The Escape

by David Baldacci

  straight onto the road. The houses on either side of it are empty. The exterior patrols are staggered. There is a garage so the cars are loaded and unloaded inside.”

  “And my shooting spot?”

  “There is a wonderful site for you. A knoll rises to the west at the very end of the street in the opposite direction of the safe house. They have demolished the house that once stood there, so the sightline is unobstructed. Twelve hundred meters approximately, with a nice angled bullet flight down to the target.”

  “I’ve done longer in my sleep.”

  “As I know. You must be quick about it, though. Getting you out will be the hardest part.”

  “I don’t intend on lingering. It’s not like I’ll have to shoot them one by one.”

  “I will be there personally to retrieve you.”

  “And then off to Russia?”

  “And then off to our new life of peace.”

  At three o’clock in the morning Susan Reynolds set up her sniper’s nest on the knoll after Anton Bok had confirmed that it was clear. From her carrying case she slid out her favorite weapon. It was a Barrett M82, designated in the U.S. military as the M107. This was a specially configured M107, a special-application scoped rifle, which could fire a unique round.

  Using this weapon a member of the United States Army had shot and killed an adversary in 2008 from over two thousand meters. The current world record for a combat kill over distance was held by a Brit. He’d killed an Afghan from nearly twenty-five hundred meters away.

  Reynolds’s shot would be from a much lesser distance, but it still required an enormous degree of skill. And she had the best technology to aid her, including a laser rangefinder, the best long-range optics, a portable meteorological device, and state-of-the-art ballistic-prediction software.

  But really she only required her scope and her gun. It literally would be like hitting the broad side of a barn. She had an auto loader to feed ammo to the M107. She pulled out one of the rounds and examined it. The fifty-caliber cartridge had a green tip with a gray ring around it. It was known in the field as a “combined effects” cartridge.

  She replaced the round, set up her rifle, lay down behind it, and settled in. The detachable muzzle brake was at the end of the barrel. That diminished the recoil kick. Her rear grip had a mono-pod socket. The bipod feet were spiked for better traction in the ground.

  She powered up her scope and sighted through it. She performed a sweep with the gun, taking in points to the left and right of the target before she swung it back straight and true and focused on the safe house.

  The last patrol had passed by minutes before. It was dark inside the house. They must be asleep by now. She could see no silhouettes moving through the structure. Well, they would never know what had hit them.

  She exhaled a long breath, got her heartbeat within the acceptable range and her physiological status to cold zero. But really she knew she could hardly miss at this range and with this particular target. Not with the ammo she was chambering.

  She fired once and the round flew dead on before colliding with the side of the house. The cartridge was an HEIAP, which stood for high explosive incendiary/armor-piercing ordnance. The fifty-caliber round had a thirty-caliber tungsten penetrator built into it. It could blast through tank armor, brick walls, and concrete blocks. Wood siding and drywall thus did not pose much of a challenge.

  The Comp A explosive embedded in the cartridge detonated on impact, taking out the entire front of the house. The natural gas supply in the house ignited on top of it, taking the roof off and catching both empty houses on either side of it on fire.

  Reynolds fired again and took out the security van in front of the house. All four wheels lifted off the ground as the van disintegrated. She fired again at the house and another explosion rocked the night. Another wall of the house fell inward. The interior was completely on fire. Another explosion hit the structure, collapsing the brick chimney.

  Reynolds waited patiently to see if anyone came running out of the house. If so, they would eat a fifty-cal round directly. It would pass right through them and explode on the other side.

  She fired three more times, taking out all the other security vehicles. One landed directly in the middle of the road, blocking access. Flames and smoke covered the ground and pushed upward, filling the night sky like a wildfire run amok.

  Since Reynolds could no longer see her targets, she decided she was done for the night. Anyone in the house would be dead. It was a nonsurvivable attack. Now there was only a car ride to the jet and her new life in Russia could get started.

  She was just about to get up from behind her weapon when the round slammed into her left shoulder.

  At first she was in such shock that she didn’t realize she had been shot. The bullet had gone right through her and struck the dirt. Her collarbone was shattered and her rotator cuff destroyed. She was bleeding, but the bullet had struck her with such force that her wound was mostly cauterized and the blood loss was minimal.

