by Matthew Dunn
Then the white gradually drifted away and left other things in its place. Will’s eyes thought they saw sky, flecks of snow and land. His face was cold. He started hearing things. He started seeing things. He started thinking.
He knew he was lying on snow. He knew that the ringing in his ears was from the explosion. He knew he could not move his legs and arms. He used all his strength to turn his head to look at Lana. Her own head was still slumped, but he could tell that she was breathing heavily. He felt overwhelming relief. They both should have been dead. And then he realized what had happened. The explosives had been stun grenades. Megiddo had wanted to keep him alive.
He turned away from Lana. The movement was excruciating, and he could still do nothing more than just lie on the ground.
Then Will saw him. Even though his vision kept blurring and fragmenting, he saw him.
The man seemed distant at first. He walked quite slowly. Snow fell around him, but it did not seem to touch him. He carried a gun. He was looking at Will. He was coming toward him.
The man was tall. His gun was a rifle, and it was held in one hand with its barrel resting on his shoulder. The man looked calm. He came right up to Will. He looked at him. He said, “You deserve a better death than one by explosives or being shot like a dog on the ground. And I have now decided that there are things you need to know before I give you that more honorable death. But now is not the time.”
Then he slammed the butt of his rifle onto Will’s skull.
Forty-Six
“Come on, come on.” The man’s voice was hard, and his hand felt icy as it moved roughly over Will’s face. “I know you can hear me, so start thinking and start moving.”
The large hand moved roughly over Will’s face and felt even colder.
For a moment Will thought he could not move or do anything. His head throbbed. His face tingled in pain from the man’s hand. He felt anger at the man and decided that whoever the man was, Will was going to make him stop. He sucked in air, and the action caused an icy slush to enter his mouth. He shook his head to try to break away from the man’s hand. The man kept smothering his face. Will felt overwhelming anger. With all his strength, he grabbed the man’s wrist and yanked it away.
Laith was above him. He looked serious and concerned. His face was bloody, and he had half an ear missing. He nodded and said, “About time.”
Will sat upright and felt his face. It was covered with snow. He brushed the snow away and looked around. He was still on the mountain summit, wind and snow swirling around him. He looked at Laith and knew that the ex-Delta operative had been rubbing snow into his face to try to bring him around. “How long have I been unconscious?”
Laith checked his watch. “The last time you and I spoke was over sixty minutes ago. I’d say you’ve been out for twenty to thirty minutes.”
Will cursed. He placed fingers against the area on his head where the rifle butt had struck. He winced in pain but could feel only bruising. He held out his hand, and Laith grabbed it to pull him to his feet. He wobbled, steadied himself, and stared out over the southern valley below him. He muttered, “Why the hell didn’t he kill me?” He looked at Laith. “Where’s Roger?”
“I strapped up his leg and took him back to our vehicles. He’s going to limp, but he’ll live.”
Will checked his pockets. His handgun, knife, and tactical communications system were gone, but he was relieved to find that his hidden cell phone was still in place. He pulled out the phone and called Roger. “Can you drive?”
Roger told him that he could.
Will nodded and turned around to face the lakes, the lodge, and Roger’s location. “All right. Megiddo’s still got Lana, and they must be heading back north toward you, since there’s nothing but endless wilderness to the south. All the time they’re on foot, Lana will slow him down, so he’ll be desperate to find a vehicle or other means of transport to get out of here quickly.” He thought for a moment. “After we attacked the lodge, Megiddo’s reinforcements came through the woods from the north. Tell me about the road network around the lakes.”
Roger told him that there was only one road that ran along the eastern side of the lake, the road they came in on, the road that Megiddo’s men would have had to use to approach and leave the lodge.
Will nodded. “Okay, Megiddo’s vehicles must be somewhere close to that road, northwest of your position and beyond the lodge.” He checked his watch. “He’s got a head start on us of probably thirty minutes, but I doubt he’s reached the vehicles yet. Drive in that direction now, and we’ll head to you on foot.”
