by Tom Clancy
He heard a muffled pop. He knew the sound all too well. Even as the voice in his head said, Cottonball, he felt the projectile strike the back of his head. The tang of the aerosol tranquilizer filled his nostrils. He snorted and ducked under again, shaking his head to get the aerosol out of his hair. He was only marginally successful. Within seconds his field of vision began to sparkle; he felt slightly drunk. Clearly, Third Echelon’s weapons geeks had improved the LTL (less-than-lethal) projectile. This Cottonball’s tranquilizer was much stronger and much faster acting. He’d gotten only a quarter dose, he estimated. If he’d been hit on land, he’d be asleep right now.
Focus, Sam, focus. . . . Keep going. Distance was survival.
He rolled onto his back and porpoised upward so only his mouth broke the surface. He sucked in a breath. Another muffled pop, this one sharper, but also familiar: a 5.56mm bullpup round from a SC-20K rifle. The round slapped the water two feet from his head. A mistake or—
Pop!
The second round zipped past his ear. No mistake.
He dove again, rolled over, scissored hard for the bottom. He covered ten feet . . . twenty . . . thirty. . . . He stretched out his right hand. Come on, come on! His fingers touched something vertical—mud, weeds. He grabbed a handful of roots and pulled himself forward until he was pressed against the mud. He surfaced amid the weeds drooping over the embankment. He caught his breath. He now knew something else about his pursuers: They either didn’t have goggles or were choosing to not use them lest they stand out. Third Echelon standard-issue NV headsets gave Splinter Cells not just night-vision capabilities but also EM (electromagnetic) and IR (infrared, or thermal). Using the latter, they would have seen him here—a man-shaped blob in various temperature-shades of blue, yellow, and red.
Fisher parted the weeds and peered across the reservoir. Kimberly and Ames were nowhere to be seen. He kept scanning, checking the length of the embankment before moving up to the trees. There. Three figures lying prone, barely visible in the underbrush of the tree line. Their scopes would be panning his side of the reservoir, looking for movement, ready to zoom in. . . . The question was: What were their fire selectors set to? And exactly what were the rules of engagement they had been given? If it had been Kimberly shooting at him, then, clearly, in her eyes their previous friendship had lost its charm. If it was Ames . . . well, no surprise there. As for Blondie, she was, at this point, a question mark.
There was no way he would make it up the ten-foot embankment. The climb was doable, but the movement of the weeds would give him away. He looked left. A hundred feet away the reservoir’s north end was bordered by an abandoned municipal swimming pool surrounded by a cracked, weed-covered cement deck whose outer wall plunged vertically into the reservoir. Fisher couldn’t see them in the dark, but Google Earth had clearly shown two squared-off alcoves where steel-rung ladders were cut into the wall. The alcoves were three feet deep—enough, he judged, to impede Kimberly’s and Ames’s lines of fire.
He sucked in a lungful of air, dropped beneath the surface, and began using the roots to pull himself along the embankment. At the halfway mark he again pulled himself against the mud wall and carefully surfaced in the weeds. He caught his breath, ducked under again, and thirty seconds later his outstretched hand touched concrete. He turned right, dragging his fingertips over the rough surface until he felt the wall turn inward. Two kicks brought him to the ladder. He pressed his head into the corner and surfaced. No shots came. He rotated his head and peeked around the corner.
With the increased distance, it was impossible to tell if Kimberly and Ames were still in position. He waited. Two minutes . . . five. He climbed the ladder, rolled onto the concrete deck, pressed himself flat, then began snaking his way through the weeds until the concrete gave way to open ground. He was three hundred yards from the opposite shore—a tough shot but not impossible. Still, he needed to be seen.
He took a deep breath, curled his legs beneath him like a sprinter, then took off, heading for the road fifty yards away. He’d covered half the distance when he heard the smack-thump of a bullet striking the earth to his right. He resisted the impulse to dodge in the opposite direction, instead turning into it, zigzagging until he reached a slight depression before the road, where he dropped flat again. He checked his watch. It would take them sixty or seventy seconds to move from their shooting position to the pool, then another sixty seconds to clear the deck and the surrounding undergrowth before pushing toward this road. Right now they’d be on their SVTs, radioing the other SUV: Circle north and west to the dirt road, and we’ll drive him from the west. A smart plan, Fisher admitted. Keep up the pressure; don’t let the quarry rest. Unfortunately for them, he wasn’t about to let himself slip into the quarry mind set.
