Slightly woozy from the massive concussive force generated by the explosive, Sam stood and dropped the pillow at her feet. She thought she heard Riley calling to her over the transceiver but wasn’t certain because she’d been temporarily deafened by the incredible noise inside the room.
A brief investigation of the window revealed the blast had stripped the security bars loose. The ends glowed red-hot. Chipped stone and broken glass had sprayed across the floor.
Grabbing the bars, Sam shoved outward and felt the metal grate against the stone as the security unit tore loose. She still couldn’t hear anything more than a low-pitched roar. The bars clanged distantly against the hard stone ground.
“I’m free,” she said, hoping the transceiver hadn’t suffered damage in the ear-splitting blast. She wanted Riley listening to her at the other end of the connection because she didn’t want to feel alone.
Part of her resisted that want. Except for her six years among the Cassandras at the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women, her whole life had been spent in some degree of seclusion. She hadn’t gotten close to any of the foster families that had helped raise her. Working for the CIA had appealed to her because she could be part of something that mattered, a place where she could matter, without being overly intimate with it. In fact, anonymity was a plus.
Peering out the window, Sam saw the ground a little more than twenty feet below. A sharp drop lay less than three feet out from the castle wall. In the weak moonlight, her eyes still somewhat dazzled by the explosive, Sam couldn’t tell how far the drop was.
Another explosion came as a dulled thump behind her. She turned and stared at the warped door. Light from the hallway blazed through the smoky ruin clouding into the room.
Subtlety obviously isn’t a priority, Sam thought.
The door shivered from impacts. Evidently whoever had set the explosive was now trying to finish breaking in. Steiner’s door had been bomb resistant—to a degree.
Lowering herself through the window, Sam held on to the window frame by her fingertips, her front plastered against the rough stone side of the castle. Her gown ripped. Glancing down, she tried to estimate how far away the ground was.
Fourteen feet, she told herself with some trepidation. At least.
The height wasn’t much. She’d dropped farther than that while running la parkour. The French urban footrace over building tops, fences, cars, and anything else that got in a runner’s way was something she excelled at.
But a drop onto uneven and treacherous ground in the dark without proper footgear was dangerous. If she broke, sprained or even just twisted an ankle, she’d slow down considerably and could be caught or killed in heartbeats. Neither outcome was enticing.
Tense male voices came from inside the room. They spoke English and sounded far away in her still-ringing ears.
“Where is she?”
Cones of illumination moved inside the room, letting Sam know the men carried flashlights.
“The window.”
Sam released her hold and dropped. She remained limp, rolling with the impact instead of trying to resist it. Sharp pain ripped through her left heel as the spike of the shoe snapped off. She slid dangerously close to the drop-off, but managed to shove her palms out to bring herself to a stop. Her head and shoulders hung over the edge. Pebbles skated past her and fell. Gravel and stone scraped her palms.
“Sam,” Riley called over the transceiver. His voice barely sounded above a whisper even though she knew he was speaking loudly or maybe even yelling. “Get up.”
“I am,” Sam snarled. Gingerly, mindful of her balance, she sat up, and kicked off her useless high-heeled shoes. One of them scooted over the drop-off and disappeared. Ringing sounded in her ears as she forced herself to her feet. Her bruised and scraped palms burned from the effort. She bent down and snatched up the clutch purse, then stuffed it into the dress’s built-in bra.
“There!” someone shouted above her.
Sam didn’t look up. Looking up could guarantee a bullet to the face or a loss of her night vision if she saw a muzzle flash or her pursuers caught her full-on with a flashlight beam.
“The parking lot’s down the mountain,” Riley called.
“I know.” Sam felt irritable about the situation she was in, as though she had somehow failed. That was the only thing keeping her fear in check.
She grabbed her gown and ripped it from around her hips, freeing her legs for longer strides. Despite the summer season, the night air up in the mountains felt cold. She ran, dressed in the tattered remains of the gown and her underwear. When survival was on the line, modesty came in a distant second.
