Day of Wrath

CHAPTER ELEVEN SAFE HAVEN

Helen Gray gingerly peeled down her jeans and dispassionately studied the varicolored bruises running down the length of her left thigh. She shrugged after a moment. Painful, yes, but she hadn’t suffered any serious injury. Nothing that some aspirin, cold washcloths, and a few hours’ rest couldn’t handle.

Rest would be welcome in any case. She and Peter Thorn had been on the move almost constantly for nearly seventy-two hours now, and they were running a little ragged. They’d each managed to grab a couple of hours of fitful sleep on the early morning train from Hannover to Berlin, but that wasn’t really enough to fully recharge their batteries.

She rebuttoned the jeans, turned to face the tiny bathroom’s little mirror, and brushed her hair back into place. Satisfied with her appearance for the time being, she stepped quietly out into the equally tiny bedroom and closed the door behind her.

Peter Thorn looked up from the documents he’d been studying for what must be the twentieth time. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah.”

Peter scooted over to make room for her on the narrow bed.

The bed, a single, straight-backed metal chair, and a used, battered wooden wardrobe were the only pieces of furniture in their room.

Helen took in their surroundings and shook her head in amusement. This hotel wasn’t exactly the Ritz. On the other hand, they did have a private bath — an uncommon luxury among small, family-run pensions. And the Pension Wentzler had several other things going for it from their perspective — it was relatively inexpensive, inconspicuous, and so small that days might pass before its owners delivered their guest registers to the police as required by German law. The pension was also in what had once been East Berlin — far enough away from the glitz and glitter of the West Berlin shopping districts to be fairly quiet.

Of course, there was some irony implicit in their choice of sanctuary, she knew. The hotel was just a few blocks away from the once-feared headquarters of East Germany’s disbanded Ministry of State Security — the Stasi.

“You still think we should phone home?” Peter’s question brought her out of her reverie.

Helen nodded. “Yes, I do.” She ticked off her reasons. “First, we’ve followed the trail as far as we can on our own. And whatever’s hidden inside those smuggled jet engines could be arriving in Texas in the next day or so. If we’re chasing a stolen Russian nuke, that’s a risk we can’t run, we have to push the Bureau’s wheels into motion — now, not later.”

“All true,” Peter admitted. “But I still hate the thought of relying on Mcdowell for anything …”

“So do I,” Helen said. “Like it or not, though, he’s my boss. If we want to send our data up the chain of command, he’s the guy we have to start with. And, as much as I hate it, the weasel has the kind of clout we need to get out of Germany without being asked too many inconvenient questions.”

Peter nodded reluctantly.

Helen knew he was remembering their earlier assessments of the situation they were in. After the carnage they’d left on that quiet Wilhelmshaven residential street, Germany’s highly efficient law enforcement agencies were undoubtedly looking for them. Not by name.

Not yet. But the police were sure to have obtained fairly accurate descriptions of the two Americans last seen in Herr Steinhof’s company.

With those in hand, putting real names to their faces was only a matter of time.

The longer she and Peter stayed out on their own, the higher the odds they’d be arrested and charged with manslaughter — or its equivalent in German law. They’d achieved a lot operating on their own — without a legal safety net-but it was time to come in from the cold.

Helen checked her watch, mentally subtracting six hours to arrive at the local time in Washington, D.C.

Deputy Assistant Director Lawrence Mcdowell tossed his briefcase to one side and plopped himself down in the plush chair behind his desk. He scanned quickly through the overnight reports from the FBI’s overseas offices, looking for anything particularly urgent or interesting. Nothing struck his eye.

With that out of the way, he turned to the one-page memo on top of his internal action pile. It was a draft of his latest press release — listing the most recent accomplishments of his outfit, the FBI’s International Relations Branch. Grist for the media mill, it would be shotgunned out to more than a hundred newspapers, radio stations, television networks, wire services, and interest groups.

