Conviction

plunged vertically into the reservoir. Fisher couldn’t see them in the dark, but Google Earth had clearly shown two squared-off alcoves where steel-rung ladders were cut into the wall. The alcoves were three feet deep — enough, he judged, to impede Kimberly’s and Ames’s lines of fire.

He sucked in a lungful of air, dropped beneath the surface, and began using the roots to pull himself along the embankment. At the halfway mark he again pulled himself against the mud wall and carefully surfaced in the weeds. He caught his breath, ducked under again, and thirty seconds later his outstretched hand touched concrete. He turned right, dragging his fingertips over the rough surface until he felt the wall turn inward. Two kicks brought him to the ladder. He pressed his head into the corner and surfaced. No shots came. He rotated his head and peeked around the corner.

With the increased distance, it was impossible to tell if Kimberly and Ames were still in position. He waited. Two minutes… five. He climbed the ladder, rolled onto the concrete deck, pressed himself flat, then began snaking his way through the weeds until the concrete gave way to open ground. He was three hundred yards from the opposite shore — a tough shot but not impossible. Still, he needed to be seen.

He took a deep breath, curled his legs beneath him like a sprinter, then took off, heading for the road fifty yards away. He’d covered half the distance when he heard the smack-thump of a bullet striking the earth to his right. He resisted the impulse to dodge in the opposite direction, instead turning into it, zigzagging until he reached a slight depression before the road, where he dropped flat again. He checked his watch. It would take them sixty or seventy seconds to move from their shooting position to the pool, then another sixty seconds to clear the deck and the surrounding undergrowth before pushing toward this road. Right now they’d be on their SVTs, radioing the other SUV: Circle north and west to the dirt road, and we’ll drive him from the west. A smart plan, Fisher admitted. Keep up the pressure; don’t let the quarry rest. Unfortunately for them, he wasn’t about to let himself slip into the quarry mind set.

He shed his clothes, trading the red on green outfit for a dark blue sweatshirt and a pair of old French army fatigue pants he had picked up at a surplus store. The Aloksak bag had kept them perfectly dry. He stuffed the discarded outfit under a bush, careful to leave a bit of red showing.

He let a minute pass, then got up and ran, hunched over, north along the depression to where it intersected with a stand of pine trees. He paused to pull out his red hooded penlight, then kept moving until he estimated he had enough cover. He stopped and ducked behind a fallen trunk.

A branch snapped. South.

Partially obscured by the trees, a lone figure crossed the open ground, heading west. The build told Fisher it was a woman. Kimberly. She stopped. Her head swiveled, scanning the pine trees. Good girl. She’d neither heard nor seen anything, of that he was certain, but she was thinking: If Fisher had cut to the north instead of crossing the road, he’d be in there… What to do? Abandon the pincer plan, leave her partner alone and search the trees, or—

She kept moving.

It was the smart move. She was going to kick herself later, but clearly she’d been paying attention during Small-Unit Tactics.

He waited until she’d moved out of view, then continued east, slowly at first and then more quickly as he gained some distance, until he could see car headlights on the D16/18. When the trees thinned enough that he could see the cars themselves, he stopped. He opened his rucksack and found the two Aloksak bags he needed. He traded his fatigues and sweatshirt for the yellow Lacoste polo over sky blue outfit, then got out his binoculars — a pair of night vision Night Owl Explorers. Not the same caliber as Third Echelon’s DARPA-produced headsets, but as he was something of a beggar these days, he’d renounced choosiness.

He powered up the Night Owls, crawled to the lip of the embankment, and panned the highway. There were four SUVs in view, but none of them Renaults. A half mile to the northeast, across the highway, he could see the lights of Esch-sur-Alzette’s CFL (Chemins de fer Luxembourgeois) train station. Almost there. Fifteen minutes and he’d be gone. He’d have some breathing room. At least for a while.

