Tom Clancy's op-centre_ mirror image - Tom Clancy [19]
He smiled as a young woman jogged toward the river with her Jack Russell terrier. He didn't think they had the English breed in Russia, though the black market was smuggling anything and everything these days, including dogs that were fashionable in the West.
The woman was dressed in sweat clothes and a baseball cap and carried a small plastic water bottle. As she approached, he noticed she wasn't perspiring. That seemed strange, since the nearest apartments were at least a half mile away and a runner should have worked up a sweat by now. She smiled at him. He smiled back. Suddenly, the dog broke free of its leash. it darted toward him and took a bite from the inside of his shin before the jogger was able to pull it away.
"I'm so sorry!" she said as she thrust the yipping dog under her arm.
"It's all right," he said, wincing as he dropped down on his right knee and examined the painful wound. He set his computer aside, took out his handkerchief, and wiped away the blood from the two semicircular rows of teeth marks.
The woman knelt beside him, her face a mask of concern. With her right arm clasped tightly around the frenzied terrier she held out her left arm, offering him the water bottle.
"This will help," she said.
"Thank you, no," Fields-Hutton said as the teeth marks filled anew with blood. Something wasn't right about this. She was too concerned, too attentive. Russians weren't like that. He had to get out of here.
Before Fields-Hutton could stop her, the woman poured water on his wound. Rivulets of blood streamed down his leg into his sock as Fields-Hutton reached out to stop her.
"What are you doing?" he demanded as she emptied the bottle on his wound. "Miss, please--"
He rose. Then she did, backing away as she stood. Her expression was no longer concerned but devoid of emotion. Even the dog was silent. Fields-Hutton's suspicions turned horribly real as the stinging in his leg began to fade-- along with sensation in his feet.
Who are you?" he demanded as numbness spread up his leg and he began to feel dizzy. "What did you do to me?"
The woman didn't answer. She didn't have to. Fields-Hutton suspected he'd been poisoned with a fast-acting chemical agent. As the world began to spin, he thought about Leon and bent to retrieve his computer. He fell, grabbed the handle, and dragged the laptop along as he crawled toward the river. When his legs became completely numb he tried to claw ahead, to remain conscious. He wanted to stay alive long enough to throw the computer into the Neva. But then his shoulders began to lose all sensation. His upper arms became dead weight and he fell forward.
The last thing Keith Fields-Hutton saw was the golden river flowing just a few meters away. The last thing he heard was the woman behind him say, "Goodbye." And the last thing he thought was how Peggy would cry when Commander Hubbard informed her that her lover had been killed on a mission in St. Petersburg.
His head rolled slowly to the side as the VX nerve agent stopped Fields-Hutton's heart.
CHAPTER NINE
Sunday, 9:00 P.M., Belgorod, the Russian/Ukraine border
The Kamov Ka-26 radial-engined helicopter landed on the floodlit patch of earth, its twin rotors kicking up dirt and swirling it into inverted sea horse patterns. While soldiers ran over and began unloading crates of communications equipment from the bay aft of the pilot's cabin, Interior Minister Dogin stepped out. Holding his fedora with one hand and the front of his greatcoat with another, he ducked low and walked briskly from the landing area.
Dogin had always loved temporary bases like this one-- empty fields transformed overnight into pulsing centers of power, bootprints on the windswept soil, the dusty air ripe with the smell of diesel fuel.
The