by Jack Mars
The bomb-maker abandoned his plan of shooting Reid, and instead sprinted away toward the front of the building. Reid followed hastily. He heard shouts in Arabic—“Switch! He has the switch!”
He rounded the corner to the front of the facility with the AK aimed forward, the stock rested in the crook of his elbow, and his other hand holding the dead man’s switch high over his head. The sprinting bomb-maker hadn’t stopped; he kept running, up the gravel road that led away from the building and screaming himself hoarse. The other two bomb-makers were gathered near the front door, apparently ready to go in and finish Reid off. They stared in bewilderment as he came around the corner.
Reid quickly surveyed the scene. The other two men held pistols—Sig Sauer P365, thirteen-round capacity with fully extended grips—but neither pointed them. As he had presumed, Otets had made his escape through the front door and was, at the moment, halfway to the SUV, limping along while holding his hurt leg and supported under one shoulder by a short, portly man in a black cap—the driver, Reid assumed.
“Guns down,” Reid commanded, “or I’ll blow it.”
The bomb-makers carefully set their weapons in the dirt. Reid could hear shouts in the distance, more voices. There were others coming from the direction of the old estate house. Likely the Russian woman had tipped them off.
“Run,” he told them. “Go tell them what’s about to happen.”
The two men didn’t have to be told twice. They broke into a brisk run in the same direction their cohort had just gone.
Reid turned his attention to the driver, helping along the lamed Otets. “Stop!” he roared.
“Do not!” Otets screamed in Russian.
The driver hesitated. Reid dropped the AK and pulled the Glock from his jacket pocket. They had gotten a little more than halfway to the car—about twenty-five yards. Easy.
He took a few steps closer and called out, “Before today, I didn’t think I had ever fired a gun before. Turns out I’m a really good shot.”
The driver was a sensible man—or perhaps a coward, or even both. He released Otets, unceremoniously dropping his boss to the gravel.
“Keys,” Reid demanded. “Drop them.”
The driver’s hands shook as he fetched the keys to the SUV from his inner jacket pocket. He tossed them at his own feet.
Reid motioned with the barrel of his pistol. “Go.”
The driver ran. The black cap flew off his head but he paid it no mind.
“Coward!” Otets spat in Russian.
Reid retrieved the keys first, and then stood over Otets. The voices in the distance were getting closer. The estate house was a half mile away; it would have taken the Russian woman about four minutes to reach it on foot, and then another few minutes for the men to get down here. He figured he had less than two minutes.
“Get up.”
Otets spat on his shoes in response.
“Have it your way.” Reid pocketed the Glock, grabbed Otets by the back of his suit jacket, and hauled him toward the SUV. The Russian cried out in pain as his gunshot leg dragged across the gravel.
“Get in,” Reid ordered, “or I’ll shoot your other leg.”
Otets grumbled under his breath, hissing through the pain, but he climbed into the car. Reid slammed the door, circled around quickly, and got behind the wheel. His left hand still held the dead man’s switch.
He slammed the SUV into drive and stomped the gas. The tires spun, kicking up gravel and dirt behind it, and then the vehicle lurched forward with a jolt. As soon as he pulled back onto the narrow access road, shots rang out. Bullets smacked the passenger side with a series of heavy thuds. The window—just to the right of Otets’s head—splintered in a spider web of cracked glass, but held.
“Idiots!” Otets screamed. “Stop shooting!”
Bullet-resistant, Reid thought. Of course it is. But he knew that wouldn’t last long. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and the SUV lurched again, roaring past the three men on the side of the road as they fired on the car. Reid rolled down his window as they rolled by the two bomb-makers, still running for their lives.
Then he tossed the switch out the window.
The explosion rocked the SUV, even at their distance. He didn’t hear the detonation so much as he felt it, deep in his core, shaking his innards. A glance in the rearview mirror showed nothing but intense yellow light, like staring directly into the sun. Spots swam in his vision for a moment and he forced himself to look ahead at the road. An orange fireball rolled into the sky, sending up an immense plume of black smoke with it.
