The Bourne Imperative

by Robert Ludlum

  Rifle shots aimed in his direction sent him scuttling toward the shelter of the copse of pines; as one struck close to his left shoulder, he gave a shocked cry and bucked his body as if hit. Biting the inside of his mouth, he allowed the warmth to fill his mouth, then spat out several globs of blood as he dragged himself between the boles of two trees.

  Once hidden, he pulled a pair of high-powered field glasses out of his backpack. Robbinet had seen to it that everything he had asked for was inside. Bourne quartered the immediate vicinity, looking for any overt sign of more of Maceo Encarnación’s people. Inevitably, his attention was drawn back to the low rise. They knew he had survived; now they would think he was wounded. They wouldn’t let him leave here alive, of that he had no doubt. And yet, beyond the trees there was no cover for him, even if he circled around to either the left or the right. Hidden and impregnable: They had chosen the perfect spot from which to observe and attack. No matter. Now that they thought him wounded, they’d come to him. He required only patience now, watching and listening for them to step into his copse of trees.

  While he waited, he wondered how they had arrived here. He doubted they had trekked, and the rise was too small to hide a vehicle. He put the field glasses back up to his eyes, looking for a bit of camouflage. He found it off to the left, about a thousand yards from where they were hunkered down.

  He had just confirmed the outline when he picked up the soft crunch of boots through snow. Not knowing how many men Encarnación had sent against him, he began to move toward the sound, which was repeated again and again at cautious intervals.

  The man was following the bloody trail he had seeded. Bourne looked around at the pines. Though they had relatively soft wood and did not have ideal branch structure, he managed to find one that was suitable. Reaching up, he launched himself through the forest of needles, climbing quickly so as not to put stress on any one branch for long.

  He watched the man come into view. He was holding a QBZ-95 assault rifle at the ready. Even before Bourne glimpsed his uniform, he knew from the QBZ that the man stalking him was a member of the Chinese military. So Minister Ouyang had a presence here.

  At the last instant, Bourne gathered himself, dropped down onto the soldier, drove his fist into the back of his neck, and, as he turned, stumbling, took hold of his head and slammed it into the trunk of the tree. The soldier dropped like a stone, blood streaming from nose and eyes. It seeped through his hair where the skull was cracked. Bourne considered switching clothes with the soldier, but the man was too short.

  Scooping up the QBZ, Bourne set off after the others who, he surmised, had entered the copse of trees from different directions. The QBZ was the newest Chinese assault rifle, but Bourne found it an awkward weapon, mainly due to the large 30-round magazine sitting just behind the trigger guard, but its cold, hammer-forged barrel, though short, made it exceptionally accurate.

  With his back against the trunk of a tree, Bourne stopped, listening intently. He heard nothing. Maceo Encarnación had a head start on him; he had no time to play an extended game of cat-and-mouse with these people.

  He fired a short burst from the QBZ into the trees on his right, then sprinted to his left. Sure enough, the fire drew other soldiers. They had recognized the firing sound of the QBZ and assumed their compatriot had gotten a bead on their quarry.

  Bourne took one down with his second burst of fire, but the third eluded the spray of bullets. He had lost the element of surprise, but he had gained the knowledge that there were only three soldiers in the copse with him.

  He took a reading on the last place he had glimpsed the third soldier; taller and bigger than the other two, the soldier had scrambled away to Bourne’s right, so he circled around to his left to come upon him from the opposite direction.

  A burst of fire almost took his head off as he dived onto the bed of spent needles. More shots, nearer now, and he rolled away. The soldier had obviously considered Bourne’s strategy and, once out of sight, had reversed course, heading left to intercept him. His maneuver had almost worked, but now Bourne knew exactly where he was. Aiming the barrel of the QBZ high, he fired, shredding a fistful of branches, which came showering down onto the spot where the soldier crouched. Bourne was ready when he leaped up, firing, the bullets slamming into the soldier’s left shoulder, twisting him off his feet. He struck the trunk of a tree, which kept him on his feet. As Bourne fired again, he darted away. Bourne fired again, but came to the end of the cartridge. He didn’t have a replacement. Throwing the weapon away, he dug into his backpack while taking off after the lone remaining soldier.

