by Mike Maden
And if not? Well, he’d manage somehow. If David Goggins could do 4,025 pull-ups in seventeen hours and run hundred-mile-plus ultramarathons, he sure as shit could walk just a few more hours.
For the first time, Jack wondered if he’d pushed beyond his physical limit. Shivering and exhausted, he had at least two more hours ahead of him, and then the long, five-hour hike back down in the dark without food or water. He began to despair. Not because he might die—an even bet, especially if the temperature dropped much further—but because he might not reach the summit and finish the job.
Something told him this was all a very stupid idea that Cory would hate.
But this really isn’t about Cory anymore, is it?
Something yelped up ahead, knocking Jack out of his delirium. He glanced up in time to see a young girl, dirty and dark-haired, her eyes wide with panic, staring straight at him.
Before Jack could call to her, she bolted off the trail and down the slope, crying and yipping as she stumbled and slid down toward the valley floor.
Suddenly, a teardrop-shaped OH-6 Cayuse appeared out of nowhere, its rotors beating the air.
It swooped hard and fast out of the sky, tracking the girl.
Automatic rifle fire erupted from the chopper. Bullet strikes burst around her, cutting her down in a dead run. She tumbled like a rag doll facedown, her twisted form coming to rest in the grass and rocks. The chopper hovered over her above the boulders, unable to land. Satisfied, it rocketed away, back toward the La Hermana Alta summit.
Jack sprinted off the trail and down toward the girl, his weakened, exhausted legs nearly collapsing underneath him on the steep slope. He stumbled over a rock halfway down and tumbled forward, smashing his arm against yet another stone lying in the grass. He grunted with the pain but regained his footing and raced ahead for the girl, praying she was still alive.
He fell down next to her shattered, bleeding body. Her face was intact, her unblinking eyes opened to the sky above. Jack felt for a pulse but knew before he touched her that she was gone.
Jack wept.
Beyond the bullet wounds he saw a body brutalized. Her nails were torn away from bloody and callused fingers, and her bruised flesh scabbed and purpled.
The girl was fleeing the mountaintop, terrorized and terrified. She might have escaped if she had stayed on the trail, hiding among the boulders. But she saw him and thought he was chasing her, too.
In a way, he’d caused her death.
Jack glanced up at the summit.
Whoever had killed that girl was on top of that mountain.
Something broke in him.
He stood, trembling with rage.
Suddenly his mind narrowed, his focus singular and pure.
All of his life had led him to this moment.
And if it was his last, so be it.
Somebody had to pay.
For all of the evil, and all of the pain, and all of the hell on earth, or at least his corner of it.
Right here. Right now.
He knew he didn’t stand a chance. He had no weapons, no food, no strength.
There was only one thing he could do.
Fight like hell anyway.
78
CYBERSPACE
CHIBI’s computer received the last of the four acknowledgments. With four—well, technically five—proof-of-concept demonstrations, each of the four bidders—Iran, China, Russia, and the Iron Syndicate—now understood the value of what was being put up for auction.
The time—two days from now—was set, as were the place and conditions. Everything had gone according to plan.
How high the bidding would go was anybody’s guess. But that was the point of a blind auction, wasn’t it? What would America’s fiercest enemies be willing to pay for unlimited and undetectable access to the totality of Western intelligence—past and present—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week?
A billion?
Ten billion?
More?
However high the bidding went—and truly, the sky was the limit—all of it would land in CHIBI’s digital pocket.
More than enough money to disappear, to reinvent, to resurrect in a new face, a new body, a new reality.
Good-bye, CloudServe.
* * *
—
Jack scrambled back up the slope and onto the trail.
The Cayuse had disappeared and was out of earshot; whether it landed back on the mountaintop or flew away, he didn’t know. It could reappear at any moment, and the trail was probably monitored. He began using whatever cover he could, crouching low and scrambling fast among the jagged boulders through which the trail now threaded.
Up ahead, heavy boots scuffed in the dirt and rocks, heading his way. No doubt somebody sent down to verify the kill and dispose of the corpse. Jack ducked behind a boulder just off the trail and held his breath.
A voice crackled on a radio as heavy footfalls crunched past. Jack timed his swing perfectly. A sharp, softball-sized stone in his hands thudded hard into the soft flesh of the bearded man’s temple, spraying hot blood onto Jack’s numb face.
The bearded man hit the ground face-first, dead before his forehead broke open against a jagged stone embedded in the trail.
Jack scrambled to pull the corpse off the trail and back behind the boulder where he’d been hiding just in case another man was following behind or someone was watching up above.
The bearded man was Jack’s size—a little taller, actually. That was lucky. He stripped the man of his camouflage coat and pulled it on, along with his black woolen watch cap. The cool breeze had picked up and blew colder, dragging black clouds across the late-afternoon sky.
