The Last Hostage

by Nance, John J. ;

  Robert yanked open the door and stepped into a dark, wet alleyway behind the hotel. He slammed the heavy metal fire door behind him, feeling deliverance in its reverberation.

  The alley ran to an adjacent street, and he raced the entire length, moving into the flowing crowd and blending with it before realizing that it was carrying him back toward the main hotel entrance.

  A surge of guests spilled from the interior of the hotel through the main entrance doors, tangling with the city crowd as they moved onto waiting buses, each of them happily chatting with friends, and each of them carrying a familiar shopping bag.

  He looked more closely at one of the bags, recognition coming as a shock. There were hundreds of them, each emblazoned with a Mercedes-Benz emblem.

  Robert MacCabe stopped in his tracks, shaking his head. The Mercedes bag he had seen on the thirty-second floor could have belonged to anyone. They were all over the hotel. He’d panicked for nothing.

  But what about the pursuer in the stairwell? Hadn’t he come through a locked stairway door …

  Good grief! Of course! Robert thought, wincing. He had a key because he was hotel security! I probably set off an alarm when I opened the stairwell door.

  He felt like an idiot as he took a deep breath and began walking calmly toward the main doors, adrenaline making his legs wobbly. Obviously no one had been chasing him. He’d allowed his imagination to get the best of him, building on what had probably been a simple burglary unconnected with terrorism or Cuban crashes or potentially overheard conversations with FBI agents.

  I’d sure make a lousy spy! Robert thought. Jumping out of my skin every time the phone rings.

  The aromas of Hong Kong began to awaken his other senses, the pungent smell of various seafoods and the essence of fresh garbage mixing with a delicious smell from a steakhouse grill. The street was glistening with moisture from a passing shower, the lights reflecting from the surface of the street in a kaleidoscope of colors.

  He looked at the hotel entrance and checked his watch. He’d have to hurry to report the burglary and check out by phone. There was barely enough time to get a cab.

  The hotel driveway where the taxis were waiting was incredibly crowded, and Robert had to push into an incoming group of conventioneers, several of whom seemed to be pushing back—one on his left and one on his right—pressing in on both sides and herding him away from the main entrance door as he struggled to hold on to his bag and computer case.

  It was no use. Their rudeness was ridiculous, and Robert stopped suddenly to let the two men go ahead. But both of them stopped, too, and at the same moment he felt something hard and metallic poke into his right rib cage.

  “That’s a gun barrel,” the man on the right said quietly.

  “What … what do you want?” Robert managed.

  “Keep walking. Keep looking straight ahead.”

  Robert tried to twist away, but firm hands clamped down on his arms as his hand was ripped from the handle of his bag. The voice was in his ear again. “I have a silencer, Mr. MacCabe.”

  American accent, Robert concluded, the thought scaring him even more.

  “It’s aimed very accurately at your backbone. One more try to wiggle away and you’ll hear a small pop as a nine-millimeter bullet bores in and efficiently severs your spine, and we’ll simply disappear. Or you can cooperate and keep your legs.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m walking. Who are you?”

  The barrel was thrust harder into his side. Robert winced with pain. “Shut up,” the voice said.

  “Look, I don’t …”

  “I SAID SHUT UP!” It was more an intense snarl right in his ear than a shout, but the effect was the same.

  Looking ahead, Robert could see a dark sedan waiting at the curb and the heavyset man from the thirty-second-floor elevator emerging from the passenger side to open the rear door, his face devoid of expression.

  “Where are the bags?” the man by the car asked.

  “Got ’em,” the gunman replied. The man on Robert’s left released his arms as the one with the gun pushed him toward the backseat.

  Robert felt time distend. Whoever they were, if he got in the car he was dead. Of that he was sure. He had less than a few seconds to act, and no idea what to do.

  The gun barrel was withdrawn from his right side as one of the men started around to the other side of the car. The burly one climbed into the passenger seat, leaving only the gunman between Robert and a slim chance of escape.

  Robert turned to his right to look at the gunman, a sudden move that startled the man and caused the barrel to rise again.

  “You did get my computer, didn’t you?” Robert asked.

  The man smiled an evil smile, not caring that his face was fully visible. It was obvious he didn’t expect the reporter to live long enough to identify him, a confirmation of Robert MacCabe’s death sentence.

  “How good of you to ask, Mr. MacCabe. That’s precisely what we were looking for, as a matter of fact. Pity you didn’t leave it in your room.” He held up the computer case with his left hand as he let the aim of the pistol in his right hand drop toward the pavement, its barrel clearly visible to Robert.

  There was no silencer.

  The energy behind the sudden kick of Robert MacCabe’s right leg encompassed every ounce of his will to live. His aim was perfect; the toe of his size-eleven shoe catching the gunman squarely in the crotch and literally lifting him into the air. A piercing cry of pain punctuated the air, followed by the roar of the gun firing wildly as it left the injured man’s flailing right hand. The crowd cringed and turned in his direction to see what was happening.

  The force of his kick propelled Robert backward against the car, but he lunged forward instantly, diving to catch his computer case as it fell from the gunman’s hand. Robert grabbed the computer in midair and fell to the pavement, rolling once before leaping up and regaining his feet. He ran for his life, literally, past the hotel entrance and across the crowded street beyond, ignoring the commotion in his wake. The screech of brakes and honk of horns accompanied his frantic, broken field run as he darted left and then right. He spotted what looked like an alley a hundred feet away, dodged between and behind everyone he passed, and skidded around the corner through a loose stack of cardboard boxes into the middle of a bazaar full of startled people.

