Robert Ludlum: Bourne 7 – The Bourne Deception

The rest of Arkadin‘s contingent was still in the plane, where they were looking after the pilot and navigator, as they had the entire flight, to make sure they didn‘t warn anyone about the larger-than-normal cargo. At a prearranged signal, the men would come pouring out of the belly of the plane, not unlike the Greek warriors who had been taken inside the impregnable walls of Troy in the wooden horse.

— It‘s good to meet you at last, Leonid Danilovich, Perlis said in passable Russian as he gripped Arkadin‘s hand. -Your reputation precedes you.

Arkadin smiled his most welcoming smile and said, — I think you ought to know Jason Bourne is here-

— What? Perlis looked as if the world had dropped away from him. -What did you say?

– or if he isn‘t here yet, he soon will be. Arkadin kept the smile on his face even as Perlis tried to yank his hand away from the death grip Arkadin had on it. -It was Bourne who infiltrated the Air Afrika building in Khartoum. I know you must have been wondering who it was.

Perlis appeared to be struggling to understand what Arkadin was up to.

— That‘s nonsense. Bourne is dead.

— On the contrary. Arkadin jerked back hard on Perlis‘s trapped hand.

— And I ought to know. I shot Bourne in Bali. I, too, thought he‘d died, but, like me, he‘s a survivor, a man with nine lives.

— Even if all this is true, how would you know Bourne was in Khartoum, let alone at the Air Afrika building?

— It‘s my business to know these things, Perlis. He laughed. -Now I‘m being coy. Actually, I sent Bourne on a course expressly designed to lead him to Khartoum, to the Air Afrika building, to-and this is most important of all-Nikolai Yevsen.

— Yevsen is at the heart of our plan, why would you do such an idiotic-

— I wanted Bourne to kill Yevsen. And that‘s precisely what he did.

Arkadin‘s smile spread all the way up to his eyes. This arrogant American looks good with all the blood drained from his face, he thought. -I have all of Yevsen‘s computer files-all his contacts, clients, and suppliers. Not that that‘s a wide circle of people, as you can imagine, but by now they‘ve all been informed of Nikolai Yevsen‘s death. They‘ve also been told they‘ll be dealing with me from now on.

— 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, lowIQ 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 NasiriAstara, 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 antitank 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.