Endgame (1998)

by Tom Clancy

  "The tail I placed on Stingray just reported in," said Moreau. "Guess where Stingray's headed?"

  "Villerupt," said Grim. "And since I haven't issued my next report to Kovac yet, we have confirmation."

  "Let me say it out loud so we're both clear on this: Stingray is a cutout for someone on our team. Someone on Delta Sly is a mole working for Kovac." Moreau took a deep breath. "That's the only way Kovac would've known I'm in France and the only way Stingray would know where the team is headed. Someone on the team is feeding the information back to him."

  "So all our efforts to bypass him--meeting here, everything--have been for nothing."

  "Don't pop the Prozac yet," sang Moreau. "This just makes the game more fun. First question: Do we notify the team?"

  "No, we don't. That'll heighten the paranoia, interfere with the mission, and tip off Kovac that we're on to him. We've already got Noboru's mercs to deal with. We need to handle the mole problem from our end."

  "All right. How about this: If we can identify the mole, then we feed that information to Fisher. He'll need to remove the problem and the team can be left out of it."

  "Excellent. I could pass this on to Fisher's cutout, though I'm not sure when they'll be able to link up again. I'll have to risk contacting him to see."

  "Any thoughts on who the mole might be?"

  "I'd love to rule out Hansen, but there's no ruling out anyone at this point. He could've been working for Kovac before I recruited him. And I confided in him, even picked him for the mission to Russia. That could've been a grave error."

  "What about Ames? I hate that little bastard."

  "Who doesn't? That's why I like him. He's a thorn in everyone's side--including our enemies. And you've read his fitness report. He's scored higher than anyone else on the team, across the board. Fisher told me he doesn't have the temperament for this line of work, and I agree, but temperament isn't everything. I think he's too loud, too noisy, too obvious to be our mole."

  "Or he's overplaying it so he becomes too obvious."

  "Maybe."

  Moreau squinted into a thought. "What about one of the women?"

  "I don't know. I'll do some more probing. Noboru could be our man. Maybe Kovac promised him something we couldn't."

  "Maybe I'm the mole," said Moreau.

  "Don't even go there, Marty."

  "You know if I am the mole, the entire NSA had better watch out, because I'm so wired into the intelligence community that it wouldn't take long to bring the walls tumbling down."

  "But instead we got Kovac, who wants to line his pockets and arm our enemies."

  "I'm sure he thinks he's saving America. As long as our enemies are armed and dangerous, we're all gainfully employed. No war on terror, no threats, and the NSA downsizes us onto the streets. They'll say, Let the CIA do the field work. We're here to cut government spending and lower taxes! So Kovac's boosting the American economy by making sure the bad guys remain very, very bad."

  Grim smirked. "Our enemies don't need his help."

  21

  SIXT RENTAL-CAR OFFICE VILLERUPT, FRANCE

  VALENTINA drove while Noboru rode shotgun, and it took the team a good forty minutes to get from the airstrip at Errouville to the Sixt rental-car office on place Jeanne d'Arc in Villerupt. Valentina ran inside and cried out breathlessly to the man at the counter, "My father was here earlier and rented a car." She showed him a picture of Fisher. "He had on a red shirt."

  "Yes, that man was here. Is something wrong?"

  "He told me he was going to pick me up, but I can't find him. He was telling me what color the car was, but the signal dropped on the phone, and now he's not picking up."

  "I think he took one of our Aveos. A yellow one."

  "Really? Thank you! I'll go see if he's waiting for me!" She ran back outside, where Hansen confirmed that the car he'd seen leaving the airport was light colored, probably yellow, though it had been pretty far off.

  "I don't get it. Why would he rent a car, and then come back to the airport just before we arrived?" asked Valentina.

  Hansen's tone darkened. "The target has gone asymmetrical on us, and so have our superiors."

  "Now what?"

  Hansen flipped on his OPSAT, pulled up the map, and scrolled around. Valentina read the map over his shoulder.

  "He could be anywhere now. He could've gone west to Sainte-Claire or south down to Cantebonne. Or maybe he just went straight out to Audun-le-Tiche, right here." Hansen tapped his finger on the screen. "I'll be surprised if he's not heading to Luxembourg."

