The clacking rush of an approaching train drifted into the platform — one of the express lines that served the main stations in the off hours. The hacker raised his hands and slowly turned, but his eyes shifted down to the tracks. He sidestepped closer to the edge.
Nick raised his gun and advanced. “That’s a bad idea, kid.”
As the rush grew louder, a growing light shined from the tunnel behind Grendel. The hacker lifted his eyes to meet Nick’s. There was fear in them, but Nick could see something else. A taunt. A half second later, Grendel flashed a smile and jumped down to the tracks, fleeing toward the oncoming train.
A horn blared. Lights flickered and brakes locked with an earsplitting shriek. Nick leaned out over the tracks to see what had happened, but he had to jerk back again as the train blew by. Inertia carried it six car lengths into the station before the driver got it stopped.
“He jumped in front of a train,” said Nick, hopping down to the tracks and racing toward the cab.
“He what?”
“He jumped down onto the tracks and ran into the tunnel in front of the Metro.”
“I see the street entrance, One. I’m coming down.”
At the front of the train, Nick holstered his weapon and bent down to examine the bumper. The bewildered driver shouted a stream of Hungarian through the Plexiglas above. Nick didn’t look up. He ran his hand along the dirty aluminum and then held it up in the light of the cab’s left headlamp, rubbing the grime between his thumb and fingertips. “Negative. Hold your position. There’s no blood here.”
He jogged down the other side, bending down every few paces to look beneath the cars for body parts. He saw none. Above him, the late-night passengers peered out their windows. A few shouted and pounded on the glass.
During the course of his career, Nick had witnessed two suicides at close range. He had stood face-to-face with a suicide bomber in Bagram, and he had watched a Pakistani ISI agent pitch himself off a cliff to avoid capture. Of the two, the bomber had smiled, but not like Grendel. The hacker’s face did not show the same placid acceptance of death. Nick stood up and ran, turning sideways and pushing against the car as he squeezed past tunnel supports. “Is my locator breaking the surface, Three?”
“Affirmative.”
“Follow my signal. Stay above ground.”
Twenty feet down the track from the far side of the platform, he saw it — an alcove cut into the tunnel wall beneath a faded emergency-exit sign. “I’m turning east.” He pushed through the exit into a long low passage. As soon as he was in, he heard the echo of a door clicking closed on the other end. “He’s out! Find him!”
“Working on it. I had to divert around some buildings.”
Nick raced down the passage, up a flight of stairs, and slammed through another heavy door into cold night air. It had started snowing again. Big, airy flakes fell lazily down through the yellow cones of light beneath the street lamps. Quinn came running around the corner a half block away and pulled up short. The two stared blankly at one another. “Where is he?” shouted the young operative.
The row of buildings between them faced a small park. Nick spotted movement among the bare trees. “There!”
Both men broke into a run, and Quinn pulled ahead as they crossed into the park. The young operative had his forty-five out. With the long, fat suppressor fixed to its nose, the bulky XDm looked about as subtle as an RPG. Nick was thankful that the area was deserted.
Quinn stopped at an old-school carousel and rested his forearms on the rail, leveling his weapon. “He’s making for the buildings across the street. Let me shoot him.”
“Cleared hot. One to the calf. I don’t want him bleeding out.”
“Copy that.”
Nick never broke stride as he raced past, just right of the line of fire. He had complete faith in the kid’s aim.
At the same moment the muted thud of the shot reached Nick’s ears, Grendel stumbled. He cried out and pitched headlong onto the snow-dusted grass, but he did not stay down for long. Nick had to give him points for tenacity. The hacker got up, pinballed off a tree, and limped on, leaving a crimson trail through the snow.
Nick was closing the distance now. “Give it up,” he called, drawing his Beretta again.
The hacker only quickened his pathetic gait, letting out small cries of pain with every other step. He looked back over his shoulder. No taunting smile this time, only fear. He limped past the trees at the edge of the park and turned south onto the street, where a black sedan plowed right through him.
Grendel’s body flipped over the hood like a rag doll, glanced off the windshield, and slammed down into the gutter at Nick’s feet. His head hit the curb with a hollow thock. Blood and gray matter spattered across the snow. The driver’s window was down and he locked eyes with Nick as he passed. The young face looked oddly familiar, and there was something else — a tattoo on the left forearm, a simple geometric shape set within a circle, a crescent moon with an eight-pointed star nestled in its bend.
Where had he seen that mark before? An image flashed in Nick’s mind — the drunk at the Black Dog, the one who had stumbled into Quinn and outed them to Grendel. Then a second image overpowered the first — the same youthful face under a ball cap, asking if Nick needed help, a green medical kit slung under his arm.
Nick raised his weapon and fired, but the sedan was already at the next intersection. His rounds blew out the back windshield and sparked off the bumper as the killer fishtailed around the corner. Then he passed behind a building, out of range.
CHAPTER 15
Nick and Quinn sprinted up a wet cobblestone street, heading for the Vitara. “Lighthouse, I need a patch to NSA reconnaissance right now!”
“Coming up, Nightmare.” The voice in Nick’s ear belonged to Molly, manning the SATCOM station at Romeo Seven. A moment later, she connected him to an NSA space-based reconnaissance crew.
“This is Raven Zero One. Send your code and request.”
“Raven, this is Nightmare One, authorization seven zero one, requesting a priority-four retask for your bird.”
A short pause. “Nightmare, you are authenticated and authorized. Go with retask.”
“Do you have my grids?”
“Affirmative.”
In midstride, Nick glanced down at his watch and did some quick math. “I need a two-mile-radius scan. You are looking for a sedan with a blown-out back window.” He didn’t bother giving the color. At night, it wouldn’t matter. The crew would start the search with synthetic aperture radar, taking rapid, highly detailed radar photos, the best way to find a vehicle with a missing window. Then they would switch to infrared to track it. Neither sensor used true color. “Send me your feed. Lighthouse will pass you my streaming address.”
“Raven copies all. We’ll have the bird on target in two mikes.”
Nick’s foot was on the Vitara’s gas pedal before his door had even closed. He took a hard right at the end of the street and then right again on the next one over, working south toward the point where Grendel was run down. “Anytime now, Raven.”
“Copy, Nightmare One, our bird is overhead. Stand by.”
Nick held out an open palm to Quinn and snapped his fingers. “Eyes, please.”
Quinn was ready for him. He placed a compact head-mounted display in Nick’s hand, a composite frame with a tiny screen positioned at the edge of the right eye — the military version of Google Glass. Nick put them on and then slapped his smartphone into the kid’s chest. “Sync it up and give me Raven’s feed. I want to see this guy as soon as they lock him up.”
Quinn busied himself with the phone and a few seconds later, a black-and-white video appeared at the corner of Nick’s right eye. A stream of photo-quality radar stills flashed by like pages in a flip book. After drifting southwest over urban Budapest for nearly a minute, the satellite feed settled on a sedan heading west on a two-lane street. The radar return showed every surface of the car in varied shades of light gray, except for the back windshield. That part came through as an empty black hole.