The Bourne ultimatum (81 page)

“I’ll spend more time sitting in airports than in the air.”

“Probably, so cover those great legs of yours and carry a Bible.”

“That’s sweet,” said Marie, touching his face. “I suddenly hear you, David.”

“What?” Again Bourne did not respond to the warmth.

“Nothing. ... Do me a favor, will you?”

“What is it?” asked Jason, in a distant monotone.

“Bring that David back to me.”

“Let’s get an update on the plane,” said Bourne, his voice flat and abrupt as he touched her elbow and led her back inside.
I’m getting older—old—and I cannot much longer be what I am not. The Chameleon is slipping away, the imagination isn’t there the way it used to be. But I cannot stop
!
Not now
!
Get away from me, David Webb
!

No sooner had they reentered the small terminal than the telephone on the counter began to ring. The lone clerk picked it up. “
Oui
?” He listened for no more than five seconds. “
Merci
,” he said, hanging up and addressing the four interested parties in French. “That was the tower. The plane from Poitiers will be on the ground in approximately four minutes. The pilot requests that you be ready, madame, as he would like to fly ahead of the weather front moving east.”

“So would I,” agreed Marie, rushing to Alex Conklin and Mo Panov. The farewells were brief, the embraces strong, the words heartfelt. Bourne led his wife back outside. “I just remembered—where are Krupkin’s guards?” she asked as Jason unlatched the gate and they walked toward the lighted runway.

“We don’t need them or want them,” he answered. “The Soviet connection was made in the Montaigne, so we have to assume the embassy’s being watched. No guards rushing out into cars, therefore no movement on our part for Carlos’s people to report.”

“I see.” The sound of a small decelerating jet could be heard as the plane circled the airfield once and made its descent onto the four-thousand-foot runway. “I love you so much, David,” said Marie, raising her voice to be heard over the roar of the aircraft, rolling toward them.

“He loves you so much,” said Bourne, images colliding in his mind. “
I
love you so much.”

The jet loomed clearly into view between the rows of amber lights, a white bullet-like machine with short delta wings sweeping back from the fuselage, giving it the appearance of an angry flying insect. The pilot swung the plane around in a circle, coming to a jarring stop as the automatic passenger door sprang out and up while metal steps slapped down to the ground. Jason and Marie ran toward the jet’s entrance.

It happened with the sudden impact of a murderous wind shear, at once unstoppable, enveloping, the swirling winds of death!
Gunfire
. Automatic weapons—two of them; one nearby, one farther away—shattering windows, ripping into wood, a piercing screech of pain erupting from the terminal, announcing a mortal hit.

With both hands Bourne gripped Marie by the waist, heaving her up and propelling her into the plane as he shouted to the pilot. “Shut the door and get
out
of here!”

“
Mon Dieu
!” cried the man from the open flight deck. “
Allez-vous-en
!” he roared, ordering Jason away from the spring-hinged door and the metal steps, gunning the jet’s engine as the plane lurched forward. Jason plunged to the ground and raised his eyes. Marie’s face was pressed against the window; she was screaming hysterically. The plane thundered down the runway; it was free.

Bourne was not. He was caught in the wash of the amber lights, the glowing rows a cyclorama of yellowish orange. No matter where he stood or knelt or crouched he was in silhouette. So he pulled out the automatic from his belt—the weapon, he reflected, given to him by Bernardine—and began slithering, snaking his way across the asphalt toward the bordering grass outside the fenced-gate area.

The gunfire erupted again, but now they were three scattered single shots from within the terminal, where the lights had been extinguished. They had to have come from Conklin’s gun, or possibly the clerk’s if he had a weapon; Panov did not. Then who had been hit? ... No
time
! A shattering fusillade burst out of the nearest automatic rifle; it was steady, prolonged and deadly, spraying the side of the small building and the gate area.

Then the second automatic weapon commenced firing; from the sound it was on the opposite side of the terminal’s waiting room. Moments later there were two single shots, the last one accompanied by a scream ... again on the other side of the building.

