Endgame

30

Hansen’s determination to work alone and stay the course paid off. They spotted the Range Rover heading east about a mile ahead of them. Gillespie zoomed in with her night-vision binoculars and confirmed that Fisher was behind the wheel. She even saw him consulting an OPSAT, either Ames’s or one he’d procured from the weapons cache in Bavigne.

They were racing down a winding road with a series of dips and bends that challenged Hansen’s driving skills. Each time Fisher reached the crest of a hill, Hansen was better able to gauge his lead. Audi versus Range Rover? There was no competition, unless Fisher was actually driving Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and planned to fly over the treetops.

“I’m right behind you, Boss,” said Ames through the subdermal.

Hansen had not asked the man for an update. “Uh, yeah, I can see you,” he said sarcastically, stealing a look in his rearview mirror.

“Don’t slow down.”

“Ames, we’ll catch up to him. Relax.”

Fisher disappeared once again. The road grew dark. Hansen accelerated a bit more, rose up and over the next crest, and started down.

Lights appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the road.

Reverse lights.

Hansen’s mouth fell open. Fisher had stopped dead, waited for them, and thrown the Rover into reverse. He was now barreling backward, directly toward them.

With the better part of three seconds to react, Hansen jammed on the brakes, and while the Audi’s sophisticated antilock braking and traction- control systems immediately kicked in, he still found himself skidding across the road, past the Range Rover, and sliding up onto the right-side shoulder. And then, with a jerk, the car dropped, as though on the rails of a roller coaster, and began to plunge down the embankment.

Hansen corrected course, rolling the wheel and taking the car back up toward the pavement as Gillespie clutched a handle near the passenger’s-side window and said, “The son of a bitch was never a good driver!”

As they neared the top of the embankment, Hansen hit the brakes hard, burning rubber to a stop, front tires now up on the pavement, back still on the dirt.

“Now what?” Hansen asked.

“Oh, no,” said Gillespie. “This is bad.”

Ames had to blink hard as his headlight picked out the two cars seemingly parked in the middle of the road. Without thinking, he just reacted, cutting the wheel hard, sending the Audi into a flat spin across the slick pavement and careening down into the ditch along the left side.

The car wasn’t stopped for three seconds when suddenly Ames found his door being wrenched open. He looked up at Noboru, who reached across Ames, unfastened Ames’s seat belt, then ripped him out of the driver’s seat. “You idiot!” cried the Japanese man, and this was the first time Ames had ever heard the usually reserved operator raise his voice. “I drive!”

Noboru dumped Ames onto the ground and jumped into the driver’s seat.

“Ames, get back in the car!” screamed Valentina.

Hansen gaped at the oncoming vehicle, transfixed, as though watching it all in an IMAX theater.

Fisher had thrown his Range Rover into drive and was now racing toward them. Reflexively, Hansen leaned toward the passenger’s side as Fisher’s car struck Hansen’s door, the safety glass shattering. The Range Rover then turned, now broadsiding them, tires screeching, engine roaring. They were slammed back down into the ditch. Hansen didn’t dare hit the accelerator until he could turn the Audi around. The Range Rover glanced off them, climbed back out of the ditch, and continued up the road.

They were on a thirty-degree slope, and when Hansen finally hit the gas, the back tires spun freely in the mud and began to dig deeper.

“We’re stuck down here, Ames! Stay on Fisher.”

“This is Nathan! I’m driving now!”

“All right, Nathan, stay with him!” Hansen turned to Kim. “You drive.”

Before exiting the car, Hansen hit the trunk button. He climbed up, raced back, and removed the large, carpeted trunk mat from the back and slid it in front of one of the back tires. Then he got the two rear seat mats and did likewise with the other tire. Gillespie eased on the gas, and the little trick worked, getting them up past the mud and onto the harder ground. Hansen hopped into the passenger side, crying, “Go!”

Noboru followed Fisher onto a side road that was mostly dirt and gravel. The road grew so narrow that only one vehicle could barely pass through. Freshly torn branches lay in the path, and Valentina reported that the Range Rover was definitely ahead, with Fisher hacking his way forward. It was raining a bit harder now, and Noboru switched on the wipers to clear the drops and still-falling leaves and twigs.

The road began turning radically, zigging hard to the right at forty-five-degree angles, and Noboru hit the brakes and rolled the wheel again. And again.

“If you don’t slow down, you’ll hit a tree,” hollered Ames.

“Like you’re an excellent driver?” spat Valentina. “Shut up!”

“Yes, shut up!” added Noboru, feeling his cheeks warm as, far in front of them, Fisher’s taillights flickered into view.

Fisher had shifted to avoid a big rock in the road and had plowed into a berm on their left, leaving a huge trench where his SUV had pushed through. The canopy above had lowered, and his truck had sheared off dozens of more branches, which littered the road. Through the stands of trees, Noboru thought he spotted Fisher’s taillights. He hadn’t bothered to switch them off and go to night vision, but Noboru assumed that momentarily he would — once he realized he was still being followed.

