“That’s him, Raven.”
“Copy Nightmare. Switching to infrared. The target vehicle is two miles southwest of your current position, heading west toward the river.”
The video switched from radar stills to gray-scale infrared and showed the sedan moving along a two-lane road at moderate speed. The killer paused at the next intersection like any other law-abiding citizen.
Quinn watched the feed on Nick’s phone. “He doesn’t look like he’s in a hurry.”
“He already has a busted rear window. He doesn’t want to draw any more attention to himself.” Nick turned west down an unlit street and floored it, but a block later, a brick wall materialized out of the dark. He gritted his teeth and slammed on the brakes. A dead end.
He smacked the steering wheel with his palm. “Get me a street map,” he said, shifting into reverse.
As Nick floored the Vitara backward down the alley, Quinn shrank the satellite video to one side of his heads-up display and added a street map. Nick’s blue dot was trapped in a web of city streets. The target’s red dot had just reached the wide road next to the Danube. It turned south and accelerated. The killer’s lead was growing.
Nick hit the brakes and spun the Vitara 180 degrees on the slick road, coming to a stop at the intersection he had just left. He let it idle.
“Boss?”
“Give me a sec.”
Quinn stared at the feed. “He’s getting away.”
“I know. Shut up.”
Nick studied the map. None of the main roads in Budapest were straight. All of them led in big circles except for the winding river road and a four-lane highway that cut diagonally through the web, heading southeast to the airport. A half mile ahead of the red dot, a side street connected the river road to that highway.
Nick shoved the Vitara into gear. He turned left, backtracking for two blocks before hopping a curb and cutting across a grassy park to get to a two-lane road heading northeast.
“You’re going completely the wrong way,” said Quinn, gripping the dash as they bounced onto the road. “The target is headed south. He’s headed out of town.”
“He’s going to turn east.”
“How could you possibly know th—”
“Nightmare, your target is turning east,” said Raven. “He’s leaving the river.”
Nick took his eyes off the road long enough to purse his lips at Quinn. “Copy that, Raven. Moving to intercept.”
After continuing two blocks in the wrong direction, Nick turned south onto a four-lane road that made a wide circle around the city. The dots on the map were finally converging again, both heading for the highway to the airport — the blue from the northeast, the red from the west.
Nick reached the highway first, two miles north of the street the killer was on. The engine screamed as he pushed the little SUV’s tachometer to the limit.
Seconds later, the target reached the highway, still a mile and a half ahead. The red dot turned southeast and accelerated beyond the speed limit.
“I think he’s made us,” said Quinn.
“Impossible. We’re too far back.”
“Target is stopping,” said the satellite controller. “He’s pulling over, still well short of the airport.”
Just as Raven described, the sedan slowed to a stop on the side of the highway. The killer jumped over the barrier and climbed a set of stairs to a footbridge next to the road. “Zoom out one, Raven,” ordered Nick, and the image blinked to a wider view. The footbridge led across the road and over a small field to a Metro station. Nick’s target was about to disappear. “Raven, go optical, now! Get me some details before we lose him.”
The crisp gray-scale image turned to dull black, broken only by a few orange lights on the street and on the train platform. The target ran beneath a dim lamp on the footbridge. He was barely a shadow.
The image flashed back to gray scale. “Negative, Nightmare. There’s not enough light. Sticking with infrared. Suspect is wearing a hoodie, dark in color. That’s all we got.”
The sedan came up fast, abandoned on the side of the road. Nick skidded to a stop behind it and threw open his door.
“Boss—” said Quinn, but Nick was already out of the car.
He ran across the short grass field underneath the footbridge and half-climbed, half-vaulted over the chain-link fence at the edge of the tracks. By the time he reached the platform, the train doors were closing. There were a number of passengers. Sunrise was approaching and the early commute had begun. As the train pulled out, Nick counted at least six dark hoodie sweatshirts among the passengers near the windows. He let out an angry shout and punched the schedule display. The Plexiglas cover cracked. The few remaining passengers on the platform stared and backed away.
Quinn appeared at Nick’s shoulder. “He’s gone, boss. We lost him.”
CHAPTER 16
He was there, at ground zero.”
Drake looked incredulous. “You sure about that?”
“Absolutely. I spoke to him. It was the same guy.” Nick stared out his cabin window. The sun was just breaking over the eastern horizon, spreading its light across a solid cloud deck far below the aircraft. The two older team members sat facing each other in club seats with a faux wooden table between them. Quinn was across the aisle, sound asleep. Their flight to Turkey would last another hour.
Nick and Quinn had returned to the killer’s car to find it completely clean — no papers, no prints, even the VIN had been scratched off. The license plates were stolen. Drake and Scott had fared little better at the apartment. Scott cracked the hacker’s laptop and disabled the booby traps on the servers, but the servers did not reveal the Emissary’s identity. All he found were some scraps of code that looked like a virus and a second e-mail that went out on the day of the DC bombing. That e-mail had prompted a robbery at Istanbul University, one that had already made the news. They had no other leads.
After a long silence, Nick pressed a switch on his armrest to darken all the cabin windows. Then he glanced across the table at Drake. “I know you did something to make Amanda mad. What was it?”
Drake had started playing with his phone. He kept his eyes on the screen. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Terri Belfacci invited me to coffee. I went.”
Nick nodded. That would do it. Terri was their primary contact at the CIA — striking, flamboyant, and quite open about her designs on Drake. She referred to Amanda as “the grease monkey,” even when Amanda was in the room.
“You’re an idiot.”
Drake dropped his hands to his lap and looked up. “I know.”
Before Nick could follow up with all the reasons why Drake was an idiot, the big operative changed the subject back to the Emissary. “So, has our new friend made any more chess moves?”
“He made another one while we were on our way to pick you up last night. So far, he’s given me two pawns, sending them up the edges of the board. I’m no chess master, but that’s a very unconventional opening.”
Drake shrugged. “So he’s just using the app as a conduit to get your attention. He doesn’t know a pawn from a pineapple.”
“Maybe.” Nick let his head settle back onto the leather cushion. “Or maybe he’s a grand master and he’s setting me up to take a beating.”
The door separating the main cabin from the aircraft’s aft comm station opened and Scott peeked out. He nodded to Nick. “The colonel’s on the line. He wants to speak to you.”