Cutting Edge

by Ward Larsen

  She opted for what looked like the least-used path—an entrance to something called the Winter Riding School that had been barricaded off for construction. Two minutes later, she rounded a warning sign, slipped through an unlocked door, and found herself in a great sunlight-splashed hall. Squarely in the middle, on a floor of churned dirt beneath a giant chandelier, was a body so severely crumpled it could not possibly sustain life. The face was turned toward Lund, and she discerned a male with Indian features. Behind a shattered pair of glasses his face was twisted into a mask of pain, the last expression he would ever wear. Lund knew who it had to be—the man who was twenty minutes late for a presentation in the Festsaal Gallery.

  Dr. Atif Patel.

  She saw no one else in the cavernous hall, but her gaze latched quickly on one other anomaly.

  A big door at the back of the riding floor had been left ajar.

  * * *

  DeBolt tried to keep moving. Keep functioning. His right leg was useless, deadweight dragging beneath him. The sidewalks were busy, the boulevards behind the Hofburg bursting with the commotion of a thriving city. He tried to keep as normal a gait as possible, knowing a pronounced limp would act as a beacon, highlighting him to Delta.

  DeBolt kept to the flow of crowds, tried to lose himself in small groups. His knee was swelling, tightening with each step like a fast-rusting hinge. Fleetness of foot, the one advantage he’d had over Delta, was now lost. He considered hiding, but knew it was hopeless—no one could hide from META. His only chance was to get away, to create distance. Which meant he had to find a quicker way to move.

  He found it just in time, red and boxy, gliding up the street a hundred yards behind him. A city tram. He searched ahead for the next stop and easily spotted it—a sign with a tram symbol next to sheltered benches. He hobbled as fast as he could, not caring how conspicuous he was, desperate to reach the stop before the car arrived.

  The tram passed him effortlessly, then drew to a stop. DeBolt nearly fell trying to catch up, but reached the door just in time. He hauled himself up into the car—there was only one step, but his right leg was carrying almost no weight. He collapsed into an empty front seat as the tram started moving. His breathing was ragged, the cold air dry on his throat. He ventured a look back, and for a moment there was nothing, only the buzz of Vienna on midday. Then he saw the unmistakable shape, a wide overcoat bulling through the crowds.

  The track was angling closer—it would take the tram to within fifty feet of Delta. The killer’s eyes were scanning, searching, and when they paused on the tram car DeBolt hunched down instinctively in his seat. Had he been seen? He ventured another look and saw the bald head pointed loosely toward the tram. Delta was no longer searching, his features lost to an empty gaze—the same one that was on his own face, DeBolt supposed, when he employed META. What function was he using? Was he commandeering feeds from cameras? Intercepting police communications? If Delta had spotted him on the tram, DeBolt was sure there was a computer network or application that could be used to track individual cars.

  He suddenly realized his own screen seemed to be failing, the video intermittently going to snow. What now? Had the hard landing from his jump dislodged something in his head? DeBolt pushed away the ridiculous thought. Striving for logic, he looked outside and saw the problem—the tram was electric, and high-voltage wires were strung above the track. It was no more than signal interference, the same as when he’d gone near the electrical substation in Maine.

  The tram rocked from side to side as it made its way up the street. He tried for a map in his head to see where it was taking him, but the feed kept getting interrupted. The same electricity that was taking him away from Delta was also blocking META. He guessed they were running north, toward the Danube.

  Soon the tram slowed for its next stop, and DeBolt ventured another look back. His heart skipped when he saw someone running to catch up on the far side of the street.

  It nearly stopped beating altogether when he realized who it was.

  * * *

  “I saw you get on the tram,” Lund said breathlessly, “but I didn’t think I could catch up! I’ve never run so fast in my life!”

  She was in his arms, her chest heaving into his with the rhythm of a heartbeat. DeBolt kept holding her, his cheek buried in her soft hair while he looked warily out the window behind. He saw no sign of Delta, and wished it were otherwise. A few minutes ago he’d at least known where the man was. He was ecstatic to see Lund, but terrified she was so near the killer.

