Death Wave Read Free Page B

deafening inside the Cielo. He aimed high, trying to allow for the drop of the bullets, but so far as he could tell not a single round hit. The Mi-8 continued drifting closer …
Then it shot straight up just as the Cielo rounded another turn, and Zhern lost sight of it. Pulling back inside the car, he fumbled with his weapon, dropping the empty magazine into the foot well and snapping home a fresh one.
The Cielo finished rounding the curve along the side of the mountain and the road straightened once more, the ground abruptly leveling off to either side as they raced across the crest of the hill. The helicopter was there , in front of them, hovering ten meters above the gravel of the roadway, turned broadside toward them as its rotor wash stirred up swirling clouds of dust. A muzzle flash flickered in the open cargo hatch door, and geysers of dirt snapped skyward to either side of the car. The windshield disintegrated in slivers of flying glass as the driver lurched back in the seat, blood splattering from face and throat.
Out of control now, the car plunged off the right side of the road, bouncing heavily across open ground that grew steeper, more precipitous, with every lurch and crash. Zhern threw up his arms, covering his face, and screamed. Kwok shouted something shrill from the backseat as more machine-gun bullets sprayed the plunging vehicle.
The Cielo slammed down hard, then rolled, every window shattering. It came to rest on its roof beneath a boiling cloud of ocher dust.
Kwok hung from his seat belt in the back, upside down, blood streaming up his face, his eyes glassy and wide open. Dead, then … his neck snapped in the crash, perhaps. Or he might have caught one of the bullets in that last volley.
Dazed and bruised, Zhern could still wiggle through the open window and crawl out into the harsh sunlight. Damn … damn ! Where was his AKM? He’d lost it in the roll, didn’t know where it was. Flat on his belly, he reached back through the window, groping for it.
No weapon—but he did find the briefcase and pull it out of the wreckage. He could hear the thunderous clatter of the helicopter coming closer. Blindly, he struggled to his feet and started to run. If he could make it down the slope toward the south, toward the river …
Submachine-gun fire rattled, and hammer blows against his back sent him tumbling down the hill. He came to rest on parched, barren dirt, unable to move.
Odd. There was no pain …
Within a very short time there was no feeling at all.
     
A man in civilian clothing walked up to the body moments later, nudging it with the toe of his shoe to roll it over. He squatted, then spent some moments comparing the man’s face with the face on a black-and-white surveillance photo. Satisfied that this was Anatoli Zhern and that he was quite dead, the man reached down, retrieved the briefcase, and opened it. After checking through the contents—papers and a computer CD in its plastic jewel case—he snapped the briefcase shut and gestured to the men at his back. “Take him,” he said. “Take them all.”
“A nice haul, sir,” an aide said.
“It was not enough,” Lieutenant Colonel Pyotr Vasilyev replied, angry. “They have already made the handoff. We were too late. Again .”
The shipment, it seemed, had already been delivered. By now it might already be out of the country and on its way to its ultimate destination, wherever in an unforgiving hell that might be.
Someone—not the Russians, perhaps, but someone —was going to pay a very dear price because of that.

2
     
    NSA HEADQUARTERS
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
WEDNESDAY, 0728 HOURS EDT
     
Twenty miles northeast of downtown Washington, D.C., in a corner of the sprawling grounds of the U.S. Army’s Fort Meade tucked in between the Patuxent Freeway and Route 295, rose the towering black glass cube of the headquarters building of the National Security Agency. Deep below the structure, behind multiple security checkpoints and high-tech security