The Hunted

by Alan Jacobson

  Until he casually pressed the infrared binoculars to his eyes.

  Until he saw the rocket launcher protruding from the top of the Navigator, until he saw the burst of flame pouring from the rear of the bazooka.

  “Holy fucking shit!” Waller said.

  But it was too late.

  The back-blast was enormous, the shock wave furiously slamming against the Navigator with a loud whoomp! Rocko McCabe was thrown backward, his head smashing against the moon roof’s opening just before he crumpled onto Griff Daniels’s lap in the backseat.

  “Impact!” Scarponi screamed.

  The rocket pierced the back of the ambulance less than a second after it was fired, penetrating the metal as if it were a sharp knife slicing through sponge cake. After a split-second delay, the ambulance’s metal substructure burst upward toward the heavens, a swirling round fireball surging off the blacktop, lighting up the murky darkness brighter than a baseball stadium.

  Scarponi veered hard to the right, missing the Crown Victoria that was careening left off the road. The driver’s-side wheels of the Navigator left the asphalt for a second as the vehicle continued moving onto the shoulder and then into the brush. It barreled through the periphery of the burning wreckage, fire licking up its sides, blistering its finish.

  Daniels was already spraying nine-millimeter rounds across the windows and tires of the leading escort vehicle. At the instant the FBI agent locked his brakes in disbelief, a bullet blew apart his skull.

  “Woo-hoo!” Scarponi whooped as the inferno receded in his rearview mirror. McCabe sat up from the backseat, dazed and disoriented. He turned toward the ruinous fire on the roadway framed by the large back window and smiled. “Right on!”

  Waller had pulled the binoculars away from his eyes at just the right instant. Had he still been looking through the infrared glasses, the light flare from the explosion would have blown out his rods and cones for at least the next fifteen minutes.

  “My God,” was all Hector DeSantos could say.

  Douglas Knox was seething. “Take us in!” he said to the pilot. “Don’t let them get away—”

  Waller twisted a knob on the control panel in front of him and yanked his headset microphone close to his lips. “This is Air Unit Five,” he shouted, his voice cracking. “Need backup and medevac at mile marker eighteen!”

  Harper Payne, sitting next to Hector DeSantos on the right side of the helicopter, could not pull his stare away from the distant blaze. “He’s crazy. Scarponi, the guy’s lost his mind.”

  “Obviously, he thought you were in that ambulance,” DeSantos said.

  “ETA for backup?” Knox asked.

  Waller repeated the request and waited about ten seconds before he received the reply. They all heard the answer over their headsets: two of the additional units that were stationed ahead of them at mile markers twenty-five and forty were not responding. Required time to get ground vehicles to that location: at least fifteen minutes.

  Payne looked over at Knox and saw the man’s shoulders slump forward in defeat. The chopper vibrated hard as the pilot pushed the throttle to 152 knots—175 miles an hour—and the distance to the burning plume began decreasing rapidly.

  Knox slammed his fist into the console. “I will not let Scarponi get away again,” he shouted into his microphone. His voice was high, his demeanor frenzied. Desperate.

  As they passed above what was left of the ambulance, DeSantos shook his head. “Jesus.” The carnage was devastating, warlike. “Talk about overkill.”

  Waller shook his head. “More like road kill.”

  “Get us down close,” Knox said to the pilot. “Hector. You and Waller are going in.”

  “What about me?” Payne asked. “All this—all those HRT agents in that ambulance—they’re dead because of me.”

  Knox swiveled in his seat to face Payne. “You’re not going anywhere, mister, and that’s not up for discussion. You should be in bed recuperating. I took you along as part of our deal to gain your cooperation. I said nothing about letting you jump out of a moving helicopter."

  In fact, the plan as Payne knew it did not call for any of them to jump out of a moving helicopter. They had set up the entire scenario expecting Scarponi to attempt an ambush of the ambulance. That was the reason for filling the back of the vehicle with HRT agents, ready—and waiting—for the assault. But plans had a way of falling apart at the worst possible moment. In this case, their strategy had literally blown up in their faces.

