Endgame

24

Valentina was jogging toward the west side of the foundry when she stopped short and looked back over her shoulder a split second after someone had crashed through the floor.

Not a heartbeat later, as the broken wood continued to crash down, a loud splash echoed up from somewhere below.

“Nathan, did you hear that?”

“Yeah, I’m coming back to you,” he said.

She and Noboru met up in the center of the ground floor, and their lights led them to where a man-sized hole had been punched through the floorboards. Pieces of wood jutted up from the crossbeams, and Valentina knocked a few out of the way and directed her flashlight below, while Noboru appeared beside her, scanning with his rifle.

The slimy black canal lay below, shouldered by smooth concrete walls rising a few feet above the murk. More important, a trail of disturbed algae, oily puddles, and bubbles wound off into the darkness.

“There he is,” cried Noboru; then he dropped to one knee and fired his first Cottonball.

Valentina brought her rifle around and launched one herself, as he fired again, then switched to live rounds, firing to Fisher’s left and right to bracket him.

“What’re you doing?” she hollered.

“He’s getting away!”

“Is your name Ames? Hold fire. Jesus, stay here. I’m going out to see if we can cut him off.”

She rose and dashed back toward the slit in the metal wall where they had first entered.

Noboru had already decided that if he could anesthetize Fisher, he would; but if he had to, he’d fire to wound him. There was only so much you could do with Cottonballs, Sticky Shockers, ring airfoil or CS gas grenades, and wall-mine stunners — especially when your prey had intimate knowledge of each and every one of those less-than-lethal weapons.

Admittedly, he hadn’t been able to clearly see Fisher in the water, but he’d rather shoot first and apologize later. That was, perhaps, the only thing he and Ames would agree upon. It was readily apparent that taking Fisher alive would be like capturing a tiger with your bare hands — and that wouldn’t be fun for you or the tiger.

Fisher wasn’t going to double back. Noboru felt certain of that, but he had to remain on overwatch just in case. Valentina had just taken him out of the pursuit. He could ignore her, but, then again, he thought that, maybe, just maybe, there was a spark there. If he gave her a little power over him, she’d probably find that very attractive. He chuckled to himself. That logic was faulty, to be sure, but when you’re thinking with your libido, logic, of course, has nothing to do with it.

A sound like a dull clap came from below, followed almost instantly by a louder, closer thump from a piece of wood not twelve inches from his elbow.

Incoming fire!

Noboru jerked backward, tripped, and landed on his rump, heaving a cloud of dust.

Fisher had returned — or maybe he was trying to make them believe he had…

“I’m taking fire over here,” he reported into his SVT.

Three more shots ripped into the wood, blasting up splinters and streaking on toward the ceiling, where they ricocheted across the concrete. From the corner of his eye, Noboru saw sparks dance off the stone and steel.

Then… silence. He edged back toward the hole, balancing his rifle and light. If Fisher wanted to play with live fire, he’d come to the right place.

Noboru swallowed. He imagined the old spy sitting down there, one with the shadows, watching as Noboru shifted his head just far enough into the hole — and then, bang! The bullet would tear through Noboru’s forehead, and his last thought would be that he’d been shot for being stupid.

He set his teeth, took a breath, then winced and stole a peek below.

But down there, the waters of the canal had grown deathly still.

“Stay with him! Stay with him!” Hansen ordered as Ames slowly opened his eyes, coughed, tried to swallow, and made a face registering pain.

Hansen just shook his head. “He’s got your pistol and your OPSAT — and he disabled the OPSAT’s GPS so we can’t track it. What the hell happened?”

Ames’s voice was low and blurred. “What’re you talking about?”

“What do mean, ‘What am I talking about’? You’re lying here on the floor. It was Fisher… ”

“It wasn’t him.”

“You know what we used to say at MIT? He took you out of the equation like a math professor with one swipe of the eraser. Whoosh. Just like that.”

Ames sat up and rubbed his throat. “It wasn’t him. I’m positive.”

“How do you know?”

“Because this guy was much bigger. I mean, he was huge. Arms like my thighs. He would’ve dropped you like a bad transmission.”

“Don’t lie to save face.”

Ames took a deep breath. “I’m not.”

Hansen looked at him.

“All right. The son of a bitch got me… and I never heard or saw a thing.”

“Fisher. Well, if you’re ready, get up. Let’s move. Kim, Maya, where are you guys? You got him?”

Kimberly Gillespie slammed her shoulder hard against a rusting fire-escape door in an attempt to get outside. A small courtyard lay below, and Valentina had just told her that Fisher might be headed there.

