Shadow Knight's Mate (17 page)

“Yes sir.”

“That is all for now.”

“Yes sir.”

A loud click ended the call. The half dozen people in the room looked at each other. The chief master sergeant was grinning. “I believe that was orders for us to carry on,” said the major.

“Yes sir,” snapped out everyone in the room, including, with a broad smile, the CNN correspondent.

They all left the room, leaving Major Sloane looking grim, thinking he had to start watching his back again.

Hanging in the awning three feet over the heads of his pursuers, Jack felt his weight shift, though he hadn't twitched a muscle. The awning sagged an inch lower. The Jack lookalike below him, now holding a gun like his partner, looked around alertly. Jack turned his neck ever so slowly and saw that the awning had
begun to tear, next to the metal strut that held it. As he watched, the rip lengthened to six inches. He tried to distribute his weight more evenly, but that only stopped the rip for a second.

“Got it!” the burly thug said in French. And he pulled open the door in the recessed doorway and started inside.

Several things happened at once: An alarm sounded, a shrill clanging in the dead night. The awning ripped completely, dropping Jack toward the ground. His lookalike below him looked up. The burly thug froze just inside the doorway.

And Jack swung down, holding the horizontal metal support, kicking his double in the shoulders and knocking him into the doorway, pushing the door closed and trapping his partner inside.

The Jack lookalike was momentarily stunned, dropping his gun. Jack fell to the ground in a crouch and lunged toward the gun. But his double alertly kicked it to the side, and before Jack could grope for it again there was the sound of gunfire as the thug inside tried to shoot his way out through the wooden door. Both Jack and his double ducked aside as bullets flew past them. Jack turned and ran. His double took a few seconds and found his gun. Jack was running full out down the street by then, when gunfire started up again. In an idle part of his mind, the tiny part that wasn't scared to death, he noted the effect of gunshots being aimed at a person, which was much more unnerving than any video game had ever depicted. It caused panic to fly in all directions, making him want simultaneously to burrow into the ground, keep running, and fall to his knees whimpering for mercy.

He kept running, just out of momentum, darting out into the street so that a line of parked cars partially protected him. A car would have been a good idea, he wished he had one. Also a cell phone. What kind of idiot went out without one?

The gunfire had stopped, which drove his panic higher. He risked a look over his shoulder and saw that the men were no longer shooting at him. They were no longer in sight, in fact.

He skidded to a stop in the middle of the street. They were circling the block, obviously. Or had gone for a car they had nearby. Or knew that they had confederates just ahead, and Jack was
running right into their arms. Jack stood there trembling, afraid to keep running, afraid to go back, afraid to turn a corner. Every choice seemed bad. He had never in his life so badly wanted to fly.

Now would be a good time for Arden to reappear, screeching around the corner in a Porsche to rescue him, as she had predicted she would have to do again. But Arden didn't appear, and he saw no way she could. He hadn't told her where he was going, hadn't even told her he was going out.

A screech of tires did happen, though. A pickup truck pulled out of the line of cars, a weird European conglomerate sort of vehicle, very boxy, but with good acceleration. It had eaten up half the distance between them before Jack had a chance to react. Then he turned and ran, to the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from where he'd started. He looked for an opening, an alley, a fire escape, night club entrance, anything. But the street was dark and quiet. Wide glass windows showed empty display cases, their goods locked away for the night.

The car/truck had almost caught up to him now, and because it was European the passenger side was on the left, the side closest to Jack. That window was already down, and as the car nearly came abreast of him a hand emerged holding an automatic pistol. The gunman began firing before he was quite level with Jack's running position. Bullets stitched their way across the brick storefront right beside and behind him.

Jack fell. It could have been deliberate or just that his legs stopped working, but he went to his hands and face on the pavement just as the line of bullets passed over his head. The shooter didn't stop, either. The spray of gunfire continued, coming to a window and blasting it apart, showering Jack with shards of glass.

