The Ka-60 had turned broadside to him, hovering over the statue fifty yards away. It bobbed slightly as it hung in the air there, then stabilized itself until it was motionless, seeming almost glued to the air.
Its side hatch slid open — the movement was enough to make Chapel look — and the copilot peered out for a moment, then ducked back inside. A second later the long narrow shape of a heavy machine gun rolled forward, four barrels sticking out through the side hatch to glint in the sunlight.
Chapel recognized the gun — a Yak-B Gatling gun that could pump out four thousand rounds every minute. Standard equipment on most Russian attack helicopters, though the Ka-60 normally didn’t carry one. The helicopter must have been modified to carry it at the expense of crew seats. It opened fire almost instantly with a grinding noise that made every muscle in Chapel’s body twitch.
He dove backward, under the short wall that screened the rooftop. His face hit the searing tar paper as bullets lanced over him, chewing up the roof only a few feet from where he lay. If the pilot ascended even a few dozen feet, the gunner would have a perfect view of Chapel, wherever he was on the roof.
It was definitely time to move.
He waited until he heard the Gatling gun start to spin down, then pushed himself up on his hands and dashed for the stairway that led down inside the building. The helicopter started firing again before he reached the stairs, but he managed to get down into cover behind thick walls, even as dust and shards of broken concrete rained down on him. Something hurt, but he didn’t have time to think about it. He hurried into the center of the building where he would be safe from the Gatling gun and pressed himself up against a wall, gaining just a little space to breathe.
Something really started to hurt by then. It didn’t matter — he could walk. And he had to find some way to deal with the helicopter. As long as it was airborne, there was no way to get away in the truck, no hope for him or for Nadia or Bogdan.
He checked his rifle, even though the pain was getting pretty intense. His clip was still half full, and everything looked in order…
Goddamnit, that hurt.
He realized he was being foolish. If he was really injured, he could bleed out in minutes. He just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that he was wounded. He looked down, then, and saw a huge oblong gash in his leg. It was bleeding profusely, but he didn’t think any arteries were pierced, and none of the bones were broken.
Still, it had to be taken care of. He tore off his shirt and ripped it into strips. He could barely manage a quick field dressing, but at least that would slow the blood loss. While he was tying off the bandage, he heard something, and he stopped rigid in place.
He’d heard someone whisper.
He grabbed his rifle and almost fired a burst into the shadows—
— before he realized it was Nadia, and she was calling his name.
He realized that he’d lost track of her, and that she must have run into his building as she moved around the intersection. She would have known he was still there, of course — she only had to look for the building currently being demolished by the helicopter. It was a terrible risk, though, for them to be in the same building at the same time. If the assassins had a bomb or even just more tear gas grenades—
“Jim,” she breathed. “Oh, thank God you are still alive!”
She came out of the shadows and rushed over to put an arm around him. He thought she was trying to embrace him and wanted to tell her there was no time for that, but then he realized he had been falling over and she was coming to support him.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
“I’ll be fine. What’s the situation?”
“We are about to be killed,” she said.
Chapel grunted in frustration and pushed his back up against the wall. “That’s not what I meant. There were six of them on the ground. You got two over by the factories, then wounded another one when they spotted me. I’m pretty sure two of them are still holed up in the dormitories; they’re probably watching the entrance to the canyon, ready to gun us down if we try to run into the desert, and—”
“Eight,” she said.
He shut up and just stared at her.
“What?” he asked, when she didn’t elaborate.
“There were eight of them on the ground, by my count.”
Chapel wanted to close his eyes and sit down and just stop thinking then. He wanted to pretend like none of this was happening.
He couldn’t do that, of course.
“I counted six,” he told her. “I was planning on six.” But it had been hard to get an accurate count when they jumped out of the helicopter. The rotor had been kicking up so much dust, and he’d been far enough away he could have counted wrong. “Okay, there were eight. Now there are six and one is wounded. Then there’s this helicopter. The second we step out of this building, it’s going to mow us down.” He thought of something, then. Something that should have always been there, in the middle of his plans. “Where’s Bogdan?” he asked.
“In the truck,” she said. “Hiding under some crates. I got him in there while the killers were still distracted.”
Chapel forced a grin, despite the pain in his leg. Damn, but Nadia was good at this. The truck was probably the safest place for the hacker to be. The assassins had already checked the vehicle and cleared it. They would have no reason to check it again, at least not until they were sure they’d secured the area.
“It might be possible,” Nadia said. “Not likely, mind you. But possible that we could draw enough attention away from the truck that he could drive out of here alone. Of course, we would have to sacrifice both our lives to get him clear.”
“If we don’t take care of the helicopter, he won’t get very far. And do you think it would even occur to him to take that kind of initiative?”
Nadia’s shoulders swiveled around in a complicated shrug as she wrestled with her thoughts. “No,” she said, finally.
Chapel nodded. “Okay. So, slightly different plan. I go up on the roof and shoot down this helicopter — if I can, which is a big hypothetical. In the chaos you run for the truck and drive the hell out of here. Assuming these assholes don’t shoot out your tires or get a lucky shot and kill you at the wheel, you can get to the Caspian Sea and meet the submarine there; it can take you to—”
“That is the most foolish plan I have ever heard,” Nadia told him.
“You have a better one?”
“Yes,” she told him. “I go to the roof. You drive the truck.”
Chapel could guess her logic. He knew perfectly well what she was thinking. She had only a few months to live, even if she did escape from Aralsk-30. Sacrificing herself here and now wouldn’t do much to shorten her life expectancy.
He knew he couldn’t let her do it, though. He couldn’t let this woman, this incredible person, just throw her life away, no matter how short it might be. He didn’t understand his feelings for her. He didn’t know that he ever would. But they were real.
He would do everything in his power to make sure she lived, for as long as she could. To make sure she escaped.
He also knew that she would try to argue him around if he said anything like that. She would tell him he was being an idiot, an emotional idiot, and maybe she would be right. So he needed another reason why it couldn’t be her.
“You’re a lousy shot,” he said.
Her eyes flared with something similar to — but not quite the same as — anger. He could tell she knew he was right. She pressed her lips together very hard, until they turned white. She twisted her face away from his. Then she brought it back very fast and kissed him, deeply, passionately. For what they both knew was the last time.