by Jeff Abbott
Ten minutes later the boy from Alabama returned from his stroll. He stared down at Bridger’s body and Henry heard the click of his swallow. ‘Well.’
‘Get rid of him for me, please. Make sure he’s not found. Dig deep. Then go home. You’ll receive extra money or extra training at our expense, your choice.’
The Alabamian nodded, his face pale. ‘I want to learn how to make bombs.’
‘I’ll see that you do.’
Henry drove home to Alexandria. He sat down at his computer.
Quicksilver – he needed to know who they were. And they would have to be eliminated. If they were a new incarnation of the Book Club, a group working outside government constraints, then their activities could be mapped, followed, discovered.
Among the clients of The Shawcross Group think-tank were leading telecommunications companies, concerned about infrastructure attacks; transportation companies, worried that they themselves could be terrorist targets; and financial services companies, always knowing that a wave of terrorism could slash their profits in the event of a massive financial collapse.
He would use his clients’ resources to find Quicksilver.
He crafted his email carefully, then sent it to his highest, most discreet contact in each client. As one of my key clients, I urgently require your help. I have been requested by a high government official to test how quickly both government and private databases can unearth covert operatives working on American soil, as well as seeing how consistent the information is. I suspect lucrative contracts may be at the basis of his decision. I have created two false identities: Allen Clifford and Kevin Drummond. Please use your databases in communications, financial, transportation, credit, security, and so on to find them. I have given them an association with a legitimate firm called Quicksilver Risk Management. Please forward any results, time-stamped, on these two identities or this firm. Thank you and please know that our confidentiality agreement applies.
Henry suspected he wouldn’t have long to wait. And this would give him the best opportunity to find out about his enemy.
Afterwards, he sent out another private email to his clients. The first line of the email read: Forthcoming from Shawcross Group research, a new series of papers outlining the most likely infrastructure attacks against the United States.
Hellfire was going to make him look like a very smart man.
32
Luke woke up from his doze, leaning against the airplane’s back wall. Frankie Wu stood over him. Luke’s head throbbed, thick with sleep. He blinked himself to full wakefulness. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, Mr Lindoe. I just wanted to be sure you were all right. You’re not in your seat.’
‘Sorry. I sat to have a think and I thought too much.’ He stood awkwardly.
Frankie Wu watched him, arms crossed.
‘Shouldn’t you be flying the airplane?’ Luke said. He went back to his seat. His knapsack lay tilted on its side and he wondered if that was the position it was in when he dozed off. Had Wu searched it?
‘Auto-pilot. Just wanted to see if either of you needed anything, Mr Lindoe.’
The use of the false name again, the barest emphasis. He knows. But he’s not calling you on it. Not yet. He doesn’t want trouble in the air. ‘When do we land in New York?’
‘Forty minutes.’
Luke glanced at Aubrey; she was asleep. He wasn’t surprised, not even at his own heavy slumber. Sleep was escape. Hunger was a sudden, sharp fist of pain.
Wu turned without a word and went back to the cockpit. Closed the door.
Luke opened the knapsack. The gun was still there. He checked it. Unloaded. The clip was gone, and nowhere in the backpack. The gun was now useless. The cash he’d taken from Eric’s stash was still there, though. The laptop from Eric’s was there too, cool to the touch. It hadn’t been fired up.
Wu had searched the bag.
Luke went to the tiny galley. Quietly, he checked the drawers. In one he found a flight manifest for the food and drinks on the flight. The charges paid for by Quicksilver Risk, with a New York City address. Quicksilver.
His stomach sank to his toes. He picked up the phone in the galley. He called information for Braintree. He remembered the name of the property company of the cabin, from its sign near the gate. He got the number and called. If they rented cabins, there ought to be an emergency number in case the renters had a problem after hours. He got an answering machine that fed him such a number; he redialed.
‘Yes?’
‘Hello. My father has gone missing and he may have rented a cabin from you. Cabin number three. At the edge of the property. Was it rented by a company called Quicksilver?’
