leader didn’t like getting paid to sit still. It wasn’t his style. Like the others in his squad, he was ex-Force Recon, the U.S. Marines’ equivalent to the Navy’s SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force.
Something in his pack warbled. He glanced at his watch. The call was expected.
He checked on the chopper’s position again. It was banking away in a wide arc. He pulled out his satellite phone, a tiny Iridium handset. It was no bigger than a regular cell phone, if not for the ten-inch antenna that pivoted out from it and the STU-III voice encryption module clipped onto its base. He pressed the answer key. A sequence of beeps mixed with static told him the call was bouncing its way halfway across the planet. He waited for the red LED to tell him the call was secure, then spoke.
“This is Fox One.”
After the briefest of lags, a computerized male voice responded. “What’s your status?”
It sounded like Stephen Hawking was calling, and he knew his own voice sounded just as robotic at the other end. Although he and the project’s overseer had dodged bullets together on more than one continent, the military- level, 256-bit voice encryption made their voices unrecognizable, in case someone was eavesdropping. Which was unlikely enough, but one could never be too careful, which was also why a second safeguard was built into his phone’s microchip, enabling a hybrid of hopping and sweeping scrambling. Only another phone fitted with the same chip could decode their transmissions. Any other phone would only pick up a burst of ear-piercing static.
“We’re ready to roll,” Fox One replied.
“Any problems I should know about?”
“Negative.”
The synthesized voice came back. “Good. Pull your men out and initiate the next phase.”
The team leader terminated the call and glanced up at the sky. It was back to its monotone, off-white, bleak self again.
Chapter 23
Cambridge,Massachusetts
Matt slipped the phone back into its cradle and eased the door shut before darting through the hallway and into the main bedroom.
He had to get the hell out of there. They were only seconds away.
He ignored the near window in the bedroom and went straight to the back wall where, in the pale moonlight coming in through the window, he’d earlier spotted a half-glazed door that gave on to a ten-foot-square balcony. With his heartbeat throbbing in his ears, he peered out and saw that, as he’d suspected, it led to a fire escape.
He joggled the door handle, but it was locked. He looked left and right for a key, but there was nothing in plain sight. He pulled and yanked at it again, a hopeless, desperate gesture, the door stubbornly refusing to budge, then was glancing back toward the hallway, his brain tripping wildly, like the ever-accelerating countdown of a time bomb, wondering how much time he still had, visualizing the two men bursting into the apartment, when a heavy knock pounded the front door.
“Open up, police.”
He didn’t want to get caught in there. He was sure Bellinger was dead, and here he was, in his apartment, an apartment he’d broken into, the apartment of a dead man who was last seen running away from him after they’d had a bust-up in a crowded bar.
A slam-dunk with any jury—if it ever got to that.
Somehow, he didn’t think he’d make it that far.
His reflexes took over.
He grabbed a side table by the bed, swung it back, and hurled it through the window of the balcony door. Glass exploded as the heavy wooden console flew out and thudded heavily onto the decked floor. The posse outside the door must have heard it, as a more pointed shout of “Open up, police” echoed from the stairwell, a shout with a distinct finality to it. Matt dashed across the room, only he didn’t go for the balcony. Instead, he scurried in the opposite direction, away from it, and dived behind the door to the bedroom just as the front door erupted inward.
Two men thundered in, quickly got their bearings, and charged into the master bedroom, rocketing up to the shattered balcony door. Matt squeezed himself tightly against the wall and heard one of them yell, “He’s gone down the fire escape,” adding, “Check out the rest of the place” while using the muzzle of his handgun to sweep away the shards of glass that stuck up from the window frame, before clambering over and disappearing into the darkness outside. His partner darted past Matt, and just as he felt him go by, Matt slipped out from his hiding place and launched himself after him.
The man was halfway through the dark hallway when Matt tackled him from behind. They tumbled onto the hardwood floor, spilling over each other, something metallic clattering across the floor away from the downed cop. A handgun, by the sound of it. The man wasn’t too tall or bulky, but his thin arms had a fierce, coiled energy within them and he fought back like a caged mongoose, twisting around and lashing out with rapid-fire blows to try and get out from under Matt. Matt knew he didn’t have time on his side and had to end this fast. He weathered a couple of sacrificial blows to his ribs to set up an opening for a solid hit, then saw one and let loose with an anvil of a punch that caught the downed man just below the left ear and pounded the air out of him. The man curled over, groaning heavily. Matt used the brief respite to roll him back onto his front and felt something under his jacket. He reached under it and found a pair of handcuffs in a belt pouch. He pulled the groggy man a couple of feet to the wall and quickly locked his arms around a radiator pipe. A quick glance around yielded a coat rack overhead that held some jackets, caps, an umbrella, and a scarf that Matt yanked down and stuffed into the man’s mouth before roping it around his head a couple of times and tucking it in to secure it in place.
Without even glancing back, he sprung to his feet and flew out of the apartment, hurtling down the stairs three at a time. He plowed to a sudden stop at the main entrance to check out front. There was no sign of the man who’d gone down the fire escape. He took a deep breath to clear his senses, steeled himself for the move, and slipped out into the cold night.
The street was disconcertingly quiet, oblivious to his plight. He scuttled down the steps and crept over to the parked sedan, pulling out his Leatherman and slashing one of the car’s front wheels with its blade. He watched for a split second as its air rushed out, then leapt over the small picket fence by the pathway that led up to the house and skirted the front facade, avoiding the sidewalk and scanning ahead and back until he reached the alley.
The Mustang was still there, squatting in the shadows, waiting for him. He slid into it as quietly as he could, and pulled the door half-shut. With his breathing still coming short and fast, he spurred the engine to life without switching on the headlights, and just as it ticked over, the other cop appeared at the mouth of the alley, behind him, backlit by the streetlights. He hollered, “Stop, police,” reaching for his handgun and holding his other arm up, palm out and flat. He was blocking the way, leaving Matt no way out but to back out and charge him, risking a game of chicken that could end really badly for the one of them who wasn’t cocooned inside two tons of steel. It was either that, or—
Matt cursed under his breath, slammed the car into gear, and floored it. The Mustang’s wheels spun slightly in the thin snow cover before biting into the asphalt, and the car leapt forward, howling angrily through the alley, rushing deeper into its dark recess. Matt strained to see where he was headed, what waited for him at the end of the alley, and when it finally came into view, it wasn’t good. The alley ended in a mound of bushy terrain that rose into a thicket of trees. A Hummer might have had a chance. The Mustang wasn’t built for this. It didn’t have a hope in hell of making it through.
