Collateral (Tier One #6)

Gavriil shoved the slumping, dead GRU agent off him with his forearm as the heavy truck bounced from wrecked car to wrecked car. The problem with the high-tech jammer Arkady had deployed was that now Gavriil was just as blind and deaf as the Americans. If Arkady had not hollered back at him that the Americans were coming, he would have been caught alone in the warehouse and his mission would have ended in failure.

But how many Americans are assaulting? And where are they?

His sniper team and spotter, if not already dead, would buy him precious little time. Worse, he needed to assume the Americans had positioned their own snipers, so any attempt to launch from the street—technical difficulties of an obstructed launch aside—meant he risked getting cut down by a sniper’s bullet before missiles away. Taken together, all of this had driven his decision to flee.

He needed separation from this location and a height advantage and knew exactly where to get it. He crossed the first intersection—a large delivery truck on his left screeching to a halt centimeters before collision—and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The Astrolog’s engine growled, and the monster 8X8 transporter shook, bounced, and rolled down the street. He heard gunfire and glanced in his side mirror. Two operators were in the street, firing at the back of the truck, but they quickly shrank from view.

When he reached the hospital, he cut the wheel hard right and vectored toward the parking garage. He glanced at the height-restriction barrier hanging down over the entrance. A second later, a horrible screech sounded as the top of the truck scraped the barrier. Hopefully there was no damage to the launchers in back, but he was not worried about the height—he had planned carefully for this contingency and he had several centimeters of clearance on the ramps leading to the roof of the parking deck—and that was before he’d removed a considerable amount of air from the enormous tires, giving him even more clearance. No, his worry was the width of the lanes during the circular ascent to the roof. While the cab did articulate with the bed of the MZKT-7930 truck, in the missile configuration there was precious little play during turns, and the damn truck stretched to nearly ten meters . . .

He turned the wheel left and then right. Sparks flew and metal screeched as he dragged his cab along the side of a high-top van, and then he was in the center of the two narrow lanes leading up and down the ramp. He pressed hard on the accelerator, building the momentum needed to continue the ascent and overcome the friction of repeated contact with the concrete walls. Assuming he made it to the roof, he’d need two minutes to set the stabilizers so he could raise the missiles, and a few more minutes to launch them. He should be out of any firing lanes from snipers the Americans might have in play, so if he hurried . . .

More sparks accompanied a horrible squeal as he navigated a tight turn, the Astrolog’s right side dragging across a cement column. Gavriil corrected, easing left, and, with gritted teeth, came out of the turn—leaving a trail of marred concrete in his wake. He laughed, the adrenaline stoking feelings of invincibility as he found the perfect balance of speed and turn radius to navigate the tricky ascent. Now on level two, he spotted a series of low-hanging pipes crossing the gaps between the cement ceiling ribs. Probably part of a fire department standpipe system, he imagined, as he slammed into the first set. He ducked reflexively as the top of the cab sheared the two parallel pipes cleanly in half; metal clattered to the deck and water exploded everywhere. Gavriil activated the windshield wipers to clear the brown water from the dirty windshield—the truck having not been cleaned after the long drive from Crimea.

As he approached the turnoff for the fourth level, he heard a horn blaring. Through the spray of water from the third pipe he had just sheared off, he watched a grey Renault two-door slam on its brakes. With nowhere else to go, Gavriil pressed harder on the accelerator, slamming the front of the Renault with his wide, square cab. The Renault’s hood compressed like an accordion. Inside, a wide-eyed man wearing blue scrubs and a white lab coat gripped the steering wheel in horror. Using the Astrolog’s front bumper, Gavriil pushed the Renault backward up the ramp. A constant and whining screech of metal over concrete sang in discordant harmony with the squeal of rubber flaying off the sedan’s tires, and Gavriil clenched his jaw in aggravation as he felt his time advantage slipping away. He had only minutes until the Americans descended on him—or simply obliterated him and the truck with a Hellfire missile from above.

Feelings of panic and inadequacy flooded his mind.

“Nyet!” he shouted. “I will not fail.”

The truck lurched as it shot up the final ramp, the cab grinding across the ceiling before emerging on the roof deck. The Renault spun off to the left. Gavriil brought the truck to a stop, leaned out through the open window, and looked at the wrecked sedan beside him. The doctor emerged not from the driver’s side—that side of the vehicle was more badly damaged—but from the passenger side. He stumbled and weaved in shock as he backed away from his car, the front wheels now turned impossibly out and backward. The doctor looked up at him, dazed and frightened, just as Gavriil raised his pistol and fired a single round that went through the man’s forehead, just above his left eye. He collapsed dead on the roof beside the destroyed sedan.

Gavriil stepped on the accelerator, and the Astrolog rumbled across the nearly empty roof deck. He maneuvered the truck beside the wall of the hospital—perhaps the Americans would be reluctant to drop ordnance on him if they risked killing civilians. Such concerns seemed to be his enemy’s Achilles’ heel. Then he engaged the air brake and pulled the lever that deployed the massive outboard stabilizers to convert the truck into a launch pad.

“You can do this. You can do this,” he murmured as he climbed out of the cab.

Just a few more minutes and it wouldn’t matter what the Americans did . . .