  She pushed away and looked at him, her expression an awkward mesh of relief and desperation. “I got your message about Patel, so I came as fast as—”

  “No,” he cut in. “That message wasn’t from me.” They passed through three stops while DeBolt explained everything he’d learned since they’d last talked in Boston. He covered how everyone associated with META had been killed, Patel’s oversight of the project, and its link to the NSA. He told her about Patel’s plans to sell the technology to the highest bidder. Finally DeBolt told her how he’d gotten Delta to turn against his creator.

  “That’s why he left the gallery,” Lund said.

  “What?”

  “I saw him, the killer—he was right behind me in the room where Patel was going to speak, only a few feet away. It was a very public place, so he must have been waiting for the right time.”

  DeBolt felt a shudder rise through her shoulders and translate into his hands. He said, “But then I got Patel to confess, and I transmitted it to Delta. When he learned the truth, he ignored you and came after Patel in a rage.”

  “I saw what he did—the body in the dirt.”

  “He went berserk. I tried to reason with him after he killed Patel. I tried to explain that I was no threat to him. I told him we were both victims of META. He came after me anyway. I jumped over the top-level balcony, landed in the dirt.”

  “I saw you limping.”

  “Right knee and lower leg.”

  “Is it broken?”

  “I don’t think so, but I can barely walk.”

  She looked outside. “We need to get out of town. Can you get a car, the way you told me you did at that diner in the States?”

  “Like OnStar, some European version? I don’t know. Right now I can’t do anything.” He pointed up. “Those high-voltage lines screw up my connection—I’ve noticed it before.”

  “Then we have to get off the tram.”

  He considered it. “If Delta saw either of us get on this car, he’ll find a way to track it.”

  DeBolt looked outside and saw a great basilica-style church. Beyond that the Danube stretched out before them, rolling lazily under a wide double-stacked bridge. The tram came to a stop called Mexikoplatz, and after a careful look outside they got off. DeBolt leaned heavily on Lund as they walked toward the river.

  He said, “There’s a big parking lot near the base of the bridge. We can find a car there.”

  Progress was slow, and ground they would normally have covered in two minutes took five. They paused together at a deep set of stairs, five flights leading down to a parking lot where at least a hundred vehicles stood in wait. “There’s got to be something we can use down there,” he said. “We’ll start with the luxury brands. I think they’re more likely to have a system I can—” DeBolt’s voice cut off abruptly.

  Lund looked at him, saw his distress. She looked all around. “What is it?” she asked. “Do you see him?”

  He stood frozen on the sidewalk.

  “What’s wrong, Trey?”

  He hesitated, then said, “The stairs. It’ll take me forever to climb down with my bad leg. You go down and do some research. I’ll need makes and models, license plate numbers with the country of origin. I’m not sure which will be the easiest for META to hack, so we have to expect some trial and error.”

  “But Trey, I can help you down the stairs and—”

  “No, go now! Do not question me on this!”

  Lund he
sitated, taken aback by his sharpness. She said nothing, but started down the long stone staircase.

  DeBolt waited until she was halfway down before following the instruction in his right eye.

  TURN AROUND, BRAVO.

  He saw Delta step from behind a stone column. He was across the street near the church, no more than fifty yards away. It left only one way out for DeBolt. He limped away from the stairs and headed toward the bridge.

  63

  All too late, DeBolt realized how perfectly Delta had orchestrated things. Only two people now stood in the way of his private ownership of META. Using his abilities, Delta had easily lured him to Vienna, and so too Lund. The man had tracked them both through the city, and even though they’d managed to escape him, DeBolt twice, the final outcome was never in question—it was only a matter of time.

  At that moment, the killer had DeBolt in a nearly perfect situation—isolated, injured, and alone. If there was any consolation for DeBolt, it was that his snap decision had been the right one. He might have given Lund a chance. Once he’d split from her and moved toward the bridge, Delta had followed him. Bravo is the greater threat. That would be his guiding thought. DeBolt only wished he could live up to it.

