by L. T. Ryan
Most would consider the choice a tossup. The sniper had a partner or two out there. No way he worked alone. Either alley likely led to a trap. But through the back offered a better chance of escape. He wouldn’t be completely blocked in.
The empty lobby fell silent. The sniper had lost sight of his target. No point in wasting rounds. By now his roost would be easy to determine by the authorities who were beginning to arrive. They remained at bay. Their blue lights reflected off the spidered and shattered window glass. Looked like a disco club inside the lobby.
Jack sprinted past the first corridor, hung a left at the next, then a right. Daylight streamed in through the double doors that offered a slice of view of the rear alley. That view broadened as Noble chased down the gap.
How many people were on the ground supporting the sniper? Had anyone entered the hotel yet? A smart wager said at least one team waited across the street to catch potential fallout. The hit hadn’t gone as planned. Too drawn out. Authorities had arrived, making it too late for that team to mobilize.
He stopped short of the doors and found the right wall. His elbow grazed it as he approached with the Beretta and the remaining eleven rounds at the ready.
The alley stood bare to the left. He darted across the hallway to the opposite side and moved as far forward as he could before being seen from the upper windows across the way.
Again, empty. And no way to tell beyond his visuals. If there was a way to hole up in the hotel, down in the boiler room or in a maintenance closet, he’d take it. But he’d finally broken his cardinal rule of the past two months. He’d been caught on camera. Every lobby camera filmed his face. In less than twenty-four hours, the CIA would have their closest agents on site, reviewing, investigating. He had to go now.
The door caught the wind and slipped free from his hand, clattering as it hit the stop bolted to the ground. Jack swept the first and second row of windows on the other side of the alley then dashed across. He paused to decide on the best route. Didn’t let the decision linger. He chose right and ran to the first intersection.
A darkened walkway led to the next street. Sitting there, a parked yellow car offered a potential escape option.
Sweat slid down the bridge of his nose and settled into his eye at the tear duct. A film of wetness formed in response to the stinging. He wiped his face with his sleeve, then brushed his damp hair back, off his forehead.
Noble cut down the alley, wary of obstacles in his path that appeared the nearer he got. Trash cans. Bags of refuse that had missed the cans, either by laziness or just piss poor aim. Bottles and cans. A mattress cut in thirds, each laid out longways. The alley was someone’s home. Were they around?
The view broadened slightly as he neared the end of the corridor. No occupants sat in the front seats of the little car. And as luck had it, the damn thing was shaking a little. Vibrating. Idling.
He hesitated only a moment before dashing beyond the safety the confines of the alley provided and hurling himself through the open air to the vehicle. The chipped chrome overlay on the door handle sliced at his palm. He ignored the stabbing pain and found the release button with his index finger. The door popped open with a satisfying click. The air that met him smelled like stale cigarette smoke and Polish sausage. Jack folded his body as he climbed in through the opening. Semi-cool air piped through the warped plastic vents. The seats were frayed and torn.
With his chest against the steering wheel, he reached between his legs for the slide lever. He had it all the way back and the car in first gear peeling away from the curb before he registered a woman in the back seat screaming at him.
He shifted into second while glancing into the rearview, which was duct taped to a bible perched on the dash.
“What are you doing?” The woman grabbed the top of the passenger seat and leaned forward. She had a blanket draped over her chest, pinned behind her right shoulder. Her other arm was hidden underneath.
Jack ignored her as he wove through the streets in a right-turn-left-turn pattern. Distance from the hotel. That was the name of the game now.
Sirens wailed all around. Every cop and ambulance in Luxembourg City must’ve been on their way to the site of the shooting.
“Let me out!” The passenger seat shook under her tight grasp.
Noble had a wide swathe of road ahead. He looked over his shoulder and took in the cramped backseat. The woman. The blanket covering her chest and stomach. The empty baby carrier strapped in next to her. He felt the blood drain from his head.
“Where’s the baby?” He took in the road, then looked back at her, alternating, wondering why she looked so confused. Finally, he reached back and snagged the blanket. Her shirt scrunched up around her abdomen. Her stomach was trim. A butterfly tattoo adorned her bellybutton.
“Watch out!”
He jerked his head forward and the wheel to the right. The little car crunched as it took on the curb and found the sidewalk. A man pushed his wife into a brick storefront and then dove after her. She smacked her cheek against the facade. Jack whipped the wheel to the left. Tires screeched and the suspension, what was left of it, groaned. They fishtailed on the asphalt.
After he regained control, he glanced back again.
“Where’s the baby?”
The woman sat with her mouth agape, both hands gripping the seat in front of her so tight her fingertips disappeared into the fabric.
“The baby?” Jack said. “Where?”
“M-m-m-my friend,” she stuttered out. “My friend’s b-b-baby.”
“This her car?”
“Y-y-yes.”
“Where is she?” Jack waited a moment, but the woman didn’t respond. He pulled over to the side of the road and turned in the seat. “Where’s your friend and the baby?”
The woman met his gaze. She grabbed a long lock of blonde hair and tucked it behind her ear. Her grey eyes looked translucent with the sun hitting them.