With luck, the release would catch some editor’s eye somewhere and become part of tomorrow’s news. If it did, the circle would be completed — because a clipping of that story would land on the Director’s desk.

Mcdowell ran his finger through the draft, scowled, reached for a marker, and then scrawled “Redo!” across the top in large red letters.

His name appeared only once in the release and that was in the last paragraph. He drew a red circle around that section and then a line pointing to the front. He also crafted several sentences ascribing the field office successes to the personal leadership of both Mcdowell and the Director himself.

Any complaints from his underlings would be met with his usual reminder that “RHIP”—rank hath its privileges — followed by an insincere invitation to lunch or dinner the next time they were in D.C. Satisfied now, Mcdowell buzzed for Miss Marklin, his secretary.

The tall, good-looking blonde came in quickly, almost at a run. She’d learned early on not to keep him waiting.

He handed her the draft press release. “Give this back to Thompson and tell him I want the final version on my desk before lunch.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mcdowell turned back to the rest of his morning paperwork, looking up in irritation when his secure phone line buzzed. He grabbed it.

“Mcdowell.”

“This is Gray.”

The sound of Helen Gray’s voice struck him like a thunderbolt.

“Where the hell are you?”

“Berlin, sir,” she said coolly, using the calm, utterly unimpressed tone of voice that never failed to get under his skin.

“Then I suggest you stop screwing around and report to the embassy there, pronto!” Mcdowell snapped. His hand reached for the button that would initiate a phone trace, hovered for an instant, and then withdrew. Tracing an international call was a major endeavor, and besides, from all the traffic noise he could hear in the background, she was using a pay phone.

“That might be … difficult, sir,” she said. “We’ve run into a snag while tracking this shipment of smuggled jet engines …”

“Outside your jurisdiction and without Bureau sanction,” Mcdowell reminded her, his anger barely under control. Her little escapade had him in hot water with both the Director and that ex-Stasi son of a bitch, Heinrich Wolf.

“Yes, sir. Nevertheless, Colonel Thorn and I have obtained information you need to hear.”

Mcdowell reined in his temper. Gray was right — though for more reasons than she knew. “I’m listening.”

He took notes while she ran through the sequence of their lone-eagle investigation and brought him up to date on their latest finding. He drew a sharp line under “Galveston.”

“You’re sure this shipment is headed for Texas?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine. I’ll pass the word on to the local DEA office,” Mcdowell lied.

“Now, Agent Gray, I suggest you get yourself on the first available flight to D.C. I understand the Director wants to personally chew you out—”

“This isn’t about heroin trafficking, sir,” Helen Gray interrupted.

“Colonel Thorn and I believe the Caraco Savannah may be carrying a stolen Russian tactical nuclear weapon.”

Mcdowell felt his blood run cold for a moment.

A stolen nuke? Was that what Wolf’s game was? Mcdowell could turn a blind eye to a little drug running. Tons of heroin and cocaine washed up on American shores every day — no matter what he did or didn’t do.

And there was always the chance he could muscle in for a cut of their action. But nukes were a whole different ball game. If Wolf and his cronies really were smuggling a nuclear weapon into the U.S and anybody ever found out he’d helped them … Mcdowell gripped the phone tighter, feeling his palms sweating profusely. He cleared his throat. “Just what hard evidence do you have to back up that rather extraordinary claim, Special Agent Gray?”

Mcdowell listened intently while she ran through their chain of suppositions, feeling himself relaxing as it became clearer and clearer that she and Thorn were simply grasping at straws. His anger came roaring back at the same time. The bitch had scared the hell out of him over a simple doodle in some dead O.S.I.A inspector’s logbook.

The corners of his mouth turned down. Trust a borderline case like Helen Gray to go off half cocked over the worst-case scenario, especially when it required ignoring every bit of real evidence they’d acquired.