“I’ve been hit!” The voice was the cry of a man in pain ... on the
other side
of the
building
. The automatic rifle! Jason slowly rose to a low crouch in the grass and peered into the darkness. A fragment of blacker darkness moved. He raised his automatic and fired into the moving mass, getting to his feet and racing across the gate area, turning and squeezing the trigger until he was both out of bullets and out of sight on the east side of the building, where the runway ended and the amber lights stopped. He crawled cautiously to the section of the waist-high fence that paralleled the corner of the small terminal. The grayish-white gravel of the parking area was a gratifying sight; he was able to make out the figure of a man writhing on the stones. The figure gripped a weapon in his hands, then pushing it into the gravel, raised himself to a half-sitting position.

“
Cugino
!” he screamed. “Help me!” His answer was another burst of gunfire from the west side of the building, diagonally to the right of the wounded man. “Holy Christ!” he shrieked. “I’m hit
bad
!” Again the reply was yet another fusillade from the automatic rifle, these rounds simultaneous with crashing glass. The killer on the west side of the building had smashed the windows and was blowing apart everything inside.

Bourne dropped the useless automatic and grabbed the top of the fence, vaulting over it, his left leg landing in agony on the ground.
What’s happened to me
?
Why do I hurt
?
Goddamn it
! He limped to the wood-framed corner of the building and edged his face to the open space beyond. The figure on the gravel fell back, unable to support himself on the automatic rifle. Jason felt the ground, found a large rock, and threw it with all his strength beyond the wounded man. It crashed, bouncing into the gravel, for an instant like the sound of approaching footsteps. The killer spastically rose and spun his body to the rear, gripping his weapon, which twice fell out of his grasp.

Now
! Bourne raced across the stones of the parking lot and lunged off his feet down into the man with the gun. He tore the weapon from the killer’s grip and crashed the metal stock into his skull. The short, slender man went limp. And, again, suddenly, there was another crescendo of gunfire from the west exterior of the terminal building, again accompanied by the shattering of glass. The first and nearer killer was narrowing down his targets.
He had to be stopped
! thought Jason, his breath gone, every muscle in his body in pain.
Where was the man from yesterday
?
Where was Delta from Medusa
?
The Chameleon from Treadstone Seventy-one
? Where
was
that man?

Bourne grabbed the MAC-10 submachine gun from the unconscious figure on the gravel and raced toward the side door of the terminal.

“
Alex
!” he roared. “Let me
in
! I’ve got the weapon!”

The door crashed open. “My God, you’re alive!” shouted Conklin in the darkness of the shadows as Jason ran inside. “Mo’s in bad shape—he was shot in the chest. The clerk’s dead and we can’t raise the tower out on the field. They must have reached it first.” Alex slammed the door shut. “Get down on the floor!” A fusillade raked the walls. Bourne got to his knees and fired back, then threw himself down beside Conklin.

“What
happened
?” cried Jason, breathless, his voice strained, the sweat dripping down his face and stinging his eyes.

“The Jackal happened.”

“How did he
do
it?”

“He fooled us all. You, me, Krupkin and Lavier—worst of all,
me
. He sent the word out that he’d be away, no explanation even with you here in Paris, just that he’d be gone for a while. We thought the trap had worked; everything pointed to Moscow. ... He sucked us into his own trap. Oh, Christ, did he suck us in! I should have known better, I should have seen through it! It was too clean. ... I’m sorry, David. Oh, God, I’m sorry!”

“That’s
him
out there, isn’t it? He wants the kill all to himself—nothing else matters to him.”

Suddenly a flashlight, its powerful beam blinding, was thrown through a shattered window. Instantly, Bourne raised the MAC-10 and blew the shiny metal tube away, extinguishing the light. The damage, however, had been done; their bodies had been seen.

“Over
here
!” screamed Alex, grabbing Jason and diving behind the counter as a murderous barrage came from the blurred silhouette in the window. It stopped; there was the crack of a bolt.

“He has to
reload
!” whispered Bourne, with the break in the fire. “
Stay
here!” Jason stood up and raced to the gate doors, crashing through them, his weapon gripped in his right hand, his body prone, tense, prepared to kill—if the years would permit it. They
had
to permit it!

