by Tom Clancy
A sound like a dull clap came from below, followed almost instantly by a louder, closer thump from a piece of wood not twelve inches from his elbow.
Incoming fire!
Noboru jerked backward, tripped, and landed on his rump, heaving a cloud of dust.
Fisher had returned—or maybe he was trying to make them believe he had… .
“I’m taking fire over here,” he reported into his SVT.
Three more shots ripped into the wood, blasting up splinters and streaking on toward the ceiling, where they ricocheted across the concrete. From the corner of his eye, Noboru saw sparks dance off the stone and steel.
Then … silence. He edged back toward the hole, balancing his rifle and light. If Fisher wanted to play with live fire, he’d come to the right place.
Noboru swallowed. He imagined the old spy sitting down there, one with the shadows, watching as Noboru shifted his head just far enough into the hole—and then, bang! The bullet would tear through Noboru’s forehead, and his last thought would be that he’d been shot for being stupid.
He set his teeth, took a breath, then winced and stole a peek below.
But down there, the waters of the canal had grown deathly still.
“STAY with him! Stay with him!” Hansen ordered as Ames slowly opened his eyes, coughed, tried to swallow, and made a face registering pain.
Hansen just shook his head. “He’s got your pistol and your OPSAT—and he disabled the OPSAT’s GPS so we can’t track it. What the hell happened?”
Ames’s voice was low and blurred. “What’re you talking about?”
“What do mean, ‘What am I talking about’? You’re lying here on the floor. It was Fisher… .”
“It wasn’t him.”
“You know what we used to say at MIT? He took you out of the equation like a math professor with one swipe of the eraser. Whoosh. Just like that.”
Ames sat up and rubbed his throat. “It wasn’t him. I’m positive.”
“How do you know?”
“Because this guy was much bigger. I mean, he was huge. Arms like my thighs. He would’ve dropped you like a bad transmission.”
“Don’t lie to save face.”
Ames took a deep breath. “I’m not.”
Hansen looked at him.
“All right. The son of a bitch got me … and I never heard or saw a thing.”
“Fisher. Well, if you’re ready, get up. Let’s move. Kim, Maya, where are you guys? You got him?”
KIMBERLY Gillespie slammed her shoulder hard against a rusting fire-escape door in an attempt to get outside. A small courtyard lay below, and Valentina had just told her that Fisher might be headed there.
The door finally gave way. The wings of the main building jogged off to her left and right, lined by dozens of windows. A long hedgerow stood below and rose maybe twelve feet as it wrapped around the corner. Fisher had 101 places to hide, and she had only one pair of eyes.
Somewhere outside, far off, a crowd roared, and she glimpsed the soccer stadium’s lights reflected in the clouds. If he saw those lights, he might get the idea to lose himself in the crowd. Yes, that could work, because he’d be surrounded by innocent civilians, making him much harder to apprehend without causing a panic or a riot.
If she were him, she’d head there.
She raced down the stairs, reached the courtyard, but something, she wasn’t sure what, made her turn back toward an archway for a second look.
And there he was, crouched near the wall! He was still wearing the red shirt? He’d changed, hadn’t he?
Two sets of identical clothes? Well, isn’t that clever.
“In the arch! Three o’clock low!” she reported.
As she bolted toward him, Fisher charged back through the arch and sprinted out of sight, back into one of the building’s side wings.
Gillespie entered through the same side door and took another stairwell down to a subbasement, finding herself directly below the section where Valentina and Noboru had first entered.
She’d been right behind him … but he was already gone? How? That was impossible.
She stopped. Behind her, through a busted-out window, she spied two people running across the courtyard, probably Valentina and Noboru. They entered the building above her.
The basement was much larger than she expected, perhaps larger than a football stadium. Catwalks were suspended over the main canal and a half dozen stone staircases led back up to the first floor.
A chill fanned across her shoulders.
He was close.
Suddenly, three rounds from somewhere just above punched into the water, sending her diving for the ash-covered floor.
“Kim, you all right?” asked Valentina. “Where are you now?”
“I saw the shots,” she whispered. “He’s above me. Very close! He’s shooting to kill!”
“Try to take him alive,” Hansen interrupted through her subdermal.
Gillespie pushed back up to her feet and sprinted toward the nearest stairwell. At the top she found herself in a maintenance tunnel barely wide enough for a person and spanned by conduits, pipes, and more wall-mounted ladders.
Her light picked out footprints in the dust. She stopped, examined them. They looked fresh. She followed the prints to the first ladder, whose rungs were rusty and revealed clear signs of his ascent.
She climbed another ten feet, becoming enclosed in a narrow shaft, and then another twenty feet took her toward a door with a rusted knob. She assumed she’d reached the first floor. The knob looked dusty. She kept on, finding another door on the second floor—again no signs of exit—and then yet another door on the third floor: it, too, untouched. But the ladder betrayed his passage, and there was no clever way to conceal that.
“Kim, where are you?” asked Hansen.
“I’m in some kind of shaft. Check me on the map. I think he came up here.”