Then he heard the screech of the truck's brakes. In a subconscious part of his mind Jack had thought of the truck as a boat in a current, that would keep sailing on by, while Jack could stop on the bank. But the truck could stop too, of course. Jack made a quick calculation. He could get up and keep running, in which case the truck would catch up to him and someone inside
would shoot him. He could run back the way he'd come, making the truck back up, which would be a little more difficult for the driver. And wouldn't police arrive soon, with all this gunfire and alarms going off?

Or he could run
toward
the truck, and try—

No more time for thinking. Jack stood up, still crouched, and his body took over. Right beside him, the gunman's bullets had shattered the show window of a small shop. Jack leaped through the new opening into the dark interior.

Behind him he heard car doors slam. Two of them, at least. So either the burly thug had broken out of his momentary trap, or they'd had another confederate close by. Jack fell to his hands and knees again, this time on broken glass, jumped up, and ran deeper into the darkness of the little shop. He had no idea what it sold, but apparently a lot of display cases were required. Jack banged into two, caromed off like a billiard ball, spun and kept heading toward the back of the shop. Behind him he heard feet hit the floor.

A real secret agent would duck down behind one of these cases now and set a trap for his pursuers. But a real secret agent would have a gun and some fancy high-tech equipment like maybe a cell phone. Jack had only fear and adrenaline. He kept going. Behind him, his pursuers moved more cautiously, maybe thinking he was more dangerous than he was. Jack reached the back wall of the shop and scrabbled along it. He found a door and gratefully yanked it open. Just before he went inside, though, he caught a whiff of disinfectant and realized this was a bathroom. He closed the door again and kept going.

The shop was silent in a very strange way, silent beneath the continued clanging of the alarm down the street, a silence fragile as a soap bubble, sure to burst any moment. The shuffle of a foot sounded like a lion's cough, the sliding of cloth against skin like an urgent whisper. Jack stood absolutely still for a moment and heard them closing in on him. He stepped back and could hear his own footfall, sure they could hear it too. He wanted to pick up something and toss it across the room to distract their attention,
but was afraid of knocking over something if he moved his arm, giving away his position for real.

Ten feet farther along that back wall he almost fell over as he reached an open doorway. Jack went through it, hearing someone yell behind him. He found himself in a hallway even darker than the shop had been. With two directions to choose, Jack went right, immediately regretting it because that would be most obvious, at least to an American. He hoped Europeans thought differently, from years of driving on the wrong sides of roads.

By the time he reached a very narrow staircase, he could tell that his pursuers had guessed correctly, or maybe they had split up, because at least one was coming after him. And when Jack started up the stairs, making more noise than he intended, the man shouted something in Czech for his companion.

The stairway was so narrow Jack's shoulders brushed the walls on either side. He suddenly realized that the shopkeeper might live upstairs, and hoped he wasn't leading these killers into a family home. But when he got to the top there was no other hallway, just a big open room, obviously used for storage. Bulky objects lurked everywhere, undefinable in the darkness. And two of the walls had windows.

Jack ran to one, looked down, saw only a long fall to a hard street. Nevertheless, he yanked up the window and leaned out. His pursuers' truck was below, the engine still running. A police car had arrived, just as he'd prayed, and was stopped behind the truck. The police weren't getting out yet, though. Like their counterparts worldwide, they preferred to stay in the relative safety of their vehicle to take their initial surveillance of the scene.

Jack reached and grabbed something, a small chest of some kind, made of heavy wood. Without the power of adrenaline he might not have been able to lift it, but now he did easily. He hurled it out the window as far as he could, aiming for the truck, then ducked back inside without seeing what he'd hit. He did hear police voices, though, as they obviously came scrambling out of their car.

It was still the middle of the night, but closest to the
windows was where the room was lightest, because of streetlights outside. Jack moved quietly back into the interior of the room and crouched behind a cabinet. A moment later one man came hurtling into the room, in such a headlong rush that he skidded to a halt in the middle of the room without even pausing to survey the new setting.