Noboru was still a bit in awe that the tip he had given Ames had actually paid off. Noboru had obviously underestimated Spock’s influence in the mercenary world. Yes, he’d thought Spock would be the one man to know something about Fisher, but it’d also been a long shot. Still, according to Ames, Spock had been unable to confirm that it was Fisher, only an American. But that was enough, and here they were, pursuing the man.

There was something, though, that bothered Noboru. Spock, given his position, was not a very forthcoming individual. How had Ames gotten him to talk?

Hansen should have let Gillespie drive in the first place. She was an ace behind the wheel, cutting corners tightly and catching up quickly to Noboru.

“Where the hell did you learn to drive like this?”

“I don’t know. I’ve always liked fast cars. My first was a ’98 ’Vette. We added a supercharger and custom cam and really ramped up the rear-wheel horsepower and torque. The dyno numbers were great.”

“Okay, that’s Chinese. Just watch the road and keep turning like that.”

She cut the wheel hard. “Hang on!”

As Noboru came out of the second of two hairpin turns, he spotted the Range Rover straight ahead, and he took in the scene at once.

Fisher was rolling around a boulder at least as tall as his hood, and as Noboru accelerated even more, the berm to their left suddenly exploded in a shower of mud and shrapnel that blasted against the car.

Reflexively, Noboru cut the wheel. Fisher had cleverly tossed a grenade into the berm to force them into the rock. Noboru appreciated the beauty of that plan, even though he was on the receiving end of it. Thankfully, the tires held on the gravel, and they slipped past the boulder with just a slight, glancing blow and the crunch of fiberglass.

They raced forward, and within a minute, the road suddenly widened into some kind of a logging camp with piles of mulch along one side, piles of cut logs, and clearings made into the deeper stretches off to the north.

The road split into three, with the main one heading directly west and the two others north and east.

Noboru slammed on the brakes.

“Why are you stopping?” hollered Ames.

Noboru ignored him and turned to Valentina. “Which way?”

There were tire tracks all over the clearing, and it was nearly impossible to pick out Fisher’s.

Valentina was already scanning with her goggles and told him to take the north road. He jammed down his foot, and they lurched forward as Hansen came thundering up behind them.

“You sure he’s heading north?” Hansen asked in the subdermal.

“I’m sure,” said Valentina. “Got his exhaust trail.”

“Roger that.”

Noboru drove farther on, the road growing muddier, as Ames informed them that they had crossed into Germany. They came up and over a rise, and there, ahead, lay a wooden bridge with a gaping hole in its center, a hole large enough to permit a vehicle, a Range Rover, perhaps.

“Aw, hell,” said Valentina. “I think he broke through the bridge.”

“Ya think?” cried Ames.

And then the incessant blaring of a car horn rose from somewhere down below the shattered planks.

Then the horn went silent.

Hansen eased out onto the bridge and directed his flashlight through the gap, drizzle filtering through the thick yellow beam that found the Range Rover sitting upside down in a ravine about twenty feet below. The door was open. Fisher was gone. Hansen quickly shifted the light around, picking out the banks of the creek below, the water only a foot or so deep, the rocks piled up along the shoreline. To Hansen’s left, beyond the bridge, the ravine trailed off into the night. He turned, aimed the light off to his right.

A concrete wall rose alongside the streambed, with more ornate concrete facades on either side of it. In the center lay a rusting steel door. Hansen squinted. On the door was an old white sign with red letters: VERBOTEN. SIEGFRIEDSTELLUNG WESTWALL.

Fisher didn’t have time to get out of the ravine, Hansen thought. He must have gone in there.

“We need to get down there!” Hansen ordered.

“Over here!” called Noboru. “I think we can get down here!”

They rushed over to where Noboru picked out a rocky edge of the ravine that would allow them to descend — slowly and carefully — but at least they could get down without breaking out ropes or rappelling gear from the trunk.

Noboru took the lead, and they descended one by one, burning up valuable time.

“Hey, I called up this place on the OPSAT,” said Ames. “They called it the Siegfried line. It’s a whole bunch of bunkers built by the Germans after World War I. There are thousands of them and tunnels and machine-gun emplacements all up and down it. Goes for, like, four hundred miles.”

“Great,” Hansen said with a groan. “Another perfect place for him to lose us.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” corrected Valentina, who reached the ground and took off running along the bank toward the door.

Noboru jogged behind her, as did Hansen, who turned back to Ames and Gillespie and said, “Circle around the other side and see if there’s another entrance up top.”

They nodded and rushed off.

As they neared the door, Hansen motioned to Noboru. “Sorry, buddy. I’m going to post you right here.”

Noboru made a face, but he drew his SC pistol and nodded.

Hansen and Valentina reached the door, and Hansen gave it a solid shove with his shoulder. The door seemed to give a little, then bounced back, as though held by something elastic.

“Light,” he ordered Valentina.

She moved in with a penlight, and in the gap between the jamb and the door they saw weblike rows of paracord. Fisher had tied shut the door from the inside.

Hansen drew his combat dagger — the one that had belonged to Fisher. He got to work on the cord.