by Tom Clancy
“How long have you been here, Hans?” Fisher asked as he sat down. There were only five other people in the courtyard: two couples sitting several tables away, and a thick-necked, broad-shouldered man in a black suit standing near the courtyard’s rear wooden gate. Bodyguard , Fisher thought. This told him something he’d suspected about Hoffman: The man was fairly high in the Bundesnachrichtendienst. This was the first time, however, that Hoffman had brought along protection.
Hoffman smiled, shrugged. “Long enough to sample four . . . no, five wines,” the BND man replied in lightly accented English. “They don’t give you much to try, you know. Would you like—”
“No, thanks.” Fisher shifted in his chair ever so slightly so he could see both the bodyguard and the courtyard’s main entrance. “Who’s your friend?”
“Dietrich.”
“He needs to smile more.”
Hoffman chuckled. “He is very stern, isn’t he?”
Fisher said nothing but held Hoffman’s gaze. Finally the BND man waved his hand dismissively. “Nothing to worry about, Sam. Another matter altogether. Apparently not everyone I deal with likes me as much as you do.”
It was a lie. A well-told lie but a lie nevertheless. Fisher offered Hoffman a hard smile. “Who said I like you?”
Another laugh. Hoffman was the quintessential jovial German. Dietrich, on the other hand, was the quintessential stone-faced Teutonic knuckle dragger. His suit was also poorly fitted. Fisher could see the outline of a semiautomatic in a paddle holster at his waist.
“We’re good friends, Sam.”
“I’ll take your word for it. His coat shouldn’t be buttoned, you know.”
“Pardon me?”
“Dietrich. His coat. It’ll cost him a second or more when he goes for his weapon.”
Hoffman glanced at his bodyguard and frowned slightly. “I’ll see to it. Tell me how you fared in Luxembourg.”
In answer, Fisher placed a 4 GB USB flash drive on the table and slid it across. “A lot of information. Whether it’s what you’re after is for you to judge.”
Hoffman touched the flash drive with his index finger and slid it to the edge of the table, behind his collection of wineglasses. “I’ll arrange for your fee to be transmitted when we’re done here.”
Fisher nodded. “Hans, just so we’re clear: If you’ve set me up, I’ll put two bullets in your heart before Dietrich can even reach his buttons.”
Hoffman’s face went slack. He cleared his throat. He shifted in his seat. “I don’t know that I would it call it a ‘setup.’ ”
“What would you call it?”
“An order from on high. I got a call from Pullach,” Hoffman said, referring to the BND’s headquarters in Pullach.
“From whom, exactly?”
“Does it matter? Someone called him, and someone had called the person before him. They wanted to know if I was working with you. What could I say?”
Nothing, Fisher thought. Unless Hoffman was lying and the request had come from outside the government—and his motivation was personal gain—he was taking the only option open to him. Besides, Fisher had just given Hoffman a flash drive full of useless information, so they were even.
“Who’s coming for me?” Fisher asked. “Some of yours?”
“No, but I do not know who.”
“Do they know what I’m driving?”
“If they do, it’s not from us.”
“How soon?”
Now Hoffman smiled. “Why, when we meet, of course. At two o’clock.”
Fisher checked his watch. It was one fifteen. “Thanks, Hans.”
“For what? I showed up early to enjoy the wine, and here you were.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”
“No, I’m sorry. If I had to guess, however, I would say they are flying in.”
“Which means Cologne Bonn Airport.”
“Yes.”
From the airport to Hammerstein it was an hour’s drive south on Highway 42. At least he would know from where the threat was coming—unless they were already here, that was.
“Frankfurt is only ninety minutes to the south. Big city. Plenty of places to lose yourself.”
Fisher stood up and extended his hand. “Do me one more favor.”
“Certainly.”
“In five minutes call the local police. Tell them a mad-man in a BMW is smashing into cars in the marina parking lot south of the winery. Tell them he headed south down 42.”
Hoffman pursed his lips in confusion but nodded. “Five minutes.”
“Thanks.” Fisher turned to go.