  "So has he stopped dropping bread crumbs?" Valentina asked.

  Hansen shrugged. "I'm calling Moreau. We need eyes in the sky to find that car."

  Valentina raised her brows. "Why don't you let me talk to him?"

  "You?"

  "Yeah, I've been dying to give him a piece of my mind."

  He grinned. "Be my guest."

  She activated her OPSAT and called Moreau on one of the secure tactical channels. He answered after a four-second delay. "What is it, Maya?"

  "We're done here."

  "Excuse me?"

  "You heard me. We're done playing. Fisher shows up at our airport. Now you got us running around. You already know where Fisher is. Maybe you want us to eventually bring him in, but maybe you want us to do that at a certain time or at a certain place, so just tell us; otherwise I'm done."

  "Young lady, you're not anything until I say so."

  "Adios, Moreau. I just can't do this anymore. I won't let myself be used by you people. This operation is a joke. I thought I was being hired and trained as a professional operative. I'm not an actor."

  "The hell you're not."

  "You know what I mean."

  "You walk away, you'll regret it."

  "No, I won't." She smiled at Hansen. "Nice working with you, Ben. Maybe one day you'll wise up, too. They'll probably get you all killed--because of their pathetic little games." She turned, strutted down the sidewalk.

  All right, so she was calling Moreau's bluff and was waiting for him to chime in. But the bastard kept silent.

  Thank God for Hansen, who came running after her and said, "Maya, don't be like this. You know we're part of something bigger. If they told us everything, they could compromise whatever else they have planned."

  "I guess I'm more of a straight-up fighter. I'm really sick of this."

  Hansen suddenly looked away, and Valentina realized he was being contacted through his own subdermal. He turned back, eyes wide.

  "What?" she asked.

  "Car accident at a McDonald's on rue du Luxembourg in Audun-le-Tiche. Yellow Aveo. It's just a couple of minutes away!" He went storming back toward the SUVs.

  Valentina fell in behind him. She really was getting tired of all the lies. If there was a certain artifice to their chase, then Grim and Moreau should come clean about it. But maybe they couldn't, and maybe whatever Fisher was up to was so important that, as Hansen has implied, they needed to engage valuable human resources like themselves in order to get the job done. That was an eloquent way of kidding herself and continuing to live in denial about what she really was: a Barbie doll on a fake spy mission.

  She could only hope that Fisher didn't see it that way, and if they stayed close to him, she would definitely see some action. The real stuff, no doubt.

  He was, after all, a magnet for mayhem.

  THE sun was already on the horizon, the sky fading from light blue to deep saffron as they reached the McDonald's parking lot. There they found several police cars, along with a few gendarmes talking to witnesses in front of the restaurant.

  Fisher's yellow Aveo was smashed into the rear bumper of another subcompact. The Aveo's door was still hanging open. The vehicles' positions made it difficult to see who had been at fault. Fisher could have been in some sort of frenzy, perhaps pursued by someone else--and had hit this other car. Or this could be another bread crumb, Valentina thought. He slammed his car into the other to bring the
team here.

  She spun around, studied the area, saw a train station in the distance and some kind of commotion up there. The side streets were blocked off by a few barricades. Some kind of party?

  Hansen approached after having questioned one of the witnesses. "They say a guy in a red shirt. They weren't sure which way he ran."

  "Nathan and I will go up there, toward the train station," Valentina said.

  "Good. We'll spread out south toward that greenbelt. Everybody open a channel and put on your SVTs."

  Valentina applied the flesh-colored transmitter to her throat and took off running, with Noboru at her side.

  They headed up rue du Luxembourg, then turned northwest toward what her map called the Audun-le-Tiche station, where a train had just come in from its run to Esch-sur-Alzette on the other side of the border in Luxembourg. Valentina did a double take because the train was a nineteenth-century locomotive pulling three carriage cars and seemingly transported right out of Disney's Magic Kingdom.

