Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Command

by Robert Ludlum; Paul Garrison

  “Here he comes.”

  Kincaid watched from inside the van, through the open window on the driver’s side, as the two cops executed a thoroughly professional takedown. They waited until Van Pelt stepped out of the camper’s cab. Then flashed their badges and drew their weapons.

  Caught flat-footed in what Kincaid assumed Van Pelt must be guessing was some sort of police sting, the big South African did not resist. He turned around as the cops ordered with the resigned expression of a man who knew that expensive attorneys would shortly rally to his defense and placed his big hands on the hood of the Toyota. Doris kicked his feet apart, without getting too close, and covered him with her empty pistol. Mary patted him down. She removed a gun from a belly holster and another from the small of his back. More evidence, Kincaid thought, of SR’s long reach. Moments after passing through airport security, the operative had gotten fully equipped.

  Kincaid raised her own weapon now that Mary had a loaded gun in her hand. But the Australian detective continued the procedure as if this were an ordinary arrest. She clamped a cuff on Van Pelt’s left wrist and told him to bring his hands together. Van Pelt obeyed, sliding his bandaged right arm across the hood. But just when the cops felt safe was the most dangerous moment.

  Kincaid yelled, “Heads-up!”

  The South African mercenary exploded into motion, straightening up and swinging both arms wide, knocking both women to the ground and lunging for his guns, which had fallen to the pavement.

  Kincaid fired through the open window. But Van Pelt was still in motion and the Tomcat lay too small in her hand to shoot accurately at any distance. The slug fanned Van Pelt’s face. Startled by lead flying from an unexpected direction, he jumped back from reaching for his own guns, grabbed one of the Glocks that the cops had dropped, and dove behind the camper. In the seconds it took Kincaid to get out of the van, the Securité Referral operative leaped the sawhorses and bounded up the stairs to the Harbour Bridge.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Kincaid vaulted the barricade and chased after Van Pelt, two steps at a time.

  When Cons Ops used to bring her in to master-class the pick of the new agents, she always warned the women that they faced one real disadvantage: “We may be faster than men,” she told them, “and more observant, but we’re shorter.” Here it was with a vengeance.

  The SR agent was a foot taller than she and in just as good condition. Kincaid climbed two steps at a time. Van Pelt pulled ahead in bounds of three and four as if she were standing still. She couldn’t see him when she got to the top of the stairs and found herself on a lit pedestrian walkway enclosed by a high mesh fence topped by three strands of barbed wire to stop suicide jumpers.

  Kincaid climbed onto the handrail to see farther. It was nearly bright as day. The bridge deck and the stone pylons that bracketed the arch were floodlit. Architecture lights rimmed the enormous steel truss as it curved into the night sky, powerful lamps illuminated huge flags at the top of the arch, and low-hanging clouds reflected the glow of the city’s buildings on both sides of the harbor. She clung to the mesh fence and searched the 150-foot-wide deck. Traffic was scant. A smattering of cars and trucks sped by on six lanes of highway. A train rumbled along one of two railroad lines. Cyclists flickered on the bike path, and she saw a second enclosed pedestrian path on the far side, which, unlike the one she was on, was open to walkers. The fence was high. Van Pelt was probably still on this footpath. But in which direction was he running? Across the water to the Central Business District or—

  There!

  In a splash of lamplight in front of the pylon where the arch started to span the harbor, he was running toward the water. She jumped down and ran after him.

  Her view along the normally straight footpath was blocked by the construction work and he repeatedly disappeared behind sheds, work platforms, and stacks of material. There! She saw him again. But it was hopeless; he was still drawing ahead. The Central Business District was only a mile across the water. Once he reached the stairs on the other side, he would vanish into the city while she was still pounding across the bridge.

  All of a sudden, he stopped. Kincaid put on a burst of speed, swiftly halving the distance between them. She saw ahead of him a blue flasher. It was right on the pedestrian path. Police? Van Pelt seemed to think so. He jumped onto the fence and started climbing the wire mesh.

