Korbin, their demolitions expert, had a backpack full of any tools he needed. He was armed with a 9mm in a shoulder holster, but Rae, Jeremy Sunn, Nathan Drake, and Retter would cover his ass if Korbin had to disarm a bomb.
Drake’s beefed-up body dwarfed the bike. His weathered look had been earned in the big house when he took his twin brother’s place in prison after his sibling was conned by a drug lord. That had been on the heels of Drake’s tour of duty as a Special Forces soldier. Sunn had spent his share of time in lockup, but mostly under orders, though he’d come to BAD with his own rap sheet. His blond hair stuck out haphazardly when he removed his helmet that was now hooked on a handlebar.
Rae hadn’t twitched a muscle in a while, her helmet on and latched, backpack slung across her shoulders. Tall, toned, and tough, she wore a thin all-weather suit in black like the other agents.
Retter’s phone beeped through his Bluetooth. He pressed the button. “Go ahead.”
Gotthard said, “Got a location. Chicago. Clark Street Bridge and Lower Wacker. Bomb detonates in twenty-one minutes.”
Ending the call, Retter spoke into his transmitter, passing the information to his team. “Take off, Korbin. We’re right behind you.”
Korbin flipped his face shield down and rolled on his throttle, squealing rubber in a streak as he left.
Retter took off right behind him. Korbin wove between cars then cut over after a truck to take a fast right turn. Retter followed around the same curve, pressing hard and leaning close to knee dragging the pavement. He straightened up quickly before plowing between traffic cluttering every lane ahead.
Korbin sliced over to the sidewalk, which had little foot traffic. Some guy jogging in sweats flew up a set of steps. Korbin zigged and zagged, blaring his horn and missing anyone in the way. The pedestrians he passed had vacated the sidewalk by the time Retter and the other three bikes roared down.
Retter slid around the corner when Wacker Drive turned right. He faced a wall of people running away from the Clark Street Bridge. Gotthard and Joe had contacted local police by now, under the guise of being with the FBI, ordering the police to put out announcements for evacuation of vehicle traffic and pedestrians anywhere near that bridge. Joe would have informed Chicago PD an FBI bomb squad was heading to the scene on motorcycles, which gave Retter and his team a half hour before the PD showed up. Maybe.
If the time for the detonation was accurate a half hour would be plenty of time. Unless they didn’t disarm the bomb.
Retter slammed on his brakes, his back tire coming off the ground, then dropping down. He kicked the stand down and climbed off the bike, pulling out his FBI windbreaker. Rae parked and pulled her matching jacket on, then shouldered a high-powered LaRue Tactical OBR rifle. All four of them plowed through the crowd.
“I’m at the base of the bridge,” Korbin’s voice said calmly in Retter’s earpiece.
He hated fucking bombs.
“Got it,” Korbin muttered, indicating he’d found the bomb. “Still scanning… shit… see a second one.”
Retter stopped at the top of the bridge on the south side, sending Sunn and Drake across to cover the north bank of the river. Rae didn’t slow until she reached the park area below and to the southeast side of the bridge. She had the best vantage point to keep an eye on Korbin’s movement and any unexpected activity beneath the bridge.
“Goddammit,” Korbin said.
Retter said, “What’s wrong?” He leaned over to see Korbin swinging under the bridge, using his hands to carry his weight and the backpack.
“Five, repeat, five bombs.” He was breathing faster with the exertion. “Let me get a look.” Silence for a few seconds, then, “Material appears possibly uranium based, but not a large amount.”
Retter had seen Korbin teaching Rae how to disarm minimally complex bombs in seconds. Let this be quick and simple. “How much time will each one take to disarm?”
“First one might take five minutes. Next ones will be faster.” But Korbin didn’t say how much faster.
Not encouraging.
Retter scanned the mass of panicked people moving away from the bridge and flooding out of the buildings, adding to the chaos. Korbin was one of the very best. Since the bombs didn’t contain much uranium, maybe the team would get lucky and the bombs would turn out to be duds. But amateurs didn’t normally use uranium.