But it wouldn’t do to let her know that he thought her wild-eyed theory was completely full of crap. If she thought he wasn’t taking her seriously, she and this Thorn character were likely to try an end run around him — and that would blow his only chance to keep a lid on this whole can of worms.

“All right, Agent Gray,” Mcdowell said after she’d finished.

“I’ll run your theory past the Director, pronto. In the meantime, I want you and Thorn out of Germany.”

“As I said earlier, sir, that may present a problem,” she countered.

What now? Mcdowell wondered. He drummed his fingers on the desk impatiently. “Go on.”

“We were ambushed again near the Wilhelmshaven docks.

Five hostiles were waiting for us. They knew exactly what we were looking for.”

Wolf’s men, Mcdowell suddenly realized — using the information and photos he’d passed on the day before. Too bad the Stasi bastards had failed. It would have made his life so much simpler.

“And?”

Helen Gray’s voice dropped an octave. “We killed two of them while making our break. I suspect the German police are looking for us now.”

It was getting worse and worse. Mcdowell grimaced. He needed time to sort through this mess — and to reach Wolf.

That bastard would never forgive him if he allowed Thorn and Gray to slip through his fingers after they’d made direct contact.

He sighed. “All right, then. I’ll try to see what I can work out.

In the meantime, just sit tight and stay off the streets.” He let his tone grow rougher. “And God help you if you screw up and get arrested before I’ve had a chance to smooth things over! Call me back in six hours. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

This time Mcdowell could hear the anger in her voice. But that anger was combined with a reluctant acceptance. Much as she must hate it, she clearly knew how dependent she was on his help.

Good, he thought. That would make whatever action he took that much easier.

Ninety-odd miles northwest of Los Angeles, the flat expanses of California’s agricultural heartland — the Central Valley — stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. Cropdusters, heavily laden with pesticides or fungicides, lumbered down Shafter-Minter Field’s main runway at periodic intervals.

Outlined against the fiery glow of the rising sun they lifted off into the air and turned — roaring off toward the vast fields surrounding the airport.

Two new hangars and several other buildings, painted dazzling white in the bright California sunshine, sat just off the main run-way — secure behind a high steel fence. A discreet sign on one of the buildings identified the compound as the “Caraco Corporate Aviation Training Center.”

Rolf Ulrich Reichardt stood just inside one of the two hangars — watching as sweating workers continued modifying the interior.

They’d walled off part of the floor space — building living quarters large enough to house several men for a week or more. Another crew was hard at work in another area of the hangar building another enclosure — this one out of heavy steel.

Welding torches sputtered and burned, filling the hot, stuffy hangar with acrid smoke, but the big central doors were kept closed as a safeguard against prying eyes.

The construction crews were working almost around the clock to meet the Operation’s tight timetable.

Satisfied by what he saw, Reichardt slipped outside and strode into the second hangar. Technicians were hard at work there, too, inspecting a sleek, twin-engined Jetstream 31 turboprop.

Others were busy unloading crates filled with extra tools and spare parts next to the area marked out for a second Jetstream still en route to the field. Their orders were clear: When the word came down from on high, the aircraft based at Shafterminter would be ready to fly — or else. There would be no exceptions, no excuses, and no delays.

Reichardt turned as the door behind him opened. Johann Brandt stepped through it, his face serious.

“What is it, Johann?” he asked.

“Another message from PEREGRINE.”

Finally. Reichardt swung away from the organized chaos filling the hangar and followed Brandt outside onto the airport tarmac.

The twin-engined Cessna executive jet that Prince Ibrahim al Saud had put at his disposal sat waiting for him. Reichardt hurried up the steps into the Cessna’s luxurious interior — all solid cherry, dark leather, and gleaming brass. A powerful computer workstation and communications center now occupied the aft end of the six-passenger compartment.

Reichardt dialed Mcdowell’s direct line.

The FBI agent sounded almost happy. “You missed them again, Herr Wolf.

Your people in Wilhelmshaven blew it. Thorn and Gray are still alive.”

