Golov glanced over and couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the driver.
It was the same man who’d been at the gala in Malta. The captain of the Oregon. He was in the car with his fake wife and another man.
The captain smiled as he yanked the police car’s steering wheel over and crashed into the side of the van.
With the hobbled wheel, Golov couldn’t keep the van on a straight track. It veered to the right, aiming straight at the bridge’s steel railing.
By instinct, Golov jerked the steering wheel right to avoid a collision with the railing. He realized too late that it was the wrong choice. He stood on the brakes, but the van was already on the wet grass alongside the Neris River. The wheel carved muddy ruts in the ground as the van slid toward the embankment. It flew over the edge and down the soggy slope toward the water. The van smacked, nose first, into the concrete path, bounced up, and splashed into the river.
The air bag saved Golov’s life, but it didn’t leave him unscathed. Blood coursed down his face. His forehead had struck the wheel as the van hit the water. That was nothing compared to the agony of his three fingers, which were dislocated when he had tried to brace himself on the dashboard.
With water swirling around his knees, he turned to see Sirkal and O’Connor in the back. O’Connor was up, but holding his head in both hands.
A screwdriver had impaled Sirkal in the shoulder. He stood and pulled it out without a word. He pressed his hand against the wound to stanch the flow of blood. The two of them left the trunk behind and leaped through the rear of the sinking van.
Golov jumped through the driver’s door into the river, ready to swim to the shore and use the last of his bullets to fight his way up to the bridge. With any luck, they could hijack a car there.
Then he saw the boat moored under the bridge and he knew Providence was smiling on him. He yelled to the others and swam over to it, clenching his jaw from the intense pain of each stroke.
Sirkal was the one to reach it first. Using his powerful, uninjured arm, he pulled himself in, then reached down and heaved O’Connor and Golov inside with him.
Gunshots punched through the boat’s fiberglass hull. O’Connor returned fire while Sirkal pried open the dashboard so that Golov could hot-wire the ignition. His dislocated fingers screamed as he manipulated the wires with his thumb and index finger until the connection was made. With a spark, the engine roared to life.
Sirkal sliced through the lines tying the boat to the bridge, and Golov hammered the throttle forward. He looked back in frustration at leaving Polichev’s formulas to sink in the river. The van’s rear end slid beneath the surface with barely a splash.
He expected the police car to parallel their course along the river. Instead, the man who’d been in the car with the captain was racing down the stairs toward where the van had gone down, stripping off his jacket as he ran. The Oregon’s captain was hot on his heels.
They must have been trying to save the contents of the submerged trunk. Surely the ink and paper would turn into a sodden mess, but if it were saved quickly, the formulas might still be legible.
Golov slowed and spun the wheel, bringing the Sea Ray around in a U-turn.
“What are you doing?” O’Connor yelled, incredulous. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
Golov ignored him and jammed the throttle to its stops, determined that this operation wouldn’t be a complete failure.
FIFTY-FOUR
Juan chased Trono down the steps of the embankment to the river, yelling for him to wait. As Trono had seen the van sinking with the trunk that might hold the clues to what Golov was after, he pulled a length of rope and a flashlight from the police car’s supplies and raced down the stairs in an attempt to save it. Over his shoulder, he had called for Juan and Gretchen to chase the boat and come back for him later. He was so fixated on the sunken van that he didn’t notice Golov swinging the boat around downriver.
But Juan had noticed. He leaped down the steps two at a time, but he couldn’t stop Trono from plunging into the river. An experienced diver, Trono would have no trouble swimming down to the van and attaching the rope to the trunk so they could haul it up.
With his gun still in hand, Juan dived into the water and kicked his way down to the van. Trono was already inside the cargo space, tying the rope to the trunk’s handle. Juan grabbed his arm and motioned for him to get out of there. Confused by Juan’s presence, Trono nodded and followed him out of the van, still holding the free end of the rope.
The roar of the Sea Ray’s engine announced that it was fast approaching. Trono’s eyes went wide with understanding that they were in danger. They both dolphin-kicked underwater all the way to the river’s bank. When they reached the concrete lip, Juan surfaced and saw the boat coming even with the bridge and slowing down. Golov was driving, and his lip curled in satisfaction when their eyes met. He had Juan just where he wanted.
What happened next took only seconds, but, for Juan, they would always play back in his mind in slow motion.
A red-haired man behind Golov had his pistol pointed at Juan. There was a third man in the boat, a huge Indian, but he was unarmed.
Out of breath, Trono came up for air next to Juan, who shoved Trono aside, using the momentum to push himself in the other direction.
As he did so, a bullet whizzed past Juan’s head. He raised his own gun from the water and fired three quick shots at the redhead. Two of Juan’s shots hit home, one in the chest and one in the temple. The redhead fell forward, firing as he dropped. Rounds plunked into the water beside Juan.
Shots came from behind Juan and stitched a line across the boat’s hull. Golov ducked, turned the boat around, and revved it up to full throttle. He glanced back in fury as he took the Sea Ray downriver at full speed. Not only had they missed their target but Golov was now down another man.
Juan spun around and saw Linda on the pathway nearby. With her pistol down by her side and a look of horror on her face, she turned and called up to Gretchen.
“He’s been shot!”