Knife . . . knife . . .
He groped with his right hand, down his leg to his calf, felt the sheath, then drew the knife and began hacking at the air bag, holding his breath and squinting against the powder. The air bag collapsed like a sun-warmed, partially deflated balloon, and Fisher kept slicing until it came free of the steering wheel. He tossed it aside and glanced at the rearview mirror. The Audis were coming on fast, only two hairpins behind.
Fisher shifted the Range Rover into reverse, stomped on the gas, then the brake, and then shifted into drive and accelerated around the boulder. Give them something else to think about.He slammed on the brakes, rolled down his window. He plucked the M67 fragmentation grenade off his harness and pulled the pin. He checked the rearview mirror. The lead Audi had cleared the second closest turn and was accelerating. This would be a lot easier with real bad guys,Fisher thought. He counted three more seconds, then let the M67's spoon fly, let the grenade cook for one second, then hurled it into the dirt berm. He hit the accelerator and lurched forward. As he skidded into the next turn, the grenade exploded. Fisher heard the skidding of tires on dirt, then the familiar crunch of fiberglass.
Another deposit lost,Fisher thought with a grim smile.
HEpushed the Range Rover as hard as he dared on the dirt road, which was growing muddier with each passing moment. The four-wheel drive helped, but with the road so narrow, Fisher found himself glancing and bumping off the dirt walls, leaving sod and branches and shredded foliage in his wake.
Suddenly the road widened into an oblong clearing covered in mulch and chopped tree branches. A loggers' dumping ground,Fisher thought. Ahead, the road split--the center branch continuing straight, west, the other two heading to the north and the south. Though he'd seen no signs, he assumed he'd crossed the German border. The sooner he could find a major highway, the sooner he could widen the gap between himself and Hansen's team. He slowed, letting the Range Rover coast, and checked the OPSAT map. The L1 highway, which ran north to Neuscheuerof and beyond and south to Obersgegen and Korperich, lay two miles down the center road. He needed a highway, and they probably knew he needed a highway. Take the road less expected,Fisher's instincts told him.
He spun the wheel to the left and accelerated out of the clearing and onto the north road. Again he found himself immediately bracketed by trees. This road was narrower than the previous one by at least two feet but so far appeared less winding. He accelerated to 80 kph, just over fifty miles an hour, and didn't slow for a quarter mile until the road veered right. He eased into the turn, then followed the road back to the right and onto another straightaway. Ahead, the road started up an incline. When the Range Rover was twenty feet from the crest, he took his foot off the gas pedal, bleeding speed; then the car was up and over and back on level ground. A wooden bridge loomed through the windshield. Even as his brain analyzed the structure and warned, Too old, too rickety, the Range Rover's front tires were thudding over the uneven planks. He heard a soft crunch, like a hiker's foot plunging through the crust of a rotted fallen log, and then the Range Rover was tipping forward and plunging into darkness.
FISHERfelt the car go vertical and had a momentary wave of vertigo. The Range Rover stopped, tailgate jutting skyward through the bridge's deck. Fisher had a split second to refocus, and then the car was moving again, plunging straight down. He felt his belly fill his throat. The headlights illuminated only blackness, but then Fisher saw a shimmer of water, wet stones, steep-sided rock walls. The hood crashed into the ground. Fisher was thrown forward against his seat belt. His chest slammed into the steering wheel. The horn began blaring. Shit! . . .He pushed himself off the steering wheel and pressed his back into the seat. The horn kept blaring. He switched off the ignition. The horn went silent. He switched off the headlights. Through the windshield he could see water rising over the hood. He turned around, looked out the tailgate window. The red taillights were glowing eerily against the underside of the bridge.
Moving slowly, carefully, with the sound of gravel grating on steel, the vehicle was moving again, tail end tipping forward. With a surprisingly gentle crash, the Range Rover landed on its roof, rocking gently a few times before coming to a stop. Upside down, Fisher looked over his shoulder and saw the creek water begin rising against the tailgate window and trickling through the weather seals. He took stock of the Rover; the steel cage had done its job. Aside from a slight dent in the sheet-metal roof, the cabin seemed undamaged. Nor was the rising water a worry. The creek was shallow, a foot or two at most. His driver's window was still open, and through it water had begun to trickle. It was surprisingly cold, almost instantly numbing the skin of his hand.
His big problem was the horn. As he had, upon reaching the clearing Hansen and the others would have probably stopped. Faced with no tire treads to follow in the mulch, they would have had to explore each road, if only for a few dozen feet to determine if the Range Rover had passed that way. The blaring horn had just negated that delay.
Right palm braced against the roof, Fisher unbuckled his seat belt with his left and eased himself down, then turned onto his belly and crawled into the backseat. Working from feel alone, he found the handle to the Pelican case and dragged it forward onto the passenger seat. He spun himself around again, stuck his legs out the open window, and began crawling backward, dragging the case out with him. Once clear of the car, he got up, stepped out of the water onto the bank, and found a clump of bushes where he crouched down.
He took stock of his surroundings. The ravine was no more than twenty feet deep, but the walls were nearly vertical, with only the sparest of weeds and plants growing from the dirt. It was climbable, Fisher decided, but he doubted he had the time. To his left, past the bridge, the ravine disappeared into the darkness. To his right, a hundred feet away, was something interesting: a clearly man-made concrete wall sitting at a forty-five-degree angle to the streambed. After a few more moments, his eyes adjusted and he could make out a darker rectangle set into the facade. A mine?he wondered.
From the road above came the revving of an engine. Headlights swept over the bridge's uprights.
Time's up.
Fisher got up, hefted the Pelican case over his shoulder, and sprinted for the concrete facade. He was there ten seconds later and immediately realized it wasn't a mine. The rectangle he'd seen was actually a rusted steel door flanked by angled facades. On the door a square white sign with red letters told Fisher where he was: VERBOTEN. SIEGFRIEDSTELLUNG WESTWALL.
This was no mine entrance, but rather part of the Siegfried Line, a span of defensive forts and bunkers built by Germany during WWI and again in the 1930s in answer to France's Maginot Line. The Siegfried stretched almost four hundred miles from Kleve, on the border with the Netherlands, to Weil am Rhein, to the north on the border with Switzerland, and was made up of almost twenty thousand bunkers, tunnels, ramparts, dragon's teeth tank traps, and termite-mound machine-gun emplacements.