“There they are,” Abbey said, pointing across the street. “They’re on the move.”
Bourne lifted his binoculars. He saw the vehicle they’d followed two nights ago, the armored Volvo SUV, emerging from the winding road that led to Sensara. He couldn’t see through the smoked windows to identify who was inside. This time, there was more than one vehicle leaving the estate. Two other identical SUVs followed the first, like a convoy.
“Let’s see where they go,” he said.
He pulled into traffic two blocks behind them. As early as it was, there were enough cars on the roads to keep the Land Rover anonymous. The three matching Volvos all followed the same route westward across the city. None of the vehicles had any identifying markings, and the windows were all black. The convoy made slow progress through the city traffic, but when they reached the flat, empty desert land in the far south of the valley, they accelerated. It was easy to keep the three vehicles in sight, and Bourne stayed half a mile back, watching them turn toward Henderson’s executive airport.
Before the convoy reached the airport itself, the first of the vehicles turned into the driveway of a large, windowless warehouse. Jason pulled the Land Rover to the curb and watched them. The three SUVs all parked outside a loading dock halfway down the length of the building, and the passengers got out.
He could see them now through his binoculars. Gabriel Fox was there, accompanied by Miss Shirley. The others were security, including faces he recognized from the previous evening. These weren’t ordinary guards; they were clearly trained black ops men. He counted nine of them.
Medusa.
Miss Shirley walked up to the loading dock and unlocked the door with a key. Two of the guards rolled up the white metal door on its rails, and two others opened up the rear panels of the three Volvos. Then Miss Shirley and Gabriel led them all inside, while one of the guards stayed outside as a sentry.
“Can you see inside the warehouse?” Abbey asked.
“No.”
A few minutes later, the guards emerged, pushing hand trucks loaded with wooden crates. One by one, they stored the crates inside the SUVs, and by the time they were done, they’d squeezed two dozen crates into the rear of the Volvos. At that point, they closed the loading dock door, and Miss Shirley relocked it. The vehicles headed back out to the road, and Bourne followed.
“I saw labels stamped on the crates,” Abbey said. “What did they say?”
“They were brand names for French vineyards. Champagne.”
“Another party?”
“Maybe.”
This time, the convoy headed for the airport. Jason stayed behind them until they drove to the fenced area leading to the taxiways, and then he pulled into the airport parking lot and used the binoculars again. The gate slid back, giving the SUVs access, and the Volvos drove in tandem toward a Gulfstream jet parked inside the airport fence. There, Gabriel Fox and Miss Shirley met two uniformed pilots, and the four of them got on board the jet.
Meanwhile, the guards in the SUVs loaded the crates of wine into the baggage compartment of the plane. When they were done, they climbed the steps into the passenger area. The door closed behind them.
Not long after, the jet taxied to the runaway and roared into the sky over the Las Vegas mountains.
“You want me to sweet-talk one of the ground crew and see if they know the flight plan?” Abbey asked.
Jason shook his head. “Gabriel told me that he and Miss Shirley were heading to a meeting of the tech cabal in Nassau. Scott told me they meet on some private island down there.”
“You’re going to go there, too, aren’t you?” Abbey asked.
“Yes.” Then he added, “Just me.”
Abbey bit her lip, but she didn’t protest.
“I’ll charter a jet and go after them,” Jason said, “but there’s something I need to check out first.”
Bourne took the Land Rover out of the airport. He retraced the route that the Volvos had taken to the unmarked warehouse a mile away. The parking lot was deserted. He found the loading dock where the convoy had brought out their cargo, and he stopped the Land Rover just outside the door.
He and Abbey both got out. Jason retrieved a crowbar from the back of the truck, and then he went to the loading dock door and used two metal pins from inside his wallet to manipulate the tumblers on the lock. It took him a couple of minutes, and when the lock clicked open, he bent down and threw the door up on its metal rails.