“Hey, it’s Maya here. Kim, I think I know where you are. Nathan and I just checked that out, but we didn’t climb up.”
“Well, I think he came this way.”
The ladder terminated at a small hatch. She opened it, set the prop-arm into place, then climbed out, finding herself on an expanse of patchy gravel and peeling tar paper that extended across the wing’s E-shaped roof. In some areas the roof had collapsed: Exposed ceiling planks and the remains of the skylights created dangerous voids promising injury or death below. Several brick chimneys stood in various stages of decay, a few resembling teeth in silhouette.
Out to the west, three towerlike structures made her feel as though she were atop a medieval castle, and off to the north and west the courtyard was enclosed by the two wings of the E-shaped building. She was up pretty high; correction, make that damned high, probably close to a hundred feet, and while she had no serious fear of heights, standing atop a dilapidated structure, with just the pale beam of her flashlight to help her find a safe path, wasn’t exactly comforting.
She thought she heard a shuffling sound to the north, then directed her light to the exposed beams and thought, perhaps, she saw footprints. She followed them slowly, gingerly, toward the north wing.
With her gaze focused on the roof, she failed to see the tree as she came around the side one of the chimneys. Before her was a colossal oak whose heavy boughs and thick branches overhung the roof like the claw of some beast ready to devour the stonework and steel.
She took a few more steps, lifted her flashlight… .
And there he was, standing at the ledge, facing away, about to climb into the tree.
Surprised by his sudden appearance, she could barely speak, and when she did, her voice sounded unrecognizable, even to her. “Don’t move a muscle.”
She wanted to say, “Sam, please, don’t do this. Come with me now. It’s all over. This is for the best… .”
But only that order came out, cued by instinct, reaction, her time spent in the military listening to hundreds of people issue thousands and thousands of orders. Comman
ds. Do this. Don’t do that.
Don’t move a muscle.
And the expectation was compliance.
But if your name was Sam Fisher and you were on the run, orders meant little, even if they were issued by a former lover, by someone who still cared very, very much… .
And so Fisher did not turn back. He did not obey her.
He simply jumped.
Chapter 25.
HANSEN was at the exact opposite end of the foundry from where Fisher was escaping, and it might as well have been on the opposite end of the universe. Hansen’s competitive nature and jealousy had boiled up to the surface; he wanted to be the operative who captured Fisher. Maybe that sounded immature—something Ames would no doubt admit and not apologize for—but the desire was there and Hansen needed to wrestle with it while maintaining control of his team and always putting the mission first. But it was damned hard.
He and Ames were in a full sprint, racing along the wall toward the next corner as the others issued their breathless reports.
“He jumped through the trees! He just jumped right through,” said Gillespie. “I think he caught himself. Wait! He’s on the ground now! I need to find a way down.”
“We’re coming to you,” said Noboru. “Almost there.”
“Don’t lose him,” said Valentina. “Do you hear me, Kim? Don’t move—just maintain surveillance.”
“But now he’s already gone,” she cried.
“Moreau, you got him?” Hansen asked.
“I had him coming out of the tree,” said the operations manager. “Zooming in again. Aw, I’ve lost him now.”
“The side street! The side street!” cried Gillespie. “I think he’s heading for the stadium.”
“Ames, go!” Hansen hollered, then waved him on.
“Boys and girls, listen to me,” began Moreau. “I think he’s definitely crossed the side street, but I’ve got multiple pedestrians down there. I’ll see what I can do, but you need to close with this target!”
As Moreau continued his satellite-fed commentary, Hansen slowed to a stop. It was time to act like a team leader and not a glory-seeking operator. It was time to hold back and let his people do their jobs while he kept them organized and on task. He lifted his wrist to view his OPSAT and thumbed to the map. On the other side of the street lay a maze of alleys and intersecting roads, and Hansen estimated that a three-minute run would get Fisher to the stadium—if they didn’t cut him off first. “Moreau, I need you to pick him up.”
“I’m on it, cowboy. What the hell do you think I’m doing over here, sipping Coke and eating French fries?”
BACK at his hotel room in Reims, Moreau was, in fact, patched into the Trinity System while consuming a Coke and fries. He’d already finished off two cheeseburgers that tasted no more royale than their American counterparts… .
More important, he had a perfect fix on Mr. Sam Fisher, not that he’d disclose that to the team. Fisher needed to put a little more distance between himself and Delta Sly before Moreau would tip off those youngsters.
He munched on another fry. Mmm. Salty. Good.
“Moreau, you got anything?”
“Still working on it.”
“Are you eating?”
Moreau smacked his lips. “Wait a minute. Hang on. I think I might have him!”
GILLESPIE should have raced down from the roof after she’d lost Fisher, but for a long moment she was a statue against the weather, against time, against all the BS that separated her from him. Of course he hadn’t recognized her voice. Of course he’d never turn back. Of course he was gone before she could say something meaningful to him.
There was only the hollow pang in her gut upon which to reflect, only the memories, like a pair of jeans with so many holes in them that you should throw them away, but you just can’t, you couldn’t, you wouldn’t—even if you tucked them in the drawer and never wore them again. Knowing they were still there meant something.
