by James Phelan
“You think he’s safe?”
“Fox is canny, by far the most capable operator we’ve got to send into a hot zone,” Wallace said. “He’s used to looking after himself … Hell, you know that as well as anyone.”
It was true, McCorkell knew that. But just what Fox would do if cornered and something happened to Kate … again. About a year back, Fox practically tore Nigeria in two, driven by revenge and anger and his stubborn drive to uncover the truth no matter what the cost. Jesus. The man couldn’t go on like this forever; even the best’s luck ran out, eventually. Those who survived into old age knew when to walk away.
“Tas, if you can get hold of him, tell him what’s happened, to keep his head down until we get someone to him,” McCorkell said. “We need to get him back Stateside and under FBI protection asap. If not for me or himself, for Kate.”
“Got it,” Wallace replied. “You sound tired.”
“Haven’t had a good sleep in thirty years, Tas,” McCorkell said with the smallest of smiles. It was still dark outside the windows, the sunrise not even a glow. “Why can’t we be back at Oxford, in the prime of our lives and chasing girls in bars?”
“I don’t know if it was ever like that, but yeah, bring back the good old days,” Wallace replied with a chuckle before turning serious. “I’ll get onto Fox and keep you posted.”
He hung up. McCorkell could hear Bowden down the other end of the office—like a court-side coach going nuts at his guys during time-out—demanding to know what more could be done to get Babich back; not sold by the agents’ feedback that they were putting everything out there to get him.
“We find him under a rock or he pops up on the grid. Either way, when we’ve got him, we take him heavy!”
Bowden’s staff knew their jobs, and they knew how to dig a little deeper to hustle for their boss.
McCorkell watched the screen, the designated SAR units nearing Hutchinson’s dot. They were converging, coming at him from several directions. Just like the unknown forces headed to a farmhouse somewhere in the French countryside.
30
GIVERNY
“Just us,” Kate said, following Fox to the sink and kissing him again. He reluctantly let her go and filled a water jug.
He picked up his phone as he followed her into the front room and noticed it was vibrating—
“Tas?”
“Lachlan,” his boss said. “Bill McCorkell has been trying to contact you. Babich is out there, on the loose.”
“What!” Fox said. “When?”
“Just now, the last hour or so.”
“Oh shit…” The others in the front room stopped talking and looked at him. His shoulders and arms tensed. Everything seemed to go quiet—his world on the head of a pin. “Hutchinson?”
“That’s all I know,” Wallace said. “Look, get to the nearest police station and I’ll arrange a security team to pick you up.”
“No,” Fox said. “We’ll stay on the move and lay low. I’ll check in on the hour. Just keep me posted on the search.”
“I will, but let me send—”
“We’re better off on our own.”
“You need police protection.”
“I can handle it,” Fox said, looking into the front room. “Matter of fact, there’s a couple of French cops here right now. We’ll head into Paris. I’ll call you once I’m there and I’ve spoken to Bill, okay?”
There was silence for a moment.
“Keep your head down,” Wallace said.
The line went dead.
“What was that?” Kate asked, getting to her feet. They all turned to Fox expectantly. Vincent was leaning through the window. He was a sharp-looking cop the right side of middleage. He had been joking around with Gammaldi, but was now fully alert.
“Tas—my boss at GSR—giving us a heads-up,” Fox explained.
“About what?” Kate asked. She was worried, but Fox didn’t fully register it.
Zoe said something to Vincent in French. There was a strange sound in the distance Fox couldn’t place. Brujon barked, then silence.
Fox spoke, but he was listening more than speaking: “Babich. We’re in danger…”
That sound again, a hollow clap. Familiar.
“Al,” Fox said, moving fast and pushing Kate down and towards his friend. “Get Kate to the car, drive to the nearest police station. We’ll stall them here and meet you there.”
Zoe was on her feet and speaking to her colleague. Gammaldi was moving Kate towards the kitchen. She looked back at Fox wide-eyed.