Calluses from years of running kept her feet somewhat protected, but she still felt sharp rocks and rough stone edges. Flashlight beams cut through the night around her.
“Have you still got a knife?” Riley asked.
“Yes.” Sam carried a small folding knife disguised as fingernail clippers in her clutch. Her breath rasped in her lungs, but her movements became more fluid as the adrenaline hit her system and her muscles warmed up. The internal rhythm she’d developed over years of physical exercise took over. Her arms and legs pumped, driving her body like a high-performance machine.
“Ever hot-wire a car?”
“Yes.”
“Under less-than-ideal circumstances?”
Sam didn’t bother to answer. When was hot-wiring a car ideal?
The flashlight beams licked the cold stone of the mountain around her. One of them fell across her from behind, and her shadow stretched long and lean ahead of her.
“There are four armed guards in the parking area,” Riley said.
“Where’s Bret?” Sam broke free of the castle and ran along the stony ground behind the tall wall enclosing the main grounds. The ground there held more soil and didn’t bruise her feet quite as badly. Grass actually grew in several spots.
“Getting away.”
Flashlight beams continued to splash the countryside after Sam. She risked a glance behind her. One man was just rising from dropping out the window. Another one hit the ground in the next second.
“Who are these guys?” Sam asked.
“Save your breath for running.”
“Who?” she demanded.
Riley didn’t sound happy about being distracted or disobeyed. “British Intelligence.”
“Why is British Intelligence chasing me when Steiner is such a prize?”
“I don’t know.”
Shots split the night behind Sam. Bullets struck sparks from the castle’s outer-perimeter wall and stones farther down the incline. Several of them passed within inches of her while the two men behind her ordered her to stop.
“There are probably six cars down there that you can hot-wire,” Riley said. “All of them old enough that they lack the antitheft devices of newer models.”
Sam reached the bottom of the incline where the mountain leveled out toward the graveled parking area. Guards carrying flashlights took cover among the cars, SUVs and limousines.
One of the guards swung his flashlight up in her direction. Sam slitted her eyes against the glare to preserve some of her night vision, saw the massive semiautomatic pistol in the guard’s hand and kept running.
“What are you doing?” Riley asked. “He sees you! Get down!”
Instead, Sam kept running. Hiding was an instinctive male reaction. She was female. A half-dressed female running out of the darkness was something a lot of men dreamed about. Especially bored security guards.
“Help!” Sam cried in a pathetic and frightened voice in German. “Those men!” She pointed behind her as she ran. “Help me!”
“Fräulein.” The guard spoke German, as well. “Who is chasing you?” He stood partially shielded by the massive bulk of an H2 SUV.
“I don’t know,” Sam replied, acting as though she were out of breath. She ran at the man, never breaking stride.
“Stop!” The command rang out behind Sam. A flurry of
pistol shots punctuated the order. One of the bullets shattered the H2’s passenger rearview mirror only inches from the guard’s head.
The man abandoned all pretense of playing the dashing hero to the damsel in distress and got down to the selfish business of saving himself. He ducked behind the H2’s bulk, then fired two shots toward the MI-6 agents.
“Help me!” Sam cried as she closed on the guard. She kept her hands up and away from her body, showing that she carried no weapon.
“Come here,” the man said. His voice cracked with nervousness. “I will protect you.”
Without leaving the safety of the H2, the guard reached for Sam. She caught his wrist in both her hands, set herself, and ruthlessly twisted the man’s hand over, controlling the thumb and feeling it break in her grip.
Before the man could cry out in pain, Sam kicked the guard hard in the groin. The man’s knees buckled. He couldn’t get his breath. Still controlling the broken thumb, Sam kicked the man twice in the face. His head bounced from the H2’s reinforced body with hollow thuds.
