Night Watch--A Novel

by Iris Johansen

  Lynch was swearing. “Nothing. You know nothing. If Jessie hadn’t been there, you’d know less than nothing.” His hand clinched on his phone. “Don’t tell me about hope. Give me results.”

  “We’re working on it. All we need is one lead, and we’ll pounce.”

  Lynch drew a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time to go on the attack. Griffin would just get stubborn and start avoiding his calls. He was having enough frustration trying to get through this damned flight without going ballistic. “I want to know when that lead comes in. Don’t make me call you.”

  “It’s not as if you could do anything right now anyway. But I’ll keep you informed.” He hung up.

  Griffin was right, Lynch thought in frustration. There wasn’t anything he could do flying at thirty-five thousand feet above the Atlantic. He needed to be on the ground working those leads himself. Not depending on Griffin’s agents or Jessie to come through for him.

  And it would still be hours and hours before he would be able to take control of the hunt.

  What could happen to Kendra during those hours?

  Anzo-Borrego Desert

  As the last tinges of sunlight disappeared in the west, Kendra turned to Waldridge. “Ready?”

  “Ready.” His eyes were still closed as they had been for many of the hours they’d spent hiding in this crevasse nestled in a long ridge. He had made no complaints, but Kendra suspected he must still be recovering from those days of torture.

  She smiled as she noticed that he’d torn off his shirttail to fashion a sweatband over his forehead. “Hey, what’s this? Rambo?”

  “I wouldn’t presume. Though I was pretty good back at that lab, hmm?”

  “You were awesome. Rambo, eat your heart out.”

  He opened his eyes and leaned forward. “Any idea where they are?”

  “No. I haven’t heard the cars in over an hour.” They had barely gotten the ATV hidden and found this crevasse when she’d heard the pursuit she’d expected. Two vehicles, but they hadn’t risked coming out of hiding to see who was in them. They’d just crouched here, trying to blend with the brush surrounding them. Then the vehicles had passed, and they’d heard them only in the distance for the last few hours. “They may be trying a different direction.”

  He nodded. “It was probably lucky that our ATV quit on us. It would have given them a dust plume to follow.” He slowly, painfully, stood up and surveyed the desert around them. “I’d hoped we might see a light from a house or building somewhere around here.”

  “I already looked. There’s nothing.”

  “Too bad.” He moved stiffly across the uneven earth.

  She frowned. “Look, if you want to stay here. I can set out on my own and—”

  “Absolutely not.” He smiled. “We’re in this together. And don’t worry about my being able to keep up. I told you I could do it, and I will. As soon as I get the kinks out, I’ll leave you in my dust.”

  “Okay, Rambo.”

  True to his word, Waldridge kept a brisk pace for the next few hours as they made their way across the rough desert terrain. The night sky, free of spill light from any large population center, shone brilliantly with the illumination of thousands of stars. After dark, the wind had died down, and the desert was still, almost silent.

  Almost.

  A sound, a roar in the distance!

  Not good.

  Kendra stopped short as she picked up on the sound. Her heart jumped into her throat. She’d hoped that they’d lost them. “Hear that?”

  Waldridge listened and turned to look at her. She couldn’t see his expression in the darkness, but his body language spelled out the same tension she was feeling. “Yes. Probably one of the cars that’s been looking for us?”

  “I’m pretty sure it is. It sounds like a Jeep. There was a Jeep back at the complex.” Her gaze searched the distance. “But I don’t see headlights yet.”

  Waldridge cocked his head. “You’re far better at this than I, but do they sound as if they’re getting closer?”

  She took a moment to get her bearings.

  She closed her eyes.

  Concentrate. Locate. See it.

  “I think … they’re near where we ditched the ATV.”

  “Do you suppose they’ve found it?”

  “They might have run across it. They’re heading in our direction.”

  The car was getting closer.

  “Because now they can also see our footprints. The minute the wind died down, we were screwed.” Waldridge motioned back to the desert floor behind them, where their prints in the sand were now plainly visible. “Once they found the ATV, it was only a matter of time until they found those prints.”

  Right, Kendra thought, as she felt the chill go through her. It was only a matter of time, and their time might be up if she couldn’t think of some way to escape the vehicle bearing down on them.

  They had no weapons. There was only flat desert terrain where they were here. No real place to hide. Only cactus and sagebrush that wouldn’t take long to search.

  Okay, think. Look at the whole picture. Go back. Remember. Search for options. Pull a plan together.

  The car was getting even closer.

  Suddenly, she could see the headlights!

  “Closer than I thought,” Kendra said. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “Then why the hell are we just standing watching them?” Waldridge’s gaze was darting around the terrain, attempting to find an escape route. “Let’s go. We can’t stay here.”

  “No, we can’t.”

  Because she had the plan. No weapons here, but she’d remembered another possible weapon. Flimsy, at best. She only prayed it would work.

  But first she had to go after it.

  She didn’t look at Waldridge as she started running forward instead of away. “But we can’t let them run us down either. We’d be even more vulnerable. I have an idea. Go take cover behind that brush. Okay?”

  “What? Where are you going?”

  She gestured toward the headlights. “There.”