Hoffman said, “Just tell me one thing: If you hadn’t liked the answer I gave you, would you have shot me?”
“Yes. But I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”
He turned and headed for the rear gate, leaving Hoffman chuckling at the table.
FISHER went around the winery and came through the trees in the side yard. He stopped beside the bushes and looked around. Across the highway a couple dozen cars were parked in the boat-launch lot. It was busy for a weekday, with cars and boat trailers jockeying around one another, waiting for a chance to launch or leave.
Fisher watched, looking for anomalies. It didn’t take long. Two men and two women dressed like locals, but not quite like locals, were moving through the lot, pausing at cars, peering in windows, and keeping one another in sight. Ames, Valentina, Noboru, and Kimberly Gillespie. He should have known that forty-five minutes was enough of a head start. Like any good operative Hansen had moved his team into position well before his quarry was set to arrive.
Speaking of Hansen . . . Fisher watched him emerge from between a pair of cars in the lot and step over the guardrail and onto the shoulder of the road. He waited for a break in traffic, then started across toward the refinery.
Fisher didn’t hesitate but stepped out from between the bushes and started toward his BMW. Hansen spotted him immediately and picked up his pace. Not quick enough, Fisher thought, and kept walking. When he was ten feet from the BMW, Hansen called, “Don’t, Sam, we’ve got you.”
Fisher didn’t reply, didn’t look up.
Hansen hesitated; his pace faltered. “Fisher!” It was almost a shout.
Fisher was five feet away. He pointed the key fob at the BMW and unlocked the door. In the corner of his eye he saw Hansen’s right hand reach into the folds of his black leather jacket. Fisher reached for the door handle, lifted it, and opened the door, only then looking up at Hansen, who’d just reached the edge of the winery parking lot. Fisher gave him a curt nod and got into the car. As the door shut Hansen muttered, “Damn!” then turned and sprinted back across the highway. Fisher started the engine, did a Y-turn in the lot, and pulled onto the highway, heading south.
Indecision and youth, he thought grimly.
WHETHER born of his own suspicions about their mission, Fisher’s saving of Noboru at the Siegfried Line, or something else altogether, Fisher didn’t know, but clearly Hansen hadn’t yet crossed the threshold.
As advertised, Fisher sped to the marina a quarter mile south of the winery, pulled into the parking lot, and side-swiped a dozen unoccupied cars before pulling back onto the highway and continuing south. He glanced in his rearview mirror. Several cars sat at the exit to the boat-launch lot, but none had emerged since he’d left the winery.
He made no attempt to blend in with traffic, and made no turns, but headed straight south, pushing the BMW as fast as he dared, weaving around slower cars until four minutes later he saw the sign for Neuwied. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Two miles back a pair of sedans was swerving over the center line, leapfrogging around slower cars; far behind them Fisher could see flashing blue lights.
He had no intention of letting this turn into a protracted chase. Hollywood portrayals notwithstanding, urban high-speed chases always attracted the police, and the police usually won in the end. Plus, in the back of Fisher’s mind he knew he’d been lucky too many times over the last few days.
In broad daylight, with two cars to Fisher’s one, Hansen would get the upper hand sooner rather than later. What he needed was to end the chase quickly and dramatically—and in a way that would not only allow his escape but also complicate Hansen’s situation.
Sitting at the table with Hoffman, Fisher had reviewed his mental map of the area and picked his spot.
AS he sped past the Neuwied city limits sign the traffic thickened, and he slowed to 60 kph. Highway 42 swung west, looping around the city, and changed into the L258. Another half mile brought him to a cloverleaf. He followed the Highway 256 exit, which swung south and east, back into Neuwied proper. As the waters of the Rhine came back into view, he looked in his rearview mirror but saw nothing. But they were there, matching his speed, flowing with the traffic, trying not to attract attention. The police from Hammerstein were also nowhere to be seen, but witnesses from the marina would have been certain of the BMW’s direction. By now, the Neuwied police were on alert.
