by Jeff Abbott
“Jack Ming. Is that my new friend’s name? Why would you want me to give him the cold shoulder?”
“Shut the hell up and just go.”
“No. Why are you here, Sam?” Now August’s voice rose.
I started to walk down the steps. My gun was holstered in the small of my back. My hands were in the air.
I knew there was a spy inside Special Projects. Another traitor who’d likely been bought. Maybe this Ray Brewster. And if I told August the truth the traitor could learn it, no matter how careful August was. It could be his teammate, his boss. And they would never give me back Daniel if I exposed their man.
So I lied: “This is a trap. Novem Soles wants to capture you. Pick your brain.”
“What are you doing here?” And I heard what I didn’t want to hear in his voice. Suspicion. “How did you even know I’m here?”
He thinks I’m one of them now.
“Oh, my God, Jack Ming is here,” I heard Leonie’s voice in my earbud. “He just ran to the door from the building across the alleyway, he’s coming in now…”
No time. No time to react.
The door slammed open and caught August with its edge. He staggered back. I saw Jack Ming power up a gun, aimed at August’s head.
“Drop your gun,” the young man screamed.
And August did and the young man looked up at me. I’d pulled my weapon and he still had his gun leveled at August.
“Drop it!” he screamed. “Drop it now!”
Shoot him, I thought. Just shoot him and this is over. But the gun, his gun, so close to August’s head. I couldn’t. I dropped the gun.
“You,” he said and I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me or to August. But he aimed his glare at me.
I was the surprise. Not August.
“The Chinese hacker from Amsterdam.” August paled. “You were shot.”
“You were dead,” I said. “We thought.” He didn’t need to know I was hunting him. I wanted him to think I was just as surprised as August at his identity. Notice my clever use of we.
If he was surrendering to the CIA then let him think I was part of the CIA. Even if it bought me ten seconds of confusion.
I would have to kill him in front of August. That was that. Then run, like a coward, in the slim hope that Novem Soles would give me my child back.
August said, “The past is the past and I’m guessing since you’re coming to me that all is forgiven.” I remembered the CIA team roughed up Jack a bit.
Jack gave a little shrug.
“We had a deal. I’m ready to carry forward that deal. Lower your weapon. Let’s talk about Novem Soles,” August said.
The young man’s gaze slid to me. I remained very still. If I moved for my gun he could blow August’s brains onto the wall.
But then he swung the gun toward me. “Not yet. Why is he here? He’s one of them.”
“No. I’m not.” This had all gone south. I couldn’t draw on him and risk August’s life. But for Daniel to live he had to die.
“I saw you in Amsterdam,” he said to me. “You were working with Nic.”
“No. I was working with him.” I nodded toward August. August, thank God, kept his mouth shut at this lie.
“No. The CIA was hunting you. You’d run from them. They talked about you in front of me when they thought I didn’t understand.” Jack Ming’s mouth narrowed. “What the hell is this? Why is he here, August?”
After a long, long moment, August said: “Answer the man, Sam.”
I said nothing.
August said, “Listen to me. Sam used to be CIA, he has fought against Novem Soles, and he’s okay. I can assure you of that.” He stared up at me.
Jack’s hand with the gun was shaking, ever so slightly. The hacker had claws and didn’t know what to do. A weird back corner of me wanted to say Your mother is dead, I’m sorry. I’m sorry it’s come to this kind of awful. I’m sorry I have to kill you.
I couldn’t use August to help me.
“I said only you to come,” Jack said to August.
“I didn’t invite him,” August said.
Oh, no.
I played my hand. “Listen to me. There are two dead women upstairs. They were here waiting for you, Jack. Novem Soles is hunting you. I became… aware of this fact.”
“And aware that this was where we were meeting? How could you know?”
“Because I figured out who you were. Really were. Not a Chinese student from Hong Kong. Jack Ming, New Yorker and runaway hacker.” I needed three seconds to shoot him. I needed him not to be aiming at August’s head. “I know because I was smart enough to find you.”