Reichardt scowled. “I’m already well aware of that fact, Mr. Mcdowell.”

He’d received the first panicked report from the survivors of the Wilhelmshaven security team barely an hour after their ambush went disastrously wrong. He shook his head. That tattooed young idiot, Bekker, was no great loss. But Heinz Steinhof had been one of his best and most trusted operatives. First Kleiner and now Steinhof. His losses were mounting. These two Americans were even more dangerous than he’d first thought.

Well, Reichardt thought sourly, at least this time he’d had the foresight to take added precautions against possible failure. The cover story he’d so painstakingly built over the past few weeks should hold water for long enough.

The German turned back to the conversation at hand.

“You’ve been in contact with Special Agent Gray, then? Another fax, I assume.”

“Not a fax,” Mcdowell said. “A phone call. From Berlin.”

Reichardt raised an eyebrow. Interesting. Perhaps the two Americans were even more rattled by their narrow escape than he’d hoped. “Go on.”

He listened intently while the FBI agent ran through the details of his talk with the American woman, Gray — frowning only when he heard that she and Thorn knew the Caraco Savannah’s final destination, lie made a mental note to push the work in Texas even further ahead of schedule.

Mcdowell’s dismissive tone made it clear ‘that he didn’t believe their nuclear story. That was fortunate. Still, the FBI agent already knew more about the Operation than he should. At some point in the not-too-distant future, he could easily become a liability.

The American’s next question confirmed that. “Is there some part of the Galveston waterfront you want me to steer any potentially embarrassing investigations away from? A warehouse, maybe? I’ve got some contacts in the Drug Enforcement Agency I could use to help you out — if need be.”

“Don’t let your beak grow too much, PEREGRINE!” Reichardt growled. “You know the bounds of your orders. Stay within them!”

“Well, then, what action should I take?” Mcdowell asked plaintively. “About Gray and Thorn, I mean.”

Reichardt ran through his options, knowing they were far more limited than he would prefer. Most of his special action teams had already left Europe — bound for the United States. In any event, too few of his people were close enough to Berlin or its environs to make an aggressive move against the two Americans.

He rubbed his jaw. How else could he make sure they were taken off the chessboard until it was too late for them to interfere further?

The answer struck him suddenly. Why strive for the complicated solution when a simple plan would work just as well — and with fewer risks?

Smiling now, Reichardt said, “Very well, PEREGRINE. Here are your new instructions. You will follow them precisely, and without deviation. Clear? …”

Inside the phone kiosk, Helen Gray turned her back on the Wasserklops, the gigantic fountain outside the towering Europa Center. She glanced at Peter Thorn. “Any sign of trouble?”

He continued scanning the crowded, neon-lit square and streets around them for a moment longer before shaking his head. “Nope. A few cops on patrol — but they don’t seem to be looking for anyone in particular.”

Helen nodded — relieved but not especially surprised. Even if the Berlin police were hunting for them, they’d have a hard time picking out two particular foreigners from among the tens of thousands milling along the Kurfiirstendamm — the German capital’s busiest and most prosperous boulevard. The Europa Center behind them was a hive of activity — housing everything from fine jewelry stores to overpriced restaurants and even a pallid imitation of a Monte Carlo casino.

She punched in Mcdowell’s office number, waited for the automated operator, and then swiped the phone card they’d purchased at a local store through the electronic reader. Glowing digits on the phone’s display showed how many longdistance minutes her German marks would buy. Thank God for modern technology, she thought while waiting for the call to go through.

In an earlier day, she and Peter would have needed a satchel to carry all the coins necessary to call overseas using untraceable cash.

This time Mcdowell’s secretary patched her straight through.

“Mcdowell here.”

“This is Gray,” Helen answered steadily. “We’re ready.”

“You should be,” her boss said. “You were right. The German police are looking for both you and Colonel Thorn. Or at least two Americans matching your physical descriptions.”

