The Shroud of Heaven (16 page)

Suddenly his world seemed to collapse inward. Blood, rushing to nourish and repair his exhausted extremities, seemed to have been shunted away from his brain, and darkness began closing in around the periphery of his vision. He felt an overwhelming need to vomit.

The Humvee was nearly below him. It was now or never; Kismet had no choice but to make a leap of faith.

The transition from the top of the train car onto the moving hood of the vehicle was not so much a jump as a controlled fall. Kismet made no effort to keep to his feet as he slammed into the molded fiberglass cover, but instead redirected the momentum of his drop into a sprawl across the broad windshield.

Through the dark haze occluding his vision, he could not make out the assassin’s reaction to the sudden assault, but he was not expecting a hospitable welcome. He had not forgotten that the killer was armed with a silenced pistol, but there was a much simpler way for repelling boarders against which Kismet would have little defense. His earlier misadventure had revealed just how difficult it would be to cling to the smooth shell of the vehicle.

The Humvee immediately began to swerve back and forth, but Kismet was ready. Blindly grasping the top mounted windshield wiper arms, he held on as the vehicle bucked beneath him. The driver’s attempt seemed half-hearted. The lost rear tire was proving more troublesome than expected, and after only a couple attempts, the Humvee’s path straightened once more. Kismet did not wait to see what would happen next. He scrambled onto the roof of the vehicle, removing himself from the killer’s line of sight.

The momentary dizzy spell seemed to relent as he resumed moving. It was the rest, not the exertion, that had compromised his blood pressure. He did not find this realization especially encouraging. He knew the effect would only worsen as the struggle continued, eventually reaching a point where he would simply collapse. It wouldn’t do at all to finally capture his foe and then pass out before commencing the interrogation.

The Humvee shifted to the left beneath him, not in an attempt to shake him loose, but simply a turn leading them one step closer to the edge of the maze. As the platform beneath him stabilized once more, Kismet turned his attention to the hatch covering the turret. The sheets of metal were secured from within by several snap-down clamps. He contemplated trying to use the
kukri
to pry it open, but rejected that plan. His forced entry would likely be so noisy that the assassin would be waiting to dispatch him with a gunshot as soon as he tried to pass through. He would have to find a better solution.

Spread-eagled prone on the roof and still fiercely gripping the driver’s side windshield wiper pivot with his right hand, he drew the gun from his waist pack and wormed toward the left side of the car. He ducked down long enough to look in through the window then pulled back quickly in case the assassin was waiting with gun drawn. Seeing no evidence that such was the case, he reached down with the gun and hammered on the pane.

“Stop now!” He repeated his order twice more, shouting each time and punctuating his words with taps on the plastic surface.

His demand was ignored. Delta 42 continued limping across the rail yard, angling toward the gaps between parked trains and scraping over the metal tracks. Like a table with one short leg, the entire vehicle wobbled uncertainly as it moved, dropping down on the chewed-up remains of the rear wheel then rebounding onto the three good tires. But then, as the path out of the maze became apparent, the driver did something that seemed completely counter-intuitive. The Humvee began to accelerate.

He was forced to stow the gun once more and hold on with both hands as the vehicle picked up speed. The last set of tracks fell behind as it pulled onto a graveled road, and as the engine poured more and more power into the three good wheels, the vehicle seemed to stabilize. Kismet however, began to feel more and more uncertain as their velocity increased, and a glance into the hot wind blasting against his face supplied more than adequate reason for concern. The road on which they were now hurtling forward ended in a locked gate.

Reason dictated that the driver was bluffing. Surely no sane person would charge such an obstacle headlong. Yet, as the barrier drew nearer, Kismet became more certain of the assassin’s intentions. When the Humvee hit the simple iron gate, the sudden stop would catapult him forward, hurling him from his precarious perch and launching him like a missile. It was conceivable that he might survive with only a few broken bones, but the odds did not favor that outcome. The only safe choice was to abandon the vehicle.