He shed his clothes, trading the red on green outfit for a dark blue sweatshirt and a pair of old French army fatigue pants he had picked up at a surplus store. The Aloksak bag had kept them perfectly dry. He stuffed the discarded outfit under a bush, careful to leave a bit of red showing.
He let a minute pass, then got up and ran, hunched over, north along the depression to where it intersected with a stand of pine trees. He paused to pull out his red hooded penlight, then kept moving until he estimated he had enough cover. He stopped and ducked behind a fallen trunk.
A branch snapped. South.
Partially obscured by the trees, a lone figure crossed the open ground, heading west. The build told Fisher it was a woman. Kimberly. She stopped. Her head swiveled, scanning the pine trees. Good girl. She’d neither heard nor seen anything, of that he was certain, but she was thinking: If Fisher had cut to the north instead of crossing the road, he’d be in there. . . . What to do? Abandon the pincer plan, leave her partner alone and search the trees, or—
She kept moving.
It was the smart move. She was going to kick herself later, but clearly she’d been paying attention during Small-Unit Tactics.
He waited until she’d moved out of view, then continued east, slowly at first and then more quickly as he gained some distance, until he could see car headlights on the D16/18. When the trees thinned enough that he could see the cars themselves, he stopped. He opened his rucksack and found the two Aloksak bags he needed. He traded his fatigues and sweatshirt for the yellow Lacoste polo over sky blue outfit, then got out his binoculars—a pair of night vision Night Owl Explorers. Not the same caliber as Third Echelon’s DARPA-produced headsets, but as he was something of a beggar these days, he’d renounced choosiness.
He powered up the Night Owls, crawled to the lip of the embankment, and panned the highway. There were four SUVs in view, but none of them Renaults. A half mile to the northeast, across the highway, he could see the lights of Esch-sur-Alzette’s CFL (Chemins de fer Luxembourgeois) train station. Almost there. Fifteen minutes and he’d be gone. He’d have some breathing room. At least for a while.
He put away the Night Owls, waited for a lull in traffic, then stood up and walked down into the ditch and back up the other side. He was stepping onto the dirt shoulder on the far side of the road when, to the right, he heard the roar of an engine. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a single headlight bearing down on him.
6
THE instinctive part of Fisher’s brain reacted instantly, registering the motorcycle a quarter second before sending the “jump” impulse to his legs. The nearest oncoming car, moving at a leisurely fifteen miles an hour, was twenty feet away. To avoid Fisher, the motorcyclist could either go right, into the ditch, or left, into traffic. Fisher gambled and went in the latter direction, spinning on his heel back into the path of the oncoming car, landing in a half crouch, with his legs spread, ready to dive away if the car didn’t slow. To his left, the motorcycle’s brakes locked up. The headlight shuttered with the sudden deceleration, then veered right and down into the ditch. There came the sound of wrenching fiberglass. The car bearing down on Fisher slammed on its brakes. Horns began blaring. Car doors opened and witnesses began jo
gging toward the scene.
Blend, Fisher commanded himself. “Help me—he’s down here!” Fisher called in French, then trotted down into the ditch. The rider lay in the tall grass on the other side of the embankment; ten feet away his motorcycle was a tangled heap. Fisher and four others reached the rider at the same time. He was barely conscious. “Stabilize his head,” Fisher commanded, then lifted the visor on the man’s helmet. The face didn’t look familiar. Just bad timing, he decided.
Voices began babbling: “Idiot tried to pass . . .” “Did you see him? . . . almost hit . . .”
Fisher said, “He’s in shock. I’ll find a blanket. Stay with him. . . .”
“Oui, oui . . .”