“They’re coming,” Fox said to Kate, “I’m sorry.”
Those words. She knew. She kept low, Gammaldi bustling her out of the front room.
“There’s no one out here,” Vincent said in stilted English. He scanned around, his sidearm drawn. “I can see down the driveway. All clear. No one.”
The sound again and this time Fox identified it. A low-velocity round fired from a silenced weapon.
“Lachlan?” Zoe called.
Fox didn’t answer, he was reaching over to the sideboard, gathering the shotgun, filling his pockets with shells.
“Get down!” Fox yelled. “Do it—now—down!”
Zoe started drawing from her hip holster.
Something flew across the room—Fox looked across to see Vincent at the side window, turning, shaking where he stood. Blood splattered the room. The Frenchman looked down at the dark crimson gushing from his chest and collapsed across the windowsill.
“Down!” Fox yelled again. Gammaldi had Kate hunkered down on the tiled floor of the kitchen, Fox knelt and shouldered the shotgun, still in the front room. He could hear Brujon barking madly outside. Zoe was already braced to the side of the front door, firing quick shots outside. Fox tried to pinpoint where Brujon’s barking was coming from.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
The front doors and windows were shredded by submachinegun fire, the lace curtains catching most of the flying glass.
Zoe closed her eyes for a second, then opened them with new resolve. Nodded to Fox. She peered around the doorjamb.
“I can’t see anything…”
Brujon still barking. The submachine-gun fire halted. A couple of silenced rounds hit the wall above Fox’s head.
“Can we get to your car?” Fox asked. Through the open front door he could see the boot of the Peugeot where it was parked across the driveway.
Zoe nodded.
“I’ll move up and cover you,” Fox said.
Zoe looked around the door and ducked back—bullets sprayed through the doorway, a stream of nine-millimetre steel on full auto turned the masonry to dust … Then a new sound: KLAPBOOM!
A fragmentation grenade went off against the front wall of the house. Shards of metal and glass flew through the doorway and windows. Fox glanced back as Kate screamed—she was okay, just spooked. Gammaldi kept her close to the floor, behind the solid butcher’s block. Bullets whistled past, tearing into the kitchen’s back wall; the escape route out the back door cut off.
Fox turned to Zoe and squinted through the dust of the blast.
Not two seconds after the grenade going off there was a far larger explosion—the Peugeot, hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Fox was knocked back by the concussion wave. Debris and fire swirled around him before his world turned black.
31
WASHINGTON, DC
McCorkell was pacing behind the FBI desks. The SAR aircraft would be flying over Hutchinson’s last known GPS coordinates any moment now. Fox had been warned. Now he was waiting for news. Useless.
Bowden was still chewing out his team in the far corner of the room, demanding updates and explanations. The hands of his NSA and CIA agents were a blur over their keyboards, most multi-tasking by talking on phones at the same time. Around the world agents were being activated, sources were being milked, payments were being made. The dragnet was fanning out around the globe; wherever the
y found Babich, assets would be nearby, ready to play.
“Sorry, what?” McCorkell asked, realising Valerie had been talking to him. Her team was hushed. The prisoner transfer had been organised by them and they were feeling the heat; finding their man Hutchinson alive was the best they could hope for.
“Babich,” she repeated. “It’s how he’s survived so long.”
“How?”
“He took out insurance. Something up his sleeve. Something big.”
“I’m gonna need more,” McCorkell said.
“He’s not going somewhere to hide,” she said, looking into middle-distance as she searched for threads that would make sense. “He’s going somewhere to gloat, not to clear his name. And—and he’s not going to wait around. I mean, for what? Someone to take him in? To kill him? He knows the score. He’ll act fast.”
“Where’s he got to turn? Can’t be Russia or Italy, those havens are dead to him.”
“He’s gotta have something somewhere.”
“No one will stand for it,” McCorkell said, playing devil’s advocate. “No one will listen to him.”
