He had seen, though, that the driver was wearing a cap, its long bill pulled low—an odd choice for someone driving at night, even on a highway with as many frequent overhead lights as this one.
Tom determined that the Bronco was pulling ahead, working to pass them, but before he could communicate that, the Denali veered suddenly to the right, making the exit at the last possible moment.
As the two vehicles diverged, the Bronco increased its speed.
More than that, it changed lanes, moving through the center and into the far right lane.
Racing for the next available exit.
The Denali followed the exit ramp’s sharp curve, and the Bronco was gone from sight.
The man beside Tom announced, “I saw the driver bring up a cell phone. I saw the display light up. He was making a call.”
The driver addressed his men. “Keep a lookout.”
Silence filled the interior again. Within a few minutes, the Denali had crossed into a light rain.
The Merritt Parkway’s four lanes were divided into two northeast-bound and two southwest-bound lanes.
At certain points a concrete barrier set upon a narrow median of grass separated them, and at other points there was a small barrier fence made of steel posts and wooden planks.
In either case, there would be little room for evasive action, should it become necessary.
Since the Merritt was a winding road, with many crests and sudden dips, anyone seeking to come up behind the Denali unseen could do so easily enough.
Tom remained keenly aware of this as he watched several exits come and go.
It was as the Denali was approaching the first no-man’s-land—a stretch of a few miles that ran through a secluded wooded area, the terrain of which caused the two-lane road to crest several rises and follow numerous bends—that the man behind Tom spoke.
“Headlights,” he said.
Eleven
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror. “It’s only been a few minutes. Could he have doubled back and gotten behind us that quickly?”
No one answered.
The man beside Tom was looking back as well. “They’re sedan lights. You can tell by the height relative to the road.”
A moment of silence fell, all eyes but Tom’s on the vehicle behind them.
He was watching the eyes of the driver, who was splitting his attention between the road ahead and the rearview mirror.
Tom said to him, “You have plenty of eyes on the headlights. Pay attention to the road.”
The driver locked eyes with him briefly, then grudgingly looked ahead.
“It’s keeping its distance,” the man in the back observed.
The driver asked, “Is it just the one vehicle?”
“As far as I can tell.”
Garrick reached for his backpack, opened it, and removed the two halves of his AR-15.
Within seconds he had them assembled, then slapped in a mag and pulled and released the charging handle to chamber a round.
He turned to look back at Tom, was about to say something to him when a flash of white light filled the SUV’s interior.
At first Tom thought it was lightning, but the sound that struck his ears immediately after it was no thunderclap.
It was the sound of an explosion coming from beneath the SUV, and it triggered a deafening, steady ringing deep in Tom’s ears.
He felt a wave of supercompressed air hit him, moving both through him and past him at the same instant, pressing the air from his lungs and causing his mind to reel like a gyroscope.
Despite the sudden confusion that gripped him and the sickening wave of nausea that spread through him as his organs vibrated, Tom sensed the nose of the Denali dropping downward and knew that at least one of its front tires had been torn away by the blast of some kind of attached explosive device.
The front bumper made contact with the pavement, and the friction it encountered provided a pivot point that transformed the vehicle’s forward motion into a sudden, violent spin.
The Denali turned counterclockwise several times, but the spin stopped as the vehicle traversed the shoulder and headed off the road backward at a high rate of speed.
For a second the SUV was crossing uneven terrain, shaking its occupants, and then the rough ride ended almost as instantly as it had begun, though this wasn’t because the vehicle had come to a rest but rather because it had gone airborne.
A strange lull of several seconds of near-weightlessness ended as the Denali found ground again and began to crash through brush and trees as it descended at a steep angle into a deep roadside ditch.
The contents of the SUV that weren’t strapped in took flight—carbines were ripped from hands; weapon cases, steel ammo cans, and backpacks were flung first into the air, then in near unison slammed against the ceiling once the vehicle was upside down, only to be flung into the air again as the roll continued.
The man beside Tom, who had unfastened his seat belt just prior to the crash, fared no better.
He was being thrown around the interior like a rag doll.
His faculties assaulted to the point of overload, Tom sensed that he was on the verge of losing consciousness.
Still, he managed somehow to observe tree limbs puncturing windows, and from the corner of his eye he kept track of the man beside him being tossed around by each successive rollover.
Then, without warning, that man was ejected from the vehicle.
To Tom, it looked less like he had been thrown through the broken window beside him and more like he had been pulled out by some unseen force.
Just like that the man was gone, and Tom blacked out.
Twelve
Tom woke to the smell of rain, a cold mist on his face.
Opening his eyes, he saw only darkness, but then the silhouette of his own hands hanging in front of him eventually came into focus.
The only source of illumination inside the cabin was the faint glow of the still-running dashboard lights.
