The van engines rumbled to life.
She was out of ammo for the rifle. Her brain felt like it might explode, and now the enemy was in pursuit.
Just another day in the life of a Vector agent.
Alex made it to the car and flung open the rear passenger door. He forced Elad into the back seat and buckled him up for good measure. He just hoped it was enough in case Elad lost control of himself like Jaber had in Amman.
Skylar had dropped her empty rifle and whipped out her handgun, firing a few wild shots before jumping into the front passenger seat. Alex slipped into the driver’s seat. The Mercedes purred to life, and he threw the vehicle into gear. The tires squealed, and the odor of burning rubber filled the car. They raced down the winding residential roads, avoiding the other cars parked haphazardly along the street.
Alex didn’t want to turn on his headlights, relying instead on the sporadic streetlights. The headlights would give them away, acting like a beacon calling out their location to their pursuers. But as they tore through the streets, bumping over potholes and taking violent curves, he didn’t have much of a choice. It was either give themselves away in the dark or slam hood-first against a parked car or stone wall.
The white lights illuminated the swath of bumpy road ahead.
The car rattled with each pothole and crack in the road as they shot over the gravel-strewn streets, back toward the Aqaba city center. Alex wanted to lose these people somewhere in the maze of buildings before leaving the city behind.
Three sets of headlights bloomed in the darkness behind. Muzzle fire burst from the open windows of the vans in a malicious barrage. A few rounds smashed against the Mercedes, punching into the metal and cracking the rear windshield.
“Can you get a clean shot on them?” Alex asked Skylar.
In the occasional passing streetlight, he could see muscles tightening on her clenched jaw. Maybe it was the bad lighting, but she appeared drained of color.
“I’ll try,” she said. “Don’t have much left.”
He didn’t know if she was referring to ammo or willpower.
She pushed the button to retract the Mercedes’s sunroof. Wind rushed past it. She pushed herself out with her pistol.
Alex took a hard right, trying to lose the vans, and then straightened out to give his partner a chance to shoot.
Skylar fired. Spent casings rattled over the car’s roof.
A quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed one of the vans losing control. A cloud of gas and rubber blasted from one of its front tires. The vehicle swerved and crashed into a stone wall in front of an apartment building. Its front end crumpled. Smoke poured from under the hood.
“One down,” Skylar yelled into the cabin.
But the other two vans barreled past.
“Command, Vector One, ran into hostiles,” Alex said. “On the road with tails.”
“Copy,” Morris’s voice came back over the line. “I’ve got a read on your position.”
“Get me a route out of here,” Alex said.
“Working on it.”
While visibility was limited, driving at night at least meant that there were few cars on the road—and, even more fortunate, almost no pedestrians. Alex raced over sidewalks and through empty intersections, ignoring every stoplight and sign.
He took another hard left, tires squealing, struggling to maintain their grip on the road with the sudden shift in acceleration.
Another burst of rounds ripped from Skylar’s handgun. The headlights of the lead van exploded.
That wasn’t enough to stop the vehicle.
They were now headed straight back into Aqaba’s city center along the main road. Exactly what Alex had hoped to avoid. Lights glowed from the nearly identical five-story white-and-brown buildings that flashed by. More vans and cars drove down the two-lane road, and Alex zipped between them, clearing the other vehicles by centimeters, even jumping up on the sidewalk lined with palm trees to bypass the traffic.
All the while, their pursuers kept coming.
At least Elad had stopped writhing in the back seat. He seemed more aware again.
Skylar dropped back into the car, her hair plastered against her skin with sweat.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m alive.” She jammed in a new magazine and pulled back the pistol’s slide. “Head’s better. But I’m not sure I can stop these guys. First van was more luck than skill.”
“Vector, I got bad news,” Morris said. “I’m intercepting calls from the police. Units responding from the north along 65 and 80.”
“Any way around them?” Alex asked, he cranked the wheel hard to skirt past a bus.