  At the top, where the mesh started to curve inward under two rows of barbed wire, he gripped the wire between the barbs. Then he swung his feet high in the air like a trapeze artist, flipped himself upright, and landed on the wire. Pinwheeling his arms to catch his balance two hundred feet above the black water, the South African pulled himself onto the girder above him and disappeared inside the massive steel web of ties, struts, plates, and flanges riveted into countless triangles that joined to form the trusses that shaped the arch.

  Kincaid saw that the flashing light drawing nearer was a two-man police bicycle patrol. She had an instant to act before they saw her. She climbed up the fence as Van Pelt had, jumped for the top strand of wire, gripped between the barbs and flipped herself skyward as he had, got her feet under her, and used the wire’s springiness to bounce in a long jump to the girder.

  She caught the edge with her fingers. The steel was freshly painted, slippery as a stack of plastic bags, and she lost her grip and started to fall backward. A sheet metal sign warned people not to climb on the bridge. She grabbed it. It sliced into her fingers. She gripped hard and pulled herself onto the girder.

  It was oddly quiet inside the maze of steel, and much darker. What faint light there was came from beams and shafts that penetrated the openings between struts and plates and cast huge shadows.

  Suddenly she heard Van Pelt high above her, pounding on metal steps. He had found an interior staircase that zigzagged up into the web. Kincaid located it and went up after him. The flights of steps were narrow. Here and there they ended at the foot of a steel ladder, which in turn joined at the next level another flight of steps.

  Kincaid was guessing that Van Pelt thought she was another cop, the Aussies’ backup. And if he believed he had been caught in a sting he had to assume that there were cops everywhere. At least it looked that way. He wasn’t even wasting time looking back. The longer he thought that way, the better. He was in for a surprise when he saw who she was. His second surprise would be discovering that he was carrying an empty gun.

  She heard his feet pounding the metal.

  The stairs were so narrow that her smaller size was now an advantage. She could climb faster than he could. She heard him cry out in pain. He must have banged his head on a projecting step or one of the many knobs of steel projecting from the girder. She grazed one herself as she ran from one flight to the next, but she couldn’t slow down or he would escape.

  Her eyes were adjusting to the light. Or perhaps more light penetrated as she climbed and the structure grew more airy. The top of a flight revealed another ladder. She climbed it, raced up another flight of stairs, and rounded a tight corner bounded by massive plates of riveted steel. Van Pelt was standing in it, facing the top of the stairs. He had his left arm pressed against his torso, in the classic shooter stance protecting vital organs. In his right hand he was aiming the Glock at Kincaid’s face.

  She pawed for the gun she had pocketed in order to climb with both hands.

  He pulled the trigger twice.

  “Bring bullets next time, asshole.”

  Van Pelt got over the shock of firing an empty pistol instantly. “You think you can stop me with that?” He lunged at her.

  “Kneecapping’ll do it,” Kincaid said, trying to steady the little gun in hands that were wet again with blood from her wrists and firing twice at his knee. She heard him cry out, but he slung his empty weapon underarm in her face. It caromed off her skull as she ducked, slicing her scalp. Before she could fire again he had bolted around the next corner and was pounding the next stairs.

  She knew she had hit him, but
not in the knee or he wouldn’t be running like that. She slipped on something wet and fell hard. Righting herself on the steps, she felt the wet she had slipped on. Sticky blood—his this time. He wouldn’t get far.

  The stairs and ladders stopped with no warning. She looked up, saw the glowing sky, saw the moving silhouette of Van Pelt climbing hand over hand up an improvised ladder of triangular cutouts in the girders. There was a sudden lull in the wind that whistled through the steel, and she could hear his laboring breath. But he was climbing fast, undaunted by whatever wound she had dealt him, and she saw no clear shot through the steel.

  Pocketing the gun again, she felt for hand- and toeholds in the openings between the ties and struts that formed the panel he was climbing and started up after him. Something stung her eyes. His blood was dripping down on her, she thought at first. But no, her own blood was trickling from her scalp. She tried to brush it away with her sleeve and kept climbing, her breath coming short from exertion.