It took a moment for Tom to realize that he was upside down, and then another before he could even think of what to do about that.
The first action he took was to reach up for the pocket that contained his folding knife. Withdrawing it and opening it with one hand, he carefully cut himself free of his seat belt—the shoulder strap first, then the lap belt.
He placed his left elbow against the ceiling below him to soften his fall, but the instant the serrated blade severed the nylon fabric of the second belt, he dropped fast, landing awkwardly on his left shoulder before rolling over so that he was on his hands and knees.
As far as he could tell, the only pain that registered was from the broken bits of glass digging into his bare hands, but that didn’t necessarily mean there weren’t other injuries.
The important thing right now was that he was able to move his limbs.
Whatever it was that had motivated him to get this far, however, was suddenly gone, and he lingered dumbfounded amid the wreckage surrounding him.
It was only at this point that he became aware again of the ringing deep within his ears. As loud as an alarm, it dominated his limited consciousness.
Like a mythical sea siren, it seemed to pull him farther off course.
He didn’t know how long he’d been stunned into inaction before he’d finally managed to lift his head to look for the other occupants of the SUV, but it struck him that it had taken a while. Glancing toward the back of the vehicle, he saw that the man seated behind him had been impaled by a tree branch that had pierced first the rear window and then the back of the seat into which he was strapped.
The blunt end of the severed branch, a half inch in diameter, protruded from the center of his chest.
From Tom’s position he couldn’t see the dead man’s face, not that he needed to or wanted to, because the shockingly mangled torso was confirmation enough that he was dead.
Beside that man, hanging upside down and limp, was Torres.
Tom said h
er name several times, feebly, but received no reply.
A fast glance at her rising and falling stomach, though, told him that she was alive.
Turning toward the front of the vehicle, he expected to find the driver and Garrick suspended upside down as well, but only seeing the driver caused him to fear that Garrick had been ejected during the rollover as well.
A rush of panic raced through him, and yet he still couldn’t move any faster, nor could he perceive his surroundings without experiencing significant lag time between comprehension and action.
If anything, the space between perception and deed was getting longer.
But out of this chaos came the words he’d relied on often in times of desperate need—the words of his former skipper, James Carrington.
The only way out is through.
All Tom could count on now was his will to survive, and there was clarity enough in that.
He forced himself to determine the best way out—the window nearest to him—before pulling himself across the field of broken bits of glass toward Torres.
He’d only begun to move when he heard a single muffled crack, followed after a beat by several more.
Even in his condition—his hearing severely damaged and his mind spinning—he was able to identify those distant-sounding snaps as small-arms fire.
More than the sound itself, it was the pattern that served to inform Tom.
Tentative at first before opening up.
Bam . . . bam bam . . . bam bam bam bam bam . . .
What was also obvious to him was that more than one weapon was involved.
Looking toward the source of the sounds, he spotted several muzzle flashes, and this was what told him how many shooters there were.
Three—or at least three were currently firing.
The flashes also told him that each shooter was armed with an automatic rifle, though which variant Tom could not yet tell.
Any hope of surviving was dependent on determinations such as this.
Any and all advantages needed to be assessed.
Tom looked up through the path of torn-up woods to the point where the Denali had first taken flight, and parked on that section of the shoulder was a sedan, its running lights on and doors open.
All four doors.
The three shooters, roughly halfway down the steep bank, were firing at something several feet to the right of the overturned Denali.
Looking in that direction, Tom saw a figure crouched behind a large, half-buried rock.
Laying down the suppressing fire that had stalled the advance of the three armed men, the figure was holding a commando-length AR-15.
It was Garrick, his head and face bloodied.
Adrenaline cleared Tom’s mind, and he knew what he needed to do.
And that he needed to do it quickly.
The driver suspended upside down in his seat was closest, so Tom cut him free first.
Crashing down onto the ceiling returned the man to consciousness.
“We’re under attack,” Tom told him.
Hearing those words, the driver was instantly, fully awake.
Tom would have expected no less from one of Raveis’s best.
The two men briefly locked eyes before Tom turned and began to crawl across the glass toward Torres.
As he did this, the driver searched through the clutter of gear for his own carbine.
Tom reached Torres, but positioned as he was—on his right side with his arms stretched forward—there was little he could do to soften her landing once she’d been cut free.
And he knew enough about first aid to know that moving her at all would be dangerous, never mind letting her take a fall like that.
But he had no other choice.
The last overturned vehicle he had occupied had been set on fire by Chechen gang members—thugs passing themselves off as assassins and doing a poor job of it.
Tom had since lived with the threat of reprisal by surviving gang brothers, and there was the chance, however slim, that they were behind this attack.
If so, he had to get Torres out, and fast.
Tom cut through the shoulder strap, then the lap belt, and she fell like deadweight to the ceiling, landing hard. The impact, however, did not cause her to instantly regain consciousness, as it had for the driver.
