Authors: Kevin Wignall
Chapter Thirty-two
They drove away in silence and they were passing back through the village before Inger said, “How dangerous is this?”
“They don’t know we have it.” He shook his head in amazement, and said, “Jesus, thanks to Bergeron, no one even knows it exists. But I think it tells us why Brabham’s coming after me the way he is, and why he sent someone after Patrick White. This means a hell of a lot more to him than shutting down former CIA contractors.”
“So we have to get this disk to Patrick. It’s the only way.”
Dan nodded, and said, “I haven’t spoken to him in days. Do you know where he is?”
She held up her hand, her fingers crossed, and said, “He was in London, but he told me he was coming to Paris, I think either today or tomorrow.”
“Good.”
He’d taken a left and only realized after a few hundred yards that he’d made the wrong turning. They were on a long narrow lane, overgrown woods forming a hedge on one side, open flat fields stretching out on the other to more woods and another village in the distance. He was just thinking about turning when he noticed a motorbike appear in his rearview, a trails bike with the rider sitting high in the saddle.
He kept driving now, but said, “Could be nothing, but we might have someone following us. Guy on a motorbike.”
“But how?”
Dan shook his head, trying to think. He looked in the rearview again—he was certain of it, some quality about the guy that suggested he didn’t just happen to be on the same road as them. Then he thought of the car itself, knowing that he hadn’t been as thorough as he should have been.
“There must be a tracker on the car.”
She threw a quick glance over her shoulder and said, “If there’s one guy, there’ll be more, surely?”
“I guess so.” The guy was gaining on them now, and fast. Within seconds he was close up behind them, looming in the rearview, reaching into his jacket. “Brace yourself.”
Dan hit the brakes hard as the guy pulled the gun clear, the rider’s concentration just a shade enough off for it to catch him unprepared.
Bike and rider hit the back of the SUV with a multiple thump and clatter as if they’d been caught in a rockslide. The back window cracked but held. Dan drove forward, saw the guy on the floor behind them then, with the bike further back. He reversed fast until they hit the guy again, the bump throwing them out of their seats a little, then a gentler, somehow queasier bump as he once more drove forward and stopped.
Inger said something under her breath in Swedish. He looked at her, but then back in the mirror. The guy was lying motionless, but a black car had appeared in the distance behind them.
As if sensing it, Inger turned and said, “CIA?”
“I’m not sure it matters now, especially out here.” He could hear another motorbike somewhere, then saw it approaching from the distant village to the far right. The lane they were on curved around to the right up ahead, but he could also see a turning into the woods.
He drove on until they reached the turn. The road through the woods was straight for as far as they could see, and he was pretty certain there was another car, just visible, at the very far end of it.
He turned to the left, into the woods, and Inger looked behind again and said, “Don’t you think this is what they want? They have us surrounded.”
He didn’t answer, but said, “There’s a rucksack in the back. Put everything you need in it, including the disk. Then open my bag—you’ll find another rucksack inside—it’s already got everything I need.”
The final comment seemed to throw her, perhaps leaving her wondering if he lived constantly in readiness for flight, but she put the question on hold and clambered into the back seat. He carried on slowly along the track. The car ahead was approaching but at a crawl, and both the car and the bike had appeared in the sunlit opening from the woods behind them. Five guys in total, by his reckoning.
“Okay, I’m done.”
She was about to climb back into the front when he said, “No, don’t bother.” He stopped the car now, turned off the engine. “I loved this car.”
He turned to face her, and she said, “So this is your plan, to make a run through the woods? To where?”
“My plan is to get into the woods, kill five guys if I can, then make a run for it.”
“If we kill all five we could come back for the car.”
“The tracking device isn’t on us, so it must be in the car, and we haven’t got time to find it. We’ll make our way into Auxerre somehow, take the train back up to Paris.”
She thought about it for a second, then said, “Okay, it’s a plan. I still don’t know that it’s a good plan. But let’s do it.”
In the rearview he could see that the two guys had got out of the car behind them, and even from here he could see one had a rifle, so he said, “We’ll head for the right, along that path. Let’s go.”
Inger jumped out of the door on the right-hand side, Dan out of the driver side on the left. He knew if they took a shot they’d go for him first, so that would give her enough cover to get off the track and into the woods. But he was quick, and if there was a shot in the time it took him to catch up with her, he didn’t hear it.