  The bridge was a modern and busy thoroughfare, two levels of traffic stacked on top of one another. The sidewalk fed into a pedestrian bridge on the outside of the lower level. It ran straight and true, a wide concrete path spanning a quarter of a mile to the far shore.

  DeBolt saw a few other pedestrians and one bicyclist on the path. He was sure Delta noticed them as well, and was no doubt calculating how to do his work without drawing notice. The answer seemed obvious: on DeBolt’s right was a metal rail that ran the length of the bridge, and beyond that was a thirty-foot drop into the Danube. He remembered how Delta had killed Patel, and adapted those mechanics to fit what a police detective might think later this afternoon when the body of a young man was collected from a bank downstream: Broken neck, poor bastard. That’s what happens when they go off the big bridge.

  DeBolt hobbled as fast as he could, his right leg screaming in pain. Thankfully, the four-foot-high guardrail was on his right side, and he used it as a crutch, trying to gain a rhythm. It would never be enough. The far end of the bridge seemed miles away, and with a look over his shoulder he saw Delta closing in. The man wasn’t even running, just keeping a methodical pace thirty steps behind him.

  DeBolt was so focused on moving, he hadn’t realized the screen in his eye was again blank. The static was stronger than ever, crackling on the screen, buzzing in his ear. He passed a service door that was set into the concrete wall that separated the path from the enclosed lanes of traffic, and on it he saw a warning sign—the words were in German, but DeBolt recognized the high-voltage symbol. The bridge, he realized, had embedded utility tunnels. Water and sewer, heavy-duty power lines. It meant META was disabled for both him and Delta. Was there some way to take advantage of that briefly level playing field? Nothing came to mind. Delta seemed to hold every advantage.

  DeBolt heard the killer’s footsteps behind him, heavy and relentless, like pistons in a great engine. He heard the cyclic exhaust of his breath. At the dead center of the bridge the handrail bowed outward, the path going to double width for a twenty-yard stretch. It created an observation deck of sorts, a platform from which one could drink in the beauty of Vienna. Realizing he had to do something, anything to change the situation, DeBolt veered toward the widest part of the platform. On reaching the outer rail, he came to an abrupt stop at the edge.

  He looked down at the river and saw a dark body of water, swirls and eddies flowing smoothly past. He gauged the surface to be forty feet beneath the walkway. Forty feet, a good estimate. He was, after all, something of an expert when it came to judging height above water. In that instant, DeBolt sensed a slight but distinct swing. However slim, he’d found a remnant of what he once was. A trace of familiar ground.

  All at once he knew what he had to do … but to make it work, his timing would have to be perfect. He looked over his shoulder and saw Delta closing in. He was slowing down, looking up and down the pedestrian walkway. DeBolt tried to read his thoughts—not using META, but by putting himself in the man’s position. There was no longer any hurry, so he wanted to choose his moment. Or perhaps he was only being cautious—with his prey cornered, he had to expect a fight. Delta had dispatched Patel with ease, but this time he was facing a man who was young and strong, and who had some measure of training. A man who’d scalded him with boiling water the last time they’d engaged.

  DeBolt reached the rail and backed against it.

  Delta stopped where he was, ten steps away. He looked once more up and down the walkway.

  DeBolt did the same.

  There was no one in sight.

  DeBolt made his move.

  Defying the pain in his leg, he half rolled, half vaulted over the steel rail. The move surprised Delta, who rushed to close the gap. DeBolt could have jumped right then—and maybe he should have. But to escape like that would change nothing.

  In the space of two seconds, DeBolt found a lip of concrete and set his feet. He gripped the hip-high rail with both hands. Then he leaned back as far he could, his body reclined steeply over the chasm below. It was a vantage point he was intimately familiar with, even if the Danube below looked warm and serene compared to the Bering Sea. A veritable swimming pool.

  DeBolt concentrated on one thing—his good left leg. He twisted that foot sideways to gain solid contact with the bridge, and bent his knee slightly. The movements strained his damaged right knee, but in the end he was poised precisely where he wanted to be—hanging precipitously from the rail, a fall imminent.