What was left between them? Was there anything at all? Anything?
Seeing him again brought too much back. Far too much.
Would she have taken the shot? He hadn’t allowed her the decision. He’d been too quick, and she should thank him for that. Somehow.
Hansen would grill her, want to know if she’d had the opportunity and failed. She would tell the truth and hope they believed her.
After a deep breath, she fled the roof, picking her way down the stairs, the ladders, the tunnel, until she emerged outside to find that she was the last one left at the foundry. Hansen ordered her to get in the remaining SUV. Noboru had already taken off in the other.
VALENTINA had crossed rue Barbourg well ahead of everyone else and had the lead. She’d be the one to nab Fisher now, and as she ran, she thought how excellent that would be and how much that would prove to not only Grim, Moreau, and the others, but to herself. She was not a Barbie with an SC-20K. She was an operator, through and through.
The cheering of fans grew louder, and she spotted the banks of lights outlining the main entrance to the stadium and began racing through the parking lot, her gaze reaching out toward anything red, any shade of red, from pink to deep crimson, but most of the Jeunesse Esch fans leaving early were wearing the home team’s black shirt with black and yellow logo.
All right, if Fisher had gone inside the stadium, he would’ve had to buy a ticket. She could not ask every attendant if he or she had seen a man in a red shirt. There were seven ticket booths and certainly other folks dressed in red. She quickly handed over her credit card to the young man behind the nearest booth, and he told her that the game was almost over. She told him she didn’t care and double-timed it inside, resisting the temptation to run so as not to draw too much attention to herself.
“All right, I’m in the stadium,” she reported.
Now, what would Fisher do?
What would she do?
She glanced up and down the large hallway below the bleachers. Souvenir shops and food vendors lined the left side. And there it was: the men’s room.
“What would I do?” she muttered aloud. “I’d change.”
She charged toward the men’s room and brushed by a pair of young men in their twenties, who did a double take as she pushed through the door and hurried inside.
The place reeked. Men were pigs with bad aim. Three such swine stood at the urinals, and one, a portly middle-aged man with white sideburns, turned his head and suddenly frowned at her as his neighbor, an equally old man, turned and said, “Hey, sweetheart, are you looking for me?”
She ignored the perv and went straight for the white steel trash bin near the bank of sinks. She knocked it down to the tile floor. The lid crashed off and out came Fisher’s clothes, along with piles of crumpled-up towels.
She cursed and reported her findings. She snatched up the clothes and ran out of the room, leaving the old gawkers behind.
Valentina then ventured up to the stadium proper and stood there at the foot of the bleachers, her face panning the sea of faces, some five thousand in all. He’d changed and probably bought himself a hat. Hundreds of identical caps seemed to bob as though floating on waves across the stands.
“Maya, report,” ordered Hansen.
“I don’t think he planned any of this.” She gasped. “I just think he’s one lucky guy.”
Her shoulders slumped. They would never find him now.
But part of her said don’t give up, and she kept probing the faces, probing … and then came a thought that she voiced to the others: “He might try to leave on the east side.”
HANSEN sent Noboru back to the train station in Esch-sur-Alzette. He ordered Gillespie to take her SUV up rue Jean-Pierre Bausch, north of the stadium, and remain there. He, Ames, and Valentina eventually met up on the east side of the stadium, and Hansen realized that a densely wooded area lay before them.
Fisher could have easily left the stadium via the east exit and vanished into that perfect cover. Beyond the forest to the northeast lay the
town of Schifflange with its mushroomlike water tower. Fisher could reach Highway 31 and simply hitchhike or walk farther east to the towns of Rumelange, Kayl, and Tetange. At any rate, he was pushing farther into Luxembourg, a country slightly smaller than Rhode Island and bordering France, Germany, and Belgium. Was he just running through here? Or did he have a clear purpose in mind?
After five minutes of surveying the tree line with their binoculars, Hansen ordered Gillespie to come back down and pick them up. They would head out to Highway 4.
“I’ve got all our resources online,” said Moreau. “He tries to rent car, we got him. He buys a train ticket, we got him.”
“If he’s not using cash,” said Hansen. “Don’t humor me, Moreau. We’ve already lost him. We’re just going through the motions now.”
Abruptly, Noboru’s breathless voice cut over the channel: “It’s Nathan. I’m at the train station. I think I have him.”
NOBORU was running along the platform, weaving through the few other people and chasing after the man in the red shirt and white ball cap.
After first spotting the man, Noboru widened his eyes. They made eye contact from afar, the man’s face half in shadow—but his shirt said enough. Noboru had started for him, and he charged off.
“What’s he wearing?” Valentina demanded.
“Back to the red shirt. White cap.”
“No, he’s changed,” she cried. “And if he hasn’t, the team caps are black.”
“Or maybe he wants us to think he’s changed but hasn’t.”
“No, he has,” she insisted. “You got the wrong guy.”
“Then why’s this guy running?”
Noboru launched himself into the air and came down from the platform with a heavy thump on the soft earth, as the guy started across the train tracks toward a long row of maintenance buildings on the other side.