‘I sure am getting calls about this rental.’ The clerk sounded huffy. ‘Please. Allen Clifford, he’s missing…’
‘Well, he left the cabin a mess, destroyed the bedroom furniture, and we charged his card again for damages.’
‘How did he pay? I’ll make sure you’re compensated.’
‘Charge card. Company card. Quicksilver Risk Management.’
‘Thank you.’ Luke hung up. Jesus, they had paid for the cabin, Henry was right. That didn’t mean he could trust Henry. But it sure didn’t mean he could trust these people, either. He took a calming breath.
He tore the page with the address from the manifest. Eric’s escape route was a trap.
He found sandwiches in the galley and he ate one. The city that never sleeps looked like a creamy, miniature galaxy below. He guessed they would be landing in New Jersey, right across the river.
He shook Aubrey. She blinked at him, awake and ready. He handed her a sandwich and mouthed the words the pilot knows. We have to run. Her eyes widened in fear and she mouthed back what’s the plan?
He wished they’d had this discussion back in her car but they hadn’t known they’d be able to con their way onto Eric’s flight. They’d have to improvise. He whispered into her ear: ‘A company called Quicksilver paid for the cabin we were held in and for this flight.’
Her eyes widened in fright.
Who are they? She mouthed.
He shook his head. Follow my lead, he mouthed, and she nodded.
He took her hand, and they waited to land.
The plane taxied toward the small terminal at the private airfield. Wu asked, through the intercom, for them to remain in their seats.
Luke disobeyed. He got up, went to the door, popped the lever. The door swung open and an alarm brayed into the cold night air. Aubrey was at his back and they jumped to the tarmac. Aubrey landed next to him and they ran.
Cutting through the roar of the engines, he heard Frankie Wu’s once-friendly voice yelling in rage. The airport’s runway was between them and a fence and another commuter jet was preparing to take off, now that Wu’s plane was clear.
Luke and Aubrey ran to the edge of the runway – then he heard voices bellowing his name. ‘Luke! Luke Dantry! Stop!’
He glanced back, causing Aubrey to collide into him, and saw two men, running past where Frankie Wu had screeched his jet to a stop. Wu was in the doorway, pointing at them. Closing fast. Quicksilver’s welcoming party, he thought. If he and Aubrey stayed put they’d be dead. The other commuter jet approached.
We can make it, he thought. Aubrey’s hand clenched in his.
They ran across the runway, the departing jet catching them in its lights, rising, knocking them in a battering wash of engine, both stumbling to their knees from the wake.
He looked back – one of the Quicksilver men held a collapsible rifle and was unslinging it from a knapsack on his back. ‘Aubrey, run!’ he yelled.
They bolted back to their feet, running, nearly in a headlong dive, both intent on reaching the fence. Forty feet; beyond the mesh lay a parking lot, a scattering of cars. A stream of light beckoned beyond, the hazy glow of a highway.
The grass erupted in front of his feet, shots spewing green bits of lawn. They kept running.
They hit the fence. He sl
owed to help her but Aubrey was quicker and more nimble, clambering up the chain link with an assured grace. She reached the concertina wire and paused, pulling her coat free. She balled it over her head in a tight dome and wiggled through the slicing spiral.
‘I don’t want to get caught again,’ she screamed. And he knew to his bones her fear, that helpless, this-is-not-happening-to-me, terror. He’d felt it when Eric Lindoe had stuck the gun into his ribcage, steered him out of normalcy into the rapids of nightmare. He knew she’d felt it when that burlap bag went over her head as she left her office.
She was through, on the ground, pants torn along the leg where the razor wire scored.
He ripped off his own coat, following her lead, yelling at her to keep running, don’t look back.
He covered his head with the cheap windbreaker just as he heard the voices closing in, one saying, ‘No way.’ Then thumps against the fence, the boom of the rifle.