  The copse was suddenly very quiet. The stench of the rifles’ fire hung in the air like mist. Crouching down, Bourne pushed forward from tree to tree. Bullets flew at him, striking so close to him he could feel the brush of air they displaced. He sprinted toward the flare of the weapon, and the instant he saw the soldier, he threw the knife he had extracted from the backpack.

  The soldier fired, but the bullets went upward into the sky as he crashed backward, the knife buried hilt-deep in the left side of his chest. Cautiously, Bourne went to him, kicked his weapon away, then crouched down beside him. Confirming that he was dead, he quickly stripped off the soldier’s clothes, then his own. The uniform was an acceptable fit. There was blood on the shirt, but this could be easily explained after a pitched battle in the pines.

  Taking up the dead soldier’s rifle, he struck out for the edge of the copse closest to the rise behind which the soldiers had attacked the Jeep. Rounding the left edge of the rise, he picked up the abandoned rocket launcher and saw that it had been loaded in case the first rocket missed. Keeping it with him, he quartered the area. Finding no other soldiers, he headed for the camouflaged vehicle. Dressed as he was, it wouldn’t do to return to camp on foot.

  He reached the vehicle and, speculating on the curious presence of Chinese soldiers so close to a top secret Israeli base guarded by Mossad, pulled off the opaque camo material, only to come face-to-face with a plainclothesman, armed with an Israeli Tavor TAR-21, small, lethal, accurate, like everything Mossad. The agent, who had obviously driven the Chinese soldiers to the site, whipped the barrel of the Tavor toward Bourne’s face.

  30

  Colonel Ari Ben David stood facing Maceo Encarnación, and all the resentment and diminishment he had stored up from the moment he had entered into talks with the Mexican entrepreneur bubbled poisonously into his throat like mercury. He detested dealing with intermediaries, which, in this case, Maceo Encarnación was, but he detested even more having to deal with the Chinese, in the form of Minister Ouyang. He’d had no choice, a bitter circumstance he had divulged to Maceo Encarnación along about their third meeting.

  It was the Mexican who had come up with the idea. This should have softened Ben David’s feelings toward Encarnación, but it did not. On the contrary, the proposed solution was so ingenious, so perfect, that Ben David felt only resentment that he hadn’t thought of it. From that moment on, he had been beholden to Maceo Encarnación.

  Colonel Ben David, bitter by birth, paranoid by nature, persecuted by dint of both his nationality and his religion, was incapable of any positive emotion whatsoever. He was enraged that Minister Ouyang was in possession of incriminating evidence that, should it find its way to either Dani Amit or the Director, would not only end his career in Mossad, but also see him incarcerated for the rest of his life. He and Ilan Halevy had collaborated on terminations outside the sanctioned purview of Mossad. They had made tens of thousands by Ben David’s soliciting kill requests from individuals and the Babylonian’s enacting the murders. They had made one mistake: They had left a paper trail regarding the first hit. How Minister Ouyang had come into possession of the information, Ben David did not know. The fact was that he had it and was using it to get what he wanted from Ben David: namely, the modified SILEX formula the scientists at Dahr El Ahmar had perfected, which would allow China accelerated access to nuclear fuel and weapons.

&
nbsp; Now, breaking his brief reverie, Colonel Ben David looked from Maceo Encarnación to Colonel Han Cong, commander of the six-man cadre Minister Ouyang had sent as his representatives.

  “Your report, Colonel?” he said.

  “The enemy Jeep has been destroyed,” Han said.

  Maceo Encarnación addressed himself to the Chinese. “Bourne and the driver?”

  “The deaths have not yet been confirmed.”

  “And why would that be?” Ben David asked.

  Colonel Han cleared his throat. “I have not yet heard from my men.”

  At once Ben David lost interest in him. He turned to Maceo Encarnación. “They’re dead,” he said. “Bourne is coming.”

  “Excuse me,” Colonel Han said. “How do you know that?”

  A slow smile spread across Colonel Ben David’s face, as if he had been waiting for that question. “I know Bourne, Colonel Han.”

