And tonight was one of those times.
The Horse wore a dark cotton jumpsuit and black leather boots. Every exposed piece of flesh was smeared with gray cammy, including his eyelids, lips, and even his teeth, allowing him to blend nearly perfectly into the night. He crouched under the thick brush that lined the side of the rutted, gravel road. A tiny radio transmitter was strapped to his waist. With its pea-sized speaker stuffed tightly in his ear and the tiny microphone clipped to his collar, the man could communicate without using his hands.
The Horse glanced at his watch. 21:26. Three minutes to go.
“Trojans up,” he whispered to the darkness. His ear piece crackled just slightly as his transmitter scrambled and broadcast his voice over the VHF frequency.
Twelve miles to his south, level with the tops of the trees, a tiny helicopter sped through the night, controlled by a single pilot. Despite years of training and a thousand hours of combat flying, the pilot was tight as piano wire.
Pulling his chopper over the top of a ridge, he banked slightly to the right and pushed the noisy machine down a small valley. He navigated only by feel, never referring to a chart. Indeed, he didn’t even have one. He had rehearsed the mission so many times, he could have navigated the route in his sleep.
The pilot reached down and keyed his mike. “Say status?”
“No contact.”
The pilot swore violently under his breath. “Say position?”
“Charlie.”
“Say time?”
“Three minutes.”
The pilot swore once again, cursing in fear.
The Horse didn’t respond. Settling deeper under the brush, he scanned the road once again.
The Russian pushed himself to his feet and brushed the mud from his eyes. Far, far in the distance a dull “whoop” rolled through the forest, barely perceptible to the human ear. The Russian turned and ran without notice. The darkness began to break, deep shadows giving way to dim light. Without warning, he burst through the trees and onto the road, his shoes crunching across the wet gravel.
Lifting his face, he searched the night sky for the north star to show him the way, but the tree line blocked his view. In a panic, he ran to his left, then suddenly stopped and turned back to his right. Frozen in the middle of the road, he listened.
He could hear him out in the trees. The man had followed him through the deep forest. The soft rustle of dead winter leaves. The snap of a twig. Soggy branches being pushed out of the way.
Turning quickly, the Russian took a deep breath and gathered himself for the run.
Two hundred feet across the Borodinski bridge stood the Klanublsky Towers. Resting atop a small outcropping of granite and sand, they lined both sides of the bridge, standing as twin sentinels over the eastern side of the river. Four arched capstones rose more than 100 feet into the air, providing a perfect view of the road down below. High atop the northern tower, two unidentified men lay in a prone position, their blackened faces barely visible over the high granite wall. As the motorcade approached the bridge, they each dropped ANVIS Night-Vision goggles down in front of their eyes. With the goggles in place, the two men could easily make out the individual features of the men who sat in each of the cars, their faces ghostlike and surreal in the faint, green light of the goggles. As they counted the cars in the caravan, both men noted the small red light shining brightly from the roof of Fedotov’s car.
The first man picked up a rifle-like object. It was small and light as an umbrella. The man looked through the telescopic lens and focused on the first car in the motorcade, then flipped a switch and pulled the trigger. An invisible beam of laser hit the car squarely on the windscreen, scattering billions of protons of energy in all directions. Meanwhile, the second man picked up a much larger weapon. He quickly loaded two huge shells, just as the motorcade was crossing the threshold of the bridge. Traffic had been stopped for the oncoming dignitaries and the sedans in the motorcade were now the only cars in sight.
“Ready?” the second man mumbled, his breath emitting just a hint of moist vapor into the cold air.
His companion took a deep breath and held it, then nodded his head in reply.
The first rocket was fired. Sensors inside the small warhead immediately picked up the scattering pool of energy that was washing around the window of the first sedan. It honed in like a missile, traveling the distance to the car in less than a second, then impacted the windscreen with a crash. The shell didn’t detonate until it had passed through the glass and into the interior of the car, where it exploded with a fury, blasting seat fibers, glass, and jagged pieces of hot metal in all directions. Mingled among the exploding debris were charred pieces of clothing and broken fragments of bone, the remains of the four men who had once occupied the now-burning car.
The car rocked up on its front tires as it exploded. The second car in the motorcade crashed into the wreckage, creating a sufficient roadblock to stop the remaining cars from going any further across the bridge.
Within seconds another shell was on its way. This one honed in on the third car in the procession. Before the driver of the Presidential sedan had any time to react, it was over. The President of Russia was now dead.
A huge fireball rolled across the bridge, splitting the night air with a roar. Shadows burned and flickered across the empty road as the fireball rose in the air. The driver of the Prime Minister’s sedan slammed on the brakes. He knew instantly what had happened, and realized that the only thing he could do to save his life was to get his car off the bridge. He shoved the heavy sedan into reverse before it had come to a stop, the transmission grinding and jerking from the strain. As he started to back up, he tried to look through his rearview mirror. But he couldn’t see a thing. The interior glass panel that separated him from the back scat was nothing but a flat sheet of black glass. Turning to his sideview mirror, he accelerated backward, weaving like a madman through the maze of limousines that now lay strewn across the bridge.
It would only take a few seconds to get off the bridge. Then he would steer the car off the embankment and onto the safety of the low ground by the Moscow River. A few seconds was all he needed to save the Prime Minister, as well as himself.
The second assassin was reloading his weapon. Reaching beside him, he pulled a red-tipped shell from a black leather pouch and shoved it down the muzzle of his weapon. The shell was very short and not as round. Inside its hard steel casing was a mixture of gunpowder and sawdust, giving it only a fraction of the explosive power of the shell that had been fired at Sakarovek. Leveling the missile launcher against the side of the granite balcony, he pulled the trigger once again. His companion had already focused his laser on the faint red light on the roof of the fleeing limousine. The shell honed in on its target. Another explosion rocked the air, noticeably less forceful than the first. The blast blew out all of the windows and buckled the roof of the car. The two men in the front seat of the Prime Minister’s sedan were instantly killed.
Broken glass and burning powder exploded into the rear compartment, tearing at Fedotov’s neck and arms and scorching his hair into tiny, white curls. His suit was tattered and his face was smeared with blood. However, the front seat and thick privacy glass had absorbed most of the shock, and for the most part, Vladimir Fedotov had been protected as he lay on the floor.
After the shell exploded, his car continued to roll backward before it crashed against a high cement guardrail that lined the side of the bridge. As the limousine crunched to a stop, Fedotov rolled out the back door and crawled over to the side of the bridge. From where he crouched, it was only a twenty-foot fall to the water. He looked around quickly, then let himself over the side rail, just as the fourth and final shell hit another sedan. The explosion rocked the bridge and shattered the air, sending a burning tire to bounce over the guardrail and drop into the cold river down below.