  Delta arrived like a train, the impact of his body shaking the thick metal rail. The killer’s hands went straight for DeBolt’s throat. DeBolt actually allowed him to get a good grip. Then, in the instant before pressure could be applied, he released his hands from the bridge rail. The effect was subtle against all the other forces involved—most prominent being the strength of Delta’s upper body—but there was a shift in their combined momentum. DeBolt then did the unexpected. He reached out for Delta’s own neck. He didn’t grasp flesh, but rather the collar of his heavy coat, and as soon as he had two tight fistfuls, DeBolt jammed his left leg straight with every ounce of strength.

  DeBolt’s body angled back, away from the bridge and toward the abyss. Delta recognized what was happening, but all too late. Their combined center of gravity was too far from the rail, moving too fast. DeBolt’s grip was too tight. Delta’s hips were dragged over the rail, and there was a terrible hesitation. Then both men tumbled outward, spinning like blades of a broken propeller into the cold Viennese air.

  Falling from great heights is an unnatural event for most humans. Striking the water at forty miles an hour even more so. That was the speed they would reach after dropping forty feet, a number DeBolt knew precisely. He also knew they would sink ten feet as their descents were arrested by the water. There was nothing to be done about any of that. It was physics, pure and simple. He was confident the center of the Danube River was deep enough. Like a smart kid jumping into a new swimming hole, he’d worked through that ahead of time.

  The two men released their grip on one another in midair, a perfectly natural reaction. At that point any commonality ended. Delta began wheeling his arms in an attempt to combat the fall, a basic instinct that was quite useless. He wasn’t traveling fast enough for appreciable wind resistance, so trying to arrest his rate of fall or stabilize by flailing was all but impossible. Gravity and momentum were going to have their way.

  DeBolt, on the other hand, was an expert when it came to falling. To begin, he knew he had precisely 1.58 seconds to work with. He pulled his legs together, from thigh to injured knee to toe, and crossed his arms and tucked them tight into his chest. He sucked in a deep breath and closed his mouth, keeping a board-straight spine and neck. He did it all in less than a second.

/>   DeBolt hit the water, and after the shock of impact he felt the familiar, rapid deceleration. He opened his eyes and looked for the bubbles to tell him which way was up. He was able to orient himself quickly, even discerning the light of day playing on the river’s surface. Then he looked for Delta. He was predictably an arm’s length away, limbs flailing in a froth of bubbles made effervescent by the midday light. His legs kicked mightily, but only one arm was moving, the other hanging limp at his side. He was obviously injured—possibly a broken arm, but more likely a dislocated joint. Delta was also looking up at the surface, and pulling mightily toward it. Only it wasn’t working.

  DeBolt knew why, a hopeful calculation he’d made moments ago on the pedestrian bridge. Delta was wearing body armor. And body armor, by definition, was extremely heavy. The man was effectively wearing an anchor.

  DeBolt floated motionless, neutrally buoyant, his body quiet in the water. Barely using oxygen. He watched Delta pull a mighty one-armed stroke, then sink a little deeper. Pull and sink. Pull and sink. He finally realized his predicament and began tearing apart his wardrobe. He ripped off his overcoat, followed by a heavy sweater, both ghosting out amorphously in the steady current. He was struggling and kicking, working hard, his thick muscles burning oxygen at a prodigious rate. The armored vest—the real problem—had plastic snaps that had to be unlatched one by one. His meaty fingers fumbled in desperation.

  Still sinking.

  Delta’s movements began to slow.

  DeBolt couldn’t take it any longer. It wasn’t in his DNA to watch an injured man drown. He kicked downward, wishing he had fins, and approached Delta in the way he would approach any drowning victim—from behind. He got a hand under one armpit, but as soon as he did Delta twisted in the water to face him. In a fit of rage he grabbed DeBolt’s throat with his good hand. It was an ill-considered move on any number of levels. DeBolt wasn’t breathing to begin with, so shutting down his airway accomplished nothing. More critically, it meant Delta was ignoring the vest that was dragging him to the bottom of the river. DeBolt had a hand underneath Delta’s good arm, which gave him plenty of leverage. With a twist of his body he was free.