Moving Targets, page 45
The explosive went off with a sharp bang, blowing open the front door.
Kiselev released his timer, rolled around the corner, and tossed the bag through the opening.
Gremiakin’s bullyboy at the front door was killed in the first explosion, the front of his body cut to ribbons by flying glass, steel, and pieces of concrete. Gremiakin himself, realizing that a second explosion would come on the heels of the first, had just managed to pull back into the shop when it happened, the force of it knocking him off his feet.
Someone began shooting from the second floor, and a split second later more automatic weapon fire came from above on the bridge.
He would have bet almost anything that the Militia wouldn’t have gone this far this fast. Someone else was behind the attack, and it had to be KGB.
“There they are,” Senarighi said as they came around the back side of the Capitol building. Tyson’s Mercedes was just turning down one of the curving driveways to Independence Avenue which led past the Library of Congress to Pennsylvania Avenue. The car was moving erratically all over the road, as if the tires were getting no traction.
“Something’s wrong,” Sweeney said. “Fall back a little, let’s give them some room.”
Senarighi slowed down as the Mercedes shot out onto Independence in front of a yellow cab. There was no chance to avoid a collision. The cab smashed into the Mercedes’ right rear fender, sending the car spinning on the icy street.
Senarighi pulled to a stop, skidding sideways half out onto the avenue, as the Mercedes plowed into a snowbank blocking the broad sidewalk up to the library.
Both front doors popped open. Tyson jumped out one side and his wife got out on the other.
Sweeney scrambled out, drawing his pistol and, hunching over, started across the avenue. “Get down! Get down!” he shouted.
Kit Tyson looked his way and pulled up short, but Tyson turned and sprinted up toward the library’s loading docks.
The rear door of the Mercedes popped open, and Privet jumped out. He fired two shots at Sweeney, who dove facedown in the street, and then raced around the corner and down the ramp after Tyson.
The assassin was interested in only one target: the assistant national security adviser, and not the wife. It was Tyson’s only hope as he tore open the service door and paused just long enough to make sure Privet was behind him, before plunging into the labyrinth of the Library of Congress.
Tyson had been here only twice before. He was counting on the likelihood that the assassin had never been here, and that whoever was following them—probably the FBI—would make it in time to effect a rescue.
If nothing else, however, he’d drawn Privet away from Kit. It was something.
Sweeney hauled Kit Tyson to her feet and hustled her back to the car, where Senarighi was already on the radio asking for backup.
“Are you all right?” Sweeney asked her.
She was half hysterical, crying something about a daughter. It was difficult to make sense of anything she was saying.
Senarighi stopped in midspeech, releasing the microphone button. “Daughter?” he asked Sweeney.
“What do you mean, Mrs. Tyson? Whose daughter? Where?”
Kit Tyson looked up into Sweeney’s eyes, hers filled with tears, then looked over at Marina Demin still seated in the car. “Her,” she said.
“What about her?”
Kit Tyson looked back into Sweeney’s eyes. “She is my husband’s daughter.”
“How do you know?” Sweeney asked. “Who told you?”
“He did. My husband told me.”
“Stay with her,” Sweeney told Senarighi. “He’s admitted it, which means he’s innocent, and Privet will have to kill him.” He turned and headed across the street in a dead run, Senarighi shouting something.
Kiselev’s operation had been delicate and deadly. He’d planned, by using Raya Nechiporenko and Marina Demin … who were to do nothing but tell the truth … to try to discredit Tyson in the eyes of the American authorities. They were to do it in such a way that the CIA and FBI would believe that Tyson was the victim of a Russian plot to turn him.
But that was only one part of an operation they were apparently calling Homeward Bound. The two women’s real mission was to unhinge Tyson to the degree that he would, in one rash moment, agree to cooperate with them by handing over some forged document to a Washington Post reporter. That document purported to prove that the American government had contributed somehow to the August 19th Kremlin coup by secretly supporting the conspirators while openly supporting Gorbachev.
Senarighi had outlined everything Special Agent Wilson had overheard in Privet’s telephone conversation with his control officer.
Of course Tyson could not be counted on to become a permanent agent for the KGB hard-liners, who’d meant to use this triumph to regain some of the power they had lost, so Privet was to have assassinated the assistant national security adviser as soon as the document was in the hands of the press. Privet, in turn, was to be killed, leaving no loose ends.
But something had gone wrong, possibly in Moscow, and the operation had been called off.
Privet was a desperate man. Under a death sentence at home, he was apparently lashing out at anything that stood in his way of escape. Tyson was his prime target.
Sweeney yanked open the service door and entered the library. He stood just within the loading area for a second, catching his breath and trying to listen for the other two men.
The library was open, but there wouldn’t be many people here because of the weather.
Then Sweeney spotted the wet footprints across the loading area and into a rear corridor. Tyson and Privet had both tracked in snow on their shoes.