Will scoured the ground around him. He saw his Colt M4A1 assault rifle, walked to it, picked it up, briefly examined the gun, swore, and tossed it away. The bolt had been removed. He looked at Laith. “What weapons do you have?”
“Only one handgun. I had to leave the fifty-caliber behind to reach Roger and you quickly.”
“Goddamn it.” Will looked in the direction of the lodge, then at Laith. “We need to move very fast.”
“You sure you can do this?”
Will’s head throbbed with increased pain. “I have to.”
The two men sprinted down the mountainside. They kept a gap of thirty meters between them to minimize the chances of them both being shot, but even so, Will knew that they were running too fast and too blindly to spot Megiddo before he could easily shoot one of them. Will desperately hoped that Megiddo’s only priority now was escape.
They ran past the bodies of men they’d shot. They ran until they reached the base of the mountain and the slope leveled. They ran faster and changed direction slightly so that they were heading toward the road. They ran over ground covered with snow and trees, ground that had earlier been pretty and innocent but would soon be remembered by others as the location where a bloody battle had taken place.
Laith stopped suddenly and crouched. Will did the same, sucking in air after the excruciatingly fast run. Laith looked around him, looked at Will, and pointed ahead. He was silently telling Will that they were now very close to the road.
Will nodded, calmed his breathing, pulled out his phone, and called Roger. He cupped his other hand over his mouth and the phone to reduce sound and spoke as quietly as he could. “We’re very close. What can you see?”
“Nothing. Not even any signs of recent tire tracks.”
Will briefly closed his eyes in frustration. “Could he have gotten past you in a vehicle without your seeing him?”
“Impossible. But it’s possible he got to a vehicle and headed southwest away from me on the road.”
“What do you think?”
“I can’t be sure. But I’ve been driving up and down this road, and I can be sure I’ve seen no evidence of recent vehicle movement.”
“Shit. All right, well, I can’t be sure either, but I think we’ve got to assume he’s still on foot and heading north to the village of Saranac Lake.”
“I agree. I’ll meet you on the road.”
Will ran low to Laith, patted him on the shoulder, and moved forward with Laith close beside him. Trees began to thin, and Will spotted glimpses of the road. Laith turned, held up a hand to tell Will to halt before moving forward in a crouch position while twitching his handgun left and right. As Laith came to within a few meters of the edge of the road, he stopped altogether, lay down on his front, gathered snow up around him, and waited.
From his spot forty meters behind Laith, Will also waited. He looked around and felt totally exposed. He imagined Megiddo emerging from somewhere in the dense forest behind him, walking up to him unseen, and cutting his throat with the knife he’d removed from Will. He heard a distant noise and glanced quickly toward the road and Laith’s hidden position close to it. The noise grew louder, and Will knew it belonged to a vehicle. He watched Laith, but the man remained motionless.
Will scoured the area between the gaps in the trees in front of him. He saw nothing at first but then spotted movement to his far right. The movement was l
arge and dark, and it flashed between the trees. It was the vehicle. Most likely it was Roger, but it could also belong either to Megiddo or to heavily armed police. He looked back at Laith and knew that he would be thinking the same.
The vehicle moved slowly from right to left. Will ignored it, looked at Laith, and saw that he was continuing to stay very still. But as the vehicle got closer, Laith gradually started to raise himself out of his self-made shallow snow hole. The vehicle was almost right in front of him. Laith immediately stood, held his gun high, and took five steps forward. The vehicle stopped dead. Laith held his gun trained at its driver.
Will sighed with relief as he saw that the driver was Roger.
Will glanced quickly around again before sprinting to Laith. They entered the vehicle, both sitting in the rear passenger seats.
“How far is it to the village?” Will asked Roger.
Roger turned to look at him. The man’s face was etched with pain. “Six kilometers. Keep your eyes peeled on the way, because if Megiddo and his captive aren’t there yet, they could be on foot, paralleling this road.”
