smell was suddenly more apparent in the confined, slowly moving box. His breathing and that of the others was magnified. Sweat ran into his eyes. Priabin's face was mobile with conflicting anticipations, eyes flickering again and again to the floor indicator above the doors. The lights winked on winked off, but the elevator did not stop.
Don't let it stop, don't let it, don't—
'They'll be waiting,' Gant warned. Priabin nodded.
Gant gripped Serov's body more strongly, keeping one arm across the man's throat, feeling the bobbing Adam's apple against his sleeve; hearing the gurgling swallows of Serov's breathing, as if the man were drowning. Priabin placed the pistol muzzle almost ceremoniously against the blood-seeping temple.
Ground floor. The elevator did not stop. He felt the luck of it in another surge of adrenaline, but it seemed thin and ineffectual.
The elevator jerked to a stop, the doors opened. The icy temperature of the basement garage struck into the compartment, jolting Gant. He shivered. In his arms, Serov growled. Priabin jerked his head up. Serov's eyes were narrow with hatred.
'Gant?'
'I go first, sure—*
The basement was silent, apparently empty.
'Dmitri what if—?' Katya began.
'Don't think,' Gant growled at her. 'It has to work.' He adjusted Serov's weight so that he could push him ahead. 'Rifle,' he added, nodding at the floor of the elevator. Their noises seemed lost in the echoing cold and concrete reaches of the basement. Gant listened. He could hear no footsteps, no running men.
Rasp of metal on metal. Glimpse of a rifle trained, resting on the hood of a car ten yards from him. Other men, perhaps five or six. Two officers, too. Men with uniforms undone but already dragooned into order and purpose.
He crushed Serov's body against him like a shield, feeling his own vulnerability; aware of every vital organ beneath the thin, stretched envelope of skin.
The noise of the first shot seemed swallowed by the low-roofed cavern of the basement, echoing harmlessly into the distance. The bullet chipped concrete flakes and dust from the wall near Gant's cheek. Dust filled his eyes, he felt his cheek sting.
'Stop firing, stop firing!' an officer bellowed through a loudspeaker, his voice distorted and booming. 'You idiot, you'll kill the colonel,' he added unnecessarily. Then he said, directing the open mouth of the loudspeaker toward Gant: 'Stay where you are. Drop your weapons — you're outnumbered. You can't get out of here.'
Gant coughed as he attempted to reply.
'There's no time to talk!' he heard Priabin shout. 'We have nothing to lose — get out of our way. Don't attempt to stop us or Serov will be killed. You'll answer for that death, Captain. Think about it.'
He stood alongside Gant, now thrusting the barrel of an AKMS rifle against Serov's head.
'Dmitri, the keys are in this car,' Gant heard Katya call out.
'Start moving toward the car,' Priabin whispered fiercely. Gant nodded, dragging Serov so violently off- balance that his legs stuck out in front of him and he became a drunk being towed rather than a shield. His heels scraped on the concrete floor. Oil stains, the smell of gasoline as Katya started the engine of the car Gant had not dared turn to see. The captain and his men made as if to move forward, their poses tense, threatening danger through reckless, instinctive action. 'Serov's head will disappear if I squeeze this trigger,' Priabin roared. 'Stay where you are. Don't move a step.'
Serov's bulk shifted against Gant, the dragging legs attempted to push the body upright. Serov cried out:
'Let them go! Don't interfere!'
Gant felt the body of the car against his back, felt the open rear door scrape against his sleeve, jab into his upper arm.
'Get in, get in,' he said urgently, dragging Serov backward with him onto the seat. Serov struggled out of Gant's hold, but Priabin pushed him across the seat with the rifle and almost tumbled into the car. Gant felt exhausted beneath their combined weight. Priabin slammed the door, and the car immediately jerked forward, engine racing, tires squealing on the concrete.
The soldiers moved aside, losing their purpose and pattern as the car rushed at them. The captain jerked away from the hood at the last moment.
'Keep down,' Priabin urged. Katya's form was bent over the steering wheel. 'It's three kilometers, no more.'
The car bucked onto the bottom of the exit ramp. Roared up into fading daylight, bouncing and skewing onto the cobbles of the square, beneath the archway and toward the dark statue surmounting the war memorial. The whole car smelled of gasoline; the engine howled. The traffic was light, Katya weaved through it out of the square onto a broad dual highway. Serov's eyes gleamed in his face. in contrast with the delicate, infirm manner in which his fingertips touched at the drying blood and the bruise on his temple.
Priabin's face was excited, elated. He laughed, the rifle held across his stomach and jabbed against Serov's ribs. He studied his prisoner with a wild satisfaction. Then looked at Gant, his features clouding. He shook his head as if to rid it of memory.
'You'll—?'
Gant was cradling his hand. It was already lividly bruised. He flexed his fingers in demonstration.
'I can fly,' was all he said in reply. Then he turned to look back through the rear window.
'Two cars and a truck,' Katya said through clenched teeth.
'We're immortal as long as we have this bastard with us,' Priabin replied. 'Katya — turn on the radio. Let's find out what they're up to.'
After the click of the switch, orders and counterorders, ideas and schemes and warnings flew like escaped birds in the car, adding to the strain of tension between its four occupants. They guessed the KGB helicopter at one point, others discounted it, they queried the use of roadblocks, voices demanded action, authority leaped and changed and was questioned and recognized. They agreed on the priority of Serov's life; agreed, too, that the helicopter was a possibility. Behind them, Gant saw the cars and the truck maintaining but not decreasing the gap between them and their quarry. In the distance, away above and beyond office blocks, the first helicopter could be discerned against a pale sky gradually being stained dark.
The modern buildings thinned, leaving gaps of sky and flatness between them, until the town opened out into low buildings, fenced perimeters, the sense of a military place. Katya turned the car off the highway onto an approach road. The first car followed, only hundreds of yards behind. Gant heard the orders, transmitted ahead, that the car was not to be stopped, the barrier was to be raised. High wire, parked aircraft. The pole of the guardhouse barrier lifted like an arm beckoning. Armed soldiers stood back, almost at attention as if for a visiting dignitary. The car swept past them, slid as it turned violently, then straightened again. Hangars, repair shops, control tower, vehicles, and aircraft.
An army truck was parked outside the hangar for which the Woman was heading, soldiers already emerged from it but loosely grouped as if given a break from some training exercise. An officer with a walkie-talkie. The cars and the truck surging closer behind them as the car slowed. White feces peering to check on them, on Serov.
Katya drove the car into the hangar, then slowed to a halt. A cramped, low building, gaps of sky visible through holes in the corrugated roof. A single helicopter, a Mil-2, unarmed and designed for aerial surveillance. Small, light, vulnerable, its top speed seventy miles an hour slower than a Mil-24 gunship. Gant felt his hands quiver with disappointment.
He opened the car door, entering the tension of the hangar, his awareness narrowing to a matter of seconds ahead.
'Can you?'
'Yes, damn you,' he yelled back at Priabin. 'Get that bastard in the cabin — watch them.'
They were all on the side of the car away from the entrance to the hangar, shielded by its bulk from the soldiers outlined against the poor daylight; they still had a loose-limbed, uncertain air about them.
'It won't be long,' Gant murmured, reluctant to move from the shelter afforded by the car, 'before someone gives them an order they can't question: 'Kill them all.'' More troops in the doorway as they climbed out of the truck that had pursued them. A droning of rotors, closing. There was no evidence of any ground crew, no KGB uniforms.
