shut behind them, just as Petrunin appeared about to issue an instruction to the guard — perhaps to assist his secretary…? Hyde grinned. There was the slightest shrug from Petrunin as he donned his greatcoat. Hyde glanced through the windows. A splay of lights on the patchy snow, the noises of a helicopter's descent. In the windowed corridor stood three soldiers and an officer, the soldiers in combat fatigues and armed with AKM rifles. Crack troops. The officer saluted Petrunin.
'Come quickly, Comrade Colonel,' he instructed. 'The helicopter is waiting for you.' His glance passed over Hyde but was satisfied by the uniform. Petrunin nodded but said nothing, then swiftly moved into and beyond the circle of the three soldiers, shielding himself from Hyde with the three bodies. Hyde realised he had lost the advantage. Petrunin — this Petrunin — had an animal's quick, alert cunning. A word — a moment of safety and a quick order — could kill him. The Russians moved down the corridor and rounded the corner. Hyde hurried after them, aware of his own danger. People were running and there was a smell of burning paper and plastic and celluloid. Hyde sensed panic. There was sporadic firing from beyond the embassy compound as the second MiL helicopter, a big transport, began to sag into view, thirty yards or so above the lawns, its lights playing over the grass and snow and the bare trees on the other side of the compound. Still Petrunin remained silent. The man was taking not the slightest chance. Hyde guessed he had begun to enjoy the situation. He knew that the tables had been turned — that now he had Hyde.
Hyde reached the top of the stairs. People pressed back as Petrunin and his small escort moved down the stairs, boots clattering, rifles bristling, Petrunin at the centre of their tight circle. Hyde cursed himself. He had allowed himself a moment of confidence in which he had relaxed, and in that moment Petrunin had surrounded himself with a protective curtain of soldiers. The helicopters had been minutes too early, minutes—
A bright, false sunrise garishly lit the windows alongside the stairs, gleaming whitely on each shocked, puzzled face. The officer, Petrunin, each of the guards, each of the embassy staff. Hyde's eyes were dazzled.
Petrunin glanced back up the steps that separated him from Hyde. His expression was shocked. For the moment, the man was incapable of giving the order he might have issued an instant before. Move, then—
The first helicopter had been minutes early, had been left out of Hyde's calculations. Then the second helicopter, the big transport…
Gobbets of flaming metal, a burning body, flailing rotor blades scattered down on the snow and grass and the guards around the first MiL. A huge ceremonial firework; Miandad had used the rocket launcher once more, perhaps because he had weighed the odds against Hyde. Panic now—
Hyde moved, skipping the intervening steps. Petrunin watched him come, his gloved hand reaching towards the officer's arm, to turn him and his dazzled attention towards this new danger — then Hyde was alongside Petrunin and the Makarov was pressed into the flank of the military greatcoat, hard. Hyde grinned.
The remains of the transport helicopter were burning like a scattered bonfire on the embassy lawn. Soldiers were rolling in the snow, extinguishing the flames that had caught them. One or two green greatcoats lay still. Frightened faces watched from the windows of the surviving MiL. The soldiers surrounding Petrunin had begun to drift towards the glass doors of the building. One of the transport's main rotors lay buried like a sword in the lawn. A ball of flame ascended from an exploding fuel tank. The light washed the foyer. Much of the glass had shattered — Hyde felt his face and hands prickling with fragments — and the cold night air had entered, the successive waves of heat from the fire now dispelling the chill.
Hyde had regained control.
'Guard the helicopter!' he yelled in a high, panicky Russian voice full of desperate authority, pressing the gun into Petrunin's side to ensure his silence. The officer in charge of the escort detail turned to him. 'Do it! It's the Colonel's only way out, you fools. Move!' People were clambering into the surviving MiL — civilian staff, soldiers, clerks and secretaries, clinging to it like the one remaining lifeboat adrift from a sinking liner. 'Get everyone off that helicopter except the ambassador and his wife!' Hyde yelled in Russian. 'Get them off.'