Helen sighed. “Damn.”

“Exactly,” Mcdowell agreed icily. “The Berlin field office has obtained a copy of the Wilhelmshaven police report. It doesn’t make pleasant reading. The German authorities don’t exactly approve of so-called tourists dropping corpses all over their nice clean streets.”

“Have they identified the bodies yet?” she asked.

“One of them. The older guy carried a walletful of ID and credit cards made out in the name of Heinz Steinhof. The local police say he apparently owned some kind of export-import business in Hamburg.”

Helen snorted. “Sure. And John Gotti just ran a little mom-and-pop pasta shop in Brooklyn.”

“There’s one more thing you should know, Special Agent Gray,” Mcdowell said, sounding smug.

Helen didn’t like the sudden shift in his tone of voice. “What’s that?”

“The German cops found a plastic bag containing fifty grams of pure heroin sewn into Steinhof’s jacket. In case you can’t handle the math, that’s worth roughly twenty-five thousand dollars on the street. So they’re assuming this was some kind of midlevel drug buy that went sour.”

Helen made a face. More heroin. More misdirection for anybody in authority eager to jump on the easiest and safest explanation for everything they’d discovered. Terrific.

“You still there, Agent Gray?” Mcdowell said.

She fought down the urge to let her temper flare. “I’m still here.”

“Good. Anyway, whatever the hell you and Thorn have stuck your big dumb feet in, it’s pretty clear we’ve got to scoop you out of Germany before you wind up in the slammer. God knows, the FBI, the U.S. Army, and I personally don’t need the kind of bad PR that would generate.”

That rang true, Helen thought. Trust Mcdowell to worry more about his image than about the truth of their story. She took an even firmer grip on her temper. “So, what do you suggest, sir?”

“Nothing fancy. Just make your way to the following intersection,” Mcdowell said, rattling off a couple of street names in badly pronounced German. “That’s in some district called Neukolln. Can you find it?”

Helen flipped through the city-guide map book she’d picked up on their first pass through Berlin. Neukolln lay just east of the city’s old Tempelhof Airport. “Yeah. What happens there?”

“You’ll meet Special Agent Crittenden. He works out of the Berlin office. Do you know him?”

Helen ran through her memory quickly. She had the impression of a tall, broad-shouldered man with the beefy look of a former football player. “Yeah. I met him once, I think. Either at the academy or at one of our conferences.”

“Crittenden will be waiting there at 2030 hours, local time.”

Helen glanced at her watch. That gave them a little under an hour and a half to make the rendezvous point. Plenty of time.

“He’ll have a car with embassy plates,” Mcdowell continued.

“You and Thorn pile in. He’ll drive you to the Air Force base at Ramstein where you’ll both meekly trundle aboard the first available flight heading to Andrews — just like the lost little lambs you are.”

Gritting her teeth, Helen nodded into the phone. “Got it.”

“You’d better get it, Agent Gray,” Mcdowell said. “We’ll sort out your story once you’re back here in D.C. In the meantime, make sure you’re at the rendezvous point on time. Capisce?”

Almost against her will, Helen forced out a terse, “Yes, sir.”

Then she hung up.

Colonel Peter Thorn stepped out of the S-Balm car onto the Neukolln station platform — quickly scanning the surrounding area for signs of any watchers. Only four other passengers left the crowded three-car electric tram and they immediately headed for the nearest station exit.

He signaled the allclear.

Helen Gray followed him out onto the platform just before the car doors closed.

With a low electric hum and a hiss of hydraulics, the SBAHN train slid away from the platform and sped off down the above ground tracks. It disappeared around a bend in seconds — lost in the darkness and urban sprawl.

Thorn strode toward the exit, still keeping a wary eye out for anyone who looked out of place. He went through the turnstiles and came out onto the poorly lit street.

Neukolln was not one of Berlin’s more scenic neighborhoods, he decided.

