Polar Quest

60

As Kilkenny stepped away from the BMW, Martineau heard the door locks pop closed. Her eyes never left him as he disappeared into the darkness.

When she was sure he was gone, Martineau shifted position in her seat. She balanced all her weight on her left knee, leaning her torso against the inclined leather seat. She felt the rush of blood into her legs, and a sharp stinging of a thousand needles replaced the numbness.

Martineau took several deep breaths, then lifted her bent right leg up and extended it over the center console and the driver’s seat. Slowly, the stinging ebbed. She flexed the sculpted muscles of her thigh and calf, then slowly folded her leg as she pulled it toward her. Her thigh rose up against her chest, her knee just below her chin.

A shudder rippled through her left leg as she struggled to maintain her balance. She pulled her calf tight against the back of her thigh while keeping her foot square with her leg and her heel pressed up against her right buttock. Martineau took a deep breath and slowly eased her cuffed wrists around her foot. When the handcuffs slipped past her toes, she released her breath in a single burst.

She turned forward and slipped back down into her seat, both legs burning from her contortions. When she regained feeling in her legs, Martineau opened the door. Awkwardly, she retrieved her laptop from the floor of the car and, clutching it against her chest, began to run toward the château.

The grounds of Lafitte’s estate were covered with large shrubs and ancient trees, some over four feet in diameter and towering upward of a hundred feet. Kilkenny made the most of this natural cover, moving quickly from position to position.

In the darkness he approached the tidy cluster of service buildings. Light poured out of the windows of one, which Kilkenny surmised was the guardhouse. A carriage lantern by the door cast a grazing light across the cottage’s ivy-covered walls and gravel drive.

Kilkenny kept his eyes away from the light-filled windows, attempting to preserve his night vision until he was ready to attack. As he neared the guardhouse, he began to hear music. At first it was all bass, then he heard notes in higher frequencies until a melody of sorts became apparent — electronic dance music.

In the corner of his eye, Kilkenny saw something move. He lost it, then caught it again. Martineau had somehow managed to free her arms and was now running toward the château. Kilkenny knew there was no way he could catch her before she reached the château, leaving him precious little time to work before the alarm was sounded.

As he moved around the tree trunk, a guard ran out of the door toward the Jeep. Seeing Kilkenny, the guard reached for his pistol. Kilkenny fired and two rounds struck the guard just above his right eye.

‘Charles! Sumner! It’s Dominique, let me in!’ she screamed. ‘Hurry!’

She pounded on the heavy wooden door for nearly a minute before a security guard finally opened it. Martineau burst through the opening and limped straight to Lafitte, trembling uncontrollably. She stumbled and lost her grip on the laptop computer cradled in her arms. It fell to the marble floor and its black plastic case cracked.

‘Dominique, what has happened?’ Lafitte asked.

‘Kilkenny is here!’ she announced, out of breath.

‘What?’ Duroc shouted. ‘You were supposed to kill him!’

‘He escaped and took me prisoner.’

‘How? When I left, he was unconscious.’

‘I revived him,’ Martineau admitted. ‘After all the trouble he has caused, I wanted to see the look in his eyes when he died. He broke free.’

‘Maudite vache!’ Duroc cursed.

‘Calm down, Sumner,’ Lafitte commanded. ‘And you, remove her handcuffs at once.’

After the guard unlocked the manacles, Lafitte led Martineau and the others back into his study. Udall Walker was seated there with a glass of bourbon. Lafitte poured Martineau a glass of cognac and handed it to her.

‘Now, Dominique,’ Lafitte began, ‘where is Kilkenny?’

‘Heading for the guardhouse. He’s come for the woman.’

Kilkenny ran up to the guardhouse door, kicked it in, and entered a large room with a kitchenette. He held his pistol chest high, the barrel pointed in the same direction as his eyes, both sweeping the room for a target. He found nothing.

The music still pounded on. Kilkenny moved to the next room and found communications equipment and a bank of video monitors. One of the monitors showed Martineau at the château’s front door. Down the hall, he cleared the bathroom and guards’ armory. Unfortunately, a keypad controlled the magnetic locks on the steel mesh door securing the weapons and ammunition.

