slammed through in a loud shattering of glass and splintering of old wood, and was gone, carrying the protective drapes with him. Without letting herself think, Randi followed.
The room had been on the third floor of a building from the thirties. A scream escaped Randi’s throat as she and Jon plunged down.
Jon and Randi flailed through the air, desperately grabbing at anything they could see as they plummeted. They smashed onto a heavy canvas awning.
Safe, they gazed with relief at each other, collecting their wits. The awning groaned. They scrambled toward the frame, trying to grab it. The steel supports resisted and bent.
As shouts sounded from the window above, the canvas ripped, dumping them toward the street again. But there was a second, shorter awning, shielding a window. They landed, slid off, and landed again — this time on the umbrella of an omelette vendor. Instantly, it collapsed, too.
They fell hard to the street, barely missing the omelette cart. As the vendor yelled, they lay stunned, reeling. Around them, businesspeople were preparing for the new day. Delivery trucks rumbled along the narrow street, parking on the curb, blocking the traffic so that only one lane could pass. Pedestrians stopped to stare at the European couple who had crashed into their midst, especially since the blond woman wore rustic country clothes. A babel of languages filled the air as they gathered, some pointing upward as they explained the unusual event.
Jon’s mouth and face were bleeding again, and there was a ragged tear in his trousers where fresh blood oozed up. He moved his arms and legs. He hurt everywhere, but nothing seemed broken.
Randi had landed on her back. Gasping, trying to breathe normally, she checked herself for injuries, for broken bones, for blood. Remarkably, she appeared to be unhurt.
They sat up, almost at the same moment. As the circle of the curious closed in, they exchanged another look of relief, this time mixed with exhaustion. Still, it was not over. Feng Dun and his men were probably already chasing down the stairs after them.
As they struggled to their feet, she told him, “There’s an alley.”
Jon nodded, unable to talk. They limped toward it, pushing people out of their way.
“Randi! Here!” CIA operative Allan Savage waved his arms from where he stood on the fender of a black Buick. His nondescript face was worried.
Two more members of Randi’s team were shoving their way toward them.
“Who’s this guy?” Agent Baxter wanted to know as he slung Jon’s arm over his shoulder and supported him toward the car.
“Don’t ask. Get him inside. Fast!”
With his peripheral vision, Jon saw Feng Dun burst through to the street next to an adult shop, his head swiveling as he looked everywhere. Three other men crowded out behind. All aimed weapons. When the crowd saw them, they screamed and ran.
Jon’s legs moved weakly, unable to hold him up. Randi tumbled into the back of the Buick. Agent Baxter threw Jon in after her.
Shots ripped the street. People continued to scatter, finding cover where they could. From the car, Allan Savage in the driver’s seat and a female agent in the back returned a withering fire from minisubmachine guns.
As Feng Dun and his killers dove back into the doorway, Savage ground the Buick’s gears and drove away, screeched around the first corner, and was gone.
The CIA safe house occupied a four-story building on Lower Albert Road in Central. The Buick drove into an alley behind the building, a cement wall slid open, and the car disappeared inside. The first floor had been gutted, the hidden garage installed, and the front area turned into an insurance office where people came and went all day, doing legitimate business.
The insurance agency made a small profit, which pleased the DCI in Langley well as the congressmen and senators on the oversight committees. On the second floor was the safe house’s first-aid room. An American-born Hong Kong doctor on Langley’s payroll examined their wounds and bruises and took X rays with a portable unit.
He declared Randi “one lucky little girl.”
Allan Savage and the others on the rescue team winced as they saw the scowl that appeared on Randi’s face, expecting the worst for the doctor.
But to their astonishment, she merely glared. The doctor, who had expected at least a smile of appreciation, was confused.
He turned hastily to Jon, who was a different matter. “That’s a nasty battering your face took, and you’re bruised around the ribs.” He muttered to himself as he took X rays of Jon’s injuries and was amazed to find nothing more than the severe bruising. “Still, you’re well beat up. I’d say you were out of action for a week … at least three or four days. You could get an infection from those facial wounds and the lacerations in your mouth.” “Sorry, Doc,” Jon told him. “Work to do. Clean me up and shoot me full of antibiotics. Painkillers sound like an attractive idea, too.”
After the doctor left, the crew provided lunch. Soup only for Jon.
Allan Savage apologized to Randi. “Sorry we were late, but Tommie tailed you fine until they got you to the street. That’s where she lost you.
She never saw exactly where they took you. We were combing the area building by building when you came flying out those windows. That was a damned risky way to escape. How’d you know how high you were and what was under the windows?”
“Don’t ask me.” Randi gave a toss of her head toward Jon. “It was his idea. I just followed.” She wolfed down eggs and bacon.
Jon shrugged. “I figured it was an older, lower building. Anyway, without weapons, and Feng Dun’s going for his gun and the rest of the gang damn near into the room, we didn’t have time to even grab our chairs and swing them. It was out the window or dead.”
There were awed looks all around.
The other female agent, Tommie Parker, said to Randi, “Who is this guy?”
“Meet Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M.D. That’s Jon without an h. He’s a researcher for USAMRIID. What else he is remains open for speculation, right, Jon?”
“Randi sees conspiracies everywhere.” Jon grinned innocently. The painkillers were taking effect. Between them and the soup, he was beginning to feel much better. There were flesh-covered Band-Aids on his face, and his fat lip was hardly a pretty sight. Still, he figured he could look a lot worse. Now what he wanted was a few uninterrupted hours of sleep.
“So do we,” Allan Savage said, studying Jon.
Jon sighed. “I’m a doctor, a microbiological scientist, and I work at Fort Detrick for USAMRIID. Sometimes they send me on special assignments. Especially in cases of emerging viruses. Why don’t we leave it at that?”
Tommie frowned, her dark eyes suspicious. She had shoulder-length brown hair and a sweet, gamin’s face that Jon had decided hid shrewd intellect and a daring spirit. “What virus is emerging in Hong Kong, Colonel?”
“None. But there’s one inside China,” he lied, “and Donk & Lapierre’s medical division is investigating it. The government wants to know more.”
“Which government?” Tommie probed suspiciously.
Randi interrupted, “That’s the only thing about Jon I’m sure of — he works for our side.”
Jon had a retort ready to fling when the last agent from the Buick, Baxter, leaned into the first-aid room through an open door. “We’re picking up something on the phone bug we installed in Mcdermid’s office last night. A call just came in.”
They jumped up and ran out along the hallway and into a rear room crammed with electronic gear, machines, and instruments. Randi and Jon pushed through to stand close to a notebook computer from which a woman’s voice spoke with a slight accent. “You’re Ralph Mcdermid?”
Chapter Thirty-One