They cautiously entered the dark storage area, which was almost completely filled with wooden crates that matched what had been loaded on the jet. They were all labeled with the names of French wineries. Jason glanced toward the ceiling and saw a series of red lights go on as their motion activated the security cameras. “We don’t have much time before we get a lot of company in here,” he said.
“What are you looking for?” Abbey asked.
Bourne didn’t answer. He went to the nearest crate, which had an ink stamp on the outside for Sarcennes Blanc de Blancs champagne. He wedged the forked blade of the crowbar into the top seam of the crate and pushed hard to loosen the nails on the upper panel. Then he pushed the crate open and shined his flashlight inside.
There was no champagne in the crate.
Instead, he saw military rifles nestled in dense foam, plus magazines and boxes of ammunition.
“Shit,” Abbey murmured. She stepped back and assessed the quantity of crates stacked against the wall. “Medusa has enough firepower here to start a war.”
“I think that’s the plan,” Bourne said.
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE jet that would ferry Bourne out of Las Vegas was almost ready to go.
He’d called in a favor from a CEO whose son had been kidnapped in Guatemala a few years earlier and then rescued in a Treadstone mission that Jason had led. The man was happy to arrange a private flight from McCarran to Nassau, no questions asked.
“Take the Land Rover,” he told Abbey. “I put twenty thousand dollars in cash in your bag. Drive home. Go back to Quebec City and The Fort. Forget about Medusa, and forget about me.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Abbey replied. “You need to call me when this is done.”
“If we stay in touch, you’re at risk. If anyone thinks they can get to me through you, they’ll come after you.”
“I don’t care. You need to let me know you’re safe.”
He nodded. “I will if I can.”
“Call me. Because if you don’t, I’m going to assume you’re dead.”
“I’ll call you.”
Abbey shook her head in frustration. “I suppose there’s no point in telling you to walk away from this. You don’t owe anything to the people who hired you. They betrayed you; they tried to have you killed. Let someone else go after Medusa. Not you.”
“I’m not doing this for the tech cabal. It’s not about them. If I don’t stop Medusa, I’ll spend the rest of my life running. Always looking over my shoulder. And after what we’ve found here, this is personal to me, too.”
“Because of Nova,” Abbey concluded.
“Yes. Medusa killed her. Miss Shirley killed her. I can’t let that stand.”
Abbey came up to him in the McCarran parking lot. He was aware of how achingly pretty she was. Her big eyes were wide and serious. Her bangs hung in messy spikes across her eyes. Having her close to him reminded him of how it felt to have her body in his arms. “You do have a choice, you know. Nova wouldn’t want you to die for her. If she really loved you, she’d want you to be free. You have money. Contacts. Skills. Even if you’re on the run, you could disappear. I’m sure you know how to do that. Put an end to this, live on a beach somewhere. Anywhere in the world.”
“Abbey—”
Before he could say anything more, she put her hands on his face and whispered to him. “If you asked me, I’d go with you. You get that, right? I’d leave everything behind.”
“That’s why I can’t ask.” Jason glanced at the corp
orate jet, which was in a remote corner of the airport grounds. The pilot flashed him a thumbs-up. “I have to go.”
“If that’s what you need to do, then go.”
Abbey kissed him. He could feel the passion as she held him and the longing as her mouth moved against his. It was a kiss that said she wanted him to stay, a kiss that almost changed his mind. When they broke apart, she took a last long look at him, and then she turned and walked away without another word. She didn’t look back. He watched her until she got to the Land Rover, and when she peeled away from the parking lot with the tires screeching, he watched the vehicle until it was lost in the Las Vegas traffic.
“Goodbye, Abbey Laurent,” Jason said.
Bourne picked up his duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. He put on sunglasses and marched through the airport gate onto the tarmac. The jet was waiting for him.
It was time to fight.
*
ABBEY filled up the Land Rover at a gas station off Paradise Road before heading to the freeway. Her mind was full of Jason, and she was equal parts angry and lonely. She didn’t really think about what she was doing. She took cash from her wallet and went inside to prepay, then waited impatiently as the pump dribbled gas into the tank. As it did, she wandered into the middle of the parking lot and watched as a 737 glided over her head to land on the runway at McCarran. She could have waited to see Jason’s jet leave, but she didn’t want to see the plane that was taking him away from her.