  “That’s crazy. I don’t care what kind of—”

  “Don’t say another word.” She glanced over her shoulder, and said fiercely, “Stop arguing with me. I don’t have time. I’m going to do this. I can make it work. Now hide. I’ll be right back.”

  “Kendra!”

  She blocked him out as she sprinted toward the headlights, jumping over brush and cactus plants along the way. She needed to cover three to four hundred yards for her plan to work, but the car could be on top of her before she got there.

  What then?

  Don’t think about that. Just keep pushing …

  The Jeep’s engine revved harder. It was closing the gap fast. Had she been seen?

  No. The Jeep was slowly drifting away from her.

  Can’t let them get too far off track …

  She ran even faster, ignoring her aching ankle and cactus-needle scrapes.

  She cut to the right, crossing in front of the Jeep’s high-beam headlights.

  As if in response, the car’s engine roared. She’d been spotted!

  She turned and ran back in the direction whence she had just come.

  No shots. She hadn’t thought there would be. She still had value to Dyle alive. But there had always been the chance …

  The Jeep revved even harder.

  Damn, she’d cut it close. Maybe too close.

  The vehicle bore down on her with the headlights casting her long shadow on the landscape ahead. She nimbly jumped over cactus plants and wild brush. But the car mowed over them even more easily than she had.

  And was gaining on her.

  Shit. Stupid idea, Kendra … Stupid, stupid.

  She leaped over the thick clump of brush she’d seen just minutes before.

  Zero in on me. I’m the target. Don’t think of anything, don’t look at anything, but me.

  There it was right ahead of her!

  She skirted the wild s
agebrush with just inches to spare.

  Faster.

  Faster.

  Faster …

  Crash!

  She whirled. Just fifteen feet behind her, the vehicle had smashed at high speed into a clump of large boulders hidden by that wild sagebrush she’d just skirted.

  It had worked!

  Maybe.

  Kendra kept her distance while she warily tried to assess the damage to the jeep and its occupants. The entire front was pulverized. Smoke poured from the crumpled front end, and the engine noise had been reduced to a series of erratic clicks.

  Only one of the headlights was now functional though it was flickering on and off. There was blood on the shattered windshield.

  She moved carefully around to the driver’s side. A man was slumped over the steering wheel, his head oozing blood. He was dressed in the same black fatigues as Dyle’s other security men.

  She circled around to the other side.

  She froze. There was no one in the passenger seat, but the door was now wide open.

  Shit.

  She whirled around, her gaze flying in every direction. Where in the hell had—

  “Hold it right there, Kendra.”

  She knew the voice immediately. “Biers.”

  “Turn around. Slowly.”

  She turned to face him. His lips were cut and bloody, his shirt torn.

  And he was holding a handgun aimed at her chest.

  “This is what it’s come to?” she asked. “No more brilliant scientist and partner? Dyle’s made you one of his mercenaries?”

  He flushed. “For the time being.”

  She nodded back toward the jeep. “The job didn’t work out so well for your friend there. Guess he should have worn his seat belt.”

  “Where’s Waldridge?”

  “We split up hours ago. We figured it would make it more difficult for you.”

  “Nice try. We saw two sets of footprints back there. Side by side.”

  “You must be mistaken. Want to go back and check again?”

  “It doesn’t matter. We’ll find him. Dyle has called for reinforcements. Anytime now, there’s going to be a small army out here.”

  “It’s a big desert.”

  “But Dyle has you again.” Biers smiled. “Waldridge won’t let you be—”

  A belt snapped around his neck!

  Waldridge leaped from the darkness and yanked Biers’s head down hard against a boulder.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again.

  The gun went flying, and Kendra ran to pick it up. She spun around with the gun aimed at Biers, but he was unconscious, his head and face a bloody mess.

  Waldridge let go of the belt, and Biers fell to the ground.

  She drew a deep breath and tried to smile. “Damn. You have become Rambo.” She frowned. “But there’s blood on your cheek.”

  “Not mine. Biers’s. He splattered.” He used his sleeve to wipe Biers’s blood away. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, thanks to you.” She walked around the car and with the gun still in front of her, pushed the unconscious driver back in his seat. She unfastened his shoulder holster and pulled out his handgun.

  “Is he alive?” Waldridge asked.

  “Barely. I don’t know for how long. He’s not going to be giving us any trouble.”

  She reached for his phone on the console. The screen read NO SIGNAL.

  No surprise there. Few towers in this barren area.

  She grabbed the walkie-talkie resting in the cup holder and held it up. “There’s this, but the range is probably only a couple miles.”

  “Which makes it only useful if you want to chat with Dyle.”

  “Not likely. Too bad we can’t use it to—”

  She froze.

  “Turn Biers toward the car.”

  “What?”

  “Do it.”

  “I will. But you really shouldn’t order Rambo around like that.” Waldridge turned Biers’s unconscious, bleeding body toward the still-flickering headlight. Kendra knelt beside him and fished through his right pocket.

  Let it still be there …

  Then she felt it! She dove deep into the pocket and pulled it out. Small, unobtrusive, but as valuable as the Hope Diamond at this moment.

