Rogue force, p.19
Rogue Force, page 19
Troy slashed the knife across the throat of the cigarette-smoker. The knife cut deep, nearly beheading the man. He barely grunted in response. His burning smoke fell to the ground, and a split second later, the man did as well.
Troy spun toward the second man, just in time to catch a punch in the face.
Troy’s head snapped back, but he lunged in with the knife.
The man sidestepped and screamed something in a language Troy didn’t understand, a deep guttural shriek. It almost sounded like the man was vomiting.
He did it again, backing away and trying to pull the rifle down from his back. He got it. He got the gun down. Troy lunged again, but the man leapt back. He grabbed the gun in both hands, pointed from his waist, and…
BANG!
A gunshot cracked and echoed across the surrounding hillsides. It was loud. It repeated itself as it rolled across open land, hit some hill or mountain, and echoed back again.
Troy stared at the man. The man stared back at Troy. The guy had a scruffy face, black, bushy eyebrows, and maybe three days’ worth of sharp, thick beard. His eyes were dark. He dropped his gun and it rattled on the paving stones. He hadn’t got a shot off.
His eyes went blank, no longer staring at Troy. The man’s shoulders slumped. He leaked to the ground and lay still.
Near the wall of the abbey, Dubois stood, still in a shooter’s crouch, both hands on her gun. Her eyes were wide.
Next to her was a doorway he hadn’t noticed before - more of the opening to a tunnel than a doorway. It was darker than dark, and cool air was coming from it. Things were about to get hot. The tunnel looked about as good a place to go as any.
Troy reached for the machine gun strapped to his back.
“Did I kill him?” Dubois said. She gestured at the man on the flag stones. Her voice was high, and shaky.
Troy nodded. “Yeah. Thank you. He was about to shoot me. But now we have to move, and fast. Come on.”
* * *
She had just killed a man.
Her mind was awash with thoughts, fears, and emotions.
Thou shalt not kill. The Fifth Commandment. It was a mortal sin to break. Ten years in law enforcement, and she had never broken this law.
She was numb, and she was crying now, and she was running. She plunged through the darkness, crouching low, running behind Stark, running in blindness, as she had been trained to do - her left hand on Stark’s lower back, feeling him there, her right hand still holding the gun, the murder weapon.
They were running through a tunnel, or catacombs, part of the old abbey. It was cold in here. There were no lights, and they ran through pitch darkness. The tunnel was not straight. It curved around to the right.
Somewhere close, men were shouting, maybe up ahead. Dubois was breathing hard, not speaking, but she wanted to scream:
“WHERE are we going?! WHAT are we doing?”
It was crazy. They had just killed two men. She had no idea who those men were. Stark seemed to kill people regularly. Yesterday - it seemed like forever ago - he had threatened to kill the men at the small aerospace company. She thought he was bluffing. Apparently not. He had killed a bunch since then. Dubois was losing track of them all.
Without warning, he stopped short in front of her. She crashed into him.
He was completely still.
“Back,” he said, under his breath. “Get back.”
Suddenly, he opened up with the Uzi.
DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH
The noise was an explosion in the tight confines of the tunnel. The light of the muzzle flashes blinded her, then imprinted on her eyes. Darkness… light… a deafening wall of sound.
“Back!” he screamed. “Get back!”
She could barely turn around. He was against her now, looming large, shoving her back the way they had come. She turned, but then he tackled her. They hit the stone floor hard. His bulk landed on top of her.
She was screaming, but she almost couldn’t hear herself.
Others were screaming as well.
TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT
More shrieking noise. Muzzle flashes lit up and down the hallway, wherever that was. Bullets ricocheted off the curving walls, throwing sparks.
Stark pushed off of her and slid along the ground.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
He threw something, which bounced away from them along the corridor.
“Now! Close those eyes! Cover your ears!”
She did as she was told. There was a blinding flash behind her closed eyelids. Even with her fingers plugged into her ears, there was a loud, sharp…
BANG!
Instantly, somewhere ahead of her, Stark opened up the gun again, this time from the floor, the ugly blat of the Uzi blinding and deafening, once more.
DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH
Dubois pressed her hands to her ears. One hand was still holding the gun. She squeezed her eyes shut against the muzzle flashes, but it was too late. Lightning storms were inside the darkness of her vision. Close her eyes and there were lightning flashes. Open them, and there were more lightning flashes. All she could see were white explosions against black darkness.
His strong hand gripped the collar of her jumpsuit.
“Get up! Let’s go.”
He yanked her to her feet. She flew up from the ground automatically - she was lighter than air to him. Now they moved up the hallway again, more slowly this time. Her left hand was on his lower back again. She still had the gun in her right. She felt useless - dizzy, blinded, deaf, traumatized. She had killed a man. She had never done that before. Then she had almost died herself. She had never been fired on by a machine gun before. She was an investigator.
A night of firsts. A nightmare of them.
In a moment, a flashlight appeared in Stark’s hand. It gave off a concentrated beam, nearly like a laser pointer. It searched the far curve of the wall, reaching ahead of them a few steps, keeping them out of the line of sight of any bullets.
