As his feet hit the rooftop, Jack broke into a dead run toward the men jammed up outside the stairwell entry, firing into the group as fast as he could pull the trigger. Everything now depended upon him closing that distance before the stunned survivors could react. What happened after that was up to Janet.
CHAPTER 38
Janet heard two shots from the fire escape but kept firing up the stairwell. The activity above her faltered and as a fresh burst of gunfire was accompanied by panicked screams, Janet put it all together. As she spoke into her tactical radio’s jaw microphone, her voice carried a sense of urgency.
“Jack’s attacking from the roof. If we assault right now, we can punch through up there.”
Spider reacted immediately. “Everybody to the roof. Now!”
Janet moved up to the corner, emptied her weapon around it, and slapped in a new magazine as Bronson moved into the spot she’d just vacated. Then Spider was there and all three opened up on full auto as Bobby and Paul covered behind them.
She changed magazines again. It was now or never. Ducking below Spider’s and Bronson’s line of fire, she scrambled over the dead bodies toward the roof access door. A head poked out around the corner and a bullet knocked it backward out of sight.
Janet slipped on a corpse, righted herself, and dove for the roof exit. Just through the open door, a wounded man crawled toward cover but Janet’s bullet stopped his progress. Six feet beyond that, another man stood against the wall, firing wildly around the corner of the square concrete stairwell shelter, presumably toward Jack. Janet shot him twice in the back, and as his body fell away, another bullet caught him in the side of the head.
Moving to kneel at the corner vacated by the man she’d just killed, Janet saw Spider and Bronson move to cover the opposite side of the stairwell shelter.
“Jack!” Janet yelled.
“Watch out!” His answering yell was accompanied by fresh gunfire.
Immediately, Janet saw the new danger as Jack’s bullet sent a man tumbling from the top of the fire escape.
Spider’s command sounded in her ear. “Harry! We’re headed for the north end of the building. Bring the van.”
Behind Janet, emerging from the stairwell, Paul supported Bobby, who leaned heavily on his shoulder.
“Follow me!” Spider yelled as he rounded the corner and sprinted north across the roof, toward the cover provided by the next stairwell access structure. He was followed by Paul with Bobby, as Bronson covered from behind. When the others reached cover, Bronson made his move.
When Janet started to follow, Jack surprised her by standing fast, his pistol aimed back toward the fire escape.
“Jack, let’s go!” she yelled, but he ignored her.
Reversing course, she grabbed his shoulder, swinging him to face her. If anything, Jack’s eyes burned hotter in her goggles than before. Son of a bitch! It was Bolivia all over again. Janet swung her left fist and, though she knew Jack sensed it coming, he made no move to duck the blow that snapped his head around.
As Jack’s face turned back toward her, Janet heard herself yell, “Are you coming or do we die here together?”
For an endless second, she watched as he considered the options. Then, under the crackling cover fire from Raymond Bronson and Spider Sanchez, they sprinted after the others.
CHAPTER 39
When Qiang entered the dry-cleaning establishment where the trap had been sprung, the sight of a half dozen triad gangsters huddled outside the stairwell brought his anger to a new level. Without a word, Qiang approached the biggest of these men, doubled him over with a kick to the liver, and then crushed his windpipe with an open-handed blow that left him balled up on the floor.
His yelled command carried more than a threat. “Get up to the roof! Kill the Americans!”
No one moved to challenge him. Instead they ran for the stairwell, urging each other on as if they had intended to make this assault without his encouragement. Qiang did not follow them. Instead he moved back out into the street, studying the building and the attack that had stalled at the top of the nearest fire escape. One man at the top raised a weapon above the level of the rooftop but fell backward, his body tumbling over the steel railing to strike it again one level down before smacking the sidewalk.