  Nauseous from the shock of being shot, Reynolds struggled to her feet, holding her useless arm. She looked frantically around to see from where the shot had come. But all she saw was darkness. Leaving her weapon behind, she started to stumble down the path that would carry her to the car where Bok was waiting. Behind her she heard someone coming. She tried to run in the opposite direction, but the person was moving far more swiftly than she could manage.

  Reynolds looked back and stumbled over a bush and fell to the ground screaming in pain.

  She turned over and looked up.

  John Puller stared down at her, his sniper rifle over his shoulder and his pistol pointed at her.

  When she saw who it was, she screamed, “I’ve been shot!”

  “I know. I was the one who shot you.”

  “You bastard. You miserable bastard!”

  He ignored this and spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Send a stretcher. Top of the knoll. Got a GSW. Non-life-threatening. No need to rush.”

  “I will kill you. I swear to God.” She tried to kick at him, but missed. She fell back moaning and clutching her arm.

  He knelt down beside her. “There’s one key difference between the Olympics and combat, Susan. You might have overlooked it.” He paused. “In the Olympics, no one is shooting back at you.”

  CHAPTER

  73

  WITH THEIR GUNS OUT, Knox and Robert approached the car parked off a back road. The security forces guarding them had fanned out looking for Anton Bok, but Knox and Robert had stayed together and broken off in this direction while the others had headed to other areas. Knox reached the car first and peered inside.

  It was empty.

  “Look out!” yelled Robert. “On your six.”

  Knox leapt over the hood a split second before machine-gun fire raked the front of the car, blowing out the front tire and destroying the headlight on that side.

  As Knox hit the ground hard on the other side of the car her gun popped out of her hand.

  Robert fired at the gunman, but Bok had already taken cover behind a tree. He stepped out and unloaded again, spraying shots at the spot from where Robert had fired. Bark and leaves were blown off trees.

  But that was all, because Robert was no longer there.

  Bok took up cover once more and then moved to a new spot.

  Knox slid on her belly and snagged her gun. She did a turkey peek over the car and fired a handful of shots in Bok’s direction.

  None of the rounds found their target because Bok was on the move again. He circled around, intending to come at Knox from her exposed flank.

  She deduced this and fast-crawled to the rear of the car.

  Bok stepped clear of the trees a moment later and raked the car with fire. The tires on that side deflated and one of the rounds struck the fuel tank. Gas started to splash onto the road.

  Bok took a moment to reload his weapon.

  Robert called out, “Move, Knox! The gas!”

&
nbsp; She looked back at him, then at the gas, then over at where Bok had been.

  She turned to run as Robert stepped out into the clearing at the same time that Bok did.

  Both men fired at the same time.

  Bok had reloaded with incendiary rounds. When his round hit the gas tank the Ford sedan exploded.

  A small but still lethal chunk of the car came swirling at Robert. He tried to duck, but the metal caught him in the arm, slicing it open and knocking the gun out of his hand. Staggered, he grabbed his bloody limb and looked around desperately for Knox.

  “Knox!”

  There was no answer.

  He looked across the way as the smoke started to lift. Through the flames eating at the car he saw Bok standing there, his gun pointed directly at him.

  “Susan’s been shot. She’s in custody,” Robert called out.

  Bok said nothing to this. He walked forward. He fired a round at Robert’s feet. And then another. Robert backed away holding his arm.

  Bok walked forward. “Then I have nothing left to live for, do I?”

  “That’s your choice,” said Robert.

  “I have no idea how someone like you could be so, how do you say, fortunate,” said Bok. “Susan was far more talented. Far more dedicated. She cared far more than you ever would.”

  “For the Russians.”

  “I made her see the light. That was my job.”

  “And her job was not to turn traitor. On that I’d say she failed spectacularly. And, by the way, we totally kicked her ass.”

  “Your country has had its day. It’s time for new world leaders. The Stars and Stripes are done. She could see that clearly, even if the likes of you could not.”