Otets let out a jagged, groaning sigh. “You have no idea what you’ve just done,” he said quietly. “You are a dead man, Agent.”
Reid said nothing. He did realize what he had just done—he had destroyed a significant amount of evidence in whatever case might be built against Otets once he was brought to the authorities. But Otets was wrong; he was not a dead man, not yet anyway, and the bomb had helped him get away.
This far, anyhow.
Up ahead, the estate house loomed into view, but there was no pausing to appreciate its architecture this time around. Reid kept his eyes straight ahead and zoomed past it as the SUV bounced over the ruts in the road.
A glimmer in the mirror caught his attention. Two pairs of headlights swung into view, pulling out from the driveway of the house. They were low to the ground and he could hear the high-pitched whine of the engines over the roar of his own. Sports cars. He hit the gas again. They would be faster, but the SUV was better equipped to handle the uneven road.
More shots cracked the air as bullets pounded the rear fender. Reid gripped the steering wheel with both hands, the veins standing out stark with the tension in his muscles. He had control. He could do this. The iron gate couldn’t be far. He was doing fifty-five through the vineyard; if he could maintain his speed, it might be enough to crash the gate.
The SUV rocked violently as a bullet struck the rear driver’s side tire and exploded. The front end veered wildly. Reid instinctively counter-steered, his teeth gritted. The back end skidded out, but the SUV didn’t roll.
“God save me,” Otets moaned. “This lunatic will be the death of me…”
Reid wrenched the wheel again and righted the vehicle, but the steady, pounding thum-thum-thum of the tire told him they were riding on the rim and shreds of rubber. His speed dropped to forty. He tried to give it gas again but the SUV quaked, threatening to veer again.
He knew they couldn’t maintain enough speed to break the gate. They would bounce right off it.
It’s an electronic gate, he thought suddenly. It was controlled by the guard outside—who would no doubt at this point be aware of his escape attempt and be ready with the dangerous MP7—but that meant there had to be another exit to this compound.
Bullets continued to pound against the fender as his two pursuers fired on them. He flicked on the high beams and saw the iron gate coming up fast.
“Hang onto something,” Reid warned. Otets grabbed the handle over his window and muttered a prayer under his breath as Reid yanked the wheel hard to the right. The SUV skidded sideways in the gravel. He felt the two passenger-side tires come off the ground and, for a moment, his heart leapt into his throat with the notion that they might roll right over.
But he held control, and the tires set down again. He stomped the accelerator and drove right into the vineyard, crashing through the thin wooden trellises as if they were toothpicks and rolling grapevines flat.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Otets screeched in Russian. He bounced heavily in his seat as they drove over the planted rows. Behind him, the pair of sports cars squealed to a halt. They couldn’t follow, not through the field—but they were probably aware of what he was looking for, and they knew where to find it.
“Where’s the other exit?” Reid demanded.
“What exit?”
He yanked the Beretta from his jacket pocket (no easy feat, with the violent bouncing of the ca
r) and pressed it against Otets’s already-shot leg. The Russian screamed in pain. “That way!” he cried, pointing a crooked finger to the northwestern edge of the compound.
Reid held his breath. Please hold together, he thought desperately. The SUV was sturdy, but so far they had been lucky they hadn’t broken an axle.
Then, mercifully, the vineyard ended abruptly and they were back on a gravel road. The headlights shined on a second gate—made of the same wrought iron, but on wheels and held together by a single link of chain.
This is it. Reid clenched his jaw and slammed the gas once more. The SUV lurched. Otets howled some indistinguishable curse. The front end collided with the iron gate and smashed it open, knocking one side right off its hinges.
Reid breathed an intense sigh of relief. Then the headlights flashed again in his rearview—the cars were back. They had doubled back and taken the other road, likely branching from the opposite side of the estate house.
“Dammit,” Reid muttered. He couldn’t keep going like this forever, and if they shot out the other rear tire he’d be dead in the water. The road here was straight, and seemed to be inclining upward. It was also better paved than behind the gate, which only meant that the sports cars would catch up that much faster.