  Payne grabbed a pair of infrared goggles and zeroed in on the Navigator, which was moving back onto the roadway from the side brush about a mile away from them. DeSantos pulled a Desert Eagle from his belt and ejected the magazine: it was full, but Payne had the feeling DeSantos already knew that. DeSantos then removed a compact Beretta 92, which he checked as well. Satisfied, he replaced it and withdrew a stiletto. Even in the muted green glow from the cockpit instrumentation, the blade was imposing. Whatever Hector DeSantos’s background—Payne guessed the Green Berets—this man was prepared for action.

  Payne patted his chest and felt his Glock securely seated in his shoulder harness. Although he had the Bureau’s most technologically advanced handgun and a spare magazine, he felt oddly underpowered.

  “Fifteen seconds to intercept.” The pilot’s voice came through their headphones and instantly sent DeSantos and Waller into action. They moved toward the back door of the right side of the aircraft and steadied themselves as the helicopter descended rapidly behind the Lincoln Navigator, tilting with its nose up, like a large bird swooping in for a landing.

  Payne felt his stomach tighten. Just ahead of them now was the man who had wreaked so much havoc on his life...the man who destroyed his promising career, the man who was responsible for separating him from his wife and daughter... and again, for severing his ties with Lauren. The emotional pain was great, the desire for revenge building as they neared Scarponi’s vehicle.

  Knox turned to the pilot. “Bring us down faster.” He looked back at the approaching SUV. “Get ready to drop,” he said into his mike; DeSantos and Waller knew Knox was talking to them.

  As the Black Hawk descended to within thirty feet, DeSantos slid the door open. He removed his headset and tossed it on the seat behind him. He pulled a black woolen mask over his face, then leaned partially out of the passenger compartment.

  Cold air struck his face with a vengeance, but the mask absorbed most of its wrath. DeSantos glanced over at the pilot, who was attempting to level off the chopper while keeping the speed steady at seventy miles per hour. It was now directly above the Navigator.

  “Ready?” DeSantos yelled.

  “Ready!” Waller said.

  Scarponi felt the unmistakable vibratory thumping above and instantly knew what it meant. “Chopper!”

  “Got it,” McCabe said. He grabbed for the bazooka and felt around in his canvas bag for another armor-piercing rocket.

  Daniels moved to the passenger’s-side window and steadied his MPS submachine gun. “I’m on it.” He took aim and fired.

  The nine-millimeter rounds pinged loudly off the skin of the Black Hawk as the pilot instinctively pulled up on the stick. The helicopter tilted suddenly, sending DeSantos and Waller reeling backward, into the passenger compartment.

  “Shit,” DeSantos said as he struggled to right himself.

  Payne moved toward the still-open door just as Knox was shouting at the pilot through his headset: “No! Descend—back over the car!”

  “We’ve been hit—we’ve gotta assess damage,” the pilot shouted back.

  “Assess later,” Knox yelled. “Get us back down there!”

  The pilot dipped the craft, nose down, flying an erratic pattern as Waller, who had gotten his feet back beneath him, began firing off rounds at the phantom shooter in the Navigator. Just then, a bullet pierced the front right portion of the windshield. The pilot slumped to the side, moving the control stick, sending the helicopter veering off to the right, away
from their intended target.

  “Pilot’s been hit,” Knox shouted as he pulled the man off the stick.

  “How bad?” Waller asked.

  DeSantos grabbed his fallen headset and reseated it, then reached over and turned the pilot’s head, exposing the oozing wound in his skull.

  “His flying days are over.”

  Waller climbed into the front and helped Knox move the pilot out of the cockpit as DeSantos settled himself into the command seat. He quickly brought the chopper back in line with the Navigator and increased the airspeed to resume their pursuit.

  Waller laid down fire through the shattered windshield, and the man who had been poking his weapon through the sunroof of Scarponi’s vehicle retreated, and then retracted the metal covering.

