— Set this bucket down, and I mean now! Karpov ordered over the racket of the engines.
The pilot, who had been battling the controls ever since they were hit, nodded and they descended vertically. The moment they made contact with a bone-rattling jar, Karpov wrenched the door open and dropped to the ground. Bourne followed him with a grimace of pain. His breath was hot in his throat. Both of them ran, crouched over, under the aircraft‘s wind-sweep, until they were outside the circumference of the rotors.
What they came upon was hell on earth. Or, rather, war. In the air, the virile whoosh of the missiles had been exhilarating, especially as retaliation for the first strike, but here on the ground, without the cool detachment of a God‘s-eye view, all was devastation. Great mounds of black earth, scorched and smoking as if from the pits of the underworld, halfcovered random bits and pieces of bodies, as if some insane creature had decided to improve on the human form by first dismantling it. The stench of roasted flesh mingled with the foul odors of excrement and exploded ordnance.
To Bourne, the scene had the nightmarish quality of Goya‘s half-mad Black Paintings come to life. When so much death presented itself, when all was horror in every direction, the mind interpreted it as surreal in order not to go mad.
The two men spotted Arkadin at the same time and took off after him. The problem was that the pain in Bourne‘s chest was growing in size and heat. Whereas only moments before it had seemed to be the size of a pinball it now seemed larger than a fist. It seemed, moreover, to have encompassed his heart. As he went down on one knee, he saw Karpov vanish into a plume of black, oily smoke. He couldn‘t see Arkadin, but what was left of his cadre was engaged with the Iranian oil field guards in a pitched hand-to-hand battle for every inch of territory that hadn‘t been turned into an infernal pit. As for the Black River operatives, none that he could see remained alive, having been either killed in the missile attack or executed by Arkadin‘s forces. All was chaos.
Bourne forced himself to his feet, staggering past the bodies into the curling smoke that reached up into the sky. What he encountered on the other side was not encouraging. Boris lay on the slope of one of the craters, one leg at an unnatural angle underneath the other. White bone shone through. Standing astride him was Leonid Danilovich Arkadin. In Arkadin‘s hand was a
38 SIG Sauer.
— You thought you could fuck me up, Colonel, but I‘ve waited a long time for this moment. Arkadin‘s voice could just be heard over the screams and the harsh, rat-a-tat sounds of weapons of war. -And now my time is here.
He turned abruptly, facing Bourne, and a slow smile spread across his face as he squeezed off three shots in a tight triangle into Bourne‘s chest.
34
BOURNE WAS BLOWN BACK off his feet by the concussion of the bullets striking him. Searing pain racked him; he must have passed out for a moment, because the next thing he knew Arkadin had climbed up to the lip of the crater, looking down at him with an odd expression that might have been pity or even disappointment.
— Here we are, he said as he walked toward Bourne. -Karpov isn‘t going anywhere and Perlis‘s men are dead, if not buried. They‘re both dead men. So now it‘s just you and me, the first and last Treadstone graduates. But you‘re on the verge of death as well, aren‘t you? He crouched down. -You are complicit in Devra‘s death and I made you pay, but there‘s something I want to know before you die. How many more graduates are there? Ten? Twenty?
More?
Bourne could barely speak, he felt paralyzed. There was blood all over the front of the jacket Boris had given him.
— I don‘t know, he managed to get out. Breathing was more difficult than he‘d expected, and the pain was incredible. Now that he was in the center of the web, now that he had found the clever spider who crouched there spinning his intricate strands, he felt helpless.
— You don‘t know. Arkadin cocked his head to one side, mocking him.
— Well, here‘s what I know and, unlike you, I don‘t mind sharing. I imagine you think I hired the Torturer, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Why would I hire someone to do something I‘m itching to do myself? Doesn‘t make sense, does it? But here‘s what does make sense: The Torturer was hired by Willard. Yes, that‘s right, the man who remade you in Bali, after you somehow survived a bullet to the heart. How did you manage that, by the way?
Never mind. In a moment, when you‘re dead, it‘ll be irrelevant.
Ordnance-mortars perhaps-from the Iranians came whistling through the sky, detonating at two different flanking points not a hundred yards away. Arkadin never flinched or even blinked. He merely waited for an abatement of the screaming.
— Where was I? Oh, yes, Willard. Here‘s another news flash for you: Willard knew I was alive and that I was the one who‘d pulled the trigger in Bali. How did he know? The typical Treadstone way, he interrogated the man I hired to make sure you were really dead. He called me on my own man‘s cell, can you believe the balls on that fuck!
Not far away, aircraft engines whined into life. The Black Hawk‘s rotors started spinning. Now Bourne knew where Perlis had gone.
— I imagine you‘re wondering why he didn‘t tell you? Because he was testing you-just like he was testing me. He wanted to see how long it would take you to find out about me because he already knew how long it took me to find out about you. Arkadin sat back on his heels. -Clever little fucker, I‘ll give him that.
— Well, now that we‘ve gotten to know each other a little better, it‘s time to end it. There‘s only so much time I can spend with my doppelgänger without getting sick to my stomach.
He got to his feet. -I‘d make you crawl, but I‘m quite sure in your condition you can‘t manage it.
That was when Bourne rose up as if he‘d returned from the dead, and lunged at him.
Arkadin, in shock, raised the SIG and fired. Once again Bourne was knocked off his feet, once again he rose to one knee and then to his feet.
— Good Christ! Arkadin said. His eyes harbored a hunted and dangerous look. -What the fuck are you?
Bourne reached out and grabbed at the gun. At precisely that moment, a shot rang out, spinning Arkadin around. Blood leaked from a wound in his shoulder. He shouted, struck out at Bourne, then fired off two shots at Boris Karpov who, despite his broken leg, had crawled up the side of the charred crater. Arkadin‘s SIG clicked hollowly; the magazine was empty.
The Black Hawk lifted off and, swinging around, began a raking fire of machine-gun bursts at the remaining members of Arkadin‘s cadre. It made no difference to the Black River gunner aboard the helicopter that Arkadin‘s men were still engaged with the Iranian guards-both were being systematically mowed down.
Throwing the useless SIG into Bourne‘s face, Arkadin raced toward what remained of his men. Bourne took three steps after him and fell to his knees. His heart felt as if it was about to burst. Despite the Kevlar vest and packets of pig blood Karpov had insisted he put on under his jacket, the impact of the four shots Arkadin had fired at him had torn open his original wound. He could barely catch his breath.