  If Fisher's plan was to cross the border, then he had picked an excellent avenue of approach. There was so much traffic moving between France and Luxembourg, so many connections between the inhabitants of each country and the sister cities of Russange and Esch-sur-Alzette, that it was quite routine for a French family to spend as much time in Luxembourg as it did in its own country, crossing the border dozens of times each week. As a result, border standards were loose and fast, and Fisher could very well exploit them.

  As they neared the station, Valentina spotted a large billboard that announced the decommissioning celebration and carnival of the Audun-le-Tiche rail line. Ah, there was the explanation for the old train; it was part of the festivities and making hourly runs across the border. She and Noboru were running smack-dab into a crowd of weekend revelers--yet another perfect situation for Fisher to exploit. Hundreds of colorful balloons had been tied to the platform, and rows of equally festive flags billowed above rows of vendors' portable stalls with awnings striped red, blue, and white. Valentina could smell the coffee and the pastries, and her stomach growled as she ran past the stalls. There were, she estimated, at least five hundred people at the station, perhaps more, and she and Noboru began cutting through them, trying their best not to shove people and draw attention.

  A cry of "All aboard!" in French lifted above the din of the crowd, and with a clank, groan, and sudden hiss, the train broke forward, and those still standing on the platform raised their arms and waved to their friends seated in the carriages.

  As Valentina neared the station doorway, she and Noboru strained to see past all those arms and spot a man with a red shirt on board the train. By the time they reached the edge of the platform, the train had already pulled away.

  "He might be on the train," said Valentina. "We're just not sure. Moreau? Do you see it?"

  "I'm on it. I'll let you know if I spot anything."

  THE automatic streetlights were beginning to switch on as Hansen called back Ames and Gillespie from the greenbelt area. They hadn't spotted anything, and Moreau had done a thorough scan of the area with the help of his satellite feeds. They rallied back at the SUVs, where Valentina and Noboru were already waiting for them.

  "We searched the entire station," said Noboru. "Very crowded. But no red shirt."

  "Did you know that on Star Trek the guys who wear red shirts always die?" asked Ames. "I wonder if Fisher knows that. I wonder if, maybe, he's suicidal. But subconsciously, you know? That's why he picked a red shirt."

  Nearly in unison Gillespie and Hansen told Ames to shut up; then Valentina said, "If I were him, I'd be on that train."

  "Then let's go up there and have a look."

  Hansen cocked his thumb back in the direction of his SUV, and Gillespie and Ames jumped in while Valentina and Noboru rushed back to theirs. They took off, heading up rue Napoleon 1er and veering off along a side street running parallel to a large, triangular-shaped reservoir in the distance.

  Suddenly Hansen slowed to stop. Gillespie hopped out the back door.

  "What's going on?" asked Valentina.

  "I see something down there. Looks like a bike," said Hansen. "Moreau, can you get a fix on it for us?"

  "No, I've got a signal issue right now. Give me a minute."

  "Great timing," grunted Hansen.

  "Take the wheel," Valentina ordered Noboru; then she grabbed her weapon and hopped out. She crossed to the black SUV and joined Gillespie, who'd donned a long trench coat, just like Valentina had. Ames climbed out as well, and all three started down the slope, toward the bike Hansen had spotted. They were shouldering their SC-20K rifles with long-range scopes and under-barrel attachments loaded with Cottonballs, LTL (less-than-lethal) projectiles that resembled shotgun shells but were, in fact, aerosol tranquilizers with stronger, faster-acting agents that began taking effect on impact. The round would strike the target, release its contents, and render the subject unconscious for about twenty minutes, depending upon the size of the dose, the target's body weight, and a host of other factors. Valentina thought it'd be a small miracle if they actually got to fire one of those rounds.

  "Keep going. It's right there," came Hansen's voice through their subdermals. "Near the bottom of the slope."

  "Wait a minute . . . wait a minute . . ." began Ames. "I got movement. Wait . . . red shirt! There he is! He's running!"