With only seconds remaining before the collision, he scooted headfirst toward the sloping rear hatch of the Humvee, and reached down to the familiar United Nations banner that had adorned each vehicle in the ill-fated convoy. From this perspective, the damage wrought by Bravo 25’s machine gun was evident. A series of ragged holes marred the smooth shell of the vehicle and had punched through the white flag in several places. A dark stain—diesel fuel from the resupply cans—was spreading like blood from some of the wounds.

Kismet grasped the damaged banner with both hands, then allowed his weight to fall sideways. His feet came around in a broad arc and abruptly all of his mass was depending from the torn flag as his boots dragged along the gravel roadway.

“This seems familiar,” he muttered through clenched teeth. Dismissing the irony of his situation, Kismet braced himself for what was about to happen, and let go.

The impact was much worse than he had expected. His chest slammed into the ground, driving the air from his lungs even as inertia continued to propel him along behind the doomed Humvee. The grainy pebbles that covered the roadway were more forgiving than a paved surface, but nonetheless stripped the skin from his palms and elbows. It was, he imagined, like being pulled across a cheese grater. He made a belated effort to roll in order to reduce the burn of friction, but all this seemed to do was spread the pain around evenly.

He did not see the collision, but there was no mistaking the sickening crunch of metal on metal. Kismet’s agonizing tumble ended about ten meters from the rear of the Humvee. The vehicle was still quaking on its springs from the shock of hitting the barrier.

That the driver had been willing to flirt with suicide in an effort to knock him loose from his perch seemed too ludicrous to consider, yet there was no refuting the obvious outcome. Nevertheless, it stood to reason that the assassin would have taken steps to survive the crash, and it was this assumption that motivated Kismet to haul himself erect and draw his weapon.

He advanced with due caution, feeling acutely the pain of his exertions in every muscle and joint as he crept forward, staying low. He expected the assassin to appear at any moment, brandishing a gun, but there was no sign of activity on board the Humvee. He raised his head level with the windows for a second, then quickly ducked down again.

The vehicle was abandoned. Kismet looked in again, more assertively to verify what that initial glance had revealed. There was no sign of Aziz’s murderer behind the wheel.

The collision had crumpled the hood and grill of the vehicle, and a plume of superheated steam rose from the ruptured remains of the radiator. However, aside from what was mostly cosmetic damage, the Humvee had weathered the crash quite well. The cheap padlock securing the gate had snapped, allowing the single iron I-beam to burst open on its hinge, transferring some of the kinetic energy away from the vehicle. Nevertheless, the occupant of the vehicle would have been subjected to a violent burst of force, certainly enough to stun, if not kill.

Kismet backed away quickly, realizing that the assassin had in all likelihood abandoned the doomed troop mover just as he had. He turned a quick circle, making sure that the killer had not somehow flanked him, then hastened to the other side of the wreck.

The passenger side door was gone, ripped off its hinges by the force of the collision, and thrown well beyond the gateway. Kismet drew the obvious conclusion: the door had been open at the moment of impact. He scanned ahead, seeing for the first time that beyond the gate, the service road connected with a paved street and the city proper. After a momentary survey, he detected movement, and recognized the retreating back of the killer, now well over a hundred meters away.

He took off running before he could even consider the alternatives. It galled him to have been so close to capturing his foe, only to suffer such a setback. The first steps were sheer hell, but his determination carried him through, and once he hit his stride, the pain seemed to recede. The pounding in his skull however returned with a vengeance and as he sprinted toward the street, dark shadows gathered in his vision.

He knew on a clinical level what was happening. He was getting dehydrated. The outpouring of energy in pursuit of the killer beneath the brutal desert sun had sapped his finite reserves. The adrenaline that fired him through one bruising encounter after another was no substitute for the most basic element of life: water. He only hoped the assassin was feeling it as well.

A horn blast and screeching tires alerted him to the peril he had completely ignored. Though traffic in the city was light, it was by no means nonexistent, and he had wandered into the middle of the Arbataash Tammuz or 14
^th
July Street, one of the busiest thoroughfares in this section of the city. He reached the center of the divided road without mishap, and paused there to wait for a clearing. After so many close calls, this minor brush with fate hardly fazed him.