He crawled through the gate he had opened for Marie and spun on the ground to his right, scrambling along the fence. He
was
Delta—of Saigon’s
Medusa
... he could
do
it! There was no friendly jungle now, but there was everything he could use—
Delta
could use—the darkness, the intermittent blocks of shadows from the myriad clouds intercepting the moonlight. Use
everything
! It was what you were trained to do ... so many years ago—so many. Forget it, forget time!
Do
it! The animal only yards away wants you dead—your wife dead, your children dead.
Dead
!

It was the quickness born of pure fury that propelled him, obsessed him, and he knew that to win he had to win quickly, with all the speed that was in him. He crept swiftly along the fence that enclosed the airfield, and past the corner of the terminal, prepared for the instant of exposure. The lethal submachine gun was still gripped in his hand, his index finger now on the trigger. There was a cluster of wild shrubbery preceding two thick trees no more than thirty feet away; if he could reach them, the advantage was his. He would have the “high ground,” the Jackal in the valley of death, if only because he was behind the assassin and unseen.

He reached the shrubbery. And at the moment he heard a massive smashing of glass followed by yet another fusillade—this time so prolonged that the entire magazine had to have been emptied. He had
not
been seen; the figure by the window had backed away to reload, his concentration on that task, not on the possibility of an escape. Carlos, too, was growing old and losing his finesse, thought Jason Bourne. Where were the flares intrinsic to such an operation? Where were the alert, roving eyes that loaded weapons in total darkness?

Darkness. A cloud cover blocked the yellow rays of the moon; there
was
darkness. He vaulted over the fence, concealing himself behind the shrubbery, then raced to the first of the two trees where he could stand upright, view the scene and consider his options.

Something was wrong. There was a primitiveness he could not associate with the Jackal. The assassin had isolated the terminal,
ad valorem
, and the price was high, but there was an absence of the finer points of the deadly equation. The subtlety was not there; instead, there was a brute force, hardly to be denied, but not when employed against the man they called Jason Bourne who had escaped from the trap.

The figure by the shattered window had spent his ammunition; he reeled back against the building, pulling another magazine out of his pocket. Jason raced out of the cover of the trees, his MAC-10 on automatic fire, exploding the dirt in front of the killer, then circling the bullets around his frame.

“That’s
it
!” he shouted, closing in on the assassin. “You’re dead,
Carlos
, with one pull of my finger—if you
are
the Jackal!”

The man by the shattered window threw down his weapon. “I am not he, Mr. Bourne,” said the executioner from Larchmont, New York. “We’ve met before, but I am not the person you think I am.”

“Hit the ground, you son of a bitch!” The killer did so as Jason approached. “Spread your legs and your arms!” The command was obeyed. “Raise your
head
!”

The man did so, and Bourne stared at the face, vaguely illuminated by the distant glow of the amber lights on the airfield’s runway. “You see now?” said Mario. “I’m not who you think I am.”

“My
God
,” whispered Jason, his incredulity all too apparent. “You were in the driveway in Manassas, Virginia. You tried to kill Cactus, then
me
!”

“Contracts, Mr. Bourne, nothing more.”

“What about the tower? The air controller here in the
tower
!”

“I do not kill indiscriminately. Once the plane from Poitiers was given clearance to land, I told him to leave. ... Forgive me, but your wife was also on the list. Fortunately, as she is a mother, it was beyond my abilities.”

“Who the hell
are
you?”

“I just told you. A contract employee.”

“I’ve seen better.”

“I’m not, perhaps, in your league, but I serve my organization well.”

“Jesus, you’re
Medusa
!”

“I’ve heard the name, but that’s all I can tell you. ... Let me make one thing clear, Mr. Bourne. I will not leave my wife a widow, or my children orphans for the sake of a contract. That position simply isn’t viable. They mean too much to me.”

“You’ll spend a hundred and fifty years in prison, and that’s only if you’re prosecuted in a state that doesn’t have the death penalty.”

“Not with what I know, Mr. Bourne. My family and I will be well taken care of—a new name, perhaps a nice farm in the Dakotas or Wyoming. You see, I knew this moment had to come.”