The room was vast, it seemed to go on forever, and yet the space seemed intimate because of the hundreds of thousands of books crammed onto the shelves. Privet took out his .22 automatic pistol, screwed the can silencer onto the end of the barrel, and followed Tyson’s footprints into the maze.
He was getting an erection, and his blood was beginning to sing. He’d been too long in America, too long on this one assignment. It was time now for him to make the kill and then get away.
In his idle time over the past few days he’d studied maps and booklets on Washington. Twenty meters from here was the entrance to the tunnel that ran under First Street to the Capitol building. He would make his escape from there.
There was an underground passageway between the library and the Capitol complex. Tyson had been in it once a couple of years ago, but he’d been with a group of congressmen and hadn’t paid much attention. Now he was turned around; he no longer knew which direction was toward the east down here. In fact, he no longer knew the way back to the stairs he had come down.
If he could reach either the tunnel or the stairs, he might be able to sneak past Privet and get out. But he was going to have to get lucky, and soon.
He stopped at the end of the row and cautiously peered around the corner both ways down the broader corridor. No one was here. On a normal day there would be library clerks removing or returning books, but the weather had apparently stopped returns and orders.
If he survived this ordeal, what would he say to the President? How would he even be able to face the man? There would be a public trial. Disgrace. Christ, where had it gone wrong? At what point had his conceit ruined his ability to think rationally?
Making sure the corridor was still clear, Tyson hurriedly stepped across into the next row, as something made a book jump on the shelf about head height just behind him. He turned and looked back.
One of the books on the shelf had been pushed farther back. He stood flat-footed staring at it. In the dim light he could make out a small hole in the spine of the book. A bullet hole! Privet!
Spinning on his heel, Tyson raced to the end of the row, turned left down a narrow aisle, then right again down another row.
He stopped short and held his breath to listen. There were footsteps behind him, off to the left, for just a second, and then they stopped.
Privet was right behind him. But how?
Tyson looked down, suddenly realizing that his feet were wet. He’d left tracks. He took off his shoes and then hurried silently to the end of the row and started right, when something very hot and very sharp penetrated his left arm just above his elbow. There was no pain, but his hand went instantly numb, and he dropped his shoes.
He’d been shot. Blood started to ooze from the wound.
He fell back into the row he’d just come out of as a bullet ricocheted off the metal bookshelves inches away from him.
Christ, Privet was right there.
Tyson turned and ran headlong down the row, skidding to the right in the aisle and immediately left again down the next row, crashing into a roll-about cart filled with books.
Tyson was in trouble. He was bleeding and he had crashed into something. Privet could hear the man grunting like a pig that knows it is about to be killed and gutted.
Taking his time now—Tyson was still thrashing around, trying to extricate himself from whatever he’d crashed into—Privet stepped out into the aisle and followed the trail of blood.
The wet footsteps finally petered out, and Sweeney ranged in a zigzag pattern through the seemingly endless rows of aisles of floor-to-ceiling bookstacks. He stopped every ten or fifteen seconds to listen for a sound, any sound that might indicate Privet or Tyson was nearby. He carried his .9-millimeter Beretta automatic, the safety off, the hammer cocked.
When the crash came, it was close and off to his left. Sweeney turned directly and hurried down the aisle in that direction, taking great care to make as little noise as possible.
His heart was hammering and his mouth was dry, and when Privet stepped out into the aisle barely fifteen feet away, Sweeney nearly shot him.
The Russian could have been anyone: a bureaucrat, a tourist, a clerk, one of a hundred thousand exactly like him. But this one stopped at the intersection between two rows and raised his pistol.
“Privet,” Sweeney shouted, raising his own gun.
The Russian spun around in surprise. For an instant it was clear he could not make a decision, but then his gun hand started to come around.
“No,” Sweeney shouted, and a moment later he fired three shots. The first caught Privet in the left side, spinning him around; the second hit him in the chest; and the third slammed into his forehead, blowing out the back of his head as he fell.
Gremiakin ejected the spent clip from his AK-47 and slapped his last into place as the heavy thump of still another explosion came from the rear of the department store. The bastards had blown the back door. He couldn’t remember which of his men was back there, but it was a safe bet he was dead by now. As they would all be soon. If only the Western press and television reporters had shown up.
Holding the assault rifle out in front of him, Gremiakin pointed it around the corner and squeezed off a burst. Someone cried out in pain.
Returning fire slammed into the stone beside the doorway in which Gremiakin crouched, sending sharp chips flying into his face and eyes, blood spurting down his forehead and obliterating his vision.
“Bastards,” he shouted at the top of his lungs, and leaped out into the central corridor, firing toward the main doors as he moved.
At least fifteen bullets slammed into his legs, his head, and his neck, knocking him out of his shoes, killing him before he stopped falling.
Kaplin just managed to get off the bridge a second after Gremiakin had gone down, when an explosion lifted its center section two meters straight up, and it began to tumble and fall. The force from the blast had also blown a huge hole in the skylights, glass flying everywhere.
Back at the opening, he fired the last of his ammunition down into the central corridor, and then fell back.
