The shield still hung from his arm.
Austin pulled his helmet off and threw his lance aside. He slipped out of the saddle and ran out on the bridge.
Baltazar had one shoulder up. He saw Austin bending over him.
“Help me,” he pleaded.
“Maybe this will lighten your load.” Austin plucked the car key from the horn.
Austin was tempted to send Baltazar to oblivion with a shove of his foot. But Baltazar’s men had recovered from the shock of seeing their leader unhorsed and were running for the bridge.
Austin turned and loped toward the car.
As he drew near, he saw that Carina had her head against the dashboard as if she had been unable to watch the tilt. He called her name. The figure in the passenger seat lifted its head. The unshaven face of one of Baltazar’s men leered at him from under a head covering.
“Thanks for rescuing me,” the man said in a falsetto imitation of a female voice. He reached under the folds of his dress for a gun but got tangled up.
Austin hauled back his mailed right fist and channeled his fury into a crashing blow to the man’s chin that knocked him cold. He pulled the unconscious man from the car. He slipped behind the steering wheel and muttered a prayer that Baltazar hadn’t switched keys. The engine started.
He decided not to head away from the bridge into unknown territory. The woods he saw in the distance might be a dead end.
Baltazar’s men had pulled him back onto the bridge. He screamed at his men to get Austin. Half a dozen guards advanced across the bridge. Austin retrieved the lance he had discarded. He angled the point out as if he were in a tilt, drove away from the gorge, then spun the wheel around and aimed for the bridge.
Baltazar saw the Bentley speeding toward him and ducked behind the tilt barrier, but the lance swept his men from the bridge like crumbs being brushed off a table.
When Austin had gained the other side, he discarded the lance and nailed the accelerator. The wheels spun on the grass, but Austin kept the fishtailing car under control and drove onto the road that led back to the tents.
He glanced in his rearview mirror. An SUV was on his tail. Someone had radioed ahead because another SUV came directly at him. Austin aimed the Bentley at the oncoming vehicle and pressed his hand down on the horn.
The SUV driver must have figured the heavier vehicle would win the game of chicken. At the last second the Bentley swerved aside. The SUV crashed head-on into the chase vehicle.
Austin breezed past the entrance to a driveway that led to a big house in the distance. He stayed on the road for another mile until he came to a gate and guard post. He slowed the car, in expectation that a guard would pop out of the shelter, but he drove up to the gate without being challenged. Austin guessed that the gate guards had been given permission to desert their post for the joust.
He got out of the car and went inside the hut, where he punched the button that would open the double cast-iron gates.
As he stepped out of the guardhouse, Austin heard the sound of motors. A convoy of black SUVs was speeding toward the gate. He drove through the open gates, stopped the car, and went back into the guardhouse. Then he closed the gates, picked up a heavy chair, and hammered the controls with the chair leg until they were useless.
The convoy was less than an eighth of a mile away.
Austin climbed a tree and crawled out onto a thick branch that extended over the fence. He dropped to the ground, knocking the wind out of his lungs, but quickly recovered. He scrambled back into the Bentley and mashed the accelerator in a jackrabbit start.
He was speeding along an open road flanked by green pastures and agricultural fields. Farm silos rose in the distance. No one was on his tail. He glanced at the cloudless blue sky, and it occurred to him that Baltazar might have access to a helicopter.
The bright red car would make an easy target from the air.
He turned onto a narrow lane. The closely grown trees on either side formed a thick canopy that shielded the car from above.
He noticed a car pulled over onto the shoulder. A man in a dark suit was leaning against the fender, and he looked up from the map as the red car blasted his way. As Austin flew by, he caught a fleeting glance of the man’s face. He hit the brakes, put the car into a fast backup, and slammed to a reverse stop.
“Hello, Flagg.” Austin said.
The CIA man looked out of place in his dark suit and tie. When he saw Austin, a half-moon grin crossed his face. His heavy-lidded eyes took in the Bentley and Austin’s mail jacket.
“Fancy wheels. NUMA must be paying you big bucks. Suit’s nice too.”
“They’re not mine,” Austin said. “I borrowed them from Baltazar. What are you doing here?”
“I found out Baltazar’s got a place around here. I was nosing around.”
Austin jerked his thumb to the rear. “It’s back there a few miles. Where are we?”
“Upstate New York. What about your lady friend?”
“I couldn’t get to Carina. How fast can you line up some muscle?”
“Police might be faster.”
“The local gendarmerie wouldn’t stand a chance against Baltazar’s mercenaries.”
Flagg nodded and pulled a phone out of an inside pocket. He punched in a number and talked for a few minutes before hanging up. “Got a ‘go’ team coming out of Langley. They’ll be here in two hours.”
“Two
“Best they can do,” Flagg said with a shrug. “How many bad guys you say there were?”
“About three dozen, counting Baltazar.”
“Odds are about right for a couple of tough old company men,” Flagg said. He opened the door to his car and reached under the seat to pull out a Glock 9mm pistol, which he handed to Austin. “This is a spare.” He patted his chest. “I’m already carrying.”
Austin remembered that Flagg was a walking arsenal.
“Thanks,” Austin said, taking the weapon. “Hop in.”
Flagg slid into the passenger side of the Bentley.
“Damnit, Austin,” Flagg said. “I had forgotten until now how boring my life had become since you left the company.”
Austin levered the gearshift into low and put the car into a tight U-turn.
“Hold on to your hat,” he said over the squeal of spinning tires. “Life is about to become very interesting.”
Chapter 49
“SHOULDN’T THEY BE UP BY NOW?” Saxon said, sounding a note of concern.
“Don’t worry. They’re both experienced divers,” Trout said.
He and Saxon sat in the rubber raft near the marker buoy. Trout was more worried than he let on. He had glanced at his wristwatch a few minutes before Saxon spoke. Gamay and Zavala were pushing their air supply to the limit, especially if they needed decompression stops. Dire scenarios materialized in his imagination. He could picture the divers lost or their tanks entangled in the unknown passages below the hotel.
Trout had been staring at a blue heron skimming over the lake when he saw a disturbance on the surface.
He pointed at the mounding bubbles. “They’re
He grabbed his paddle and told Saxon to do the same. They dug in and were only a few yards from the first head to break the surface. Gamay. Zavala surfaced seconds later.
Gamay inflated her buoyancy regulator and floated on her back. She pulled the regulator mouthpiece from between her teeth and took gulps of fresh air. Trout tossed a rope to his wife.
“Hey, beautiful, how about a ride?” he said.
