Duty and Honor

24

“…Schweinhund!”

The shout came from behind Jack. He turned in time to see a crowd outside Optimolwerke’s entrance envelop an SUV, and in seconds all Jack could see was its taillights through the multitude of legs.

SUV, silver or light gray, Jack thought. Maybe.

He sprinted to Effrem’s Audi, got in, shut the door, and started the engine. He pulled away from the curb and sped down Friedenstrasse. Ahead, the Optimolwerke revelers were dispersing, revealing the SUV’s brake lights in the distance. Jack sped up and swerved around the mob. Angry and drunken faces flashed past his window. Fists pummeled the sides of the Audi. Jack floored the accelerator and the Audi’s engine surged.

Ahead, the SUV turned right onto Rosenheimer Strasse.

If Effrem wasn’t in that vehicle, Jack was screwed. If the journalist was, Jack didn’t have the luxury of running a covert pursuit. Once Möller or whoever was driving got Effrem to a secure location, it was over. The only question would be whether they tortured him first or simply put a bullet in his head.

If they hadn’t already.

Should have told Effrem no from the start.

He reached the stop sign a few seconds later, tapped the brakes and glanced left to make sure the road was clear, then spun the wheel and accelerated again. The Audi’s tail swerved momentarily before the tires caught hold and it snapped back. The SUV was fifty yards ahead and appeared to be in no hurry. Jack let the Audi coast a bit, closing the gap but not enough to alarm the SUV’s occupants, until finally he could make out the license plate: MOD ZL 292.

Through the back window he saw a figure rise up in the rear seat. There was a commotion. The passenger turned in his seat and started batting at the figure until it disappeared from view. Effrem was putting up a fight. Lie still, Jack thought. Don’t be more trouble than you’re worth. Not yet, at least.

Jack accelerated until his bumper was almost touching the SUV’s, then started flashing his high beams. He didn’t expect them to pull over, of course, but now they knew there was a witness, a thorn. If they wanted to get clear with Effrem, they’d have to deal with Jack first.

The SUV accelerated, opening a gap, but Jack countered until he was again on their tail. The SUV’s brake lights flashed. Jack braked hard, swerved left, and found himself alongside the SUV. Jack didn’t need to see the vehicle’s window rolling down to know what was coming. He jerked the wheel, crushing the Audi against the SUV. Jack’s passenger window spiderwebbed once, twice, then shattered inward. Wind gushed through the Audi’s interior.

He slammed on the brakes, letting the SUV pull ahead, then slid in behind it as a train overpass enveloped them. Jack stomped on the gas pedal and smacked into the SUV’s bumper. He backed off and did it again, this time angling the nose of the Audi into the SUV’s quarter panel in hopes of sending it into a spin. The SUV’s driver countersteered into Jack and he lost the angle.

This couldn’t go on for long, Jack knew. If the police weren’t already on their way, they soon would be. That might solve the issue of Effrem’s rescue, but if the occupants of the SUV opened fire on the police there might be bodies in the street, and at best Jack would end up in jail. He needed to end this quickly.

The road dipped and the SUV slipped into an underpass with Jack a few feet off its bumper. Headlights flashed through the Audi’s windshield. The blaring of car horns echoed through the underpass. Jack weaved right, trying to pass the SUV, but again the driver countered, swerving and shoving Jack toward the guardrail, forcing him to brake hard. The SUV surged ahead, emerged from the underpass, and turned left at the next intersection. Jack momentarily lost sight of it, but then, as he, too, made the turn, he saw the SUV fishtailing and disappearing through a gate in a long wooden fence. Jack overshot the gate, braked to a stop, then reversed and turned in.

On either side of the car, massive open-sided bays stacked with lumber flashed past the Audi’s windows. A lumberyard. Bright, pole-mounted security lights cast sharp circles of light on the pavement.

A forklift emerged from an alley to Jack’s right. He jerked the wheel left, but not enough. The forklift’s blades scraped down the Audi’s side and shattered the rear window. Jack slammed on the brakes, glanced at the sideview mirror, and saw the forklift was still upright, its driver climbing down from the cab. He hit the accelerator again.

Ahead, the SUV turned right and disappeared behind a warehouse.

Jack was five seconds behind.

The SUV was gone.

To his right was the warehouse wall. The nearest door, lit from above by a spotlight, was fifty yards away and partially closed. Too far. Jack looked left down an alley bordered by tiered stacks of railroad ties. No sign of the SUV. He kept going, glancing down the next alley as he went past. At the third intersection, he saw the SUV’s tail end disappear behind a lumber stack. It was running parallel to him, its lights off.

