The Fall (27 page)

“I can get you—” Dago began.

“No,” Jack said. “Thanks, Dago, but you're just as compromised as Angie and me. And anyone you contact will also become a target. Those were contractors back there.”

“Contractors?” asked Angela.

“Mercenaries. There's a large international community of very sophisticated bounty hunters that government agencies can activate at the push of a button to do their dirty work and bring wanted individuals into custody, and do so very, very quietly. Discretion is just as critical as delivering results. SEALs use them from time to time in various theaters to gather intelligence on HVTs.”

“High-value targets,” Angela said.

He nodded.

“Those guys back there were Germans. Pete must have activated them.”

“So we're HVTs now?” she asked.

“Correct.”

“So, what are you thinking, Jack?”

“We need to get that glass token into the right hands, and to do that we need clean transportation,” he replied, staring into her hazel eyes.

“And,” he continued, “I know how to get it.”

 

9

SURPRISE

Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy if possible.

—Stonewall Jackson

Everything happened very fast.

Angela and Dago instinctively dropped to the floor as another silent round broke through, bursting through the sofa where Dago had sat a moment before.

“Art! Down!” she screamed at the hacker, who started typing very fast while trying to duck under the table.

A round punched the laptop's screen, embedding itself in the wall behind him, providing the required encouragement for the hacker, who dropped to the floor, pulling down the hardware with him.

“Passcodes … my phone,” Olivia hissed as Angela dragged her feet first from the chair.

“Passcodes in your phone,” Angela repeated as another round buzzed overhead, piercing a hole into the sofa chair. “Got it. What else can you tell us?”

“Daughter … please…”

“You have my word, Olivia. We'll keep her safe.”

“She … has … nobody…”

“I'll look after her, Olivia. Do you hear me? I'll take care of Erika.”

The scientist managed a brief smile before starting to go into shock, her limbs trembling as she began to convulse, coughing blood into Angela's face.

She wiped it off with a hand while lifting Olivia's head with the other. “Tell me where, Olivia. Where is my husband?”

“Leaped … he … leaped.”

“
Leaped?
Leaped
where?
”

“Passcodes … daughter,” she repeated before her eyes shifted toward her small purse still on the chair. She opened her mouth again but only made guttural, raspy sounds as Dago put a hand on her shoulder.

“Angela, we've got to get out of here.”

More rounds cracked windows, exploding plasterboard, splintering wood.

“Where is he, Olivia?” Angela demanded, ignoring him—ignoring everything while grabbing the woman by the lapels, shaking her. “Where the hell is my husband?”

Olivia's lips trembled, blood coming out of her mouth, her nostrils.

“Tell me!”

“She's gone, Angela!” shouted Dago, trying to pull her away. “She's gone!”

Angela stared into her lifeless eyes, anger boiling up inside her. She had been so damn close to finding out the truth.

“Now, Angela!” Dago shouted again. “We need to get out of here!”

She finally let go, before turning to Dago.

“Time to hit the road, Bonnie,” Art-Z said, crawling to them, dragging his backpack as more rounds buzzed inches above their heads.

“Damn right,” said Dago.

Something snapped inside of Angela, and she grabbed Olivia's purse before clambering toward the garage with them, getting out of sight from the rear windows, from the immediate threat.

Dago surged to his feet, pulling Angela and Art-Z up with ease, before scrambling into the two-car garage monopolized by a large Harley, her Triumph, and a scooter.

“Don't even
think
about getting on that fucking thing,” Dago warned Art-Z while Angela donned her helmet and got on her bike.

“Hop on behind me, hacker,” Dago added, extending a thumb over his left shoulder to the small passenger seat on the back of his large bike.

Art-Z stared at his scooter, looking like a toy next to the Harley, which rumbled into life, and quickly obeyed.

They climbed onto the bikes, their engines deafening inside the closed garage until the door finally lifted, sliding overhead, revealing Olivia's parked car.

They sprung ahead, reaching the street, spotting two figures running down the sidewalk in their direction from their far right, almost a block away, shouting something she couldn't make out.

Angela squinted, trying to see who they were, for a moment thinking that one of them looked a lot like Captain Riggs holding a gun.

Deciding not to hang around long enough to find out, they pointed their bikes in the opposite direction, burning rubber as they accelerated, working gears and throttle, increasing the gap, drowning their shouts, though she could have sworn she'd heard her name.

But it really didn't matter.

She wasn't about to turn around, not after what they had done to Olivia—what they almost did to them.

Three armed men emerged in between two homes as she accelerated, one of them wielding a massive rifle.

The trio started to train their guns at her when fire erupted down the street, behind her.

Her back itching in anticipation of a bullet, Angela opened the throttle fully in between gear shifts, watching the three gunmen fall to the ground as she reached sixty in four seconds, shooting ahead of Dago and Art-Z.

What was that?

Did Riggs just protect us?

But she didn't look back, focused on the road, past the men bleeding on the sidewalk, shooting ahead as houses and parked vehicles blurred by, the sound of her engine and the whistling wind drowning everything, her anger, her pain, her anxiety, her confusion—her overwhelming desire to do everything in her power to bring down Hastings and his circle of murderers.

But Jack was alive.

Olivia had confirmed her suspicions, her scientific deductions—her instincts.

Jack was somewhere …
leaped
was the word she had used, before Hastings's guns silenced her.

She frowned inside her helmet.

What the hell does
leap
mean?

But she had Olivia's purse and her phone, which Art-Z and Angela would be able to dissect, to pick apart and maybe, just maybe, peel the next layer of this complex technical onion, of this mystery that had apparently begun well before Jack jumped from that pod, before he vanished in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

She downshifted, also remembering the promise she had made to a dying mother, popping the clutch and hitting the brakes when reaching the next intersection, leaning into the turn, steering the Bonneville to the right.