“You could loop south when you hit the marina, but it sounds like the police are already setting up a barricade there. Even if you get around them, you’re going to be stopped at the border to Saudi Arabia.”
Crimson lights tore into the night from other parts of the city, a tightening noose, as the chase forced Alex toward the Red Sea. Neither the Jordanian authorities nor these dogged gunmen were letting up.
No matter how hard he tried to shake them, he couldn’t.
But he had no intention of letting Elad or those vials of what very well might be the Ring of Solomon end up in anyone’s hands but Vector’s.
Alex took another sharp turn. Then a hard left.
The city wasn’t large. There weren’t too many more places to go that weren’t already soaked in red-and-blue lights, police waiting for him to drive right into their trap.
He flew past mosques and apartment complexes, resorts and stores. Then he swerved off the road, the bottom of the car grinding on the curb, and he raced straight over a vacant, trash-strewn lot.
As soon as he hit the road again, two police cars shot down an alley from his left. He was forced to pull a ninety-degree turn and blasted down another street.
“We aren’t going to get away,” Skylar said.
Alex pulled hard on the wheel. “We can’t just get out and fight them.”
“Vector, I just got word all highways are blocked now,” Morris said. “There are checkpoints on every artery out of the city.”
“Alex, we need to ditch the car and hide,” Skylar said. “Lie low. Find a place to pull over. Now.”
She sounded desperate. His partner probably wanted to hole up in a building, man the barricades, and fight their way out of this. Alex figured if he gave her a chance, maybe it would work. At least for a little while. But only if they had been facing those gunmen in the vans alone. With the authorities on them like flies on carrion, they didn’t have a chance.
And Skylar was a potential liability. As much as he trusted her, he couldn’t rely on her if they were cornered. She was liable to lose control again. Worse, whatever had infected Skylar was evidently in Elad too.
Alex had dealt with two infected people, and one of them had been an overweight, middle-aged bureaucrat. He had barely survived then.
Doubted he’d be that lucky again.
Surrounded by police checkpoints, chased by a pair of vans filled with gunmen, he saw only one solution, one escape. Maybe just as dangerous as Skylar’s plan, but at least it gave them a shot. A real way out of this mess.
“Command, I need to speak to Kasim,” Alex said. He pressed the pedal to the floor, speeding down a straightaway toward the marina.
“Here,” Kasim replied. “What do you need?”
“I hope you still have your Mossad contacts,” Alex said. “Because we’re headed to Israel.”
-20-
The tendrils of pain around Skylar’s head had finally loosened.
But after escaping her mental torture, she still wasn’t happy. She got less happy the longer Alex explained his plan.
“It’s the only way we’re getting out of this,” he said.
They barreled down the road toward a traffic circle. In the center of the circle was a small fountain and a scattering of bronze statues of soldiers on horses. Instead of following
the road around the circle, Alex hopped the curb, front tires tearing into the grass and dirt. The bottom of the vehicle scraped against concrete with a jarring heave, quickly followed by a loud bang and a grinding sound. A rooster tail of sparks flew up behind them.
The two vans and now three police cars followed the same path. Alex swerved around the statues and concrete benches surrounding them. One of the vans wasn’t agile enough, slamming sideways into a statue. The bronze horse toppled, and the van flipped sideways, sliding against the pavement with a terrible screech.
Alex took them over another strip of grass, flattening a few scrubby bushes. The car roared back onto the road, wheels biting into asphalt once more. While the engine revved, Alex kept his eyes ahead, only occasionally glancing at one of the mirrors.
Ahead, the yellow glow of sodium lights illuminated a pier. Fishermen were tossing nets and supplies into their boats. Several boats were slowly cutting away from the pier, toward the open sea.
Skylar had hoped they might find a yacht or speedboat that looked ready to sail. A boat built for speed that would let them hop in and get the hell out of Aqaba before the gunmen could even step foot on the pier.
They had no such luck. So she settled for the next best thing.
