Kismet’s cheek struck a hard object beneath the assassin’s robes, the silenced pistol, but it was something soft and yielding pressing into his forehead that caused him to falter in the ferocity of his assault.
The veiled killer struggled free of his grasp and Kismet careened headlong. He managed to recover his footing and backpedaled to block the exit once more, but the assassin no longer seemed interested in escaping by that route. Instead, with robes fluttering like the scarves of a dancer, his foe whirled around and dove toward the balcony wall. Kismet gasped involuntarily as the other figure took flight.
He reached the railing just in time to see the assassin land gracefully, cat-like, on two feet. The downward momentum translated effortlessly into forward motion and the assassin moved unimpeded toward the exit, oblivious to the amazed exclamations of clueless laborers working in the garden.
“Shit.” Kismet muttered the rare curse because he knew what he had to do.
With considerably less elegance than his opponent, and a good deal more trepidation, he closed his fists around the railing and vaulted over the barrier. He kept his handhold firm, describing a pendulum motion with his body, until the soles of his feet were parallel with the floor. Only then did he let go, narrowly avoiding a collision with the outward facing balcony wall, and dropped two vertical meters to crash noisily into an unidentifiable thorn bush. The assassin reached the entrance lobby while he struggled to disentangle himself, and Kismet knew he had lost the race.
The assassin hit the double doors, blasting through them with hardly a pause, and continued through the elaborate archway. After the controlled interior lighting of the museum, the rays of the midday sun stabbed down like knives, causing the robed figure to raise a shading arm. No one took notice. What was one more traditionally dressed Arab in a nation almost exclusively populated by them? The killer slowed to a walk, staying close to the outer edge of the building, and crept along the perimeter. The soldiers, unaware of the commotion inside the museum, carried out aimless patrols around their vehicles or huddled together in small knots of conversation. Aziz’s slayer saw an opening and launched into motion.
A lone infantryman stood at the rear of D-42, the refueling vehicle, idly smoking a cigarette and paying attention to little else. The assassin moved like lightning, flashing in front of the hapless soldier and striking before the young man could even register surprise. A slashing blow to his exposed throat left the soldier gasping for air, while the robed killer effortlessly ripped his carbine away.
The violent attack did not go unnoticed by the other soldiers, but the lethargy of too much heat and too little action slowed their collective response. Before a single man could lift his weapon, the assassin checked the captured M4, advanced a round, and switched the fire selector to “burst”. Fire and lead erupted from the muzzle, splitting the silence with a series of rapid cracking sounds. To a man, the infantry squad hit the ground, dashing for cover as they wrestled to bring their weapons to bear, but their target had already moved on.
The assassin popped open the door to the Humvee and slipped inside with practiced familiarity. The military vehicle had a simple starter switch and was secured only by a padlocked cable looped around the steering wheel. Using the stubby barrel of the carbine as a pry-bar, the assassin broke the shackle and toggled the starter switch. The diesel fuel, already warmed by the desert sun, ignited instantly.
Kismet could barely hear the shots through the dense brick walls, but what he could make out was enough to slow his pace as he ran toward the exit. His shirt and the skin underneath had been torn to shreds during his violent extrication from the museum’s interior gardens, but he gave it little thought. He was far more concerned about catching a stray bullet as he stepped outside the sheltering brick structure.
The distinctive popping sound of gunfire ceased as he reached the doors, but he continued with hasty caution, moving in a duck walk through the archway. He eased around the corner, just in time to see a lone Humvee tearing out of the parking area and onto the street. The pandemonium that lingered in its wake was explanation enough as to what had just occurred. The lone assassin had somehow stolen the vehicle under the noses of the infantrymen and was escaping.
Colonel Buttrick was already marshaling his troops for the pursuit, but every passing second put the fleeing Humvee further away. Before Kismet could cross half the distance to the parking area however, the first of the three transports took off in a spray of sand and gravel, while three soldiers, now standing in a firing line, continued to pump short bursts from their carbines at the rapidly diminishing target vehicle. If the bullets found their mark, they were insufficient to slow the assassin.
A second Humvee pulled away close on the heels of the first and Kismet saw the third give a slight tremor as its gears were engaged. Desperate to reach that last remaining vehicle, he sprinted ahead, no longer concerned about the exchange of weapons fire.
He was not sure what exactly he hoped to accomplish. Catching up to Aziz’s killer seemed a remote possibility at best, but that individual was the only person remaining who could answer the question burning in Kismet’s mind: why had Aziz been silenced?
The death of the curator had been eerily familiar. The killer had controlled the situation, yet upon discovery, Aziz had become the target, not Kismet. The phone call had evidently been a ruse to separate the Iraqi from his inquisitors, yet for what purpose? Had he been marked for death all along? What secret had died on his lips? Kismet knew from experience that secrets worth killing for were the kind of secrets that most needed to be revealed, and presently the assassin was his only link to that secret. If the soldiers succeeded in overrunning the fleeing Humvee, they would probably follow the time-honored progression of shooting before questioning. Perhaps that fact, more than anything else, spurred him onward as he drew closer to his last opportunity to join the chase.
As he closed to within ten meters, the Humvee’s rear tires began to turn. A scattershot of gravel blasted into his face as the driver punched the accelerator a little too eagerly, and Kismet involuntarily looked away for a moment. Three more steps, in less than a second, brought him to the place where, only a moment before, the Humvee had sat idle. Now there was only a toxic cloud of diesel exhaust. Still running, he thrust out both hands, blindly groping for the vehicle as he blinked away the sand and fumes.
The fingers of his right hand bounced off the hardened aluminum exterior of the rear hatch, momentarily catching on the fabric of the white United Nations banner rigged across the back end of the vehicle. His left hand however closed on something more substantiaclass="underline" the driver’s side antenna mount. He reflexively closed his fingers, gripping the coiled spring of metal as he might a lifeline.
The Humvee lurched forward and Kismet was abruptly yanked along with it. A stabbing pain shot from his elbow to his shoulder as his full weight suddenly depended from that lone extremity, but he did not let go. He made a futile effort to run behind the vehicle. There was no hope of keeping pace with the racing transport, but Kismet reckoned he only needed to get his feet under him long enough to propel himself up and onto the rear hatch. If he failed to do that, nothing else would matter.
For a moment or two, he succeeded. Pouring on a burst of speed, he actually managed to run along behind the Humvee, easing the strain on his left arm incrementally. He could feel the ground vanishing beneath his toes, moving faster than his legs could propel him, and knew that he would only get one chance. With two more bounding steps, he threw his right hand forward, groping for anything that might give him a second secure point of contact.