When the tank was full, Abbey went to collect her change and then walked back to the Land Rover. She didn’t give a thought to the gas station security cameras, which had a clear view of her face and of the license plate on the SUV.
Traffic crawled on Tropicana heading west to the I-15. Hot air blew through her open window. Eventually, she reached the freeway and headed north past the Strip hotels, reversing the route that she and Jason had taken two nights ago from Mesquite. Road construction slowed her down, and she found a radio station playing fast songs to distract her.
As she passed each exit, another traffic camera registered her vehicle.
The freeway took her out of the valley into the desert hills, where she put the Land Rover on cruise control. Driving back to the cold of Canada would take her several days, but she was in no hurry. She’d continue on I-15 into Utah, head across the mountains toward Denver, and then traverse the flat midwestern lands through Lincoln, Des Moines, and into Chicago. She’d cross the border in Michigan north of Detroit and be back home for the final leg through Ontario into Quebec.
She didn’t pay much attention to her surroundings as she drove. Her mind was elsewhere. Then, half an hour outside Las Vegas, she noticed a black helicopter hovering above the scrubland near the freeway. It was surprisingly low to the ground, with no markings to identify it. After she passed it, she kept an eye on the machine in her mirror, until it disappeared from view as she crested a shallow hill. There was nothing else around her in this section of the road. Utility poles dotted the plains, and rust-colored stone mountains bordered the highway on both sides. She was miles from the nearest town.
Not long after, she noticed something odd. Traffic had completely disappeared from the southbound lanes of the freeway. There wasn’t another vehicle to be seen anywhere. When she looked in her mirror, she realized the same was true in her own lane. All the trucks and cars that had been playing tag with her since she left the valley had vanished. She was literally alone in the desert.
Abbey tapped the brakes, feeling a strange sense of foreboding. As she slowed down, a deafening roar erupted outside the Land Rover, so loud and sudden that she screamed. The black helicopter reappeared and shot over the SUV, barely twenty feet above her roof, creating a downdraft that forced her to cling hard to the wheel to avoid driving off the highway. Ahead of her, two SUVs sped toward her, going the wrong way in the northbound lanes, blocking her passage. She slowed as the SUVs wheeled to a stop, angled across both lanes of the freeway directly ahead of her.
When she glanced in her mirror, she saw two more SUVs approaching from behind and blocking the road from the other direction.
All Abbey could do was stop.
Men with assault rifles poured from the four vehicles, and she screamed again. They were dressed in helmets and paramilitary gear, and they had their guns pointed directly at her. Spreading out, and keeping a safe distance, they surrounded the Land Rover. Meanwhile, the unmarked helicopter drifted to the ground barely fifty yards away, kicking up a fierce cloud of dust in the dry land just beyond the freeway guardrail. The engine cut off, and the whirling rotors slowed.
A voice on loudspeaker boomed from the helicopter.
“Abbey Laurent! Open the door, and keep both hands visible as you exit the vehicle!”
Terrified, Abbey undid her safety belt, pushed open the driver’s door of the Land Rover, and stretched out her arms into the warm air as she got out of the SUV. She kept her arms up, her fingers spread wide, as she inched away from the truck.
“Get on your knees! Hands on top of your head!”
Abbey sank to the ground on the hot blacktop and laced her fingers together on her head. “I don’t have any weapons!” she shouted. “I’m alone, and I’m unarmed! He’s not with me!”
The men approached her slowly, squeezing the circle tighter. Half of them closed on the Land Rover, checking the undercarriage and then pointing their guns in the windows. The other men came close enough to Abbey to brush the barrels of their rifles against her body. One, a large Hispanic man with charcoal smeared under his eyes, shouldered his weapon, then shoved her facedown onto the highway lane. He gave her an invasive pat-down while she lay on her stomach, and then he flipped her over and repeated the process on her front, digging his fingers into her breasts and between her legs.