  He could hear running footsteps and shouts behind him, but he had the advantage of surprise, if only for a few seconds—along with the horrid certainty that his paranoia had been justified. Someone really was out to kill him for what they thought he knew.

  A jungle of handcarts and tables full of wares were spread like an obstacle course in front of each of the tiny shops that opened into the street. A cacophony of music from Asian rap to the Beatles filled the street as he wove back and forth, his computer case flapping alongside. He darted beneath colorful awnings and through myriad aromas of food and smoke as he eyed first one entryway, then another, trying to decide which might have a rear exit.

  Toward the end of the second block he shoved too hard past an angered merchant, and the man caught him by the sleeve to yell at him in Mandarin. Robert twisted away, apologizing in English. He looked back at the crowd and tried to spot his pursuers. He knew they would be following him, or even waiting for him on the other end.

  He had to disappear, and quickly.

  A small shop full of exotic fabrics appeared on his right and he hunched down behind a row of wares to dash through the entrance. He ran straight for the back, bursting through beaded curtains into the presence of a surprised man and woman hunched over their evening meal.

  The man came to his feet, his eyes wide, his chopsticks held out like a weapon.

  “Quick!” Robert said, gasping for breath. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need a back way out of here.”

  “What?”

  “A back door. Do you have a back door?”

  “Why?” the old man asked with suspicion, chopsticks at the ready.

&
nbsp; “Because I’m being chased. Not by the police or the army. But by someone who’s trying to kill me, okay?”

  “She come now?”

  “What?”

  “Chase you?”

  “Yes!” Robert said, confused.

  The old man brightened and nodded. “I understand. Come this way!”

  He pushed through another beaded curtain to a small door, which he opened, stood aside to let Robert pass, then caught his arm, speaking urgently in his ear, his breath reeking with garlic. “Two blocks that way, go into shopping mall, down one level. Buy ticket for movie, go inside, then slip out back exit near screen. You come up on street two blocks away. Big secret. Never fails.”

  Robert paused and looked at the man quizzically. “This … happens a lot?”

  The man shook his head. “No, no, no. But when my wife chase me, that how I get away!” He grinned, showing a mouth of imperfect teeth. “She like to chase me down the street, yelling and carrying on. Family tradition. All our friends laugh.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No, no, no. Just a game, but when that woman get angry, she scary.”

  “Women,” Robert said with a smile.

  The old man nodded with the same wide, toothy grin. “Women.”

  The movie theater was fairly new, and Robert tried to blend into the crowd as he pushed through the turnstiles, then moved quickly through the exit the old man had described. There was a long underground hallway leading to steps and, as promised, an exit to the street above.

  Robert opened the door to find a taxi sitting at the curb in front of him. He yanked open the taxi’s rear door and dove in, giving the address of Katherine Bronsky’s hotel as he hunched down out of sight.

  “Only the hotel?” the driver asked, calculating whether this strange intruder was worth the small fare.

  “No. Then to dinner, then to the airport. Big fare, big tip, no more questions.”

  The driver nodded and gunned the car down the street.

  Buy Blackout Now!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Being a professional author is seldom a solitary pursuit. An impressive retinue of marvelous people are required to support the work of the author from conception to publication, and many kindnesses are needed along the road of research and review.

  It all begins with family, and the love and support of my wife, Bunny, who shoulders the thankless task of working on the ideas and the raw copy as it comes out of the computer.

  But my works would not be possible without my agents, Olga and George Wieser, to whom this book is dedicated.

  My thanks as well to my editor at Doubleday, Shawn Coyne, whose strategic suggestions and outstanding ideas added immeasurably to the force and excitement of this work. My thanks also to my publisher, Arlene Friedman, Chief Editor Pat Mulcahy, and Matthew Shear, my paperback publisher at St. Martin’s. My appreciation also to Helen Verno and Winifred White-Neisser of Columbia TriStar Television, and to producer Bernie Sofronski—my partners in bringing this work to the screen.

  Before anyone in New York or Hollywood sees a page, my business partner and primary editor, Patricia Davenport, has spent untold hours working on the manuscript, and the end result would be impossible without her.

  Thanks as well to retired FBI veteran Larry Montague, who helped make sure the Bureau is presented correctly in these pages, and to my friend and neighbor, Federal District Judge Frank Burgess, who helped this lawyer vet the legal side of the equation.

  University Place, Washington

  October, 1997

  About the Author

  John J. Nance is the author of thirteen novels whose suspenseful storylines and authentic aviation details have led Publishers Weekly to call him the “king of the modern-day aviation thriller.” Two of his novels, Pandora’s Clock and Medusa’s Child, were made into television miniseries. He is well known to television viewers as the aviation analyst for ABC News. As a decorated air force pilot who served in Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm and a veteran commercial airline pilot, he has logged over fourteen thousand hours of flight time and piloted a wide variety of jet, turboprop, and private aircraft. Nance is also a licensed attorney and the author of seven nonfiction books, including On Shaky Ground: America’s Earthquake Alert and Why Hospitals Should Fly, which, in 2009, won the American College of Healthcare Executives James A. Hamilton Award for book of the year. Visit him online at www.johnnanceassociates.com

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1998 by John J. Nance

  Cover design by Andy Ross

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-2796-0

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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