There were no Black River personnel left alive that Bourne could see, and Arkadin‘s cadre lay strewn on the smoking ground. Bourne ran into the smoke and immediately his eyes began to tear; his breath felt ragged in his throat as his lungs labored. In that moment he sensed something coming at him from out of the swirling blackness, and he ducked, but not quite in time.
Arkadin‘s two-handed blow caught him on the shoulder, spinning him around. For the moment, the Luger was useless, and Arkadin delivered a punch to the side of Bourne‘s head, staggering him further. Bourne felt as if both his head and his chest were about to explode, but when Arkadin lunged for the Luger, he struck out with the barrel, flaying open a long bloody wound on Arkadin‘s cheek, so deep he could see bone.
Arkadin reeled backward into the thick black pall, and Bourne squeezed off the Luger‘s last three rounds. He careered through the smoke, searching for his foe, coming at last out of the plume. He turned in all directions, but Arkadin was nowhere to be seen.
All at once he was on his knees, felled by the pain in his chest. His head hung down, the agony all-encompassing. In his mind he saw the fire creeping through him, threatening to consume him, and he thought of what Tracy had said as she lay in his arms, dying: “It’s in our darkest hour that our secrets eat us alive.”
And then in the center of that fire a face appeared—a face made of fire.
It was the face of Shiva, the god of destruction and resurrection. Was it Shiva who lifted him to his feet? He‘d never know, because one moment he was on the verge of collapse, the next he stood swaying on his feet.
And it was then that he saw Boris lying at the edge of the crater, his head covered in blood.
Ignoring his own pain, Bourne dug his hands under Karpov‘s armpits and hauled him up. Then, with the tracers buzzing through the air overhead, he dipped his knees and threw Boris over his shoulder. Gritting his teeth, he began to pick his way past the dead and the dying, the still-smoldering remnants of human beings, toward the Russian helicopter.
Several times, he was forced to stop either by the hail of machine-gun fire or by the pain that gripped his heart like a vise cinched so tight he could scarcely breathe. Once, he went down on one knee, and the blackened hand of a soldier—of which side it was impossible to tell—grabbed at the fabric of his trousers. Bourne tried to brush it away, but the fingers stuck to him like glue. All around him half-shattered faces seemed to turn to him, shrieking in the silent agony of their death throes. They were all the same now, these victims of violence that was always, at heart, senseless. Their allegiances were rendered irrelevant by chaos, blood, and fire, erasing not only their humanity but also their beliefs—that one thing that drove them, whether it be politics, religion, or simply money. They were all jumbled together under a lowering sky filled with the ashes of their compatriots and their enemies.
Finally, he peeled the soldier‘s grip off him and, rising unsteadily, continued on his agonizing journey over the blasted landscape. Visibility was now an issue, what with the oily smoke that choked the already filthy air. As if in a dream, the Russian helicopter seemed to fade in and out of focus, to be at first near at hand, then thousands of yards distant. He ran, stopped, crouched over, panting, then ran on again, feeling like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill but never getting to the top. His goal still seemed a mile away, and so he kept on, one foot in front of the other, stumbling and loping with his ungainly burden, zigzagging through the zone of death this mini-war had produced. And at last, lungs bursting, eyes tearing, he saw Boris‘s men pour out of the shelter of the helicopter to meet him and their fallen commander. They took him off Bourne‘s numb shoulder, and he fell to his knees. Two of Boris‘s men lifted him to his feet and fed him water.
But more bad news awaited him here. Boris‘s crew had been forced to abandon the Havoc, which had been rendered inoperable by the missile strike.
Bourne, looking around while he tried to regain his breath, directed them to the Air Afrika jet, sitting idle three hundred yards away.
They encountered no one around the jet or on the gangway. The door gaped open. Inside, they discovered why: The crew had been bound and gagged, presumably by Arkadin and his cadre. Bourne gave the order to free them.
They lay the colonel down on the floor of the Air Afrika jet and the medic crouched over him, beginning his examination.
After five anxious minutes, when he tested and probed, he looked up at Bourne and the men hovering around. ―The leg is a simple break and is no problem,‖ he said. ―As for his wound, it could have been worse. The bullet grazed the side of his head, but didn‘t crack the skull. That‘s the good news.‖ His hands continued to work on his fallen commander. ―The bad news is he‘s got a serious concussion. Pressure is building in his brain; I‘m going to have to relieve it by drilling a small hole‖—he pointed to a spot on Boris‘s right temple—‖just here.‖ He took a closer look at Bourne and clucked his tongue. ―Still and all, I can only do triage. We need to get him to a hospital as quickly as possible.‖
Bourne went up front and gave the Air Afrika pilot and navigator orders to take them back to Khartoum. At once, they began their preflight checklist.
The engines came on one by one.
―Please strap yourself in,‖ the medic said when Bourne returned. ―I‘ll see to you as soon as I‘ve got Colonel Karpov‘s condition stabilized.‖
Bourne was in no condition to argue. He collapsed into a seat, stripped off his jacket and the spent packets of pig blood Arkadin‘s bullets had ripped open. He said a silent prayer to the spirit of the pig who‘d given its life to spare his own, and could not help seeing in his mind‘s eye the great carved pig at the pool in Bali.
He unstrapped the Kevlar vest and buckled up, but his gaze never left Karpov‘s prone form. He looked deathly pale, there was blood all over him, and for the first time in Bourne‘s spotty memory he looked truly vulnerable.
Bourne found himself wondering whether he‘d looked like that to Moira after he‘d been shot in Tenganan.
As they began to roll down the runway, he had the presence of mind to call Soraya on his sat phone and tell her what happened.
―I‘ll get to General LeBowe, who‘s commanding the allied forces, and tell him to stand down,‖ Soraya said. ―He‘s a good man, he‘ll listen. Especially when I tell him that by tomorrow morning we‘ll have enough hard evidence to prove it was Black River, not Iranian terrorists, who fired the Kowsar 3.‖
―A lot of people in the US government are going to have egg on their faces,‖ Bourne said wearily.
―With what we have, I‘m hoping more than egg for some of them,‖ Soraya said. ―Anyway, it wouldn‘t be the first time and it sure as hell won‘t be the last.‖
He heard three huge blasts from somewhere outside. Looking through the Perspex window he saw Perlis‘s parting gift: the Black Hawk had fired missiles into each of the wells. They were now all on fire. Doubtless this was his way of ensuring that, even if he survived, Arkadin wouldn‘t get his hands on them.