Half the street lamps were out — evidently smashed by vandals and left broken by an overworked city bureaucracy.

Trash and dog excrement littered the pavement. Most of the tenement-style buildings packed close together in all directions were liberally daubed with graffiti, soot, and torn and tattered political posters.

Most of the cars in sight were old and cheap — a mix of Volkswagens, Fords, Renaults, and even a few dented Trabants. Except for a few elderly men and couples out walking dogs, there weren’t many pedestrians on the streets.

“What do you think?” Helen said, skeptically eyeing their surroundings herself.

Thorn shook his head. “I don’t like it. It’s too damned quiet. This isn’t the kind of neighborhood I’d have picked for a rendezvous. There’s not enough traffic. We’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”

“Maybe the RP itself is busier,” Helen said.

“Yeah … maybe.” He summoned up a mental picture of the street map he’d memorized before they set out to meet Mcdowelli’s man. The SBAHN station was about five blocks north of the intersection they were aiming for. About a five-minute walk if they headed straight there.

Not that he had any intention of doing anything that stupid.

If nothing else, the ambushes at Pechenga and Wilhelmshaven had again pounded home all the old lessons he’d learned as a combat soldier: Never move blind in unknown country. And never, ever, do the expected or the easy.

He turned back to Helen. “Feel like a little stroll?” He nodded up the street — directly away from the rendezvous point Mcdowell had specified.

She flashed a quick, thin smile. “My thoughts exactly, Mr. Thorn.”

Together, they turned and walked north — back the way the SBAHN tram had brought them — pausing often to check windows or the sideview mirrors of parked cars for any signs that they were being followed. At the first opportunity, they turned right down a narrower side street and picked up the pace. From time to time, they stopped suddenly — hoping to flush out anyone trailing them.

Nothing.

Ten minutes of hard, fast walking and several more turns brought them out onto a wider north-south avenue — one running just a block east of the intersection they were heading toward.

There were even fewer cars and fewer pedestrians out on the streets now.

Thorn took Helen’s arm and pulled her into a shadowed doorway with him.

He nodded toward the next corner. “I should be able to take a quick look at the RP from there.”

“Oh? What’s this “I,’ Peter?” she asked quietly.

“This is where we split up,” he said. “If anybody unfriendly is out there waiting for us, they’ll be looking first for a couple. So I’ll just mosey on over there — run a fast recon — and then swing back. In the meantime, you keep an eye on my back just in case we missed somebody on our tail. Okay?”

Helen’s eyes narrowed. “You really don’t trust Larry Mcdowell, do you?”

Thorn shrugged. “From what you’ve told me about him, and from what I saw at the crash site, I trust him to be a lying, slimy, incompetent asshole.”

She laughed softly. “I’d say you have the man pegged just right. Okay, Peter, you go run your sweep. I’ll watch your back.”

He kissed her once and then stepped out of the doorway. He sauntered off, whistling softly under his breath — determined to look and act as much as possible like a local making his way home from one of the several pubs they’d passed.

At the corner, Thorn stopped briefly — looking both ways before crossing the street. He let his eyes sweep west down the block toward the intersection Mcdowell had picked out as the rendezvous point, scanning for anything and anyone out of the ordinary.

Nothing. Nothing.

There! His eyes lingered for an instant on the dark Mercedes sedan with Berlin plates parked halfway down the block under a burned-out streetlight. That’s too nice a car for this neighborhood, he thought grimly. And he’d bet a month’s pay there were a couple of guys sitting inside that can-hidden behind tinted windows. His senses went on full alert.

Without breaking stride, Thorn crossed the street, putting a graffiti-smeared apartment building between him and the Mercedes. It took him another five minutes to circle his way east and then north again to get back to the doorway where he’d left Helen on watch.

“Well?” she asked.

“We’ve got trouble,” Thorn said. He filled her in on the car he’d spotted.

