The Fiat was catching up. Charlie saw Stanley at the wheel, face speckled with blood, but as determined as ever. In the passenger seat, Lanier squinted against the onrushing air, aimed a preposterously large assault rifle through the cavity in the windshield, and fired.
The bullet hammered through the back of the ambulance, struck the metal handle of the open compartment door, and ricocheted into a computer display, smashing it to pebbles. Morneau regarded the computer with heightened dread.
“It’s okay,” Charlie said. “The bullet didn’t come close to us.” He shifted into second and made for the well-lit cross street about half a mile ahead; it appeared to be bustling with pedestrians and other vehicles.
“I just thought of one problem,” Morneau said. “In your Al Capone story, the vehicles were not carrying highly flammable oxygen tanks.”
Charlie nodded. “That is a problem. Pass me the defibrillator?”
Although clearly puzzled, Morneau handed the device forward.
Charlie rolled down his window, causing an eruption of blood from the gunshot wound in his shoulder and pain to match. Alternating glances between the Fiat and the road ahead, he tried to aim the defibrillator at the large cavity that had formerly been the Fiat’s windshield.
“The big red button puts this thing in zap mode, right?” he asked the paramedic.
“Yes, but it can’t shock anyone unless both paddles are in contact with the body simultaneously, forming a circuit.”
“Well, what are the odds he’ll know all that?” Charlie let the defibrillator fall out of his window.
It wobbled backward through the air, its paddles flapping wildly, toward the Fiat.
Eyes wide, Stanley spun the wheel to avoid the device, sending the Fiat crunching into a parked delivery truck. The Fiat’s hood crumpled, Stanley slumped in his seat, and the fender flopped onto the asphalt.
“That sounded good,” said Morneau.
“Yeah …” Charlie hesitated at the sight of Lanier climbing out of the sports car, leveling her assault rifle.
A monster bullet punched through the rear of the ambulance, sounding as if it had exploded on impact. The entire vehicle jumped.
“The oxygen tank!” Morneau shouted. “We need to get out!”
Flames began to sprout throughout the ambulance. Charlie hit the brakes and punched open his door. He clocked the wheel so that the driver’s side would face away from Lanier, allowing the ambulance to provide cover for their egress.
Morneau hauled Drummond to his feet and dragged him toward Charlie.
Before Charlie could help, a bigger explosion spat him out the open driver’s door. The ambulance itself disappeared in a blob of fire. Scalded, Charlie fell backward, landing on the asphalt, on his spine, the pain unbearable, then even worse as Drummond and Morneau slammed into him. He was pleased, though, because neither appeared seriously injured. At the same time, shock tugged him toward unconsciousness.
He would have allowed himself to glide there if not for the click of Lanier’s heels.
Scrambling out from the tangle of limbs, Charlie grabbed for the Glock beside him.
The Glock that had been beside him.
Now, nowhere in sight.
Stanley rounded one end of the van, leading with a gun. The massive barrel of Lanier’s rifle preceded her around the other side.
Morneau fainted, probably a consequence of the blood pouring from his reopened wound.
Seven or eight vehicles, several with flashing lights and sirens, charged toward the remains of the ambulance. Leading the charge were the same two beige Suburbans in which Charlie and Drummond had been transferred from the docks to the consulate.
As if Stanley and Lanier needed reinforcements, Charlie thought.
Turning to his father, who lay on the street beside him, he said, “I’m sorry.”
Drummond’s response was lost under the shrieking halt of the Suburbans. A passenger door opened and Corbitt slid out. He wore a rumpled linen business suit over a pajama shirt.
Staggering out from behind the van, Stanley said, “Chief Corbitt, your timing is excellent once again.” He waved at Charlie and Drummond. “The rabbits nearly gave us the slip.”
“Really?” Clasping his hands behind his back, Corbitt started to pace. “Remember how this morning I was telling you that we now have miniaturized digital camcorders capable of recording up to sixteen hours of video?”
Stanley smiled. “Of course.”
Corbitt stopped pacing, squaring himself with Stanley. “Tonight, after I reviewed today’s footage from the decanter on the yacht, I decided I’d better get down here.”
Charlie sensed the odds had taken a fortuitous if not incredible turn. He kept his cheer in check, however. In his experience, such a turn was unprecedented, and, with the Cavalry involved, impossible.
Stanley sighed. “Listen, Corbitt, there are factors you know nothing about, and that needs to remain the case.”
“Maybe so. But until I hear otherwise from the State Department or from headquarters, you two are going into custody.” Corbitt indicated the other members of his party. Six Martinique policemen, two paramedics, and three marine guards had emerged from the vehicles, all but the paramedics carrying sidearms or rifles.
“What authority do you have to take us into custody?” Stanley shouted.
“French law,” Corbitt said. “On the way here, we received a report of a Martinican emergency medical technician who’d been gunned down in cold blood.” Turning toward the local policemen and paramedics, the Saint Lucia base chief pointed at Stanley and Lanier. “I believe we’ll find that they’re the ones who did it.”
57
“I owe you a pot of homemade chowder,” said Alice over the phone from the American embassy in Geneva. “And whatever else you want.”
In the Martinique consulate’s secure conference room, Charlie should have leaped in elation and told Alice that he loved her.
But the ADM was stuck like a splinter in his thoughts.
She said she didn’t recall Bream by name, only that the copilot who flew her to Newark three weeks ago had been handsome in a roguish way. “Not in the good way, like you,” she added quickly.
Their catch-up otherwise was of the bullet-point variety, a function not only of his preoccupation but of a rush on her end-a battery of NSA debriefers awaited her. Hanging up, Charlie couldn’t believe he’d neglected to mention that he’d found the treasure of San Isidro.
Eager to check on his father, he shot out of the secure conference room and into the hallway, hurrying down to the infirmary. Drummond had been under anesthesia for the better part of three hours, during which cardiac catheterization had enabled the surgeons to determine that the extent of the damage to his heart was minimal. As also was the case with the CIA’s Hilary Hadley, Drummond had made it out of the medical equivalent of the woods.
Corbitt jogged out of an adjacent office, pulling even with Charlie. “Eager to see your dad?” the base chief asked.
“Yes. And to see if he knows where Bream took the bomb.”
“It’s only a matter of time until we find that son of a bitch.” Reaching the elevator landing, Corbitt gazed into the gilded-frame mirror as if already seeing himself with the medal he would receive.
Charlie hit the down button. “I wish I were even half as sure.”
“Look, our commo folks sent an encrypted cable-flash precedence-to the director, the chief of the Europe division, plus all the honchos in India, Pakistan, and pretty much everywhere else boats go. The U.S. Coast Guard and Homeland Security have cast the satellite and radar version of a tight net over the water between Saint Lucia and the coast of India. And as we speak, the agency’s unleashing NEST teams.”
