Conviction

5

Like the Audun-le-Tiche station, the rail line was decorated: Old fashioned replica conductor’s lanterns, blinkered in blue and red, were mounted on posts every hundred yards or so. Moving at a mere eight miles per hour, the train covered one post every thirty seconds, so Fisher had no trouble keeping track of his position. At the twelfth post, just over the Luxembourg border, the train approached a curve. Fisher stood up, walked to the back of the car, and without looking back, opened the vestibule door and stepped out onto the coupling platform. It was fully dark now. Beneath his feet the levers and wheels rattled. To his right, on the other side of the embankment, lay a line of trees; to his left, across a ditch, the two lane road linking Russange and Esch-sur Alzette. Cars tooled along in both directions, honking and waving at fellow revelers.

He waited until the train was halfway between two lighted posts, then tossed his rucksack and jumped after it. Just before hitting the ground, he dropped his shoulder, rolled into the impact, and let himself go flat. He watched the train disappear around the bend, then groped around, found his rucksack, and crawled up the embankment and into the trees. He stopped to get his bearings.

These machinations — the fracas in the McDonald’s parking lot, his theatrical dash to the train station, the bicycle he paid to have deposited along the D16/18, the change of clothes — were admittedly overengineered, but his trail into Luxembourg needed to be not only cold, but convoluted. The more he could split the team, both physically and mentally, the better. Not only would it keep them at bay, but it would, hopefully, reveal weaknesses he might use later.

He used the stone obelisk across the road and the lantern posts to fix his position. Unless the boy hadn’t followed through, the bike would be lying in the tall grass of the embankment, fifty yards up the road. Fisher stood up and began picking his way through the trees. Across from him, the cars continued in steady north and south streams. Horns honked. Laughter and friendly shouting echoed in the darkness. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of chrome in the moonlight: the bike. He stopped, crouched down. He looked up and down the road. All was clear. Hunched over, he ran down the slope and up the other side. He was ten feet from the bike when, fifty feet to the left, he noticed a pair of SUVs — one silver, one black. He dropped flat. Ten seconds passed. Nothing happened. He began wriggling backward down the slope.

The black SUV’s rear driver’s-side door opened, and out stepped Kimberly. A moment later Ames and Blondie came around from the other side. Each wore a long trench coat. Together they began walking toward the bike. Fisher kept going, reverse crawling to the bottom of the ditch, where he crabbed around and started up the opposite slope toward the trees.

The trio started running. Fisher did the same. Within seconds he was in the trees and heading east. He recalled his mental map: a hundred feet to the reservoir, two hundred feet to the opposite shore, then a dirt road bordered by forest.

Using what little light filtered through the canopy above, he ducked beneath branches and dodged trunks until he broke into the clear and found himself skidding down another embankment. He dropped into a baseball slide and dug his heels into the moist earth, coming to a halt with his legs dangling in space. Ten feet below was the surface of the reservoir. Damn. Here was a reminder: The map is not the territory. Having not anticipated needing to run this way, he’d relied solely on Google Earth, which, of course, didn’t show this miniature cliff along the shoreline.

From the trees behind him came the crunch of footfalls.

He spun himself on his butt, pushed off, and dove into the water. Instantly he felt a wave of relief, an old habit from his SEAL days: Water was cover, escape, safety. He scissored hard for thirty feet, broke the surface for a lungful of air, then dove again, this time kicking straight for the bottom, eight feet below. When his outstretched hand touched mud, he began kicking. After thirty seconds his lungs began to burn; he heard the pounding of blood in his head. He kicked off the bottom and broke into the air.

He heard a muffled pop. He knew the sound all too well. Even as the voice in his head said, Cottonball, he felt the projectile strike the back of his head. The tang of the aerosol tranquilizer filled his nostrils. He snorted and ducked under again, shaking his head to get the aerosol out of his hair. He was only marginally successful. Within seconds his field of vision began to sparkle; he felt slightly drunk. Clearly, Third Echelon’s weapons geeks had improved the LTL (less-than-lethal) projectile. This Cottonball’s tranquilizer was much stronger and much faster acting. He’d gotten only a quarter dose, he estimated. If he’d been hit on land, he’d be asleep right now.

Focus, Sam, focus… Keep going. Distance was survival.

He rolled onto his back and porpoised upward so only his mouth broke the surface. He sucked in a breath. Another muffled pop, this one sharper, but also familiar: a 5.56mm bullpup round from a SC-20K rifle. The round slapped the water two feet from his head. A mistake or—

Pop!

The second round zipped past his ear. No mistake.

He dove again, rolled over, scissored hard for the bottom. He covered ten feet… twenty… thirty… He stretched out his right hand. Come on, come on! His fingers touched something vertical — mud, weeds. He grabbed a handful of roots and pulled himself forward until he was pressed against the mud. He surfaced amid the weeds drooping over the embankment. He caught his breath. He now knew something else about his pursuers: They either didn’t have goggles or were choosing to not use them lest they stand out. Third Echelon standard-issue NV headsets gave Splinter Cells not just night-vision capabilities but also EM (electromagnetic) and IR (infrared, or thermal). Using the latter, they would have seen him here — a man-shaped blob in various temperature-shades of blue, yellow, and red.