“Might just belong to the local Lotto winner …” she said slowly.

Thorn grinned. “Why, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus …”

“Very funny, Peter.” Helen tapped her watch. “We’ve still got fifteen minutes before Crittenden is supposed to show. You want to scope this out a little further?”

He nodded. “Let’s say I’m kinda curious to find out who may be gunning for us this time.”

She shook her head. “Jesus, Peter, I sure hope you’re just being paranoid.”

They headed east for several blocks before turning south again. Once they had gone far enough that way, they swung back west down a trash-filled alley. It took them the better part of ten more minutes to work their way closer to the target intersection, approaching it from the south this time.

They were within a hundred meters of the rendezvous point when Thorn felt Helen stiffen slightly. Her hand closed around his arm — and tugged him off the street into another alley between two brick tenements.

“Shit,” she said under her breath. “I don’t frigging believe it.”

She looked up at him, eyes wide in the darkness. “There are two more up ahead fifty meters or so. Standing in a doorway on our side of the street.”

“Describe them,” Thorn said.

“Dark leather jackets. Jeans. One’s wearing a baseball cap. The other’s bareheaded.” Helen shook her head in disbelief. “How the hell did they know where to find us?”

Thorn spread his hands. “Maybe there’s a leak in the Bureau’s Berlin office. Or in D.C. somewhere. Hell, maybe Mcdowell’s phone’s being tapped …”

She grimaced. “I can’t believe that. The phone lines into and out of the Hoover Building are checked and rechecked practically every day.”

“Well,” he said slowly, “all I know is that these people have been all over us every time we get close to their goddamned operation.

As to how exactly they’re doing that …” He shrugged.

“We should start doing some serious thinking about it later. After we get ourselves out of this fix we’re in right now.”

Helen nodded.

Thorn looked intently at her. “So, if you were setting up a tight surveillance net around that intersection, how would you do it?”

She didn’t hesitate. “I’d cover all four approach routes, and I’d use at least two foot teams and two cars to do it. That way I’d be set, no matter how my targets entered the zone.”

“So we’re facing around eight hostiles here,” he concluded.

“At least.” Helen looked troubled. “We’re outside the net now, Peter.

We could just back off quietly and slip away. God knows, that would be the smart move.”

“Yeah.” Thorn knew she was right, but somehow the idea stuck in his craw. Fading back meant ceding the initiative to their unknown adversaries — again. And it would leave them right where they’d started: stuck in Germany while what they suspected was a stolen Russian nuke was sailing into an unsuspecting American port city.

He suddenly realized that Helen was watching him closely.

“You getting tired of playing it safe, Colonel Thorn?” she asked quietly.

“Playing it safe’s not exactly our forte, is it, Special Agent Gray?”

“No, I guess not.”

He nodded toward the unseen intersection. “Okay. Pretend you’re running that op out there. One of your teams spots someone who might be one of the two people you’re after — but this person is heading away from the place you’ve staked out. What would you do?”

Helen hesitated for only a split second before answering. “I’d detach a team to investigate.”

“But not your whole force?” Thorn pressed.

She shook her head. “No way. Not with so many variables still in play. I’d want confirmation first.” A wolfish smile crept across her face. “You want a little personal contact with a Couple of these folks, Peter?”

He nodded grimly. “You could say that.”

Two minutes later, Thorn waited alone inside the dark alley — near the opening to the street. He could feel the damp, dirty brick wall right at his back. A dog barked somewhere off in the distance. Soon now, he thought.

Helen strode right past the opening — heading straight toward the intersection they knew was under surveillance. Her eyes didn’t even flicker in his direction.

Good work, he thought.

She left his field of view. Her footsteps faded.

Thorn ran a slow countdown in his head. She must be forty meters from the closest two-man surveillance team. Thirty meters.

Twenty.

Adrenaline flooded into his bloodstream — distorting his sense of time.