“There!” she said, pointing at the second row of docks.
Alex hit the hand brake on the Mercedes. It drifted sideways, smoke rising from the rubber burning against the pavement. He shot between smaller fishing boats toward the twenty-four-footer that Skylar had spotted.
The fishermen stopped loading their vessels or untying them from the iron cleats lining their slips. They stared at the car blasting past them, some screaming and shaking their fists, others leaping into their vessels for protection.
“What are you doing?” Elad cried from the back seat. “Are you trying to kill us?”
“The exact opposite,” Alex said.
He slammed on the brakes. Skylar ripped open the door and lunged from the car before it came to a full stop. She sprinted at the two men loading up a fishing vessel with Sea King painted in chipped black letters along its flaking hull. Both its engines were idling with a throaty gurgle, the stink of oil and gas drifting from the boat.
Wasn’t the prettiest or fastest boat. But it was a good size and ready to sail—and right now, that was all Skylar needed.
“Get off now,” she yelled, waving the empty assault rifle at them.
Whether they knew English or not, they were quick learners. The man standing on the bow of the ship jumped straight overboard, and the other leapt to the dock with his hands up.
Skylar used her knife to cut the two remaining lines holding the boat secure. It started to drift away from the pier as Alex ran toward it with Elad. The two of them jumped over the gunwale and landed on the sternward deck with a heavy thump.
Down the pier, the remaining van skidded to a halt as black-clad figures began to pour out of it. Police cars were only a couple hundred yards behind.
Skylar ran to the cockpit of the boat and pushed the throttle all the way forward. The engines roared, and a deluge of water erupted behind them, splashing over the dock. She steered the boat straight out of its slip and sped past buoys with No Wake Zone signs. The waves from their racing boat pounded against the sides of other fishing vessels, the unfortunate seacraft bobbing and crashing against their slips.
She caught sight of a few sailors on one pier shouting at her and making gestures she could only assume were terribly rude.
“Straight across the Red Sea,” Alex yelled over the rushing wind, bracing himself on the gunwale.
The boat cut through the relatively calm waters, the hull bouncing against waves only a foot or so high. Behind her, Elad was on a bench that wrapped around inside the sternward gunwale. The look on his face told Skylar he wasn’t used to sea travel. And at the speeds she was going, even with the conditions favorable as they were, the poor guy didn’t have much time to get his sea legs.
“Command, Vector One,” Alex yelled into his mic. “We’re traveling by boat. The Sea King. Headed straight toward Eilat. We need exfil now!”
Eilat was the port city directly across the Red Sea from Aqaba. They could see it up ahead, flush with lights glowing from resorts and apartment buildings against the dark silhouettes of the mountains behind it. From port to port, the two cities were separated by five miles or so.
“Copy,” Kasim called. “I’m having a little trouble getting ahold of my contacts, though. If you go into Israel hot, know that they don’t take kindly to people trying to crash their borders.”
“We don’t have much of a choice,” Skylar said.
She turned back to see another boat chasing after them, kicking up a canyon of water behind it. Sparks of gunfire flickered from near the craft’s bow, and rounds thunked against the Sea King’s hull, chipping away at the fiberglass. It looked like the gunmen from the van had stolen a fishing boat of their own.
And they weren’t the only ones who had taken to the sea after Skylar and Alex. A steel-gray, forty-five-foot-long Response Boat from the Royal Jordanian Naval Force—the JRNF—joined the pursuit, shooting out from another pier about half a mile from the marina where they had commandeered the Sea King.
But unlike the fishing boats, this one was a hell of a lot faster.
Water sprayed up from behind the vessel in an arcing rooster tail. The antennae atop its cabin wobbled as it cut through the waves.
A voice sizzled over the radio next to Skylar’s wheel. First in Arabic. Then English.
“Unidentified vessels, this is the Vigor of the Royal Navy of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Shut down your engines immediately. If you do not comply, we will open fire.”
