Fifth Victim tcfs-9

by Zoe Sharp

  I turned back facing front, toed the Buell into first gear with the clutch in, ready to make a clean getaway as soon as red dropped to green.

  Come on, come on! What’s taking so long?

  And then all hell broke loose in the form of high-frequency white noise flooding the comms network. I let go of the clutch and the bike lurched and stalled under me, but that was the least of my worries. I was too busy scrabbling for my helmet strap, my only thought to get the pain out of my head.

  Even above the horrendous volume in my earpieces, though, I heard the rising howl of the Dodge’s engine, felt the rumble through the road surface. I opened my eyes and jerked my head round, just in time to see the car pick up speed and swerve straight for me.

  ‘Ambush, ambush!’ I yelled into my useless radio. Then all I could do was hope to survive.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  A moment before impact, I yanked my left leg upwards. The front end of the Dodge hit the side of the bike’s frame just about where my knee would have been, and kept on coming.

  The Buell was whipped viciously sideways by the force of the collision. Weighing less than one of the car’s axles, it never stood a chance. As I hiked my leg up over the tank, the bike started to disintegrate under me, scattering aluminium and plastic like shrapnel. And all the time, the dreadful screeching noise drilled into my brain.

  I never had a second’s suspicion that this was a simple traffic accident. I didn’t need to flick my eyes to the two occupants and see the ski masks covering their faces, but I did it anyway, just to be sure.

  Then I was hitting the ground hard enough to jolt the air out of my lungs, the bike partially on top of my right leg as we skated across the asphalt. The Dodge’s horns were locked into the tangled machine that had once been my pride and joy and it wasn’t letting go.

  Bastards, bastards, bastards!

  There was nothing I could do to stop being ploughed across the deserted intersection, so I kept my arms and head tucked in as much as I could to avoid injury and waited until they deemed I’d gone far enough. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot else I could do.

  Fortunately, the jacket and jeans and boots I was wearing had been designed with just this kind of road contact in mind. They kept skin and bone intact, so when we finally slid to a stop almost at the far kerb, the only damage was to my nerves and my temper.

  My right foot was still pinned by the bike, which itself was half underneath one of the vehicle’s front wheels. I kicked at it with my left leg, but I was totally trapped. Heart pounding, hands suddenly cold as fear squirted adrenaline into my system and primed my body to run, the only course left to me was to fight. I scrabbled for the SIG, but I was lying awkwardly, sprawled on my back, and the way the rucksack had been dragged underneath me as I’d been scraped along the asphalt meant I couldn’t quite get my fingers to the gun. I reached for the KA-BAR instead, ripping it free of the tape that held it in place to my boot.

  The car doors slammed and two figures converged from either side, looming over me. The driver raised his arms, hands clasped. I had a flash image of Torquil’s paralysed fall on the beach, and instinctively knew what was coming.

  Oh shit – not again …

  The last time I’d suffered direct contact with a Taser I had not enjoyed the experience. It was only as the driver’s hands tightened that I realised he had something altogether more permanent in mind.

  And then he shot me.

  Even with body armour, taking a round to the chest at close range hurts like a bitch. I dropped the knife and doubled around the point of impact, gasping. The second man stepped over the ruined tail of the bike, kicking the KA-BAR away as he did so, and slashed through the straps of the rucksack, dragging it off my shoulders roughly. They backed away.

  Ironically, removing the rucksack freed up my access to the SIG. Still panting, I snaked a hand behind me and freed the weapon, but the two men were already out of eyeline beyond the car’s bonnet, climbing back inside. I couldn’t even see the windscreen from down there, so I went for the softest available target, putting four rounds straight through the front grille.

  The engine was hot, the coolant system under pressure. The rounds punctured the radiator and sweet yellow-green antifreeze sprayed out like blood. As the Dodge reversed rapidly, bumping down off the mangled remains of the Buell, at least I had the satisfaction of knowing the wounds I’d just inflicted on the car in return were mortal.

