Page 40 of The Bourne Deception (Jason Bourne 7)

  “You—you’re taking over Yevsen’s business?” Despite what he’d just heard, Perlis couldn’t stop himself from laughing in Arkadin’s brutal face. “You have delusions of grandeur, my friend. You’re nothing but an uneducated, low-IQ Russian hood who’s inexplicably come into some good luck. But in this business good luck will get you only so far, then it’s time for the professionals to take you out.”

  Arkadin resisted the urge to turn the American’s face into bloody pulp. That time would come, but first he required an audience for what he was about to do. Still holding on to Perlis’s hand, he thumbed open his cell phone and sent a three-digit text message. A moment later the belly of the Air Afrika jet seemed to split open with the remaining eighty men in Arkadin’s private army.

  “What’s this?” Perlis said, as he watched his own personnel being overpowered, disarmed, thrown to the ground, where they were systematically bound and gagged.

  “It isn’t only Yevsen’s business I’m taking over, Mr. Perlis, it’s these oil fields. What’s yours is now mine.”

  The Russian Mi-28 Havoc combat helicopter carrying Bourne and Colonel Boris Karpov, two of his men, as well as a two-man crew and a full complement of weapons, banked low over the Iranian oil fields in Shahrake Nasiri-Astara, and immediately they saw the two planes—one the Air Afrika jet Karpov’s IT man in Khartoum had tracked here, the other a Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawk painted matte black but with no markings: Black River transport.

  “According to my intel in Moscow, the American-led allied forces have not yet crossed over into Iranian territory,” Karpov said. “We may still have time to avert this catastrophe.”

  “If I know anything about Noah Perlis, he’s sure to have made contingency plans.” Bourne, peering down at the swiftly changing terrain, was mulling over everything Soraya had told him. At last he had all the pieces of the puzzle, save one: Arkadin’s angle. He had to have one, Bourne was as certain of that as he was of anything in this delicately constructed spider’s web.

  And there was the spider, he thought, as the Havoc swept down like a bat out of hell, passing directly over the figures of Arkadin and Perlis. As Karpov directed the pilot to land, Bourne felt the deep throbbing pain in his chest wound, returning like an old enemy to dog him. Ignoring it, he tried to work out what was going on. Five men and one woman were lying facedown on the ground, trussed like suckling pigs ready for the rotisserie. Bourne counted a hundred heavily armed men in camo uniforms that were clearly not American military issue.

  “What the fuck is happening down there?” Boris had just now switched his attention to the same scene that absorbed Bourne. “And there’s that fucker, Arkadin.” He clenched his fist. “How I want his nuts in a sling, and now by God I’ll have them.”

  By this time the Havoc had come under small-arms fire and the pilot, sitting in his raised cabin in the rear, was taking evasive maneuvers, the two TV3-117VMA turboshaft engines whining in response. Neither Bourne nor Karpov was particularly concerned by the semi-automatic fire, since the Havoc was outfitted with an armored cabin able to withstand the impact of 7.62 and 12.7mm bullets as well as 20mm shell fragments.

  “Are you all set?” Karpov asked Bourne. “You look ready for anything, just like an American should.” And he laughed tonelessly.

  The weapons man yelled a warning. Looking to where he was pointing, they saw one of the men slide a Redeye missile into its launcher, and his compatriot swing it up onto his shoulder, aim it at them, and pull the trigger.

  The moment Arkadin saw the Redeye rammed home into its launcher, he delivered a vicious uppercut to Perlis’s jaw and, releasing his hand as the American went down, ran toward the man who was about to fire at the Havoc. He shouted for the man to stop, but it was useless, the noise of the helicopter rotors was too loud. He knew what had happened. His men had seen the Russian combat Havoc and had reacted instinctively against an enemy.

  The Redeye shot into the air, detonating against the Havoc’s fuel tanks. That was a mistake because the Havoc’s tanks were insulated with polyurethane foam to protect them from being set on fire. Plus, any rents in the tanks themselves were instantly closed with latex in the self-healing covers. Even if the blast had ruptured one of the fuel lines, which seemed likely because the Havoc was at a low altitude when it was hit, the fuel feed system operated in a vacuum, which prevented the fuel from leaking into areas where it could be ignited.