“Who are these women, Sam? Did you kill them?” August asked.
“Kill Jack, what are you waiting for?” Leonie hissed in my ear. “What are you waiting for?”
I was waiting because, if I didn’t kill him, I wanted to find a way to burn Novem Soles to the ground and still get my kid back. The thought had been in the back of my mind, a constant trickle I wouldn’t hear.
But consider the sisters. They tried to take me without killing me, and it didn’t work out. I couldn’t end up like them.
Ming swung the gun away from August and aimed it at the center of my chest. He clutched it with the other hand and for an amateur it telegraphed he meant to fire. August threw himself into Ming and the bullet cracked, two inches from my head. I jumped down from the stairs and pulled them apart. I wrenched the gun from Ming’s hand and knocked him to the floor. His gun dropped to the concrete. Jack’s foot hit it as we struggled and it skittered into shadows beyond the dim gleam of the entry light.
August stood, raising his own gun. Oh. Did not want that.
“Thank you,” I said, and slammed my fist into the side of my friend’s head. He staggered and I hit him again, hard, across his wrist. The gun fell from his nerveless fingers.
“What the hell!” he yelled and he parried my next blow. “What are you doing?”
Leonie, who had been silent, started screaming in my ear, wanting to know what was happening. I couldn’t shoot August. I wouldn’t shoot him. I just needed him sidelined so that I could kill Jack Ming. I would explain later, if he let me. If he didn’t shoot me on sight.
I hit August, a hard right cross, catching him off balance, and he fell. But as he hit the concrete, he kicked out at my legs. I hit the floor, mad. We’d entered Special Projects together, trained together, sparred together. August was bigger than me, heavy with Minnesota farm and college football muscle that he maintained. And now he was mad at me for screwing up what had to be a career highlight. He delivered a kick toward my chest and I caught his foot.
Corner of my eye, I saw Jack Ming scrambling for his gun.
He might shoot both of us. I would if I were him.
I pulled on the foot, going into a roll, knocking August off balance. He was bigger than me but I was more wiry and faster. I couldn’t think of him as a friend, I couldn’t. Not now.
He wrenched free from my grip—despite his bulk, I underestimated how strong he was—and kicked me, catching me in the face. Heel hit jaw, hurt like hell where I’d already been battered by the sisters. I felt blood on my lips. August circled me, a look mixing disgust and confusion on his face, and hammered three hard, fast punches into my chest. I fell back against the wall; I felt the raised thumbs of the light switches stab my spine. He started to scream at Ming and I, stumbling back, twisted to see Ming running. Gun in hand, but running. From both of us, throwing himself out into the alley.
“Grab him!” August screamed and I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to a partner who was listening in, same as Leonie.
I yelled, “Ming’s heading out!” But I already heard footsteps pounding on the stairs. Leonie dashed past me and August. He made a grab at her but she dodged him, mostly because I roundhouse-kicked him as hard as I could in the chest.
He fell but as I turned to pursue Ming I stumbled over Jack’s backpack. He’d left it behind in his panic. I
fell. August, huffing, closed hands around my throat and threw me into the adjoining, unfinished wall I’d complained about to Meggie when she was pretending to be Beth Marley.
The drywall gave way and we tumbled through it together. Coughing, I fought to free his grip from my throat. He wouldn’t let go and those sausage-thick fingers started to squeeze the life out of me. He didn’t want me dead, he wanted me out of the way. So I sagged, like I was passing out. He let go and levered back a fist to slam it into my face.
I clawed my hands around his fist and held it still.
“Why?” he yelled.
“They’re gonna kill my kid if I don’t,” I said, before I could think.
“Evacuate the informant if you have him,” he yelled. Oh, crap. He was talking to someone. He was wired. A team was here.
I shoved him off me and I seized a splintered support from the broken wall. I wrenched it free and I skimmed it right across the back of the skull. He collapsed.
For one horrifying second I thought I had killed him. I checked him. He was breathing.
I ran, stumbling into the alley, after Leonie and Jack, into whatever awaited.
