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SHE WOULD NEVER MAKE it in time.
The pilot had agreed for an exorbitant fee to meet her at the only flat spot in a hundred kilometers. The DGSE agent who called herself Miray had contacted him on the satellite phone she kept well hidden. But seasonal rains had washed out the road, and the Jeep was struggling through another wallow of mud, slowing her down. She’d had to push the Jeep once, an hour ago, her briefcase jammed against the accelerator while she shoved from the open door, and her khaki slacks and long-sleeved shirt were splattered with mud from the effort.
Good luck that I didn’t run over my own foot.
Despite the roads, she had to admit that she had caught her share of luck today. The lab staff had been hungover from celebrating, and she had been able to sneak away without waking any of them. That was the most important thing. The satellite phone was half-charged, and her call for extraction went through. That was a lot of good luck to start the day. She feared that now she had reached the end of it. Good luck always turned to bad. It was a rule of life.
But she was supposed to meet the pilot in less than a minute, and she was still more than six kilometers from the rendezvous site. To call it a “landing strip” would be overly optimistic. It was a bare spot up on a plateau, and she’d been warned if it was still muddy up there, the pilot wouldn’t land. She figured there was a fifty-fifty chance he might risk it.
Hurry.
She gunned the Jeep, but the wheels only spun in the muddy road. Taking a breath to calm herself, she tried again, barely pressing the accelerator. The tires caught, and she eased the vehicle up over a clump of rocks.
The road grew steeper. She downshifted and kept going, the seconds still ticking off. Every time she glanced at her watch, her concern mounted. The pilot might wait for her—he’d want the money he’d been promised—but he might fly over, see the Jeep wasn’t there, and leave without landing.
She had to get this information out. She’d made a coded phone call to France, but that was only a vague warning. Without the details, the warning by itself was useless. She had stolen documents from the lab and taken photos, proof of what was happening here. The evidence was enough to arrest Dr. Kater, and she hoped it was enough to warrant an air strike on the lab.
Her recommendation would be fire-bombing the compound. Utter destruction was called for, though she knew the chances of that happening—especially on the recommendation of one junior agent—were tiny. But the chance would drop to zero were she unable to get this information back to her superiors.
The trees grew sparser, and the Jeep shuddered up a last slope, and she was there, on the plateau. The plane was not there. She turned off the Jeep and listened for the sound of a plane engine moving away—or better yet, moving toward her. But she heard nothing.
She considered phoning the pilot again. But there was no reason to do that. He would show up, or he would not.
An engine noise, faint, approaching. Ah, good. Miray scanned the skies, focusing to the south, where the pilot would likely be coming from.
A moment later, the noise shifted in pitch, and she understood she was not hearing a distant airplane. It was a vehicle, coming up the road she had just traveled.
She ran for her Jeep, jumped in, and tore off across the plateau, aiming for a thick patch of trees on the other side. She’d abandon the Jeep and hide in the trees, yes? It was a poor plan, unlikely to save her if someone from the lab was following her, but she could think of nothing better. She slammed the brakes just shy of the woods and grabbed her evidence. She ran. As she passed the first tree, she glanced behind her to see a 4-by-4 coming up the last rise to the plateau.
In it were two men from the lab: the big Cyprian, and the American, the one Dr. K had code-named Aruna. These men did whatever Dr. K told them to. The American had an AK9.
This was bad.
She sprinted through the woods, fear making her fast, training allowing her to keep the fear from turning to mindless panic. A patch of thick bushes appeared at her left. She swerved to them and shoved her briefcase and satellite phone under them. It’d be easier to run without them.
She swung back right and wove through the trees. Above her head, a tree trunk splintered, raining bits of wood down on her, the sound of gunfire coming a fraction of a second later. She didn’t pause or look behind her. She ran for her life.
And, just possibly, for the lives of everyone.
The chase lasted too briefly. The Cyprian had taken a parallel route through sparser trees, it seemed, for when she burst into a clearing, there he was, waiting for her, an MPT-76 in hand.
She had just enough time to be angry at herself for failing at her mission. And then he fired.