The lined windbreaker made a fragile cocoon. The curling wire cut past his defenses – he felt a slash along his scalp, his back, his butt. Then gravity superseded fear, yanking him through the last curve, the concertina cutting at his suddenly bare stomach.
He hit the ground, panicked, rolling free of the tattered wind-breaker, running for the lot.
Aubrey was gone. It wasn’t that big a parking lot and she wasn’t moving through the moonlight. Where was she?
She’s hiding, he thought, and then he saw a car racing away from the lot, far faster than normal traffic. And in a blur, her face, struggling at the window.
‘Aubrey!’ he yelled. He glanced back. The Quicksilver men who’d dogged him to the fence ran, yelling into cell phones. Not in such a hurry. Of course not. They had friends waiting to catch Aubrey and him, maybe a team for each. A car powered up, raced straight toward him as he ran off the curb.
33
Luke ran. Not deeper into the parking lot, where he knew the Mercedes sedan could corner him as their partners had caught Aubrey; nor back toward the razor-tipped fence where the two men had corralled him.
He ran toward the highway.
The grass funneled out into a short expanse – maybe sixty feet across – and then a service road and then the torrent of cars, traffic still brisk at a late hour, people returning from Manhattan.
Behind him, the Quicksilver Mercedes vroomed off the asphalt lot, onto the dry grass.
Blood coursed down his calves where the wire had bit. He did not dare glance behind him; he did not want to see. It was worse than being pursued by Mouser and Snow because this was teams, coordinated, an inexorable fist closing around him.
Luke hit the service road and a minivan laid on its horn, nearly veering off the road trying to avoid him. The van revved past him, leaving a wake of burnt stench and a scream of you crazy asshole as he ran. The pursuing Mercedes lurched across the grass, closing the distance fast, and now he glanced back, saw a rear window powering down.
He measured his options in one glance. He could go to the right, where the service road curved toward a distant intersection and the Mercedes could run him down or scoop him up. Or he could go left, where he’d be running headlong into one-way traffic. But to the left was an entrance ramp onto the highway, bordered by a crash barrier, so the Mercedes would have both to go against the one-way traffic and make a 180-degree, sharp-as-nails turn to follow him onto the highway.
He headed for the ramp.
Two cars hurtled at him, both screaming with their horns and he ran between them, feet snapping on the white line. He ran like a machine, the wind carrying him, trying to urge every bit of speed from his tired muscles.
A screech yowled behind him, metal sliding, skimming hard against other metal. He turned as he sprinted along the highway entrance ramp, another car zooming past him in a blur.
Luke stormed up the ramp, and he glanced back. The Mercedes began a sharp turn to navigate the entrance, smoke misting the wheels.
Five lanes of traffic, a median wall, and then five more lanes. They would catch him if he hugged the shoulder and ran in the direction of the traffic. Or smear him like jam along the concrete.
But a stream of traffic coursed by, and he couldn’t get across the lanes in time; it would be a violent waltz where one wrong step or one veering driver would kill him.
No time to hesitate. He saw the approaching cars and their headlights, and he had to dodge them.
A belching semi rocketed past him and he ran the first lane in its wake, seeing a station wagon in the second. The wagon slammed brakes and he jumped and ran around it, clearing it and the third lane as the station wagon resumed speed.
The Mercedes powered fast onto the highway. He froze, no choice, five zooming sedans powering past him. He was trapped, the Mercedes approaching, trying to navigate to his lane.
The Mercedes aimed dead on for him as the fifth car blasted by and he ran, brakes screeching, a crunch as a car swerved over into another lane, its side crumpling against another sedan. The Mercedes cut around the cars, heading straight for Luke. He could see the triumph on the driver’s face.
Then the Mercedes was rear-ended by a brake-slamming truck.
Luke turned and ran through the final lane and vaulted the concrete wall. The slowing of traffic had already started due to the inexorable human urge to rubberneck and while the New York-bound traffic didn’t slam to standstill, he managed a short, brutal dash to the opposite side.