He put away the Night Owls, waited for a lull in traffic, then stood up and walked down into the ditch and back up the other side. He was stepping onto the dirt shoulder on the far side of the road when, to the right, he heard the roar of an engine. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a single headlight bearing down on him.

6

The instinctive part of Fisher’s brain reacted instantly, registering the motorcycle a quarter second before sending the “jump” impulse to his legs. The nearest oncoming car, moving at a leisurely fifteen miles an hour, was twenty feet away. To avoid Fisher, the motorcyclist could either go right, into the ditch, or left, into traffic. Fisher gambled and went in the latter direction, spinning on his heel back into the path of the oncoming car, landing in a half crouch, with his legs spread, ready to dive away if the car didn’t slow. To his left, the motorcycle’s brakes locked up. The headlight shuttered with the sudden deceleration, then veered right and down into the ditch. There came the sound of wrenching fiberglass. The car bearing down on Fisher slammed on its brakes. Horns began blaring. Car doors opened and witnesses began jogging toward the scene.

Blend, Fisher commanded himself. “Help me — he’s down here!” Fisher called in French, then trotted down into the ditch. The rider lay in the tall grass on the other side of the embankment; ten feet away his motorcycle was a tangled heap. Fisher and four others reached the rider at the same time. He was barely conscious. “Stabilize his head,” Fisher commanded, then lifted the visor on the man’s helmet. The face didn’t look familiar. Just bad timing, he decided.

Voices began babbling: “Idiot tried to pass…” “Did you see him?… almost hit…”

Fisher said, “He’s in shock. I’ll find a blanket. Stay with him… ”

“Oui, oui…”

Fisher trotted north, up the road. He glanced over his shoulder. A dozen or more people were now at the bottom of the ditch, tending to the motorcyclist. From the border came the whine of sirens and flashing blue lights. He put another fifty yards between himself and the commotion, then walked back into the ditch, up the other side, and into the trees beyond. He paused to get his bearings, using the highway to his left and the soccer stadium lights to his right as navigation points. The CFL station would be… that way. Another two minutes of walking brought him to a weed-covered gravel lot surrounded by a dilapidated hurricane fence, half of which jutted from the ground at wild angles, while the other had collapsed altogether. In the center of the lot was what had looked like, on Google Earth, an abandoned prison, with high brick and corrugated-steel walls topped by conical watchtowers and arched mullioned windows. It was, in fact, a deserted steel foundry. Early twentieth century, Fisher judged. A hundred years ago European industrialists often chose the ornate over the pragmatic, assuming a happy worker was a productive worker.

It was as good a place as any for another clothing change, he decided. His second clothing change had been for his pursuers’ benefit; having likely found the first outfit east of the swimming pool, they would have assumed he’d adopted night-friendlier clothes. If spotted now, he’d be another local in colorful springtime garb.

He spotted a vertical slit in the foundry’s sheet-metal wall and headed for it. A quarter mile to his left, back on the highway, he saw a pair of headlights do a quick U-turn, then a second pair. At this distance he couldn’t make out the makes and models, but the shapes suggested SUVs. They began heading south, in his direction.

What the hell?

Fisher sprinted for the wall, pried back the sheet metal, and stepped through the slit. He glanced back. The SUVs had drawn even with the foundry driveway and stopped, turn signals blinking, as they waited for a gap in traffic. Fisher wriggled through the opening, then did his best to wrench the metal closed behind him.

He pulled out his penlight and looked around. In the darkness, the scene was jumbled: vaulted concrete ceilings dotted with broken skylights through which moonlight streamed, crumbling plaster-covered brick walls, ladders and catwalks and spiral staircases, a labyrinth of overhead iron girders and concrete lintels. The floor was ankle deep in ash, dust, and accumulated silt. Weeds and spindly trees sprung from the loam. Somewhere overhead he heard the leathery flapping of wings. The echo told him the space was cavernous.

He took a step. His foot plunged through the soil and into empty space. He shined his light down. The floor was made of heavy four-by-four wooden beams. Through the hole in which his foot had slipped, he could see