“She went back inside to feed the baby. I waited in the car. Closed my eyes and took a little nap.”
“Nap? How the hell could you nap?” Even behind the building she had to have heard the gunshots, the chaos from the hotel.
She reached to her lap and lifted a set of headphones dangling from wires. “Why did you steal her car?” She narrowed her eyes and began looking around. “You know what, I think I should get out.”
He was caught on camera at the hotel. But it could be hours before they reviewed the footage and ID’d him. If he let the woman go, she’d report the auto stolen, prompting the police to review the tapes. He had to clear the border before they knew he was there. Otherwise, the net would close in on him.
“Please,” she said, leaning forward, face inches from his. He caught a whiff of lemongrass. Her hair fell from behind her ear, over her shoulder. The last inch or so was brown. “Let me go.”
Jack shifted into gear. They lurched away from the shoulder.
“Afraid I can’t do that right now.”
Chapter 8
Clive Swift positioned himself underneath the broad vent delivering cold air to the room. He ran hot. Always had. Most people in his position would come to work in a suit and tie. Not Clive. He didn’t look unprofessional, but his light chinos and cotton oxford kept him from overheating.
The dozen people gathered around Isa’s desk followed his lead. They weren’t at Langley, Legoland, The Aquarium, or The Farm. Clive started Global Associated Tracking, Limited eight years ago after being forced out of his director position with MI6. He found a niche in the marketplace. A need for a group that kept up to date with technological advancements in the tracking field. He had staff in four other locations: Chicago, Buenos Aires, Singapore, and in England.
Located on the southern outskirts of Paris, the building looked like any other office. If someone were to mistakenly walk in off the street, thinking they were at their chiropractor’s office, they’d find a lovely receptionist waiting behind a knee wall and sheet of plexiglass. Two rows of cha
irs facing each other had a rotating cast of occupants, usually from the field teams. Had to give them something to do when not out tracking a fugitive.
Beyond the receptionist’s desk, a supply closet contained a hidden door, which led down two flights of stairs to a bunker outfitted with bleeding edge tech. The main room consisted of six pods typically occupied by one to four analysts. The walls were lined with fifty- to eighty-inch monitors displaying newsfeeds from around the globe, live feeds from big brother cameras when an active investigation was taking place, and general monitoring of places and people of interest.
But right now, all eyes were on him.
They’d had their first hit on The Ghost since accepting the contract.
“Capture him by any means necessary, but we must take him alive.”
Those were the instructions. Clive didn’t need them. That’s how they operated on a day-to-day basis. At any given time, they had ten two- to six-man teams in the field working upwards of five active investigations. Some were dead ends. It was not infrequent that they rode out the six-month contract, knowing they’d forfeit the majority of the upfront payment.
He thought that would be the outcome with Jack Noble. In fact, he’d thought that the moment they took the job.
“Moments ago, we got our first solid lead on Noble,” Clive said. There were nods and looks of acknowledgment amongst the analysts. These folks put in sixty hours a week at the office searching through every shred of evidence, which in this case hadn’t been much and had led to them reviewing the same data over and over, looking for any single detail they could pursue. It became a wearisome game after a while.
“Where at?” Eddie Kiefer asked. The guy was former CIA and had confided that this job had special meaning for him.
“Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. Picked him up on city surveillance.”
“They don’t have a system there, though.”
Isa spoke up. “They do now. Installed not three weeks ago. Only a few cameras, but we lucked out.” She tapped her keyboard and the feed appeared on the largest monitor in the room. All attention fell upon the video footage of the shooting. They grimaced at the sight of the slain innocents.
“Who is that guy?” Eddie asked. “If Noble is there, why was that man targeted?”
“Waiting on confirmation,” Isa said. “I’m with you, though. Something about him must make him important.”
Eddie swept his hand out. “Or the shooter didn’t know—”
“There he is by the column.” Clive placed his hand on Isa’s shoulder. “Freeze the footage.”
Isa tapped three times on her keyboard, stopping the footage and zooming in close on Noble. She advanced frame by frame, then let it roll forward, rewound, and stopped again.
“He never moves,” she said. “Went behind and stayed put.”
“Let it roll.” Clive leaned forward, hands on the back of Isa’s chair to support him. He no longer stood in the jet stream of cool air. Sweat seeded along his hairline. He stifled the urge to finger-comb it into his hair.
“The glass.” Isa pointed at her monitor. Clive glanced between it and the large screen. “It’s shattering.”
A blur of the man hiding behind the pillar burst through the cracked window. Chunks of it broke free and spilled inside and out. Shards danced along the concrete walkway and down the stairs like a waterfall.
“Get me the footage from inside the hotel,” he said.
“Already on it.” Isa cycled through several windows until she had four set up in a box on her monitor. They took over four adjacent screens on the wall.
Clive wove through his people, all pressed tight and close to Isa’s desk. The padded flooring sunk under his steps. He reached the tile track circling the room and went to the first widescreen. Jack Noble was frozen in time.
“Any doubt in anyone’s mind this is our ghost?”
Several heads shook in response. Stares flitted from screen to screen, taking in the sight of the man they’d been hunting.
