Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [300]
Mission accomplished, Ryan's brain announced. This fucker isn't going to kill anybody. Go ahead, resist if you want. Nobody's that fast. His finger was so tight on the trigger that if Strokov turned suddenly, the pistol would go off on its own accord, and sever his spine for all time to come.
The man hesitated, and surely his mind was running at the speed of light through various options. There were drills for what to do when someone had a gun in one's back, and he'd even practiced them in his intelligence academy, but here, now, twenty years later, with a real pistol against his spine, those lessons with play guns seemed a very distant thing, and could he bat the gun away so fast to keep it from destroying a kidney? Probably not. And so, his right hand came back just as he'd just been told…
Ryan jumped at the sound of one-two-three pistol shots, not fifteen feet away. It was the sort of moment in which the world stops its turning, hearts and lungs stop functioning, and every mind has an instant of total clarity. Jack's eyes were drawn to the sound. There was the Holy Father, and on his snow-white cassock was a spot of red, the size of a half-dollar, in the chest, and on his handsome face was the shock of something too fast for him yet to feel the pain, but his body was already collapsing, slumping and turning to the left, folding into itself as he started to go down.
It required all of Ryan's discipline not to squeeze the trigger. His left hand snatched the pistol out of his subject's hand.
"Stand still, you motherfucker. Don't take a step, don't turn, don't do anything. Tom!" he called loudly.
"Sparrow, they have him, they have the gunman. The gunman is down on the pavement, must be ten people on him. The Pope took two, possibly three, hits."
The reaction of the crowd was almost binary in character. Those closest to the shooter jumped on him like cats on a single unlucky mouse, and whoever the shooter was, he was invisible under a mound of tourists, perhaps ten feet from where Ryan, Sharp, and Strokov stood. The people immediately around Ryan were drawing away—rather slowly, actually…
"Jack, let's get our friend away from here, shall we?" And the three men moved into the escape arch, as Ryan had come to think of it.
"Sharp to all. We have Strokov with us. Leave the area separately and rendezvous at the embassy."
A minute later, they were in Sharp's official Bentley. Ryan got in back with the Bulgarian.
Strokov was clearly feeling better about things now. "What is this? I am member of Bulgarian embassy and—"
"We'll remember you said that, old man. For now, you are a guest of Her Britannic Majesty's government. Now, be a good chap and sit still, or my friend will kill you."
"Interesting tool of diplomacy, this." Ryan lifted the gun he'd taken from Strokov—East Bloc issue, with a large and awkward can-type silencer screwed on the business end. Sure as hell he'd been planning to shoot somebody.
But whom? Suddenly, Ryan wasn't sure.
"Tom?"
"Yes, Jack?"
"Something was more wrong than we thought."
"I think you're right," Sharp agreed. "But we have someone to clear that up for us."
The drive back to the embassy illustrated what had been to Ryan a hidden talent. The Bentley had an immensely powerful engine, and Sharp knew how to use it, exploding away from the Vatican like a drag-racing top fuel eliminator. The car screeched to a halt in the small parking lot next to the embassy, and the three of them went in through a side door, and from there to the basement. With Ryan covering, Sharp handcuffed the Bulgarian and sat him in a wooden chair.
"Colonel Strokov, you must answer for Georgiy Markov," Sharp told him. "We've been after you for some years now."
Strokov's eyes went as wide as doorknobs. As fast as the Bentley had gone, Tom Sharp's mind had been driving faster still.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, we have these photos of you leaving Heathrow Airport after killing