  I tracked its retreat with the SIG, firing into the glass as soon as it became visible. The vehicle lurched into a messy J-turn and gained speed. I kept firing until the slide locked back on an empty mag, then snatched up the Glock from behind the broken front fairing, but stayed my hand.

  The Dodge was too far for legitimate damage, and even though the street had been deserted when the ambush began, the sound of gunfire had brought people to windows and doorways. The chance of hitting bystanders was too great.

  I let the muzzle of the Glock drop, dumped it into my lap and finally wrenched off my helmet and dragged the screaming earpieces out. The whining buzz continued, but at least my ears weren’t actually bleeding. Neither was my chest, although it felt like they’d hit me with a damn truck. I took a deep breath and satisfied myself that, whatever the undoubted bruises, the armour had absorbed the impact without cracking any bones in the process.

  The bike didn’t want to release me. My boot was staked by some part of the frame underneath, and from that angle I couldn’t lift it off me single-handed. I stretched across to turn off the ignition and patted the tank, regretful. Like a faithful warhorse who’d seen its last battle, it lay tangled on top and around me, bleeding fuel and lubricant in a slimy trail into the gutter as it died. Now I thought about it, I was bloody lucky I hadn’t ignited any of it.

  I was still lying like that ninety seconds later, when the first of Gleason’s chase teams reached me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Long before the cops arrived, Gleason’s men scooped me – and what was left of the Buell – off the road, but that didn’t mean they had my best interests at heart. In fact, once I was back in the situation room at Eisenberg’s place, the whole thing turned into more of another hostile interrogation. I supposed, with something worth a minimum of five million in play, they had every right, but I was glad of Parker’s presence more than ever.

  As if in response to my quip about his lack of faith, made that day at the Willners’ place, he stayed close while Eisenberg’s in-house medic checked me over and pronounced me remarkably fit, under the circumstances. When they peeled me out of the body armour, I collected the stopped round from the lining. It was a .380 with a light load behind it, if the relatively minor dent in the inner polycarbonate sheet was anything to go by. Anything heavier calibre, or higher grain, and I would have cracked a rib at the very least.

  Of course, to begin with this seemed to Gleason’s suspicious mind less like a lucky escape and more like complicity with the kidnappers on my part. I went over every second of what happened for her, again and again, from the moment the traffic lights at the intersection turned against me, to the Dodge’s slightly limping departure.

  It was hard to keep my temper while all this was going on. There was a large digital clock on the wall above the bank of monitors, and I watched the minutes flip over, one after another, while Gleason and I went round in combative circles.

  Meanwhile, Torquil’s period of captivity stretched past forty-eight hours and into its third day. Still they were refusing to call in the authorities, despite my and Parker’s urging. I don’t know if Gleason was truly protecting her employers’ privacy and interests, or if she was hoping she could present the FBI with a fait accompli – one which included me in the bag.

  And then the CCTV footage came in.

  I’ve no idea how Gleason managed to get hold of it ahead of the police, but could only guess it was a measure of how far Eisenberg’s influence stretched. Even Parker allowed himself to raise an impressed eyebro
w.

  The footage was not high quality, but considering the whole of Eisenberg’s supposedly secure comms system had been effectively jammed from the instant the white noise kicked in, it was the only proof I’d got that things had gone down the way I’d claimed.

  The camera had been mounted high, looking into the mouth of the intersection with both sets of traffic lights clearly visible, so anyone who jumped the lights could be shown irrefutable proof of their guilt. It couldn’t have been better placed to capture everything that happened.

  Gleason’s techs had already isolated the relevant segment. It began just as the lights flicked to amber and then red ahead of me, and the Buell came into view a few seconds later. I watched myself cruise to a halt in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and put my feet down. I was obviously tense, head ducking to check my mirrors as I heard the vehicle behind me. I saw me put the bike into gear, ready, just as the nose of the Dodge came into view at the extreme edge of the picture.