Despite the delay, he was gaining on the assassin. His longer legs gave him a definite advantage but his stamina was not without limits. He waited for an opening in traffic, and then darted toward the far edge of the road, vaulting the concrete barrier to continue across the barren expanse.

Aziz’s murderer had nowhere to hide in the open vastness. Acres of dusty nothingness stretched in every direction. The tableau was broken only by an occasional warehouse or shipping container storage yard. The assassin however seemed to be angling toward a construction site, with tall columns of steel and masonry springing out of the sand like a stricken forest. Kismet focused the flagging strength of his will power into a final burst of speed.

As he neared the incipient structure, its overwhelming scope became apparent. The upright columns, arranged in pairs around the perimeter, delineated an area as large as a football stadium. A great deal of excavation had been done, literally carving the site out from the desert floor, but the building work was yet in its infancy. He had no idea what purpose it would serve when, or if, it was completed. All he saw now was a chaotic maze in which his foe might seek refuge.

At the edge of the site, the assassin made a misstep, tripping over a piece of re-bar and sprawling headlong. Kismet seized the opportunity, and before the robed figure could rise, closed the gap and pounced.

The assassin struggled from his grip, kicking at his outstretched arms and backpedaling away. After enduring so much, Kismet was not about to be thrown off now. Shrugging off the ineffectual blows, he charged forward again, leaping from a crouch at his enemy’s mid-section.

His arms closed on air. Somehow, the assassin had ducked beneath him, rolling across the ground and springing up lightly, even as Kismet committed to the futile assault. This time however, the trained killer made no attempt to flee.

As Kismet struggled to rise, he felt something strike the back of his knees. The assassin had gone on the offensive, knocking his feet from beneath him with a low sweeping kick. This was followed immediately by a flurry of punches aimed at his face and torso. Some of the blows he blocked, and those that made contact were not especially forceful, but the overall effect of the assault was cumulative. He felt like a piece of steak being tenderized by repeated hammer blows.

Rejecting the innate impulse to protect himself, he lashed out into the heart of the storm. His fist caught the assassin on the cheek. Though a swath of fabric—the killer’s veil—muted the intensity of the contact, the insistent attack ceased as the robed figure pitched backward. Kismet’s follow-up was sluggish; he was at the limit of his strength and resolve. Sensing this, his opponent sprang lightly erect and ran at him.

The charge was abruptly aborted as Kismet brandished his pistol, aiming directly at the other person’s face. The assassin froze and for a long moment, both simply stood their ground, panting with exhaustion. Finally, Kismet broke the relative silence. “That’s better. Now, let’s talk about a few things.”

The assassin took a tentative step backward, but Kismet gestured with the Glock, asserting control. “The safety’s off. You know I mean it.”

“I don’t think you do.”

The assassin’s voice was low, intentionally unrecognizable, but even that short declaration served to establish certain facts about the killer’s identity. The words were delivered in English—confident, unaccented, idiomatic English. Despite the conscious effort at disguise, there was something faintly familiar about the voice. Kismet tried to keep his foe talking.

“Believe me, I will. It’s the least I can do for the soldiers you killed today.”

He could almost sense the mocking laughter behind the veil. “You know I could have killed you, back at the museum.”

Kismet felt a chilly whisper of déjà vu. When he spoke, he felt he was reciting the words from a script burned in his memory. “Why didn’t you?”

He knew exactly what the assassin was going to say, or at least the substance, but his expectations were proven wrong. Instead of speaking, the assassin remained silent for several seconds, then abruptly flashed into motion.

Kismet squeezed the trigger reflexively, snapping off a shot that pierced the air where an instant before the assassin’s laughing eyes had been. He missed by a hair’s breadth and immediately began tracking the movement with the barrel of the pistol, but the assassin remained a moment ahead of his impulse to fire. The Glock barked several times in succession, but the bullets zipped ineffectually past their target. He stopped firing when his foe ducked around an enormous stack of unused masonry blocks, and resumed the foot chase with the gun still locked in his right hand.