s arm upward. The small scientist shrieked, but the Russian ignored him and instead pressed the barrel of the gun up against the flat of his palm.
‘Ten seconds.’ He waited five and then pulled the trigger.
The bullet blasted through the small hand, leaving a hole the size of a casino chip. Blood sprayed out, and the bullet continued on to explode bricks in a house across the street.
Khamid screamed and then sagged but Borshov held him tight. ‘I think that hurt.’ Borshov laughed and maneuvered the scientist around in his arms. Taking hold of the other wrist, he then held up the second hand. Blood