Roger punched the accelerator, and the car immediately reversed. He spun the car around so that it was facing the direction of Saranac Lake and drove forward at a medium speed. Laith fully lowered his passenger window and said nothing as he held his gun in two hands and examined the passing roadside. Will looked at the vehicle’s trunk and was relieved to see the bags containing some of the unused weapons that Ben and Julian had brought for the assault. He reached to them and took a silenced Heckler amp; Koch MK23 pistol and three spare magazines. He rolled down his own window so that he could cover their right flank.
Snow fell fast, and Will could hear that Roger had put windshield wipers on full power to help him see through the blizzard. But Will didn’t dare look away from the tree line by his side. He slitted his lids to try to focus; he moved his eyes to try to prevent becoming disorientated by the rapid white dots of ice and snow; he scoured the gaps between the trees and the darkness of the forest beyond. He called to Roger without looking away from his task, “How much time do we have before sunset?”
Roger answered loudly over the sound of the engine, the wipers, and the wind, “With this weather probably no more than twenty or thirty minutes.”
Will cursed and muttered to no one in particular, “We don’t have enough time to try to find them here.”
“I agree.” This came from Laith.
Will looked straight at Roger. “Put your foot to the floor and get us to the village as fast as you can. I don’t think Megiddo and Lana are there yet, so we’ll overtake them now and wait for them to arrive.”
Their car lurched forward, fishtailing wildly on the icy road before Roger expertly manhandled the vehicle to get it speeding ahead. Will and Laith rolled up their windows and sat back in their seats. “Try to clean the blood off your face,” Will told Laith. “We’re heading to a place populated with civilians, and we don’t want to stand out. You look like shit.”
Laith smiled. “You should talk.”
Roger leaned forward, opened the car’s glove compartment, rummaged inside, and then tossed back a small parcel. Will caught the package and smiled as he saw it was a packet of baby wet wipes. He withdrew some of the disposable cleaners, gave the packet to Laith, and started cleaning his own face, neck, and hands. His smile faded as he began shivering. He looked down at himself and realized where the new coldness was coming from: his clothes had been saturated in the lake swim and later frozen solid in his pursuit to the mountaintop; they were now defrosting due to the heat inside the vehicle. He knew that Laith must be suffering in the same way. Roger had his own severe injuries to deal with. Will decided that the best he could do for now was to ignore the cold, the pain from his wounds, and the fatigue.
But he could not ignore the thoughts that hurtled around his earlier question to Patrick:
What could be worse than an attack on the premiers at Camp David?
Nor could he ignore another question he had for himself:
When will Megiddo decide that he’s safe enough to no longer need Lana as a hostage?
He thought about calling Patrick. He thought about telling him that his trust in Will had been misplaced. He thought about telling him that all hope of success was rapidly fading.
He thought about what Patrick would almost certainly say: “Megiddo’s men are all dead, so it’s a manhunt now. I’m going to blow this open and get local and federal police involved. Whatever happens, he’s going to kill Lana, so all that matters now is capturing him.”
Will looked at Laith and Roger. He wondered whether he should lie to them or withhold his thoughts. He remembered Roger’s words during their first encounter in the safe house in Zurich:
I know that none of us-my forefathers, their brothers, or me-has fought for our organization or our country. We’ve all fought for the man by our side.
He decided that he could never lie to the men who were sitting with him in this car. He had never worked with such professional operatives as the two CIA men here with him or the two heroic dead colleagues they were leaving behind.
He spoke. “Roger. Laith. I’m still convinced we need to do this our way and without others. I think that if other men are brought in, Lana will be killed. I think that if Megiddo feels that capture is inevitable, he may have emergency protocols in place to carry out his attack anyway. I think we still have to allow him to believe he has a chance to escape and conduct his assault.” He paused. “But I could be wrong. I could be very wrong, and I’m certain my handler in MI6 would think that and I’m certain your master in the CIA would draw that conclusion.” He looked at them both. “Patrick would not want us to go it alone at this stage, and if either or both of you agree with him, then I need to tell him what’s happening right now.”
Laith regarded him with a look of steel. “Fuck that.”
“Yeah, fuck that.” Roger gunned the car harder, and it sped faster toward the now-visible but still distant village of Saranac Lake.
