undecided where to leave his next pee mail.
Gurt pointed. “Manfred, take Grumps to that shed over there and stay inside.”
“But I want to see…”
“MACH SCHNELL!”
His mother rarely raised her voice to him but when she did, particularly in her native tongue, Manfred knew there would be no subsequent conversation.
Taking a second to make sure she was being obeyed, Gurt watched the little boy, followed by the dog, trot inside the rickety structure. Boards were missing and, she was certain, so was part of the roof but it should shelter both from the probing skyborne eye.
She started to bend down and disconnect the tracking device. No, no good. The chopper was close enough to find her without it. Better to use their own weapon against them.
Climbing back into the Hummer, she snatched off the brake and shifted into drive while watching the helicopter’s pool of light skim ever closer. Thankful the cold weather had delayed the engine’s seizing, she stepped on the gas, easing the bulky vehicle back onto the dirt road. Once there, she shifted again into park. Using her seat belt, she lashed the steering wheel to hold the car straight in the road before slipping the gearshift again to drive. She grabbed her purse by the shoulder strap and jumped free as the Hummer lumbered forward.
With a little luck, the Hummer and its tracking device would be a mile or so down the road before loss of oil and coolant brought it to a stop.
By that time, she intended to be gone.
Where and how, she was not sure.
She made it back to the shed just before the light from the helicopter swept overhead, the aircraft’s twin- turbine engines roaring malevolently. She watched as the pool of light moved away before going outside to the pickup truck. Rusty hinges complained bitterly as she opened the door and felt for the ignition switch. She was grateful the truck was an older model without the complicated antitheft mechanisms. She was fairly certain she remembered Agency training for how to direct-wire the ignition, bypassing the switch itself. What was it Lang called the procedure? Hot-wiring, that was it. Now if only the battery in this dilapidated scrap heap was working.
There was something else in the training for doing this…
Oh! Her instructor had mentioned the surprisingly high percentage of drivers who left the keys in their cars. Perhaps the same was true of pickup trucks.
A quick search found a key on the driver’s sun visor. The owner had taken for granted his vehicle would be safe at a remote spot on his own property.
Gurt leaned over to search the sky, saw nothing and inserted the key in the ignition. Her fears swam to her mind’s surface when the engine whined as it turned over. She took her foot off the gas, fearful of flooding the fuel system.
On the next try, the engine gave a wet cough, whined again and caught.
Gurt reached for the lights and caught herself just in time. Instead, she felt out the manual transmission and eased it into first gear, inching toward the shed.
In less than a minute, Manfred was beside her, Grumps on the floor at his feet.
“You forgot the car seat, Mommy!” the little boy giggled, glad to be free of the restraint. “Vati will be mad if he finds out.”
That’s a bridge I’ll jump off of when I come to it.
“Why aren’t we in the Hummer? Whose truck is this? Did you ask if you could take it? What about our clothes and stuff?”
Gurt searched the night sky. Wherever the chopper had gone, it was out of sight.
“When will we get to the farm?”
Gurt was thinking about the cars she had smashed into. Surely there were others available. But there were a number of crossing highways shortly past where she had taken the dirt road. Did they have enough men and vehicles to cover all possibilities?
“Mommy, will Vati be at the farm?”
And the truck. It would be reported stolen. But with this weather and in the winter, she guessed later rather than sooner. She wondered if the farm’s pond was deep enough to conceal it.
“Mommy, why did we leave the Hummer?”
Manfred, like most small children, tended to ask questions not so much out of curiosity as for attention. For once, Gurt found them comforting. They kept her from thinking about what could have happened.
The Sorbonne
One of the two men in the doorway gestured with his weapon, speaking French to the professor. His harsh tone gave a sharp edge to words Lang did not understand. D’Tasse’s eyes went to the manuscript he had just shown Lang.
The first man saw the glance and stepped forward to reach for it. Whoever these people were, they apparently kept up with articles in American University amp; College Review.
D’Tasse snatched the papers up, holding them out of the man’s reach. The academic “duty” he had described included resisting armed robbers? Pompous or not, the little man had guts.
The first man spoke to the second in another language, one Lang thought might be Chinese.
Motioning Lang away from the door, the second man went to help his comrade, obviously thinking Lang presented no clear threat.
That told Lang two things. First, neither was the same man who had tried to firebomb the house in Atlanta. That man would know what Lang looked like from observing before he struck. Second, there had been a real failure to communicate by the People’s Republic. These would-be thieves of academic treasure, if they were even aware of the problems Lang had caused, had not expected him here.
The first man grabbed D’Tasse by the turtleneck, the collar of his overcoat falling away. Lang was not surprised to see he was, in fact, an Asian. So was the other.
As the first man used the hand not holding the gun to drag the diminutive professor across the desk by his shirt, the other tugged on the papers D’Tasse had clinched in his fist. Lang felt powerless. If he attacked either one of the assailants, he or D’Tasse or both were likely to get shot. If he pulled out the Browning, gunfire would follow, with the same result.
Before he could decide on a course of action, the decision was taken out of his hands. With the sound of ripping fabric, D’Tasse’s shirt tore, the inertia of his resistence sending him backward and into the bookcase behind the desk. With a crash, the bookcase slammed forward, showering D’Tasse as well as the other two men in a paper avalanche.
In an instant, the Browning was in Lang’s hand. A single step brought him next to one gunman still struggling to free his feet from the pile of books. Lifting his pistol above his head, Lang brought the barrel down sharply on the gunman’s wrist.
The crunch of shattered bone merged with a howl of pain as the man’s weapon hit the floor and spun across the room.
Lang whirled to face the second man, whose gun was already coming to bear. Lang squeezed off a shot, the sound physically assaulting his ears in the confines of the small office. His target staggered toward the door as a red splotch grew on his light-colored overcoat. His weapon dangled from his hand as though forgotten. Then he turned, raising it. Before Lang could fire a second time, the man’s knees gave way and he sunk to the floor and lay still.
D’Tasse yelled something, pointing. Lang turned just in time to see the other man sprint through the doorway, one hand holding both the smashed wrist of the other and the manuscript. Go after him? What was the point? What would he do even if he caught him? Besides, there was the possibility these two intruders had left backup outside.
“My article!” D’Tasse shrieked. “Do not let him get away with it!”
Lang holstered the Browning. “He only has the English copy. What’s the problem? I doubt he’ll have much luck selling it to Playboy.”
“It is my intellectual property,” the professor said huffily. “Allowing it to get into other hands almost guarantees it will be pirated.”
A man is possibly dead, another crippled, a second ago you were staring down the muzzle of a gun and you