She was still out cold.
Grabbing her by the collar of her jacket, Tom dragged her with him as he pulled himself by one arm toward his window.
The team leader was straining to reach into the space directly behind the driver’s seat, where his M4 carbine lay amid a pile of ammo cans and backpacks.
After a few seconds, he finally grasped the weapon by its muzzle with his fingers and pulled it toward him.
Seizing it with two hands, he crawled to the driver’s door window and wormed his way through it just enough to get his head outside.
The carbine came through next.
Lying on one shoulder, he flipped the selector switch to full auto, took aim up the bank, and joined the firefight.
Thirteen
Though Garrick had stalled the shooters’ approach, it was the fact that a second man was now firing precise shots from a fixed position that caused the three attackers to scurry for cover.
Two dropped to prone positions behind outcropping rocks, and the third darted behind an intact tree on the edge of the path that had been created by the crashing Denali.
This brief interruption in their attackers’ fire allowed Garrick to rise above the top of the rock, shoulder his AR, and seek out actual targets.
Seeing his chance, Tom scrambled out through the window and onto the rain-soaked ground. Once clear, he reached in for Torres and pulled her through.
Despite the return fire from his teammates, at least one of the shooters had spotted Tom and proceeded to take shots at him.
Tom heard the whizzing sounds from the near misses, and snaps from those rounds that were passing closer.
One of the attackers targeted the front of the Denali, taking out one headlight, then the other.
But these shots weren’t coming from the three on the slope.
A fourth shooter, positioned as overwatch at the top of the bank by the waiting sedan, had joined in.
And he was now targeting Tom, menacing him as he dragged Torres toward the back of the vehicle.
A handful of backward strides was all it took for Tom to get there, and yet for each stride he made, a round was fired.
Despite his haste, Tom took note of the report from that weapon, observing that it was significantly louder than the other weapons being fired.
This indicated that the rifle trained on him was chambered in a caliber larger than 5.56—likely .308.
The rapidity of the shots meant the rifle being used wasn’t a bolt-action variant but rather a semiautomatic, and a semiautomatic chambered in .308 wasn’t the weapon of choice of a skilled sniper.
It was, however, the rifle favored by a DM—the designated marksman of a Special Forces squad.
The more Tom gleaned about his opponents—equipment indicated background, and background indicated level of training—the better he could fight them.
Reaching the rear quarter panel of the Denali, Tom attempted to pull Torres around the corner and behind the vehicle where there was cover, but he stumbled and fell backward into the mud.
Nonetheless, he held on to Torres and, seated, scrambled to pull them both the rest of the way.
Once safely out of the line of fire, he laid her out on the uneven ground and began to skim her head with his fingertips, checking her scalp for lacerations and contusions.
All he found was a good-size egg rising under the skin above the parietal bone on the left side of her skull.
Then he did the same with her neck, examining it carefully before moving to her arms, torso, and finally her legs, sweeping briskly downward with his palms as he searched for indications of serious injury.
Finding none, he leaned over her so his face
hovered above hers, then placed one hand on her shoulder and jostled her as he repeated her name, doing this till her eyelids began to flutter.
It took several seconds, but finally her eyes opened. After another few seconds, Tom saw cognition in them.
“We need you,” he said.
Torres nodded, her eyes on his, but then she heard the sudden burst of gunfire and turned her head sharply toward it.
Reflexively, she reached for the pistol holstered at her appendix.
“We’re going to need more than that,” Tom said.
The broken branch that had impaled the man who’d been seated next to Torres was jutting out through the back window.
Tom maneuvered around it in order to crawl into the rear compartment.
The man’s carbine was still held securely to his torso by a sturdy nylon sling. Tom found the quick-detachment mount located on the buttstock, released it, and pulled the carbine clear of the dead body.
Crawling out backward with the weapon, he knelt beside Torres and handed the M4 off to her, then reached back for his HK, only to find, to his alarm, that his Kydex holster was empty.
Tom began a visual search of his recent footsteps, but he stopped when Torres removed her Glock 19 from its holster and held it for him to take. The trigger was forward, indicating that a round was already chambered.
“You’ll need this,” she said.
He took the pistol, released the mag to check that it was fully loaded, then reinserted it and carefully slid the pistol into the pocket of his raincoat. He helped Torres sit up, positioning her at the rear right corner of the SUV.
Once she was set, he opened her jacket and removed the two backup magazines from their carrier on her left hip.
As he did this, she eased back the M4’s charging handle far enough to confirm that a round was chambered.
“Give me forward suppressing fire,” Tom said. “Once I’m with Garrick, watch me, and when I go right, you go left, understand?”
Torres nodded, though her apprehension was clear.
“We can do this,” Tom said.
She nodded again.
The Shadow Agent Page 8