Even as the guard dropped unconscious, Sam plucked the big pistol from the man’s hand. She identified the weapon at once as a Heckler & Koch Mark 23 chambered in .45ACP. The weapon was fierce, designed for knockdown power on the battlefield for special forces. With two shots fired, Sam knew the brutally compact pistol held eight more in the magazine.
“Get moving,” Riley ordered.
Sam let the unconscious guard drop and resisted the impulse to look for more ammunition. Getting out of the confusing situation she was currently in relied more on mobility than firepower.
“What am I looking for?” she asked as she fled through the maze of parked cars. Her feet ached but she ignored the pain.
“Mercedes 450 SL,” Riley replied. “Thirty-year-old-model. Midnight blue. It’ll look black tonight. Three rows up and six cars down on your left.”
Sam altered her course.
“C’mon,” Riley said. “They’re gaining.”
They have shoes, Sam thought angrily. But she saved her breath for running.
She found the Mercedes seconds later, exactly where Riley had said it would be. The vehicle looked sleek and powerful. Although it was almost thirty years old, the two-seater model had classic lines that she recognized at once.
Without breaking stride, Sam pointed the pistol at the car and squeezed off two rounds. The bullets shattered the driver’s side window, revealing at once that the glass wasn’t bulletproof. The rounds dug deeply into the passenger seat and door.
“What the hell are you doing?” Riley asked.
“Opening the window. Faster this way.”
“You just ID’ed your location.” Riley sounded pissed and worried all at the same time.
Sam didn’t have time to argue the point over an immediate entrance into the car versus picking the lock or hoping that the vehicle had been left open. She reached through the broken window and pulled up the door lock. A shadow drifted into her periphery on her right.
“On your right,” Riley warned.
Sam wheeled, pulling the pistol up and pointing instinctively. She had one frozen flicker of time as she put the pistol’s iron sights over the center of the guard’s chest. She’d never shot at a human being before. She hesitated.
The guard fired. Heated air skated Sam’s left cheek, letting her know how close the bullet had come to taking her head off.
“Damn it, Sam, fire! He’ll kill—”
Sam squeezed the pistol’s trigger three times, aiming at the man’s beltline and riding the recoil up. He’s not an innocent, she reminded herself. Steiner doesn’t hire innocents.
The bullets knocked the guard backward, spinning him from a limousine before depositing him in a heap on the cracked rock covering the parking area.
Instant horror lanced through Sam. She didn’t let herself dwell on what she had done. There was no doubt that the man would have killed her if he’d had the chance. She walled emotion away, thinking it was possible the man had even been wearing a bulletproof vest and had only had the wind knocked out of him, and turned her attention back to the Mercedes.
She opened the door, slid inside and dropped the pistol on the passenger seat. Reaching under the dash, she located the wiring harness bundle along the steering column and yanked it out. Taking the tiny knife from her purse, she cut through the starter wire and bypassed the ignition. She kept her head up, letting her peripheral vision scan her immediate vicinity.
Sparks flashed the instant the wires touched. The engine hesitated once, then rumbled to vibrant, powerful life just as one of the two men who had pursued Sam from Steiner’s window arrived. He glanced around hurriedly, then spotted her inside the Mercedes. The man ran between rows of cars and suddenly stood before Sam with his pistol in both hands.
“Get out of the car, Agent St. John,” the man ordered in English.
Like hell I will, Sam thought. In the same instant she realized the man knew her name. How does he know me?
Sam lifted the pistol and fired through the windshield. A silvery halo formed in the spiderwebbed glass where the bullets cored through the safety glass.
The British agent ducked for cover behind a nearby car. The glass had deflected her first shot, perhaps even her second.
When the pistol blew back empty, she dropped the H&K into the passenger seat. The weapon had her fingerprints on it; she wasn’t getting rid of it till she wiped it clean. Holding the clutch down, she moved the gearshift into Reverse.
Draping an arm across the back seat, Sam gunned the engine and released the clutch. The rear tires spun as they fought for traction, then caught and yanked her backward so fiercely she almost banged her head on the steering wheel.
