close to Boris Glukov while the professor was still inside the cave. Now he wanted a gun, something with more range than the 9mm pistol he’d set up in the video camera shell he’d been given by the crew aboard the airplane that had brought him to Herat.
He’d planned on using the handgun to kill Boris once he’d found out what the professor knew. That plan hadn’t come even close to fruition yet. Now, it looked as though it never would.
Calmly, he watched as the journalists and media people foolishly got themselves killed by abandoning their positions in search of another one. If they hadn’t gotten killed in the first onslaught, chances were good that their attackers wouldn’t see them on a second pass through.
Linko crept to the front of the vehicle and peered around the bumper. Scanning the western ridge of the mountain, he counted at least eight men. A dead ANP policeman lay in the snow four meters away. The man was on his back, face and chest bloody and his rifle practically resting in his hand.
The itch to dart out for the weapon was almost too strong to resist, but Linko did. He’d been in bad circumstances before. With the way the ANP police were dying around him, there’d probably be a closer weapon before long.
Running footsteps came up behind him. He turned and watched as a woman ran toward the cargo van. Snow flew in all directions as she sprinted, trying to stay low to the ground. She grabbed the door to the van and levered herself inside, snatching the radio mic and switching on the engine.
“Hello! This is an emergency! The archeology dig thirty-five miles south of Herat is under attack! I repeat, this is an emergency!”
Linko gazed up at the woman and saw that she was sitting up in the seat. He was just about to call up and advise her that such a course of action was foolish.
Before he could do more than open his mouth, a bullet cored through the windshield and exploded the woman’s head. Pummeled by the heavy-caliber, high-velocity round, the woman’s corpse fell back out of the cargo van and on top of Linko, showering him with blood and brain matter.
“Hello? Hello? Caller, this is Foxtrot Leader of the United States Army Airborne. Can you hear me?”
Linko reached up for the mic and pulled it down to him. He tasted the dead woman’s blood in his mouth. “I can hear you.” He spoke in an American accent.
“Okay, you people just keep your heads down. We’ve got planes in the area on recon missions. We can get there in seven minutes.”
Linko didn’t say anything because there wasn’t anything he needed to say. All he had to do was stay alive—and find Boris Glukov.
And he only had seven minutes to do that.
Once that window of opportunity was over, he felt certain getting information from Glukov was going to be even more difficult. He gazed back at the cave where Glukov had disappeared with the American, Thomas Lourds.
Cursing, Linko returned to the front of the van and peered at the cave mouth. He kept expecting Glukov to appear there like a cuckoo bird popping out of an alarm clock, then get shot down.
If that happened, there might be no promotion. Even worse, Linko was certain he would secure the enmity of the Russian president.
Forcing himself up, he lunged from the cargo van and raced for the cave seventy meters away. He counted his steps, hit ten, and threw himself into the nearest pile of snow. He leaped in like a swimmer, hands thrust forward to break the surface before him, then he was kicking to get in more deeply.
Bullets zipped through the snow and slapped into the earth around him. He forced himself to be still, to allow the gunners to think they’d killed him and move on to other targets.
Then he pushed himself up and ran again, knowing that the playing dead trick wouldn’t work again on any of the attackers that had fallen for it before.
Luck was with him, and he made it to the incline leading up to the cave. His breath came in ragged gasps, throwing out gray clouds in front of him. He shoved a sawhorse aside, noting the dead ANP guard draped over another sawhorse only a short distance away.
Linko ran hard, digging his boots into the frozen ground and staying bent over as he ran, using his hands and arms as another set of legs