“Having fun?” Abbey hissed.
The man said nothing.
“I told you, I’m unarmed,” she went on. “I know you’re looking for him. He’s not here.”
She lay on her back, her skin burning where her flesh touched the hot pavement. As she watched, the men searched the Land Rover, and when they’d cleared it, one of them relayed a message to the helicopter. A voice responded on radio, but Abbey couldn’t make out the words. A moment later, the Hispanic man yanked her off the ground and secured her wrists behind her in cuffs.
“Go,” he ordered, pushing her forward with a hard shove. Abbey stumbled, then righted herself and walked across the freeway lanes, with the rifles of the guards following her. They led her to the steel railing, and she climbed awkwardly over it, accompanied by half a dozen men. Footing was treacherous on the rocky ground, and when she slowed, she felt the jab of a gun in the small of her back.
They pushed her toward the helicopter.
As she got closer, the passenger door of the machine opened, and a man got out into the desert.
It was Nash Rollins.
The Treadstone agent leaned on his cane and clutched a fedora in his other hand. His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. She’d first met him in Quebec City only a few days ago, but somehow he looked older now. The men with guns pushed Abbey forward until she was standing in front of Rollins, and then he dismissed them with a flick of his fingers. The military men retreated, and the two of them were alone by the helicopter.
“Ms. Laurent,” Rollins said. “I’m pleased to see you again. Let’s make this quick. Where is Jason Bourne?”
PART FOUR
THIRTY-EIGHT
BOURNE walked along one of the dozen crowded piers that stretched into the heart of Nassau Harbor. Hundreds of boats bobbed in the pale green water, ranging from beat-up fishing charters to sleek two-hundred-foot yachts. Two soaring highway bridges arched over the inlet’s narrow channel, and the pink towers of the Atlantis resort loomed over the white-sand beach of Paradise Island. From where he was, he could see several cruise ship behemoths docked at Prince George Wharf.
The warm late-afternoon sun beat down on his face. He wore a dirty gr
een tank top and loose-fitting cargo shorts, along with a fraying baseball cap, sneakers, and no socks. He hadn’t shaved. He’d swapped his leather duffel for an old canvas bag with a shoulder strap. With that look, he blended in as just another Nassau beach bum, one of those urban escapees who’d traded in the nine-to-five world for a downscale island life.
Halfway down the pier, he found what he was looking for, a thirty-foot catamaran with smoked black windows on its bridge and the name Irish Whiskey painted along its gleaming-white hull. The owner kept it in pristine shape. The flat boat deck was empty, but someone had been stretched out in the sun recently, leaving behind a half-full pink drink in a hurricane glass and a rippled Tom Clancy paperback that had obviously spent time in the water.
Bourne stepped from the pier onto the boat, feeling it rock under his feet. He didn’t announce himself, because if he was in the right place, the owner already knew he was here. He’d talked to half a dozen locals as he tracked down the man on the catamaran, and he was sure that the man’s spies had warned him that a stranger was coming his way.
Except Bourne wasn’t a stranger.
He dropped his bag on the deck and made his way to the glass door leading to the boat’s interior. He opened it, stepped inside, and immediately felt the barrel of a gun pushed against the back of his head.
“Cain,” the boat’s owner said cheerfully.
“Hello, Teeling.”
“I’d say you were getting sloppy, because you made it so easy for me to spot you. But you’re never sloppy, are you? That means you wanted me to know you were coming. Presumably, that means you want me to think you’re not a threat.”
“You’re right. I just want to talk. I’m not a threat.”
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong, because the Jason Bourne I know is always a threat.”
“My gun’s in my bag outside,” Bourne told him. “Otherwise, I’m unarmed.”
“How’d you find me?”
“You’re not as anonymous as you think you are, Teeling. Director Shaw made sure we kept an eye on you after you left. I heard you hopscotched around South America for a couple of years, then landed here. Retirement suits you.”
Robert Ludlum's™ The Bourne Evolution (Jason Bourne Book 12) Page 28