  In the aftermath of the hit, the Havoc swung back and forth like a disoriented insect; then what Arkadin feared most happened: two Shturm anti-tank missiles streaked out from the underbelly of the wounded Havoc toward the surface. The resulting detonations took out three-quarters of Arkadin’s cadre.

  Bourne, thrown face-first against a bulkhead, felt the explosion of pain in his chest radiating out into his arms. For an instant he thought the trauma to his wound had caused a heart attack. Then he got himself under control, mentally tamped down on the pain, and, extending a hand, pulled Karpov off the deck of the Havoc. Smoke drifted into the cabin, which made it more difficult for him to catch his breath, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether it was from damage the helicopter had sustained or from the shallow craters on the ground where the Shturms had struck.

  “Set this bucket down, and I mean now!” Karpov ordered over the racket of the engines.

  The pilot, who had been battling the controls ever since they were hit, nodded and they descended vertically. The moment they made contact with a bone-rattling jar, Karpov wrenched the door open and dropped to the ground. Bourne followed him with a grimace of pain. His breath was hot in his throat. Both of them ran, crouched over, under the aircraft’s wind-sweep, until they were outside the circumference of the rotors.

  What they came upon was hell on earth. Or, rather, war. In the air, the virile whoosh of the missiles had been exhilarating, especially as retaliation for the first strike, but here on the ground, without the cool detachment of a God’s-eye view, all was devastation. Great mounds of black earth, scorched and smoking as if from the pits of the underworld, half-covered random bits and pieces of bodies, as if some insane creature had decided to improve on the human form by first dismantling it. The stench of roasted flesh mingled with the foul odors of excrement and exploded ordnance.

  To Bourne, the scene had the nightmarish quality of Goya’s half-mad Black Paintings come to life. When so much death presented itself, when all was horror in every direction, the mind interpreted it as surreal in order not to go mad.

  The two men spotted Arkadin at the same time and took off after him. The problem was that the pain in Bourne’s chest was growing in size and heat. Whereas only moments before it had seemed to be the size of a pinball it now seemed larger than a fist. It seemed, moreover, to have encompassed his heart. As he went down on one knee, he saw Karpov vanish into a plume of black, oily smoke. He couldn’t see Arkadin, but what was left of his cadre was engaged with the Iranian oil field guards in a pitched hand-to-hand battle for every inch of territory that hadn’t been turned into an infernal pit. As for the Black River operatives, none that he could see remained alive, having been either killed in the missile attack or executed by Arkadin’s forces. All was chaos.

  Bourne forced himself to his feet, staggering past the bodies into the curling smoke that reached up into the sky. What he encountered on the other side was not encouraging. Boris lay on the slope of one of the craters, one leg at an unnatural angle underneath the other. White bone shone through. Standing astride him was Leonid Danilovich Arkadin. In Arkadin’s hand was a .38 SIG Sauer.

  “You thought you could fuck me up, Colonel, but I’ve waited a long time for this moment.” Arkadin’s voice could just be heard over the screams and the harsh, rat-a-tat sounds of weapons of war. “And now my time is here.”

  He turned abruptly, facing Bourne, and a slow smile spread across his face as he squeezed off three shots in a tight triangle into Bourne’s chest.

  34

  BOURNE WAS BLOWN BACK off his feet

by the concussion of the bullets striking him. Searing pain racked him; he must have passed out for a moment, because the next thing he knew Arkadin had climbed up to the lip of the crater, looking down at him with an odd expression that might have been pity or even disappointment.

  “Here we are,” he said as he walked toward Bourne. “Karpov isn’t going anywhere and Perlis’s men are dead, if not buried. They’re both dead men. So now it’s just you and me, the first and last Treadstone graduates. But you’re on the verge of death as well, aren’t you?” He crouched down. “You are complicit in Devra’s death and I made you pay, but there’s something I want to know before you die. How many more graduates are there? Ten? Twenty? More?”

  Bourne could barely speak, he felt paralyzed. There was blood all over the front of the jacket Boris had given him.

  “I don’t know,” he managed to get out. Breathing was more difficult than he’d expected, and the pain was incredible. Now that he was in the center of the web, now that he had found the clever spider who crouched there spinning his intricate strands, he felt helpless.