The seat was set for someone much taller. She had to stretch to pin the accelerator to the floor. Reaching under the seat, she made the adjustment. The faint, clinging scent of a man’s cologne stained the car’s interior, mixing with the stink of cigars. She stopped the car, then shoved the gearshift into first, let out the clutch, and shot forward. The line of cars ended at the long, twisting road leading up to Steiner’s castle.
“A vehicle is headed your way,” Riley said.
“Who?”
“Damn it! At this point, it doesn’t really matter who.”
“MI-6 agents aren’t the bad guys here,” Sam argued. “Steiner’s people are. I don’t want to hurt one of them if I don’t have to.” Sam paused. “I won’t.”
Riley hesitated only a second. “We don’t know. The car started moving about the same time the MI-6 agents started mobilizing to track you down.”
“I’m their target?” Sam couldn’t believe it.
“Yes. Now move!”
Sam sped out into the aisle just as a pair of headlights came around the long line of parked vehicles. The other driver swung his vehicle around and skidded sideways, blocking her.
In the next instant, the man shoved his hand through the window. She caught a glimpse of the pistol in his hand before the first muzzleflash blossomed. He fired rapidly as Sam stepped hard on the brake pedal. The shots went low, slamming into the Mercedes’s grill and the gravel to Sam’s left.
Moving effortlessly, the adrenaline slamming through her system masking whatever fear she might be feeling, Sam shoved the gearshift into Reverse. She turned and looked back over the seat as she accelerated. Gravel popped and crunched under the Mercedes’s tires.
Headlights flared behind her as a second car shot forward to fill the gap between the rows of vehicles.
Knowing that speed was the only chance she had, Sam kept the accelerator on the floor and steered for the gap between the new arrival and the SUV parked at the end of the row. The rear of the Mercedes negotiated the narrow gap, then the other car banged into the passenger side. Sparks sprayed from the impact and the front bumper hung up with a jerk just for a moment before pulling free. Cracks ran across the windshield.
Airbags swelled up into the driver and passenger’s faces i
n the other car. The driver might have had time to continue the pursuit if not impeded by the safety measure, but even deflating the airbag and freeing the steering wheel was going to take a few seconds.
Sam continued in reverse for another fifty yards, then tapped the brakes, cut the wheel sharply, and brought the Mercedes around in a tire-eating bootlegger U-turn. She’d mastered the Agency’s defensive, offensive and pursuit mode driving classes during training, then put in extra time at the tracks.
When the Mercedes’s nose slewed around, Sam gazed down the long mountain road that led up to Steiner’s castle. With the ancillary parking area outside the castle’s main walls, no security remained between her and freedom. She pushed into first gear, then floored the accelerator.
Wind rushed through the hole in the windshield. A quick glance at the rearview mirror showed figures converging on the wrecked car she’d left in her wake.
“Riley,” Sam called over the transceiver.
“I’m here.” Riley’s voice cracked and spat. The distance was already pushing the limitations of the frequency booster in the limousine still in the parking area.
“They were after me.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“I’m working on it, Sam. Maybe I’ll have answers by the time you reach the safehouse.”
“Going there might not be a good idea.”
Riley’s voice sounded testy. “Do you have a better place?”
Actually, Sam did. But she didn’t want to announce that. Every mission she worked, she always kept a bolt-hole. Maybe she hadn’t been out in the field on such a dangerous assignment before, but she’d been out there.
“No,” she said, because she knew he was awaiting a response.
“Fine. Get in touch with me there. And try to stay safe. I don’t want—”
Whatever Riley didn’t want got lost when the connection finally failed.
Chapter 4
D ressed in stolen clothing she’d plucked off a laundry line strung between two buildings in an alley near where she’d ditched the Mercedes after wiping it clear of fingerprints, Sam stayed in the shadows of the Munich streets. Her satellite phone nestled in one of the pockets of the oversize ankle-length black duster she wore.
Double-Cross Page 3