What had seemed a good plan, when Gan Liu had briefed him on it, had unraveled under The Ripper’s brutal assault. Now, the Americans had broken through and regained the rooftop, leaving the remainder of the triad gangsters concentrated in the building below them. It made Qiang wish that he had brought along some of his agents, but after losing the five he’d sent to Kansas City, he’d left the remainder of them guarding Grange Castle and the Hayward lab.
The gunfire on the roof shifted to the north and Qiang understood what that meant. The Americans had broken out in that direction, and since the triad plan had involved an all-out effort to keep them bottled up inside the trap, they had left no reserve forces in position to block a possible escape.
For a second, Qiang considered the possibility of running to the north end of the street and blocking the Americans by himself, just long enough to allow the triad to regroup and catch up from behind. But as bad as he wanted to deal with The Ripper, Qiang could afford to be patient. He would catch The Ripper at a time and place of his own choosing. Tonight he had taught the Americans a very important lesson about the capabilities he now possessed. Before long, Qiang would show them that what he’d just demonstrated in San Francisco was only the beginning.
Knowing it was a wise decision, Qiang started to turn away, then came to a complete stop in the middle of the street. For the first time in his adult life, he couldn’t force himself to do the right thing. The call of The Ripper was just too strong to resist. Spinning on his heel, Qiang tossed off his night-vision goggles and sprinted toward the north end of the pedestrian walkway.
For better or worse, Qiang would settle this right here and now. And whether or not the other Americans made good on their escape, there would be one less complication to deal with.
CHAPTER 40
Jack felt dizzy, not from Janet’s blow that had split his lip but from the weird mental state it had left him in. Before that confrontation, he’d given himself over to the raging beast within, ready to pay whatever price it demanded in return for the incredible experience it delivered. But Janet’s blow and her threat to die alongside him had pulled Jack from that terrible mental embrace. Not all the way. Just enough to leave him in a no-man’s land of sensation, one foot firmly planted in the here and now while the other stepped through an altered reality that refused to release him from its grasp.
Up ahead, Spider Sanchez reached the north edge of the roof and pulled a collapsible grappling hook and line from his utility vest, hooking it in place before tossing the line out and down the side of the building. With Bronson still firing back toward the south, Paul released Bobby, snapped a carabiner to the line, took a single wrap, and dropped over the side.
Spider leaned over the north edge of the wall, his MP5 covering Paul’s descent as Janet moved to assist the wounded Bobby. As Jack neared the spot where Paul had gone over the wall, the familiar sense of nearby danger tugged at him from below. He leaned over the edge of the roof and saw Paul move to the northeast corner of the building, but as Paul turned to aim his weapon south along Spofford Street, someone grabbed him, flipping his body head over heels out of sight.
Without hesitation, Jack dropped his knife and gun to the street below, grabbed the line with both hands, and catapulted his body over the edge. His right leg hooked the line in a single wrap around his boot as he slid downward. When he neared the ground, Jack kicked free of the line and dropped into a forward roll that carried him out onto the pavement. A black van skidded to a stop two feet in front of him.
Ignoring the gun that now lay beneath the van, Jack grabbed his knife and raced to the corner where Paul had d
isappeared. He felt the other man coming around the corner before he saw him and whirled into a side kick as a bullet whizzed past his left ear. In that brief moment, as the muzzle flash of the gun illuminated his opponent’s face, Jack recognized him. Qiang Chu. Although Jack’s kick knocked the gun from Qiang’s hand, the spy reacted with incredible speed and agility, converting Jack’s angular momentum into a flip that sent him tumbling into Paul’s limp body.
Jack sensed the kick aimed at his head as it began and rolled right, taking a glancing blow on his left shoulder as he hooked the foot in the crook of his elbow. A hard twist dropped Qiang facedown on the street as Jack attempted to drive his black blade into Qiang’s side. But Qiang twisted in his grasp, using a move that Jack had never before encountered, a maneuver that knocked the knife from Jack’s hand as his assailant landed back on his feet.