“Lacy, who is closest to Luxembourg?”
“Sadie,” she said without thinking. “In Montpellier, north of the city. She’s still without a partner.”
“Not for long.” Clive stuffed his hand in his pocket and gripped his phone. He had someone in mind for this. Had been waiting for the right moment to call him up. His attempt failed. The line had been disconnected. “Isa, let’s keep this footage rolling.”
They watched the feeds through a single cycle, lasting all of twenty seconds. Noble slipped through a rear door and was lost.
“Get me that alley,” Clive said.
For once Isa didn’t respond by tapping on her keyboard.
“What is it?”
Her nose scrunched up and the center of her forehead wrinkled as she looked back. “There’s no footage from back there. Luxembourg City only recently installed surveillance, and it is quite limited. We were lucky the hotel is situated close to the bank.”
The mood in the room evaporated like helium in a popped balloon. Faces wrought with excitement grew sullen. For every minute that passed, the net grew exponentially. If Noble gained a mile of separation, that meant their search radius was now ten times wider than it had been. After an hour, they’d have lost all chance of picking the man up.
“Lacy, get Sadie mobilized now. Tell her she’ll have her partner soon enough.” Clive knifed through his people and positioned himself under the monitor showing the empty rear lobby. The double doors parted slightly, the result of a wind tunnel from the shattered glass in front. “There’s only so many places he can go from here. What do we know about this guy?”
Lacy Evans brushed her strawberry blonde hair out of her face and said, “He’s been off the grid for over three months. At some point he’ll need to tap into his funds. If he managed to get a car, it’s about a five-hour drive to Switzerland.”
“We’re assuming he has accounts there?”
“I’ve dug extensively into his past,” she said. “He’s done a number of for-hire jobs, and these are the types of operations where an employer”—with her fingers making air quotes—“wouldn’t simply hand over a check.”
“OK, what are the chances we can get verification on this?”
“Impossible.” She pulled at a single strand of hair that had glued itself to the corner of her mouth. “That’s the whole point.”
“Who do we have near Geneva?”
“Bravo team is in Nice, France.”
“Mobilize them.”
“Wait a minute.” Isa spun in her chair, smile on her face.
“What is it?” Clive said.
“Police report that just came in.”
“And?”
She spun again, her dark hair billowing up and falling back down like fallout. “A vehicle stolen from the alley behind the hotel.”
“Please tell me this happened recently.”
She looked back, nodded while biting her bottom lip. “The woman went inside to feed her baby, leaving the auto idling with her friend inside. After the fracas, she went back out. Vehicle was gone.”
Clive tempered himself. “And this woman, she was wise enough to carry something with her that lists her license plate?”
Disappointment spread across Isa’s face, and he knew the answer.
“Dammit.”
A new smile formed. “But I’ve already located her records in Germany’s motor vehicle database.”
“You’ve got the plate?”
“I’ve got the plate.”
All the major highways in Europe have license plate readers. They scanned the plate of every vehicle that passed. When a plate matched a record in a database, the authorities were notified. Isa could bypass the system so no one knew they were monitoring, and if the vehicle Noble had escaped in hopped on the motorway, any motorway, they’d have his location. The net would shrink and tighten.
Renewed, Clive positioned himself squarely in front of the group. “Call in every analyst who is off this week. I wa
nt all field teams briefed and ready to move.”
“All?” Lacy said. “Even other regions?”
“Everyone. We’re going to eliminate any chance he slips past us.” He walked over to Isa’s station again, placed his hand on her shoulder. “Activate the LPR across Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, France, and Switzerland.”
“Already done,” Isa said.
Chapter 9
Bear sunk into the recessed doorway. He eased his left shoulder against the wall. The MP7 pointed in the direction of the man taking Mandy hostage. The guy’s eyes swept the corridor wildly, his head turned as though it were on a swivel with no tightening nut. No doubt he searched for someone. He was looking for Bear.
Which meant he knew who Mandy was.
Bear risked leaning forward enough to take in a full shot of the hallway down to the cafeteria. Scanning the faces rapid-fire in search of Sasha. He couldn’t locate her and took that as a sign that she and Mandy never found each other. No way Sasha would stay behind while some asshole dragged Mandy through the hospital at gunpoint.
Unless…
He didn’t want to consider that thought. He’d lost so many people in his life. Friends. Family. Lovers. Sasha had become all three. And she’d become a mother to Mandy. Everything to Bear. God help these people and whoever sent them if either Sasha or Mandy were killed.
Mandy yelped as the guy yanked her hard to the left. Looked to be forceful enough to dislocate her shoulder. Bear squeezed his crutch, lifted the tip off the floor. As the last glimpse of Mandy’s blonde hair slipped out of sight, Bear emerged from the alcove. Even with the crutches supporting him, he wove through the mob at a speed most would have found unbelievable if they weren’t already in a situation they could not believe.
Bear’s momentum carried him into the opposite wall near the intersecting hallway. The hum of activity rose as another group emerged from the cafeteria. They screamed out names, or in fear, or pain. Sasha wasn’t among them.