He was watching.
He saw her.
It was too late to turn back. If she ran, the man would simply catch her. She wasn’t going to set any land speed records with an angry wound in her side.
Sam walked past the sedan, pulse pounding, hands vibrating with adrenaline.
She heard the car door open as she passed.
She moved the key fob to her left hand, stuck her right hand into her purse, clutched her pistol. She quickened her pace, hoping the headscarf was enough of a distraction to buy her a few paces, a few meters, a few seconds.
She quickened her pace yet again as the man stepped out of the sedan. She resisted the urge to turn and look at him. She didn’t want to give him a good look at her face.
She also resisted the urge to run. It would just invoke the man’s chase instinct. Like a feral dog.
She mashed the unlock button manically. Her thumb hurt from the unnecessary pressure.
Finally. The flash of yellow lights. She had found the car. A BMW sedan, a five-series. She must have stolen a doctor’s jacket.
She resisted the temptation to run toward the car, opting instead to walk at a brisk, deliberate pace.
She was ten steps from the car when the man called out to her. “You! Stop!” His voice was low, guttural, raspy.
He yelled in English. Not a good sign. It suggested he recognized her.
Sam pretended not to hear. She kept walking. Six paces to go.
“Stop!” he shouted again. He sounded closer, meaner, more insistent.
Fear coursed through Sam’s veins. She lunged toward the driver’s side door, jerked it open, thrust herself into the seat, and slammed the door shut. She used the key fob to lock the doors. She jammed the key into the ignition and twisted. The big, powerful BMW engine came to life.
Motion caught the corner of her eye. She turned. He was right outside the window.
“Police!” the man shouted. “Open up, now!”
He wasn’t wearing a uniform.
He wasn’t holding a badge.
But he was definitely holding a gun.
17
Sam jammed the big sedan into reverse. She cranked the wheel to the right. She mashed the gas pedal.
She saw the man, the gun, the snarl on his face. He became a blur as the car pulled out of the hospital parking spot.
She saw him lurch out of the way, but not far or fast enough. She felt a thump as the sedan sideswiped him.
After that, she couldn’t see him. She had no overt intention of grinding him up beneath her tires, but she wasn’t opposed if that was what the universe had in mind. She cleared the other cars, threw the transmission into drive, whipped the wheel back to the left, stepped hard on the accelerator.
The car lurched forward, rocketing toward the parking lot exit. She felt no more thumps. He must have gotten out of the way.
She saw motion in her rearview mirror. The man was standing up, pointing the gun at the back of the car. Sam rounded the corner, narrowly missing an early morning commuter on the cross-street. She looked back into the parking lot. More motion. The attacker, sprinting toward the back of the parking lot.
Then he was lost to sight.
The road arced in a long, lazy curve, and the hospital soon disappeared around the bend. Sam spent more time checking her mirrors than looking forward. She was certain there would be more of them.
Time to change the game up.
She took the next left, and then the first left after that, sending her back toward the rising sun. The maneuver displaced her one block south of the hospital road, and she was now heading opposite the direction she had turned leaving the parking lot. It was an old trick, but a pretty good one. She hoped it had worked.
She looked at her watch. Thirty minutes until Brock’s flight landed. She wondered if there was enough time to shake her tail.
She wondered if it mattered. If they knew her flight details in sufficient time to place an agent or two on her trans-continental flight out of DC, it was no stretch to imagine that they’d know about Brock’s flight, too.
The thought made her shudder. Brock was two hundred pounds of sexual tyrannosaurus, but he wasn’t a trained spy.
She thought again about the woman standing outside the hospital entrance. Her features had seemed familiar. Sam wasn’t certain, but her instincts told her it was the same woman from the airport. If so, it implied a resource limitation. It was a fundamental rule of trade craft. If you’re spotted, you’re pulled from the op. It was just too risky to have a field agent running around who was known to the target. So maybe the opponents weren’t as well-resourced as Sam originally thought.