Fisher trotted north, up the road. He glanced over his shoulder. A dozen or more people were now at the bottom of the ditch, tending to the motorcyclist. From the border came the whine of sirens and flashing blue lights. He put another fifty yards between himself and the commotion, then walked back into the ditch, up the other side, and into the trees beyond. He paused to get his bearings, using the highway to his left and the soccer stadium lights to his right as navigation points. The CFL station would be . . . that way. Another two minutes of walking brought him to a weed-covered gravel lot surrounded by a dilapidated hurricane fence, half of which jutted from the ground at wild angles, while the other had collapsed altogether. In the center of the lot was what had looked like, on Google Earth, an abandoned prison, with high brick and corrugated-steel walls topped by conical watchtowers and arched mullioned windows. It was, in fact, a deserted steel foundry. Early twentieth century, Fisher judged. A hundred years ago European industrialists often chose the ornate over the pragmatic, assuming a happy worker was a productive worker.
It was as good a place as any for another clothing change, he decided. His second clothing change had been for his pursuers’ benefit; having likely found the first outfit east of the swimming pool, they would have assumed he’d adopted night-friendlier clothes. If spotted now, he’d be another local in colorful springtime garb.
He spotted a vertical slit in the foundry’s sheet-metal wall and headed for it. A quarter mile to his left, back on the highway, he saw a pair of headlights do a quick U-turn, then a second pair. At this distance he couldn’t make out the makes and models, but the shapes suggested SUVs. They began heading south, in his direction.
What the hell?
Fisher sprinted for the wall, pried back the sheet metal, and stepped through the slit. He glanced back. The SUVs had drawn even with the foundry driveway and stopped, turn signals blinking, as they waited for a gap in traffic. Fisher wriggled through the opening, then did his best to wrench the metal closed behind him.
He pulled out his penlight and looked around. In the darkness, the scene was jumbled: vaulted concrete ceilings dotted with broken skylights through which moonlight streamed, crumbling plaster-covered brick walls, ladders and catwalks and spiral staircases, a labyrinth of overhead iron girders and concrete lintels. The floor was ankle deep in ash, dust, and accumulated silt. Weeds and spindly trees sprung from the loam. Somewhere overhead he heard the leathery flapping of wings. The echo told him the space was cavernous.
He took a step. His foot plunged through the soil and into empty space. He shined his light down. The floor was made of heavy four-by-four wooden beams. Through the hole in which his foot had slipped, he could see crisscrossing pipes and, beyond that, the glint of water. Man-made canals, he thought. Older foundries relied on them to cool equipment.
From the lot came the skidding of tires on gravel. Car doors opened, slammed shut.
Don’t think, run!
He pushed up, levered himself onto his belly, then jerked his leg free; he flexed it. Nothing broken. He got up and ran, steering for the nearest wall, hoping and assuming the beams would be stronger nearer the joists. The dancing beam of his penlight picked out a staircase rising against the wall. He sprinted for it, leapt onto the third step, then stopped. He looked back; his footsteps were as clear as if he’d left them in snow. To his right a series of forearm-sized pipes stretched beneath a concrete lintel. Fisher mounted the handrail for a better look. Maybe. It would be tight, but—
Voices shouted outside. The sheet metal at the entrance rattled.
Fisher grabbed the nearest pipe, pushed off the railing, then swung, hand over hand, until he reached an intersection of beams. He flipped his left leg up, hooked his ankle on the pipe, shimmied another three feet, then chinned himself level with the pipe, reached over with his left hand, found purchase, and levered himself atop the pipe run. He straightened his legs and tucked his arms flat against his thighs. It was a tight fit. He went still and took three calming breaths to slow his heart rate. He craned his neck to check his surroundings.
Five feet above him was another concrete lintel, this one running perpendicular to the pipes on which he lay; there would be a matching shelf along the opposite wall, he assumed. Four feet above this lintel, through a tracery of pipes, he could see the underside of the second floor.
From below came the violent wrenching of sheet metal, then silence.
Whispered voices.
Come on in, Fisher thought. But watch your—
As if on cue, he heard the splintering of wood, followed by a curse in Japanese. The accent was American, though, which told Fisher a bit more about the man.