While that answered the question about whether these gunmen were working with the Jordanian authorities, it didn’t make Skylar feel any safer. Now they had two different groups after them. Two groups determined to stop them, dead or alive.
“Kasim, keep trying your Mossad contacts,” Alex said over the comms. “We’ve got a JRNF boat after us, and we’re taking fire. We need support.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not having any luck,” Kasim replied, his voice nearly cracking with obvious strain. “Vector, if you enter Israel, you’re on your own.”
“Rather be on my own in Israel than at the bottom of the sea,” Skylar said, picking up the radio handset.
More bullets punched into their boat. She heard a pop. The odor of fuel wafted around her, and the fuel gauge on the console started to drain.
Behind them, the Jordanian Response Boat and the gunmen were both drawing closer. Gunfire struck out from both vessels now. The JRNF vessel was equipped with military-grade weapons. Tracer rounds from a machine gun cut through the dark.
The gunmen on the other fishing boat returned fire, opening up a three-way gun battle on the harbor. Skylar thought she saw a sailor fall over the gunwale of the JRNF boat in the flash of those blue lights. The Response Boat swung one of their spotlights on the Sea King, nearly blinding her, forcing her to keep her eyes forward.
She squeezed the radio handset, wind whipping through her hair. “Israel Port Authority, this is the Sea King, Jordanian designation. SOS. Requesting assistance.”
“Israel Port Authority, Sea King,” a man’s voice called back gruffly over the radio. “We are aware of your location and situation. Advising you to surrender to the Jordanian authorities.”
“We cannot do that.” Skylar looked at Alex. They didn’t have many options. Definitely no good ones. And if Kasim couldn’t play interference for them, she had to do it. “We have an Israeli national aboard. His life is in danger. We require immediate assistance.”
Black smoke started to pour from one of their engines. Then a deafening bang thundered over the deck. Red tongues of fire flared from the busted engine.
The Sea King was losing speed. Fast.
Skylar could see the port clearly at Eilat. Lights illuminated vessels ranging from shipping frigates to smaller leis
ure craft. And among them, she saw a pair of eighty-one-foot Israeli patrol boats.
Those two ships sped toward them at what had to be nearly fifty knots. She could see each of them was outfitted with 25 mm cannons on their bows and a manned machine gun on both the starboard and aft sides. From what Skylar knew of the Israeli fast patrol craft, they might have grenade launchers, too.
Were they coming to intercept the Sea King and escort them to safety? Or were they ensuring that the rogue vessel remained the Jordanians’ problem?
“Sea King, you are advised to surrender to the Jordanian authorities immediately,” the Port Authority officer called back again. “Do you read?”
Guess that answers who the Israelis plan on helping.
Her ploy hadn’t worked.
“Kasim, we’re at the end of the line,” Alex said, his cool façade cracking as he shouted over the rushing wind and gunfire. She’d never heard him like this, almost desperate.
“Vector, I am exhausting my options,” Kasim said, equally frantic. “Find a way out or surrender. There’s nothing else I can do.”
Skylar heard the pain in his voice. She was well aware of what would happen when they surrendered. At this moment, they were United States citizens. But when they fell into the custody of foreign powers, the US would disavow them. There would be no diplomats trying to free them, no one from the State Department coming to advocate for their release.
They would be deemed lone wolves, bad actors.
They had known this when they signed up for Vector. It had always been a risk.
But Skylar had hoped they could finish a few more missions before everything came tumbling down.
They were nearing the Israeli port. Rounds poured from the JRNF vessel, slamming into the Sea King and the fishing boat with the gunmen. The fire devouring the engine grew wilder, a pillar of black smoke climbing from their boat.
She considered jumping off. Making a swim for it. But they wouldn’t get far. The Response Boat would be on them in seconds.
She had one last Hail Mary. Might not work. But with her rifle empty and her head drained of all other ideas, it was all she could offer.
Demon Mind (Vector Book 2) Page 18
