Page 113 of Cry Havoc

Look for what isn’t in chaos.

Tom’s eyes clocked a movement out of sync with the calamity that had followed the shooting. Another Vietnamese waiter, standing on a platform that overlooked the pavilion, raised a pistol in the SEAL’s direction. Tom was faster. He angled his body slightly to the right and sent two rounds into the waiter’s chest. As the man fell forward, Tom adjusted his aim and sent another into his head after he hit the ground.

“Tom! Let me the fuck up!” Ella screamed.

He kept her pinned.

“I said stay down!”

He continued scanning, keeping Ella restrained.

She continued to struggle.

“My father! Tom! My father!” she screamed.

“I’m going to check on him,” Tom shouted above the commotion. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

He knew Gaston had been killed, but Tom needed to ensure the first assassin was dead as well. Even though he had taken three rounds to the chest, the human body could be extremely resilient.

“Promise me! Stay down!” he said.

Tom stood and quickly scanned the room. It was still pandemonium, but the majority of people had found their way off the pavilion and were running past the pool and tennis courts. He slowly stalked toward the table strewn with blood and brain matter, pistol in his outstretched right hand.

Tom never heard the bullet that struck him just under and behind his right ear. The overwhelming sensation was not pain but a shock that instantly paralyzed him. He could still hear the screams of the club patrons, still feel the chaos around him, but they were now echoes, almost a memory of something that had once been.

He blinked his eyes and couldn’t understand where he was. He shouldbe looking at a table, a table with two dead bodies nearby. Instead, all he saw was white wood. He slowly realized he was on the ground and looking up at the ceiling of the restaurant. He blinked his eyes again, and there was Ella on top of him, grabbing his face and shoulders, shaking him.

Try as he might to respond, he could not do anything. He could not feel anything. He wanted to tell her to take his pistol, to be careful because there might be more assassins, and that they might have additional targets. He wanted to tell her to run. He wanted to scream at her to move, but he could not form the words. The echoes of violence receded, replaced with the sound of his own breathing. He could tell it was labored. He tried to move, to reach out to Ella above him, tears streaming down her cheeks as she continued to shake him. Darkness crept in from the corners of his vision, and the blinding pain in his head began to radiate through his body.

Ella stopped shaking him and turned her head toward her father. Tom watched helplessly as she pushed herself to her feet.

Run, Ella!

Her primal screams were the last thing he heard before the darkness, before he accepted that death had found him.

CHAPTER 38

GRU Headquarters

Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

“WHAT’S THE STATUS OFour project in Berlin?” Director Lavrinenko asked before his deputy had even taken his seat. He did not need to specify which project.

Lavrinenko preferred not to leave his office during the day. Subordinates came to him.

Anatoly Penkovsky took his customary chair and set the file folders he was carrying next to him on a small side table.

“I have promising news. We have confirmed that damage to the American encryption devices from thePueblospy ship was almost nonexistent.”

“How is that possible?”

“The crew tried to destroy them with axes and sledgehammers, but the devices were built into banks of eavesdropping and communications equipment. Say what you will of the Americans, they can build sturdy housings for their electronics.”

“And the manuals?”

“They attempted to burn and shred some, but they appear to have been completely unprepared to deal with the amount of classified material they had aboard.”

“Perhaps they were counting on their flag as a defense?”