Kilkenny braced himself against the wall beside the last door. He could feel the beat pulsing through the plaster. He spun around, raised his leg, and kicked the door. Splinters flew from the jamb and the door sprang inward, crashing into the plaster wall with Kilkenny right behind it searching for a target.

‘Nolan, look out!’ Tao screamed, her hoarse voice almost inaudible with the blaring music.

He caught a blur of motion out of the corner of his eye and turned just as a wooden chair crashed down on his forearms and wrists. Kilkenny’s arms dropped with the forceful blow and one of the chair’s wooden legs caught the back of the Glock and stripped it from his hands. The pistol slid across the floor and disappeared beneath the bed where Tao lay bound and nude.

To his right he saw a naked man holding the chair.Kilkenny snapped a side kick into the man’s face, then pulled his leg back and delivered a second kick to the same spot, trying to drive his heel through the man’s head. The guard reeled back, his nose flattened against his cheek. Several broken teeth protruded through his bloody lips.

Gripping the chair legs like a plow, Kilkenny rammed the naked guard into the wall behind him. The backrest shattered, as did several of the guard’s lower ribs, and the tips of the broken spindles skewered into the man. Blood poured out of his mouth. The guard growled, reached out, and grabbed Kilkenny around the throat. Kilkenny pressed his body forward against the chair’s bottom supports, driving the broken spindles farther into the guard’s body, and bent his legs into a deep wide stance. With the broken chair braced between them, Kilkenny drove his hands upward like a wedge between his attacker’s elbows, broke the man’s hold on his neck, and speared his fingertips into the guard’s eyes.

The soft orbs ruptured and gelatinous blobs of vitreous humor oozed out around Kilkenny’s fingers. Instinctively, the guard recoiled, but there was nowhere for him to go. His head impacted the wall with a dull thud as Kilkenny’s fingertips broached the eggshell-thin sockets of his eyes. The last thing he consciously felt was Kilkenny’s fingers sliding through his face into the gooey mass of his brain.

Survival instincts took over and the guard thrashed wildly for a minute, emitting guttural noises until his body finally went slack. Kilkenny pulled his fingers from the man’s skull and let him fall. On the floor near the guard’s body, a boom box continued to thud out a monotonous dance beat. Kilkenny yanked the plug from the wall socket, bringing a welcome silence.

‘Thank you,’ Tao said with relief.

‘I got here as soon as I could,’ Kilkenny said as he covered Tao’s torso with a sheet. He sat on the edge of the bed beside her, wiped his hands clean on the end of the sheet, and began untying Tao’s wrists. ‘Are you okay?’

‘They were rough, but I’m still alive.’ Tao massaged the ligature marks on her wrists to get the blood moving in her hands. ‘What about you? You look terrible.’

Kilkenny showed her the marks on his wrists. ‘Let’s just say they had a similar idea for me.’

He untied her ankles and massaged both joints tenderly. ‘How’s that?’

‘Much better.’

‘Good.’ Kilkenny scooped up Tao’s clothes and backpack from the floor. ‘Get dressed. Martineau is up at the château right now warning them about me. How many guards?’

‘I only saw four.’

Kilkenny knelt down beside the bed and searched for the Glock. ‘That jibes with what Martineau told me. I killed two and left a third unconscious and unarmed. That leaves one more, along with Duroc, Lafitte, and Martineau. Look, I’ve uploaded some information out of Martineau’s laptop to Grin back in Ann Arbor — it ties Vielogic to everything. It’s not perfect evidence, but it’s a start. We’ve both had enough for today. I say we get the hell out of here.’

‘We can’t, Nolan.’

‘Why not?’

‘Udall Walker, the CIA’s Paris station chief. He sold us out to Lafitte. He and Duroc captured me inside Martineau’s lab. Walker is here now, and if we leave, he’ll send teams out to hunt us down. We might get word to Barnett, but Walker can jam up the official channels long enough to make sure we disappear. Then it’s a matter of spin control.’

Kilkenny stood up and checked the pistol; it was undamaged. ‘In that case, we finish this now.’