Tracker

Return fire pinged off the gate and chewed into the bricks.

One headlamp blacked out in a shattering pop of glass.

Then the car came jamming forward.

Crap.

Tucker danced back out of the archway, diving to the side as the sedan came charging toward him. He shoulder-rolled clear, the gates banging open behind him as the huge black beast came blasting into the turnaround. Gunfire chased him into the forest’s edge. He ducked behind the bole of an old oak and caught his breath.

He subvocalized a command to Kane. “Stay hidden.”

He planned on doing the same.

Then that Hungarian voice yelled to him, heard above the growl of the idling engine. He risked a glance to the street. The back passenger door was ajar. He saw Aliza being dragged into the glow of the headlamp. The burst of the sedan must have caught her by surprise, the light reaching her hiding spot, exposing her.

The gruff Hungarian with the pocked face held her by the throat, a pistol at her temple. The man tried English this time. “You come now or woman dead!”

With no choice, Tucker stepped into the open, his hands high, the pistol hanging loosely from one finger.

“Toss gun!” he was ordered.

Tucker underhanded it toward the sedan. It skidded under the car.

“Come now!”

Now this should get interesting… which was never a good thing.

He joined Aliza, who cast him an apologetic look.

He shook his head. Not your fault.

After his body was given a cursory search, he and Aliza were forced at gunpoint toward the archway and the gate, now broken and hanging askew. The sedan backed up behind them, pushing them all forward.

Beyond the brick span, the forest grew even denser, overgrown with ivy and thick ferns. Graves and mausoleums looked tossed about like children’s blocks. Many looked broken into, leaving gaping holes in the ground. Other markers had been toppled or leaned drunkenly against one another. Moss and lichen etched the white marble and stone. Mounds of leaf matter and broken deadfall obscured many of the rest.

Tucker glanced to Aliza.

He saw the recognition in her eyes.

The closest gravestone bore a deeply inscribed Star of David.

Here was the lost Jewish cemetery.

They were forced to the side, toward the caretaker’s cottage. A small room in back glowed feebly with light seeping past heavy drapes.

As they neared it, a door opened and allowed that blaze to sweep over them.

A stranger stood there, a tall man with a skeletal frame and thick black-rimmed glasses. His eyes swept past Tucker and focused on Aliza.

She stumbled forward, then restrained herself. “Professor Csorba…”

So she knew this man.

“Jo estet, Miss Barta,” he greeted her. “I’m sorry this reunion is under such poor circumstances.”

He stepped clear of the doorway.

“Domonkos, bring our two guests inside.” The professor’s eyes finally found Tucker’s face. “I did not imagine the independent Miss Barta would hire a bodyguard. An oversight of mine, but no harm done in the end.”

The pock-faced hulk named Domonkos shoved Tucker toward the steps and through the door.

Inside, the cottage room was quaint, with a raw-hewn plank floor covered in thick but worn rugs, heavy wood beams strapped to a low ceiling, and a small hearth glowing with embers.

Tucker was forced against one wall, guarded over by Domonkos. One of the other two thugs took a post by a nearby window. The last vanished down a hall, likely to watch the street outside, ready to respond if the brief firefight drew any unwanted attention.

As he settled against the wall, Tucker smelled a familiar sourness to the air, coming from those shadowy spaces beyond this room. Somewhere back there, a body or two moldered and had begun to stink. Likely the original caretakers.

But not all of the bloodshed here was old.

Tied to a chair was an elderly man with a full head of gray hair. His face was bruised, one eye swollen, dried blood running in trails from both nostrils. When Tucker first stepped inside, that remaining eye had blazed with defiance — but no longer, not after the slim figure followed Tucker inside.

“Aliza!” he croaked out.

“Papa!” She rushed forward, collapsing on her knees at his side. Tears were already running down her face. She turned to the man who had greeted her. “How could you?”

“I’m afraid I have ninety-two million reasons why, my dear.”

“But you worked with my father for thirty years.”

“Yes, ten of those years under Communist rule, while your father spent that time in London, raising a family, enjoying the freedom of such a life.” The man’s voice rang with jealousy and pent-up fury. “You have no understanding of what life was like here, if you could call it that. I lost my Marja because they didn’t have enough antibiotics. Then my brave little Lujza, living up to her name as warrior, was shot during a protest. I will not see this treasure handed back to the Hungarian government, one little better than before, with many of the same players in power. Never! ”

“So you will take it for yourself?” Aliza asked, not backing down from his vehemence.

“And I will use it for good, to help the oppressed, to heal the sick.”

“And what of my father?” she sobbed. “Will you heal him?”

“I will let him live. If he cooperates, if you do the same.”

Fat chance, Tucker thought.

The same doubt shone from her face.

Csorba held out his palm. “I have contacts enough to know, Aliza, that you have obtained what your father asked. The satellite feed from the Americans.”

“Don’t do it…” her father forced out, though each syllable pained him.

She glanced over to her father, then looked at Tucker.

He recognized she had no choice. They’d search her, punish her, and in the end, they’d get what they wanted.

He lowered his chin, passing on his opinion — but also hiding his throat mike. They had taken his phone, his knife, but hadn’t noticed the earpiece shoved deep in his left ear or the thin sensors of the radio microphone taped over his larynx. It was sensitive enough to pick up the slightest subvocalized whisper.

As Aliza handed over the USB flash drive, stirring up excitement in the room, Tucker covered his mouth and whispered quiet commands.

* * *

Kane hides in shadow, his heart thunders, his breathing pants quietly.

He remembers the aching blasts, the screech of tires, the spew of oily exhaust. He wanted to run to his partner, to bark and howl and bite.

But he stays in shadow because that was what he was told.

Now new purpose fills his ear.

“RETRIEVE MY GUN. HIDE UNDER CAR.”

He stares out of the darkness to the moonlit pavement, to the gun out there. He knows guns. He watched it slide under the car when his partner threw it. Then the car left. The gun stayed.

Kane shoots out of the darkness, gliding low. He scoops up the gun, smelling smoke and fire and the whisper of his partner’s sweat. He rushes back into darkness, into hiding, but he does not stop. He swerves on silent paws, diving back around. He races through the archway, drawn to the soft putter of a cooling engine, to the reek of burned oil — ready to slide beneath and wait.