“It has to be an offer that the world can’t refuse. Gotta be … Gotta be big.”
“He’ll never be heard.”
“He’ll use the press…” Valerie said, lost in her ideas. “Something that will threaten to pull apart our world. Not financial markets, but public sentiment for our political systems—he wants instability; we’ve seen him exploit that so often…”
“Why?” He liked her thinking. Could have used her back in the day at the White House. He looked at the SAR’s ‘time to station’ reading on the screen. Measured in seconds now.
“To make change, to force it. He’ll emerge with—no, as the solution.”
Time …
“Solution?” McCorkell repeated. “You’re too far ahead, go back. So, where’s the audience? Where’s his lifeline?”
“Somewhere we can’t extradite him from.”
“Where could he possibly get that kind of coverage and audience, where we can’t touch him?”
Valerie looked at him, shook her head, then stopped.
“That deadline? That time clock in the NSA intercept?” McCorkell said. “What’s happening this weekend? What’s happening where there’s an audience, where we can’t extradite from?”
Valerie’s face lit up. She looked as if she would burst out of her skin.
“China,” she said. “He’s going to China.”
32
GIVERNY
Fox, recovered from the aftershock of the explosion, looked across at Zoe who was reloading in a cloud of dust. He crouched and blasted two shots out the front window. Submachine-gun fire raked the front of the farmhouse in reply. More rounds were finding their way inside, powdering the plaster-lined masonry behind him. The attackers were closing in.
“Al!” Fox yelled in the direction of the kitchen. “Take Kate and head out the back—get to the car!”
“I’ll stay—”
“We’re all going!” Fox shouted, shielding his face from flying debris as he reloaded the gun. At least four shooters out there. Nearing. No way did he and Zoe have the firepower to repel the assault. They’d delay them a couple of minutes at most. “I’ll stay and draw their fire—go!”
He got up on one knee, fired a barrel through the side window and one out the front door.
“Zoe!”
Zoe clocked what Fox wanted to do, nodded, and they tipped over the heavy table and pushed it up against the door. Two inches of century-old hardwood was immediately peppered with bullets, but it would buy them some time.
“Moving!” Gammaldi called from the kitchen.
“Keep low!” Fox hissed as he and Zoe crawled in towards them.
Fox paused behind the foot of the stairs. Reloaded two more shells from his shirt pocket, crawled to the side window facing the pizza oven—saw two figures running in, ten metres away—got up on one knee: blam, blam!
Winged one. Fox stuck close to the wall, broke open the breech and ejected the spent shells as the other attacker sprayed the window, plaster and debris coating him again. Fox closed the loaded gun, launched around the kitchen table to Zoe, seeing Gammaldi and Kate cowering down by the back door, ready to make for the car. Fox signalled, Five seconds! and kept moving, scanning. Crashing sounds coming from the front of the house. He passed the stairs and ducked into the alcove seat, pushed the small stained-glass window open, slid the barrel out: blam, blam!
The attacker, one leg through the kitchen window, flew through the air as both blasts hit him. The man he’d wounded before was crawling away, slowly, out of the action.
Fox backed around, headed for the kitchen.
PHFT!-PHFT!-PHFT!-PHFT!-PHFT!-PHFT!—silenced automatic-weapons’ fire raked into the front room as Fox took cover at the bottom of the staircase. Back against the masonry he could feel the rounds hitting the wall. He watched as Zoe led his friends out the back door to the car, then he reloaded in a brief silence and heard the metallic katang! and rattle of a grenade that had been tossed into the front room.
He crouched down, hands over his ears, eyes closed, mouth slightly open against the concussion.
KLAPBANG!
A loud and bright detonation, but no debris. A flash-bang grenade.
KLAPBANG!
Another one in the front room. His ears rang as he ran up the stairs. There’d be guys entering the house under the cover of the grenades’ impact, submachine guns blazing. They’d clear the house in twenty seconds, half that if they were good.
