McCracken heard the footsteps coming and didn’t have to turn to know the Russians were approaching. He had to act fast. But what to do?
When in doubt do nothing, went the humorous teaching, but tonight Blaine found more than humor in it. The killers had never gotten a good look at him in the Kerameikos Cemetery, and he doubted they had been furnished with anything but vague descriptions. Their target was not supposed to be a figure in a crowd.
Blaine’s escape had changed all that. His dusty clothes might have given him away but the night breeze had dusted other men as well. The only feature that could identify him was his wounded shoulder. The flow of blood had stopped, and the patch was drying. A skilled eye, though, might notice something out of the ordinary.
Blaine backed up so he was flanked by two women.
“That concludes our tour, ladies and gentlemen,” the tour guide said, and the group applauded politely. “Now,” she continued, starting to move through them, “if you’ll follow me, we’ll make our way down the east path back to the bus.”
McCracken let himself be absorbed into the crowd. Turning, he saw the Russians for the first time in the light, suits looking out of place and soiled by their climb up the hill. Their eyes swept the tour members anxiously, holding briefly on each of the men as they too struggled to mix with the crowd. They gave Blaine the same visual inspections the others received and then conferred with each other, shrugging. Some of their fellows had drifted back among the relics, perhaps believing their quarry to be lurking somewhere in that area.
Blaine blessed his luck. If they thought he was still hiding, he might be able to slip by them by simply sticking with the tour group. He descended with the group down the well-lit east path of the hill. He did not look ahead to his next move; there was no reason to until he found what awaited the group at the end of his descent. He was aware of a pair of Russians lagging back a bit at the rear of the group. A third walked near the head of the procession. From his position in the center Blaine could easily neutralize all three with bullets if it came down to that.
With forty more yards to go until ground level, McCracken saw the tour bus for the first time. Along with something else.
A pair of black Mercedes sedans, windows lowering as the tour group came into view. The cars were ancient, as much relics of their kind as the structures he had just left at the Acropolis. Oversized monsters from a different age, they sat by the curb, one behind the other, waiting.
Blaine also noticed a number of well-dressed men on the sidewalk near the bus across the street. All wore overcoats on the warm spring night. The enemy’s strategy was obvious: wait until the group reached the bottom of the hill and kill all the tour group patrons if their quarry had not showed himself. The media would call it a terrorist attack, and a half-dozen leftist groups would claim responsibility.
Blaine felt the cold sweat dripping down his face and soaking the skin beneath his shirt. His heart thudded against his rib cage, and his breathing suddenly felt labored. Clearly he had to act. He couldn’t allow the slaughter of innocent people. He drew his right hand slowly inside his belt to feel for his Heckler and Koch P-7, which still had seven shots left. The key questions were when to move and where to move first. The street was coming up fast. Russians lay on all sides of him. He had to act before they did but not in a manner that drew their fire randomly into the crowd.
Think, damnit, think!
The bus was right in front of him now. The shape huddled behind the wheel was obviously the driver. The large vehicle could provide cover for him. It would certainly — No, not cover…. Blaine saw what he had to do, but there was still the crowd to consider.
Ten yards from the bus now….
He had to make sure the tour patrons were safe before he acted. It was the only alternative.
Near the bus and across the street, the Russians were pulling out their automatic weapons. The windows in the black cars were all the way down. The signal to fire would come from them.
Blaine knew his next step had to come now and threw himself forward without further thought.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
His scream pierced the night and froze the tour group in its tracks just as it was supposed to. In that same instant, he had his pistol out and was firing in the direction of the black cars, for distraction as much as anything. He had done the last thing the Russians would have expected, and the action allowed him to take control of the crowd’s movement. As his gunshots resounded, the tour patrons hit the ground screaming, taking them out of the line of fire from the street.
The suddenness of McCracken’s motion had stopped the men in the Mercedes from signalling and had forced the over-coated men to take cover. By the time the enemy had recovered their senses, Blaine had reached the side of the bus and fired four bullets up the hill at the charging figures who had stayed near the rear of the pack. Two of the men went down quickly, and then a third.
Just one bullet left, and no time to snap his last clip home….
Automatic fire sliced into the side of the bus. Two over-coated men rushed across the street trying to better their angles as Blaine moved to the open door of the bus. McCracken climbed the steps with his frame low. He saw that the driver, slumped over the wheel, must have been hit by a stray bullet. Blaine pulled the man’s head back, and saw the protruding tongue and purplish features in time to realize he had been strangled. Suddenly a figure rose out of the darkness in the back of the bus.
Blaine fired his last bullet, but he was still in motion himself, and the shot went off target. It hit the bolt of the Russian’s machine gun and jammed it. More machine gun fire pounded the bus as McCracken yanked the dead driver away from the wheel and crouched low in his place. The keys were still in the ignition and he turned them. The bus engine coughed, then caught.
McCracken saw the Russian charging him from the rear, knife in hand now, and floored the accelerator pedal as he shifted into gear. The bus lurched forward suddenly and the attacking Russian toppled over backwards.
Enough bullets had found the tires to make for a bouncy, grinding ride. Blaine kept his head just above the dashboard as more automatic fire sliced through the few remaining windows. He concentrated on keeping the bus straight against its determined efforts to waver out of control. The big vehicle weaved one way and then the other, Blaine’s frantic spins of the wheel inevitably an instant late. What remained of his side mirror showed the Mercedes sedans in hot pursuit with gun-wielding men hanging out windows in both. Blaine raced the bus past the Roman Market and the Library of Hadrian, then screeched into a left toward the familiar surroundings of Monastiraki Square. He had a fleeting sad thought of shop-owner Stadipopolis’s children, who would now grow up orphans after all.
It was the sound of a boot grinding against the steel floor behind him that made Blaine swing around, and the motion saved his life. The Russian’s knife missed him and tore into the fabric of the seat back. The bus careened wildly out of control through Monastiraki Square, smashing through the outdoor tables and sheds. McCracken struggled to control the wheel with one hand while the other reached back for the Russian.
Behind him the two sedans weaved an ever-changing course to avoid the wreckage in the bus’s wake. McCracken heard more than saw them as he fought the Russian behind him. The man was raising his knife once more and Blaine knew in that instant there was no way he could possibly deflect the blow. There was only one thing he could do.
He jammed on the brakes.
The Russian went flying toward the windshield, separated from the knife. Stomping on the accelerator again, Blaine grasped the man’s hair with his free hand while his other hand worked the wheel frantically one way and then the other, tearing the front of a shop out on one side of the street and then weaving into a second across the way.