Fisher parted the weeds and peered across the reservoir. Kimberly and Ames were nowhere to be seen. He kept scanning, checking the length of the embankment before moving up to the trees. There. Three figures lying prone, barely visible in the underbrush of the tree line. Their scopes would be panning his side of the reservoir, looking for movement, ready to zoom in… The question was: What were their fire selectors set to? And exactly what were the rules of engagement they had been given? If it had been Kimberly shooting at him, then, clearly, in her eyes their previous friendship had lost its charm. If it was Ames… well, no surprise there. As for Blondie, she was, at this point, a question mark.

There was no way he would make it up the ten-foot embankment. The climb was doable, but the movement of the weeds would give him away. He looked left. A hundred feet away the reservoir’s north end was bordered by an abandoned municipal swimming pool surrounded by a cracked, weed-covered cement deck whose outer wall plunged vertically into the reservoir. Fisher couldn’t see them in the dark, but Google Earth had clearly shown two squared-off alcoves where steel-rung ladders were cut into the wall. The alcoves were three feet deep — enough, he judged, to impede Kimberly’s and Ames’s lines of fire.

He sucked in a lungful of air, dropped beneath the surface, and began using the roots to pull himself along the embankment. At the halfway mark he again pulled himself against the mud wall and carefully surfaced in the weeds. He caught his breath, ducked under again, and thirty seconds later his outstretched hand touched concrete. He turned right, dragging his fingertips over the rough surface until he felt the wall turn inward. Two kicks brought him to the ladder. He pressed his head into the corner and surfaced. No shots came. He rotated his head and peeked around the corner.

With the increased distance, it was impossible to tell if Kimberly and Ames were still in position. He waited. Two minutes… five. He climbed the ladder, rolled onto the concrete deck, pressed himself flat, then began snaking his way through the weeds until the concrete gave way to open ground. He was three hundred yards from the opposite shore — a tough shot but not impossible. Still, he needed to be seen.

He took a deep breath, curled his legs beneath him like a sprinter, then took off, heading for the road fifty yards away. He’d covered half the distance when he heard the smack-thump of a bullet striking the earth to his right. He resisted the impulse to dodge in the opposite direction, instead turning into it, zigzagging until he reached a slight depression before the road, where he dropped flat again. He checked his watch. It would take them sixty or seventy seconds to move from their shooting position to the pool, then another sixty seconds to clear the deck and the surrounding undergrowth before pushing toward this road. Right now they’d be on their SVTs, radioing the other SUV: Circle north and west to the dirt road, and we’ll drive him from the west. A smart plan, Fisher admitted. Keep up the pressure; don’t let the quarry rest. Unfortunately for them, he wasn’t about to let himself slip into the quarry mind set.

He shed his clothes, trading the red on green outfit for a dark blue sweatshirt and a pair of old French army fatigue pants he had picked up at a surplus store. The Aloksak bag had kept them perfectly dry. He stuffed the discarded outfit under a bush, careful to leave a bit of red showing.

He let a minute pass, then got up and ran, hunched over, north along the depression to where it intersected with a stand of pine trees. He paused to pull out his red hooded penlight, then kept moving until he estimated he had enough cover. He stopped and ducked behind a fallen trunk.

A branch snapped. South.

Partially obscured by the trees, a lone figure crossed the open ground, heading west. The build told Fisher it was a woman. Kimberly. She stopped. Her head swiveled, scanning the pine trees. Good girl. She’d neither heard nor seen anything, of that he was certain, but she was thinking: If Fisher had cut to the north instead of crossing the road, he’d be in there… What to do? Abandon the pincer plan, leave her partner alone and search the trees, or—

She kept moving.

It was the smart move. She was going to kick herself later, but clearly she’d been paying attention during Small-Unit Tactics.

He waited until she’d moved out of view, then continued east, slowly at first and then more quickly as he gained some distance, until he could see car headlights on the D16/18. When the trees thinned enough that he could see the cars themselves, he stopped. He opened his rucksack and found the two Aloksak bags he needed. He traded his fatigues and sweatshirt for the yellow Lacoste polo over sky blue outfit, then got out his binoculars — a pair of night vision Night Owl Explorers. Not the same caliber as Third Echelon’s DARPA-produced headsets, but as he was something of a beggar these days, he’d renounced choosiness.

He powered up the Night Owls, crawled to the lip of the embankment, and panned the highway. There were four SUVs in view, but none of them Renaults. A half mile to the northeast, across the highway, he could see the lights of Esch-sur-Alzette’s CFL (Chemins de fer Luxembourgeois) train station. Almost there. Fifteen minutes and he’d be gone. He’d have some breathing room. At least for a while.

He put away the Night Owls, waited for a lull in traffic, then stood up and walked down into the ditch and back up the other side. He was stepping onto the dirt shoulder on the far side of the road when, to the right, he heard the roar of an engine. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a single headlight bearing down on him.