Step.
“Help me, goddamn it!” a voice rasped.
“Hold on, hold on . . .” This was a woman’s voice. Not Kimberly, he didn’t think. Blondie, then. Hansen, the team leader, would be working solo while the other four were paired up. Blondie and Vin were here; Kimberly and Ames would probably be on the east side, looking for an entrance. As for Hansen—
More cracking of wood, another curse. This one from Blondie.
There were thirty seconds of grunting and whispers as the two extracted their legs and feet from the floor traps, followed by muffled feet padding through the loam and moving toward the stairs. A foot clanged on the metal steps, then stopped.
“What?” whispered Blondie. Clearly these young Splinter Cells had a few things to learn about CommSec—communication security. SVTs did, in fact, take some getting used to—as well as a bit of ventriloquial talent—but this was Stealth 101.
Silence now.
Fisher leaned his head to the side, just enough for one eye to clear the pipe run. Directly below him was a clean-shaven head. Vin. Fisher eased his head back. A flashlight clicked on and panned left to right, pausing on piles of debris and shadowed corners until the beam had made a 360-degree circuit. The flashlight went dark.
Then came on again. The light angled upward, tracking slowly over the pipes and beams. After a long thirty seconds, the beam went out.
Above, Fisher heard a crack, not of wood, but of rock on concrete, followed by a series of metallic clangs. Something hard thumped into his thigh, then rolled off and hit the ground with a powdery fwump. They were trying to flush him out. Another rock smacked into the lintel over his head. It ricocheted upward, hung there for a moment, then came back down, ting ing loudly in the darkness before zipping past Fisher’s face.
“Nothing there,” Blondie whispered. “Come on.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Footsteps clanked up the steps, then faded.
Fisher let out a breath. He drew his legs forward, under his chest, then stood up. Arms extended above his head, he grabbed the edge of the lintel, chinned himself up, then rolled onto the shelf. He was twenty feet above the floor; unless one of them found the perfect viewing angle through the pipes below, he was effectively invisible.
Next step, he thought. He had three options: hunker down and wait until they moved on, wait for a chance and slip away, or create his own chance and slip away. The first option was the worst of the three. With five people and at least a nominal equipment loadout, they could exfiltrate the foundry and stake it out electronically. He needed to be gone before the plan occurred to them. That left the third opti
on: create some chaos and use the confusion to break out. How, though?
The answer presented itself with the sound of splintering wood above his head. The floor planks split. Ash and dirt funneled through the opening. The dust cleared to reveal a leg jutting through the hole, wriggling like a worm on a fishing line. To his or her credit, the person above made no sound, not even a gasp of surprise.
Fisher dug into one of his rucksack’s side pockets and came up with ten-foot coil of Type III 550 paracord. This was one of Fisher’s many “desert island staples,” along with duct tape, Swedish FireSteel, and superglue for on-the-fly wound repair. He tied a quick running bowline in one end of the cord, then lassoed the dangling foot, looped the free end twice over a pipe, and finished with a cinch knot.
The leg jerked once, then again.
“Shit,” a voice rasped from above. Sounded like Hansen.
Gonna need help, Ben.
Fisher didn’t wait for it to come but rather dropped back down to the pipe run and followed it across the space, ducking under beams and around pipes, until he reached the opposite lintel, where he chinned himself up. Through the floor he heard the rapid padding of footsteps. Two people, it sounded like. Hansen had called for help.
Fisher followed the shelf south, past Hansen’s position, until he reached the far brick wall. Below him and to the right he could see a steel ladder affixed to the wall. Arms outstretched like a trapeze artist, Fisher leaned out from the lintel, let himself fall forward, and then, at the last second, pushed off, snagging a pipe with both hands. He let himself swing twice, then hooked a lower pipe with his heels, reached forward, and grabbed the next pipe over. He wriggled his trunk forward until the pipe under his heels rode up under his butt, and then sat down. Next he rolled over so the pipe was pressed into his quadriceps and let himself slide off until his hands caught the pipe. Two hand-over-hand swings brought him to the ladder.