Fisher had shifted to avoid a big rock in the road and had plowed into a berm on their left, leaving a huge trench where his SUV had pushed through. The canopy above had lowered, and his truck had sheared off dozens of more branches, which littered the road. Through the stands of trees, Noboru thought he spotted Fisher’s taillights. He hadn’t bothered to switch them off and go to night vision, but Noboru assumed that momentarily he would — once he realized he was still being followed.
Noboru was still a bit in awe that the tip he had given Ames had actually paid off. Noboru had obviously underestimated Spock’s influence in the mercenary world. Yes, he’d thought Spock would be the one man to know something about Fisher, but it’d also been a long shot. Still, according to Ames, Spock had been unable to confirm that it was Fisher, only an American. But that was enough, and here they were, pursuing the man.
There was something, though, that bothered Noboru. Spock, given his position, was not a very forthcoming individual. How had Ames gotten him to talk?
Hansen should have let Gillespie drive in the first place. She was an ace behind the wheel, cutting corners tightly and catching up quickly to Noboru.
“Where the hell did you learn to drive like this?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always liked fast cars. My first was a ’98 ’Vette. We added a supercharger and custom cam and really ramped up the rear-wheel horsepower and torque. The dyno numbers were great.”
“Okay, that’s Chinese. Just watch the road and keep turning like that.”
She cut the wheel hard. “Hang on!”
As Noboru came out of the second of two hairpin turns, he spotted the Range Rover straight ahead, and he took in the scene at once.
Fisher was rolling around a boulder at least as tall as his hood, and as Noboru accelerated even more, the berm to their left suddenly exploded in a shower of mud and shrapnel that blasted against the car.
Reflexively, Noboru cut the wheel. Fisher had cleverly tossed a grenade into the berm to force them into the rock. Noboru appreciated the beauty of that plan, even though he was on the receiving end of it. Thankfully, the tires held on the gravel, and they slipped past the boulder with just a slight, glancing blow and the crunch of fiberglass.
They raced forward, and within a minute, the road suddenly widened into some kind of a logging camp with piles of mulch along one side, piles of cut logs, and clearings made into the deeper stretches off to the north.
The road split into three, with the main one heading directly west and the two others north and east.
Noboru slammed on the brakes.
“Why are you stopping?” hollered Ames.
Noboru ignored him and turned to Valentina. “Which way?”
There were tire tracks all over the clearing, and it was nearly impossible to pick out Fisher’s.
Valentina was already scanning with her goggles and told him to take the north road. He jammed down his foot, and they lurched forward as Hansen came thundering up behind them.
“You sure he’s heading north?” Hansen asked in the subdermal.
“I’m sure,” said Valentina. “Got his exhaust trail.”
“Roger that.”
Noboru drove farther on, the road growing muddier, as Ames informed them that they had crossed into Germany. They came up and over a rise, and there, ahead, lay a wooden bridge with a gaping hole in its center, a hole large enough to permit a vehicle, a Range Rover, perhaps.
“Aw, hell,” said Valentina. “I think he broke through the bridge.”
“Ya think?” cried Ames.
And then the incessant blaring of a car horn rose from somewhere down below the shattered planks.
Then the horn went silent.
Hansen eased out onto the bridge and directed his flashlight through the gap, drizzle filtering through the thick yellow beam that found the Range Rover sitting upside down in a ravine about twenty feet below. The door was open. Fisher was gone. Hansen quickly shifted the light around, picking out the banks of the creek below, the water only a foot or so deep, the rocks piled up along the shoreline. To Hansen’s left, beyond the bridge, the ravine trailed off into the night. He turned, aimed the light off to his right.
A concrete wall rose alongside the streambed, with more ornate concrete facades on either side of it. In the center lay a rusting steel door. Hansen squinted. On the door was an old white sign with red letters: VERBOTEN. SIEGFRIEDSTELLUNG WESTWALL.
“We need to get down there!” Hansen ordered.
“Over here!” called Noboru. “I think we can get down here!”
They rushed over to where Noboru picked out a rocky edge of the ravine that would allow them to descend — slowly and carefully — but at least they could get down without breaking out ropes or rappelling gear from the trunk.
Noboru took the lead, and they descended one by one, burning up valuable time.
“Hey, I called up this place on the OPSAT,” said Ames. “They called it the Siegfried line. It’s a whole bunch of bunkers built by the Germans after World War I. There are thousands of them and tunnels and machine-gun emplacements all up and down it. Goes for, like, four hundred miles.”
“Great,” Hansen said with a groan. “Another perfect place for him to lose us.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” corrected Valentina, who reached the ground and took off running along the bank toward the door.
Noboru jogged behind her, as did Hansen, who turned back to Ames and Gillespie and said, “Circle around the other side and see if there’s another entrance up top.”
They nodded and rushed off.
As they neared the door, Hansen motioned to Noboru. “Sorry, buddy. I’m going to post you right here.”
Noboru made a face, but he drew his SC pistol and nodded.
Hansen and Valentina reached the door, and Hansen gave it a solid shove with his shoulder. The door seemed to give a little, then bounced back, as though held by something elastic.
“Light,” he ordered Valentina.
She moved in with a penlight, and in the gap between the jamb and the door they saw weblike rows of paracord. Fisher had tied shut the door from the inside.
Hansen drew his combat dagger — the one that had belonged to Fisher. He got to work on the cord.
31
Hansen sawed through the first line of paracord and began working on the second.
“It’s taking forever,” said Valentina.
“Best I can do.” The second one gave suddenly, and he began work on the third.
Something pinged hard just inside the door, near the concrete jamb, and Hansen realized with a start that he was taking fire. He pulled back the knife, shuddering as he did so.
“Shots,” he said through a gasp.
Her eyes widened. “What did you expect? He’s slowing us down even more. Come on.”
Hansen took a deep breath — just as another round struck the wall inside.
“That came from a distance,” he said, knowing that he would’ve heard a slight hand clap from inside but hadn’t heard anything. “Warning shots.”
“Just cut,” Valentina urged him.
Hansen thrust his hand back into the gap and began sawing once more. “Kim, you find anything up