  Colonel Han frowned. “But three soldiers, highly trained and heavily armed…”

  “I know what Bourne is capable of.” Ben David touched the livid scar on the side of his face. “Intimately.”

  The dubious expression on Han’s face turned into a shrug. “Then we should complete our transaction as swiftly as possible.” He nodded to Maceo Encarnación, who hefted a hard-sided suitcase onto the trestle table. The fingerprint lock was duly opened, the top swung back, and the thirty million American dollars were revealed.

  “It’s all there. You have Minister Ouyang’s word.” Colonel Han held out his hand. “Now the formula.”

  Ben David dug into the pocket of his fatigues and drew out a USB drive, which he placed in the Chinese’s palm. “It’s all there,” he said dryly. “You have my word.”

  The Mossad agent’s hesitation on first seeing the Chinese uniform gave Bourne the chance to duck away.

  Dropping the launcher, he grabbed the agent by the front of his vest and flung him out of the vehicle onto the ground in a flurry of snow. The agent rolled onto his back, firing the Tavor, almost severing Bourne’s head from his neck. The sting of the bullets’ heat burned Bourne’s cheek as he jabbed the butt of his QBZ down onto the agent’s sternum. The agent smashed the butt of his own weapon against Bourne’s, deflecting it at the last instant so that it slipped off his ribs and onto the ground. Kicking upward, he struck Bourne’s left hip, throwing him off balance.

  Bouncing to his feet, he came at Bourne, driving the Tavor crosswise into Bourne’s neck, sending him stumbling into the side of the vehicle. The agent bent him backward as he pressed the weapon so hard into Bourne’s throat that all air was cut off. Grinning with the effort, he bore down, his focus narrowing to his intent as the moment of his target’s death approached.

  It was this intent, so fervent, that caused him to miss Bourne’s right heel hooking into his. As Bourne drew back his leg, the agent lost his balance. But even as he fell, he swung the Tavor around, aiming it at Bourne’s chest. He pulled the trigger as he landed, the bullets firing wide when Bourne smashed the butt of his weapon into the agent’s face. The second strike shattered his sternum and rib cage, driving a rib through his chest. It must have punctured a lung because pink foam boiled between the agent’s lips, followed by a gout of blood, thick and clotted.

  Colonel Han, having given no indication that he had registered Ben David’s barb, inserted the drive into his tablet and switched it on.

  Maceo Encarnación’s lips twitched. “Believe it or not, Colonel Han is an expert in physics and in laser excitation in particular.”

  The two men watched as Colonel Han brought up the files on the USB drive and scanned them.

  At that moment, Colonel Ben David’s satphone buzzed. He listened for a moment, the frown on his face deepening. “No, do nothing. Just keep him in sight.” He closed the connection before saying, “Our vehicle has been sighted. Only one man is in it.”

  “Bourne?” Maceo Encarnación said.

  “He’s wearing Dov’s uniform.” Ben David shook his head. “But I doubt it’s Dov.” He turned to the Chinese. “Colonel Han, I believe it’s past time for you to leave.”

  Han looked up from his scrutiny of the equations, nodded, and closed down his tablet. Pocketing the USB drive and sticking the tablet under his arm, he nodded curtly to the two men, then stepped smartly out of Ben David’s field tent.

  Bourne, wearing the agent’s clothes, drove the vehicle toward the Mossad encampment outside Dahr El Ahmar. The loaded launcher lay in the footwell behind him. He had a clear idea of the layout of the camp, having seen it from the air on his previous visit with Rebeka.

  He found his mind, normally so calculating and pragmatic, turning back to Rebeka. He remembered the first time he had seen her, on the commercial flight to Damascus, a flight attendant about whom swirled a mystery he wanted to unravel. It was only later that she revealed herself as a Mossad agent. During their joint assault on the terrorist Semid Abdul-Qahhar’s stronghold, she had proved herself to be fierce, intelligent, and brave. He felt her loss as keenly as if Maceo Encarnación had knifed him in the ribs. Constanza Camargo had told him that Maceo Encarnación was protected by the ancient Aztec gods, but the truth as he knew it now was something both more mundane and more sinister. Maceo Encarnación was protected by all those people he had seduced, suborned, coerced, tricked, and beaten into submission. Armor enough for the modern world.