Almost at that same instant, bullets rang out from ahead of them and tore through the vehicle’s engine, through the windshield, and through Roger.
The car swerved left, and Will lunged forward, wrapped one arm around Roger and his seat, and grabbed the steering wheel with the other.
Laith shouted, “Keep us on the road!” He punched an elbow through the glass in his window several times, gripped the headrest in front of him, and leaned out the window with his gun. “I’ll deal with the shooter!”
Will yanked the wheel left and right and left to try to compensate for the movement of the out-of-control vehicle, but they were going too fast and had no grip on the icy road. He shouted, “Too late! Brace for impact!”
The car spun 360 degrees, lifted into the air, rotated, crashed onto its side, and slid along the road before shuddering to a halt. Will breathed hard for a moment. He tentatively moved his arms and legs and knew he was uninjured. When he heard a banging noise, he looked over and saw Laith kicking at his passenger door. He heard the CIA man curse and felt him clamber over to haul himself through the window. Will was still holding Roger. He could hear the injured driver wheezing, but otherwise he was motionless and quiet.
Laith was now outside the vehicle, and Will could see that he was holding his handgun in front of him, looking for the man who had destroyed their car with an assault rifle, looking for the man who was definitely Megiddo. Will knew that Laith was an easy target for Megiddo if the man was still close to them. And he knew that if he himself stayed in the vehicle a moment longer, he could die.
He gently eased Roger’s head against the bare road that had smashed through the man’s side window and pulled himself through the sky-facing window that Laith had punched a hole through. He jumped down onto the asphalt and pulled out his gun. He looked up and down the road, at the roadsides, and into the forest, but he could see nothing. He glanced at the sky. Darkness was rapidly descending.
Laith had
moved ten paces ahead of the vehicle and was crouched down in the middle of the road, pointing his gun directly ahead and in the direction where the bullets had come from. He remained very still, and Will knew that he had positioned himself so that he presented a human barrier against any bullets intended for Will.
Will climbed back onto the vehicle and tried to open the front passenger door. It seemed jammed, but after four attempts he managed to yank the door open. He looked into the car and at Roger. The injured man’s eyes were screwed shut, telling Will that he was in severe pain but also, more important, that he was conscious. “Roger, can you speak?”
The man wheezed but said nothing.
“Roger, I want to get you out of there. But if I move you and you have a broken neck or back, I’m likely to kill you. Do you understand?”
Snow fell hard over Will, through the window, and onto Roger. At first there was no response. Then Will could see the man move his hands and his feet slightly. He could see that Roger was trying to determine if he had any broken bones.
Finally he spoke. “Bullet in my left arm.” His voice sounded weak and thready. “At least one bullet in my shoulder. . think I can be moved, though.”
Will wasted no time, lunging headfirst so that his upper body was facing downward in the vehicle, thrusting his hands under Roger’s armpits and hauling him up. Roger screamed, but Will kept pulling, focusing all his strength on slowly dragging up the large CIA man’s deadweight. Will’s biceps and back muscles tightened in agony, and as he moved Roger inch by inch, he wondered whether his body was strong enough to do this. His breathing increased rapidly. He squeezed his eyes shut. He focused on nothing else but lifting his colleague upward little by little. He spread his legs wide against the vehicle’s exterior to give himself extra leverage and stability. For a moment he had to stop pulling and just lay there panting with the strain of the effort. Then he sucked in a lungful of air, held his breath, banged his legs hard against the car, and heaved with every muscle he had. He pulled until his whole body was racked with pain. He pulled until he felt Roger’s head brush against his chin. He held still momentarily, knowing that he would have to adjust his grip and in doing so support the injured man’s entire weight with one hand. He exhaled and inhaled again, braced his right arm, released his left hand’s grip, and immediately felt his right biceps tighten to the point where he thought it would burst. He quickly thrust his left arm around Roger’s chest and breathed again. He yanked with both arms and guided the man through the window. Then he slowly moved onto his feet and used his leg muscles to aid him in pulling the man the rest of the way out of the car.
