by David Wood
“Moving!” Tam called.
Greg turned just in time to see her head through the door. When her exit did not trigger another fusillade, he hurried after her. Almost as an afterthought, he pitched the shotgun into the niche under the steps. The weapon was great for discouraging close pursuit in the cramped hallways but too slow and unwieldy for what awaited him on the other side of the door. With his Glock in hand, he charged out into the reception lobby, just a few steps behind Tam.
The smell of burnt gunpowder hung in the air, but there was no sign of the shooters, no sign of anyone at all, in fact. The receptionist was probably hiding under her desk—Greg didn’t stop to check—but Lavelle and Esperanza, along with whatever security contingent was accompanying them, were gone.
Tam edged through the main entrance door without being shot at, and headed outside with Greg close behind her. In the parking lot beyond, a rust-colored Ford Excursion with tinted windows and a Texas license plate was pulling away. Tam leveled her pistol at the departing vehicle. The moment was eerily reminiscent of what had happened outside the Hofburg palace, only this time, instead of a red-handed burglar—and a Russian agent to boot—the escaping vehicle held a prominent businessman who might very well be the next president of Mexico. Wisely, Tam held her fire, but she was not ready to throw in the towel. Without a word of explanation, she turned on her heel and sprinted out across the parking lot. Greg didn’t have to be psychic to know where she was headed, and as he ran to catch her, he holstered his unfired weapon and dug the car keys out of his pocket, clicking the alarm remote furiously, first to pinpoint the car’s location for them both, and then to unlock the doors.
They reached the rented sedan at almost exactly the same instant and Greg slid behind the wheel even as Tam settled into the passenger seat. He hesitated for just a moment as he slotted the key into the ignition. What if Lavelle’s men had booby-trapped the car?
No way, he thought. We weren’t in there long enough. Besides, they were planning to take us out in the desert and shoot us. No need to wire the car.
Nevertheless, he held his breath as he turned the key.
No boom.
He put the car in gear and executed a quick three-point turn to get the car turned in the right direction and then accelerated through the parking lot, steering toward the highway. The Expedition was barely visible, heading west. Traffic was relatively light, but Greg had to tap the brakes and wait for a car to pass before rocketing out of the lot and across the eastbound lanes, leaving a cloud of dust and tire smoke in their wake.
“Déjà vu all over again,” Tam said.
“No kidding. What do we do if we catch them?”
The question was moot almost as soon as he finished asking it. Further down the road, just past the outline of the Expedition, was a long line of flashing red and blue lights atop cars and pickups with the distinctive black and white paint scheme of the municipal police. Before Greg could react, two of the police vehicles swerved across the median, into the westbound lanes, and cut the road diagonally, blocking traffic behind the SUV carrying Esperanza and Lavelle. The rest continued on their way, drawing closer with each passing second.
Tam muttered a week’s allowance of swear words. Whether the law officers were responding to reports of shooting at Esperanza’s factory or were secretly in Lavelle’s pocket, there was little mystery as to their intent.
“Maybe we should turn around?” Greg tried to match Tam’s earlier calm, but there was no hiding the anxiety. When Tam did not immediately reply, he added. “I’m open to other suggestions.”
“Do it.”
It was not exactly the clear-cut guidance he had been hoping for, but Greg nevertheless stomped the brakes, bumped the gear-shift lever into ‘neutral’ and steered hard to the left. The tires shuddered against the pavement and, for a fleeting instant, Greg thought the sedan might roll. The view through the windshield changed with dizzying rapidity as the car spun one hundred-eighty degrees, and then the crazy carnival ride ended with them facing back the way they’d come.
The cars that had been directly behind them before the maneuver were still in the process of reacting, some skidding to a dead stop, others heading for the shoulder. Further down the road, Greg could see more cars and trucks approaching at highway speed, oblivious to what loomed ahead.
Greg slipped the transmission into ‘drive’ and punched the gas pedal, threading the sedan between the haphazardly scattered vehicles, edging toward the median. Before he could cross over to the eastbound lanes, however, he spied flashing lights from the corner of his eye. The police cars had almost caught up to them. He veered away from the median and kept accelerating, straight into oncoming traffic.
“Still waiting on that suggestion.”
Tam stared out the side window for several long seconds before turning to him. “You know, America is right over there.”
“So close, yet so far away.”
While it was true that the border between Mexico and the U.S. was close in a very literal sense, the nearest border crossing was several miles away, in the other direction, with half the police force of Ciudad Juarez arrayed between them and it. Even if they could somehow elude the pursuing officers and find a circuitous route back to one of the bridges that spanned the river, the actual crossing would require them to wait in line—possibly for hours—during which time the police would be looking for them.
We could ditch the car. Maybe they don’t have descriptions of us….
That was too much to hope for. His face was anonymous enough, but Tam’s mocha-colored skin was distinctive enough that she would be singled out immediately.
Tam repeated her statement, emphasizing each word. “Right. Over. There.”
“I know, but… Oh. You mean… You can’t be serious.”
She can’t be serious, he thought.
As if to answer his rhetorical question, she gave the shoulder strap of her seatbelt a tug to ensure that it was functional. “I always wanted to make a run for the border.”