  She heard voices. Numerous voices. Was she hallucinating? It sounded like people calling to each other. Not cops, not pursuit, but people having fun. Maybe she was hallucinating. Her head hurt and she was sure as hell breathing hard, slipping into oxygen deficit, climbing hand over hand, foot over foot, like Spider-Man, minus the spidey juice that made him stronger than humans. Chill! Stay with this!

  She concentrated on the endless task of lifting leaden arms and legs in a steady rhythm while trying to stay alert for another ambush. She had to remember to look up. High above her, Van Pelt appeared to be emerging from water. He had reached the top. He was climbing out of the steel into the air. She heard the voices, again—frightened now, shouts, a cry of pain, and then the pounding of Van Pelt running again.

  She reached the top. She swung herself up off the girder onto a narrow windswept catwalk. The slope of the arch curved down behind her. People yelled. She turned and looked up and saw the arch still curving higher into the sky. The people were between her and the summit—a crowd of eight in identical jumpsuits. They wore radio headsets and were tethered to a cable beside the catwalk. Bridge climbers, she realized.

  The Sydney Bridge Climb was advertised on the plane and in the airport. Groups of tourists were escorted to the top of the bridge to enjoy the stunning view and have their pictures taken above the beautiful city. Two of them were slumped unconscious on the catwalk, laid out by Van Pelt. He had broken past them and was racing toward the top.

  A girl saw Kincaid and screamed.

  “There’s another one!”

  Kincaid ran straight at them, pointed to the side she was going to pass, and ordered in a shout louder than the wind, “Disperse!”

  The tourists shrank from the sight of a determined woman with blood streaming down her face. She blasted past them.

  She saw Van Pelt fifty feet ahead, running like the wind.

  The bastard was home free, running fast and easy, untroubled by his wound, and again taking advantage of being so much faster than she. A second climbing party suddenly materialized ahead of him, between him and the crest. The leader was shouting into a walkie-talkie. Without hesitating, Van Pelt jumped from the catwalk to the girders that traversed the bridge and ran, balancing himself hundreds of feet over the roadway and train tracks, racing across them to the opposite arch.

  Kincaid followed. Her heart soared. She had better balance. She could run faster on the girders. In fact, the faster she ran the better her balance—as long as she didn’t miss a step and plunge a foot through a hole in the steel. He was picking his way more slowly, tiring, limping, stiffening up like a man afraid of falling. She was only twenty feet behind when the SR mercenary reached the far arch and scrambled onto its catwalk. His way was clear. There was nothing between him and the summit and when he crested it and started down he would go even faster. Kincaid reached the catwalk, scrambled over the rail, and ran after him.

  A lone figure appeared at the top of the arch.

  Kincaid blinked, gasping for breath, half-blinded by her own blood, thoroughly confused. The tourists’ voices had been weirdly hallucinatory. What she thought she saw now was even stranger. Hunched over a mobile phone, peering myopically through wire reading glasses at the yellow glow of a Google Map, the lone figure looked like a bridge climber who had somehow gotten lost, untethered from his group at the top of the bridge 450 feet above Sydney Harbour. He looked up from his phone at the sound of their pounding feet and removed his reading glasses as if to take a better look at the enormous Van Pelt charging the narrow catwalk straight at him. He slipped his glasses into his pocket, put his phone in another, and stood up straight.

  “Janson!” The sight of his innocent specs and the span of his shoulders sent an invigorating blast of adrenaline through her arms and legs. No way she would let Paul Janson beat her to the catch. Kincaid summoned her last reserves for a final burst of speed to tackle Van Pelt’s ankles.

  Van Pelt thrust his right shoulder forward like a battering ram. A loud yell stormed from his lips, a feral howl of destruction. He hurled his left hand in a pile driver blow with all his running weight behind it.

  Paul Janson slid inside the arc of the mercenary’s fist, and Kincaid knew she had lost the race. But she had to admit that the traditional prizefighter punch that her partner chose from his close-combat arsenal was a thing of awesome beauty. With a synchronized explosion of footwork, hip pivot, and body momentum, the hand that had pocketed his mobile phone closed into a fist and flew with precisely directed energy. Quick as flame, smooth as oil, it traveled the shortest possible distance to strike the running man’s jaw with the audible crunch of a meat cleaver and lifted him over the guardrail and into thin air.