Jack jammed the accelerator against the floorboards, pushing the Audi’s accelerator past fifty, then tapped hard on the brakes and spun the wheel left, slewing the car down the next alley. He let the tail end snap back, then accelerated again and reached the next intersection just as the SUV sped past. Jack didn’t slow but raced to the next intersection, did a hand-brake skid-turn to the right. As he raced through an exit gate, the pavement turned to rutted dirt. Out his passenger window was a line of trees, and through these he could see fragmented light that seemed to be moving, keeping pace with him. A train, he realized.

He sensed movement out his passenger window, glanced that way. The SUV’s headlights filled the Audi’s interior, blinding him. He jammed on the brakes. Through the windshield he saw the SUV fishtail and its rear bumper clip the Audi’s hood. Jack steered into it but overshot. A pyramid of railroad ties loomed through the windshield. He counter-steered, but not quickly enough. The Audi sideswiped the stack of ties, and a pair of them crashed into the hood and spiderwebbed the right half of the windshield before tumbling over the roof and disappearing.

Jack spun the wheel, bringing the Audi back in behind the SUV.

Time to end this, he thought. Hold on, Effrem…

He eased left and accelerated. The SUV took the bait and moved to cut him off. Jack tapped the brakes, swerved right and down the SUV’s opposite side, then jerked the wheel hard, ramming the Audi’s bumper into the SUV’s tire. The driver had no choice but to counter, but he overdid it. The SUV’s rear tires, now sideways to the vehicle’s momentum, stuttered over the furrowed ground. The SUV flipped onto its side, then began spinning toward the trees. Dirt and chunks of the vehicle’s chassis peppered Jack’s windshield. He hit the brakes and the Audi skidded to a stop.

Jack got out and paused to get his bearings. Dust swirled in the beams of the Audi’s headlights. The sudden halt to the chase left him momentarily dizzy.

Which way?

He raised the HK and started jogging toward what he guessed was the tree line.

From the darkness, a lone gunshot.

A round in Effrem’s head? he wondered.

He slowed down, hunched over, and tried to localize the sound, then eased left. Somewhere in the distance a train whistle echoed, then went silent. Abruptly the dust thinned and he found himself in the trees. A branch smacked into his forehead. He landed on his butt, got back up. To his right one of the SUV’s turn signals blinked yellow in the darkness. He headed that way.

“Jack, he’s out there!” Effrem’s voice.

Jack froze, crouched, sidestepped behind a tree trunk. He assumed Effrem was referring to Möller. “Just him?” he called.

“The driver’s not moving.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got one of their guns.”

Jack didn’t know if this was true, but it was a smart move on Effrem’s part.

“Sit tight!” Faintly Jack heard the warble of sirens. “Police are on the way.”

This was as much a problem for them as it was for Möller, but Jack hoped the German would flee before he had time to think that through. Then again, Möller was just unflappable enough to do the opposite.

“No, I gotta get out!” Effrem shouted. “This thing’s leaking gas.”

Jack could smell it now.

From the direction of the railroad tracks came the clank of steel wheels. A train was coming.

Jack realized his NVGs were still hanging around his neck. Using his free hand, he settled them over his eyes. The left lens was shattered, leaving him only a grayish monocular view of his surroundings. With each beat of his heart the view vibrated. He took a calming breath, then looked around, starting behind himself and moving slowly toward the crashed SUV.

He stopped.

Movement.

He panned back and focused on a bush. Something there, he thought, a straight line in the curved branches. Too much bulk in the foliage. He took aim on the shape and fired once. Nothing moved.

A branch snapped. Jack spun right. Twenty feet away, a figure was moving through the trees toward him. Jack raised the HK, laid the front sight on the figure’s center of mass.

“Hallo, ist da jemand?” a male voice called. Hello, is anyone there?

Jack kept the HK trained on the man. Was it Möller?

“Wer is da?” Jack called.

“… Holzlager,” came the answer. Lumberyard.

“Polizei! Gas!” Luckily the word was the same in both languages. With any luck, the man would relay this message to the first police on scene. It might slow them down a bit.

“Okay, ich verstehe!”

Jack waited until the man had backed out of sight, then headed for the SUV. He had no time left. If Möller was lying in wait, Jack would know soon enough. Jack picked his way through the trees to the SUV, which was lying on its left side. As he approached, Effrem’s hands rose through the moonroof and wagged. His wrists were secured by a zip-tie. “Jack, is that you?”

“Yeah. Can you climb up?”

“I think so.”

The odor of gas was almost overpowering now, stinging Jack’s nostrils. Behind him, a train rattled past, its lighted windows flashing through the trees.

Jack made his way to the SUV’s windshield and peeked through. The driver lay in a heap, half against the door, half on the dashboard. His head was pointing in the wrong direction; his neck was broken. Jack photographed the SUV’s VIN.