48
The Streets of Williamsburg
JACK MING BOLTED FROM THE BUILDING into the cool of the alleyway. The red notebook, wedged in the back of his pants, hidden under a jacket, rubbed his skin at the top of his butt. He could hardly breathe.
This had been a trap. Either August had set him up or August had been set up himself. There would be no surrendering to him today. That Capra guy was after him. He stumbled. He had to get out of the neighborhood. Neither of those guys might be here alone.
He heard the chook of the discharge from a small gun, nearly soft in the humid air. He felt the heat of a bullet whizz close to his ear.
Someone was shooting at him. He stumbled, turned, and saw a woman racing after him. She was petite, red-haired, with mouth gritted. She wore jeans and sneakers and a blue T-shirt and she looked like a young suburban mother. She stopped and she stared at him as he stared back at her, backing away in shock, and for a second he screamed, “Get out of here, someone’s shooting…”
But she raised a gun. It shook in her hand.
“Forgive me,” she said. “You have to die. I’m sorry.”
And she fired as he turned and ran toward the end of the alley. A black Lincoln Navigator slammed to a stop thirty feet ahead of him, then started blasting toward him.
He had nowhere to go.
49
I HEARD THE DISTANT PELL-MELL OF SHOTS. The space between them told me they weren’t fired with confidence. I hit the door and ran into the alleyway and headed toward the gunfire.
It was the battle of the hackers who couldn’t shoot straight. Leonie stood, discharging the weapon at the running Ming. She hadn’t hit him as far as I could see.
Two men in suits spilled out of a Lincoln Navigator, braked in the alley. I know Special Projects when I see it and these two were August’s men.
I hurtled past Leonie, told her to run, take cover.
Jack stopped, tottered, caught between the twin threats. One of the men seized him from behind as he turned back to Leonie—just as I ran past her—and levered him toward the Navigator. The other man—stocky, short, with a neck thick with muscle—raced toward us, aimed his weapon at me.
“Don’t shoot!” I yelled. “Holdwine is in trouble!”
And he paused. He knew me; we’d worked briefly in New York before Lucy and I moved to London. His name was Griffith. And that moment of recognition, tethered to doubt, bought me three seconds I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
“He’s been shot by that kid!” I yelled.
“He’s lying!” Ming screamed.
“Stop,” Griffith yelled. But too late: I slammed into him with a jump; if I’d stopped to throw a punch it would have telegraphed my half-truth of being on August’s side.
I knocked the wind out of his chest, tumbled to the pavement, rolled against a Dumpster. The other agent—who I didn’t know—strong-armed Jack toward the Navigator and aimed his pistol back across the hood at me. Jack fought him, and he had to turn his attention to Jack, to force him into the car, and I ran toward them both.
The agent shoved Jack into the driver’s side, then followed him into the Navigator.
He wheeled hard, rocketing out of the alley, backing into traffic with a blaring of horns. He had to wait several seconds to execute a U-turn. He was leaving Griffith and August behind. Which meant they were under orders that Jack Ming had to be protected at all costs.
I ran at full throttle. I hoped the adrenaline rush would make up for any lack of gracefulness like I showed in my sloppy running back in Las Vegas. I didn’t dodge into traffic behind them. I read the road, the direction they’d gone, with a glance—the level of traffic, the obstacles, the shifting pattern of the cars. You have to read the terrain in a parkour run and that’s why normally you only run where you’ve walked and explored, thoroughly. I was breaking a basic rule.
He was out in traffic; I couldn’t catch him. But. One chance. Insane but I did it.
Running at full power, I jumped onto the trunk and roof of a parked car next to the alleyway and launched myself, timing it to land on the side of a moving MTA bus barreling past, closing in on them. I gripped a side ad of the bus and clambered—past the astonished stares of the riders—on to the roof.
Everything hurt. Fingers, arms, chest, legs. Brain.
The bus driver, trying to figure out what that sound of an impact was against his bus, slowed. No doubt the passengers were telling him a crazy man was on board. I ran the length of the bus as it slowed, launching myself onto the roof of the Navigator.