Her ears were ringing. Her eyes were flashing. She could feel a headache coming on. The night had been too long already. If she lived through this, Interpol needn’t fire her. She was going to quit.
A pile of bodies littered the narrow tunnel ahead of them. Stark’s searchlight found them on the floor, three men, bloodied, battered, their clothes shredded.
“Don’t look at them.”
She could barely hear him. But anyway, how could she not look? She had to step on them, climb over them, just to get past. And she did, stumbling over their soft, immovable lumps in the darkness. If she could have, she would have stretched her legs like taffy to step all the way over them without touching. But they couldn’t do that, so she stepped right on them, tripping, nearly falling, pushing blindly past.
Stark’s light had already moved onward.
Three dead men in the tunnel. Two out in the courtyard. Five dead men so far. For what? What had these men done that warranted death? What were they doing here?
What if they were merely guarding the vineyards?
With machine guns?
The vineyards are fallow. There’s nothing out there to guard.
Okay.
Her hearing settled down the smallest amount. Behind the ringing, she heard a new sound. Somewhere in the building, or on the grounds, alarms were going off. It was impossible to say how close they were to here.
Stark turned to face her. He put the light on his own face. He seemed like a gremlin, or a demon, his face half in shadow.
“We have to hurry.”
She could barely hear him, but the opening of his mouth made it clear that he had shouted the words. Maybe he was as deaf as she was right now.
She nodded.
He turned and started moving quickly again. She touched his back and moved with him. He raced down the hall, crouched low, the machine gun poking out in front of him, the light probing ahead. A new hallway went off to the left and without a word, and with no reason she could discern, he turned and followed it.
Ahead was a solid wooden door with a heavy metal locking mechanism.
“Cover your ears!” he shouted.
She did as he said, jamming her fingers in each ear. The last thing she needed was to become even more deaf than she already was. But then he stopped. He let the machinegun hang on its strap. Gingerly he reached out and touched the lock. There was a long bolt. He slid it back. It seemed to move easily.
He grasped and turned the big knob. The door opened a crack. It wasn’t even locked.
Stark stepped back, raised the machine gun again, and toed the door the rest of the way open. Dubois was ready with her gun. She was ready to die.
There was a large open space beyond the door, with a high ceiling. It was empty. There didn’t appear to be anything in it at all. It occurred to Dubois that she could see again. The empty space - perhaps once upon a time there had been wine presses in here - opened to the outside, the front courtyard of the abbey. Bright lights had come on out there, probably in response to their presence. There was a tall and wide wooden door on metal rollers, and it was all the way open.
“Do you smell that?” Stark said.
She did. It smelled like gunpowder, maybe, or some sort of explosive. There was also a faint smell of some type of petrol - gasoline or kerosene, or maybe even just an oil-based grease. The combined smells were sickening. But there wasn’t anything here.
“They were making bombs,” Stark said. “Or storing them.”
“But they’re gone now,” she said.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
He flicked off his light and walked across the open space to the doorway. She watched him. He took something out of one of his pockets and tossed it on the ground. Dubois just barely saw it - it seemed like a small sliver of plastic. She was about to mention it to him, but as he reached the open slider, a burst of gunfire rang out.
TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT
Dubois shrieked in surprise.
Stark fell back. He dropped to the stone floor, his gun sliding off his shoulder and out of his hand. He lay on his back.
“Oh my God,” Dubois said.
She had seen Stark take the bullets. If he was dead, after all of this madness…
Outside, in the courtyard, she heard the tell-tale sound of a motorcycle engine roar to life. A headlight came on.
She ran to Stark. His eyes were open. He looked up at her.
“I’m not gonna lie. That hurt.”
He put his hands to his chest. He ripped open his jumpsuit. Of course, the heavy bulletproof vest was there. His hands roamed up and down his chest.
He shook his head. “These old vests were great, you know. Cumbersome. Ridiculous. But they saved a lot of lives in their time. And they just did it again.”
She looked out through the doorway. The motorcycle had turned and was tearing off up the long driveway that came to the abbey from the main road. There was another motorcycle parked where the first one had been, a low-slung racing bike.
Stark was looking in the same direction. He worked his way to his knees.
“They left us one. Let’s go.”
“Where?” Dubois said.
Stark gestured up toward the taillight of the first motorcycle. “Wherever that guy is going. Apparently, he knows something we don’t.”
“You were just shot,” she said.
He nodded. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
He climbed to his feet and took a deep breath. He walked out on what seemed like unsteady feet toward the motorcycle. He seemed to feel along the ignition wire. She knew the trick well enough from her father. He was going to start the bike by popping open the wire socket, and filling both sides of it with something metallic, thereby closing the circuit.
As she watched, he opened his flashlight and took the battery out. He fiddled with the battery and a small knife. In a moment, he had peeled away the metal casing and plugged it into the wire socket. He sat on the bike and the engine roared to life. He worked fast; she’d give him that. In darkness. After a murder spree and being gunned down himself.