The trees were thinning on the right side of the road. Reid’s gaze flitted from the road to the passenger window. He could have sworn, through the cracked glass, he saw a shimmer, like… like water.
A rush of memory came to him, but not the flashing visions of his new mind. These were actual memories, Professor Lawson’s memories. We’re in the Ardennes. The Battle of the Bulge took place here. American and British forces held the bridges against German panzer divisions on the river…
“Meuse,” he murmured aloud. “We’re on the river Meuse.”
“What?” Otets exclaimed. “What are you babbling about?” Then he ducked instinctively as bullets splintered their rear windshield.
Reid ignored him, and the bullets. His mind raced. What was it he recalled reading about the Meuse? It sliced through the mountains, yes. And they were on an incline, heading upward. There were quarries here. Red marble quarries. Sheer cliffs and steep drops.
The SUV shuddered in protest. A heavy and very disconcerting clunking sound rumbled from its underbelly.
“What is that?” Otets shouted.
“That’s our axle breaking,” Reid answered. He focused on the road ahead. They had very little time…
Another bang rocked the SUV and threatened to tear it from the road. Not a bullet, Reid thought. That was their other rear tire blowing out. He was out of time and running out of road. He scanned for a break in the trees wide enough.
The sports car immediately behind him must have noticed the blowout. It crept up on his rear end and bumped their fender. The SUV veered slightly. For a brief moment, Reid thought about slamming the brakes, letting the car crash into them. With the momentary distraction, he could gain the element of surprise. He still had two guns. But no; there was a good chance that the two pursuing cars had the same bullet-resistant plating as the SUV.
There was only one way he could think of to get out of this.
But that’s impossible, he thought. That’s lunacy.
No. It’s not. You still don’t understand? You’ve been trained for every situation. You’ve been in every situation. Look at what you’ve done so far. Don’t you get it yet? You are Kent Steele.
“I am,” he murmured. “I am.” He didn’t know how it was possible, and his brain was still an utter mess, but he knew it was true. And the voice in his head was right. There was a way.
He yanked the wheel to the right. The SUV screeched and groaned as it skidded sideways. Reid piloted it between two narrow trees, directly toward the river. “You’re going to want to jump out of the car when I say jump.”
“What are you doing?!” Otets screamed. “Are you insane?”
“I might be.” The car jolted with a teeth-rattling quake as the axle broke, but by that time their momentum was too much to stop it. Reid grabbed onto the door handle with one hand and steered with the other. “But if you don’t want to die, you’ll jump.”
Otets whimpered another prayer under his breath, his eyes squeezed shut.
Reid clenched his jaw tightly. Here we go. The sports cars behind him squealed to a stop, the drivers watching in disbelief as the SUV careened over the edge of the red marble quarry and plummeted sixty feet down into the darkness of the Meuse.
CHAPTER NINE
The fall felt impossibly long.
As the SUV’s front tires lost the ground beneath them and rolled out over nothing, Reid threw open the driver’s side door and, with a burst of adrenaline, leapt out of the car. A half second before that he shouted “Jump!” He heard Otets’s high-pitched moan of fear as he too threw open his door.
And then they fell through darkness toward the rushing water below. Reid thought it strange, in that moment, that there was no hypnic jerk, no falling sensation as they dropped quickly toward the Meuse—and then thought it was stranger still that his mind could be so cognizant and lucid while plummeting over a cliff.
They hit the river’s surface a half second before the SUV and several feet away. An electric shock scorched Reid’s entire body as they struck the frigid water. Every muscle went as taut as rubber bands stretched to their limit. The air rushed from his lungs so quickly he nearly passed out. The heavy vehicle bobbed for a moment and then sank; the suction of it sent them both tumbling over and over in the blackness until he didn’t know which way was up.