  Ames sprinted off ahead of them, and Valentina cried out for him to wait up, but then she saw him, too, climbing up the opposite slope and heading toward the trees--and for a moment it was like a dream, utterly surreal--Sam Fisher dressed like a goofy tourist but Sam Fisher nonetheless, stealing looks over his shoulder as he bolted away from them and spirited into the dark cover of the woods.

  Valentina's heels dug deeply into the soft earth, and she and Gillespie fought to catch up with Ames. They reached the top of the slope and once more spotted Fisher darting into the woods, heading east.

  "You're about 120 feet from the reservoir, 200 feet across, and there's a dirt road on the other side. Looks like he's headed there," said Moreau.

  "We're standing by in the cars," said Hansen. "Noboru and I will be ready to pick you up. Just don't lose him!"

  "No chance of that now," said Ames.

  Valentina was about to snort when the short man in front of her lost his footing and suddenly dropped to his rump. And in the next second she and Gillespie found themselves stumbling downward as the forest gave way to a forty-five-degree slope. Gillespie fell; then Valentina lost her footing and slammed onto her butt, and now all three of them were careening down, gliding across thick beds of leaves, trying to push off trees and find a path toward the flickering sheet of darkness that was the cool, calm surface of the reservoir.

  And then . . . a splash . . . and Ames grunting into his SVT: "He's in the water."

  22

  BORDER CROSSING RUSSANGE, FRANCE

  AMES smacked into the tree so hard that he was wrenched sideways and his rifle flew off his shoulder. He whipped his head as the weapon slid away and landed beside another tree a few meters away.

  Before he could get up, Valentina and Gillespie were already back on their feet and running past him. He cursed, rose, and crawled on his hands and knees to scoop up his weapon.

  He stood and headed farther down the embankment to where the women had dropped down to their bellies, along a rocky ledge with the water about ten feet below.

  "Wait for him to come up," said Valentina. "I have the first shot when he does."

  "No, I got it," snapped Ames, hurrying up to the edge himself.

  "I have it," Valentina insisted. "Do not test me, little man. . . ."

  Ten, twenty, almost thirty seconds passed. . . .

  Ames impatiently stared through his scope, searching in vain across the dark waves dimly lit by the moon. The night scope lit up the darkness, but there was still some distortion coming off the water. Mist perhaps.

  And then, sans any forewarning, Valentina launched a Cottonball.<
br />
  Ames jerked his rifle left, toward the sound, and spotted Fisher in the water. The old man had come up to steal a lungful of air, and Valentina's round hit him perfectly in the back of the head.

  But that wasn't how Ames would interpret it.

  "You missed," he said through his SVT. "Damn it, you missed!"

  "No, I didn't! He's hit," barked Valentina.

  "No, he's not!" Ames insisted, paving the way for what he'd do next. . . .

  He tracked Fisher's intended path, and he assumed that the man, clearly alerted to their presence, wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

  Fisher had taught Ames that water was cover, escape, and safety, and he'd also taught him to swim on his back and steal breaths so that only his mouth broke the surface, not his head. This was a basic escape-and-evasion technique often forgotten by operative in the heat of the moment.

  Imagining Fisher doing just that, Ames zoomed in with his scope and spotted a faint outline in the water, the slightest disturbance across the waves.

  Ames shuddered. He had him.

  But now to set it up for the others.

  "He's getting away," Ames cried. "But he's submerged. The Cottonball's no good. I have to stop him."

  With Kovac's orders to kill Fisher echoing through his head, Ames took in a long breath and steadied his rifle. Fisher was shifting through his sights. Ames would not waste this opportunity. No way.

  Was there any guilt? Even the faintest trace? No. It was just business. Time to put the old boy out of his misery. Fisher's ghost would probably thank him for it.

  Ames blinked and stared more intently through the scope. He took another deep breath, held it. Then he trained his crosshairs over the disturbance in the water.

  Moment of truth. He was ready, with thirty 5.56-mm bullpup rounds at his disposal. The SC-20K's bullpup design meant that the magazine and action were located behind the weapon's trigger, allowing the rifle to have a longer barrel length relative to its size. The design was popular with NATO operators and quite useful for Splinter Cells who needed the capabilities of a longer- range weapon in a compact design for stealth.