Judith slipped her hand from his. “Hold on! What exactly …?”
Jason could only see her outline in the dusky alley. “We can talk later. Right now I want to get out of the dark.”
The alley ended at H Street. Jason took a right, finding himself on the open, well-lit, tree-studded quad of George Washington University.
Judith stopped. “OK, we’re out of the dark. Now, what the hell …?”
Was that movement at the base of a massive oak?
Jason put a finger to his lips. “Not out of the woods yet.”
She was looking over his shoulder. “Do you know those men?”
Jason whirled around. Two figures, their faces in the shadow of baseball caps, were advancing slowly from the direction he and Judith had come. A quick look over his shoulder revealed two more coming from the opposite direction.
“Are they students, you think?” Judith asked.
Jason was cursing himself for not checking on the cab ride to Kinkead’s. Not that a tail could have been spotted in city traffic. “I doubt it.”
“Muggers?”
“Not likely.”
“But what—”
He took her hand again, this time backing up slowly until he was in front of the door of the law school. Fortunately, Judith had spotted them before Jason had no chance of finding a position to protect his back.
He reached under the back of his jacket, producing the Glock. “You know how to use this?”
She looked as though he were handing her a serpent. “I’ve only fired a pistol in basic training, but I think I remember.”
“Try. Don’t shoot unless you have to, though.”
If the approaching quartet had intended to use firearms, they would have done so before Jason has seen them, certainly before he had managed to back into a defensive position. No reason to announce what was happening to the local and campus police. They were armed, though, Jason was certain. If he showed any move toward gunplay, they would respond in kind, worrying about cops later.
Now he could see something in the hands of two of the men, something that reflected the light. Something like long-bladed Spetsnaz knives. The other two had hands inside their jackets, ready in case guns were needed.
Four against one wasn’t good odds in a shoot-out. Even worse in a knife fight.
36
The man called Pedro smiled as he looked at the screen of his cell phone. The other hand held a glass of chilled vodka. It was far from his first of the evening.
“Prekrasniy! Chudesniy! Peters has left the sanctuary of the military base. Anatoly’s team has Peters cornered in the American capital.”
His younger companion was not quite so sanguine. But then, he had consumed far less vodka. “In English, remember?”
“OK: awesome, fantastic. In any language we will soon be shed of this Peters person.”
“Let us not celebrate too early. What do the Americans say, something about numbering eggs? Or is it hatching eggs? Besides, we do not know for whom Peters works. Who says they will not send another on the same mission.”
“Another American saying tells us not to jump off a bridge until we reach it.” A puzzled expression crossed Pedro’s face. “Why would one jump from a bridge in the first place? Anyway, we know the Englishman, the professor …”
“Cravas.”
“Cravas. He contacted the man who went to Iceland …”
“Karloff.”
“Yes, Karloff. He must have been the one who hired Peters or his employer.”
“Too bad he’s dead. Otherwise we might have some idea who that employer might be.”
Pedro reached out and gently slapped the other man’s cheek before tossing back the contents of his glass. “Do not be critical of your superiors. The decision to have Karloff die was made in Switzerland, not here. If the man had already spread the professor’s poison, how could we be sure it went no further?”
He refilled his glass and continued, “An obscure professor in northern England, that is one thing. Besides, these scientists are always bickering like married people: The world is getting warmer; the world is not getting warmer. Who takes them seriously anyway? Now that Karloff is gone and Peters soon will be, who will interfere with our mission? No one, that’s who! I’m ordering half of the teams to converge on the American capital immediately. Peters won’t escape us now!”
Carlos wasn’t quite so sure.
37
Jason pushed Judith against the doors of the building. “Watch my back.”
Then he stepped toward the two men with knives. He could see clearly now that his guess had been correct. A basic Spetsnaz tactic was for one or more men to try to finish the intended victim off with the silence of knives under cover of comrades with guns. Should the blade-wielding soldiers fail, the target could be handled with more effective, if less secretive, gunfire.
Bending slightly forward, arms extended from his body, Jason circled the two assailants. The quad was well lit enough for him to see the grins on their faces. Two experienced knife fighters against an unarmed man backed up by a frightened woman with a single pistol …
Well, they seemed to be saying, this isn’t even sporting.
Jason waited patiently, knowing what to expect. The Bowie knife — like shape of the Russian blades dictated the method of attack, an attack that was not long in coming.
The man on Jason’s left feigned a move to his own left, then swiped at arm’s length, slashing a blur of steel from his right.
Jason thought he heard a cry from Judith as he easily danced away. The thrust had not been intended to be successful but to distract Jason from what would come next, a similar but more deadly move by his partner.
It came exactly as expected. Instead of stepping out of the arc of the slicing blade, Jason stepped into it, into it far enough that the knife was behind him. At the same instant, Jason’s right arm went forward with a motion similar to a baseball pitcher releasing a fastball. The momentum flung the customized killing blade that had been strapped to his arm from its scabbard and into his hand.
Had he the time, Jason would have to thank whatever deity had reminded him to return to his room before going out and to strap the weapon on.
Before his immediate assailant could recover from his own strike, Jason was below his arm, thrusting upward. The finely honed steel entered just at the armpit, journeying upward until deflected by a shoulder bone. The man shrieked in pain as he reflexively spun away, dropping his own weapon. The move allowed Jason’s narrow blade to slide free. Not a fatal wound but one that would keep the man out of any further activity tonight.
Jason’s other opponent, anticipating the second or two Jason would need to work the knife free, charged. The look of surprise on his face when he realized his mistake would have been comic had its consequences not been fatal. Dropping to one knee, Jason simply held up his knife, letting his enemy’s inertia impale him upon it. The blade entered under the rib cage and upward to the heart.
The man went down without a sound, dead before he hit the ground.
But Jason didn’t see him fall. Instead, his attention was snatched away by the sound of a single shot.
Judith, Glock in both hands and in a shooter’s stance, was watching one of the two who presumably were carrying firearms as he slowly collapsed on the steps of the law school not twenty feet from where Jason stood.