Seconds passed with agonizing slowness. Doubts crept in and multiplied. Had they spotted Helen yet? Would they react the way he hoped?

Helen came back into sight, walking faster now. She stopped, looked toward the alley as though seeing it for the first time, and then darted in. She slipped into the shadows beside him.

“Two on the way,” she whispered.

Thorn listened carefully — trying to screen out the dull rumble of background traffic noise to pick out the sound of any nearby car engine starting. If the people out there looking for them started pulling the whole surveillance net around them, he and Helen would have to bug out fast. He listened harder. There. He heard the sound of footsteps ringing on the pavement, coming closer.

Soon. Soon.

Two men appeared at the entrance to the alley. Both wore leather jackets and jeans. One had a baseball cap pulled down right over close-cropped hair. Without hesitating, they plunged into the narrow, dark, trash-strewn passageway. They walked right past him.

Now!

Thorn lunged out of the darkness, grabbed the closest, the one wearing the baseball cap, by the scruff of his neck and the back of his jacket, and whirled him around — slamming him face-first into the brick wall. A quick neck chop dropped the moaning man to the pavement — out cold.

A rapid glance showed him that Helen had put her target down and out in that same split second.

Moving quickly, they dragged the two unconscious men further into the alley, behind a row of overflowing trash bins.

Thorn knelt beside his victim, rapidly frisking the man for weapons and ID. Helen did the same.

“Jesus, I feel like a mugger,” she muttered.

“Yeah. But at least we’re highly efficient muggers,” Thorn said with a wry grin. He set the Walther P5 pistol he’d found in the unconscious man’s shoulder holster down on the ground and kept searching.

The smile slipped off his face as his hand closed around a small leather wallet, thin but stiff, in the man’s jacket pocket. He flipped it open. One side held a photo identity card of the man he’d knocked out. The other held a badge. The word “Polizei” practically leapt off the ID card.

“Oh, shit,” Thorn said softly. “Now we are well and truly fucked …”

“No kidding.” Helen showed him the police credentials she’d found on her own man. “And there’s more.” She handed him a crumpled sheet of paper. “I found this next to the badge. Take a look.”

Thorn glanced down at the paper. He couldn’t read all the German but the two Xeroxed black-and-white photos — one of Helen and one of himself in his U.S. Army uniform — were clear enough. He frowned.

“That’s my FBI file photo,” Helen said.

“That son of a bitch Mcdowell set us up,” Thorn growled.

“Looks that way.” Helen shook her head. “I’d guess he decided to have us locked up before we could do any more damage to his precious reputation inside the Bureau. He must be betting he can do enough spin control so that we come out of this smelling real bad — and he gets the credit for shopping us to the German authorities.”’ “I think Mcdowell and I have a few things to sort out,” Thorn said.

“After me, Peter. After me.” Helen dropped the ID card on top of the man she’d attacked and jumped to her feet. “In the meantime, we’ve got maybe two minutes before their boss runs a radio check and all hell breaks loose. I suggest we skedaddle while the coast is still clear.”

“Amen to that.” He scrambled upright. “Back to the hotel?”

Helen shook her head, leading the way east down the alley toward the next street over. “No. Too dangerous. If the Berlin police are on the ball, this’ll hit the news in minutes. So we leave our bags here and start running now.”

“To where? Not the train station,” Thorn said.

“Same problem,” Helen agreed. “The cops will have men on watch at every train station, bus terminal, and all the airports before we could even get close.”

She didn’t bother hiding the despair in her voice as she continued.

“Thanks to Mcdowell, we’re about to become the targets of a major manhunt. The Polizei aren’t going to be very happy that we just put two of their plainclothes detectives in the hospital.

And I don’t have the faintest idea of how we’re going to get out of this damned city — let alone the country?”

Thorn kept his mouth shut as they left the alley and kept heading east — deeper into the city. There wasn’t any point in trying to cheer her up with false optimism. He was already feeling the walls close in around them himself.