It was over now. None of them had believed they would survive this night. But if it got Western attention, then they would have succeeded.
The sound of the battle below him in the corridor was intense. The Militia, the KGB, the Army, whoever it was, knew their business, and were not fooling around.
Pushing himself away from the wall he’d been leaning against, he went back to the switchboard room.
The instant the firing stopped from the bridge archway on the third floor, Kiselev moved out from under the protection of the shop doorway and scanned the second and third levels on the northwest side of the central corridor.
Solyakov, who’d turned out to be a damned good fighter, did the same on the other side.
They’d each lost three men. So far, Kiselev added in his head. So far.
There was a short burst of firing from above, inside the building somewhere, probably from the troops who’d come in through the back. They’d radioed that they’d put down two hostiles and were working their way up to the third floor.
The building fell silent.
Solyakov looked at Kiselev with a questioning shrug. There was a movement above.
Kiselev swung his assault rifle in that direction. Second floor. Someone in the doorway of a shop. A man. Unarmed, his hands over his head. He stepped out onto the walkway.
For a moment Kiselev looked up at the man. Then he squeezed the AK-47’s trigger, driving the traitor backward into the glass storefront in a spray of blood.
Larissa was alone in the switchboard room, huddled in the corner. She was shivering.
“Where are the others?” he asked her.
She looked up and shook her head, unable to speak.
The firing had stopped. It meant everyone else was either dead or captured. If they were taken alive, they would be sent back to Lefortovo. Kaplin knew that he could not handle that. Not now. Not ever again. Neither could Larissa. They had nothing left to give, no strength with which to endure.
“Come, little one, it’s time to leave,” Kaplin said, gently helping her to her feet.
Outside in the corridor he could hear someone coming, boots loud on the wooden floors. He turned the other way and he and Larissa shuffled painfully away.
“Clear up here,” Solyakov’s walkie-talkie blared.
“Any survivors among the hostiles?” the Militia captain radioed back. He was slightly sick to his stomach. This carnage had been unnecessary.
“No, Comrade Captain. There are no survivors.”
Solyakov looked at Kiselev, who seemed smugly satisfied. “There, it is done.”
Kiselev started to nod as a very strong white light suddenly illuminated the interior of the central corridor.
“What the fuck …” He spun on his heel as more lights came on, and dozens of people streamed through the broad opening blasted in the storefront.
“Major Kiselev,” a man shouted from behind the lights. “Major Kiselev, can you tell us what has happened here?”
“What is this?” Kiselev roared. “Who are these people?”
“Dan Boyer, ABC News,” the man shouted.
27
SWEENEY PICKED UP A TELEPHONE ON THE WALL AT THE END OF the stacks where Tyson had gone down, and dialed Drury’s number at Langley.
He’d stuffed his handkerchief inside Tyson’s shirt sleeve to staunch the flow of blood, and helped the man to the table and chair near the phone.
“It’ll be all right now, Mr. Tyson,” Sweeney told him. “Privet is dead.”
While Sweeney waited for his call to go through, he looked over at Tyson, who was watching him.
“It was you,” Tyson said.
“Me?”
“At the side of the road with …”
“Your daughter?” Sweeney said. “Yes, sir, it was me.”
“What’s she like … ?” Tyson asked, but Drury was on the line, and Sweeney turned his attention away.
“Where the hell are you, Richard?” Drury asked. “Christ, the Bureau is all over our asses.”
“I’m at the Library of Congress,” Sweeney said. “With Tyson and one dead Russian assassin.”
“Son of a bitch,” Drury said after a slight hesitation.
“You can say that again. What I’m going to need is some help. Tyson’s been wounded in the arm, and I don’t want him to go into shock on me. Besides, there’s no telling if any of the opposition is around. I’m about done in on gunfights, if you know what I mean.”
“What about the Bureau?”
“Out front for the moment, but I don’t think it’ll be long before they get down here.”
“Help is on its way, Richard. Just hang on. And for God’s sake, don’t lose Tyson.”
“No,” Sweeney said, and he hung up. Tyson was still looking at him.
“What’s she like?” Tyson asked.
“Very Russian, Mr. Tyson,” Sweeney replied. “Very Russian.”
A Company helicopter touched down on the Capitol grounds across the street from the library about the same time the ambulance and a half dozen FBI units showed up.
Adkins climbed down from the chopper, and keeping low, hurried out from under the rotor blades and got into the backseat of Young’s chauffeur-driven limousine.
“Tyson is innocent,” Adkins said without greeting the FBI man.
“So it would seem,” Young agreed. “At least innocent of actually being a spy. But he showed damned poor judgment in his choice of mistresses. A Russian in the sixties and another now.”
“So he’s out as national security adviser. From what I’m told, the President’s friend Charles Gleason has agreed to come over from Reston to take the job.”
“Not soon enough.”
The ambulance attendants hustled into the library with a stretcher.
“Where do we go next?” Adkins asked.