The door finally gave way. The wings of the main building jogged off to her left and right, lined by dozens of windows. A long hedgerow stood below and rose maybe twelve feet as it wrapped around the corner. Fisher had 101 places to hide, and she had only one pair of eyes.

Somewhere outside, far off, a crowd roared, and she glimpsed the soccer stadium’s lights reflected in the clouds. If he saw those lights, he might get the idea to lose himself in the crowd. Yes, that could work, because he’d be surrounded by innocent civilians, making him much harder to apprehend without causing a panic or a riot.

If she were him, she’d head there.

She raced down the stairs, reached the courtyard, but something, she wasn’t sure what, made her turn back toward an archway for a second look.

And there he was, crouched near the wall! He was still wearing the red shirt? He’d changed, hadn’t he?

Two sets of identical clothes? Well, isn’t that clever.

“In the arch! Three o’clock low!” she reported.

As she bolted toward him, Fisher charged back through the arch and sprinted out of sight, back into one of the building’s side wings.

Gillespie entered through the same side door and took another stairwell down to a subbasement, finding herself directly below the section where Valentina and Noboru had first entered.

She’d been right behind him… but he was already gone? How? That was impossible.

She stopped. Behind her, through a busted-out window, she spied two people running across the courtyard, probably Valentina and Noboru. They entered the building above her.

The basement was much larger than she expected, perhaps larger than a football stadium. Catwalks were suspended over the main canal and a half dozen stone staircases led back up to the first floor.

A chill fanned across her shoulders.

He was close.

Suddenly, three rounds from somewhere just above punched into the water, sending her diving for the ash-covered floor.

“Kim, you all right?” asked Valentina. “Where are you now?”

“I saw the shots,” she whispered. “He’s above me. Very close! He’s shooting to kill!”

“Try to take him alive,” Hansen interrupted through her subdermal.

Gillespie pushed back up to her feet and sprinted toward the nearest stairwell. At the top she found herself in a maintenance tunnel barely wide enough for a person and spanned by conduits, pipes, and more wall-mounted ladders.

Her light picked out footprints in the dust. She stopped, examined them. They looked fresh. She followed the prints to the first ladder, whose rungs were rusty and revealed clear signs of his ascent.

She climbed another ten feet, becoming enclosed in a narrow shaft, and then another twenty feet took her toward a door with a rusted knob. She assumed she’d reached the first floor. The knob looked dusty. She kept on, finding another door on the second floor — again no signs of exit — and then yet another door on the third floor: it, too, untouched. But the ladder betrayed his passage, and there was no clever way to conceal that.

“Kim, where are you?” asked Hansen.

“I’m in some kind of shaft. Check me on the map. I think he came up here.”

“Hey, it’s Maya here. Kim, I think I know where you are. Nathan and I just checked that out, but we didn’t climb up.”

“Well, I think he came this way.”

The ladder terminated at a small hatch. She opened it, set the prop-arm into place, then climbed out, finding herself on an expanse of patchy gravel and peeling tar paper that extended across the wing’s E-shaped roof. In some areas the roof had collapsed: Exposed ceiling planks and the remains of the skylights created dangerous voids promising injury or death below. Several brick chimneys stood in various stages of decay, a few resembling teeth in silhouette.

Out to the west, three towerlike structures made her feel as though she were atop a medieval castle, and off to the north and west the courtyard was enclosed by the two wings of the E-shaped building. She was up pretty high; correction, make that damned high, probably close to a hundred feet, and while she had no serious fear of heights, standing atop a dilapidated structure, with just the pale beam of her flashlight to help her find a safe path, wasn’t exactly comforting.

She thought she heard a shuffling sound to the north, then directed her light to the exposed beams and thought, perhaps, she saw footprints. She followed them slowly, gingerly, toward the north wing.

With her gaze focused on the roof, she failed to see the tree as she came around the side one of the chimneys. Before her was a colossal oak whose heavy boughs and thick branches overhung the roof like the claw of some beast ready to devour the stonework and steel.

She took a few more steps, lifted her flashlight…

And there he was, standing at the ledge, facing away, about to climb into the tree.

Surprised by his sudden appearance, she could barely speak, and when she did, her voice sounded unrecognizable, even to her. “Don’t move a muscle.”

She wanted to say, “Sam, please, don’t do this. Come with me now. It’s all over. This is for the best… ”

But only that order came out, cued by instinct, reaction, her time spent in the military listening to hundreds of people issue thousands and thousands of orders. Commands. Do this. Don’t do that.

Don’t move a muscle.

And the expectation was compliance.

But if your name was Sam Fisher and you were on the run, orders meant little, even if they were issued by a former lover, by someone who still cared very, very much…

And so Fisher did not turn back. He did not obey her.

He simply jumped.