Judging from Paladin’s current position on the runway and the men now moving toward the jet, Fisher assumed that the charter pilot couldn’t get his plane moving in time. The C-17 was coming, and nothing could stop it.
Chern’s party began storming across the tarmac, their gazes still distracted by the Paladin’s approach.
“Come on, Sam, I got a bead,” said Briggs.
“On three,” answered Fisher. He counted down while staring through his night-vision scope, the reticle centered over the Russian’s head as the man walked toward the plane.
Fisher took a deep breath.
Exhaled halfway.
And slowly squeezed the trigger. The hammer strike was, indeed, a surprise, and before the round even left his muzzle, he could tell this was a good shot.
The round struck the Russian’s head, knocking him forward, onto his stomach.
Briggs’s rifle cracked a nanosecond after Fisher’s, and another of Chern’s men took a round just left of his ear and tumbled sideways, away from the mechanic he’d been escorting.
Then, with remarkable precision, Briggs got on his second target as the man was attempting to hit the deck. Chern’s last associate was a handsome blond man with the trendy hairstyle of a Calvin Klein model. Briggs’s round removed a section of the man’s head before he reached the ground.
The old man Chern whirled and seized the pilot, grabbing him in a choke hold and using him to shield himself against Fisher and Briggs.
Chern stole a glance over his shoulder as Paladin’s nose came up behind the tiny charter jet like a white shark casting its massive shadow over the tarmac.
Fisher burst from the gloom with Briggs at his side. They charged toward Chern, who shuffled in retreat, nearing the open door and fold-out stairs.
Briggs shouted for the cowboy and mechanic to get back to the hangar, and they weren’t arguing. Fisher had never seen a man that large run that fast.
Fisher locked his gaze on Chern and shouted in Russian, “Sorry, this flight’s been cancelled!”
“You think glib remarks can save you now?” Chern cried.
Charlie, who now had control of the drone, brought the UAV in tight over Fisher and Chern.
Meanwhile, Briggs had his rifle raised at the Russian, keeping the man’s head in his sights.
The charter pilot was a clean-cut guy in his thirties, probably a young father who looked tense but was smart enough to keep still and offer no resistance, giving Briggs a cleaner line. Still, a sticky shocker to the head was not a good thing, especially for an old man like Chern. Better to free the hostage and target his center of mass with that shocker.
“Stand down,” Fisher ordered as he lifted his hand toward Paladin. “You’re done.”
Chern took a step back toward the jet. “You’re a little man with a big job. And this job is too big for you.”
“Listen to me,” Fisher cried even louder now, his patience gone, his anger working its way into his hands and the vice-like grip he kept on the rifle.
Chern shook his head. “There are no more words!”
Fisher lowered his rifle and took a step closer. “We know who you are. We know what you’ve done. Don’t waste any more of my time with this standoff—because my partner will blow your brains out.”
“He’ll do nothing! You want me for information!”
Fisher smiled. “I don’t need shit from you. Your plan has three stages. We know all about them. We know who your bosses are, and right now President Treskayev is having them all arrested. It’s over!”
Chern muttered something under his breath, his hair beginning to rage in the engine wash, his piercing blue eyes widening with what Fisher assumed would be a sense of defeat but strangely, something else was there. Something unnerving. His gaze was now borderline maniacal, and whatever he had in that briefcase must’ve been hugely important, because he’d taken the pilot with one hand but had never let go of the case.
Abruptly, he shoved the pilot aside, and the man took off running toward the hangar.
“You made the right decision,” Fisher shouted.
Chern clutched the briefcase to his chest and began shaking his head. “We must all make our sacrifices for the motherland.”
Fisher’s mouth fell open.
There was no computer with satellite link inside that briefcase.
No documents associated with the oligarchs’ plan.
No innocent travel arrangements or pornographic magazines or personal hygiene items.
There was, Fisher concluded in that second, only one thing:
A way for Chern to ensure that he was not captured by the enemy and turned for information.
Chern had been prepared all along for that contingency, and his associates had probably had no idea that inside his simple briefcase were blocks of C-4 rigged to a detonator built into the case’s handle.
Chern’s thumb slammed down on a button at the base of that handle.
Fisher turned to Briggs and cried, “Run!”
Grim and Charlie were shouting in their ears, but it was all white noise as Fisher wondered how many steps he could take before the explosion went off.
An even more troubling thought jabbed like a needle: What if Chern wasn’t just committing suicide?
What if he had something much more powerful than C-4 inside that case?
“There is always plan B,” Kasperov had said.
30
THAT Fisher had run past Chern, beneath the charter jet’s nose, and toward Paladin One was a decision born of experience and not an instinctual reaction to fear. An untrained man would’ve unconsciously retreated to the rear, as nature had intended. You back away from danger, not run toward it.
But Fisher knew that sprinting across the tarmac and back toward the hangar would’ve left them unprotected and that the detonation would’ve first shredded them, then set ablaze what was left of their bodies. Having his remains positively identified by an FBI forensics team was not exactly on his bucket list.
As he and Briggs passed beneath the jet, Chern did, indeed, make his sacrifice to the motherland.
The explosion shook the asphalt and kicked the charter jet back toward Paladin One in the first second.
Next came the concussion that swept Fisher and Briggs off their feet and launched them into the air, even as their ears began to ring.
Strangely enough, as Fisher’s boots left the ground, his thoughts focused not on the impending doom and promise of physical pain but on identifying the nature of the explosion. And he sure as hell knew the sound of C-4 detonating versus other types of explosions. So there was a moment of relief—a sigh that lasted all of a second in knowing that this was a conventional explosion. This was not one of the famed or, rather, infamous RA-115s, aka “suitcase nukes” identified years ago by GRU defector Stanislav Lunev.
Better still, because the charter plane was taking the brunt of the explosion and they were wearing their Kevlar-weave tac-suits, Fisher thought maybe, just maybe, they might actually survive the blast.
They flew nearly twenty feet before crashing and rolling to the tarmac, the fireballs lifting behind them, the fully fueled charter plane engulfed in the flames.
Lying there, just a few meters away from Paladin One’s forward landing gear, Fisher wanted to stand and signal the pilot to get the hell out—
But there was no need. As if on cue, the plane began backing away from the fires, the engines spinning up as Fisher stole a look back, the world still spinning from his fall, the roaring just a muted bass note behind the high-pitched ringing.
The charter jet had been cut in half just behind the wings, its cockpit blown onto its side, the tail assembly lying askew and licked by orange fires spreading rapidly across the tarmac, fed by severed fuel lines. Puddles of pale yellow fluid swelled around the plane and whooshed into flames.