She’s serious.
“Okay, then.” Greg turned his attention back to the road ahead. Several cars had already pulled into the far lanes, giving them a more or less clear path, but a police car on the other side of the median was racing ahead, the driver almost certainly planning to cut across and block their escape. Greg realized that Tam’s suggestion was not merely a good idea, but just about the only option left. He cranked the wheel left, crossed all three lanes and threaded the needle between a pair of semi-haulers that had pulled over, but not slowed down, and hit the far shoulder.
The rental car lurched as it left the smooth macadam and began jouncing over the unfinished dirt at the roadside. They crunched through a hundred yards of underbrush and then were briefly airborne as the car bumped up and over a sun-hardened rut to thump down on another hundred-yard-wide swath of bare graded dirt that formed the buffer zone between the highway and the river bed.
A plume of dust marked their passage, but through it Greg could see the flashing lights of police vehicles chasing after them. He was committed now; there could be no turning back. It took less than five seconds to reach the electronic “fence,” an endless line of what looked like streetlight poles, spaced forty yards apart, each one equipped with cameras, microphones and more exotic detection equipment, to alert border patrol agents of imminent incursions. Somewhere in an office on the other side of the river, alarms were going off, and agents were scrambling to get to their trucks.
A literal fence of the chain-link variety rose into view directly ahead. Greg knew that beyond it lay the mostly dry river channel of the Rio Grande—it was called the Rio Bravo on the Mexican side—and beyond that, the United States. He kept the gas pedal to the floor.
“Hang on!”
He thought he heard Tam shout his name, but it might have been his imagination.
The sedan hit the interlocking web of metal at nearly eighty miles per hour. The impact triggered the collision sensors, causing t
he airbag to deploy from the steering wheel with all the force of a haymaker punch from a heavyweight champ. Greg did not see most of what happened next.
The fence did not break, but it did buckle under the battering ram assault. The car’s momentum kept it going, up and over the collapsing fence, launching it—or rather what was left of it—across the concrete river channel. The initial collision had blown out the front tires and demolished the grill. The coil of concertina wire at the top of the fence snagged on the undercarriage, tearing off one of the rear wheels completely and turning the car in mid-air so that it struck a similar fence on far shore broadside. The chain-links caught the sedan like a spider’s web, stealing the last of its momentum and holding it fast above the sloping concrete walls of the canal.
Greg sat unmoving for several seconds, trying to reorient himself. The angle at which the car had come to rest was playing havoc with his senses, and the after-effect of being rattled like a peanut in a can didn’t help matters any. He glanced over and saw Tam, likewise dazed but with no visible signs of injury.
She looked back at him, eyes wide in disbelief. “Holy… What on earth possessed you to do that?”
“You told me to.”
“I told you to run for the border. I figured you’d stop so we could climb the fence, not go all Evel Knievel.”
Greg felt an embarrassed flush creep over his face. “Oh. Good to know.”
Tam turned away for a moment, surveying their situation, then offered a mischievous smile. “Hey, your way worked, so I’m not complaining. Though I think we can forget about getting our security deposit back for the car.”
Outside, a line of white SUVs with flashing emergency lights and the distinctive green stripe of the United States Border Patrol were racing across the packed dirt toward them.
“Looks like we’ve got a new problem,” Greg remarked as the rapid response team surrounded them to form an inescapable perimeter. “I hear they don’t look kindly on illegal aliens in these parts. Think they’ll ask for our green cards?”
Tam just laughed. “Welcome to Texas.”
CHAPTER 20
Washington D.C.
With painstaking care, Eric Trent inspected every inch of the Spear of Destiny under a large magnifying glass, comparing it side-by-side with the replica, looking for some tiny detail that would unlock the code in Patton’s diary. The craftsman who had made the copy had diligently reproduced even insignificant details, the tiny crosses and doves on the flanges that were almost invisible from a distance, the crinkles in the gold band with its Latin inscription.
There were differences to be sure. The real Spear looked like an actual weapon of war, with deep gouges in the black iron. The tip was blunted, probably the result of a killing thrust through some barbarian’s studded armor, although, to Trent’s admittedly untrained eye, the defects looked more recent. Yet aside from the damage and, of course, the tell-tale markings that identified one spear as a copy, there were no substantive differences between the two.
“‘The Spear will point the way,’” he muttered. So far, it had not pointed to anything. They had risked exposure with the failed kidnapping attempt at the Library of Congress and the more successful, though unfortunately highly visible robbery at the hotel, and what did they have to show for it?
Lavelle was pressuring him for results. The rest of the plan was proceeding like clockwork, but its ultimate success or failure depended on Trent keeping his promise to crack the code. He had been so certain that the answer would become immediately apparent once he held the real Spear in his hand. Lavelle’s hired guns had more or less accomplished the task set for them, but thus far, the hastily arranged trip to the nation’s capital had not borne the expected fruit.
He had been working under the assumption that Patton had made some sort of modification to the Spear when it was in his possession following the capture of Berlin, an engraving perhaps that would illuminate the meaning of the number code. When he had first discovered the craftsman’s mark on the replica, he had assumed that Patton’s alterations had not been reproduced, but if there was something there, he had yet to see it.
