Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(35)
Lieutenant Goode opened the shallow drawer on his bedside table, took out a pair of real handcuffs. There was a pistol in there, too—a 9mm Glock—which he expertly slid out of its stiff leather holster. Both gestures carried grave portent.
“You’re a bad girl, Morgana. Very bad.” He pointed the Glock vaguely in her direction. “So this is where you find yourself. I’m the honey, this here’s the trap, and there’s no fucking way you’re getting out of it.”
12
It was men, not machine-gun fire that came down out of the dawn. The helo disgorged four men, jumping out of the open bay as the helo hovered over the rocky slope. To a man, they tumbled, unable to hold their initial balance, but soon enough they were up and bounding like mountain goats across the rocks, heading straight for Bourne and Mala.
“At last,” he said. “Spetsnaz has arrived.”
But that wasn’t all. Three figures emerged from out of the dust of the rockslide as it began to settle. The Dreadnaughts weren’t buried; they were very much alive, and like a nest of wasps that had been swatted they were mad as hell.
“We have no choice now,” Mala said. “We have to fight them.” She looked from one group to the other. “But we’re just where we shouldn’t be, caught between them.”
Bourne squeezed off one shot at the spetsnaz unit.
“That was a lousy shot,” Mala muttered.
Turning, Bourne squeezed off a shot at the advancing Dreadnaughts.
“Missed again,” Mala grumbled. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
Grabbing her, Bourne crab-walked, picking his way through the spaces between the rocks, moving as quickly as he could out of the line of fire that had just started up between both sides.
And then Mala shut up, because she understood at last what he had meant to do all along. Following his lead, she slid on her backside, careful not to dislodge any loose rocks, making her way by staying completely in his shadow as he advanced along the cliff. The newly risen sun, tearing open a fiery rent in the pinkish dawn sky, was directly ahead of them. Behind them the two warring groups increased their combative fire.
Far enough away from the fray, Bourne slowed them, then halted altogether. They remained flat on their backs, staring up at wisps of cloud reflecting on their undersides the tender colors of the new day, while fusillades of submachine gun fire ripped apart the tortured soughing of the wind.
They lay in a little hollow, completely blind to the action, using their ears in a vain attempt to follow the battle. Beside him, Bourne felt Mala’s muscles twitching spasmodically and knew she was itching to bang some heads together—American or Russian, it made no difference to her. Her nostrils flared to the scent of fresh blood. Hearing the moans of the dying, Bourne sensed it was all she could do not to leap up and join the killing.
She started when his fingers wrapped around her wrist, and she turned her head. A sorority of disparate emotions darkened her eyes to midnight-blue. Rage, frustration, and, yes, love swirled in those eyes. Her lips were half open, as if she were about to reveal something terribly intimate, but if so, it never emerged.
Silence. The sea wind regained sovereignty. The gunfire had ceased as abruptly as it had begun; the calling of the gulls resumed, tentatively at first, then, as a sense of normalcy returned, the morning righting itself, the cries became more plaintive as the gulls appeared over the crown of the rock face.
Just above where they lay, the crest of the cliff began a downward sweep, leading to the lowest ridge to the east. Bourne felt the waves of restlessness in Mala and, turning to her, mouthed, Wait.
Why?
Listen. Just listen.
Both were stilled, then, as if they were among the corpses littering the rocks to the west. Their eyes were turned in that direction, as well, which is why they didn’t see the lone survivor of the crossfire, a spetsnaz assassin, who had circled around to come at them from the east. He held a knife in one hand, his other weapons having emptied themselves during the withering firefight. He was big, muscular, bald of pate, animalistic of eye.
Baring his teeth, he leapt onto Bourne, drove the knife toward him. He meant to rip open his neck, but at the last instant Bourne twisted enough to change the strike point to his shoulder. Mala whipped up and around, one arm swinging wide to catch the Russian on the chin. This was a Special Forces member, hard-trained, wet-trained, with neither conscience nor room for remorse. He withdrew the knife blade, slashed it across Mala’s chest, biting through the scarred skin, into the flat muscles between the hollow of her neck and the sharp rise of her breasts.
In the first few seconds, that seemed to be a mistake. The attack allowed Bourne the time to slam the edge of his hand into the side of the Russian’s neck. The strike should have temporarily paralyzed him, but he only grinned—more a grimace, a hard surface, revealing nothing, reflecting everything.
As swiftly as the rock-fall avalanche, he crashed against Bourne, driving him backward. Sharp rocks bit into Bourne’s back. Using the point of his knife, the Russian opened the shoulder wound he had inflicted, twisting the blade, until Bourne, lips drawn back in a silent snarl of pain, wrapped his hand around it, the edge scoring a line of blood in his palm as he wrenched the blade out of the muscles of his shoulder.
The Russian jammed the heel of his hand against Bourne’s chin, pushing his head back until Bourne was effectively blind to what he was doing. Twisting Bourne’s hand back on itself he created a fulcrum of pain in Bourne’s wrist so acute that Bourne should have been forced to let go of the blade. Instead, Bourne used his free hand to pinch the Russian’s carotid artery, temporarily cutting off blood flow to his brain. The Russian grunted and, in that instant, Bourne took charge of the knife blade, pushed the point into the Russian’s face.