two, Hansen estimated, leaving stunned drivers in his wake. A few drivers had become so nervous about the wild man in the BMW that they had pulled over to the side of the road, probably to catch their breath. Hansen began weaving through traffic himself, with Valentina, Ames, and Noboru now behind them. Noboru was at the wheel and driving even more aggressively.
They drove past the marina, about a quarter mile south of the winery, and saw people standing there, waving their arms and pointing to the damage their cars had sustained. And then Hansen saw a debris trail extending from the parking lot and back onto the road.
Unless he’d done that to get the police involved. But the call had come in before he’d caused the damage. Strange. Or not so. Fisher had planned it all. But now what was he doing? Just fleeing? Or leading them somewhere?
“Where’s he going, Marty?”
Moreau answered with a lopsided grin, then added, “Who’s Marty?”
Hansen spoke through his teeth: “No more games.
Moreau threw up his hands. “Benjamin, I have no idea where he’s going, except away.”
Beginning to pant, Hansen drove on, cutting off slower traffic and spotting a sign for the town of Neuwied.
“Uh, Ben, I don’t want to say ‘we’ve got company’ because that’s ridiculously cliche,” said Valentina. “So how about this: The goddamned police are behind us!”
Hansen flicked a look into the rearview mirror and spotted the flashing blue lights. “Yep, we’ve got company. And you know who called them? Fisher.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
“Interference. Makes for a good show, too.”
“Aw, here we go again!” she groaned.
Gillespie was up front with Hansen, now peering through the windshield with her long-range binoculars. “He’s on the L258 now. Of course, a satellite feed would help… ”
That last part, uttered as snippily as she could, was meant for Moreau, who lifted his voice and said, “You’re doing fine, boys and girls, you’re doing fine!”
Hansen took the next turn a little too sharply and clipped the front end of a Toyota pickup truck. The driver leaned on the horn.
Fisher continued on, following L258 into a highway interchange where he took the Highway 256 exit, south and east toward Neuwied. Hansen tried to stay with the flow of traffic so as not to draw any more attention. He got well ahead of the pickup truck, whose driver pulled over to assess his damage. The police from Hammerstein had drifted farther back, out of sight for now, but he assumed they’d radioed ahead to their brothers in the next town for help. No sense waving a flag to them, so long as the team still had Fisher’s BMW in sight.
“He just floored it,” said Gillespie. “You’d better speed up or we’ll lose him. And, whoa! He’s fast and furious now, flashing his lights… You’d better go!”
“I’m on it!”
Hansen kicked the gas pedal and the powerful Mercedes leapt forward, rolling up to 120 kph. They streaked past a sign that read RAIFFEISENBRUCKE 3 KM.
That would be the Raiffeisen Bridge, spanning the Rhine.
Holding his breath, he rolled the wheel hard left, weaving around another slow-moving commuter car and passing the next sign: RAIFFEISENBRUCKE 2 KM.
The bridge rose into view, a two-lane affair with a central A-shaped pylon shimmering like a white monolith with talons of support cables radiating from its sides. That pylon rose at least 150 feet, and Hansen took a few seconds to appreciate it before the lights in his rearview mirror stole his attention. Damned police were back again, coming up the Sandkauler on-ramp to drop in behind them.
“He’ll cross the bridge,” said Gillespie.
“Gotcha,” Hansen replied. “I’m with him.”
Even as he finished the sentence, they were immediately stuck behind a slow- moving lorry overloaded with crates.
As they neared the bridge, an island that Gillespie said was Herbstliche Insel, or Autumn Island, appeared to their left and lay in the middle of the channel like a slightly opened mouth, tapering at the ends. Lush green trees stood in sharp contrast to the darker, muddier waters encompassing the narrow strip of land.
“What the hell?” Gillespie said through a gasp.
“What?” cried Hansen.
“He stopped! He stopped right in the middle of the goddamned bridge. He’s straddling the center line.”
Hansen could see Fisher’s car now, seconds away from being T-boned by the oncoming traffic.
Across the center guardrail, traffic had slowed to a crawl as drivers hung their heads out their windows to gape at the car blocking traffic.
“What’s he doing?” asked Moreau, leaning forward and clutching the back of Hansen’s seat.
“Jesus…” Hansen could barely speak.
The oncoming traffic neared Fisher’s car.
“Come on, Sam, get out of there,” muttered Moreau.
“You want him to escape?” cried Hansen.
“You’re damned right!”
Hansen snorted. “Unbelievable.”
Abruptly, Fisher’s car backed up toward the center guardrail, tires smoking as his rear bumper thudded hard against the heavy steel.
“What’s he doing now?” Hansen asked.
“Oh, no,” said Gillespie. “No. He can’t… ”
It seemed as though every driver on the bridge, no matter the lane, was now tapping his or her car horn, and even through closed windows the racket was nothing short of remarkable, an atonal chorus carried on the wind.
Hansen braked hard as those ahead of him did likewise, and just a hundred yards beyond was Fisher, throwing it into drive now and leaving twin smoke trails behind him as the powerful BMW barreled directly toward the opposite guardrail…
And into the murky depths of the Rhine River below.
“You got to be kidding me!” cried Moreau.
Gillespie leaned toward the windshield. “Oh, my God!”
Hansen held his breath.
The rail was scarcely taller than a meter, as was the abutting suicide-prevention hurricane fencing, and neither was a match for the BMW’s broad front bumper and its five-hundred-plus-horsepower engine.
The car horns faded, and for just a few seconds, all Hansen could hear was the drumming of his heart.
Then, abruptly, the screeching of metal on metal made him shudder.
With widening eyes, Hansen watched as Third Echelon’s most lethal and effective Splinter Cell crashed his car through the rail — and in a moment as surreal as any, a moment in which time slowed and he seemed to watch it all from God’s point of view — the car arced in the air, then pitched forward and began its fifty-foot descent toward the unforgiving water below.
34
Hansen couldn’t help himself and was out of the Mercedes, running between the lines of parked cars toward the section of bridge where Fisher had blasted through. He reached the edge, clutched a jagged piece of metal, and with a throng of other bystanders, stared down as the shattered rear bumper of Fisher’s BMW vanished beneath the foam like a torpedoed ocean liner.
