The Pursuit (24 page)

T
he Apache gunship swooped around the castle, raking the battlements with its armor-piercing bullets, obliterating the parapet and killing two guards who tumbled into the moat. A handful of people with their hands raised in surrender spilled out of the castle and ran for the woods.

Jake grabbed his radio to relay orders to the strike team. “Apprehend those people when they reach the woods. Nobody gets away.”

The Apache came back around and fired two Hydra missiles into the castle walls, blasting huge holes in them. One of the missiles hit something extremely flammable, perhaps propane or gasoline, Jake didn't know what, but it set off a chain reaction of explosions that moved like a blazing zipper along the eastern wall. It looked to him like the choreographed sequence of blasts used to demolish a building. That wasn't supposed to happen yet, not while Nick and his daughter were still inside.

“The castle is coming down,” Jake yelled, hoping Kate and Nick could hear him on their earbuds. “Get the hell out of there now!”

Kate got the warning just as she saw Dragan dash across the courtyard from some unseen doorway and climb into the wishing well.

“Oh crap,” she said. “Dragan is getting away.”

“Go after him,” Nick said.

“I'm not leaving you.”

“I'm right behind you,” he said. “Don't let him escape!”

Kate grabbed her gun and ran to the courtyard. The castle walls were cracking, huge slabs of stone tumbling down as the fissures widened and spread. She climbed over the rim of the wishing well and set her foot on the first rung of a ladder that descended thirty feet down the shaft.

“The wishing well is an escape tunnel,” she said. “I'm going in after him.”

It was true that Nick was behind Kate. Saying he was
right
behind her had been a stretch. He couldn't leave his area without decontaminating his suit first or he could infect himself and others.

He left the lab and stood in the chemical showers in his pressure suit, thinking it was like standing in a car wash during an earthquake. Disinfectant spray doused him from every angle, thoroughly drenching his suit, while the floors and walls shook. Cracks rippled across the walls, popping off tiles. He could hear the explosions deep in the bowels of the building.

“It sounds like you're in a shower, Nick,” Jake said. “Tell me you didn't stop to clean up.”

“I couldn't leave like this.”

“You're going to be buried alive. Get out of there. You've only got seconds left.”

He hoped he'd been in the decontamination showers long enough. But it was either go now or die. Nick peeled off the suit, ran out of the showers, through the locker room, and out into the corridor. The labs were engulfed in flames, and the windows were beginning to rupture, spider-webbing with cracks. He hurried through the main air lock and into the foyer.

Bits of stone were raining down on the entryway as he stepped out. He looked out at the courtyard. The castle's front wall had collapsed like a sand castle kicked by a petulant child, smashing the wishing well and blocking Nick's only way out.

Kate reached the bottom of the thirty-foot pit just as the castle wall collapsed above. Huge stones poured down the shaft, demolishing the well and forcing Kate to take cover in the tunnel. It was about six feet high, four feet wide, and, from what she could see, about a hundred yards long, maybe more. A string of naked lightbulbs and a ventilation pipe ran along the ceiling. It was a straight shot in front of her, and she could see Dragan about forty yards away and running.

She aimed and fired and missed. She adjusted her aim and fired again, hitting him in the leg. He went down to one knee.

“Stay down!” Kate shouted. “I'm an FBI agent. You are under arrest.”

“Go to hell,” Dragan said, getting to his feet, opening fire on her.

Kate flattened herself against the side of the tunnel and shot back, but he was already on the move, shooting as he limped away.

Her back was soaking wet, and water was dripping on her head. She looked around and saw that the ceiling and walls in this section of the tunnel were seeping water at an ever-increasing rate. The moat was probably right above her head, and the castle was collapsing into it. That couldn't be good news for the structural integrity of the tunnel. She charged forward in a crouch, closing the distance between them. Dragan whirled around to fire off another shot, but she got her shot off first. He cried out in pain and tumbled backward, splashing into the mud at his feet.

Kate got up and approached him warily, her gun out in front of her, feeling big drops of water hitting her head. The lights were beginning to flicker. They'd short out from the water soon.

Dragan was on his back, bleeding from wounds in his right thigh and upper left arm. His foot was twisted at an impossible angle. Probably broken when he slipped in the mud, she thought. Muddy water was raining on him. He wasn't going anywhere on his own and there was no way she could carry him. She picked up his gun, ejected the clip, and tossed the weapon away. She took hold of the foot that wasn't broken and attempted to drag him. She slid in the mud and went down on her back. The floor of the tunnel was too slick to get any kind of traction.

“What's at the end of the tunnel?” she asked him.

“Another dry well,” he said, grimacing in pain.

“I'll come back for you with medics and handcuffs. Try to hang on.”

Nick didn't know where to go. He chose the door to his left and ran down the corridor. Another explosion shook the castle, throwing him off balance and nearly knocking him off his feet. He staggered forward, turned a corner, and found himself in a grand dining room, the chandeliers dropping and crashing onto the table.

He saw a window overlooking the moat. It was his last, best hope. He grabbed a straight chair and was about to toss it through the window, when something caught his eye. Nick looked up at
The
Creation of Adam
and was astounded to see Adam with enormous genitalia and Dragan's face. It was so bad that it was mesmerizing.

