“Everybody out! We’re taking a short break. Move it!”
Out the corner of his eye, he saw Soloviev leading the FIS officer around to the back of that second truck. His pulse accelerated. Any second now.
Banich began walking toward one of the machine-gun positions, stretching and twisting as though he were shaking loose the knots wound up by an uncomfortable journey. Fear, not fatigue, made him yawn once and then again, deeper and longer. With an effort, he shut his mouth and moved closer.
The two FIS guards manning the PK machine gun ignored him. Like their commander, they were more interested in the contents of the trucks. He saw one of them nudge the other and grin. Maybe they thought this Captain Vorisov would share the results of his “inspection” with them.
The sound of Soloviev’s two silenced shots spurred Banich into action. His right hand darted inside his uniform jacket and came back out holding his own silenced automatic. Everything around him slowed as adrenaline altered his time sense.
One of the startled gunners saw the weapon in his hand and opened his mouth to yell a warning. Banich squeezed the trigger — firing again and again. Hit by two or three rounds apiece, both FIS men crumpled. One screamed and fell forward over the machine gun with a huge, red-rimmed hole in his back. He shuddered once and then lay still. Struck in the stomach and head, the second guard sprawled back against the sandbags, staring up at the sky with unblinking eyes.
The American turned rapidly, scanning for new targets. There weren’t any. The other checkpoint guards were already down and dead or dying. He tugged the partly empty magazine out of the Makarov and snapped in a fresh clip. Hennessy, Teppler, and Soloviev’s two Russian officers were doing the same thing with their own silenced weapons.
Soloviev himself came around the side of the truck, dragging the dead FIS captain by his arms. “Don’t stand there! Move! Haul those corpses off into the trees! We haven’t much time.” He dumped the guard officer out of sight and turned around, looking for the lieutenant who had driven the first truck. “Pasha! Clear those vehicles off to the side of the road. Hurry up!”
It took several minutes of frantic effort to restore the checkpoint to a semblance of normal order. While Banich and the others hauled the bodies of the guards they’d killed out of sight, Soloviev scrambled up into the lead truck’s cargo bay and began unloading the long, narrow boxes he’d commandeered from the militia headquarters armory — boxes containing RPG-16 antitank rocket launchers, ammunition, and more AK-74 assault rifles. As each man came back from his grisly task, the colonel handed him a weapon and a pair of gloves.
All of them started when the sentry box phone rang — shrill in the eerie silence hanging over the checkpoint. Soloviev jumped to answer it. He listened briefly, answered in a gruff voice, and then poked his head back out through the open door. “Get ready! The French delegation is leaving now. Kaminov and the rest will follow shortly.”
Three big black official sedans came barreling around a bend just minutes later. Tiny French flags fluttered from the hood of each car. The cars braked, waiting just long enough for them to pull the tire spikes off the road and shoulder the barricade aside. Then they accelerated again, whizzing past the checkpoint without stopping. With a treaty signed, sealed, and in hand, Ambassador Sauret and the rest of his negotiators were evidently in a tearing hurry to get back to Paris.
Once the last French limousine disappeared around another curve, Soloviev, Banich, and the others exploded into action. Hennessy, Teppler, and the two junior Russian officers replaced the barricade and tire barrier, grabbed loaded assault rifles, and trotted up the access road toward the dacha. Banich and the colonel both scooped up an RPG-16 launcher and a pack containing extra rounds and followed their men — staying well inside the trees lining the road.
They’d gone only a hundred meters or so when they heard the sound of several engines rumbling closer, but that was far enough to lose sight of the deserted checkpoint past a curve in the winding road.
At a hand signal from Soloviev, the rifle-armed men faded back into cover, hunkering down in the shadows under the trees. Their two leaders did the same. The Russian glanced at Banich. “The first vehicle, understand?”
Banich nodded impatiently. “I know.” He settled the RPG on his shoulder after making sure he’d remembered to remove the safety pin from its antitank warhead.
“Just checking.” Soloviev surprised him by grinning. “Take away the trees and this could be Afghanistan all over again… only I would be on the other side, of course.” He clapped the American on the shoulder. “Don’t miss!”
Then the Russian was gone, cradling his own rocket launcher as he hurried forward — dodging tree trunks and patches of sunlight. The engine noises grew louder.
Banich stayed absolutely still as the first vehicles came into view. The convoy was organized exactly the way Soloviev had said it would be. A GAZ-69 jeep with a light machine gun in a pintle mount was in the lead. The driver, machine gunner, and two passengers, both officers, all wore the blue shoulder flash of the FIS. Three armored limousines came next — each an identical black and with tinted windows that hid their occupants from public view. He tensed. Kaminov, the high-ranking officers who were his closest subordinates, and their personal bodyguards were riding inside those three vehicles.
An eight-wheeled BTR-80 armored personnel carrier with a turret-mounted heavy machine gun brought up the rear. Like the four-wheel-drive Blazers the U.S. Secret Service used as “war wagons” to carry extra agents, commo gear, and heavy weapons, the BTR was a formidable fighting machine. The FIS troops it carried rode up top, helmeted heads poking through open fighting hatches on the BTR’s deck. One man near the rear carried a shoulder-launched SA-16 for protection against air attack.
God. Banich blinked away the sweat trickling into his eyes. Odds that had sounded awfully high when Soloviev first outlined his hastily formulated plan now seemed insurmountable. This was not going to work. His hands started to tremble. Oh, Erin…
The jeep leading the convoy rolled past his position. Now! Banich stood up, all fear buried beneath the overriding need to make his shot count. He squinted through the rocket launcher’s sight, steadied on target, and fired.
The RPG round flashed across the intervening distance, slammed into the dashboard on the driver’s side, and detonated. Five pounds of high explosive tore the open-topped vehicle apart in a searing ball of flame. It flipped over and landed sideways across the road.
Through the smoke, Banich saw Soloviev rise, take careful aim, and fire a HEAT round directly into the BTR- 80’s thinly armored flank. The APC exploded. Sheets of bright red fire flared out through every open hatch, fed by fuel and ammunition stored aboard. Pieces of burned bodies arced out from the exploding vehicle.
In that single horrifying instant, all hell broke loose.
Caught traveling just meters behind the jeep Banich’s warhead had mangled, the lead armored limousine roared ahead and crashed into the flaming wreckage at thirty kilometers an hour. The massive grinding impact threw both vehicles across the road and into the trees in a shower of sparks and shrieking metal. When they stopped spinning, both were locked together — completely blocking the access road.
The second black sedan skidded wildly, sliding sideways as it braked, narrowly avoiding the collision just ahead. But then the driver of the last car, less alert or maybe distracted by the blinding flash in his rearview mirror, smashed head-on into the side of the fishtailing vehicle. Broken glass, crumpled metal, and torn rubber flew outward from the impact point.
The world seemed to stand still for a moment — frozen at a lone point in time. Both ends of the narrow road were barred. Kaminov’s convoy was cut off — unable to go forward and unable to go back.
Car doors popped open, shattering the stasis. Dazed-looking men began scrambling out of the wrecked limousines, clawing their way past others who couldn’t move because they were too badly stunned or injured. A few, younger than the rest, clutched snub-nosed AKR assault carbines — staring wildly in all directions at the woods around them. Kaminov’s bodyguards, Banich realized.
He knelt down, pawing through the satchel in front of him for another RPG round.
With their targets out in the open now, Mike Hennessy, Teppler, and the Russian lieutenants opened up from the treeline, firing on full automatic. Men jerked wildly, spun around and ripped apart by the dozens of hollow-point