Just one perfect shot and my son would be safe.
Training dictated that I eliminate the bigger threat: the other Special Projects agent. He could kill me before I got to Jack. I wasn’t eager to kill an innocent man.
The Navigator skidded in to a parked car, on the passenger side.
I slid off the roof on to the hood, on my knees, gun drawn. I emptied the clip into the windshield. The reinforced glass pocked but didn’t surrender to the bullets. I placed my shots hard and neat where Jack Ming sat and I swear above the roar of traffic and horns and the gun blasts I could hear Jack Ming screaming.
But the glass held. Through the blizzard of fractures in the windshield I could see Jack scrambling toward the back of the Navigator, squeezing between the driver and passenger seats. Wriggling toward the rear exit. Panicking.
The agent was brave. He was going to cover Jack Ming’s escape. Good guy, doing his job. My throat thickened at the thought of what I would have to do. He jacked down his window and he snaked an arm around the windshield to fire at me.
I dropped off the hood, heard the first bullet kiss the paint. I was trapped in a narrow wedge between the parked car and the Navigator. The pavement was warm. The tire slanted toward me and I barely had room to curve and wriggle between the cars to get under the Navigator.
I started snaking toward the back. The car’s heat radiated against me.
To my left the driver’s door opened and I saw a foot hit the ground.
I shot the agent in the fleshy part of the calf. He howled and the leg withdrew into the car.
Ahead of me I saw red Converse sneakers hit the asphalt. Running. I writhed out from under the car, dodging through stalled and slowing traffic. The sidewalks had cleared at the first sound of the shots. Thank you, considerate, frightened pedestrians. But I had to dodge cars and Jack, fresh and unbeaten, bolted at full speed on the fast-emptying sidewalks.
He rounded a corner and vanished.
I chased him. He glanced back, fear on his face. An ache tore through my ribs, in my chest, where August had dealt me a beating. Where I’d thrown myself against the bus. Trying to sneak up on them had hurt me.
A cheap street market loomed up ahead, one of those full of stuff like prepaid cell phones and knockoff purses and anything from lingerie to D
VD players still in original packing, but not sold at original prices. People thronged between the booths, along the edges. Old folks, kids, babies in strollers, scatterings of families.
I couldn’t risk a shot at him. Not there. Too many people.
Jack dodged between the tables and the booths. Loud Chinese pop and a competing undercurrent of reggae thrummed the air. I risked a backward glance and saw Leonie, a few blocks back, weaving toward us. She’d had the presence of mind to hide the gun. I didn’t see either August or his men. But they would either be coming, very soon, or calling in reinforcements.
I tailed Jack Ming into the marketplace. He glanced back every ten seconds to see if I was following. We were blocks from where we’d started and this crowd was calm, and he wasn’t eager to panic them. He wanted them between me and him. He wasn’t screaming for help. Or for the police. He was determined to run. And he was determined to stay in a crowd.
The fear in his face tore at me. I didn’t want to kill this man.
50
AUGUST OPENED HIS EYES. His face hurt. Everything hurt. Blood on the back of his head, sticky. He got to his feet.
He heard the whine of the metal door opening, footsteps pounding the concrete floor. He groped for his gun. Gone. His head felt broken and dreamy and misty. Concussion, probably.
A woman. Petite, red hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She stared at him and raised the gun in her hand.
“Stay there,” she said. “Stay right there.”
He stayed right there.
He saw her gaze dart about the room. She ran to Jack Ming’s knapsack, lifted it almost gently. Before she picked it up he could see in its unzippered opening a small laptop. She grabbed the knapsack, put it over her shoulder. She kept the gun leveled at August.
“Just stay there,” she ordered him.
“Who are you?” he said.
Of course she didn’t answer. She kept her gaze on him, tightened her grip on the gun.
She vanished back out into the alley.
August staggered to the door. Who the hell was she? Was she in league with Ming or with Sam?