Conviction (2009)

Noboru crouched down and said, "Found another stack of Anvil cases. They're tagged."

"How big?" Fisher asked.

"About the size of the first one."

"Two down. One to go." Fisher radioed Hansen: "Status report."

"Stand by." Two minutes passed, then: "Coming back."

When he rejoined the group, his face was red and flushed. "We've got company. Medical's been turned into a barracks. I counted a couple of dozen beds, all occupied."

"The attendees?" Noboru guessed.

Fisher nodded. "The hosts wouldn't be bunked with the guests."

"Maybe he's not here yet," Valentina offered.

"Maybe. We've got one more level to check. With any luck, we'll tag the last batch of cases and be back to Severobaikalsk for breakfast."

Behind them, a familiar voice broke the silence: "Not go

EVENbefore Fisher turned around, the expressions on Valentina's and Gillespie's faces confirmed what his ears had told him: Ames.

Valentina muttered, "He's got a grenade."

"Armed?"

"Can't tell."

Fisher whispered, "Distance?"

"Sixty feet," replied Gillespie. "He's right on your six o'clock."

It was a long shot, especially off a quick heel turn, but not impossible. Still, having never used the Groza before, Fisher put his chances at only 70 percent.

Ames said, "Don't even think it. Don't even turn around. I go down, so does the grenade. No way you'll cover the distance in time."

Fisher noted that Ames's voice was still relatively soft. He wants something.

Gillespie said, "He's moving. Coming ahead . . . six o'clock . . . seven . . . eight. Forty feet. He's at the ramp railing. Damn!"

"What?"

"I can hear you whispering," Ames replied. "Turn around and you'll see what."

Slowly Fisher rotated on the ball of his foot, simultaneously raising the butt of the Groza closer to his shoulder. Hansen mirrored his movements. The entire group was now facing Ames. Gillespie and Valentina tried to crab-walk sideways to expand their fields of fire, but Ames stopped them. "Nope. Not another step."

Ames stood at the railing with his grenade hand extended over the ramp. He took a few steps closer, but his arm never wavered. If Fisher took the shot now, he wouldn't miss, but there would be no stopping the grenade. The explosion would bring everyone inside the complex down onto them.

"What do you want?" Fisher asked evenly.

"Just wanted to let you know you were right about me. I am a survivor. You figured your little gasoline trick sent me over the edge, didn't you?"

"How long did it take you to get out?" Fisher asked.

"An hour. Good thing I'm ski

"And you waited for us."

"Right."

"Do they know we're here?"

"No. I wanted to make sure I saw it all happen. I told him you were still in Irkutsk."

"Him?" Fisher repeated. "Who?"

Ames smiled. "You've met him. In fact, he told me you had him in your hands and you let him go."

Fisher's mind flashed to the guards Noboru and Valentina had killed. The faces had looked familiar, but he'd dismissed it. He shouldn't have. He had seen them before.

In Portinho da Arrabida, at Charles "Chucky Zee" Zahm's villa.

39

AMES,having read Fisher's expression, was nodding. "Yep. That's him."

Hansen said, "Who?"

"Zahm," Fisher replied.

"You're kidding me."

Fisher shook his head.

It made a certain sense. Though he'd had no overt clues at the time, Fisher could now see his psychological assessment of Zahm made him an obvious candidate for the man behind the curtain. A born envelope pusher, he joins the SAS but finds the adrenaline rush of covert soldiering only temporarily satisfies his addiction, so he leaves and decides, on a whim, to become a bestselling novelist, but this, too, isn't enough. He rounds up some former comrades and goes into the business of high-end thievery only to find himself still restless, so he raises the bar. He breaks into a secret Chinese laboratory, steals five tons of weaponry, and invites the world's most dangerous terrorists to an auction at an abandoned Soviet complex in the middle of Siberia.

To the average person, insanity. To Zahm, just another day.

What Fisher didn't know, and might never know, was Zahm's purpose at the Korfovka rendezvous with Zhao and Murdoch. He'd probably been laying the groundwork for the Laboratory 738 heist and the auction.

"Where is he?" Fisher now asked.

"Around."

"You can still do the right thing," Hansen said.

"I could," Ames conceded.

He lifted his opposite hand in a fateful gesture. Even as Fisher's eyes instinctively flicked to the hand, he thought, Distraction.

"But I won't," Ames finished.

He dropped the grenade, turned, and sprinted up the ramp.

40

FISHERjerked the Groza to his shoulder and focused the crosshairs between Ames's shoulder blades, but he was gone an instant later, around the curve of the ramp.

"Down," Fisher commanded, and dropped flat. The others followed suit. Two seconds passed and then the crumpof the grenade's explosion echoed up the ramp.

Hansen asked, "Up or down?"

"Down. We've gotta tag the last of the cases."

"Go

"Bad luck for us," Fisher shot back. He turned to Noboru. "You have the ARWEN?"

"Yeah."

Fisher pointed down the corridor to the medical zone. "In about ten seconds they're going to come charging. Don't wait until you see them. First sign of footsteps, you put two gas canisters downrange. Got it?"

"Yep."

To Valentina and Hansen, Fisher said, "You're with Noboru. Anybody comes through his gas cloud, put 'em down. They'll back off to regroup. When they do, leapfrog down the ramp and meet up with us. We'll try to hold the ramp intersection. You three split up and check the zones for the rest of the arsenal. Questions?"

There was none.

"Good luck."

You're with me," Fisher told Gillespie. They got up and sprinted to the down ramp. "Everything's a target," he shouted. "If it's alive, kill it. Two rounds, center mass, then move on."

"Got it."

THEYwere halfway down the ramp when gunfire from below peppered the walls above their heads. They veered right, away from the railing, and kept going. Behind him Fisher heard a plastic tink tink tinkand turned to see a fragmentation grenade rolling down the ramp toward them.

"Down!"

He spun on his heel, scooped the grenade with his free hand, and shovel tossed it over the railing.

"Grenade!" a British-accented voice called, followed by the explosion.

From the level above came the double fwumpof Noboru firing the ARWEN. Voices shouted, then the overlapping chatter of Valentina and Hansen firing their Grozas.

Fisher called to Gillespie, "Keep moving," then plucked a flashbang off his harness and pulled the pin. She did the same. They rounded the corner, tossed the grenades, dropped to their knees until they heard the explosion, then got up and moved into the blinding light, guns up and tracking for targets. He kept Gillespie in the corner of his eye, instinctively closing or opening the distance between them to keep an overlapping field of fire.