They ran hard, a good fifty yards into the woods, before cutting off on another path, heading towards the car that had been parked ahead of them, roughly parallel to the track. They stopped then and dropped down into a squat, shielded from view by the undergrowth which was thick and almost impenetrable in places.
Dan couldn’t hear anything at first, as both of them fought to slow their breathing. But then, as the silence took hold they began to pick up voices, one ahead of them through the trees, the other more distant and off to the left. He got the feeling they were talking to each other on the phone.
They were still listening when a shot went off, cracking through the branches off to their left. A couple of birds took flight in response.
Whispering, Dan said, “Just shooting for the hell of it, seeing if he can flush us out.” He put his rucksack on the floor, attached the silencer to his gun and said, “You stay here, look out for people approaching from the left. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She looked ready to object, but he was already on his way, moving fast and low through the undergrowth, going out of his way to stay on the straggling natural paths that cut through it, ending up circling behind the two guys who’d originally been ahead of them.
He stood behind the partial cover of a tree then and looked out. He could see the parked car, facing away from him, one guy standing closer to Dan’s hiding place, smoking and kicking his heels. The other guy, the one on the phone, was in front of the car.
He didn’t recognize either of them. The one at the back was solidly built, the one on the phone more sinewy, but he could imagine both of them working the door of a nightclub. They were both dark-haired, the bigger one almost a skinhead, a white scar visible through the hair on his skull. The guy on the phone was speaking in a Slavic language of some sort, and that matched their looks too.
There were too many trees between him and them to be sure of hitting them both from here. He looked at the undergrowth, following the nearest rough path to where it hit the track, but it was a go
od twenty yards beyond the car, not a great place to emerge.
He could always walk through the undergrowth, and it looked mostly like bracken, but if he hit a patch of briars he’d be in big trouble. Briefly, both guys had turned so that they had their backs to him, so Dan moved one tree closer, then a second. It did seem to be bracken alone, and he was close enough now that he might even have been willing to take a chance at shooting them from there.
T
hen the phone call came to an abrupt end and Dan heard the motorbike kick into life again in the distance. It had taken them long enough, but they’d decided on their next move. The big guy stubbed out his cigarette on the floor and walked towards his partner.
Dan slid out from behind the tree and moved towards them, easing through the bracken. And he was almost on them when he heard a violent rustling in front of him and an explosion of movement and feathers as a game bird of some sort burst out of the bracken and flew up into the branches above.
Both guys turned, the big guy going for his gun, the other only momentarily hampered by still having his phone in his hand. Dan fired, hitting the big guy in the chest. He fell back against the car and Dan fired at the other, hitting his shoulder. He dropped his phone, but scurried behind the front of the car.
The big guy was wheezing, trying to get control of his gun arm again. Dan shot him in the head, then threw himself into the bracken so that he was lying on the floor near the edge of the path. He could see the smaller guy now, crouching behind the front of the car. Dan fired twice, under the car, both hitting him—he crumpled onto the dirt floor.
Then a round from the sniper rifle hit the windshield with explosive force, shattering it. A second round came a moment or two later, hitting one of the front tires. The guy was pretty good, there was no doubting that, hitting the car at that distance, with Dan’s own SUV in between.
So that had ruled out the possibility of taking their car, and Dan also didn’t wait now to check that the smaller guy was dead—he was pretty bashed up at the least. Dan scrambled back to his feet and ran back towards Inger, conscious all the time of the motorbike, the sound of which he couldn’t quite pin down to a specific direction.
He saw her lowering her gun again as he emerged along the path, and he nodded, liking the fact that she was taking no chances.
He dropped down next to her and said, “I took out the two who were over there, one dead, the other dead or badly hurt. The guy with the sniper rifle’s pretty good though.”
“He was shooting at the car?”
“Yeah, took out the windshield and one of the front tires.”
The motorbike revved and produced some weird kind of Doppler shift as if it was suddenly coming towards them, and they both looked into the woods.
Inger pointed at the path on which Dan had just returned, and said, “We can either stay and try to get the other three, or we can take that path until we’re out of the forest.”
“I think if we follow that path it would put us on the right side of the woods to get into Auxerre.”
Again, the motorbike noise shifted, as if he was sweeping through the woods trying to flush them out.
