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“What did you say to me?”
The mercenary swung his weapon in Semenov’s direction and sighted along it. “I said shut the fuck up.”
CHAPTER 46
RAPPswung out over the twenty-five-foot drop, clinging to a crack in the support pillar and easing a foot onto the sill on the other side. There were still a few shards of embedded glass, making it impossible to get much more than the tip of his boot onto it. The smoke billowing around him became both denser and a bit paler, suggesting that Maslick had thrown another tear gas canister.
Rapp used the additional cover to lean left, bringing half of his face around the edge of the column and giving him a better view of the apartment on the other side. Blood was flowing beneath the edge of the table the man was barricaded behind and a puddle was forming. He remained vigilant, but with his attention centered entirely on the door. Blood loss had a strange way of sharpening one’s focus at the cost of situational awareness. It was a phenomenon that Rapp himself had experienced.
The fingertips on his right hand were starting to split on the sharp edge he was clinging to, creating a countdown of sorts. The pain was irrelevant, but if he waited long enough for them to become slick with blood, he’d be headed to the ground the fast way. He tried to bracehis gun hand against the column, but it was hopeless. The amount of muscular tension necessary to keep him from falling caused it to shake slightly. Combined with smoke, a slightly foggy face mask, and the fact that only a small portion of the man was visible behind the table, it made the shot impossible.
The Russian’s gun wavered as he wiped at his eyes. The smoke and tear gas weren’t particularly thick in the apartment, but were still bad enough to affect his vision. How much, though? Certainly not enough to prevent him from killing anyone coming through the door. But how fast could he adjust his attention to the window? How much blood had he lost?
None of those questions were going to be answered in the few seconds that Rapp had left before his grip gave way. So when a burst from Joe Maslick’s AK briefly sharpened the Russian’s focus on the door, Rapp tossed the .22 inside the apartment and used his newly freed hand to pull himself around the column.
A graceful landing wasn’t feasible and instead he came down on his shoulder, rolling toward the pistol and snatching it up just as Maslick’s gun went silent. At that same moment, any questions about the Russian’s competence were answered. He spotted the incursion immediately, swinging his weapon smoothly and beginning to pulverize floor tile in an arc that was headed straight for his target.
Rapp ignored the approaching stream of bullets and used both hands to line up the Volquartsen. He squeezed the trigger and the Russian’s head snapped back, but without the comforting spray of blood, bone, and brain matter that a 9mm round would have produced. Still, he tipped back and his rifle barrel rose, sending rounds harmlessly through the empty window frame and into the night.
By then, Rapp was already on his feet, fighting for traction in the broken glass as he ran toward the Russian. He hit the overturned table at full speed, flipping over it to find the man on his back, but still alive. The .22 round had struck him in the forehead, but lacked the energy to fully penetrate. Despite the impact and blood loss, he was trying tobring his weapon to bear again. Rapp put an end to that by pressing the barrel of the .22 under his chin and firing twice.
“Mas, I’m in!” he said into his throat mike. “Come up!”
Rapp ran across the room and opened the door, covering Maslick as he ran up the steps. The big man tossed a fragmentation grenade toward the second-floor landing and then scooped up Rapp’s pack and rifle before throwing himself across the threshold. Rapp slammed the door and had just managed to slide the bolt into place when the grenade exploded.
“Tense,” Maslick shouted through his face mask.
“Walk in the park,” Rapp responded. “Watch the window. It’s the easier access.”
“Roger that,” he said, taking up the Russian’s position behind the overturned table.
Rapp grabbed his AK and pack before jogging back across the living area and gently testing the knob to the door at the back. Not surprisingly, it didn’t budge. The stylish wood slab wouldn’t survive more than a few kicks, but it was impossible to know what was on the other side. What Rapp didn’t need was to get clipped by a lucky shot from some piece-of-shit faux general. So instead, he reeled through the ten or so Russian phrases he’d been working on for the past week. Selecting the most appropriate, he pulled up his mask and shouted through the door.
“General Semenov. Are you injured?”
Are you in thereorAre you insidewould have been better, but he didn’t know how to say either.
The answer was mostly unintelligible, with Rapp catching only the Russian word for “helicopter.”
The door was jerked open a moment later by a panicked Aleksandr Semenov, coughing from the fumes and holding a pistol loosely in his right hand. Rapp swung his rifle butt into the man’s stomach, and he collapsed, losing his grip on the gun and vomiting on the elegant floor tiles.
Rapp kicked the weapon away and entered the bedroom, dumping the contents of his pack on the floor while Semenov continued to empty the contents of his stomach.
The small explosive charge Rapp had brought turned out to be unnecessary. The long, west-facing window was already devoid of glass. So instead, he selected a length of nylon rope, which he tied around the convulsing Russian’s torso.
The next part was a little more complicated. Rapp found the black mark he’d made on the rope and placed that section just below the windowsill. Then he carried the free end to the four-poster bed that dominated the room. It felt as substantial as it looked, so he secured the rope to the frame and activated his throat mike.
“Mas. Time to go.”
“Hang on. I’ve got one more grenade and I don’t want to waste it.”
Rapp walked back to Semenov, and the man squinted up at him.
With the smoke and full face mask, recognition came slowly. But it came.
“You!” he managed to choke out before Rapp grabbed the rope and began dragging him toward the window. Semenov flailed impotently, trying to get a grip on the line behind him and screeching from the pain being inflicted by the shards of glass strewn across the floor. Probably also from the anticipation of what was to come. It wouldn’t be lost on him that a great deal of effort had been expended to capture and not kill him. He’d know better than most that the remainder of his life was likely to be short and excruciating. After all, he’d been on the other side of similar scenarios more times than anyone could count.
They arrived at the window just as a final grenade detonated in the stairwell. Maslick appeared in the doorway a moment later, watching skeptically as Rapp yanked the Russian to his feet.