  ‘Stop it there, please,’ Parker said suddenly. He stood, moved closer to the screen and turned back. ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’

  Gleason shrugged. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘The lights,’ Parker said. ‘They’ve gone to red for Charlie, but they haven’t changed at the cross-street. See – still on red. Whoever did this had control of the lights.’

  Gleason’s eyes narrowed, but then she nodded slowly, reluctantly. She pressed the remote and I could spot the instant the jammer kicked in, even without the sudden spike to the video that must have coincided with it.

  On the screen, my body jerked and went rigid. I let go of the bars and barely kept the bike upright as it stalled, wrestling unsuccessfully with my helmet as if it had suddenly melted red-hot to my head. The Dodge’s bonnet soared as the driver floored the throttle to ramming speed, and ran it full tilt into the side of me.

  From up there, it looked impossible that I’d got my leg out of the way in time. The bike was hurled sideways, skittering halfway across the intersection with me first tumbling off backwards and then underneath it. I heard a quiet intake of breath from Parker as the Dodge seemed to be doing its best to climb on top of both of us.

  The way the car drove me down was nasty for being so obviously deliberate. They must have kept going until I’d disappeared from view under the front end. The only thing that stopped them then was probably the fear they might not be able to separate me from the jewels.

  On screen, I was struggling for the SIG, then reached for the KA-BAR knife as the men leapt out. And I saw the totally calm way the driver shot me as the passenger scuttled round to retrieve the rucksack.

  Parker waved again and Gleason stopped the tape without needing to be asked. ‘This was a very well-timed operation,’ Parker said, face taut. ‘They must have had the jammer with them in the car to have reacted so fast. They were moving almost before the interference began.’ He picked up the remote himself, ran the footage back a little to watch my shooting again, his gaze hard and coolly objective.

  ‘The driver is the one in charge. He showed no doubts, no hesitation. He can’t have known Charlie was wearing a vest, and yet he went for a body-mass shot without hesitation.’ His eyes slid to me. ‘I think, if you’d managed to get your helmet off before they hit you, he probably would have gone for a head shot instead. He didn’t want to miss.’

  ‘But the passenger flinches when the gun fires,’ Gleason said, not to be outdone. ‘And everything about his body language says he’s afraid of the guy with the gun. Like, if he gets out of line, he’ll get a bullet, too.’

  Parker nodded and pressed the remote again.

  I was mildly gratified to see that I had my own weapon out before the men had managed to get back into the Dodge, that I was pouring shots into the front end of the car as it reversed off the wreckage of the Buell, the action of the SIG cycling rapidly, gases spurting the dead brass out alongside me. I saw the spreading dark pool from the Buell’s ruptured fuel system, and realised again how lucky I’d been not to catch fire.

  The car swerved round to roar away into one of the cross-streets. The passenger side was closest and, cynically, I wondered if the cold and calculating driver had deliberately put himself furthest away from the gunfire.

  ‘You got him, Charlie,’ Parker said with grim satisfaction as the car disappeared. ‘If we run it back a few seconds you’ll see that jerk – there. Just as the side glass disintegrates. I think that was a hit.’

  ‘Can we zoom in on the car a second?’ Gleason said over her shoulder to one of the techs.

  The picture froze, rewound again, and jumped to close-up, focusing on the passenger side window as the glass blew in from the first shot. In slow motion, I saw the passenger flinch back twice. Once from the shock of the flying glass, lifting his arms to protect his masked head, and the second time with the distinct involuntary snap as a round caught him.

  I had another rapid full-colour flashback. The way Sean had jerked as the bullet struck the side of his head. That same dancing twitch.

  ‘Oh yeah, she got him,’ Gleason murmured with a satisfaction that sickened me. She paused, eyes flicking me up and down. ‘Good job.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ I said tiredly, getting to my feet and discovering I ached from my ears downwards. ‘If we’d got the kid back, kept hold of the Eisenberg Rainbow, and caught the bastards, that would have been a good job. This was just a bloody disaster.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  By the time I climbed stiffly into the front passenger seat of one of the agency Navigators alongside Parker, I was feeling thoroughly beaten up.