Dan looked in that direction and said, “We could take them, I’m sure we could, but we don’t know how long it would take, or how many more people they’ve got nearby.”
“So we go?”
He nodded, but didn’t move, and said, “Only trouble is, as long as we’re here in the trees, the sniper’s got a tough job, and the bike doesn’t have much of an advantage. We get out of these woods, we’re in open country.”
She seemed to be weighing it up too, but they both looked into the trees again as the sound of the motorbike clearly changed direction and grew more distant. On the back of it, they could just hear a car starting up too, the sound of it reversing, turning, driving away.
Inger said, “What are they doing? They want to lure us back to your car maybe.”
“Maybe, and the fact he didn’t shoot my car up suggests there is a tracker hidden on it somewhere. Or maybe they’ve worked out our options and they’re circling around.”
“It doesn’t matter. We go, now, and when we get to the edge of the forest, we decide the best strategy.”
He smiled, at the seriousness of her face, the clarity in her eyes, her skin glowing in the partial sunlight, and he felt suffused with a strange contentment. The woods were peaceful around them now, and he wanted to tell her, that whatever happened from here on in, he was probably happier in this moment, being with her, than he had been for many years.
He knew though, that he would not find the words, or that he’d make it sound wrong, and so he only leaned in and kissed her lightly, and said, “Let’s go.”
They didn’t run, but walked a fast steady pace, making little enough noise that they could hear the woods around them, the sounds of birds, a distant tractor somewhere. Once Dan thought he heard the motorbike again, but it came to nothing.
They could see ahead of them when the woods were coming to an end, the brightness blurring the lines of the trees. They slowed a little more, approaching the road beyond with an increased level of vigilance.
Before breaching the undergrowth that bordered the road, they both crouched down, embedding themselves within it. Dan took the binoculars from his rucksack and scanned the open country in front of them.
He could see a road cutting across the flat fields to a village beyond, and if he had his bearings right, Auxerre was a little way beyond that. To get to the town, they had to cross at least some open country, and there was precious little cover once they were out there.
Then he noticed a stand of trees halfway between them and the village, though slightly off to the right, and just visible from their position was the front of a black car that was parked behind it. He couldn’t be certain it was the same car, but he was as certain as he needed to be about what it was doing there. Briefly, he wondered if he’d been wrong to abandon the car. It hardly mattered, but it undoubtedly looked now like they needed a new plan.
Chapter Thirty-three
Dan lowered the binoculars and said, “The trees over there, the car’s parked behind it. Not sure if it’s the same one, but I doubt they’re birdwatchers.”
She didn’t look but said, “Then we should move back a little.”
They edged backwards slowly, deeper into the undergrowth, though Dan doubted the guy would be bothered to search the tree line—he knew Dan and Inger would have to break cover sooner or later.
As they crouched there, neither of them readily suggesting a next move, he heard the motorbike again, approaching from the right along the narrow road in front of them. He didn’t seem to be doing any great speed, which suggested he was scanning into the trees as he rode.
Dan looked back at the path they’d walked along and said, “Can you ride a motorbike?”
“No, can you?”
“Not since I was about fifteen, but I can.” There wasn’t time to discuss it. He said, “Stay here. With any luck, the motorbike will hit the deck right in front of you. Pull it into the undergrowth and back onto that path if you can.”
He jumped up, ran about ten paces off to the right, crouched again. The bike was approaching, the revs a menacing purr at that speed. Dan held still as the guy passed immediately in front of him. It was a risk, because the guys in the car were probably watching the biker, but it had to be worth taking.
The biker was past now and Dan jumped up, stepped out and fired off a couple of shots in quick succession, one into the bigger target of his back, then one higher. The guy immediately fell sideways, the bike revving and sliding out from under him.
Dan didn’t see any more, diving back into the undergrowth, scurrying away, and even then he only just made it, a shot cracking into the branches close by. He didn’t wait for more but ran back towards Inger.
She’d pulled the bike through the undergrowth and was pushing it now onto the narrow path they’d used. She already had her rucksack on and he could see his over the handlebar.
He grabbed it, taking hold of the bike at the same time. Another shot clattered through the air, splintering into a tree a few feet away.
“Start running down the path. I’ll catch up.”