  As he drove, Bourne became aware of sharp glinted sunlight reflected off coated glass lenses. He was being observed by the Mossad, by Maceo Encarnación’s men, or by what was left of the Chinese military contingent.

  Maceo Encarnación followed Colonel Han out of Ben David’s tent, walking beside him as he headed for the aircraft that would take him and what remained of his cadre back to Beijing, where Minister Ouyang waited for the bounty for which he had delivered thirty million to Maceo Encarnación.

  “You played your part well,” Colonel Han said in the condescending tone of the true Celestial that set Maceo Encarnación’s teeth on edge.

  Encarnación, imagining himself swinging a machete in the powerful horizontal arc that would sever Colonel Han’s head from his body, replied, “I’ll take my fee now.”

  Colonel Han, looking straight ahead as if he walked alone, tugged out a thick envelope from the inside breast pocket of his tunic. He held it, apparently not ready to hand it over. “What is it you did to deserve this generous payment, Encarnación?”

  Feeling the blood rushing through his head, Maceo Encarnación pressed his fingertips to his temple where he could feel a distended vein beating like a second heart. He calmed himself before answering. “I acted as the go-between. I introduced Minister Ouyang to Colonel Ben David and oversaw the negotiations. Ouyang never would have got to Ben David without me.”

  “He might have.” Colonel Han slapped the envelope against his knuckles. “Minister Ouyang is both powerful and resourceful.” He shrugged, as if he had his orders to fulfill even though he did not agree with them. He held out the envelope, and Maceo Encarnación, made to feel like a paid employee instead of a partner, took the envelope and, in the Colonel’s presence, laboriously counted the bills.

  “The five million is all there,” Han said in precisely the same voice he had used inside Ben David’s tent.

  “But is it real?” Maceo Encarnación removed three bills at random and, using eyedroppers from tiny vials he carried, subjected them to two chemical tests.

  “Satisfied?” Han said with a wry smile. “They’re real. Unlike the thirty million you delivered to the Zionist Ben David. He sold his precious formula for a suitcase full of counterfeit money.”

  With a minimum of effort, Maceo Encarnación produced a smile of complicity. “But the bills are so well made it will take him some time to realize that he has been swindled.”

  “And by then,” Han said triumphantly, “it will already be too late.”

  His plane was dead ahead. He signaled to his three remaining soldiers and they climbed on board.

  “W
hat about your other men?” Maceo Encarnación asked. “Don’t you want to know whether they’re dead or alive?”

  “Once Bourne was spotted, they became a liability.”

  “Wasn’t stopping Bourne part of your mission?”

  “An adjunct.” Colonel Han began to mount the stairs up to the plane. “I have the formula. That’s all that matters.”

  “Not to Minister Ouyang.”

  “No,” Colonel Han said. “But it is to my superior, General Hwang Liqun.”

  So saying, Han mounted the steps, disappearing inside the fuselage of the plane. A moment later, one of his soldiers swung the door closed, locking it from inside. The engines started up, obliging Maceo Encarnación to step backward at a rapid pace. He wasn’t quick enough to avoid getting a face full of jet fuel backwash. Particles flew into his eyes, making them tear. He turned then, jogging back to Ben David’s tent.

  Bourne heard the roar of jet engines, and he diverted the vehicle in that direction. If a plane was taking off, it was a sure bet that the deal for the SILEX formula had been concluded. He was too late.

  Stepping hard on the accelerator, he roared through the periphery of the camp, shattering a wooden barrier and causing agents to fire at him even as they scattered out of the way. Seeing the jet, he accelerated away from them. It was a civilian plane with Chinese markings.

  These thoughts passed through Bourne’s mind like swiftly flying birds as he dug in his backpack. He was nearing the plane, which had taxied to the head of the makeshift runway and now sat, panting like a chained animal impatient to be released. He turned the vehicle hard to his left, paralleling the plane’s path. Shots were being fired off to his left, and he ducked down as bullets spanged into the side of his vehicle.