Robert Ludlum: The Bourne Ultimatum

"Yes, yes! An attack!"

"We are being attacked!"

"Invaded! It's an invasion!"

"Open the tunnel and let us out or you'll have to shoot us down! Open the tunnel!"

The protesting chorus grew from all sections of the desperate crowd as the soldiers held firm, their bayonets unsheathed and affixed to their rifles. The colonel continued, his features contorted, his voice nearly matching the hysteria of his frenzied audience.

"Listen to me and ask yourselves a question!" he screamed. "I'm telling you, as I have been told, that this is an earthquake and I know it's true. Further, I will tell you how I know it's true! ... Have you heard a single gunshot? Yes, that is the question! A single gunshot! No, you have not! ... Here, as in all the compounds and in every sector of those compounds, there are police and soldiers and trainers who carry weapons. Their orders are to repel by force any unwarranted displays of violence, to say nothing of armed invaders! Yet nowhere has there been any gunfire-"

"What's he shouting about?" asked Jason, turning to Benjamin.

"He's trying to convince them it is-or was-an earthquake. They don't believe him; they think it's an invasion. He's telling them it couldn't be because there's been no gunfire."

"Gunfire?"

"That's his proof. Nobody's shooting at anybody and they sure as hell would be if there was an armed attack. No gunshots, no attack."

"Gunshots ... ?" Bourne suddenly grabbed the young Soviet and spun him around. "Tell him to stop! For God's sake, stop him!"

"What?"

"He's giving the Jackal the opening he wants-he needs!"

"Now what are you talking about?"

"Gunfire ... gunshots, confusion!"

"Nyet!" screamed a woman, breaking through the crowd and shouting at the officer in the center of the searchlight beams. "The explosions are bombs! They come from bombers above!"

"You are foolish," cried the colonel, replying in Russian. "If it was an air raid, our fighter planes from Belopol would fill the sky! ... The explosions come out of the earth, the fires out of the earth, from the gases below-" These false words were the last words the Soviet officer would ever speak.

A staccato volley of automatic gunfire burst from the shadows of the tunnel's parking area cutting the Russian down, his instantly limp, punctured body collapsing and falling off the roof of the gatehouse, plummeting to the ground out of sight at the rear. The already frantic crowd went rabid; the ranks of uniformed "American" soldiers broke, and if chaos had ruled previously, nihilistic mobocracy now reigned supreme. The narrow, fenced entrance to the tunnel was virtually stormed, racing figures colliding, pummeling, climbing over one another, rushing en masse toward the mouth of the underwater access. Jason pulled his young trainer to the side of the stampeding hordes, never for an instant taking his eyes off the darkened parking area.

"Can you operate the tunnel's machinery?" he shouted.

"Yes! Everyone on the senior staff can, it's part of the job!"

"The iron gates you told me about?"

"Of course."

"Where are the mechanisms?"

"The guardhouse."

"Get in there!" yelled Bourne, taking one of the three remaining flares out of his field jacket pocket and handing it to Benjamin. "I've got two more of these and two other grenades. ... When you see one of my flares go over the crowd, lower those gates on this side-only this side, understood?"

"What for?"

"My rules, Ben! Do it! Then ignite this flare and throw it out the window so I'll know it's done."

"Then what?"

"Something you may not want to do, but you have to. ... Take the 'forty-seven' from the colonel's body and force the crowd, shoot it back into the street. Rapid fire into the ground in front of them-or above them-do whatever you have to do, even if it means wounding a few. Whatever the cost, it must be done. I have to find him, isolate him, above all, cut him off from everyone else trying to get out."

"You're a goddamned maniac," broke in Benjamin, the veins pronounced in his forehead. "I could kill 'a few'-more than a few! You're crazy!"

"At this moment I'm the most rational man you've ever met," interrupted Jason harshly, rapidly, as the panicked residents of Novgorod kept rushing by. "There's not a sane general in the Soviet army-the same army that retook Stalingrad-who wouldn't agree with me. ... It's called the 'calculated estimate of losses,' and there's a very good reason for that lousy verbiage. It simply means you're paying a lot less for what you're getting now than you'd pay later."

"You're asking too much! These people are my comrades, my friends; they're Russians. Would you fire into a crowd of Americans? One recoil of my hands-an inch, two inches with a 'forty-seven'-and I could maim or kill half a dozen people! The risk's too great!"

"You don't have a choice. If the Jackal gets by me-and I'll know it if he does-I'll throw in a grenade and kill twenty."

"You son of a bitch!"

"Believe it, Ben. Where Carlos is concerned I'm a son of a bitch. I can't afford him any longer, the world can't afford him. Move!"

The trainer named Benjamin spat in Bourne's face, then turned and began fighting his way to the guardhouse and the unseen corpse of the colonel beyond. Almost unconsciously Jason wiped his face with the back of his hand, his concentration solely on the fenced parking area, his eyes darting from one pocket of shadows to another, trying to center in on the origins of the automatic gunfire, yet knowing it was pointless; the Jackal had changed position by then. He counted the other vehicles in addition to the fuel truck; there were nine parked by the fence-two station wagons, four sedans and three suburban vans, all American-made or simulated as such. Carlos was concealed beyond one of them or possibly the fuel truck, the last unlikely as it was the farthest away from the open gate in the fence that permitted access to the guardhouse and thus to the tunnel.

Jason crouched and crawled forward; he reached the waist-high fence, the pandemonium behind him continuous, deafening. Every muscle and joint in his legs and arms pounded with pain; cramps were developing everywhere, everywhere! Don't think about them, don't acknowledge them. You're too close, David! Keep going. Jason Bourne knows what to do. Trust him!

Aaughh! He spun his body over the fence; the handle of his sheathed bayonet embedded itself in his kidney. There is no pain! You're too close, David-Jason. Listen to Jason!

The searchlights-someone had pressed something and they went crazy, spinning around in circles, abrupt, blinding, out of control! Where would Carlos go? Where could he hide? The beams were erratically piercing everywhere! Then, from an opening that he could not see from across the fenced-in area, two police cars raced inside, their sirens blaring. Uniformed men leaped out from every door, and contrary to anything he expected to see, each scrambled to the borders of the fence, behind the cars and the vans, one after another dashing from one vehicle to another to the open gate that led to the guardhouse and the tunnel.

There was a break in space, in time. In men! The last four escapees from the second car were suddenly three-and only moments later did the fourth appear-but he was not the same-the uniform was not the same! There were specks of orange and red, and the visored officer's cap was laced with gold ribbing, the visor itself too prominent for the American army, the crown of the cap too pointed. What was it? ... And, suddenly, Bourne understood. Fragments of his memories spiraled back years to Madrid or Casavieja, when he was tracing the Jackal's contracts with the Falangists. It was a Spanish uniform! That was it! Carlos had infiltrated through the Spanish compound, and as his Russian was fluent, he was using the high-ranking uniform to make his escape from Novgorod.