  It was five-thirty in the evening. Torquil had been missing fifty-six hours and counting.

  When we left the house, there had still been no word from the kidnappers with the boy’s location. Nicola Eisenberg had thrown a fit of hysterics and had to be sedated. Her husband didn’t look in much better shape.

  The GPS tracker had led the chase teams to the still-burning wreck of the Dodge, two miles from the scene of the ambush. It was highly unlikely that the men responsible had gone to all that trouble to grab the necklace, only to set it alight shortly afterwards. We had to assume they’d found the tracker and abandoned it with the car.

  ‘They’re not going to release him, are they?’ I said as Parker steered us out onto the main road.

  He glanced over at me quickly, as if to judge how badly I was likely to take it.

  ‘No,’ he said, voice flat. ‘I don’t think so.’

  I absorbed that one in bitter silence for a moment, then asked, ‘Who knew about the ransom arrangements?’

  Parker shrugged. ‘Gleason, her staff, the Eisenbergs, possibly their household staff, too. Hell, apparently Mrs Eisenberg kept her appointment with the pro at the tennis club yesterday afternoon, just so’s no one suspected there was anything out of the ordinary going on. For all we know, she could have let it slip to half the membership.’ He put out a gush of breath, frustrated to be involved in such a peripheral role, with no influence over major decisions. ‘Just about everyone at the meeting yesterday knew you’d agreed to be the courier. Doesn’t take much to work out you’d be leaving the house with a priceless object.’

  ‘They went to a lot of trouble – so why didn’t they disable the traffic cameras?’

  ‘Pride, would be my guess,’ Parker said. ‘They thought they could get away with it, quick and slick, and they didn’t care who knew about it after the fact. They both had masks on, the car was stolen and on fake plates. I reckon they planned on torching it when they were done anyhow, even before you shot out the coolant system.’

  ‘For all the good it did,’ I murmured with a sigh. ‘I think you’re right, but I get the feeling it goes deeper than that. It’s not quite that they didn’t care who saw it. I think they actually wanted Eisenberg to watch them walking away with his money, easy as pie. There was something … I don’t know … almost gloating about the whole thing.’

  His eyes slid away
from the road ahead for a moment. ‘Didn’t count on you running interference, though, did they?’

  I gave a hollow laugh. ‘I rather think that you calling my going down under their front wheels “interference” is on a level with trying to bruise someone’s knuckles in a fight by repeatedly thumping them with soft parts of your body,’ I said dryly.

  ‘These people were pros.’ Parker shook his head. ‘Which doesn’t square with the guys who tried for Dina at the riding club. You said yourself they were amateurs. Not the kinda guys who would know how to manipulate the lights at an intersection, or jam Gleason’s comms network.’

  ‘So, maybe they’ve called in reinforcements. The guy with the gun definitely wasn’t one of the two at the riding club.’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘And if they’re such pros, why haven’t they released the boy?’ I demanded wearily. ‘I can’t help believing they never really intended to let him go, just like they never intended to run me ragged all over Long Island this morning. I think they were always planning to hit me hard and fast, the first opportunity they got, and it worked like a charm.’

  ‘Don’t second-guess it,’ Parker cut across me, savage in his softness. ‘If you’d put up more of a fight, you’d have more holes in you now, and some of them might even have gone right through.’

  ‘I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I’d avoided the ambush, and the chase teams had closed on my last-known position, and I’d made it to Montauk Point inside the time. I mean, had they even bothered to lay in another rendezvous point from there, or was it all a con from the start? What was so special about the place, by the way?’

  Parker opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again, frowning. Before I could go on, he’d thrown the Navigator into an abrupt U-turn. I held onto the door pull and waited until the unwieldy vehicle had wallowed back onto an even course before I risked a question.