  “And you think Russia will fill that void?” said Robert incredulously. “You’ve got a shirtless leader, an economy totally based on fossil fuels, and a military that can’t even control its own nukes. Not a recipe for domination. More likely a rapid decline.”

  Bok stopped a few feet from Robert and then looked to the side. “Tell her that,” he said, indicating something with his gun barrel.

  Robert looked where he was pointing.

  Knox lay in the grass under the trees, the side of her head bleeding. Her breathing was ragged, her chest heaving.

  Robert’s lip trembled. “You’re never going to make it out of here alive, Bok.”

  Bok said nothing.

  Robert said, “You can kill me too. But you just blew up your only way out of here.”

  “As I said, it doesn’t matter to me anymore. Not with Susan gone. We were in love, you know.”

  “I seriously doubt people as twisted as the two of you could possibly love anything.”

  Bok raised his gun and pointed it at Robert’s head. “This is for Susan.”

  From the corner of his eye Robert saw Knox slowly sit up, her gun in her hand. She fired. A shot hit Bok smack in the middle of the head. He dropped where he stood.

  Robert looked back over his shoulder. Knox’s shot had sailed wide of its mark. The other shot had not.

  John Puller was just lowering his sniper rifle. At this close range it was a devastating weapon against flesh, bone, and brains.

  “And that was for my brother,” he said to the dead man.

  Behind him came an EMT squad with medical equipment and a gurney. They raced past where Bok lay and over to Knox. Puller hustled over to his brother and examined his bloody arm.

  “How bad?” he asked.

  “Not bad. I’ll make it. Take care of Knox. She’s not good.”

  Puller called one of the EMTs over. The man sat Robert down and started to treat his wound.

  Puller sprinted over to where Knox lay back in the grass and knelt down next to her. Two EMTs had already started to triage her.

  She looked up at Puller and said, “Did I get him? Did I get Bok?”

  “You nailed the prick. He’s dead.”

  She smiled weakly and touched her head. “Hurts like a bitch. Worse than my hip.”

  “I know. These guys here are going to take care of that.”

  “Am I going to make it?”

  “There is no doubt that you will.”

  “Are you lying to me?”

  “I’ve never really lied to you, Knox.”

  She reached out and gripped his hand. “Your brother okay?”

  “Good to go. Focus on yourself.”

  “Hurts like shit.”

  Puller stared over at one of the EMTs. “Can you do something about that? Like right now?”

  The EMT said, “Trying, sir. It’s…”

  Puller turned back to Knox. “We’ll get your mother to come up and stay with you while you recover.”

  “You don’t want to stay with me?” she mumbled.

  “I meant all of us. I’d like to meet her.”

  “I think . . . I think you’d like her.”

  “If she’s anything like you, I’m sure I will.”

  “We got her, Puller. This time we got her.”

  “Yes, we got her. We got them both.”

  “Hurts like hell, John.”

  He gripped her hand more tightly. “You’re going to be fine, Veronica.”

  “You’re a good man, John Puller. A damn good man.”

  Knox slowly closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER

  74

  PULLER OPENED THE door, closed it behind him, and sat down at the small table across from her. He dropped the file folder he was carrying on the table.

  Susan Reynolds was in an orange prison jumpsuit and her hands and feet were in shackles. Her left arm and shoulder were encased in a cast. She stared impassively across the width of the wood at him.

  “How are the accommodations, Susan?” he asked.

  “Lovely. Haven’t been this comfortable in years.”

  He glanced at the cast. “The docs have instructions to go easy on the painkillers. They don’t want you to get addicted.”

  “I was sure I had you to thank for that.”

  “Sorry about Anton. He unfortunately lost his head back at the safe house.”

  Reynolds simply stared at him.

  He opened the folder. “Since I can barely stand to breathe the same air as you, let’s get down to it.” He slid a document across to her.

  She didn’t even look at it. “What is it?” she asked in an indifferent tone.

  “A confession. A detailed confession not only to what you’ve done recently but to what you did to frame my brother. All you have to do is sign it.”

  “And all you have to do is slide it in a shredder after you leave, because I’m signing nothing.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “You sign the confession the death penalty goes off the table.”