The men charged forward away from his position-toward Kat and the Ghost. A spurt of panic broadsided him. Those guys were headed straight at Kat! He briefly considered standing up and shouting at the men to draw their attention and their fire away from her. But then his brain kicked back into gear. She was a trained Special Forces operative. She knew what to do when a bunch of guys ran in her general direction.
As the men moved away, Jeff ran lightly behind them, staying well out of their line of sight and possible line of fire. Who were these guys? If they were police, they were certainly acting weird. Cops would have shouted for the Ghost to halt, would have fired warning shots in the air. Searchlights would flare to life, rows of police cars would shine their headlights, and the Ghost would be well and truly caught.
But these guys were sprinting grimly, pistols at the ready, silent, coordinated, and for all the world moving like a team of commandos closing in for a kill.
He careened around the side of the house and spied the front door gaping wide open. One of the men was just leaving the front porch to rejoin his buddies. Jeff ducked behind a lush hibiscus as the guy raced past him. The guy was wearing a black knit cap and black greasepaint on his face. SWAT team maybe, but no regular cop dressed like that.
Jeff risked whispering to Kat, “Where are you?”
“Running,” she grunted.
As a powerful engine gunned nearby, the men dropped any attempt at stealth and took off running, yelling back and forth in what sounded like something Slavic.
“Cobra! Five targets straight at you!” Jeff called urgently. He swore violently as the team of armed men sprinted right at Kat. He was too far away to fling himself in front of her but, had he been beside her, he’d have done it in a heartbeat.
She veered off to the right, smartly separating herself from the Ghost as a target. The bad guys lurched and slowed momentarily in their surprise at spotting her. But now they had her in their sights and seemed determined to bag her, too. Three men peeled off after the Ghost; the other two went after her.
It was a no-brainer which group he was going after. No way was he leaving her alone to face down these guys on her own.
Neither he nor Kat was heavily armed. Without knowing how skilled-or unskilled-these guys were, he dared not take them on directly in any kind of a fight. Besides, for all he knew, these guys were law enforcement types.
“Take cover when you can,” he ordered Kat tersely as he darted out from behind a palm tree to follow the black-clad men chasing her.
He was maybe thirty feet behind the last assailant when he spied Kat’s lithe form ahead, slender and dark, sprinting through the trees. She dodged bushes and tree trunks with incredible agility, and the armed men fell back slightly. But then the lead guy raised his pistol.
“Incoming fire,” Jeff bit out frantically. He was too close to the hostiles to be talking on the radio, but he had no choice. If they heard him and turned to fire on him, so be it. Unfortunately, he was too far away to tackle the guy with the gun.
He expected Kat to dive for the ground, to reduce her target profile to practically nothing, maybe even for her to roll on her back and fire back at the shooter. But instead, she picked up speed and literally ran up the trunk of a tree, momentarily going horizontal about six feet off the ground. She sling-shotted back down to the ground with an extra dose of momentum, zipped across the shooter’s field of fire and took a running start at a medium-size palm tree. She ran the first eight feet or so up the trunk, then in one smooth move, slung a short rope around the tree, grabbed the free end as it whipped around the trunk, and used the rope and her feet to shimmy up the tree as fast as any chimp.
Jeff stared in disbelief. He’d never seen anything like it. Apparently, neither had the hostiles, for they both slowed to an incredulous jog, staring up into the treetops where she’d disappeared.
A moment later, a black shape hurtled out of a neighboring palm tree, swinging down and out on a long frond, landing lightly in the path well ahead of her pursuers. Then Kat was off and running again, this time with enough of a head start to duck into the deep shadows and vanish from sight.
Belatedly, the men took off running again. They slowed and peered into the area where she’d disappeared, but after thirty seconds or so of fruitless searching, gave up and turned to run for the road, where their buddies were shouting. Sounded like the other team wanted these two to join them already.
Jeff was stunned. He’d seen enough cheesy martial arts movies in his youth to know Hollywood’s images of ninjas, but he’d never dreamed that any of the spectacular feats portrayed on film might actually be real. Had he not just seen that with his own eyes, he’d never have believed it possible.
A vehicle roared away, its sound disappearing into the night. Sounded like the Ghost was making his getaway on a motorcycle.
Kat panted into his earpiece. “Who are these guys?”
“No idea. They’re acting military. Say status,” he bit out.
“A van just pulled up. The men are getting in. I’m taking the car.”
Jeff swore and veered toward the main road. He was in time to see their compact sedan peel out from behind the shrubs where he’d hidden it and take off down the road at high speed. Across the street, the last black-clad man piled into an unmarked white van, and the vehicle gunned its engine. Its tires spit gravel, and the rear end fishtailed as it pulled out onto the road, accelerating hard.
“They’re giving chase,” he called. “White van. Rear license plate obscured. Blacked-out windshield. You shouldn’t have trouble spotting it. It’ll be the only thing on the road behind you doing a hundred miles per hour.”
“Thanks,” Kat retorted.
“What in the hell were you thinking, leaving by yourself?” he demanded over his radio as he took off running futilely down the road behind the fleeing vehicles. Christ. She was out there by herself now, caught between the Ghost and those commandos. And he wasn’t there to protect her. A cold fist of dread closed around his throat.
“I was thinking about not losing the Ghost,” she replied tartly. “I’ll let you know where he leads me. I just passed a moped rental place. It’s about a quarter mile from the mansion. Hot-wire one if you can’t wake up the owner. I might need backup.”
“Ya think?” he snapped.
He cursed her roundly as he ran for all he was worth. His mind churned as fast as his legs. Who were those guys? He’d lay odds they weren’t cops. D’Abeau knew they were staking out Shangri-La. The detective’s men wouldn’t have pulled weapons on him and Kat. Private mercenaries, then? Maybe hired by the homeowner to protect his art? But then why had they given chase to the Ghost and not stuck with the art collection? What private citizen bothered to or could afford to hire a half-dozen hard-core mercenaries, anyway? Such men did not come cheap.
Who, then?
They’d moved in when the Ghost came out of the house. Enemies of the thief’s, perhaps? What did an art thief do to merit such enemies? Had he robbed the wrong man? Maybe stolen something besides art in a former job?
All that came into his mind were questions and more questions. He wanted some answers, dammit! He humped the quarter mile to the moped stand in about a minute. Not long in the real world, but a lifetime when his team was split up and an op was going to hell fast. After determining that the owner didn’t live there, it took him another minute to break a flimsy chain lock on one of the mopeds and hot-wire it. A two-and-a-half minute head start for the Ghost, Kat and the mystery commandos. More than a lifetime. An eternity.
Swearing under his breath, he peeled out of the stand and threw the throttle wide open. The lights of Bridgetown twinkled in the distance and a salt breeze whipped in his face, making his eyes water. He kept his mouth shut to avoid swallowing bugs and confined his cursing to silent epithets in his head.