It was the burlier of the two thugs, the one who had spoken French. So he had escaped from his brief prison after all.
“Monsieur,”
he said, then continued in English, “Come out. We are your friends.”

He would have been more convincing if he hadn't held his pistol at the ready position, barrel tilted upward, poised to spin in any direction where a befuddled Jack might stand up to accept his offer of friendship. But no sound came from the room, and the man cursed.

Then he saw the broken window and hurried over to it. Obviously he thought Jack had made his escape this way. The man leaned out with his gun hand leading, looking for a fire escape or ladder.

And Jack was behind him in an instant, grabbing his feet at the ankles and lifting. God, the guy was heavy. And struggling. The thug tried to twist around, but his head and shoulders had already been out the window, and there was nothing to grab out there.

Except the window frame itself. The man dropped his gun and grabbed the window's edge. He was as strong as he was heavy. His grip was implacable, even though he was already three-fourths of the way out the window. Jack pushed at him but couldn't dislodge that hand. The man glared at him, straining to pull himself back up, and succeeding.

Jack yelled in frustration, leaned forward, and dug his teeth into that hand on the window's edge. The thug screamed too, let go his hold, and fell. For a moment his ankles hooked the windowsill, but Jack lifted them off easily and his pursuer fell, still screaming, the scream cut short with a crunch.

He heard the gabble of police voices rise higher, then cut off as they separated. Presumably at least one of them was rushing
inside here to look for the person who had thrown the other one out into the street. Good. That was what Jack wanted.

But he was gripped in fleeing mindset now. He couldn't stop moving even if he thought rescue was on the way. Jack crouched again and half-crawled, half duck-walked across the room to those other windows. He went along the row quickly, poking his head up to glance out each window. Very little to see. The building across a side street, narrow as an alley. Maybe ten feet away. He couldn't jump that distance, but if he could find some rope—

Then he looked down and saw a very old-fashioned fire escape below one window. He raised up higher to get a better look—

And a small, delicate cough stopped him cold. The soft sound stopped him because it was accompanied by the click of a handgun being cocked.

Jack turned very slowly to see himself. In the dim light it was like he was looking into a mirror. His counterpart smiled at him in a way Jack didn't think he himself had ever smiled: confident, satirical, with one eyebrow cocked.

“Now there are only two of us left, brother. Or should I say only one.” The man chuckled, gesturing at his own face.

“What's your job now?” Jack asked. “Capture me, kill me?”

“The latter, I'm afraid. It is unfortunate, because one doesn't find a twin every day. But my instructions are very specific and leave no room for individual initiative.”

He raised his gun, his smile turning regretful. Jack raised his own arms out to the sides, making a target.

“You're in an interesting position. You might even say unique.”

His twin hesitated. Jack went on talking quickly. “Do you know why you're supposed to kill me? Are you supposed to take my place after that? Where are you supposed to go? Have they given you the next step yet?”

He saw that the answer to his last question was no. The man with his face frowned. He didn't know what came after this room, this murder. Jack shrugged in a way he hoped was very knowing. “It would have been more subtle of your boss to give you some bullshit story about what came next after you killed me. You
might have believed they wanted you to take my place. But after my body's found here in this very public way, by those policemen who will make their way up here at any moment, well, you do the math.” Jack frowned as his lookalike continued to hesitate. “You can, can't you? I hope there's a brain behind my face.”

He had almost gone too far. The man glared at him. “I do hear you,” he said in that strange accent. “It is just that English is not my first language. Nor my second. I have to translate in my head before…”

“Would you be more comfortable in—
Deutsche?
”

It was a quick shot in the dark, trying to prevent the man from taking an actual shot in the dark, and it hit. An educated guess on Jack's part. The man didn't sound Czech, he hadn't answered his companion in French, and he'd just said English wasn't his native language. And he didn't look Latin of any strain.