‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Officer!’ The two cops looked in Vaughn’s direction as he called to them. ‘These guys are impersonating Marshalls!’
The effect was startling. The agents scowled and immediately dispersed toward their vehicles as the police officers changed their route and began marching quickly toward the entrance to Terrace Drive.
Vaughn put the car into reverse and pulled gently away as the officers attempted to intercept the SUVs, both of which were pulling out of the park and onto 5th Avenue. Vaughn saw the officers speaking into their radios as he turned away and drove north. He drove for thirty seconds before he then pulled the car into the sidewalk, killed the engine and jumped out. He locked the vehicle and then abandoned it, knowing that to use it further would be suicide as it would be tracked by MJ-12. He crossed the park toward the west and hoped against hope that Lopez had gotten the downlink sorted before escaping the park.
He walked as casually as he could, fighting the urge to sprint for the west side of the park among the joggers and dog walkers as he sought the nearest exit. He was headed for the denser trees of the Ramble, which would take him to the footbridge over the lake and onto West Drive and West 77th, perfect for losing himself on Central Park West and finding Lopez.
He crossed the footbridge and turned onto West Drive, then stopped as he saw two agents making their way toward him. Both reached for their weapons in an instant, aiming at him. Vaughn looked over his shoulder at the footbridge and the lake, but one of the agents shook his head.
‘You won’t make it,’ he snapped. ‘Hands on your head!’
Vaughn complied, glancing up and down the road but seeing no pedestrians, no police officers or any other source of assistance that he could use to scare off the agents. One of them maintained their aim at him as the other hurried forward and produced a pair of handcuffs.
‘Where’s the drone?’ he demanded as he fastened one cuff around Vaughn’s right wrist.
Vaughn’s arm was yanked down off the top of his head and pinned against the small of his back.
‘What drone?’
A grim chuckle and the agent behind him reached up for the other wrist. Vaughn dropped his head forward and then snapped it back, the back of his skull smacking into the agent’s nose with a dull crack that echoed among the silent trees. Vaughn spun around, swinging his free left arm around to grab the agent and pull him against his chest as a human shield, the other cuffed wrist slammed up into the man’s throat and pitching him backwards and off his feet as Vaughn reached beneath his jacket and drew the man’s pistol from its holster and jammed it against his jaw. The entire move took no more than two seconds, far too fast for the other gunman to pick his target without fear of hitting his comrade.
‘Walk,’ Vaughn snapped at the gunman, ‘or I’ll sink him in the lake.’
The gunman shrugged.
‘Sink him then but you’ll go down with him. There’s no escape pal, the rest of our team will be here soon.’
Vaugh betrayed no emotion as he cursed silently and sought an escape route.
‘You’re done,’ the gunman insisted. ‘Drop the weapon or I’ll shoot you straight through him.’
Vaughn knew that he had no option but to kill both men and hope that he didn’t take a bullet in the process. Lopez and the drone were the priority and he knew that he could not afford for them to fail in escaping MJ-12’s agents.
A sudden whining noise roared in from nowhere and Vaughn saw something streak across the sky above them in a blur of motion. The other gunman threw his hands up in front of his face as the drone rocketed down and smashed into his head at full speed. Vaughn turned the agent in his grasp and rammed one knee into his thigh, crippling the man’s leg with a single blow. The agent crumpled onto the path as Vaughn drove his boot down onto the man’s face, incapacitating him and then he dashed forward.
The gunman hit by the drone tumbled onto the pathway, his face bleeding profusely as he tried to aim his gun at Vaughn. Vaughn swung his boot and it impacted the gunman’s wrist with a loud crack like a snapping twig as the delicate bones shattered under the blow.
The gunman’s pistol flew from his grasp as he cried out in pain. Vaughn jumped over him and dashed to the drone, which had smashed into the pathway and was now scattered into dozens of pieces all along the bank. Vaughn saw the drone’s camera drive and grabbed it, ripped it from the drone’s frame as he turned and sprinted down West Drive toward Central Park West. He tossed the guard’s gun into the bushes as he hurried out onto the main street and saw Lopez on the sidewalk opposite, beckoning him to follow.
Vaughn dodged the traffic as he jaywalked across to her.
‘We lost the drone!’ he snapped. ‘You’re lucky I got the drive.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Lopez replied without concern as she turned and walked swiftly away down West 77th Street. ‘And you lost the damned car.’
‘The agency will sort that out,’ Vaughn said. ‘Did the download complete?’
Lopez smiled as they walked and hailed a cab.
‘Oh ye of little faith,’ she murmured as the cab pulled in alongside them. ‘You think I’d trash the drone without first pulling the data from it?’
Under her jacket Lopez held her laptop.
‘You downloaded it directly?’ Vaughn asked in surprise. ‘What about the agents on foot who were chasing it?’
‘I led them into the trees and then turned around,’ she said. ‘Only took a moment to land the drone, plug it into the USB port and download everything directly, then send it back up again. They never knew a thing.’ She looked at the cab beside them. ‘Ladies first, right?’
Vaughn stared at her for a moment and then shook his head with a smile as he opened the cab door. They hadn’t even got inside when Lopez’s cell rang. She recognized the voice instantly.
‘Wilms is on the move.’
‘Where to?’
‘Lexington. He’s left the hotel via a back door and is on foot, moving quickly. If you hurry, you can intercept him.’
‘What’s your play in all of this, Mitchell?’
‘Just get there, I’ll take care of the rest. I know which vehicle he arrived in. Have LeMay’s original driver meet us there.’
‘And do what?’ Lopez asked as the cab pulled away and Vaughn, able to hear the conversation, directed the driver to head for Lexington.
‘It’s all in hand,’ Mitchell replied. ‘Trust me, once I’m done with him, there won’t be a thing he won’t tell us. But if he escapes the city, we’ll never see him again.’
XXXIII
Hannah stared at Ethan in amazement.
‘You’re kidding, right?’ she uttered. ‘You’re trying to tell me you think that Black Knight is some kind of UFO and that its owners might be listening in, that they picked up Nikola Tesla’s signals and started transmitting?’
Ethan gestured to the Piri Reis map.
‘Somebody had to tell those cartographers that there was a continent beneath Antarctica, because they sure as hell couldn’t have known about it. Quite apart from that, we know that most UFO sightings occur not over the land but over and beneath the ocean.’
Again, Hannah appeared stunned.
‘And we “know” this how?’
Ethan leaned against the control panel and folded his arms against the cold penetrating his Arctic jacket.
‘Let’s just say that Lopez and I spent a fair amount of time chasing around the globe in pursuit of artifacts for the Defense Intelligence Agency that support the existence of alien life in our universe. In the course of that work we’ve found that most craft described as UFO’s originate from maritime environments — they come out of the sea, or in some cases, the ice.’