His phone buzzed again. When Gotthard’s voice came through, Retter jumped to the point. “We got five bombs—”
“I know,” Gotthard said. “Our contact sent additional information. Five bombs, and the sniper in Colorado controls the detonation somehow.”
Hunter better find that bastard, and quick. “You have anything else?”
“Yes. Unusual uranium in bombs. Destruction estimate for simultaneous detonation of all five bombs will result in leveling nine square blocks.”
Tens of thousands would die.
Hunter sent a set of confirmation clicks on his radio to let Mako know he’d located the man prowling the grounds around the lodge. The mystery guy with the scar was connected to too many events not to be playing a role in the shooting tonight. When the guy hiked up the mountain ridge on the west side, Hunter sent another message through clicks to let Mako know he was following.
The mystery guy was headed right where Hunter expected Jackson to set up a sniper rifle to shoot the prime minister.
From now on, he’d have to trust that Mako would keep up and shadow Hunter since any radio contact was out.
The mystery guy had no sniper rifle with him, but he moved like he was on the hunt. Was he watching the shooter’s back, searching for Hunter since Jackson was expecting him? By the time Hunter closed in on him two hundred feet up the ridge, he had to make a choice.
He was running out of time.
Nineteen minutes until the hit, and he had no idea where Abbie or the sniper was.
He couldn’t covertly follow this mystery guy any longer. Hunter palmed his 9mm and moved in fast.
The mystery guy swung around a step before Hunter attacked. They went down, hitting rocks and snow. Neither made a sound beyond grunts and the thud of fists hitting bodies. Hunter took a blow to the jaw, ducked, and flipped his weapon in his hand, slamming the guy in the head, sending him to the ground.
He jumped on him before the guy caught his wind and bent a knee into his back. Hunter shoved his weapon inside his waistband and wrenched the guy’s hands behind to bind them with plastic cuffs. He bound his legs next, then flipped him over. “Who are you?”
The guy groaned. “You just fucked up royally.”
“Guess it’s all a matter of perspective. I’m the one with the gun. You’re the one tied up.”
“We’re after the same sniper. You’re letting him take the kill shot.”
What the hell? “Start talking.”
“You’ve got maybe ten minutes to find his location. I scoped the property earlier. The Jackson Chameleon has to be up this ridge another twenty yards. There’s a perfect spot to take his shot when the prime minister starts playing the piano. He’ll be sitting with his back to the windows. The guests were told he’d play at ten o’clock.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Don’t. Blood’ll be on your hands.”
“Who’re you working with?”
“No one. I’m on my own team.”
Hunter had used that line with teammates from BAD. No wonder they looked at him with the same disgust he fumed with as he looked down at this worthless speck of humanity. He didn’t have time to find Mako. If this guy was telling the truth, the killer would take that shot soon. “Why would you tell me any of this?”
“Because you stopped me from getting to him before he makes the hit. He’s the trigger for a bombing tonight.”
Who the fuck was this scar-faced guy?
“Longer you talk to me the less time you have to find him.”
Hunter had no time to deal with him. He yanked off the guy’s tie and used it
as a gag, then shoved him over to the side of the path and raced up the incline.
When he reached the high spot, he used a small handheld infrared device Gotthard had given him to search the area for a heat signature in a prone position… and found it. He couldn’t even send a click to Mako at this point without alerting Jackson too soon. When Hunter got within twenty feet of the shooter he’d lost any chance of approaching silently with so little time. Besides, Jackson was expecting him.
Hunter walked up with his 9mm in hand.
“Got here sooner than I anticipated.” Covered in a white ghillie suit and white knit skullcap, Jackson turned on his side to face Hunter. His index finger remained curled around the trigger of an Accuracy International .300 Win Mag sniper rifle.
“Where’s Abbie?”
“Close. And alive for now.” Jackson looked more ghost than man with his pale face inside all that white clothing. The only color visible was the tip of a blood-birthmark that dripped down the right side of his forehead as if he’d been shot.