Jack secured the man’s Glock ten-millimeter pistol and tossed it into the coat pocket along with the two extra mags he was carrying. Jack quickly unlaced the man’s boots and pulled them off. He stripped off his own wet socks and pulled on the man’s dry but stinking woolen socks, then pulled on one of the man’s unlaced boots. It was a near perfect fit for Jack’s swollen, blistered foot.
He slipped on the other boot, snagged the handheld radio, and headed up. Voices chattered on the speaker, mostly in accented English.
He heard a name—Rodrigo—called out three or four times. Must’ve been the name of the guy he’d killed. Jack lifted the radio and clicked the transmit button on and off like it was broken, and muttered gibberish until he finally heard the response, “Damn radios. Never mind. Just get your ass back up here. Rain is on the way. Out.”
Rodrigo won’t mind the rain now, Jack thought.
And soon enough, the asshole on the other end of the radio won’t be worried about it, either.
* * *
—
Nothing had changed. In fact, things had gotten worse.
The temperature had continued to fall, the trail had gotten steeper, and the last three hundred feet was just as Cory had promised—a steep, hand-over-hand climb over tall, jagged granite stones.
But his singular mission had focused all of Jack’s depleted energy, driving his blister-bitten steps one after the other up the steepening incline like a shot of pure adrenaline. All that mattered now was stopping whatever the hell was going on up top and seeking vengeance for the young girl murdered down below. He knew the killing couldn’t change the past, but it might change the future for somebody up there—if he succeeded.
If not, his death was a penance.
Either way was fine by him.
The light rain that began thirty minutes ago turned to ice crystals that whispered against his jacket. He counted at least a dozen different voices on the radio, probably all contract killers like the one already dead on the trail below. He killed the radio. No point in making any more noise than he had to.
It was dark now, the crescent moon well hidden behind a bank of heavy cl
ouds, but enough to see a few feet ahead of him. He was a hundred feet below the tabletop summit. Diesel motors rumbled above, no doubt the source of incandescent light glowing above the rocks. Convenient for Jack. The first sentry he spotted was silhouetted by the generator light that didn’t reach down to him.
The sentry smoked a cigarette listlessly. Jack climbed higher, carefully navigating the slippery granite beneath his frozen hands, trying not to kick anything loose beneath him and give himself away. He worked his way up and around a hundred feet to the left, out of the man’s line of sight. Jack peeked up cautiously between the rocks.
His heart sank.
The tabletop summit was a temporary mining operation. Or, more accurately, a revitalized one. New equipment was scattered among old facilities—rusted tin roofs, weathered lumber. The whole area was about two football fields long and three wide.
On one end of the summit was a wooden structure over a shaft of some sort, Jack presumed. Dozens of miners milled about, carrying heavy sacks lifted up from the shaft or pushing rock-laden wheelbarrows over to sorting and washing tables. Two guards with rifles stood in the mouth of a nearby cave, sheltered from the freezing rain beginning to fall, cursing and cajoling.
On the other side of the camp stood a half-dozen temporary prefab buildings. Housing facilities for the guards, Jack guessed. One building was brightly lit. A belching stovepipe on the roof told him it was probably the mess hall. A huge steel propane tank behind the building confirmed it. A giant lean-to, little more than a corrugated tin roof on poles, might have been for equipment storage, or shelter for people treated worse than cattle.
Careful to avoid detection, Jack caught sight of oxygen and acetylene tanks for welding, assorted tools, and plastic storage tanks for water and fuel. Even a mini–Bobcat excavator. Everything he saw could have been hauled up here by the big Russian chopper he saw yesterday.
A woman screamed. Jack’s head swiveled. A laughing guard was dragging a young girl by the hair into one of the shacks. Another guard whistled and egged him on, shouting in Ukrainian.
Jack’s body tensed. He wanted to charge forward now. But even his rage couldn’t override his training. He needed to finish counting targets, then formulate his plan.
And then it would be time.
79
The light, frozen rain had warmed to a liquid downpour. A biting wind swept the plateau.
Forty-two miners huddled in threadbare rags, shivering together around a cookpot simmering over a jerry-rigged gas burner beneath the giant lean-to. A lone guard hovered near them. An Indian woman ladled the pot’s contents into tin bowls as miners shuffled past her, sitting down exhausted on the cold, hard ground to eat.
Jack crouched beneath the rim in the drenching rain, hidden behind the rocks. He had a plan. All he needed was the opportunity.
Suddenly, he heard it.
A dinner bell clanged on the steps of the mess hall trailer. Eight armed men ambled in that direction.
So far, Jack had counted twenty men guarding the compound. He didn’t stand a chance.
But he didn’t have a choice.
Time to roll.
* * *
—
Fried steaks sizzled on the grill, filling the trailer with the sweet smell of burnt fat and cigarettes.
The eight guards inside talked and smoked as they sat at the tables in the cramped but warm little mess hall, wolfing down steaks and pinto beans, and washing it all down with cans of soda. The rain hammered on the trailer’s metal roof.
The cook—a Canadian Army deserter—circulated in the cramped space with a platter of more steaks, forking them over as requested, the butt of good-humored jokes about his food.