Another explosion jolted the castle, and a huge crack opened up on the ceiling, cleaving the fresco in half. That got Nick's attention. He heaved the chair through the glass and then took a running leap out the window as the dining room caved in behind him.

He plunged deep into the murky, ice-cold moat, followed by enormous chunks of stone that hit the water like depth charges.

Kate was about ten yards from the shaft at the end of the tunnel, and her eyes were fixed on the ladder bolted into the wall. A stream of water hit her heels and she heard a deep, jagged rumble, the sound rock might make if it were being torn in half.

She looked over her shoulder and saw water gushing out of the ceiling. The moat was collapsing into the tunnel. The tunnel ceiling caved in and an enormous surge of dark water poured in through the opening. The lights went out, plunging the tunnel into total darkness. Dragan screamed, a sound that was immediately drowned out by the powerful flood of water.

Kate ran forward into pitch-darkness, arms outstretched so she wouldn't take a header into the ladder. If she tripped, she was dead.

She hit the wall hard, grabbed hold of the nearest rung, and started climbing. The water slammed into the wall below her and surged up the shaft. She couldn't escape it, and took a last, deep breath. The wave swallowed her completely, yanked her from the ladder, and propelled her upward. She banged against a cover that splintered on impact, and she bobbed to the surface sputtering and splashing, reaching out for something solid. She found the stone wall of the well, heaved herself over it, and flopped onto the ground. Water continued to surge out of the well and swirl around her. She got to her hands and knees, breathing hard. She stood and took a minute to steady herself. The water was no longer gushing over the rim of the well and was gently lapping at the interior wall. The rotted piece of plywood that had capped the well had been tossed onto the mud and grass a couple feet from her.

“Holy crap,” she said. “Holy cow. Holy moly.”

The well looked like it hadn't been used in a hundred years. It was positioned a short distance from what might have at one time been a caretaker's cottage. The cottage itself was in a patch of woods. There were no roads leading out so she walked toward the smell of smoke and the sound of activity. It didn't take long to break out of the woods into the open field that surrounded the castle.

Kate stopped and stared at the ruins, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes, leaving a smear of mud across her face. The castle was a pile of smoking rubble, an occasional tongue of flame licking out over the moat, which was half as deep as it was before.

Oh man, Kate thought, this wasn't going to look good on form GS205.

Jake and Willie had military-style rifles trained on a clump of men who were sitting on the grass, their arms zip-tied behind them. There weren't any U.S. soldiers in sight and the Apache was gone. Kate's heart skipped a beat when she realized Nick wasn't there.

She slogged across the field and saw Jake smile with relief when he saw her. Her boots squished water, and her clothes were plastered to her and clogged with mud. She was shivering from cold and adrenaline withdrawal.

“You look like you went swimming in a frog pond,” Jake said.

“T-t-tunnel leads to a w-w-well,” Kate said. “Dragan is still in the tunnel.” She looked around. “Where is everyone?”

“You just missed the strike team. They wanted to get back to the military base before dinner. It's steak night.”

“Where's Nick?”

Jake tipped his head toward the parking lot. “He borrowed one of the Range Rovers. He didn't want to be around when the police got here.”

“Good thinking,” Kate said. “We shouldn't be here either.”

“We're just hanging out waiting for our ride to show up,” Jake said.

Kate heard the familiar
wup, wup, wup
of a chopper, and a six-seater Bell rose out of the woods and landed a short distance away.

“Thank you for being here for me,” Kate said to Jake and Willie.

“Well, I wouldn't be much of a father if I didn't occasionally blow up a castle for you.”

“And I fired off my first rocket,” Willie said. “It was life changing.”

Jake looked toward the chopper. “Are you coming with us? Or are you going to stay behind to try to explain this to the authorities?”

“I'm coming with you,” Kate said. “No one is left who actually knows who I am. And there's no good way of explaining this. Better to just chalk it up to terrorists. Plus, I need to call Jessup and give him a fast debrief so he doesn't fall off the wagon and start drinking again.”

“Good idea not to hang around,” Willie said. “You wouldn't want someone taking a mug shot of you right now. Your hair is like…
yikes.
”

After weeks in Europe, digging a hole in a sewer, and nearly drowning in a flooded tunnel, Kate was eager to go back to her one-bedroom apartment in Tarzana, and sleep in her own bed.

She flew into Los Angeles on a red-eye and walked in her door at nine in the morning. She followed a trail of Toblerones into the kitchen where Nick was waiting.

“Originally I was thinking of leaving a trail of rose petals, but that didn't feel right,” Nick said.

“Toblerones are good,” Kate said, peeling the wrapper off one and eating it. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought you'd be hungry so I stopped around to make you breakfast. I have Frosted Cinnamon Roll Pop-Tarts, Cocoa Krispies, and Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries, Eggo waffles, and Jimmy Dean sausages.”

“No champagne?”

“I went with Coke and Folgers crystals.”

“My kind of guy,” Kate said.

“Go figure.”