Her thoughts snapped back to the present. The goon in the parking lot. Had she shaken him? Were there others?
The question answered itself, and in unambiguous fashion. As Sam approached an intersection, two cars pulled forward and stopped in the middle.
Instant gridlock.
Sam cursed.
There was no road space to drive around the two cars. But there was a sidewalk. Sam cranked the wheel to the right, jumped the curb, and narrowly avoided a newspaper stand on the corner. A startled pedestrian dove out of the way. Sam floored the accelerator, and the big sedan leaped off the sidewalk, tires chirping as they contacted the roadway.
As Sam rounded the corner, the two cars blocking the intersection maneuvered to give chase. The first was already on her bumper. The second was turning around, to a chorus of angry honks.
It was on. The Wild Damned West.
Sam matted the accelerator. The big BMW responded. She felt her body sink into the cushion as the powerful engine rocketed her forward. Thank God for midlife-crisis cars. She was soon doing a hundred and fifty clicks per hour on the narrow two-lane road.
It gave a whole new meaning to the term defensive driving.
She checked her rearview mirrors. Both cars from the intersection were in view. A Saab and a Volvo, at least from what Sam could tell. They evidently had plenty of power to keep up. It was going to be down to the driver and, unfortunately, the driver’s knowledge of the city. Sam didn’t like her odds.
The road intersected a cross-street. A busy traffic circle conjoined the perpendicular roads. Sam dove into the fray, narrowly missing an angry commuter. She forced herself into the traffic loop. She heard long horn blasts and saw an obscene gesture. She nudged her way over to the leftmost lane of the traffic circle and accelerated again, tires squealing with the force of her turn.
She didn’t exit the traffic circle at the first, second, or even third exit. Instead, she went all the way around. She ended up heading the opposite direction on the same road she’d just left.
She had lost sight of her pursuers, both of them. She had no clue where they had gone, but she didn’t linger to find out. She took the first side street, turning a hard right to make the corner. Her tires chirped with the turn. She scanned her mirrors frantically.
Then she looked forward.
A dead end.
She cursed loudly and slammed her fist against the steering wheel. She’d just proven again why car chases in strange cities were rarely advisable. Another crazy risk she’d forced herself into taking.
She drove as far forward as possible, still spewing obscenities. A long, low wall brought the narrow side street to an abrupt end. There was enough room to turn the big BMW around, but just barely. Sam jerked the transmission into reverse.
She was halfway through her turnaround, the big car awkwardly perpendicular to the narrow roadway, when she saw them. First the Volvo, then the Saab. They rounded the corner onto the side street.
It was over.
There were a few options, Sam figured, but none of them were terribly savory.
So she opted for brute force. She left the keys in the ignition, jammed the car into park, threw the door open, and leaped free of the car.
She stood in the Weaver stance. She pulled her Kimber .45 from her purse and leveled it at the approaching car.
The threat had no visible effect. The driver was undeterred. He accelerated toward Sam, engine growling with malice aforethought. Evidently, her pursuer doubted her willpower.
Sam aimed for his center of mass, hoping the windshield wouldn’t deflect the slug on its way to the man’s heart. She pulled the trigger, first once, then again, and was rewarded by the familiar boom and mule-strength kick of the big handgun.
The windshield was no match for the big slugs. They punched through, leaving concentric rings in the glass in their wake.
Hit.
Center of mass, Sam guessed. Maybe a little high. She blamed the windshield.
The car lurched. The engine sound changed, and the nose drifted. It slammed against the side of the building on Sam’s left. It came to a halt, blocking the narrow lane. The trailing car skidded to a halt behind.
Sam didn’t wait to see what happened next. She leaped over the low wall, gritting her teeth at the sharp pain in her side, wondering vaguely about the status of her wound. She hadn’t checked it since the eye-watering experience of leaping out of the hospital bathroom window.