  “You don’t know.” Arkadin cocked his head to one side, mocking him. “Well, here’s what I know and, unlike you, I don’t mind sharing. I imagine you think I hired the Torturer, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Why would I hire someone to do something I’m itching to do myself? Doesn’t make sense, does it? But here’s what does make sense: The Torturer was hired by Willard. Yes, that’s right, the man who remade you in Bali, after you somehow survived a bullet to the heart. How did you manage that, by the way? Never mind. In a moment, when you’re dead, it’ll be irrelevant.”

  Ordnance—mortars perhaps—from the Iranians came whistling through the sky, detonating at two different flanking points not a hundred yards away. Arkadin never flinched or even blinked. He merely waited for an abatement of the screaming.

  “Where was I? Oh, yes, Willard. Here’s another news flash for you: Willard knew I was alive and that I was the one who’d pulled the trigger in Bali. How did he know? The typical Treadstone way, he interrogated the man I hired to make sure you were really dead. He called me on my own man’s cell, can you believe the balls on that fuck!”

  Not far away, aircraft engines whined into life. The Black Hawk’s rotors started spinning. Now Bourne knew where Perlis had gone.

  “I imagine you’re wondering why he didn’t tell you? Because he was testing you—just like he was testing me. He wanted to see how long it would take you to find out about me because he already knew how long it took me to find out about you.” Arkadin sat back on his heels. “Clever little fucker, I’ll give him that.

  “Well, now that we’ve gotten to know each other a little better, it’s time to end it. There’s only so much time I can spend with my doppelgänger without getting sick to my stomach.”

  He got to his feet. “I’d make you crawl, but I’m quite sure in your condition you can’t manage it.”

  That was when Bourne rose up as if he’d returned from the dead, and lunged at him.

  Arkadin, in shock, raised the SIG and fired. Once again Bourne was knocked off his feet, once again he rose to one knee and then to his feet.

  “Good Christ!” Arkadin said. His eyes harbored a hunted and dangerous look. “What the fuck are you?”

  Bourne reached out and grabbed at the gun. At precisely that moment, a shot rang out, spinning Arkadin around. Blood leaked from a wound in his shoulder. He shouted, struck out at Bourne, then fired off two shots at Boris Karpov who, despite his broken leg, had crawled up the side of the charred crater. Arkadin’s SIG clicked hollowly; the magazine was empty.

  The Black Hawk lifted off and, swinging around, began a raking fire of machine-gun bursts at the remaining members of Arkadin’s cadre. It made no difference to the Black River gunner aboard the helicopter that Arkadin’s men were still engaged with the Iranian guards—both were being systematically mowed down.

  Throwing the useless SIG into Bourne’s face, Arkadin raced toward what remained of his men. Bourne took three steps after him and fell to his knees. His heart felt as if it was about to burst. Despite the Kevlar vest and packets of pig blood Karpov had insisted he put on under his jacket, the impact of the four shots Arkadin had fired at him had torn open his original wound. He could barely catch his breath.

  The Black Hawk was swinging around for another run at the men on the ground, but now Arkadin had slammed a missile into the shoulder launcher. Bourne knew that it was imperative for Arkadin to protect what was left of his cadre—without them, there was nothing he could do here. He couldn’t hold the oil fields by himself. His only chance now was to bring the Black Hawk down.

  With an extreme force of will, he rose and loped toward a tangle of dead soldiers. Picking up an AK-47, he aimed it at Arkadin and pulled the trigger. The magazine was empty. Throwing it aside, he wrenched a Luger from a holster on one of the soldiers, checked that it was loaded, and ran toward where Arkadin stood, spread-legged, the rocket launcher on his right shoulder.

  Bursts of machine-gun fire from the Black Hawk tracered through the air as Bourne ran and squeezed the Luger’s trigger, forcing Arkadin to fire the missile at a run. Possibly the launcher had sustained damage or else the missile itself was defective because it missed the helicopter. Without breaking stride, Arkadin tossed aside the launcher and, with almost the same motion, ripped a submachine gun out of a fallen soldier’s grip. He fired at Bourne on the run, forcing Bourne to scramble for cover. Arkadin kept firing until the clip ran out, then Bourne was up and running, though he could scarcely catch his breath. He fired, still on the run, but Arkadin was lost in a plume of dense black smoke. Above their heads the Black River helicopter lifted away in the direction of the oil wells.

