Gridlock

by Byron L. Dorgan

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well if it’s the Dutch cops we’re in trouble if you insist on waving that gun around,” Sumskoy said, not bothering to lower his voice. He stepped forward as if to go around to the door.

  Makarov turned and shot him once in the forehead at point-blank range, driving him backward onto the filthy concrete floor. “Take his identification papers.”

  Dabir, unimpressed, bent over the body and went through the pockets. “We can’t let the kid go to ground.”

  “We won’t, but there’s someone else out there,” Makarov said.

  “The police?”

  “Maybe,” Makarov said. He went to the door and cocked an ear to listen. Something was moving in the direction of the parking lot; it was something, not someone. Like flowing water perhaps.

  From the tunnel.

  He peered around the edge out toward the parking lot where water gushed from what was probably a storm drain. The man in the tunnel was dead by now, drowned. Whoever he was no longer posed a threat, though Dekker had thought he did.

  “Anything?” Dabir asked from the darkness.

  “No,” Makarov said, but there was something out there. He could practically taste it.

  “We’re wasting time. If we don’t catch up with him in the next few minutes, he’ll be impossible to trace.”

  “He’s not staying in Amsterdam. Our coming here along with his discovery of your spy has ruined it for him.”

  Dabir started to object, but Makarov cut him off.

  “Check the airlines for bookings that have been made within the last twenty-four hours. My guess he’s going to fly out sometime later this morning.”

  “Why twenty-four hours? Why not this morning when he found out that someone was coming here?”

  “Because that’s how long his girlfriend has been dead. He killed her and knew that her control officer or someone would be showing up. He wanted to wait to see who it would be.”

  “You’re just going to let him waltz out of here?”

  Makarov spotted the storm sewer grate lying at an odd angle. The man had managed to get out of the tunnel after all. “We don’t have a choice now,” he said. “Are you armed? Do you have a pistol?”

  “Yes. What is it?”

  Makarov glanced over his shoulder. “We’re going to have company. A man was going into a maintenance shaft across from one of the other buildings. Before he left, Dekker flooded the tunnel but the guy got out.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Stay here, and cover my back,” Dabir said, pulling out his gun. “I’ll check the rear entrance.”

  “Yes, do that,” Makarov said, and he looked outside once again as Dabir headed down the corridor to the rear door. Except for the water still bubbling up from the tunnel, nothing in the parking lot moved. Nor was anything moving across in the Roma camp except for the flicking light from a small fire of some sort.

  The man Dekker had hoped to drown was coming here. To the rear entrance.

  Makarov considered going after Dabir and warning him, but the alternative—one or both of them dead—would be for the best.

  He slipped out of the building, and keeping an eye toward the open parking lot in case the man from the tunnel was hiding out there in the darkness, or in case someone else was watching from the Roma camp, he hurried to the east corner of the building and checked the side. Nothing moved.

  For just that moment it seemed that the entire city of Amsterdam was deserted, and he was the only man left alive except for Colonel Dabir and the man who’d come out of the flooded tunnel.

  71

  OSBORNE HELD UP at the steel door at the rear of the apartment building and listened to the night sounds, but it was almost impossibly quiet.

  Like the lull just before the battle when all hell would break loose. It was the same feeling from Afghanistan all over again, and he felt a great sense of calm, every thought except the here and now purged from his head.

  Neither DeJong nor the Gypsies had come across to help when he’d managed to get out of the tunnel, which left him to face the three men, plus Dekker, alone. He suspected that at least one of them had been posted at the rear, to make sure that Dekker couldn’t leave that way and that no one was coming up on their six.

  And whoever it was would be armed. Osborne was counting on it.

  Overcome. Adapt.

  He pounded on the steel door and stepped back. “Mr. Dekker, it is Interpol,” he shouted. “Come out with your hands over your head.”

  The morning remained silent.

  “Mr. Dekker, we have been sent here to talk to you about a computer virus you received either from Iran or Venezuela. There is no way for you to escape this morning. All we want is to talk to you.”

  Someone was at the door.

  Osborne took out his badge and held it up as the door opened.

  “I am armed, but my pistol is holstered,” Dabir said. He stepped outside, his Iranian diplomatic passport raised over his head.

  “You’re not Barend Dekker,” Osborne said.

  “My name is Pejiman Dabir, I am an officer of Iranian intelligence. Here apparently for the same reason as you.”

  “To retrieve the virus that you supplied Mr. Dekker.”

  “It was the Russians, and one of their agents is shot dead in the front lobby. But I’m afraid that Mr. Dekker has managed to escape.”

  Osborne pocketed his badge and held out his hand. “Give me your pistol.”

  “I’m traveling under diplomatic immunity.”

  “Your weapon will be delivered to your embassy once we have finished with our investigation,” Osborne said. He turned his head to the left as if he were speaking into a hidden-lapel mic. “Come now.”

  Dabir’s eyes narrowed. He reached inside of his coat.

  “With care, sir,” Osborne said. “We don’t want trouble. Nor do we believe you do.”

  “I will lodge a complaint with my ambassador,” Dabir said. He took out his SIG-Sauer and held it out handle first.