Finally, his head broke through the surface. He sucked in a ragged breath, his body already threatening to give out in the freezing water. He looked around for Otets but saw nothing but bubbles. It would be too dark for him to see beneath the surface. If Otets had sunk with the car, if he hadn’t gotten out in time, there would be nothing that Reid could do. He’d be dead already…
Something broke through the water a few feet from him. He reached for it and grabbed soggy clothing. The Russian’s body was limp. He had lost consciousness—at least, hopefully that was all it was. He hauled Otets toward him and made sure his head was out of the water. It would be difficult to get anywhere with an unconscious man.
Don’t panic. Move your limbs.
Reid positioned himself into a backwards butterfly stroke and wrapped his legs around Otets’s torso. He moved his arms in wide circles, slowly and methodically—he didn’t want to splash around too much and potentially give his position away to anyone looking down from above. He doubted the sports cars and Otets’s men would simply give up and go home.
The current was strong, but he let it carry them southeast as they made their way to shore. It took several minutes, but soon it was shallow enough that he could stand. He took Otets’s body over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and hauled him onto a narrow span of rocky beach.
The cold was worse out of the water. The subzero wind blew right through him and stiffened his wet clothes. He dropped Otets and checked to make sure he was still breathing by holding one finger just below his nostrils. He felt shallow, uneven breaths—Otets was alive, but had likely swallowed a good amount of water.
Reid huddled down, rubbing his chest rhythmically with both arms. He would need to find some shelter for them, and fast, before they both succumbed to hypothermia. He estimated he had between five and ten minutes before they’d both be dead. He gritted his teeth to keep them from chattering and hefted Otets up once again. To distract his mind from the raw, biting cold and the suspicion that he could be frozen in minutes, he tried to think of something else, anything else. Warm beaches. Hot showers. A cozy fireplace. His mind went to his girls, sitting in a hotel somewhere and worried sick over where their father might be and what was happening. He thought of Kate, his deceased wife and mother to his kids, and what she would do in this situation. He almost laughed bitterly—Kate would never have gotten into a situation like this. He barely knew how he had gotten in
to a situation like this.
Kent knew. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind was that knowledge, Kent’s knowledge, of what had happened and why, for a while, he was no longer Kent Steele. It was clearer to him now; there was no denying it. They were memories, and they weren’t false implanted memories like some top-secret CIA mind-control project or other such urban myth nonsense. The CIA, these flashing visions… they were his. They were his instincts, his voice, his training. No implanted memories could simulate the intuition, compulsion, and situational awareness he’d exhibited back in the facility or in the basement with the Iranians.
He didn’t know how, but he was Kent Steele. Agent Zero. He didn’t know why, but he—or someone else, perhaps—had taken all of that away from him. Suddenly Professor Reid Lawson felt like the lie. That other life, the quiet life in the Bronx and walks to the deli and lectures about pirates, all felt implanted and false.
No, he told himself. That was your life, too. The girls are your children. Kate was your wife. It was all yours.
But so was this.
Reid didn’t even realize he had reached a road until headlights were blaring in his vision. He squinted, panicking, caught like a half-frozen deer in headlights. Otets’s men had found him. There must have been a bridge or some quick way across the river, and he had carelessly stumbled right into the road in front of them. He couldn’t run—even if he dropped Otets, he had so little strength left in his freezing limbs.
The car came to an abrupt halt and idled there for a few seconds. Then the driver’s side door swung open. Reid couldn’t see anyone, not even a silhouette, beyond the headlights.
“Hallo?” A woman’s voice, pinched with nervousness. “Heb je hulp nodig?”
No recognition of her words sparked in Reid’s mind. “Um, D-deutsche?” he stammered. “E-English? Francais?”
“Francais, oui,” she said back. “As-tu besoin d-aide?” Do you need help?
“Oui, si’l vous plait,” he said breathlessly. Yes, please. He took a couple of small steps toward her car. He heard her gasp in surprise—he must have looked awful. Frost had sprouted on his collar and in his hair, and it was likely his lips were a rich shade of blue. He told her in French, “We fell into the river…”