  There were no Black River personnel left alive that Bourne could see, and Arkadin’s cadre lay strewn on the smoking ground. Bourne ran into the smoke and immediately his eyes began to tear; his breath felt ragged in his throat as his lungs labored. In that moment he sensed something coming at him from out of the swirling blackness, and he ducked, but not quite in time.

  Arkadin’s two-handed blow caught him on the shoulder, spinning him around. For the moment, the Luger was useless, and Arkadin delivered a punch to the side of Bourne’s head, staggering him further. Bourne felt as if both his head and his chest were about to explode, but when Arkadin lunged for the Luger, he struck out with the barrel, flaying open a long bloody wound on Arkadin’s cheek, so deep he could see bone.

  Arkadin reeled backward into the thick black pall, and Bourne squeezed off the Luger’s last three rounds. He careered through the smoke, searching for his foe, coming at last out of the plume. He turned in all directions, but Arkadin was nowhere to be seen.

  All at once he was on his knees, felled by the pain in his chest. His head hung down, the agony all-encompassing. In his mind he saw the fire creeping through him, threatening to consume him, and he thought of what Tracy had said as she lay in his arms, dying: “It’s in our darkest hour that our secrets eat us alive.”

  And then in the center of that fire a face appeared—a face made of fire. It was the face of Shiva, the god of destruction and resurrection. Was it Shiva who lifted him to his feet? He’d never know, because one moment he was on the verge of collapse, the next he stood swaying on his feet.

  And it was then that he saw Boris lying at the edge of the crater, his head covered in blood.

  Ignoring his own pain, Bourne dug his hands under Karpov’s armpits and hauled him up. Then, with the tracers buzzing through the air overhead, he dipped his knees and threw Boris over his shoulder. Gritting his teeth, he began to pick his way past the dead and the dying, the still-smoldering remnants of human beings, toward the Russian helicopter.

  Several times, he was forced to stop either by the hail of machine-gun fire or by the pain that gripped his heart like a vise cinched so tight he could scarcely breathe. Once, he went down on one knee, and the blackened hand of a soldier—of which side it was i

mpossible to tell—grabbed at the fabric of his trousers. Bourne tried to brush it away, but the fingers stuck to him like glue. All around him half-shattered faces seemed to turn to him, shrieking in the silent agony of their death throes. They were all the same now, these victims of violence that was always, at heart, senseless. Their allegiances were rendered irrelevant by chaos, blood, and fire, erasing not only their humanity but also their beliefs—that one thing that drove them, whether it be politics, religion, or simply money. They were all jumbled together under a lowering sky filled with the ashes of their compatriots and their enemies.

  Finally, he peeled the soldier’s grip off him and, rising unsteadily, continued on his agonizing journey over the blasted landscape. Visibility was now an issue, what with the oily smoke that choked the already filthy air. As if in a dream, the Russian helicopter seemed to fade in and out of focus, to be at first near at hand, then thousands of yards distant. He ran, stopped, crouched over, panting, then ran on again, feeling like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill but never getting to the top. His goal still seemed a mile away, and so he kept on, one foot in front of the other, stumbling and loping with his ungainly burden, zigzagging through the zone of death this mini-war had produced. And at last, lungs bursting, eyes tearing, he saw Boris’s men pour out of the shelter of the helicopter to meet him and their fallen commander. They took him off Bourne’s numb shoulder, and he fell to his knees. Two of Boris’s men lifted him to his feet and fed him water.

  But more bad news awaited him here. Boris’s crew had been forced to abandon the Havoc, which had been rendered inoperable by the missile strike. Bourne, looking around while he tried to regain his breath, directed them to the Air Afrika jet, sitting idle three hundred yards away.

  They encountered no one around the jet or on the gangway. The door gaped open. Inside, they discovered why: The crew had been bound and gagged, presumably by Arkadin and his cadre. Bourne gave the order to free them.