  Osborne took it, eased the slide back to check for a round in the chamber, and popped the magazine to check the load. “Your passport as well, please.”

  “No.”

  Osborne raised the SIG, cocked the hammer, and pointed it directly at Dabir’s face. “Your passport, please.”

  Dabir didn’t flinch, but something suddenly occurred to him and his eyes widened slightly. “You’re wet,” he said. “You were in the tunnel when it flooded. You have no backup. And even if you did your radio was shorted out. No one is coming.”

  “Where did Mr. Dekker go?”

  “You’re not even Interpol. You’re an American.”

  Osborne was certain that the man was stalling. “Where is Captain Makarov?”

  Dabir backed up a pace and shouted, “He has my pistol.”

  Osborne stepped forward, grabbed Dabir, and spun him around at the same time someone around the corner of the building fired two shots—the first going wild and the second hitting the Iranian intelligence officer in the chest.

  Osborne fired back, but no one was there.

  Dabir’s legs buckled and Osborne let the man crumple to the ground. He slipped backward inside the building’s rear corridor.

  For several long moments he held perfectly still, straining with all of his senses to detect any noise, any movement from outside, or from behind him in the corridor that led to the front of the building. But there was nothing.

  “We know who you are,” he called out. “I served with you at Camp Foremost. We even have a photograph of you, so there’s no place for you to run. Sooner or later SEAL Team Six will come calling.”

  The night remained silent.

  “They don’t take prisoners.”

  “Neither do I, Sheriff,” Makarov called from just outside the door.

  “I want the virus whoever hired you gave to Dekker. If you give me that much I’ll let you get out of here, and who knows, maybe you�
��ll be able to go to ground somewhere. At least for a while.”

  “A question for you, Sheriff. I wonder which of us could reach Ms. Borden first? You or me? Care to make a friendly wager?”

  Rats’ feet walked across Osborne’s grave, and he suppressed a shiver. Ashley was safely back in North Dakota, and because of the photograph it would be next to impossible for Makarov—no matter how good he was—to get to her.

  Next to impossible.

  “I think I’d like you to try it,” Osborne said, careful to make absolutely no noise as he eased to the edge of the doorway.

  “Perhaps I will do just that,” Makarov said. “And by the way, Dekker is gone. With the virus.”

  Osborne reached around the door with the SIG-Sauer and pulled off three shots, immediately after which the pistol was ripped out of his hand and tossed away, clattering on the concrete service driveway.

  Instead of rearing back out of the possible line of returning fire and trying to reach the front entrance to make his escape, Osborne lunged around the corner just as Makarov stepped forward, his pistol raised.

  They collided, Osborne’s heavier bulk driving the Russian backward. He batted the gun out of Makarov’s hand, and for just a moment they stood facing each other, neither of them armed.

  “You move like an old man, Osborne.”

  “The virus, or at least who hired you and supplied it to Dekker.”

  “Pizdec,” Makarov said and he struck a blow with folded fingers at Osborne’s Adam’s apple.

  Osborne moved sideways, the blow catching him low on his left cheek, and he kicked with his titanium leg, aiming at Makarov’s crotch, but he was off balance himself and nearly fell.

  Makarov laughed. “You should have stayed in Medora, cripple.” He hooked a foot around Osborne’s prosthesis and pulled it forward.

  Osborne went down heavily, but before Makarov could stomp a boot into his face, he rolled left out of the way and managed to get to his feet. “You killed a friend of mine at the power line.”

  “He should have taken better care with his tradecraft,” Makarov said, edging warily to the left, away from the building.

  “And the lineman, and the couple in the pickup truck, and my deputy?”

  Makarov shrugged. “They got in my way.”

  “And this morning?” Osborne asked. He was looking for an opening, but the Russian was light on his feet and remained out of arm’s reach.

  “I’m here for the same reason you are, to get the virus from Dekker. The man is unstable, and we wanted to get to him before he unleashed the thing. It wouldn’t do anyone any good.”

  “Not the Iranian government.”

  “No.”

  “So now I’ll go home and tell my government about what happened here tonight and let them deal with Tehran.”

  “Not if I kill you.”

  “Won’t happen this morning, unless you can somehow reach your pistol before I break your neck, and I think you know it.”

  Makarov backed up a step. “I’ll accept a stalemate for now. But unless one of us finds Dekker and soon, you won’t be going back to much of a home. If he manages to cut your entire electrical grid, which I’m told he can do, think of the consequences. It’ll push you back into the Stone Age. The death toll would be enormous, much worse even than your Civil War. There’d be no guidance for airplanes, no gasoline, no heating oil in the winters, no emergency generators at your hospitals once the fuel supplies dried up. It would be chaos many times worse than your country experienced when he caused the rolling blackouts.”

  Osborne had given that a lot of thought, as had Forester and just about everyone else in the know. It would take the U.S. years to fully recover if ever it did. But the immediate problem was finding Dekker and stopping him.

  “If he’s on the run can he do it?”

  “I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure. No one does. I was given a lot of money to find him and stop that very thing from happening. Only a madman would want such a thing.”

  “Chavez and Ahmadinejad.”