Fisher passed a sign that read RAIFFEISENBRÜCKE 3 KM. He punched the gas pedal and the BMW’s powerful engine responded instantly. As the speedometer swept past 100 kph, then 120, he swerved around cars ahead of him, honking and flashing his lights and gesturing wildly. A half mile back a pair of Mercedes did the same, moving into the passing lane and accelerating.
There you are. . . . RAIFFEISENBRÜCKE 2 KM.
Now he could see it, the two-lane Raiffeisen Bridge rising from the river, its central A-shaped pylon jutting 150 feet into the sky, angled support cables stretching out like threads from a spider’s web. In the passenger side mirror he saw flashing blue lights. He glanced over his shoulder. A pair of police cars raced up the Sandkauler on-ramp and fell in behind Hansen’s Mercedes.
Two more curves and another kilometer brought Fisher to the bridge. He tapped the brakes, jerked the BMW left, around a slow-moving lorry, and then he was on the span and over the water. To his left, over the railing, he could see the curved dagger shape of Herbstliche Insel—Autumn Island—in the middle of the channel.
Fisher felt his pulse quicken. What he was about to do would either kill him or allow him to slip away and leave no trail whatsoever.
He waited until he saw Hansen’s Mercedes appear on the bridge a few hundred yards behind him, then pushed the accelerator to the floor, putting some distance between himself and the closest following cars. He then slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop, with the BMW’s tires straddling the center line. Tires screeched. Horns began honking. Across the center guardrail, traffic in the eastbound lanes was slowing to a crawl.
Fisher closed his eyes for a moment, took a breath, tried to block out the blaring car horns, the warbling of the approaching police sirens, the shouting. . . . He looked in his rearview mirror. People were now getting out of their cars, peering at the lone BMW sitting still in the middle of the span. Fisher leaned over, pulled his backpack off the passenger floor, tossed it into the backseat, then closed each of the dashboard vents in turn.
Not going to get any easier, Sam, he told himself.
He shifted the BMW into reverse, spun the wheel, and backed up until his rear bumper thudded into the center guardrail and his hood was pointed at the opposite guardrail. He unbuckled his seat belt.
He shifted into drive, took a final calming breath, then jammed the accelerator to the floor.
16
IF not for the BMW’s six liter, 537 horsepower engine, Fisher’s escape attempt would have ended before it started, when the car’s front bumper hit the guardrail. But the engine, combined with fine German craftsmanship, was no match for the waist-high rail and the abutting suicide-prevention hurricane fencing—a bit of irony that didn’t escape Fisher’s attention as the BMW tore through the fence and plunged toward the river below. The drop was fifty feet, but trapped inside the car, listening to the banshee wail of the engine and watching horizon and sky and water turn to a smudge before his eyes, it might as well have been a thousand feet.
As it had hundreds of times before, Fisher’s training took over when every muscle of his body wanted to freeze up. He rolled over and threw himself over the seats and onto the floor in the back, atop his backpack. Most victims of bridge collapses die in the front seat, arms braced against the steering wheel or dashboard, every muscle in their body tensed as they stare, transfixed, at the water’s surface rushing up to meet them. Whether being in the backseat would provide any great protection, he was about to find out. He took a deep breath, let it out, and commanded his body to relax.
The BMW stopped dead, as though it had hit a brick wall, which, in terms of physics, was more true than not. From fifty feet up, the car had gained enough momentum that the water’s relative solidity was equal to that of concrete. Fisher was thrown against the seats, and the seats tore free of their floor mounts and slammed into the dashboard and windshield. He felt the BMW porpoise—the hood plunging beneath the surface, then breaching again as the rear of the car slammed down. With a prolonged sputter the engine died.
Fisher groaned, tried to push himself off the seat backs. White-hot pain arced through his chest and he gasped. Having experienced the sensation before, he knew he’d bruised a rib, perhaps more. He craned his neck and peered between the seats. The windshield was intact. He could feel the car settling lower, could see the water boiling up over the windshield and side windows. He heard the gurgle of it pouring through the nooks and crannies in the engine compartment. Water began gushing through the vents. Fisher felt a flash of panic. Words and half-formed images flashed through his mind: trapped, drowning, tomb, slow death . . . He pushed the panic back and focused. He was sinking, but he wasn’t trapped, not yet at least, and he’d be damned if he was going die trapped in a BMW 7 Series at the bottom of the Rhine River.