Refusing to admit defeat, Trent laid aside his magnifying glass and turned the authentic Spear over in order to remove the decorative gold band. As he carefully peeled it apart, something fell out and landed with a metallic clank on the tabletop. That had definitely not happened when he had disassembled the replica. He laid the Spear aside and stared at the object that had fallen from the Spear, but before he could fully process the significance of it, his phone began to vibrate with an incoming call. He did not recognize the number, which probably meant that it belonged to one of the burner phones his team was using.
“Hello?”
“Watchdog, here.”
Watchdog, Trent knew, was the man assigned to shadow the four CIA people, who at last report, had been loitering at the airport, to all appearances, drowning their sorrows in drinks at a pub on the concourse. “Go ahead.”
“They’re bugging out. Just boarded a flight to Houston.”
“Houston?” Houston was a major hub, so there was no reason to believe it was their final destination. Trent knew that the rest of their group had gone on to El Paso, where they had nearly thrown a monkey wrench in the works by approaching Guillermo Esperanza in Juarez, and subsequently eluded Lavelle’s attempt to disappear them. The obvious explanation for the flight to Houston was that the CIA people were trying to regroup, but Trent could not dismiss the possibility that they had somehow cracked the code. “Follow them. I want to know where they’re going.”
“Already bought my ticket. I’ll let you know where they’re heading as soon as we land.”
Trent ended the call and pondered his next course of action. If the CIA people had cracked the code, then the obvious move was to shadow them to the destination. He disliked the idea of allowing them to get close, especially when he didn’t know exactly where they were going, but until he could solve the cipher in the diary, he was just spinning his wheels here.
Satisfied that things were finally moving, even if by a more circuitous route than he would have liked, Trent returned his attention to the object that had fallen from beneath the gold band.
It was a small disc of metal, glinting the same hue as the band. A coin.
He studied the image on the face, the likeness of a woman—a goddess, he decided—with a torch in one hand and a tree branch in the other. Behind her, radiating lines simulated a sunrise, or perhaps divine glory. It was an ancient likeness, yet the coin itself was only a century old. He knew this because stamped in the lower right were four digits: 1910.
It was an American twenty-dollar gold piece, known more commonly as a ‘double-eagle.’
A triumphant grin spread across Trent’s face. The coin, by itself, offered no insights to help him crack the code, but its very presence, concealed here within a relic that was at least twelve hundred years old, confirmed everything the Russian had told Lavelle. Patton had placed the coin there, surreptitiously marking his ownership, albeit a very temporary one, of the Spear of Destiny. Yet, the coin itself held greater significance. The date stamp, while not constituting definitive proof, was consistent with the story Samsonov had revealed. The coin was almost certainly part of a cache given to Mexican revolutionaries sometime before the year 1916, when Patton would have learned about the prize he called ‘the Devil’s Gift.’
The coin meant the story was true. The Devil’s Gift was real, and it was everything they hoped it was.
He gathered up the pieces of the Spear, along with the coin, and stowed them in a duffel bag. He would have plenty of time to resume the search for the code key once he was in the air, en route to Texas, but he no longer felt the oppressiveness of the deadline looming overhead. One way or another, the Devil’s Gift would soon be in his hands, and Destiny would become reality.
CHAPTER 21
Chihuahua, Mexico
It was only when she stepped off the plane at Gener
al Roberto Fierro Villalobos International Airport that Avery realized she had spent more than half of the preceding forty-eight hours in the air. It had been two days since she’d slept in a bed or had a hot shower. Her body was definitely feeling the former, and her nose was acutely aware of the latter. The others seemed immune to the hectic pace; it was probably business as usual for them.
Aside from being tired and grungy, Avery was also more than a little anxious about the current political climate in Mexico. In the wake of the Juarez student massacre, the State Department was strongly advising Americans to avoid travel, particularly in areas off the regular tourist routes. Remote and rural, Chihuahua was exactly the kind of city that might conceal anti-government or criminal elements, the kind of people who would think nothing of abducting foreign tourists for ransom or simply making them disappear altogether. Avery felt quite sure she had already used up all her luck when it came to being kidnapped. The conspicuous presence of men in camouflaged combat uniforms armed with assault rifles did not allay her concerns. They were probably federal police or military troops, but their very presence only underscored the danger they were facing.
The others seemed unfazed by this. Avery hoped this meant her worries were unfounded, but after what had happened at the Library of Congress, no place was truly safe. She did take some small comfort in the knowledge that Kasey and Sievers were both armed. Before leaving D.C. Kasey had procured traveling documents for them all, including credentials identifying her and Sievers as FBI agents with international carry permits.
Avery’s hopes of an overnight stay in Chihuahua were quickly dashed. Within half an hour of arriving, they were on the move again, traveling in a rented Toyota RAV4 along Mexico’s Federal Highway 16. She understood that time was in short supply, and that a night wasted in relative luxury might cost them the race, but that did not mean she had to like it.
Staying on the move did have one advantage, however; a moving target was a lot harder to hit.