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Something triggered the bodyguard’s attention.
Whether it was the flurry of motion as Ilya drew the handgun or maybe just honed instincts, the result was the same. The bodyguard turned and his coal-black eyes found Ilya’s. Ilya thought that they widened for an instant. Perhaps the instinctual recognition felt by one predator for another.
He would never know.
Just as the bodyguard’s massive muscles began to twitch, a 115-grain projectile entered his skull at four hundred yards per minute. The hollow-point slug mushroomed as it tore through the cranial bone. Like a snowplow pushing aside half-melted sludge, the bullet carved an ever-widening path through the bodyguard’s cerebral cortex before exiting his head in a spray of bone and brain matter.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
The thin man turned as his bodyguard crumpled.
Ilya expected him to run. He didn’t. Instead the terrorist snarled as he lunged toward his assailant. Ilya nodded. Though either action would have been futile, the thin man had chosen fight over flight. Ilya hoped that when his time came, he would also choose to go out swinging.
Ilya squeezed the pistol’s trigger a second time, and the thin man’s head snapped backward, as if he’d been hit by a devastating uppercut. Then he collapsed in a puddle of flesh. Ilya took careful aim at the top of the man’s head and fired a third time.
Three shots, two dead men, two seconds.
Not bad.
The beginnings of a collective murmur filled the air as what had just transpired began to register with bystanders. If he walked awaynow, Ilya could disappear to the north before anyone was the wiser. Instead, the Vympel operative extended his pistol in a two-handed grip, centered the front sight post on the chest of the bobby, and pulled the trigger.
The police officer’s shirt jumped.
The bobby staggered.
Spinning, Ilya tracked the pistol to the Asian family. The front sight post passed over the daughter but found a home in the center of her father’s chest. Ilya squeezed off two more rounds.
Then the pistol went back into his pocket.
Hunching his shoulders, he sprinted for the alley to his right, chased by a little girl’s screams.
CHAPTER 33
BIZERTE, TUNISIA
RAPPwasn’t sure how he intended to return home from Tunisia, but he knew which modes of travel he couldn’t be using.
Boats or planes.
While free of the stomach-churning swells that had made his trip from Barcelona to Mallorca so unpleasant, the flight across the Mediterranean Sea hadn’t been much better. The little floatplane seemed to be one step ahead of the storm clouds that had been gathering since Rapp had begun his escape from Spain. Several times during the bouncy trip, he’d turned in his seat to watch as the weather system gathered behind him. Ominous swaths of gray and purple glared back at him as jagged bolts of lightning flickered across the horizon.
He didn’t know what a flight in a light plane should feel like, but judging by his pilot, this one had been a doozy. The Hawaiian-shirt-wearing aviator had begun the trip with an almost unbroken streaming commentary that wavered across a half a dozen languages. Once he understood that he wasn’t expected to contribute to the pilot’s monologue, Rapp had nodded when it seemed appropriate and done his best to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged. About ten minutesprior to landing, a particularly vicious downdraft had put the floatplane’s pontoons a bit too close to the frothing sea for Rapp’s taste.
The pilot seemed to share his sentiment. The verbal diatribe changed in cadence and intonation until the words became something Rapp did recognize.
A prayer.
To his credit, the pilot settled the plane onto a stretch of relatively calm ocean and then taxied to a floating dock without incident. Rapp already had his seat belt unbuckled and was out of the cockpit before the propeller stopped turning. Though judging by his actions, perhaps the pilot never intended to kill the engine. No sooner were Rapp’s feet on the dock than the pilot spun the aircraft back toward open sea and turned his taxi into a takeoff run. Rapp watched as the little floatplane clawed its way skyward and then banked to the south. While he was glad to have his feet firmly planted on terra firma, Rapp felt the enormity of his situation settle on his shoulders before the aircraft’s engine noise faded.
He was here to meet with a Soviet spy.
And not just any spy.
Rapp took a moment to get his bearings as he reviewed Hurley’s hurried instructions. He’d delivered them in a staccato burst that somehow managed to convey both seriousness and urgency in just a handful of clipped sentences. There was no doubt in Hurley’s mind that Petrov was running an intelligence operation against the United States and they were behind the eight ball. Rapp needed to make contact with Petrov’s former deputy, Dmitri Volkov, and begin picking his brain as soon as possible. Despite the unpleasantness of the flight, traveling to the Tunisian city had been the easy part.
Now the real work began.
“Pardon, sir, would you like a ride?”