I should be so lucky. “What do you want?”
“Aren’t you interested in who’s in my crosshairs?” Jackson asked in the tenor voice of a school bully.
“Prime minister.” Hunter had never wanted to kill anyone as much as he did now. His fingers tensed with the need to choke the life from this one.
“Ah, you did figure out something on your own. I can see the effort it’s taking to restrain yourself, but if you kill me, Abbie dies. You have to know by now that I’m a hemophiliac. Wound me and you lose her, plus anything else you hope to gain from me.”
Hunter had to think like the BAD agent he’d been trained to be and not a man ready to kill this psycho who dared to harm Abbie. “We have agents all over this place. You won’t get out alive. You want to show some good faith, my people will work with you if you have something on the Fratelli to trade and give me the coordinates on the bombing.”
“I didn’t mean I’d surrender to you.” He snorted at that. “And if another agent shows up, I’ll pull this trigger immediately. Besides, your people couldn’t keep me alive long enough to get any information.”
“Yes, we can.”
The sniper checked his watch, then looked back at Hunter. “Like Josephine Silversteen? You must be part of the group that captured her last year. She didn’t even make it to jail before her head exploded like a smashed pumpkin.”
“Wouldn’t take you to jail.” Hunter would enjoy handing this prick over to Joe and Tee. Tee was a tiny, frighteningly beautiful demon when it came to getting information out of a captive. “What Fratelli group are you with?”
“Should be obvious. The UK. That’s not why you’re here.”
“Why am I here?”
“To make a choice, of course.” Jackson pulled his thin lips up to one side, not resembling Abbie in the smallest way. “I’m curious how you’ll negotiate your way out of this tangle.”
“We don’t negotiate, so there are no choices.”
That made Jackson grin. “You should hear me out before you decide. If I kill the prime minister and send confirmation of that in the next twelve minutes then only one city in the United States will suffer, keeping the loss of life down to maybe a few thousand. That would be considered an encore after killing the prime minister, both events of which will result in destroying the fragile communication in progress between the U.S. and UK right now. Your president needs the UK prime minister to vote with the U.S. at the upcoming UN meeting.”
When the shooter paused to check his watch again, Hunter’s skin tightened. He wondered what Jackson was planning besides the shooting. If the sniper’s finger hadn’t been locked around the trigger and the rifle pointed at a room full of innocent people, Hunter would attack. The longer he kept Jackson talking the more time BAD had to get to the bomb if Linette managed to send location coordinates. This prick was sharing nothing.
“If I don’t kill the prime minister,” Jackson continued, looking up again, “then three American cities will be hit, each with more severity than the last, bringing the death toll up over a hundred thousand. Subsequent bombings would come with a message that any other countries willing to support the U.S. would do so at risk of the same fate.”
“Why are you willing to put our country into political and possibly armed conflict with your country?”
“I don’t actually have a country. I just perform a duty.”
“You want me to choose between killing an innocent man and destroying three cities? How about maiming you as an option?”
“There is that, but if you so much as cut me I’ll bleed out. I’m a type-B hemophiliac, the most prolific of free bleeders.” Jackson enjoyed showing off his perfectly white teeth again. “Speaking of blood, if you win our game without killing me, you’ll be able to save Abbie and her mother.”
“Your mother, too.”
“Genetic semantics.”
Hunter wanted to hurt this Jackson for so many reasons, Eliot and Abbie topping the list. But unsuspecting civilians would die by the thousands if he made a wrong decision. He had to find out why the shooter had brought him to this spot. “Are you through laying out the rules?”
The killer consulted his watch again, then cocked his head at Hunter. “Wait, it only gets better. You can go save Abbie or you can stop me from killing the prime minister, at which point only one city will be sacrificed when five compact bombs with a new strain of uranium detonate. Bombs capable of taking down nine square blocks in… Chicago, Chicago.” He sang the name of the city like the words from the musical. “The explosion will detonate at the Clark Street Bridge and shake the foundation of your ex-sister-in-law’s condominium building on Wacker. Now, who are you willing to save and who do you sacrifice?”