He looked back at her. “Ready?”
She walked toward him. Her entire body shook from adrenaline. If she had ever been this unsteady, she couldn’t remember when it was.
“I don’t want to ride behind you.”
He shook his head. “There’s only one bike. You either ride behind me, or in my lap. Unless you want to stay here and wait for the cops to arrive.”
She looked back at the abbey. Now, with lights on, it appeared like a haunted castle, all the more haunted with five corpses on the grounds.
Dubois sighed. She holstered her gun, slid on behind him, and held his waist lightly.
“You’re gonna want to hold a little tighter than that,” he said.
He put the bike in gear, and they started moving. They rolled to the top of the driveway, Stark pointed it toward the road, and gunned the engine. Within seconds, they were accelerating, Stark revving and shifting gears.
Dubois reached around him and gripped his chest tightly. It was either that or fall off the back. Up ahead, far ahead, the taillight of the man who had shot Stark reached the road. His brake light came on for an instant, then he turned left, and rode hard.
The wind whistled past Dubois as they began their pursuit. She pressed herself against Stark’s broad back.
She was alive. She had killed a man tonight, they had been in a battle of machine guns, and she was still alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
5:25 am Central European Daylight Time
On the road to Reims
France
Troy Stark liked motorcycles.
He liked them a lot. He liked this one in particular: some Yamaha dual-sport model that the owner had probably modified himself. Unless that guy up ahead was a professional racer in a previous life, there was no way he was going to outrun Troy Stark. Not out here, on wide open roads. It just wasn’t going to happen.
But give the guy some credit. He had seen how things were going, and he had lain in wait. Troy had let his guard down, and the guy had pumped him full of lead, then taken off on his bike.
If not for the vest, Troy would be dead or dying right now. Would Dubois have taken off after the shooter? Probably not. She probably would have stayed and tried in vain to save Troy’s life.
The shooter was clever. He was calm. He was patient. He did not get himself killed like some of the other guys back there.
And now he was making a run for it.
Troy gave the bike throttle. They zoomed forward. The engine whined. Troy’s hearing was shot through, but they were already gaining.
“Get ready to take your shot!” he shouted at Dubois.
“Shot?”
Dubois had killed a man tonight. Troy was proud of her. The guy had the drop on Troy, maybe (almost certainly but you never knew), and she had taken him out. Of course, it had led to that whole mess back there, but it was probably unavoidable. You had to crack a few eggs to make a delicious omelet.
The kitchen was a disaster area right now. That much was true. It would take some explaining. Troy hoped the meal was going to be worth it. He also hoped Dubois didn’t stand on ceremony every time she had to shoot someone. There’s a first time for everything. But afterwards, that’s it. You don’t get to be a virgin anymore.
Her voice came back to him, small against the whine of the engine and the wind of the road.
“Why am I shooting him?”
“He tried to kill me, remember?”
“Oh. Right.”
Up ahead, a hundred meters and closing now, the guy turned left and went off the road. Why did he do that? Troy marked the spot in the glare from his headlight.
A moment later, he was there. He slowed, almost to a stop. He went left, up a small barren cut in the land, like a hiking trail, or a trail for motocross bikes. This bike was dual purpose - it could take that trail. Troy killed his headlight, mindful of how the guy had set a trap before. The trail peaked quickly and headed steeply back down again.
There was a narrow canal below them. The guy was down there, speeding away along the edge of it. Troy could hear the guy’s engine. ZZZZZZZZZ.
Troy turned his headlight back on and plunged down the trail toward the canal. At the bottom, the trail made a sharp right and followed the canal’s edge. He and Dubois bounced along. She gripped his chest tighter, both hands.
Troy gunned it.
They tore off along the canal, the trail zigging and zagging through bushes and trees and tall grasses.
They passed under the roadway they had just left, zooming now.
A mile passed. Then two. The bikes raced through the early morning darkness. It was real country darkness - the only thing cutting it was the headlights on the motorcycles.
“You’re not gonna lose me like this,” Troy said. His voice was swallowed by the sounds all around him.
A house or building appeared above their heads and zipped by in the dark. Then another. They were coming into civilization.
A road appeared to their right. It was angling in toward them, two lanes, one in each direction. There was early morning traffic on the road. In a moment, this trail would end, and…
Ahead, the lead bike slipped between the end of two guardrails, and out onto the road. A truck coming the other way leaned on the horn. The bike zipped in front of the truck, and barely squeezed in front of a car going the same direction.
“Aaahhh,” Dubois said.
“Don’t worry,” Troy said.
He cut right at the end of the guardrail, the way the other guy had done. There was no other choice. The trail was about to go into the canal. Up ahead, the road hugged the edge of the waterway.
He zipped right, then left, into the flow of traffic.
Okay. Okay. The guy was a daredevil. He was going to get himself, or someone else, killed. Time to put a stop to this. Here on a real road, Troy should be able to catch him. He accelerated, approaching the rear bumper of a car at high speed. The guy was about two cars ahead.