Effrem hopped to the ground beside Jack. He stumbled, then steadied himself against the car. “Whoa… dizzy.”

Jack asked, “No gun?”

“I was lying, hoping Möller would hear me.”

“What about your thirty-eight? We can’t leave it behind.”

“Oh… yeah. It’s in the Audi’s center console.”

Jack took out his penknife, sawed through the zip-ties around Effrem’s wrists, and pocketed them. Effrem asked, “Souvenir?”

“DNA.” Effrem’s prints might be all over the inside of the car, but Jack wasn’t about to leave behind such an obvious piece of trace evidence. “We need to go. Can you run?”

“A close imitation, at least,” Effrem replied.

Jack had no specific plan aside from putting distance between them and the scene of the crash. Their best option was to head east, he decided, and try to make their way back to where Jack had parked his car near Kultfabrik.

They were a quarter-mile from the crash site, following the rail line north toward the Ostbahnhof and using the trees alongside the ballast embankment as cover. Occasionally a train would rumble past, its brakes squealing as it slowed for the station.

The chase and subsequent crash had attracted a lot of attention, Jack could tell from the flashing glow of emergency lights above the trees. He saw no sign of police helicopters, but that wouldn’t last long. Jack was already assembling the worst-case scenario in his head:

After securing the crash site and letting the firefighters deal with the SUV’s gas leak, the police had likely set up a perimeter, then begun searching the surrounding area for the vehicles’ occupants. One man was dead and gunfire had been exchanged during a high-speed chase. If the first officers on the scene believed the lumberyard worker, one of Munich’s finest had inexplicably disappeared from the scene, possibly the victim of a kidnapping.

Around them, the trees began to thin. Jack saw the glow of streetlamps.

“Wait here,” he said, and kept walking until he reached the sidewalk.

A police car drove past, its spotlight skimming over the trees. Jack stepped back deeper into the shadows until the car was out of sight, then returned to where Effrem was leaning against a tree, massaging the side of his head.

Jack said, “We’re at Rosenheimer Strasse. Not far to Kultfabrik.”

“Let’s hail a taxi,” Effrem said.

“We can’t afford witnesses,” Jack replied.

If they hadn’t already, the police would soon be contacting taxi companies, asking if anyone had done just what Effrem was suggesting.

“My head hurts. Bastard thwacked me with a gun.”

“Möller?”

“Who else? Just because I tried to kick him in the head.”

Courtesy of Stephan Möller, Effrem’s head had taken a beating, first from a bullet graze, now from a pistol-whipping.

“I’m starting to not like the guy very much.”

Jack couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t blame you.”

“What now? Which way?”

Jack checked his watch: less than twenty minutes since the chase had started. It seemed much longer than that. He wondered if the police had managed to identify Kultfabrik as the point of origin yet. He doubted it. Right now, drunken complaints from Optimolwerke people were probably low on the list of priorities for the police. It would take time to assemble the puzzle pieces.

Jack took off his jacket, pulled it inside out, exposing the red lining, and handed it to Effrem. “Put the hood up, too. You look like shit.”

Effrem shrugged. “Thanks for coming after me, by the way.”

Lights flashing, another police car raced down Rosenheimer Strasse, followed closely by a matte-black panel truck containing what Jack guessed was Munich PD’s version of a SWAT team.

“How’re we going to explain this, Jack? They’ll find out the Audi’s under my name.”

Jack thought about it for a moment. “Go back to the hotel. The police will show up eventually. Your story is the car must have been stolen. You must have left the keys in it. Stick with that story and keep it simple. Just like you did with the Alexandria cops. Be curious but not too curious. Ask them for a report number so you can call your insurance company and the rental car agency—”

“Yeah, I get it,” Effrem said.

Jack’s cell phone chimed. He dug it out of his pocket and checked the screen. It was a text from Belinda Hahn — or at least from her cell phone. She wasn’t using the burner he’d given her. Jack, I think there are people outside.

Effrem was looking over his shoulder. “A trap, you think?”

Jack texted back to Belinda, Blue.

She replied with their agreed-upon confirmation code: Little Boy.

Effrem said, “Still not proof.”

“It’s as close as we’re going to get. We don’t really have a choice.”

“They could have gotten it out of her. Or she could be involved—”

Jack cut him off: “Effrem, we’re not ignoring this.” Even so, the timing of Belinda’s call for help wasn’t lost on Jack. Möller had three loose ends — Jack, Effrem, and Belinda Hahn — and the German had just tried to wrap up Jack and Effrem. Why not go for all three on the same night?

Jack texted her: Where are you?

Belinda replied with an address, then asked, What do I do?

Lock doors, windows. Hide, he answered. If anyone tries to force the door, call the police. Have pepper spray?

Yes. I’m scared, Belinda texted.

I’m on my way.