She glanced at him, wanting to be sure that he would follow, then set off along the path. He dropped his gun into the rucksack, threw it over his shoulder and jumped on the bike. It only took a second, coming back to him now, but just before he kick-started it again he heard the car engine start up somewhere behind him.
She’d got a fair distance along the path, but stopped when she heard him approaching. She jumped on the back, sliding her arms around his waist, and even now, even in the middle of fleeing, her touch ran through him, mingling with the blood rush of the chase.
He rode fast, letting his instinct guide him, knowing all the time that they’d be circling back around the woods at speed themselves. They reached a firebreak and he turned right, opening it up even more, slowing as they reached the barrier onto the road where he’d parked earlier.
He edged around the barrier, glanced up, saw his own SUV still parked to the right, but didn’t hang around, making headlong for the road at the edge of the woods.
At the junction, he stopped briefly, looking at the road as it curved away and made for the distant village. He turned instead and headed back the way they’d first come, the dead rider and crashed bike still on the pale road surface ahead of them.
He was about to ride around him, but hesitated, glancing back into the trees, seeing now that the undergrowth here wasn’t as impenetrable as he’d first thought when they’d driven past it.
He stopped the bike and said, “Let’s get off here.”
She jumped off and he climbed off too, and they pushed the bike in among the trees. Once it was far enough from the road to be invisible, they edged back toward the tree line. The car was approaching at speed from the road that curved round to the distant village, a trail of white dust rising up behind it.
He pointed and Inger looked puzzled and said, “Is it a different car? It’s coming from the wrong direction.”
“No, the woods are an irregular shape. He knows the road through the woods is blocked by his friend’s car, my SUV, so he’s had to come all the way around. He’s in a hurry too. People make mistakes when they’re in a rush.”
He took his gun from the rucksack, and she took out her gun too, though he hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. He heard the car slow a little as it took the bend, then speed up again. It was already faintly visible now, a darkness rippling through the trees to their left.
He hit the brakes again as he reached their hiding place. There was no ditch between the road and the open field, but the ground was uneven enough that he needed to take it easy going around the fallen biker.
Dan ran a couple of paces into the open. The driver hit the brakes harder at the sight of him, the car swerving slightly. Dan aimed directly at the driver’s chest through the windshield and fired, three bullets in quick succession. He had to jump back then, the car veering wildly and plowing into the fallen bike.
With an odd sense of dislocation, Dan recognized the guy in the passenger seat, a Ukrainian he’d met a couple of times but whose name he didn’t remember. The guy had his gun in his hand, trying to work against the chaotic momentum of the car to lower the window, take a shot.
The window was only a little way down, when it shattered with an explosive burst of noise—Inger, who’d emerged from the trees next to him and taken a shot at the passenger. He was hit, but still lifted his gun arm and pointed it, even as the car ran off the road into the open field, denying the guy a firing angle.
Dan ran after the car, the noise of Inger’s shot still raw in his ears. It came to a halt after twenty yards and the passenger door flew open, the guy falling out of the car like a stuntman. His face was covered in blood, but he was still trying to get a shot off—Dan had to admire him for that.
Dan fired once, hitting him in the top of the head with a force that jerked his neck back before his face crashed into the dirt. Dan readied himself to fire again, but there was no need.
Quickly, he checked the driver—he knew him too, again by sight rather than by name, a Bulgarian, a sniper with a reputation, which explained a lot. He jogged back to Inger, slapping the side of his head at the same time.
When he reached her, he said, “Do you have a birthday coming up?”
She looked baffled and said, “Why?”
“I’ll buy you a silencer.” She laughed and he said, “Come on, joking aside, that shot would have been heard all over. We’ll get the bike and get out of here.”
“Did you know them?”
“Yeah, I recognized them. One was a Ukrainian, one Bulgarian. I didn’t know them really, just to look at.”
“Hopefully they’re the last.”
“I doubt it, and Brabham hasn’t even—”
“No, I mean, once we get the disk to Patrick.”
“Oh, I see.”
And yet even now, he wasn’t convinced that it would ever be that easy.
The disk would give Patrick White and the ODNI the ability to bring Bill Brabham to heel, possibly even wind up his entire operation, but Dan was fully aware that his own long-term safety wouldn’t necessarily be a part of that. He hoped it would, but hope on its own was worth nothing to him.