There was the man with the pistol, collapsing under a hail of automatic fire as he exchanged shots with the security guards. But the running man was closer, much closer now, so close now Tombstone could see his bushy mustache, see the wild light in his Oriental-looking eyes. Reaching the stage, he leaned over the railing, aiming directly at Tombstone and Boychenko from a range of less than five feet.
He pulled the trigger and nothing happened.
Tombstone was up and on his feet in the same instant, scooping up an overturned metal chair, pivoting, and hurling it as hard as he could. The gray chair struck the gunman and momentarily tangled with his weapon, knocking him back a step and confusing him. Tombstone was in the air right behind the chair, lunging for the man’s throat even as he tossed the chair aside and tried to bring his AKMS to bear once more. He hit the man high, hands lancing toward the throat, his arms held stiff before him; the impact of his legs splintered the frail structure of the railing as he crashed through and knocked the assassin down. The gunman continued fumbling with his weapon, dragging a loaded magazine out from inside one of the capacious pockets of his trench coat. Tombstone battled him for that heavy black magazine, wresting it away from him, picking it up like a flat rock and bringing it down on the side of the man’s head with tremendous force. The gunman raised his arm, trying to block the attack. Tombstone struck him again, and the man’s head lolled to the side.
Tombstone looked up, blinking. People were still screaming, shrieking, and running in all directions as security troops converged on the stage. Half a dozen civilians were down on the grass, faces and clothing smeared with bright scarlet blood. Pamela!..
There she was, apparently all right, kneeling on the grass a few yards away next to the body of her cameraman. She looked up and locked gazes with him, but there was no recognition in her eyes, none at all. She looked like she was in shock.
Then a half-dozen troops arrived, muscling Tombstone aside and pouncing on the semiconscious would-be assassin with an almost gleeful viciousness.
“Don’t kill him!” Tombstone shouted as one soldier hammered at the man with his rifle butt, but he didn’t even know if any of them spoke English. He reached out and grabbed the soldier’s arm before he could strike again. “Nyet!” Tombstone yelled. The soldier spun, face a twisted mask of anger. “Nyet!” he yelled again. Damn, how did you say “Don’t kill him” in Russian? The foreign country guidebooks never gave you the really useful phrases.
One soldier, though ― a lieutenant ― barked orders and cuffed two of the soldiers aside. In a few moments, they’d sorted things out and half dragged, half carried the man away.
Tombstone scrambled back onto the stage and raced to Tarrant’s side. The admiral had taken one round through his chest, up high, and was unconscious.
“Tombstone!” Joyce cried, reaching his side. “My God, are you okay?”
“Fine, Tomboy,” he said. “Fine.” He wasn’t sure he was ready to believe that yet. His knees now, as reaction began to settle in, felt terribly weak, and his breaths came in short, almost panting gasps. He looked at her. Her dress uniform was disheveled and she’d lost her hat. His eyes widened as he saw a bright smear of blood on her jacket.
“It’s not me,” she said, reading his expression.
“You’re okay?”
“Yeah. What about the admiral?”
“Damn. I don’t know. I don’t know!” They needed a doctor. No… they needed a Navy doctor, someone off the Jeff.
Nearby, Boychenko was standing again, staring around at the carnage with an expression as dazed as Pamela’s. Several soldiers, eyes nervously on the building and the milling, panicky crowd, started to urge him away to safety, but he shrugged free and walked over to Tombstone.
“Captain Magruder,” he said, the words heavily accented. He took Tombstone’s hand in both of his, shook it, then pulled the American close and hugged him. “Spasebaw. Thank you, for my life. That was very brave deed.”
“It was nothing,” Tombstone said. “I was running for cover and tripped.”
Boychenko blinked, looking puzzled. He probably didn’t speak enough English to be able to understand more than a word or two of what Tombstone was saying.
“Is Admiral Tarrant?”
“He needs medical help. A hospital.”
“We do what we can.”
One of his security men tugged at the general’s elbow, imploring him with his expression to hurry. Tombstone could understand their worry. There might well have been more than three assassins, should have been, in fact, given the number of Boychenko’s guards.
As they hurried him away, Tombstone moved to the far side of the stage and found Abdulhalik sitting up, one hand clutching a shoulder soggy with blood. “Lie down,” Tombstone told him. “Damn it, get down!”
“Yes, sir.”
Sandoval was lying nearby, his eyes wide open in death. Whitehead was dead as well. Damn… damn!
The security man complied and Tombstone used a length of cloth torn from the man’s sleeve as a pressure bandage on Abdulhalik’s wound. It looked as though the bullet had smashed through his chest, high up near his shoulder, shattering his scapula but, so far as Tombstone could tell, missing his lung. At least there was no blood in his nose or mouth, and he seemed to be breathing okay.
“Tatars,” Abdulhalik said, his voice weak.
“Sorry?”
“Damned… Tatars. Descendants of the Mongols. You know Genghis Khan?”
Tombstone kept working, tying the packing in place with more strips of cloth. “Not personally. I never met the man.”
“Think… Crimea is their… homeland.”
“It is, from what I’ve heard.” He’d read the history in a guidebook several days ago. Before the Russian Revolution, the first revolution in 1917, the Crimean Peninsula had been settled largely by Tatars ― as Abdulhalik had said, descendants of the Mongol hordes that had swept across southern Russia in the thirteenth century. Crimea had been their final stronghold in Russia until the time of Catherine the Great, and they’d still been a significant part of the population well into the twentieth century. After the Communists had taken over, Crimea was redesignated as a Tatar Autonomous District.
Then had come the Second World War, and the invasion by Hitler’s legions.
Crimea had been occupied, then liberated, but with liberation came persecution. Stalin accused the Tatars of collaborating with the Nazis and used that excuse to exile all of them to central Asia. The ban against their return to Crimea had been lifted in the 1980s, and they’d been returning ever since, in larger and larger numbers. Many were now demanding that the Crimea be returned to them, as an autonomous district or as a free homeland.
Those demands, Tombstone reflected, would muddy the waters a bit but had no chance at all of being realized. Neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians were willing to relinquish the embattled little triangle of land, and for damned sure they weren’t going to turn it over to the Tatars.
Looking up, Tombstone watched as soldiers picked up one of the bodies of the would-be assassins. “You think they tried to kill the general to get their homeland back?”