Todd, Pia, and baby Barrett would be home at Pia’s place.
Hunter struggled to breathe. His heart hammered his chest, threatening to burst from the blood surging through his body.
He had to get word on the bomb location to BAD.
“Abbie,” Jackson said, drawing Hunter back to him, “is hanging off a cliff exactly one hundred feet from here, but you don’t know the direction yet, so don’t get excited. And if you don’t leave in”—the killer glanced at his watch again and looked up—“twenty-six seconds you won’t reach her before the small bomb attached to the tension anchor snaps her connection to the wall. What’s it going to be?”
“You fucking bastard!”
“If you read the hidden files, you know I’m not a bastard. Twenty-one seconds.”
“Where is she?”
“Not yet… fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.” He looked up. “There’s a path six feet above you. At that point go twenty-two yards, then veer directly left and keep going until you reach the ridge.” He grinned at Hunter and counted down. “Six, five.”
Jackson’s finger relaxed from the trigger.
Time for a leap of faith that Mako was now in position.
A gunshot exploded from behind Hunter. The bullet hit the backside of the trigger guard and shattered Jackson’s fingers.
The killer howled in pain. He jerked his hand up in horror, blood spewing out of his ragged fingers.
Hunter kicked Jackson backward, away from the rifle.
Mako burst out of the dark and dove on Jackson, yelling, “We know about Chicago. More agents on the way. Get Abbie.”
Hunter had already taken off running. Joe had sent extra agents. Not that much of a surprise since Hunter hadn’t expected to get out of this clean. Mako had explained during the helicopter flight that if they had to wound Jackson, he’d use a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. Mako would inject a clotting agent into Jackson and had no problem tightening the tourniquet to the point of the sniper losing a limb.
Mako had shot “Expert” in the Marine Corps, and was capable of blowing a hole in the enemy with skill that equalled his ability to sew one up in someone he wanted to save.
He’d do whatever it took to keep Jackson alive.
&nbs
p; That miserable piece of shit had better survive.
After counting twenty-two yards with running strides, Hunter swung left. He shoved branches out of his way and stumbled over rocks and burst into a clearing at a cliff.
A rope was tied to a tree six feet back from the edge of a cliff. The face fell off for days. He hurried to grab the rope that was slack, which meant the killer had climbed back up from wherever he’d left Abbie hanging.
Hunter looked over the edge into a black abyss.
His heart dropped faster than the blood pressure of a dying man at the sight of her body in a snowsuit dangling in the wind.
Her sobs echoed against the stone.
“Hang on, baby, I’m coming!”
All Hunter had was Eliot’s beat-up karabiner. He hooked the rope through it and looped the tail of the rope around his back in a makeshift rappelling tension, then swung over the side, easing himself down.
“Don’t come down,” she cried. “There’s a… a bomb… it’s—”
“Stay still.”
“Hunter, stop!” she screamed. “You’ll die. Go back.”
He dropped fast, sick with fear he’d reach her too late. When he reached the tension anchor holding her rope sling he spotted the bomb device. It had enough C-4 to start an avalanche. And there was no way to remove the bomb without removing the anchor.
The timer ticked down. Sixty-four seconds, sixty-three…
She begged him between sobs. “Please go back.”
He lowered himself. “I’m not losing you.” When he dropped down beside her he only had another six feet of rope trailing from his waist. Her hands had been tied in front of her.
“We don’t both have to die.”
“We’re not going to.” He hoped. He looped a quick knot at the karabiner, not even sure if the battered piece would still hold, then used his knife to free her wrists. Pulling up the tail of his rope, he threaded it under the rope tied around her waist and made two quick figure-eight knots.
Waves of tremors shook off her, but he couldn’t comfort her yet with seconds flying away. “Hold this rope. Brace your feet apart and keep them against the wall,” he ordered and climbed back up, hand over hand, feeding the rope through his karabiner.
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