Dasyueshan Mountain Forest, Taiwan
LUKE WASN’T SURE if he’d heard correctly. He stared at Bo and then at Jenny. ‘What? Jenny, is that right? You’ve offered to trade places with her?’ He indicated Hannah.
His colleague – her face tight-lipped, her jaw set – replied with a nod.
Luke had an inkling he knew what was behind this. Was it because Hannah still had the flash drive? And Jenny was prepared to make this sacrifice to get it safely away to where it was needed? An incredible act of self-sacrifice to help avert a devastating war. He could think of no other explanation. But he still couldn’t let her do this. There had to be another way. His thoughts were already heading into dark places, weighing up tough choices, making the most cynical of calculations. He and Jenny were highly trained and valued intelligence officers; Hannah Slade was not. She was a collector. Someone off-the-books. A deniable asset. That didn’t mean she was expendable, but if there was a way to transfer whatever data she was carrying to Luke and Jenny, he knew exactly what course he would be expected to take.
‘Um. No. Sorry,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s not happening.’ This was not a discussion he wanted to have in front of their captors but Luke knew he needed to quash this idea immediately. ‘Jen, just think about it. Just … no.’
‘I have thought about it, Luke,’ Jenny Li replied, ‘and this is my decision. It’s the right thing to do.’
And yet something else was playing out in the back of Luke’s mind. It was something deeply sinister that Kreutzer had said to them last night, just before he left them in their cabin. Something about Bo’s plans for them. ‘As for you two,’ he’d said, ‘you’ll find out soon enough.’ That didn’t sound like a scenario that saw any of them leaving this place in one piece. It was time to find out.
‘OK, Mr Bo, let’s negotiate,’ Luke said, addressing the gangster. ‘What exactly do you want from us?’ But Bo, he realized, wasn’t listening. The man’s expression had darkened. No more the genial host.
‘Enough of this!’ Bo announced, waving over Kreutzer. ‘It’s time. Take them to the cage.’
The cage? If ever there was a trigger word for Luke, it was this. He knew, through training and painful personal experience, that the best time to escape was in the early moments of capture. After that, your options dwindled dramatically, especially if you were restrained with wrist-ties or leg-irons. They had already missed one opportunity back in that underground car park in Taipei. He wasn’t going to pass up another. It was time for direct action.
As Kreutzer came up to him, Luke raised his right hand and wagged a finger in the American’s face. ‘No wrist-ties,’ he told him.
It took only a second to distract Kreutzer’s attention but it was enough. With his left hand, Luke reached down, quick as a flash, and grabbed the handle of the knife, lifting it clear from the sheath strapped to Kreutzer’s calf. In a lightning-fast move, he thrust it halfway to the hilt, right into Kreutzer’s stomach, causing him to cry out and drop his weapon with a clatter to the floor as he clutched his hands to his abdomen. It was a calculated, calibrated attack. Luke could have stabbed Kreutzer in his femoral artery, making him bleed out in under three minutes. He could have gone straight for the jugular and done it even quicker. But he didn’t. Instead, he had given Kreutzer a wound he could probably survive. And now he had his Heckler & Koch.
Luke dropped the knife and snatched up the machine-pistol, instinctively checking that the safety was already off, then dashed over to where Bo stood, open-mouthed in shock. The triad man wasn’t smiling now. For the first time Luke saw something different in his eyes: fear.
Luke jabbed the muzzle of the weapon hard into Bo’s ribs, probably harder than he needed to but everything was happening in double-quick time and he could feel the adrenaline surging through his veins. ‘Put your hands up behind your head,’ he ordered.
A low groan came from where Kreutzer lay prone on the floor, a dark pool spreading next to him. Bo was still speechless but Luke knew that wouldn’t last, that any second now he would raise the alarm and there were a great many more men with guns on the other side of that door. They were not even close to getting out of this, but Luke had a plan forming fast in his head.