Miles crawled through, Ariana following, cursing as a spring dug a gouge out of her shoulder. By the time she was in the backseat, Miles was already in the driver’s seat and had the engine started. Bullets were smacking into the heavy glass on all sides and ricocheting off. Ariana climbed into the passenger seat as Miles threw the BMW into gear.
Ariana took a quick look around. Getty was firing while the Mercedes was also taking incoming bullets. There were men spread all across the street from the two cars that had just arrived, all with automatic weapons. The two snipers under the bridge were also firing. She could see more cars coming from both directions as Getty jumped into the temporary security of the armored Mercedes and started its engine.
Miles raced by the Mercedes only to face four white vans coming toward them. He slammed on the brakes and expertly skidded the car in a one-eighty turn. He accelerated in the other direction, Getty following. The men who had gotten out of the cars fired, bullets smacking off the bulletproof glass, leaving cracks in places. They drove out of the way as Miles continued to push down on the gas.
“Oh damn,” Miles muttered. There were four more vans blocking the way under the bridge. “Better buckle up,” he said as he threw the wheel counterclockwise, and the heavy car lifted slightly on two wheel before settling back down as they headed toward the up ramp for the bridge, between it and the Kremlin.
A bullet hit the glass right next to Ariana’s head, and she ducked as a spider web of cracks appeared. She had just managed to buckle her seat belt when the car came to an abrupt halt and she was slammed forward, the belt keeping her from bashing her brains out on the dash. She looked up. Fifty meters in front of them, the ramp was blocked by two vans parked in a V. Behind the vans, a half-dozen men with automatic weapons and one man with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher waited. The eighty-eight millimeter wide round stuck out of the forty-millimeter tube, filled with explosives and waiting to be fired. The high-explosive warhead could penetrate over a foot of tank armor, which meant the cars were vulnerable to it.
Miles’s hands were tight on the wheel, his foot on the brake. Getty pulled the Mercedes up next to them, Miles looked to the left and Getty nodded.
“What is he doing?” Ariana asked as the Mercedes began moving.
“His job,” Miles said.
She watched in horror as the Mercedes raced toward the two vans, picking up speed. The men began firing, bullets bouncing off the car. Miles switched from brake to gas, and fell in twenty meters behind the Mercedes. The man with the RPG took careful aim and pulled the trigger. Getty swerved, but the distance was too close to make him miss but not as close as Getty had hoped. The rocket grenade needed ten meters of flight to arm. He almost made it, but impact came at twelve meters. The round hit the Mercedes just below the right headlight, punched into the engine, and exploded.
Ariana ducked as the heavy engine hood of the Mercedes came flying over the burning car and smashed into the roof and the BMW, denting it. The Mercedes was still moving, four tones of momentum smashing into the point of the V, shoving both lighter vans back and clearing the way, before the car came to a halt, fire engulfing the engine.
Miles darted them through the gap, then swerved to the driver’s side of the Mercedes. “Covering fire!” he yelled at Ariana as he kicked his door open and sprayed the dazed gunmen with the MP-5.
She opened her door and fired as fast as she could pull the trigger, emptying a fifteen-round clip in four seconds. Then she looked at the driver of the Mercedes, Getty was held in place by the seat belt, but his head drooped. He was either dead or unconscious.
“Cover me,” she yelled across the top of the BMW to Miles as she abandoned the safety of the door and pulled at the driver’s door. It was locked. She looked over her shoulder, but Miles had already seen the problem and had his remote opener in hand. He pushed a button, and the lock clicked. She pulled the door open.
One of Getty’s legs was gone from the knee down, blood pulsing out. But she took the sign of the blood flowing as a positive; it meant he was still alive. She tucked her pistol in her belt and then grabbed his arms. She turned her back to him, his arms tight over her shoulders, and dragged him.
A string of bullets whizzed by her head. “Sorry,” Miles yelled as he fired another burst that narrowly missed her, giving her covering fire at whoever was behind her.
She shoved Getty into the passenger seat, then sat on top of him, pulling the door shut. Miles slid into his seat, and they were on their way. Bullets thumped on the back window as he pulled away.
As Miles raced through the streets of Moscow, darting through narrow alleys, Ariana pulled her belt off. She slid it under the stump of Getty’s right leg, then pulled it as tight as she could. Then she stuck the muzzle of the Browning under the belt and twisted, tightening down the makeshift tourniquet.
“Where are you going?” she finally asked Miles, satisfied that at least there was no more blood coming out of the stump.
“The airfield.”
She shook her head. “We need to get him to a hospital.”
“The Mafia would have him in a heartbeat if we did that,” Miles said. “We’re coming with you.”
Dane flexed his knees, allowing his body to roll with the slight swell that the Grayback bobbed in. There was one Crab in each of the two hangers, and the one on the right was being prepped for the upcoming mission.
The Crab looked like a cross between a Bradley, Fighting Vehicle and a miniature submarine. It had a tubular body ten meters long by three in diameter with a turret on the top center that mounted the thirty-millimeter chain gun and the TOW and torpedo launchers. At the rear were dual propellers and horizontal and vertical dive fins, while along the lower half on either side were treads, both powered by the same powerful engine, the changeover made by shifting the power train to either tread or propeller. Entry was by means of doors on either side near the rear, just in front of the power plant, that were hinged on the bottom and swung down to become ramps.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Colonel Loomis asked.
“Impressive was the B-52 bomber stuck vertically in the ground that was in the Angkor gate,” Dane said. “Impressive is destroying Iceland. Impressive is sending a tsunami to wipe out a hundred miles of the coast of Puerto Rico as a by-product of doing something else. It’s also destroying Atlantis so completely we thought it was simply a literary device used by Plato.”
“What’s your problem?” Loomis asked. “Ever since you’ve come here, you’ve been gloom and doom.”
“I should be dancing with joy?” Dane asked. He faced the officer. “I’ve been in a gate before. I watched my team get decimated. This” — he slapped the side of the Crab, producing a dull thunk—“is not going to defeat the Shadow. It’s a ride, that’s all. We have no clue what we’re going to find over there,” Dane nodded toward the dark wall on the northern horizon. “Not in the gate and especially not once we go through the portal, if we can go through the portal.”
“I know all that,” Loomis said. “But we’re taking the fight to the Shadow for the first time instead of reacting. I think you’d be a little more positive.”
“What makes you think this is the first time man has taken the fight into a gate against the Shadow?” Dane asked.