Tom Clancy Support and Defend

45

Ethan lay on his back in the rear of the van; next to him Gianna Bertoli sat with her coat wrapped around her. True to his word, Mobasheri had packed up her luggage, and it, along with Ross’s, sat by the back door of the vehicle. She’d pulled her coat off as soon as she’d climbed inside, and now she sat next to Ross but she didn’t render him any aid, as she was consumed by her own thoughts and worries.

Ross’s hip and his back and his arm hurt from the impacts from the truck and the hard-packed snow in the street. He didn’t think anything had been broken, but he wasn’t sure.

Mohammed was sitting in the middle row of seats. He turned and looked back at Ethan. “Are you okay?” The concern in his voice seemed genuine.

“You could have fucking killed me!”

Mohammed smiled, spun around forward, and said something in Farsi to the others. Instantly two men leapt on top of Ross and began pulling at his clothing.

“What are you doing?”

“You ran away, but you didn’t have your computer. The scrape is not on the computer, is it? You have a drive on you.”

“No!” he screamed.

It took them a minute. They stripped him down to nothing, rummaged through his clothes as he lay naked and fetal. One man pulled his arms away from him and another his legs, they were ready to begin a body-cavity search, but Ethan shouted to stop them.

“Okay! Okay!” He reached to his hip and tore off the moleskin patch. It was passed up the van to Mohammed, who pried the microdrive off the adhesive.

He nodded appreciatively. “Well done, Ethan. Well done. The computer was just a decoy.”

Ethan pulled his clothes back on. While he did so, he said to Mohammed, “You are Quds Force, aren’t you?”

“I am Revolutionary Guard. On a mission by order of the Supreme Leader. These men are Quds Force.” He smiled. “But don’t worry. You will be treated well.”

“Where are we going?” Bertoli shouted the question. She’d been forgotten in the corner of the van.

Mohammed seemed to weigh whether or not to respond for a moment. Finally, he said, “You see what happens if you try to escape, yes?”

Both Bertoli and Ross nodded.

“We are going to Genoa.”

“Genoa, Italy?” Bertoli was confused. “What’s in Genoa?”

Mohammed smiled. “A boat that will take us to Libya.”

Bertoli began shouting a string of obscenities, making it crystal clear she had no desire to go to Libya. Ross, on the other hand, tried a different tack.

“It’s got to be four, five hours to Genoa. We’ll never make it before the Americans figure out where we are.”

Mohammed waved away the comment. “Let me worry about that, Mr. Ross. You need to worry about what we are going to ask of you when we get where we are going.”

Ross knew what they wanted. They wanted the passwords. He told himself he would never give it to him, but thinking about the lengths they would go to force him to reveal his password made him close his eyes and shudder.

Dom Caruso was a skilled motorcyclist, but he’d never before raced a road bike on icy streets while his helmet visor was half covered with wet snowfall.

And on top of all this, he had to break his concentration of the road conditions to make a phone call.

For the first few minutes of his tail on the van they traveled through the narrow, winding streets of downtown Geneva, with intersections every hundred yards and large buildings that obstructed his view. He couldn’t make it to the phone in his pack, he had to give all his attention to not losing his quarry.

Finally, the road straightened out some and Dom backed off a hundred yards to stay out of sight in the snow. It took a moment to get his hand under his butt to pull his glove off, but he managed, careful to keep his glove in place while he dialed his phone.

After four rings Dom heard a recording. “You’ve reached Supervisory Special Agent Darren Albright. I am unavailable at this time. Please leave a detailed message. Good day.”

“Fuck.”

The state-of-the-art Bluetooth headset in his ear, and the sound-dampening effects of the helmet made the call relatively clear, but still Dom had to all but shout over his bike’s engine. “Albright, it’s me! Ross, Bertoli, and several armed subjects are in a white twelve-passenger van heading… I guess this must be south. We crossed the Pont du Mont-Blanc and are on — hold up while I pass a sign — we’re on Route du Maligned. I need HRT on them quick before they get to wherever they’re going. Call me back.”

He disconnected the call.

Dom had to tighten up on the van again as it entered a hilly section in a southwestern neighborhood, and then he backed off when it took the wide and straight Rue Blanche. He almost lost it once in the snowstorm, but he pressed his luck and closed, and this paid off, because he caught sight of the white vehicle just as it took an access ramp for the highway.