And they moved. The officer transmitted Hyde's orders. The Makarov pressed against Petrunin's side, just below the ribs. A BMP rolled gruntingly, cautiously past the foyer, passing a parked staff car. Petrunin moved his hands as if to restrain the now running soldiers, but he said nothing. The soldiers spread out, moving towards the helicopter, whose rotors had begun to pick up speed. There was shouting — a woman was bundled from the interior of the MiL and flung spreadeagled on the melted slush.
'Now!' Hyde whispered fiercely into Petrunin's ear.
He pushed the man forward with the Makarov, through the main doors. The cold was more intense now that the helicopter fire was dying down. There was still some firing at the gates, their ruin almost blocked by the BMP slewed across them. Hyde saw the vehicle launch a Sagger missile. There were dozens of soldiers near the gates now, and two trucks and a personnel carrier. In the hard-lit square, buildings appeared to be burning.
They reached the staff car. Hyde opened the door. Guards watched them from the steps, undecided. Petrunin looked back at them, then at Hyde. He shook his head.
'In,' Hyde said, gesturing with the gun.
Guards, suspicious now or concerned for Petrunin's safety, had begun to descend the steps. Petrunin sensed the moment, and raised his head as if to summon them. A small explosion at the gates distracted him and distracted the guards. Hyde struck Petrunin across the temple with the barrel of the Makarov and shoved his crumpling body into the rear of the staff car, arranging it as carefully as he could on the deep rear seat. Then he climbed into the driving seat. The keys were in the ignition of the Zil, and he switched on the engine. The noise brought the attention of the guards back to him. He waved them away, and accelerated towards the gates, the rear wheels slewing then biting into the gravel of the drive.
In the driving mirror, the guards seemed to accept the situation. The escort detail was busy emptying the MiL of its unwanted passengers while still more of the embassy staff — many of them obviously half-dressed or still in their nightclothes — streamed towards the helicopter as to a shrine. Petrunin sat propped and unconscious behind him.
Many of the Russian troops had moved beyond the gates now. Hyde glanced at his watch. His time had run out; the Pathans were beginning to withdraw and he was now racing to overtake them. He swerved around a truck, then edged the staff car alongside the green, high flank of the BMP, its cannon pumping shells into the square. He looked up, seeing flat Soviet helmets above the flank of the vehicle. Kalashnikovs on automatic were creating a dense field of fire ahead of the BMP, which had begun to move into the square.
The nearside wheels of the staff car jolted over one of the ruined gates. An infantry officer suddenly appeared and bent to glance into the car, then indicated that Hyde should wind down the window. Two soldiers barred the car's path. The BMP moved away, letting the lights in the square glare on Hyde, like a curtain being drawn. The concrete bunker was still smouldering and there were a number of bodies near the gates. Most of the square was littered with wreckage and clumps of flame and smoke. Hyde wound down the window. The lieutenant had checked the identity of the passenger. Hyde saw distaste disfigure the man's features.
'This bastard's been wounded — I'm getting him out!' Hyde explained, gambling.
'Pity he isn't dead — bastard's right. Where's your escort?'
'We were going to use the chopper — but there's panic back there. Everyone wants to get on. They'll be shooting each other for a place in a couple of minutes!'
'Fucking KGB!'
'He's too afraid of getting shot by one of his own — he wants to get out the quiet way. If they've got a launcher out there they could pick him off… Come on, man! If I don't deliver him, I might as well shoot myself!'
'Too right. Running like a rat, is he?'
'You've got it. Can I go, then?'
'OK — out of the way, you two!' The lieutenant waved Hyde on. He slid the car through the wreckage around the gates, jolting it over rubble and bodies. Petrunin slid slowly to one side behind him until he was lying slumped on the seat. Hyde ignored him. The BMP was ahead of him, its field of fire concentrated towards the shadowy streets beyond the lights. There seemed to be no return of fire. Infantry followed the BMP on foot, armed, afraid and cautious. Through the still open window, above the noise of flames and firing, he could hear the approach of other helicopters. He pressed the accelerator after assuring himself that Petrunin was still unconscious, turning the car into the narrow street at the corner of which Miandad had crouched with the RPG-7 and opened the way in for him. The staff car bounced on uneven cobbles. In the driving mirror, the small sliver of the square that he could see was filled with soldiers and light. The attack had been beaten off.
