Nighthawk

55

Emma’s route to Cajamarca took her through a wide valley and then up through a narrow pass. At first the road was flat and hemmed in by the mountains, but as they came out of the pass the road began to look like the one she and Kurt had dealt with on the way up. Only now it was dusk and growing darker by the moment.

She had the high beams on, along with the small fog lamps under the bumper and two auxiliary lights mounted on the roof rack. They lit the road well enough, but the drop beyond the narrow shoulder was nothing more than a dark void.

“When this is over, I’m moving to Kansas,” she said.

“What’s Kansas?”

The question came from Reyes, the escort Urco had sent with her. He sat in the passenger seat, cocked to the side and holding a 9mm pistol in his hand.

If she drove too fast or too slow, he gave her a dirty look and then complained. Right now she must have been doing fine since he was leaning back and the Beretta was resting on his lap, aimed roughly at her thigh.

“Kansas,” she said, “is a very flat part of America. None of these mountains to climb or cliffs to fall off.”

His brow furrowed.

“Never mind,” she said. “I can imagine how that sounds to someone who lives here.”

He said nothing, leaned forward to glance at the speedometer and then leaned back again.

“Are we on a schedule?” she asked.

He didn’t reply. Maybe they were.

“Urco didn’t need to send you along, you know.”

“I’m here to make sure you do as you promised.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, rounding a curve. “It’s, literally, the only sane thing to do.”

He shrugged.

“And, anyway, what would you do if I refused? Or changed my mind?”

She was just talking, just making conversation on the long drive and perhaps hoping to make him see her as a human being instead of a target. But she’d hit a nerve.

“I shoot you and drive there by myself.”

“Really?” she said, surprised and not surprised all at the same time. “And then what? Just going to hand over the containment unit and tell my colleagues you’re a Good Samaritan who picked it up on the side of the road? For that matter, how would you even find them without me?”

The answer came to her even before she’d finished asking the question. “Oh, you have a phone,” she said. “You have my phone.”

At almost the same moment, both of them realized that he’d given something away.

A phone could deliver help. It could summon a rescue team to the lake and military units to swarm over Urco and his followers. Her phone could turn the entire situation on its head.

“Pull over,” he said.

“No,” she said. “It’s okay. Let’s just drive to Cajamarca.”

“Pull the car over!”

From there, everything happened in a flash. Reyes shouted again and leveled the pistol at her head. She realized this might be her only chance to act and slammed hard on the brakes. The sudden deceleration caused his extended arm to swing forward. His hand smacked against the dashboard and the pistol discharged into the windshield.

As the glass shattered, Emma swung her right arm toward him. Her hand was stiff, her fingers outstretched. The edge of her palm caught him in the throat, a perfect backhand to his Adam’s apple.

The blow crushed his windpipe and Reyes dropped the pistol.

Her foot went to the accelerator, slamming it to the floor. He fell back now, thrown off balance again.

As he reeled in the seat, she reached down for the pistol, trying to pluck it off the floor. Her fingers brushed it, but before she could pick it up, he did the unthinkable, lunging for the steering wheel and pushing it hard to the right.

The wheels turned sharply. The Toyota skidded and then went over on its side. The windshield blew out and the old SUV slid toward the far edge of the road and the cliff beyond. It went halfway over the edge and crashed headlong into a gnarled tree that grew from the side of a steep slope and stopped.

The impact knocked Emma unconscious. Whether it was seconds or a minute or more, she didn’t know. When she woke up, she was lying on her side and pinned by the steering wheel. A hissing sound could be heard, and she was surrounded by a cloud of steam that was venting from the Toyota’s shattered radiator.

Reyes was nowhere to be seen. And with the damaged windshield completely missing, she assumed he’d been ejected.

“That was foolish,” she grunted, angry at herself. Angry at him as well, wherever he was.

She twisted around, felt a spike of pain shoot through her ribs and laid eyes on the containment unit. It remained in place, strapped down as it had been.

Emma stretched far enough to reach the control panel. As her fingers touched the screen, it lit up. The indicators were all green. Power was still flowing through the unit. The magnetic bottles were intact and the cryogenic system was still operating.

“Thank God, they didn’t give this contract to the lowest bidder,” she whispered.

For obvious reasons, the units were incredibly durable and well made. They’d been designed to survive years in space, cosmic radiation, extremes of heat, cold and pressure, not to mention the turbulence and vibration of reentry and landing or even a minor crash.

Fortunately, the one car accident was not more severe than those conditions.

All Emma had to do was get out of the Land Cruiser, find her former guard and hope that the phone in his pocket had survived his ejection and landing in the road.

She pushed against the steering column that had been loosened by the blow against the tree until she was able to shove it far enough to slide her legs free. Then she pulled them up toward her and eased into a sitting position.

With the Toyota over on its side and the front windshield gone, the easiest way out was forward. Sitting where the driver’s window had been, she swung her legs forward. They stretched through the empty space where the windshield had been and touched… nothing.

Emma froze. Her legs were dangling as if she was sitting on a swing… or a ledge. She looked beneath her. There was ground against the cabin where her side window had been, but it fell away near the front edge.

She leaned forward, grabbing the seat belt for stability. As the steam from the radiator began to dissipate, the rooftop lights played out into the darkness, touching the ground three hundred feet below.

The Land Cruiser was already pointed downward at an angle. The only thing keeping it from dropping was the gnarled tree it had run into.

Emma pulled her legs back in and shifted her weight to climb out the top. A barely audible crack from the tree trunk and a subtle shift in the Toyota’s position told her that moving was a bad idea. She went still, wondering how long the tree would hold.