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Probably the latter, Rapp decided. The question was what to do about it. Though he and Azarov couldn’t easily get to each other, the Russian did have access to a vantage point that would allow him to see that his opponent’s corpse was conspicuously absent. That left Rapp with a short window where he could use the element of surprise. The problem was that the only way he knew of to cross to Azarov’s sector was an open catwalk on the top level. By the time he reached it, the Russian would know his opponent was alive and would be looking for the move.
Rapp traversed the walkway, protected by a firewall on his right. It turned to steel mesh for about five feet and he searched the area visible through it before darting across. After covering another ten feet, he came to a sudden halt and turned around. The bottom corner of the mesh had broken free of its spot welds and was curled back a good five inches.
He walked back to it and shoved the detached edge with his foot. It took everything he had, but he managed to pop two more welds. Were the rest similarly weak?
Rapp crept along the catwalk, searching for something he could use as a pry bar. Finally he found a shutoff valve with a long lever connected by nothing but a pin. It took some effort, but he managed to work it free.
Wedging the steel rod into the hole in the mesh, Rapp threw his full weight behind it. A moment later he was rewarded by the quiet crack of welds giving way.
When the gap was wide enough, he stuffed his Glock down the back of his overalls and squeezed through. There was nothing on the other side to stand on, so he grabbed an overhead pipe and went hand over hand across it. The pain in his injured shoulder was excruciating, but there was no way to favor it. If his sweaty hands lost their grip, Azarov would find exactly what he expected to find in the tangle of pipes below.
Rapp finally reached another catwalk
and dropped onto it, landing in a crouch. He was operating blind now—there had been no time to survey this part of the facility.
He stayed in the shadows, stopping every few seconds to listen for sound that couldn’t be explained by the wind. Finally, he was rewarded. The quiet rhythm of footsteps became audible below and to his right.
He flattened himself on the catwalk and let his Glock hang over the edge. A moment later, cautious movements became intermittently visible through the mesh. Range was just under thirty yards.
There was no clear shot but he knew he wasn’t going to get another chance like this one. He needed to drive Azarov onto the more open left side of the walkway he was on. Just a couple feet was all Rapp needed. He waited for the optimal moment and fired, slamming a bullet into an electrical conduit a few feet to Azarov’s right.
Instead of moving left, though, the Russian went low and right, throwing himself toward the conduit Rapp had just hit and disappearing from sight.
“Shit!” Rapp said under his breath. This guy wasn’t just good, he was a fucking prodigy.
Despite that, now the Russian was in a box. Going back would be too much exposure for him to risk. However, there was an open pipe about six feet in diameter ahead of him and only the top four feet were visible from Rapp’s position. It was Azarov’s only option, and it wasn’t a bad one. He undoubtedly knew where it led, while Rapp had no idea.
An elongated shadow appeared at the entrance to the pipe and Rapp unloaded his entire clip into the confined space, firing a wide, random pattern. He pulled back and slammed in his last full magazine before rising again. The shadow was gone but there was something near the edge of the pipe that he didn’t remember seeing earlier. Rapp thought it might be rust, but when he moved to a better vantage point, the dark smudge took on a familiar color.
Blood.
• • •
Azarov kept moving through the pipe, not stopping until it took a hard bend to the right. Only then did he pull up his soaked sleeve to look at the neat hole in his biceps. It was bleeding badly but the ricochet had passed through without hitting bone. He pulled off his shirt and tied it around the wound, sitting against the curved wall to catch his breath.
How had Rapp survived the fall from that tank? And more important, how had he crossed the fire barrier without using the high catwalk? The only answer was that somehow the CIA man understood this complex better than he himself did. If that was the case, then he knew where this pipe let out and that there was only one vantage point that would allow him to see both ends simultaneously. Was he currently making the difficult climb to get there, or would he risk chasing his injured quarry?
Speculation was pointless. Azarov had failed to predict the man’s actions at every turn. The question that had existed for so long in the recesses of his mind was now answered. Rapp was the better man. The weaker, older American was going to kill him.
No.
Not now. Not when he was on the verge of escaping Maxim Krupin’s orbit and pursuing a life of his own. An identity of his own.
Azarov unwrapped his wound and used the back of the shirt to sop up the blood flowing from his arm. When the cloth was well impregnated, he tore off part of the left sleeve and used it to rebandage his arm. Finally, he put the shirt back on. The blood on the back would make him appear more badly injured than he really was. Hopefully it would be enough to lull Rapp into a moment of carelessness.
Azarov started moving along the interior of the pipe again, forced into a slight crouch by the confined space. Even if Rapp did know the facility better than he did, it would be difficult for the man to reach the far end of the pipe in time to line up a reliable shot.
Azarov told himself that if he remained focused, if he timed everything to perfection, there was still a chance that he would be the one who survived.
• • •
Rapp stayed high, moving from catwalk to catwalk as he tried to figure out where the pipe Azarov was hiding in led. After a few minutes it became clear that he wasn’t going to be able to keep the entrance in view if he went much farther. For all he knew, the pipe didn’t go anywhere and the Russian was sitting a few feet inside, waiting to attempt an escape. Or he could be dead. Or—as likely as the first two scenarios—he could be running along it looking for a way out.
Rapp stopped, suffering a rare moment of indecision. The only thing he was sure of was that he didn’t want to go in after the man—it was too confined a space. So forward or back? His gut said forward and he decided to listen. While his battlefield intuition had failed him more than a few times, it was right more often than it was wrong.
He dropped onto a tightly packed series of pipes before crossing to an adjacent catwalk. When he lost sight of the pipe entrance, he increased his pace to a point that it would be impossible for Azarov to come up behind him. Even at that speed, it took him almost five minutes to reach the place where the pipe disappeared into a large storage tank. A hatch on top was open and Rapp slowed, aiming his Glock upward when he spotted movement.
Azarov had cleared the tank and was lurching along a catwalk more than fifty yards away. Based on his awkward gait and the amount of blood that had soaked through his shirt, he looked to be in pretty bad shape.