  Makarov nodded. “Perhaps,” he said. “I’m leaving now.”

  “I could stop you.”

  “You could try, but the delay would give Dekker the advantage.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “I have an idea,” Makarov said. “But I’ll promise you something. Once I find him, I’m going to ground, permanently.”

  “I’ll come after you,” Osborne said.

  “Because of your friend Sheriff Kasmir and the others that day? Consider them casualties of the war.”

  Osborne said nothing.

  Makarov glanced over his shoulder. “If I find out that you’ve come gunning for me, my first target will be Ashley Borden. And photograph or not, I think you know what I’m capable of.”

  Osborne wanted with everything in his body to end it with Makarov here and now. He wanted to smash his fist into the bastard’s face, knock him down, grind him into the dirt. He wanted to feel the Russian’s neck in his grip, and watch the man’s eyes as the life was choked out of him.

  At length ne nodded. “Good hunting.”

  Makarov nodded. “You, too,” he said, and he brushed past Osborne and walked away.

  Osborne didn’t bother turning around to watch him go, instead he stood there for the longest time thinking about Kas and the lineman and the young couple in the pickup truck and Dave Grafton. And especially about Ashley.

  She was his responsibility, everything else belonged now to the CIA and Interpol and the NSA. They’d found bin Laden, but this go-around the timing was supercritical. Once Dekker went to ground there’d be nothing they could do to stop him.

  He headed back across the parking lot to the Roma camp to find DeJong and get back to the airport and report his failure here.

  PART FOUR

  ENDGAME

  That Same Day

  72

  KLM FLIGHT 652 touched down at Schiphol Airport twenty minutes early and pulled up at the gate at half-past seven in the morning local. Ashley Borden, dead tired because she had managed to get very little sleep worrying about Nate and about her father tracing her here, walked through the Jetway and into the gate area where she was met by a stern-looking man in a dark blue blazer.

  “Ms. Borden, may I see your passport please?” he said, his Dutch accent thick, but his English understandable.

  Ashley reared back. She wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. “You’re not from my consulate.”

  “Actually no, I’m Major Andries DeJong and I received word a half hour ago that you would be aboard this flight.”

  “What do you want with me?” Ashley demanded, her heart in her throat.

  DeJong took her arm and guided her away from the line of people coming off the aircraft. “As a courtesy to your government I was ordered to break off what I was engaged with to meet you. Your father believes that your life may be in danger.”

  “Who the hell do you work for? Are you a cop?”

  “No. But I have been ordered to make sure that you remain here in the airport, and that you board the next flight back to Washington.”

  Ashley pulled her arm away. “Not a chance in hell until I talk to someone I came here to meet.”

  “If you mean Sheriff Osborne, he’s already here at the airport with the CIA officer who came with him. They’ll be leaving Amsterdam very soon.”

  A profound sense of relief came over Ashley and her legs threatened to turn to rubber. He was safe. “Has he been hurt?”

  “I’m told he was not seriously injured,” DeJong said. He held out a hand. If you will give me the claim check for your luggage I will have it brought up to the gate.”

  “I didn’t bring any,” Ashley said. She took out her phone and speed-dialed Nate’s number but the call wouldn’t go through.

  “Your American cell phone will not work here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I at least get to talk to him, and whoever the hell you are, y
ou can manage it.” The fear that had ridden with her across the Atlantic was turning into anger and frustration.

  “There have been casualties this morning,” DeJong said. “Two men were shot to death, and their killer has eluded arrest up to this point. One of his targets is you, Ms. Borden.”

  “Barend Dekker is nothing more than a hacker. He’s just a kid.”

  “Not him, though he’s disappeared as well. Osborne identified the killer as a former Spetsnaz operator he was stationed with in Iraq. Your sheriff is keenly interested in returning to the States to make sure that you’re safe.”

  “Yuri Makarov,” Ashley said. “He killed five people in North Dakota, including one of Nate’s deputies.”

  “I wasn’t aware of it.”

  “Has Nate been told that I’m here?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “I demand that you take me to him immediately.”

  “Mr. Osborne is under orders to leave the country, and not to have any contact with anyone.”

  “Goddamnit,” Ashley shrieked. “I’ll leave with him.”

  The gate area and broad corridor were busy, and a number of people turned to see what the fuss was all about. A pair of airport security officers in uniforms headed over.

  “Keep your voice down, you’re attracting attention to yourself,” DeJong ordered, and he tried to guide her back toward the open door to the Jetway from which passengers were still emerging.

  “You’re damn right I am,” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “The man’s name is Barend Dekker, and he’s threatened to harm the U.S., but Dutch police are protecting him!”

  “You stupid woman, we don’t know where Makarov has disappeared to, but he could be here in this airport waiting for you.”

  Ashley was too angry to be frightened. Her father had warned more than once that her temper and big mouth were bound to get her into serious trouble sooner or later. Which it had over the holidays when the generating station, Donna Marie, had come under attack. But she couldn’t stop now.

  “Do you even know what he looks like? Do you have his photograph?”

  The armed security officers reached them, and one of them, whose name tag read VAN RIJN said something in Dutch to DeJong, who produced his identification. They had a short conversation.