Her foot landed on a steep downslope on the opposite side of the wall. She lost her balance. She fell headlong down the hill, ass over teakettle, twisting and rolling, until her legs slammed into the ground at an awkward angle, ending her tumble.
She cried out with pain. Her side hurt with an unbelievable intensity.
There was no time to recover. She stood, unsteady at first, dizzy from her fall, woozy from the pain. Then she took a deep breath, clenched her jaw, and took off again at the closest thing to a run that she could muster.
Before her flowed the Danube River. Behind her, the sound of heels clicking against the pavement on the roadway above.
Her stomach constricted. Where was her gun? It had been in her hand when she leaped over the wall. It was gone now.
She turned around, frantically scanning the steep slope leading up to the dead-end road. The path of her fall was clearly marked by flattened weeds and grass.
Sam backtracked the trail with her eyes. A third of the way up, she saw it, the blued steel barrel gleaming in the early morning sunlight. She scrambled up the hill.
Her pursuer leaped over the wall.
She saw his eyes widen as he realized the severity of the downslope on the other side. But his landing was more athletic than her own. He arrested his fall in just a couple of steps.
He raised his weapon.
Almost there. Sam dove the last few feet, arm and fingers extended, reaching for her gun. Her body slammed into the side of the hill.
The air rushed from her lungs. Her side erupted in electric pain.
But her fingers closed around her gun.
She heard the telltale sssip of a silenced slug as he loosed his first round. She heard an angry crack as the bullet tore into the concrete riverbank behind her. She had to find cover.
But there was no cover.
She rolled to her left, came to rest on her stomach, adjusted her grip, leveled the sights, and squeezed the trigger, letting loose another thunderous boom that rolled up and down the river.
She hit him. Nowhere vital. But a .45-caliber bullet entering one’s body at any spot tended to have a profound effect. Her assailant howled. He clutched his leg. He cursed.
But he didn’t go down. He raised his gun again.
Sam’s training kicked in. Slow down to get there faster. Aim small to miss small. The muzzle of his gun stared her in the face, but she forced herself to relax. She inhaled, held her breath, willed her index finger to move backward slowly, steadily, calmly.
The explosion and recoil surprised her, just like it always did when she let loose a bullseye hit.
Center of mass.
Game over. He fell in a heap.
Sam stood, unsteady, body shaking from adrenaline. She retched. She had no idea if it was due to her anesthesia, or due to the adrenaline, or due to the pain in her side, but she emptied her meager stomach contents onto the hillside next to the Danube.
She wiped her mouth on the stolen leather jacket. She safed her weapon, put it back in her purse, and moved forward to examine the body. All the noise was certain to attract gawkers, and then police. She didn’t have much time. Searching the body was a risk, but Sam needed something to go on, anything to point her in the right direction. Even a tiny morsel could help her figure out who was chasing her, and why.
She walked on rubbery legs over the dead assailant. High cheekbones. An angry, small, thuggish mouth. Eastern European.
Slavic. Just like 32A.
She saw instantly that her bullet had pierced his heart. Just like the last guy.
She’d let loose three rounds, all from her personal handgun, the same gun that had gutted the man in the cave the day prior. She wasn’t exactly keeping a low profile. All of that forensic evidence was bound to catch up with her. She needed a break, and fast.
There wasn’t anything in the man’s pockets, other than his car keys. Sam pocketed them. She was suddenly in need of a ride, she realized, and the assailant’s wheels would do as well as any. For the moment, anyway.
She kept his silenced handgun, a Hechler and Koch. Nice piece. She vowed that the next time she killed a guy in Budapest, it would be with the goon’s gun, and not her own.
She frisked him, finding a large knife inside of one sock. She put it in her purse for a rainy day.
She heard a crinkling sound as she patted down his other leg. Like a piece of paper. Sam lifted his pant leg and pulled down his sock. A business card fell out. Weird.