Jack scissored his legs, landing in a fighter’s crouch. But Qiang was gone. Then Jack saw him, ducking through a door on the west side of the street as renewed gunfire from farther down the road hissed over Jack’s head. Behind him, Bronson and Spider rounded the corner, spraying bullets past Qiang and into the charging gangsters, sending them diving for cover.
Ignoring the urge to follow Qiang, Jack tossed Paul’s body over his shoulder and retreated back around the corner to the van. But as Jack gently lowered the agent to the floor of the van, he felt Paul’s head roll like a marionette with a broken string. With a dull numbness spreading through his hands and arms, Jack released his hold on Paul’s body and climbed in.
Seconds later, the others piled in beside Jack and the van’s tires howled on the pavement, propelling the vehicle down Washington Street, sending it sliding through a hard left turn onto Stockton. Then as Harry accelerated out of Chinatown, he placed a flashing blue-and-white light on the dash and switched on a siren that echoed through the dark city.
Jack felt Janet crawl across his legs to place a hand on Paul’s throat. When she slumped back, he heard her breath hiss through her lips.
“Goddamn it!”
Janet’s voice held a mixture of anguish and fury that Jack understood very well. And as he leaned his blood-soaked body back against the van’s driver-side wall, the last of his adrenaline rush faded, leaving only emptiness in its wake.
CHAPTER 41
“If we don’t get him out of there right now, he’s going to flatline!”
Steve Grange turned to look at Dr. Landon and nodded. “Pull him out of the tank.”
Grange watched as Dr. Landon directed a team of assistants as they changed the drug cocktail that dripped through the IV tube into Jamal Glover’s left arm, taking him from the hallucinogenic dream-state and putting him to sleep. Working quickly, they opened the sensory deprivation tank, disconnected the leads from Jamal’s cap, and then transferred him from the tank onto a stretcher.
When they had wheeled Jamal out of the room, Grange turned his attention to Dr. Vicky Morris. “How’s the data looking?”
The smile that crossed the thirty-three-year-old woman’s features reminded him of just how pretty she could be if she ever let her hair down. But as far as Grange knew, that was one thing the intense Dr. Morris never did.
“Amazing. It’ll take a couple of days, but based upon the quality of the neural feeds, I think we’ll be able to finalize our digital neurosynthesis.”
“Excellent,” Grange said, meaning it. “Get back to the castle, grab some rest, and then get started.”
Grange saw the frown tighten Dr. Morris’s lips before she spoke. “I’d prefer to start as soon as I get back.”
Grange smiled inwardly. A woman after his own heart. But he didn’t have the time to allow fatigue-induced errors to worm their way into the program. And he didn’t want to double-check her work to make sure that didn’t happen.
“No. Get four hours of rest and then get started. Nonnegotiable.”
Dr. Morris’s red-veined eyes narrowed. “Four hours then.”
“Actual sleep time.”
“I can’t guarantee that.”
“I need you at your best. Whatever it takes, make it happen.”
With a final shrug of acquiescence, Dr. Morris nodded and then turned and walked toward the exit. Grange watched her go, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon. He was too close to his dream and there were far too many things that could still go wrong.
Tonight Qiang Chu’s team of elite Chinese hackers had used Jamal and tricked the federal agents into a deathtrap, yet Qiang had failed to kill them. Qiang had refused to tell him how the agents had managed their escape, saying only that Gan Liu’s Bay Triad had disappointed him. What puzzled Grange was why Qiang was lying to him. Something important had happened that was being kept secret. He had heard it in Qiang’s voice. Now an unconstrained variable had planted an additional seed of worry in Grange’s mind. At the moment, it was exactly the kind of distraction that he didn’t need.
Grange walked to the open sensory deprivation tank and stopped to stare down into the murky fluid that partially filled its interior. He reached inside and poked a finger into the still liquid, watching the circular ripples spread across its smooth surface. Tonight, something had disturbed the quiet calm that defined Qiang’s nature.
Who the hell could do that to Qiang Chu?