  Seconds later, they were once again directly above the SUV. DeSantos kept the nose up, knowing from experience that the airframe of the Black Hawk was better suited to taking on close-range gunfire than its cockpit or hydraulic pumps.

  Waller grabbed his headset and pulled it over his ears. “DeSantos has to fly the bird,” he said. “Am I going in alone?”

  Knox turned his head toward DeSantos. “No, stay where you are. Hector, keep us out of range for a minute. Anyone have any useful ideas? I’ll consider anything.”

  “If we had Hellfire missiles strapped to the side of this bird like we had in Desert Storm,” DeSantos said, “I could recommend a bunch of options.”

  “Come up alongside,” Waller said, “let me get a good look at the sniper. I may be able to take him out.”

  Knox shook his head. “You might hit Scarponi and I want him alive.” There was silence for a moment, and then Knox threw a switch on the control panel. “Hector, are you on my frequency?”

  “Here, chief.”

  “Raise Rodman and Hodges on the SAT phone. Apprise them of our status and tell them to be ready. We’re going to have to deviate from our plan.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Knox hit the switch again and was back on the general frequency that was compatible with Waller’s headset.

  DeSantos reached behind his seat to pull the satellite phone from his rucksack, then quickly twisted his head when the device caught on a strap. “Uh, chief...we’ve got another problem.” DeSantos nodded to the rear compartment of the Black Hawk.

  Knox and Waller turned around. The three of them shared a disturbed look when they saw that the cabin was empty.

  Payne was gone.

  72

  “I’m hit,” Daniels struggled to say as he pressed his right hand against a bleeding chest wound. Scarponi cursed, then swerved to the right and left, driving erratically to prevent the agents in the helicopter from getting off any more lucky potshots at them.

  “How long?” he shouted at McCabe.

  “Ready—open it up! All I need is one look.” He tilted the smoothbore tube of the rocket launcher toward the ceiling, and Scarponi pressed the button that retracted the moon roof. Just as it began sliding open, a loud thump caught their attention. They all looked up simultaneously. Something—someone—was on top of the vehicle.

  Payne was lying face down on the Navigator, his fingers sliding along the cold, slick metal top, reaching for the rail of the luggage rack. His legs were spread against the aluminum bars, steadying his lower body.

  He lifted his head into the wind and saw—inches from his face—a stitch of light growing wider as the moon roof slid open.

  “Aw, shit,” he said into the wind as he struggled to hold on with his left hand and both feet while he reached into his leather jacket for the Glock. A large tube was emerging from the opening, pointed skyward. Jesus Christ, the launcher.

  Payne yanked his handgun and took out the slack in the tensioned trigger. He shoved the weapon through the moon roof, alongside the bazooka, down into the passenger compartment. And began firing randomly.

  The car swerved violently to the left, then to the right, clearly in response to his efforts. Although wedging his legs against the top rails prevented him from flying laterally off the roof, he was so intently focused on maintaining his position that several rounds had exploded from his gun before he realized the tube of the launcher had disappeared from the opening.

  Payne suddenly became aware of the proximity of the Black Hawk above him. But more weapons fire popped in the wind—coming from the SUV’s rear window—and the helicopter once again retreated up into the darkness... but not before turning on its brilliant spotlight, adding an eerie illumination to the Navigator, which now seemed to be traveling at greater than ninety miles an hour.

  “Stay with them,” Knox shouted. “Keep back a hundred feet and watch out for that fucking rocket launcher.”

  “Looks like an M20,” DeSantos said. “We definitely want to avoid that thing.”

  Knox rubbed his temples and began tapping his foot, the insatiable desire to pace forcing him to find some other form of stimulation. He slipped on his infrared goggles, zeroed in on Payne, and gasped. “Holy mother of Mary. He’s going to get himself killed. What the hell is he doing?”

  DeSantos was busy with the controls, maintaining the desired distance while flying an unconventional, erratic pattern. “With all due respect, chief, we’ve become Captain Ahab. And the whale is doing his best to get away.”