People who survive bridge collapses only to drown in their cars invariably make one fatal mistake: They try to keep the water out, realizing only too late that it is the water pressure that’s keeping them from opening the doors or rolling down windows. Panic sets in, the mind freezes up, and they drown.
Most modern cars are equipped with thick and precision-fitted weather seals, and Fisher’s BMW was no exception. While water was gushing from the vent slats, the door seals were holding, save dozens of rivulets streaming down the glass. These would get worse as the water pressure increased, but he still had time. Teeth set against the pain in his chest, he rolled over and looked out the back window. Light from the surface was fading rapidly; he estimated the car was dropping past twelve feet. The current, which ran at an average of four miles per hour—a walking pace—had taken hold. It would be ten minutes or more before rescue craft arrived on the scene. By then, provided the Rhine was as deep here as he’d guessed, he and the BMW would be a half mile downstream.
NINETY seconds later he was passing thirty feet, and the BMW slipped into complete darkness. Fisher dug an LED headlamp from his jacket pocket, donned it, turned it on. The backseat was bathed in cold, blue-white light. The water pouring from the vents had reached the mangled steering wheel. All around him the car popped and squelched as the exterior pressure increased. Occasionally pockets of air in the engine compartment would find their way out, then bubble past the windows and disappear into the gloom.
Almost time, Fisher told himself. Gear check.
Working under the headlamp’s beam, Fisher unzipped the backpack and pulled out a black aluminum cylinder the size of a Pringles potato chip canister. Modeled on the commercial version known as Spare Air, this DARPA-modified miniature scuba tank had been named OmegaO by some long-forgotten techno-geek with a dark sense of humor. Omega for “last,” and O, the symbol for oxygen—the last breath you’re likely to take. Despite its diminutive size, the OmegaO was something of a marvel, able to hold 2.5 cubic feet, or 70 liters, of air, which translated into roughly forty-five to fifty lungfuls. For an experienced diver this could mean as much as five or six minutes underwater, enough for a strong swimmer to cover a quarter mile or more. Fisher was a strong swimmer.
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FED by spring snowmelt, the water was shockingly cold but not so much so that hypothermia was a worry. Not yet at least—not as long as he got out of the water within the next half hour. Fisher wondered how Hansen and his team had reacted. Whether they believed he was dead was a toss-up, but he wasn’t counting on that but rather on the mess with which he’d left them: a high-speed chase ending in a car plummeting off the bridge into the Rhine. If nothing else, his pursuers would be occupied for the next hour or more.
The water was roiling now, being forced into the car under ever-increasing pressure. The level reached his chest. One final time, he checked the OmegaO hanging from the strap around his neck.
With a grating jolt, the BMW hit the riverbed; the car continued to slide for another ten feet until the tires sunk into the mud, bringing it to a halt. He could feel the current buffeting the sides. Water bubbled up to his chin. He got to his knees and, head pressed into the ceiling, donned his backpack. He put on the regulator and punched the button to test the airflow and was rewarded with a short hiss. He took a breath; the air was cool and metallic tasting. He closed his eyes and the water enveloped him.
Silence.
He sat still for a moment and listened to the ticks and pings of debris washing over the BMW, then opened his eyes. His headlamp beam was a cone of white before him. He checked the windows but saw only darkness and occasional bits of swirling sediment and plant matter. In which direction had the car settled? He pressed his hand first against the passenger-side window, then the driver’s side; here he felt more pressure against the glass. He scooted back to the other side, lifted the handle, and put his shoulder to the door. It burst open. Fisher tumbled out and landed on his side, buried up to his collarbone in mud. Loosened by the impact, his headlamp slipped off his head and slipped away. He snagged it, settled the straps back on his head, and cinched them down.