  She smiled. “I’ve got it!”

  She’d produced the quarter-sized tracking device Biers had taken from her hip. She fished around for another moment until she found the thin battery. It took a few minutes of maneuvering and adjusting, but then she connected both parts together with painstaking care.

  “Cross your fingers,” she said. “I think we’re back on the grid.”

  “Hallelujah,” Waldridge said softly. “Then we can expect the FBI, the CIA, Interpol, and maybe your friend, Lynch, to be mounting a splendid rescue mission and get us out of here?”

  “Not exactly. We’re not entirely certain the tracking message is getting through.” Kendra’s gaze was on the eastern sky. “And if I’m not mistaken, that helicopter on the horizon may be the reinforcements Dyle’s sent for.”

  “Shit.” His gaze lifted to follow her own toward the helicopter. “So we run and hide?”

  “With all possible speed.” She jumped to her feet. “We definitely run and hide.”

  * * *

  JADEN PUT DOWN THE WALKIE-TALKIE and turned toward Dyle. “Koppel’s team is ten minutes out. Eleven men. A copter and three Hummers.”

  Dyle stood next to his Range Rover and turned toward the helicopter’s airborne light in the distance. “It’s about time.”

  “I thought you’d be pleased once you got used to the idea. It’s the way to go. They should wrap this thing up in no time. His gaze went to the horizon, where he knew the aircraft and Hummers would soon appear. “You’ve increased the firepower since I was last down there with Koppel. What do you have going on down there below the border that you need all that personnel and equipment?”

  “The cartels have been running wild. I need to protect my executives and my interests there. I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to pull them away.” He gave Jaden a sour look. “You spoiled that, didn’t you?”

  “Necessary. Don’t worry, it will be daylight soon. After that, it won’t take long to round up Waldridge and Michaels.”

  Ten minutes later, the helicopter touched down as three Hummers pulled up and stopped in a tight formation around it.

  Koppel’s security team gathered around Dyle as he brought them up to speed. When he finished, Tim Koppel glanced around. “This is all the men you have here? No wonder you gave me a shout. Where’s Nathan, Jaden? I don’t see him.”

  “Out there somewhere with Dyle’s pet scientist,” Jaden said. “He hasn’t checked in for the last hour.”

  “Are they in a dark-colored Jeep?”

  “Yes.”

  “We saw it from the copter as we came in. It appears to be disabled a couple of miles due north of here. You want us to check it out?”

  “No,” Dyle said quickly. “I didn’t bring you here to play nursemaid to those bunglers. I’ll take Jaden and go myself. I told you, Waldridge and Michaels need to be your top priority. Get moving.”

  * * *

  “WE’VE GOT THE LOCATION,” Griffin said as soon as Lynch picked up. “Jessie Mercado called me five minutes ago, and the GPS tracker just started sending out a signal. Kendra’s in the Anzo-Borrego Desert. That’s all I know, so don’t ask questions. I’ll text you the coordinate app Jessie sent me.”

  “Yes!”

  “How long before you land in San Diego?”

  “Another twenty minutes.”

  “Then I’m not going to wait for you. I’m heading out right now. Do you want me to send a car and agent to the airport to bring you to—?”

  “Hell, no. I’ll arrange for a helicopter to be waiting the minute this flight hits the ground. Just get to her.”

  “On my way,” Griffin said tersely.

  Anzo-Borrego Desert

>   “I couldn’t help it,” Biers whimpered as he gazed up at Dyle, kneeling beside him. “I told you, none of it was my fault. It all happened so fast. And then I thought I had her, but then … my head. You shouldn’t have expected me to do something like this.” He reached up and touched his blood-soaked head. “I’m hurt. I need a doctor.”

  “You fool!” Dyle’s eyes were glittering with fury. “You actually had them, and you let them get away?” He looked at the wreckage of the Jeep with the body of Nathan crumpled at the wheel. “Both of you were fools. I thought with Nathan along, you’d be able to function like a real man, but I was wrong.”

  “There are footprints leading to that north ridge,” Jaden said as he strode back to the Jeep. “If Waldridge and the woman are on foot, we have a chance of tracking them down if we move fast.”

  “You see, nothing I did was that bad,” Biers said. “You can still catch them. But first stop this bleeding, then send me out on that helicopter and get me medical attention. I might have a concussion.”

  “And I might need that helicopter pilot to get Waldridge out of here. You think I’d waste time on you?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m important to you. You told me so. We’re going to be partners. I need help, Dyle.”

  “Partners? That charade is over.” He turned to Jaden. “He needs a doctor just like your man did back at the lab. What’s your answer to that?”

  Jaden smiled. “My choice? Then it’s the same answer we gave Brill. That’s only fair.”

  “You heard him, Biers,” Dyle said as he turned away. “If I get Waldridge and Michaels back, I have no need of you. And I will get them back.” He glanced up at the helicopter that had just taken off again and was flying low, lights spearing the ground below. “Hurry up with it, Jaden. We need to deal with more important matters.” He moved toward the path leading to the ridge, and called back, “Don’t worry about the concussion, Biers. Jaden will take care of making it go away.”