Twelve minutes left.
If they were late, where would the terrorist cells strike? Drake imagined it would be in proximity to the Edison. Marsh would want the team to know his orders had been carried out to the letter. A car door opened ahead — just because the driver could — and Beau leaped over the top just in time. Alicia took hold of the edge of the frame and slammed it back into the man’s face.
Now they cut to the left, approaching 5th Avenue and even more crowds. Beau slipped through the worst of it like a pickpocket at a pop concert, followed by Alicia and Mai. Drake just shouted at everyone, his Yorkshireman’s patience finally running out. Both men and women blocked his path — men and women who didn’t give a rat’s shit whether he might be rushing to save his own life, one of his children’s, or even theirs. Drake muscled his way through, leaving one man sprawling. A woman with a baby glared at him hard enough to make him feel guilty, until he remembered what he was running for.
You’ll thank me later.
But, of course, she would never know. Whatever happened.
Now Beau shot left, running down the Avenue of the Americas towards 47th Street. A Magnolia Bakery passed by on the right, making Drake think of Mano, and then what the Hawaiian might have gleaned from Ramses by now. Two minutes later and they were blasting up 47th, Times Square suddenly visible to their left. The customary Starbucks sat to their right, bustling and queuing out the door. Drake scanned faces as he dashed by, but didn’t expect to come face to face with any suspects.
Four minutes.
Time was spinning away faster and even more precious than the last moments of a dying old man. The hotel’s gray façade and golden entrance appeared to the left, fronting the sidewalk, and Beau was the first to swing through the front doors. Drake skirted a luggage trolley and a dangerously reversing yellow cab to follow Mai inside. A wide foyer and patterned red carpet greeted them.
Beau and Alicia were already pressing the call buttons for separate elevators, hands close to concealed weapons, as a security guard watched them. Drake thought about producing the SPEAR team ID card, but it would only lead to more questions and the countdown was already inside the final three minutes. A chime announced that Alicia’s elevator had arrived and the team piled on. Drake stopped a young man from joining them, warding him off with an open palm. Thank God that worked, because the next gesture would have been a closed fist.
The four-strong team gathered themselves as the car rose, shaking off the run and drawing weapons. Once the door opened they piled out, searching for room 201. Instantly, a whirlwind of fists and legs was among them, shocking even Beau.
Somebody had been waiting.
Drake flinched as a fist connected above his eye socket but ignored the flash of pain. A foot tried to sweep his own but he sidestepped. The same figure moved away and beset Alicia, slamming her frame into the plastered wall. Mai stopped blows with raised hands and then Beau struck fast, a one-two that stopped all momentum and drove their attacker to his knees.
Drake leapt up and then punched downward with all his strength. Time was ebbing away. The figure, a chunky man wearing a thick jacket, shuddered under the Yorkshireman’s blow, but somehow managed to deflect the worst of it. Drake fell to the side, unbalanced.
“A punching bag,” Mai said. “He’s a punching bag. Positioned to slow us down.”
Beau drove in harder than before. “He is mine. You go.”
Drake jumped over the kneeling figure, checking room numbers. Their destination sat only three rooms away and they had one minute left. They were down to the final seconds. Drake paused outside the room and kicked at the door. Nothing happened.
Mai pushed him aside. “Move.”
One high kick and the wood splintered, a second and the frame collapsed. Drake coughed. “Must have weakened it for you.”
Inside, they spread out, guns ready and searching quickly but the object they sought was terribly obvious. It lay in the middle of the bed — an A4 size glossy photograph. Alicia approached the bed, staring from side to side.
“The room is immaculate,” Mai said. “No clues, I will bet.”
Alicia paused at the side of the bed, looking down and breathing shallowly. She shook her head and groaned as Drake joined her.
“Oh God. Is that a—”
The ringing telephone interrupted him. Drake leapt around the bed to the nightstand and snatched the receiver from the cradle.
“Yes!”
“Ah, I see you made it. Couldn’t have been easy.”
“Marsh! You crazy bastard. You’ve left us a photograph of the bomb? A fucking photograph?”
“Yes. Your first clue. Why, did you think I’d let you have the real thing? So stupid. Send it to your leaders and your eggheads. They will verify the serial numbers and all that other rubbish. The canisters of Plutonium E. The fissionable material. Boring stuff, really. The next clue will be even more telling.”
At that moment Beau entered the room. Drake was hoping he would be dragging Punchbag Man along with him but Beau drew an imaginary line across his carotid. “He killed himself,” the Frenchman said in a bemused voice. “Suicide pill.”
Shit.
“You see?” Marsh said. “We are very serious.”
“Please, Marsh,” Drake tried. “Just tell us what you want. We’ll do it right bloody now.”
“Oh, I’m sure you would. But we’ll save that for later, eh? How about this? Get running for clue number two. This chase is getting better and more difficult. You have twenty minutes to reach the Marea restaurant. It’s Italian, by the way and they make a mighty mean Nduju calzone, believe me. But no stopping for that, my friends, because this clue you will find placed under a toilet bowl. Enjoy.”
“Marsh—”
“Twenty minutes.”
The line went dead.
Drake cursed, turned, and ran like hell.
CHAPTER SEVEN
With no other option, Torsten Dahl and his team decided to dump the car and hoof it. He’d have liked nothing better than to hang on tight as Smyth threw a powerful SUV around half a dozen corners, tires squealing, objects shifting, but New York at this time was nothing but an angry snarl of yellow cabs, buses and hire cars. Gridlock was the word that entered Dahl’s mind, but it happened every day, most of the day, and still the horns blared and men shouted out of lowered windows. They ran hard, following directions. Lauren and Yorgi had shrugged into flak jackets. Kenzie jogged alongside Dahl, face turned down into a pout.
“I’d be of much more use to you,” she said to Dahl.
“No.”
“Oh, come on, how can it hurt?”
“Not a chance.”
“Oh, Torsty—”
“Kenzie, you are not getting your bloody katana back. And don’t call me that. Having one crazy woman assigning me nicknames is bad enough.”
“Oh, yeah? So did you and Alicia ever… you know?”
Smyth growled as they crossed another intersection, seeing pedestrians and bikes cramming the road at a green light, all taking their lives in their hands, but confident it wouldn’t be them who got hurt today. Quickly, they raced down the next street, soldiers barely feeling the burn of the sprint as they whipped around two slow-moving Prius’s, smashing wing mirrors. The GPS bleeped.
“Four minutes to the docks,” Yorgi estimated. “We should slow down.”
“I’ll slow down in three,” Smyth snapped. “Don’t tell me my job.”
Dahl handed Kenzie a Glock and a HK, not an easy task to perform covertly in New York. He winced as he did so. Against his better judgment they had practically been forced to accept the rogue agent’s help. This was no ordinary day and all measures, even desperate ones, were required. And truth be told, he still felt they might share a kinship, something of parallel military souls, which increased his level of trust.