He ran to the upstairs bedroom that faced the back, shut the door behind him, pulled the dresser over—it wasn’t that heavy, but would give him precious seconds to evacuate—opened the double window and looked down into the rear courtyard.
Zoe was crouched behind the engine block of the Golf—Kate and Gammaldi must be inside the car. She glanced up at him.
“Keys!” she said.
Shit.
“In the kitchen,” he mouthed out the window. “On the bench!”
Zoe nodded, disappeared into the house. Gammaldi peered out from the open sun roof.
“Al, I’m coming down!”
A window shattered and a guy leaned out the other bedroom’s window, his submachine gun tracking towards the car.
Fox let off one shot; the guy’s exposed hands and face exploded in red and his gun fell to the ground.
“Al!” Fox yelled out. “Catch!”
Fox emptied the shotgun and held it out; his friend was already out of the car, waiting below the window—caught it like he was carrying a load of wood. Fox tossed down two shells and saw Zoe emerge, keys in hand.
He was about to climb up on the windowsill when the door behind him rattled against the dresser, a weapon appearing—he ran to it, slamming into the dresser hard, crushing the attacker’s gun arm against the doorjamb. The guy fired on full auto for a couple of seconds as Fox grabbed an overturned vase and smashed it across the exposed wrist. There was a grunt and splash of blood and the submachine gun fell to the floor.
The man smashed his way into the room as Fox grabbed the gun. Fox gave the intruder a smile before pointing the gun at him: Click. Out of bullets.
The man grinned—he was huge, built like a Coke machine—and pulled out a combat knife.
Fox backed away as the blade slashed through the air. He threw the gun—it bounced off the man’s head. He hauled a chair across the room and the assassin smashed it to the ground.
Fox ducked as the knife arced through the air where he had just been. He parried around, back to the door that was hanging ragged from its smashed frame. A glance out, the hall was empty. The man charged and Fox moved quickly, parrying the attack so that the guy slammed into the door as Fox rode his momentum into it from behind. He landed two good blows into the assassin’s kidneys, while tearing a knife-size splinter of wood from the shattered doorjamb. It wasn’t a knife
, but it’d do.
Now they were both armed.
The guy grunted through his pain, grinned, wiped his bloody lip on the back of his hand and took a pace towards Fox, each of them ready to pounce.
The attacker moved first, launching with the knife in his right hand, the momentum of his bulk following fast behind it. Fox shifted, grabbed the guy’s wrist as the blade glanced his forearm and he let himself keep falling hard to the right, his other hand coming around and slamming the wooden shard down into the man’s neck. They crashed to the floor, two hundred-plus kilos landing on the guy’s outstretched knife arm causing a terrific snapping sound.
Blood spouted from the assassin’s neck wound and he clung to it with his good hand. A loud, high-pitched scream.
The assassin’s eyes were wild, blood was pouring from him, arm bent—both bones torn clean through his forearm—his hand vibrating to its own frequency of pain.
“How many?” Fox asked, twisting the wooden spike, feeling the sinewy neck muscle of his opponent tearing. “How many were sent?”
“Eight … Four to the house…” he said in heavily accented English between heaving breaths. “Two cars … Down the road…”
“What’s your mission?”
Fox moved the shard of timber.
“Kill you all.”
Fox had heard enough. He stood, climbed up on the windowsill, hung down and jumped, taking the landing in a reverse roll off the back of his heels.
Zoe was waiting, pistol in hand, tossed him the keys, while Gammaldi climbed into the back seat with Kate. Fox and Zoe jumped in and spun the car around towards the gate.
Ahead, a dark blue Audi four-wheel drive was tearing up the approach to the house. They were only five hundred metres away, but they’d have to navigate the burning wreckage of the Peugeot. Fox slammed on the brakes.
“What are you doing?” Kate yelled out.
Fox opened his door—“Brujon!”
The border collie leaped up on his lap and Fox scooted him into the back towards Gammaldi and Kate.
