The wheels finally took hold of the road and the SUV picked up speed, putting distance between Kyra and the soldiers now running in her direction. The sound of bullets perforating the tailgate sounded in the cab, like sharp thumps, rain on a metal roof. She kept her head down until she was at least three hundred yards distant.
The road bordered the residential complex in a rounded square. Whatever the speed limit was, Kyra went fast enough to break it, hoping the scream of the engine would be warning enough for anyone walking the streets outside the Spetsnaz cordon to stay clear. She pulled to the outside edge of the road, slowed a bit, then accelerated into the turn. The road straightened out for five hundred feet. Three more turns and Kyra was on the Kurkinskoye road again, pushing the SUV as hard as it would go.
Her eyes went to the rearview mirror, and she saw a black sedan pull onto the road a half mile behind her, taking the turn hard enough to convince Kyra that it was a chase car. A second car followed behind, an identical model but for its blue color, and both vehicles accelerated faster than any normal car could have managed. Upgraded engines, Kyra decided. She ran the Tiguan’s accelerometer into the red. The chase cars were still closing distance.
Splitting her attention between the rearview and the road ahead, she marked off a passing tree, then began counting seconds. Kyra kept her eyes locked on the mirror, watching until the cars behind reached the mark. Thirty seconds, she decided. They’ll catch up in thirty seconds.
Side road? She considered the option, but she didn’t know where any of them would take her. The probability that she would encounter a dead end or get blocked off by the Spetsnaz seemed high.
The main road bent to the right, leading out of the residential area into a more wooded, undeveloped landscape, and the highway began curving gently back and forth. That would slow down her pursuers and buy her a few seconds.
She couldn’t continue on this road. The men behind her would have radios, they would be calling for help, and eventually she would find a roadblock in her path or a helicopter overhead that she would never evade. She needed to break contact and get out of the chase cars’ line of sight.
The road straightened out again. She saw empty green fields to both sides, with long tree lines at the far side of each. Kyra searched for a break in the woods, anywhere she could take the SUV that their street cars behind couldn’t follow. She saw nothing.
She looked in the mirror. The cars were within a few lengths of the Tiguan. She was out of time. Within a few seconds, they would draw guns and take out her rear tires.
There was one maneuver she could try, the one her trainers in the Agency’s “Crash and Bang” course had drawn up on the whiteboard, but refused to let the students practice, citing its lethal potential. She’d never tried it before, didn’t know if it would work.
What do you think, Jon? she asked.
This is not a good idea, the absent man replied.
You always say that, she countered. You got a better idea?
There was no answer. That’s a no. “C’mon,” she muttered, looking at the Russian cars in the mirror.
Kurkinskoye was a two-lane road. A car passed in the opposite direction, and Kyra saw both lanes ahead were clear for at least a mile. She let the Tiguan drift to the right, almost onto the shoulder, so the lead car could see open path. The driver bit hard on that bait, pulled to the left, and accelerated. Kyra saw the black sedan’s front passenger window begin to roll down as it passed into her blind spot. Someone inside would be lining up for a shot.
Kyra tapped her brakes, dumping a little speed and letting the lead car shoot ahead. A pistol shot from inside the other vehicle went wide as the gunner hurried the shot and missed her Tiguan completely. Then she poured on the gas, pulling up and putting her front left tire even with the hostile car’s right rear quarter.
Bye bye, she thought.
Kyra turned her steering wheel hard left and the Tiguan’s front bumper struck the Russians’ rear tire, pushing hard against the black vehicle.
The sedan’s back end skewed and all four tires lost their grip on the asphalt. White smoke began pouring out as the rubber turned molten from the friction. The car’s front end spun into Kyra’s lane, and she slowed enough to let it rotate until the entire vehicle was sliding sideways down the road at a right angle to her. The SUV shuddered as the passenger-side doors struck her front. She steered her truck left and the car finally spun out. The driver had no control now, his attempts to steer useless as the car slid on pools of liquid made of its own melting tires. The car rotated until it was facing the opposite direction. Kyra stomped on the gas and pulled past it.
The black sedan kept rotating until it was almost crossways in the road again. The blue car’s driver had seen Kyra push the other vehicle, watched as it spun until Kyra’s SUV blocked it from his view. Thinking that Kyra would swerve right and his teammates’ car would come to a spinning halt on the left, he’d swerved to the right side of the road to avoid the coming wreck. But he was following too closely behind to react when the black car appeared in front of him. The lead chase car had pinwheeled across the entire road.
The blue sedan’s driver spun his own steering wheel, desperately trying to avoid his black twin, but there was nowhere left to go. The darker car was still spinning, white smoke blinding them both to anything coming ahead. He pushed the brakes to the floor, a mistake that forced the blue sedan’s tires to lock up. They too went liquid from the friction as the car’s inertia forced it to keep rushing down the road.
The cars slammed into each other, the front of the blue sedan connecting with the driver’s door of the black vehicle, crumpling both. The black sedan driver’s left arm and leg were shattered on contact, his ribs snapping like kindling from a dead oak tree. Steam and black smoke erupted from the blue car’s engine. Fluids gushed out of the undercarriage, leaving a stream of oil on the road and marking the death skid of its owner.
The weight of the black sedan finally dragged the blue car to a stop, its front end still crushed into the lead car’s side. The black smoke rising up from engine oil burning on the hot engine block mixed with the white fog of the melting tires and steaming radiators, filling the air with a noxious gray concoction that blocked their view of the Kurkinskoye.
Kyra accelerated until she was out of the Russian soldiers’ line of sight, then took the first right turn she found. Five more random turns and she found herself approaching a major highway. She could still see the faint pillar of smoke rising from the Spetsnaz cars now over a mile away.
She maneuvered the Tiguan onto the major artery, and only then asked the GPS unit to show her the way back to the safe house.
Sokolov opened the folder and stared down at the paperwork, still filled out with manual typewriters. Computers were a danger to security and he used them as little as possible. “Elizaveta Igoryevna Puchkov. You had a fine record of service, Major.”
The woman in handcuffs across the table kept her mouth closed and didn’t look up. She was a pretty thing, not the most attractive woman he’d ever seen, a little short, a bit overweight, black hair cut to a bob. The file said she was divorced, almost forty, childless, though he wondered whether that was by choice or nature’s cruelty. The latter, he hoped. The Rodina needed strong children and the president of the Russian Federation had all but declared a refusal to bear them an act of disloyalty to the country. Not a crime, technically speaking, but some men would have called it another act of treason to add to the paper stack on the table.