  The SR mercenary fell with a scream of astonishment.

  Plunging toward the water far below, wheeling through the beams of light that decorated the arch and illuminated the highways on the deck, buffeted by the wind and drifting like a kite, Hadrian Van Pelt took a full seven seconds to fall 450 feet.

  Doubled over, Kincaid gasped, “I almost had him.”

  * * *

  PAUL JANSON LAUGHED, giddy with relief to have her back safe. “What in hell did you think you would do with him when you caught him? He outweighed you by a hundred pounds.”

  “His gun was empty— Sweet Jesus, look at that son of a bitch!”

  As Van Pelt’s falling body dropped through the last band of light, they saw him twist around and turn a somersault in the air. With his arms held high and his feet pointed down, he knifed cleanly into the black water.

  Janson grabbed his phone, switched off the Google Map, and touched Redial.

  “… Me again. A man just jumped off the Harbour Bridge, dead center. He cut the water clean with his feet, so he could have survived.… Tall, blond hair, broad shoulders, right arm in a bandage. Confirmation would be appreciated.”

  He told Kincaid, “My friend with the Australian Crime Commission says sharks came back when Sydney cleaned up the pollution. Your boy just jumped into a harbor full of bulls and great whites.”

  “Poor sharks.”

  “There’s the harbor patrol.”

  “Good. This time I want to see a body.”

  Blue flashing lights were setting out from both North and South Sydney shores and racing toward the center of the mile-wide strait between Milsons Point and the Central Business District. Janson handed Kincaid a mini water bottle from his windbreaker. As she gulped gratefully, he spit on a handkerchief and wiped the blood from her face.

  “Ditch that gun in case we run into the cops.”

  Kincaid threw Mikie’s Tomcat into the harbor. “Where to?”

  “Canberra. My friend on the commission traced Dr. Flannigan to a package tour. I have people watching his hotel.”

  They walked down the arch, side by side, bumping shoulders like a couple heading home from a late-night date.

  “Paul?”

  Janson leaned close to hear her over the wind.“What is it?”

  “Don’t you
think that SR is going to way too much trouble for revenge? They had a whole program in place to nail me. Plus, what they did to our phones? No professional wastes that kind of energy on payback.”

  “They could be doing it for the money. What if someone hired SR to hunt us?”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever hired SR to hunt the doctor.”

  “Why?”

  Janson had been weighing that question since Securité Referral had hacked their phones. “Clearly, we’ve threatened somebody.”

  “We’ve been hired to capture Iboga. That threatens Iboga and SR.”

  “Yes, but Iboga hasn’t the assets to hound us.”

  “SR sure as hell has.”

  “Yes, but what if SR is essentially what they appear to be—hired guns doing a job?”

  “Like us.”

  “In essence,” Janson agreed. “We’re paid by Ferdinand Poe to capture Iboga and we’re paid by ASC to rescue the doctor. SR is paid by somebody to protect Iboga and kill the doctor.”

  “Are you thinking we threatened the same people the doctor did?”

  “I’m thinking what I’ve been thinking all along. We can kill two birds with one stone when we grab the doctor. Even if he doesn’t know who is hunting him, Dr. Flannigan must have a good guess why. We can work it back to who.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  I rented a bicycle,” the blonde told Terry Flannigan when he called her cell phone. She had a breathless little-girl voice and she sounded very excited. She had actually gasped like a teenager when she heard his voice. “Canberra’s the most wonderful city for riding a bike. I’ve been riding every day. But I had a feeling you would call today, so I put a picnic in my basket.”

  “I’m not exactly in bike shape,” Flannigan admitted freely. He was a firm believer in warning young women not to expect a lot when he took his shirt off.

  “There aren’t any hills. Just flat, wonderful paths. They go all around the lakes and miles and miles out into the countryside. There are private spots where you can lie in the grass all by yourself.”