Olivia was the enemy, but not by choice. She had been coerced by Hastings in the most inhuman way, threatening her child, whom she was willing to die to protect.

Angela now needed to find a way—and pretty damn quick—to get to Erika before Hastings's people.

Dago followed close behind, catching up to her after the turn, Art-Z's arms wrapped tightly around the biker's waist, the side of his face pressed against the denim vest, eyes shut.

The sight, combined with the knowledge that Jack was alive, plus the adrenaline rush from the near miss, almost made her laugh.

Shaking her head, she throttled the engine again, the toe of her riding boot working the gears, kicking up speed as they accelerated toward the highway, away from the threat, from whoever was back there, checking her rearview mirrors, confirming that no one was following them.

Angela turned onto the entrance ramp for IH-95 with Dago and Art-Z in tow, looking straight ahead through the tinted visor, contemplating her next move, her future.

A future that for the first time since the monitors went black at Mission Control and all hell broke loose, she knew would include Jack.

Whom she missed terribly and desperately hoped—even prayed—was somewhere out there trying like crazy to find a way back to her.

*   *   *

Some things have to be done very carefully.

In the SEALs, Jack had learned that the success of a mission depended not only on painstaking preparations but also on improvisation, on creativity, requiring thinking out of the box to get the job done, especially when things didn't go according to those carefully crafted plans.

Today, as he broke into a weathered Ford truck parked on a tree-lined street nestled among the large free parking lots a mile from Homestead Air Reserve base, he realized that success would require far more finesse than he had originally thought.

The escape from Angela's house, the diversion of destroying
Dark & Stormy,
even the stealing of a yacht and going through the extreme of taking it out to sea and sending it back north before diving back to shore, hadn't been enough to elude the manhunt that Pete had activated.

For better or for worse, there was now a price on their heads, and Jack's inner voice told him that the standing order was to capture them alive. Otherwise he was pretty damn sure those German contractors would have terminated them in the marina parking lot, while Jack was still trying to get his bearings after the long dive.

But they didn't.

Instead, the mercenaries had followed them, biding their time, waiting for the right opportunity to spring into action, perhaps even holding back until reinforcements arrived.

Jack needed to break the link, sever the connections created by the phone call that Angela had made, triggering the chain of events that had led him to crawling under the dash of the old pickup truck while Angela and Dago kept watch.

The cabin smelled of tobacco and fried food, reminding Jack of Palmer's rig.

He had thought about calling the conspiracy theorist, whom Jack felt wouldn't have hesitated to lend a helping hand—if anything to be a part of a real conspiracy.

But he had decided to keep it simple for now, opting for a clean getaway vehicle, which he had searched for nearly an hour in this parking area, looking for the right automobile: old but not too old, easy to steal, large enough for their gear, under the cover of trees in case of overhead surveillance—and most of all, one that gave the impression it had been parked there awhile, signaling that the owner might be away. The latter had not been that hard given that this particular parking area was used primarily by personnel being deployed overseas, mostly single Army grunts.

This time around, Jack was determined to leave nothing to chance. They needed time to get away from Miami and find a safe place to regroup, to reassess, to start thinking offensively—plus Jack just needed a good night's sleep. He had been awake for more than forty-eight hours, and although his SEAL training had conditioned him to operate up to seventy-two hours without sleep, Jack wasn't that young SEAL anymore. He was topping forty and his body was on the edge of mutiny.

He pushed those thoughts aside, locating the right wires under the dash, bypassing the ignition, engaging the starter, which slowly—almost painfully—turned the engine for nearly ten seconds while he held his breath.

It finally coughed into life with a rough idle and a burst of dark smoke out of the exhaust, signaling the need for a tune-up.

This one's been sitting here awhile,
he thought, checking the gauges, glad to see the gas needle pointing at the half mark.

“Time to go,” he said, crawling out before he gave Dago clear instructions, which included the use of their new disposable phones to stay in touch, while Angela transferred the gear to their new ride.

A minute later they parted ways with the biker, driving up the ramp of the Florida Turnpike, heading north.

Angela slid over the long bench seat, shoulder-to-shoulder with Jack, who placed an arm around her while resting the other over the wheel as they made their way through downtown Miami, constantly checking the mirrors, making sure they were alone.

He started to relax after fifteen minutes, growing certain that they had made a clean getaway, inhaling deeply, pressing her against his side. In spite of his overtaxed body and his semi-altered state of mind, it felt great to be with her, just like the old days.

“How are you holding up?” he asked her.

“I was just about to ask you the same question,” she said. “You're the one who's been abused.”

He managed a short laugh, though his sternum and ribs still hurt from the gunshots absorbed by the battle dress. “I'll survive,” he finally replied.

“Good,” she said. “What about Dago? Will he be all right?”

“As long as he sticks to the plan,” he said.

“How about us?”

“We need to stick to our plan, too.”

“Which includes finding you a way back home,” she said, pressing herself against his side to the point that his ribs started protesting.

Jack winced in pain but said nothing. He just hugged her tight, emotion making it difficult to come to terms with the reality of their situation. But logic couldn't justify anything but finding the quickest way back, especially after suspecting Hastings's intentions to use the OSS for dimensional jumps. And that not only meant parting ways with this amazing version of Angela but also overcoming of myriad technical challenges, starting with making a new suit—at least another outer shell.

They drove in silence, getting out of the Miami area and continuing north through Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton. Somewhere along the way Angela fell asleep in his arms, and he slowly set her head down on his right thigh, which she used as a pillow, laying sideways on the bench seat, breathing heavily but steady, mumbling something Jack couldn't make out.