  “The hunter and the hunted?”

  DeSantos nodded.

  “Then let’s act like a hunter. Take us in.”

  His fingers were painfully numb. Payne’s arm and shoulder muscles burned as he strained to maintain his grip on the rails. At the moment, he had many enemies: the driving wind, the light yet slippery rain, the shifting movements of the SUV... and his chief foe, Anthony Scarponi, who was attempting to shake him loose.

  But when the bullets started popping through the Navigator’s roof to either side of him, his comfort level plunged significantly—not that it was high to begin with. It was stupid for him to have jumped from the chopper, but he was not about to let Scarponi get away. For his future with Lauren to amount to something more than just a life on the run, he needed to stop Scarponi.

  Here, and now.

  Payne grabbed the edge of the moon roof with his left hand and returned fire. The SUV swerved abruptly and tossed Payne to the right, his hand catching the luggage rack as his legs slid over the passenger side of the vehicle. Dangling in front of the window and dangerously close to the roadway.

  He reached down with his Glock and fired blindly into the Navigator, the tempered glass shattering and crumbling to pieces. With nothing left to do but attack, he swung his legs into the front seat.

  And let go of his grip on the roof.

  73

  Some may say that coming face-to-face with a man whose sworn purpose in life is to kill you is a form of suicide. But for Harper Payne, it was his only means of staying alive.

  His feet landed firmly on the front seat, but his buttocks struck the open window hard and sent a shockwave of pain up his spine. He grabbed on to the top of the doorframe—and the Glock flew from his right hand. Where it landed—inside the cab, outside on the asphalt—he didn’t know. What he did know is that the person behind the wheel was Anthony Scarponi, and he was smiling. Smiling, no doubt, because the man he had struggled to find for so many years had suddenly delivered himself.

  Scarponi pressed two buttons on the steering wheel and then swung at Payne, whose attention was diverted for an instant by the clearly dead bodies of two men in the backseat, their torsos punctured quite thoroughly by Payne’s forty caliber rounds.

  The punch landed squarely on Payne’s jaw, sending him backward into the door. Scarponi climbed out from behind the wheel and grabbed Payne’s arm—the Navigator was obviously tooling along on cruise control, as stopping meant coming under attack from the agents in the helicopter.

  Payne shook his arm free and landed a jab to Scarponi’s nose, driving him against the steering wheel. Scarponi bounced right back at him and was about to throw a punch when the Navigator abruptly c
areened off the road, crossed the shoulder, and continued on through dense underbrush. Scarponi fell backward against the dash.

  They both grabbed each other by the throat, hate seeping from their pores like perspiration.

  “Die, you fucking bastard!” Scarponi croaked, Payne’s hands cutting into his vocal cords.

  The pressure was building inside Payne’s head. He could feel the veins in his temples bulging and he began feeling light-headed. He tried to kick with his feet, but one leg was pinned beneath the dashboard and the other was caught by the steering wheel.

  Just then, the Black Hawk circled around to the front of the SUV; banking and side slipping so its spotlight could burn through the windshield and illuminate the two men as if they were actors on a stage.

  Although Payne was aware of the helicopter, he knew they could do nothing to help him. The stench of burning oil and a thin fog of smoke began bleeding into the car’s interior, stinging his eyes. Through the haze, Scarponi’s eyes were filled with fury. “I treated you like a brother!”

  “I was... doing... my job.”

  “I’ve got a job to do, too,” Scarponi said. As if the anger had infused him with a sudden burst of strength, he lifted Payne up by the neck and smashed his head against the door.

  Pinpricks of agony exploded in Payne’s mind as he fought to maintain consciousness.

  “My job,” Scarponi yelled, “is to kill you.”

  The Navigator banged and thumped along the rough brush, each jolt forcing Scarponi’s hands deeper into his adversary’s neck. Payne struggled to maintain his own grip on Scarponi’s throat, but he felt his grasp weakening. Thoughts screamed through his oxygen-deprived brain.

  Do something now or die