Sam couldn’t read the writing. There were no pictures to help her out. She had no idea whether it would be useful or not. But she figured that a sock was a strange place to carry around a business card. She pocketed the card.
She trudged back up the hill.
She looked over the low wall as she neared the top of the rise. Her heart leaped into her throat again. A small crowd had gathered. They were peering into the window of the first assailant’s car.
Indecision seized her. Should she turn around, march back down the hill, and make her escape on foot? Felt like a low-percentage play, especially with a gaping wound in her side. She needed mechanical transportation, and pronto.
She took a second to compose herself, then walked toward the growing crowd.
Nobody noticed her. They were all too busy staring at the dead guy, hunched over in a pool of his own blood. Several were snapping photos with their cell phones.
Sam thought that was a damn good idea. She did the same, cursing herself for not remembering to photograph the other guy, down the embankment. In a flash, she emailed the photo to Dan, hoping it would produce a hit in a database someplace.
Sam walked to the second assailant’s car. She climbed inside, put the key in the ignition, put the car in reverse, backed out of the narrow side street. If any of the gawkers noticed her leaving, they didn’t give any indication.
She turned out onto the main road just as the first police car arrived. A lucky break, getting out before the cops showed up.
Her hands shook. She still tasted bile. Her side was killing her.
But she felt alive.
Post-combat euphoria set in, a potent cocktail of endorphins and post-adrenal alertness. She felt a familiar elation, an awe and wonder at being alive. The world had a sharpness, a crispness, a colorful, welcoming friendliness. She wondered vaguely whether she had traded alcohol for adrenaline. Addicts only had the power to choose their poison, she remembered from her recovery days.
She shook her head. She had cheated death again. But she was still very much in play. She was tooling around a foreign town in a car belonging to her pursuer, a man she had just sent howling into the afterlife. Obviously, hers wasn’t a life-prolonging predicament.
She needed to search the car to glean any available information, and then she needed to find a new ride. Immediately, if not sooner.
Her iPhone buzzed.
A text from Broc
k. “Hi, baby. I just landed in Budapest!”
Sam’s heart raced. She feared for Brock’s safety. She responded to his text. “So glad you’re here! Small situation…”
Brock’s reply arrived instantly. “Tell your boss to pound sand.”
“Wish it were that easy. Remember our flight to Caracas?” It had only been a few months since their trip to Venezuela, and it had been an extremely eventful flight, so she was sure Brock would get her meaning. There were watchers. Sam and Brock had given them the slip, but Francis Ekman hadn’t been so lucky. Or proficient. Ekman’s punishment had been a bullet between the eyes.
“Oh, shit,” Brock texted.
Sam smiled. “Right. Ask for a wheelchair, cover yourself with a blanket, and I’ll meet you outside of security.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“No, but I don’t have any better ideas yet,” Sam typed.
She had no idea where she was. The car chase had left her completely turned around, so she asked her cell phone about her whereabouts, and how to get to the airport. The little glowing box obliged, providing a roadmap and spoken real-time driving instructions. Miracles never ceased.
Twenty minutes to reach the airport, the phone said. Sam figured it hadn’t accounted for her lead foot. She hoped to make it in fifteen.
Along the way, she called Dan Gable. It was midnight in DC. Sarah was going to hate her even more.
“Sam, you have to stop calling me at home,” Dan said.
“But that’s where you are,” Sam said. “How else would I get ahold of you?”
“Ha ha.” Dan sounded tired.
“I made some more new friends,” Sam said. “I sent you a picture of one of them.”
“I got it,” Dan said. “He looked permanently relaxed. Your doing?”
“Unfortunately,” Sam said. “But he started it.”
“I suppose you want me to run a search.”
“Anytime in the next few minutes would be great,” Sam said. “He had a friend who ended up in the same condition. The friend had a silenced H&K pistol and business card on him. The card was tucked into his sock.”
“Strange place for a business card,” Dan said.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 64