McAllister parked his car about seventy-five yards up from Sikorski’s clearing, dousing the lights and shutting off the engine, but leaving the keys. Under the hood he pulled out the main wire from the electronic ignition system, rendering the car inoperative for the moment.
It was nearly dark now. He trotted down the road to the clearing and in the distance to the north he could see the lights of Reston.
The snow was deep up here, the only footprints were his, leading directly across to the front door of the cabin. He hurried down the same path so that it wouldn’t appear as if he had come and gone and returned again, entered the dark, silent house and crossed immediately to the kitchen where he let himself out, crossed the backyard well out of sight of the driveway, and scrambled down the steep hill to the path he’d found this afternoon. Now that the sun had gone down the temperature was dropping rapidly. Still he was sweating and the wound in his side was aching by the time he had circled around to the woods that sloped up from the house parallel to, but above, the driveway. A few snowflakes began to fall as he stopped about fifty yards from the house, cocking his ear to listen and scanning the dark woods in the direction of the driveway for any sign that Potemkin and his triggermen had shown up. But there was nothing, only the occasional whisper of a light wind in the treetops, and he continued up the hill.
For a while he was back in Bulgaria, racing for the border, the militia hot on his trail. He could hear the helicopters and from time to time the sounds of the dogs. It was winter, like now, and the snow was deep. Then, as now, he had been racing for his life.
He reached a spot directly above where he had parked his car and started down toward the driveway when he saw the flash of a car’s headlights below. He pulled up short, leaning against a tree, holding his breath as best he could while he listened.
The light flashed again, and then was gone. Moments later he heard car doors opening and closing, and the muffled sound of someone talking, issuing orders.
Still he held his position. There were five of them, all killers. He needed to even the odds before he confronted Potemkin.
The Taurus’s engine turned over, but of course the car would not start. Whoever was behind the wheel tried again, and then there were more voices, this time it sounded as if at least one of them was angry about something.
Finally the voices began to fade, moving down the driveway toward the clearing. McAllister pushed away from the tree and keeping low hurried through the woods, crawling the last twenty feet on his stomach.
They had left one man with the Mercedes. He was leaning up against the hood of the car, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, a big silenced pistol held loosely in his right hand.
McAllister took out his gun and continued crawling the rest of the way down the hill to a spot just a few feet above the driveway and ten yards behind the Mercedes. The lone man was gazing intently down the driveway in the direction the others had gone. He did not turn around as McAllister slipped out of the woods and crept forward to the big German car. At the last possible moment the man, hearing something or sensing that someone was behind him, started to turn. At that instant, McAllister sprang up, smashing the butt of the heavy P38 into the side of theman’s head. He went down heavily, his shoulder glancing off the car’s bumper, but still semiconscious he tried to bring up his gun. McAllister grabbed a handful of his coat, pulled him half up and smashed the butt of his gun into the man’s face, opening his nose with a gush of blood and knocking him senseless. Working fast now, with one eye toward the slope of the driveway lest one of Potemkin’s people had heard something and was coming back to investigate, McAllister stripped the unconscious man of his belt and tie, trussing his arms and leg together behind his back. He jammed his handkerchief into the man’s mouth, holstered his own gun, and snatched the silenced weapon. It was a big, heavy 9-mm automatic. A proper mokrie dela weapon for destroying faces.
They’d left the Mercedes open. He popped the hood, yanked out the ignition wire and careful to make as little noise as possible, closed the hood again, before he scrambled back up into the woods.
Neutralizing the first of the Russians had taken barely three minutes. By now he figured the other four would have reached the clearing where they would be holding up to watch the cabin for signs that this was a trap. Potemkin would probably be dispersing his men left and right so that they could come up from behind the house. They would be moving through the woods, but well within sight of the clearing. No one wanted to get lost in these dark woods. It would take them several cautious minutes to circle the entire clearing and then cross at the back. It took him precious minutes to find the path he’d made through the woods this afternoon, and then follow it to a spot about ten yards from the clearing and an equal distance up from the driveway. He thought he might be able to hear someone talking off to his left, and someone else moving through the woods toward his right, but again the sounds faded.
Stuffing the big Russian gun in his belt, he climbed up the tree to the second set of large branches about fifteen feet off the ground where e had left one of Sikorski’s hunting rifles with a big light-gathering scope.
From his vantage point he had an open line of fire across the entire clearing.
He spotted the first man to the west, just emerging from the woods. Swinging the scope quickly across the clearing, he spotted a second man on the east side, working his way slowly toward the house. Potemkin and the other one were probably waiting on the driveway.
McAllister swung the gun toward the west again, catching then losing then catching the Russian who had stopped and was looking down toward the house.
Centering the cross hairs on the man’s chest, he hesitated for just a moment. Pulling the trigger would make him an assassin… no less of a killer than the men he was fighting.
And there it is, boyo, his father had once said. The time will come when you’ll have to make a decision. One of morals. When that happens think out your options, consider the alternatives, work out the consequences not only of your action, but the consequences of your inaction.
They were killers. He had seen what they’d done to Sikorski, and to Nicholas Albright. He had seen first-hand in Bulgaria and East Germany and a dozen other places what sort of animals they could be. Not all Russians were like that, of course. But the special ones they picked to work the KGB’s Department Viktor, the murder squad, they were the worst. They simply had no regard whatsoever for human life.
He squeezed off a shot, finished with his little morality lecture to himself, the heavy deer rifle bucking against his shoulder, the tremendous crack echoing off the hills, and the Russian went down as if he had been struck by a Mack truck. Quickly he brought the rifle around as he ejected the spent shell, pumping a live round into the firing chamber. The second Russian was racing back to the protection of the woods. McAllister led him and at the last moment squeezed off a shot, the man flopping down into the snow, his arms and legs splayed out.
Hooking the rifle’s shoulder strap on a cross branch, he scrambled down out of the tree and headed back the same way he had come, moving from tree to tree, keeping his eye toward the driveway and the spot he had fired from.
After twenty yards he angled toward the driveway, pulling out the Russian’s gun, making certain by feel that it was ready to fire. There was a noise behind him; cloth brushing against a tree trunk, the crunch of a booted foot in the deep snow, and he stopped.
“McAllister,” Potemkin shouted, his voice coming from farther right than the noise. It sounded as if he were still at the end of the driveway near the clearing.