Agent Zero

Reid retrieved the keys first, and then stood over Otets. The voices in the distance were getting closer. The estate house was a half mile away; it would have taken the Russian woman about four minutes to reach it on foot, and then another few minutes for the men to get down here. He figured he had less than two minutes.

“Get up.”

Otets spat on his shoes in response.

“Have it your way.” Reid pocketed the Glock, grabbed Otets by the back of his suit jacket, and hauled him toward the SUV. The Russian cried out in pain as his gunshot leg dragged across the gravel.

“Get in,” Reid ordered, “or I’ll shoot your other leg.”

Otets grumbled under his breath, hissing through the pain, but he climbed into the car. Reid slammed the door, circled around quickly, and got behind the wheel. His left hand still held the dead man’s switch.

He slammed the SUV into drive and stomped the gas. The tires spun, kicking up gravel and dirt behind it, and then the vehicle lurched forward with a jolt. As soon as he pulled back onto the narrow access road, shots rang out. Bullets smacked the passenger side with a series of heavy thuds. The window—just to the right of Otets’s head—splintered in a spider web of cracked glass, but held.

“Idiots!” Otets screamed. “Stop shooting!”

Bullet-resistant, Reid thought. Of course it is. But he knew that wouldn’t last long. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and the SUV lurched again, roaring past the three men on the side of the road as they fired on the car. Reid rolled down his window as they rolled by the two bomb-makers, still running for their lives.

Then he tossed the switch out the window.

The explosion rocked the SUV, even at their distance. He didn’t hear the detonation so much as he felt it, deep in his core, shaking his innards. A glance in the rearview mirror showed nothing but intense yellow light, like staring directly into the sun. Spots swam in his vision for a moment and he forced himself to look ahead at the road. An orange fireball rolled into the sky, sending up an immense plume of black smoke with it.

Otets let out a jagged, groaning sigh. “You have no idea what you’ve just done,” he said quietly. “You are a dead man, Agent.”

Reid said nothing. He did realize what he had just done—he had destroyed a significant amount of evidence in whatever case might be built against Otets once he was brought to the authorities. But Otets was wrong; he was not a dead man, not yet anyway, and the bomb had helped him get away.

This far, anyhow.

Up ahead, the estate house loomed into view, but there was no pausing to appreciate its architecture this time around. Reid kept his eyes straight ahead and zoomed past it as the SUV bounced over the ruts in the road.

A glimmer in the mirror caught his attention. Two pairs of headlights swung into view, pulling out from the driveway of the house. They were low to the ground and he could hear the high-pitched whine of the engines over the roar of his own. Sports cars. He hit the gas again. They would be faster, but the SUV was better equipped to handle the uneven road.

More shots cracked the air as bullets pounded the rear fender. Reid gripped the steering wheel with both hands, the veins standing out stark with the tension in his muscles. He had control. He could do this. The iron gate couldn’t be far. He was doing fifty-five through the vineyard; if he could maintain his speed, it might be enough to crash the gate.

The SUV rocked violently as a bullet struck the rear driver’s side tire and exploded. The front end veered wildly. Reid instinctively counter-steered, his teeth gritted. The back end skidded out, but the SUV didn’t roll.

“God save me,” Otets moaned. “This lunatic will be the death of me…”

Reid wrenched the wheel again and righted the vehicle, but the steady, pounding thum-thum-thum of the tire told him they were riding on the rim and shreds of rubber. His speed dropped to forty. He tried to give it gas again but the SUV quaked, threatening to veer again.

He knew they couldn’t maintain enough speed to break the gate. They would bounce right off it.

It’s an electronic gate, he thought suddenly. It was controlled by the guard outside—who would no doubt at this point be aware of his escape attempt and be ready with the dangerous MP7—but that meant there had to be another exit to this compound.

Bullets continued to pound against the fender as his two pursuers fired on them. He flicked on the high beams and saw the iron gate coming up fast.

“Hang onto something,” Reid warned. Otets grabbed the handle over his window and muttered a prayer under his breath as Reid yanked the wheel hard to the right. The SUV skidded sideways in the gravel. He felt the two passenger-side tires come off the ground and, for a moment, his heart leapt into his throat with the notion that they might roll right over.

But he held control, and the tires set down again. He stomped the accelerator and drove right into the vineyard, crashing through the thin wooden trellises as if they were toothpicks and rolling grapevines flat.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Otets screeched in Russian. He bounced heavily in his seat as they drove over the planted rows. Behind him, the pair of sports cars squealed to a halt. They couldn’t follow, not through the field—but they were probably aware of what he was looking for, and they knew where to find it.

“Where’s the other exit?” Reid demanded.

“What exit?”

He yanked the Beretta from his jacket pocket (no easy feat, with the violent bouncing of the car) and pressed it against Otets’s already-shot leg. The Russian screamed in pain. “That way!” he cried, pointing a crooked finger to the northwestern edge of the compound.

Reid held his breath. Please hold together, he thought desperately. The SUV was sturdy, but so far they had been lucky they hadn’t broken an axle.

Then, mercifully, the vineyard ended abruptly and they were back on a gravel road. The headlights shined on a second gate—made of the same wrought iron, but on wheels and held together by a single link of chain.

This is it. Reid clenched his jaw and slammed the gas once more. The SUV lurched. Otets howled some indistinguishable curse. The front end collided with the iron gate and smashed it open, knocking one side right off its hinges.

Reid breathed an intense sigh of relief. Then the headlights flashed again in his rearview—the cars were back. They had doubled back and taken the other road, likely branching from the opposite side of the estate house.

“Dammit,” Reid muttered. He couldn’t keep going like this forever, and if they shot out the other rear tire he’d be dead in the water. The road here was straight, and seemed to be inclining upward. It was also better paved than behind the gate, which only meant that the sports cars would catch up that much faster.

The trees were thinning on the right side of the road. Reid’s gaze flitted from the road to the passenger window. He could have sworn, through the cracked glass, he saw a shimmer, like… like water.

A rush of memory came to him, but not the flashing visions of his new mind. These were actual memories, Professor Lawson’s memories. We’re in the Ardennes. The Battle of the Bulge took place here. American and British forces held the bridges against German panzer divisions on the river…

“Meuse,” he murmured aloud. “We’re on the river Meuse.”

“What?” Otets exclaimed. “What are you babbling about?” Then he ducked instinctively as bullets splintered their rear windshield.

Reid ignored him, and the bullets. His mind raced. What was it he recalled reading about the Meuse? It sliced through the mountains, yes. And they were on an incline, heading upward. There were quarries here. Red marble quarries. Sheer cliffs and steep drops.