CHAPTER 42
The van’s arrival back at the safe house hadn’t sparked any emotion in Janet. She felt so drained that she had nothing left to give. At least that’s what she thought. Dealing with Paul’s corpse proved her wrong.
Janet had first experienced violent death on her thirteenth birthday. From her bedroom, she’d heard her mom’s screams echoing up the stairs, screams that had pulled Janet down to the kitchen just in time to see her father’s massive right fist cave in the side of Anna’s lovely face. The snub-nosed .38 lay on the floor beneath the kitchen table, a precaution her mom had carried in her purse, just in case the restraining order failed to protect her. But neither of these defenses had protected Anna Price from her ex-husband’s drunken rage.
Janet had no memory of picking up the weapon. But she remembered the recoil as the .38-caliber revolver bucked in her hands. The first bullet had knocked her father off her mom’s battered body. When he’d tried to rise, the next three bullets sprawled him faceup on the linoleum floor. Then, with a scream of hate and despair gargling out of her throat, she’d stood over the big man and fired the last bullet into the center of his upturned face. Happy birthday.
In the years that followed, with the help of her maternal grandparents and an exceptional therapist, Janet had recovered her joy for life. But tonight was a reminder of just how easily joy could be sucked from her soul. And despite the fact that she had watched others die and had done her own share of killing, this was the first time she’d lost a partner. Tonight, the perpetual laughter in Paul’s blue eyes had been snuffed out forever.
As she watched Bronson and Spider gently lift Paul from the back of the van and lay him on the garage floor, his head rolled and twisted in a way that had made her physically ill. It would have been better if he’d been killed by a bullet or a bomb, but Qiang Chu had broken Paul’s neck with his bare hands, something Janet wouldn’t have thought possible. And Qiang had done it quickly, almost effortlessly. It was no fitting way for one of America’s most highly trained commandos to die.
The team hadn’t brought body bags for this mission, so they fashioned one from two large lawn-and-leaf refuse bags that Janet duct-taped together to form an airtight seal. Now Paul lay in the garage-morgue as they all stared down at him, momentarily lost in their own thoughts or saying silent prayers, each according to his own individual faith or lack thereof. All except for Jack Gregory, who watched the quasi-ceremony from the side of the van, his face so covered in dried blood that she couldn’t pick up any emotion that might have otherwise shown up in his features.
Janet turned toward him,
her eyes irresistibly drawn to Jack’s. As their gazes locked, she felt it . . . regret tinged with frustration . . . and understood. Janet had seen Jack in action on many different occasions. Although he often lost control, nobody survived a one-on-one confrontation with The Ripper. But Qiang Chu had done more than that. He’d disarmed Jack and possibly would have killed him had they not been interrupted. From the look in Jack’s eyes, he hungered for a rematch.
There was no doubt in Janet’s mind that Qiang Chu felt the same way.
CHAPTER 43
Admiral Riles occupied the third of six chairs arranged along the left side of the conference table in the White House Situation Room. The report Spider Sanchez had delivered from the NSA safe house hadn’t been good news. Someone had spoofed the NSA into providing false intelligence that had walked his ghost team into a trap. And if Jack Gregory hadn’t disobeyed Levi’s orders and involved himself, Riles would have lost the whole team. Even though they’d managed to fight their way out, Paul Monroe had been killed and both Bobby Daniels and Janet Price had suffered minor wounds.
Riles glanced to his right at the sandy-haired president of the United States. President Harris knew the country had suffered a major cyber-attack that had crippled San Francisco, but knew nothing about the NSA ghost team’s involvement in a gang shootout in the middle of that city. And for the sake of the president’s plausible deniability, Admiral Riles intended to keep it that way.
Today’s early morning emergency meeting was attended by select members of the president’s cabinet and included the director of central intelligence, the FBI director, and the secretary of homeland security. President Harris sat at the head of the table, his face tense with anger. To his right sat Vice President George Gordon while Bob Adams, the national security advisor, occupied the seat to the president’s left.
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