A single ten-millimeter pistol shot rang out a second before the propane tank erupted just outside the trailer’s thin walls. The guards not killed by the concussive blast were gravely wounded by the steel shrapnel or burned alive.
* * *
—
Three more gunshots took out the generator powering the overhead lights. The camp went dark, save for the burning mess hall.
A guard in his skivvies raced out of an adjacent trailer at the sound of the propane blast. He was cut down in mid-stride by a single shot from Jack’s ten-millimeter Glock.
The unit commander stood back in the shadows of the cave’s mouth, trying to assess the situation. Who was attacking? How many? From where?
He called for sitreps on his handheld radio, but no one replied.
“Merde,” he cursed.
The blazing mess hall flames spread to the nearest trailers. The burning buildings lit up the entire camp in a flickering, orange fire that hissed as raindrops spattered on the hot sheet metal.
Two more pistol shots rang out in the noise of the rain. Oxygen tanks exploded like artillery shells just as three men were running past, shredding them into smoking chum.
Suddenly, one of the commander’s men shouted in German and fired off two three-shot bursts from his Steyr AUG 5.56 Bullpup machine gun—at what, the unit commander wasn’t sure.
But two sparks from a pistol thirty yards behind the guard was the answer, tossing the big German backward into the dirt.
The commander couldn’t help but laugh.
He knew exactly who it was out there.
* * *
—
Thirty seconds later, another guard in a poncho and boonie hat and carrying a pistol-gripped Benelli M1014 shotgun barked in pain as a blade severed his spinal column where it attached to the base of his skull.
His body dropped behind one of the big sorting trays.
Jack stripped off the poncho and hat, pulled them on, then grabbed the semiauto shotgun and charged back toward the Bobcat for protective cover. Three guards had ducked behind one of the unburnt trailers, hoping to circle back around the perimeter.
Trusting that the poncho, hat, and Benelli gave him cover as one of the guards, Jack sped across the compound and ducked behind the shack, calling out to the others, “Hey, assholes!”
The three men turned around in unison. Jack recognized two of them from the bar. Before they could raise their weapons, Jack cut them down with eight rounds of double-aught buckshot in less than two seconds, flinging their shredded torsos to the dirt, with the smoke still curling from the barrel of the Benelli.
“JACK RYAN! CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
Out of ammo, Jack tossed the shotgun aside and pulled out the Glock. By his count, only three guards remained. He edged up to the corner of the trailer.
“JACK RYAN! LAST CHANCE FOR THIS GIRL! COME OUT NOW OR I KILL HER!”
The voice sounded vaguely familiar. A European.
Jack peeked around the corner. Slashing rain made it hard to see clearly.
In the flickering firelight, Jack saw a man holding a pistol to the head of a woman kneeling in the puddle in front of him. Beside the man with the pistol, a dozen other miners knelt in the mud at the mercy of a second gunman armed with a rifle. And behind them, the remaining miners were huddled in the lean-to, covered by the third guard.
“JACK! I see you! You have three seconds to come out from behind that trailer! Or the girl dies! One . . . two . . .”
Damn it.
If he came out, they’d cut him down. No question.
But if he didn’t, that girl would die, and so would the others on their knees.
Fury overwhelmed him again. He was trapped. But he had no choice.
“Wait! I’m coming out.”
Jack held his hands high, still holding the Glock. He stepped toward the man with the pistol.
An LED tac light popped on, nearly blinding Jack as it swept over him.
“Drop the pistol, Jack. And keep coming forward.”
Jack tossed it aside. He closed the distance. The rain splattering against his boonie nearly deafened him.
/> Jack couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Jack Ryan. You act as if we’ve met before.” The man scratched his beardless face with the barrel of his pistol.
Jack was sure they had.
Except . . . the tattoo. It was in the wrong place. The sword-bearing winged arm was on the back of his gun hand instead of his forearm.
But it was the face of the shitbird who killed Liliana.
Wasn’t it?
Not quite. Nearly the same face. A fraternal twin or maybe a cousin.
“No, we haven’t met. How do you know me?”
The man—also named Cluzet, like his younger brother—said, “Your friend Sands ratted you out.”
Cluzet saw Jack’s reaction. “Don’t be angry with the old drunk. He saved your life, actually. My men were sent to kill you, but Sands said you were an American tourist with curious and important friends. Too bad you didn’t go away.”
“I’ll be sure to thank him when I see him.”
Cluzet grinned. “I doubt it.”
“That tattoo. Where have I seen it?”
Cluzet twisted and turned the loaded pistol in his hand to flash the tattoo. “French Foreign Legion, Second Parachute Regiment.”
“Is it a rub-on from a cereal box? Or did your boyfriend buy it for you?”
Cluzet roared with laughter. “So funny, and such a killer, too! You wasted some very hard men tonight, Jack. No easy feat. I’m impressed.”
He stepped closer to Jack. Rain poured off his nose and chin. “You’re a real badass, aren’t you, Jack?”