They got on the A40, which Dom thought was good news, because he knew it would have been impossible to stick on the van much longer without being spotted as it traveled up and down city streets. But the bad news was there were fewer cars and trucks on the highway and Caruso was certain he stood out more now. As the vehicle picked up speed it blended in with the snow much better than his black bike, dark gray riding suit, and his black helmet, but he concentrated on keeping as far back as he could and retaining as much of his vision as possible by wiping his visor with the left forearm of his suit every twenty seconds or so.

Dom could not be sure Darren Albright would pick up his message in time to catch up with Ross. The Swiss police might have already detained the FBI team, or else simply delayed them, which as far as Dom was concerned, would be just as bad.

So he called Adara, who answered on the first ring with “Where are you? I came back to the Four Seasons. This place is crawling with police.”

Dom explained where he was.

“What can I do?”

“Call Gerry and get the name of the CIA station chiefs in Geneva, Milan, and Lyon. They are the closest cities with stations. Then get those people on the phone. If you can’t get the COSs, find the DCOSs. Whoever you can get, tell them the situation.”

Adara hesitated. “Right. Just so I know… what, exactly, is the situation?”

“Good question. First, don’t tell them who you are or who I am. Just say Ethan Ross is traveling southeast on the A40 in a white van. Tag number Golf Echo, three, eight, niner, seven, seven, two. Destination unknown. He’s got a half-dozen or so armed subjects with him, possibly Palestinians, but I’m just guessing.”

“Okay. They might want me to establish my bona fides somehow.”

“Tell them you work for Darren Albright, FBI CID. If those station chiefs are worth a damn they’ll move mountains to get that intel back from Ross. They’ll check into the tipster later.”

“I’m on it,” Adara said, and Dom disconnected the phone and struggled to get his glove back on.

For nearly fifteen minutes, Caruso drove through the snow alone, with a faint view of the van’s taillights. The pounding in his heart, adrenaline from the early stages of the chase, was dissipating and only the motorcycle’s drone remained.

His headset chirped in his ear, startling him. He accepted the call by pulling off his glove again and pressing a button on his phone with his thumb.

“Albright?”

“What the fuck, Caruso? You’re here? In Geneva?”

“Actually, I’m outside the city, rolling through the Alps.

Still headed southeast.”

“What are you doing in Switzerland?”

“Right now, I’m tailing your target. What are you doing still in Geneva?”

“One of my teams got held up by the canton police. We think Ross was tipped off by locals somehow, and that’s why they were ready for us.”

“Wouldn’t doubt it.”

Albright asked, “How many are with you?”

“How many what?”

“How many men on your team?”

“Team? There is no team. I’m flying solo. It’s just me. I’m on a BMW bike, chasing this bastard through a snowstorm.”

“Bullshit. I know you are running an agency operation.”

“Tell you what, when you catch up, you’ll see I’m alone, and then you can snag Ross and take all the glory.”

“I’m en route with five men. The other trucks are headed north to pull off the police.”

Dom passed through the small hamlet of Bonneville, but he was still on the A40 and Ross showed no hint of exiting the highway here. Dom gave Albright this information and Albright put Caruso on hold for some time so he could confer with his team. After a few minutes he came back on the line.

“Okay, looks like you are ten minutes ahead of us, tops. They are heading straight into the mountains. With this shitty weather we’re not going to be able to call up air transport, but that’s actually good news. Ross and his people won’t be flying out of here. If you can keep up with them and lead us to them we’ll catch up, and we’ll fight them on the ground and end this thing this morning.”

Dom had considered the weather and he came to the same conclusion. No helicopter pilot in the world would risk flying in this shit.

“Any clue where they are going?”

“In a few minutes they’ll be over the French border in Chamonix. From there it’s a right turn into the Italian Alps. I don’t know how that helps them, maybe they’ve got a safe house. Maybe they just need a bolt hole till the weather passes and they can fly out.”

Caruso said, “If they exit the highway, it’s going to be about impossible for me to stay with them for long.”

“Understood. We’re closing fast. I’ll call you when I can see you.”

Caruso added one more thing. “There’s something you don’t know. At this point, Ross is unwitting in all this. I saw him try to make a run for it. The armed guys have him, and maybe Bertoli, at gunpoint.”

Albright responded without hesitation. “That complicates things for Ross, but not for me. When we go in for the arrest I am treating everyone as hostile.”

Dom nodded in his helmet as he drove. “Can’t say I blame you there.”