A truck barreled past him on the exit ramp, clearing him by inches, and he fell on the concrete and saw the tires just miss his outstretched fingertips. He looked up and the truck was past him, slowing at the end of the ramp, brake lights brightening. He cleared the ramp by hurtling himself over its edge, dropping fifteen feet to soft dirt. He went to one knee, weary with the cold, shaking and the adrenaline turning on him, burning like poison in his veins. He staggered back to his feet and caught his breath, the quavering in his legs finally easing.
He ran down the service road, the weight of the knapsack heavy on him.
They got Aubrey. He had to get her back.
He ran to the intersection where an all-night mart sat in a puddle of streetlight. He walked in and heard the soft sounds of Indian sitar music drifting above the shelves. A few minutes ago he’d been dodging cars, now he was shopping. He wondered if he looked shell-shocked. He bought a first-aid kit and a hot coffee and a bottle of water. He went to the bathroom and inspected his cuts. A thin shallow one marked his stomach – the concertina wire had nipped him where his shirt had been hiked and twisted. Another cut had sliced through the back of his jeans, a scoring across his calf and lower back that stung even more when he saw them. He smeared on disinfectant gel, applied adhesive bandages to the worst of the cuts, and swallowed aspirin. He downed the cold water in four long gulps. He drank the still-warm coffee and the heat began to seep into his blood, under his skin.
Luke left the mini-mart and walked away from the highway. He had to keep moving. But it was late and they would not stop hunting him. He did not feel panic; rather the calm of resolution.
He was going to take the war back to these people.
First things first. He was still entirely too close to the air park and the highway, and the Quicksilver team might have friends.
He found a taxi letting off passengers close to a bus station. He showed the cabbie the address for Quicksilver he’d stolen from the food manifest.
‘That address, you know what part of the city that is?’
‘That is near NYU in Greenwich Village,’ the cabbie said, after consulting a detailed map.
‘Let’s go.’
The cabbie informed him of everything wrong about New York, a city Luke had always enjoyed visiting. Luke sat in the back seat and listened only enough to make agreeing grunts when required for politeness. When they reached Washington Square, Luke asked the cabbie to let him out at the entrance to the park. Luke walked through the darkened paths and sat down on a bench. He surveyed the immediate area for trouble and police
and saw only a drunk reclining on a bench thirty feet away, staring at the grass as though it held the secrets of the universe.
What will they do with Aubrey?
He imagined the worst for a long while and when the drunk approached and asked if he had five bucks, he got up and walked out of the park. He did not walk to the Quicksilver address. He found a small hotel that catered to New York University visitors and paid cash for a minuscule room. He registered under a fake name, Brian Blue, because a weird abstract blue painting hung in the lobby, and Brian was the name of the annoying neighbor who’d badmouthed him on the television news. He sprawled on the lumpy bed. He wanted to curl into the cocoon of sleep but he couldn’t. They had Aubrey. She had been kidnapped, again, and the thought of what she must be enduring burned. Being kidnapped at gunpoint, he knew, was not something you got accustomed to, even with practise.
He had thought he was taking them to safety. He wished he had talked her into going to the police; now she’d be safe. And he would be able to give up this fight, just vanish, run, find a nice big rock to hide under.
He stared out the window. Running was no life. Hiding was no life. He couldn’t give up, not yet. He had never felt so alone, even chained in the cabin. There, escape had been the only option he could pursue. But now, he could try to save Aubrey, or go to the police and surrender, or try and fight the Night Road and Henry.
He unpacked the knapsack. The useless gun, the laptop that he’d already picked clean. He pulled Eric’s key ring from his pocket. The Chicago Bulls toy basketball on the end of the ring caught on the pocket’s inside lining. He yanked it free.
There was a slight catch on the edge of the toy ball, under the Bulls logo. He hadn’t noticed it before. He worked his thumb on the catch.
The ball popped open.
Inside was a USB plug, the kind that slid into a computer port.
The other half of the basketball was solid. It was a hidden thumb drive; a portable way to carry computer files.
