Terrified pedestrians jumped out of his way as Cobb motored down the footpath. Building after building whizzed past as he sped through the city. The alleyways and cross streets offered fleeting glimpses of his target, but he needed to narrow the gap.
Cobb ducked low to lessen the drag and tried to squeeze every last bit of power from the small motor. From his rekky earlier in the week, he knew the upcoming parking garage provided his best opportunity to close the distance between himself and the kidnappers. It was a risky move, but their time was running out. If the ambulance made it to the highway system, there was no way that they could keep up.
Not on tiny scooters.
McNutt chased the van on the main street as Cobb swerved left and steered his bike up the entrance ramp of the massive structure. At the top of the incline, he cut diagonally across the garage’s uppermost level. Had it been earlier in the day, the spaces would have been filled with cars, but at this hour the floor was virtually empty.
With no traffic to slow him, Cobb pulled in front of the ambulance. Unfortunately, his view was over the side of a building, looking down to the pavement below.
Under normal circumstances, Cobb never would have risked a shot. The streets were full of innocent bystanders, and Jasmine was inside a speeding vehicle. And yet he sensed that this was his best opportunity to stop the van in the city.
It was a risky move, but one he opted to make.
Cobb steadied his aim, knowing that it should have been McNutt taking the shot. When it came to weapons, Cobb was highly skilled, but he wasn’t on McNutt’s level. Cobb knew all the variables — speeding vehicles, uneven pavement, varying elevations, wind, even temperature — but precisely compensating for their effects was a different matter. The calculations involved were staggering.
Unfortunately, McNutt was more than a block behind.
Cobb alone had the tactical advantage.
He took a deep breath then squeezed his trigger several times.
His first shot missed wide, but the windshield of the ambulance exploded on the second. The van lurched to the side, veering across the street through oncoming traffic. Other motorists were forced to take evasive action as the van swerved in front of them. The booming gunshots were followed by the sounds of brakes screeching and cars slamming into each other, one after the next. The groans of metal shearing against metal were accented by high-pitched cracks of shattering windows.
Cobb had hit the ambulance, but he had failed to stop it.
Worse, he had inadvertently created even more destruction.
He watched in horror as the day’s injury count grew in the massive pileup. Only McNutt’s quick reflexes saved him from becoming a casualty of the aftermath. As it was, he was merely immobilized, hemmed in by wreckage.
But the ambulance pressed on.
As Cobb reloaded, the driver pushed the accelerator to the floor and steered the ambulance down a narrow one-way alley. A moment later he turned sharply and the van disappeared behind the buildings one block over.
Cobb cursed as he gunned his scooter and looked for an exit.
By the time he reached street level, Cobb feared the worst. Five seconds can make all the difference in a chase. Thirty seconds was an eternity. The time had allowed McNutt to extricate himself from the traffic jam, but it had also put them at an even greater disadvantage. There was simply no way of knowing what had happened when they lost sight of the ambulance. As they sped down the one-way alley, Cobb knew they needed a break if they hoped to pick up the trail.
Ironically, their break was a trail.
At the end of the alley, they found torn chunks of rubber. Just beyond that, a scorched line had been burned onto the pavement. It started near the alleyway and haphazardly meandered down the street into the distance.
Cobb had seen similar markings before. He knew the rubber was a tire that had been torn from its wheel and that the ambulance was now riding on a rim. It was the grinding of metal on asphalt that had left the scarring. The zigzag pattern in the road meant the driver had never experienced losing a tire and was having trouble with the lack of stability.
More importantly, it meant they could follow the kidnappers.
Cobb and McNutt tore down the street in pursuit, their eyes pinned to the trail that led the way. Like the spark at the end of a fuse, they would inevitably reach the end. And when they did, they expected fireworks.
Not only had the missing tire made the ambulance hard to drive, but it had severely limited its speed. Only a few blocks from where they had first picked up the trail, they found the disabled vehicle stranded in the roadway.
Cobb and McNutt dismounted their bikes and approached on foot, using parked cars, garbage cans, and lampposts as cover. Neither liked the situation as they sensed they were charging into an ambush, but each accepted it was a chance that they had to take if they hoped to get to Jasmine and the bombers before the police arrived.
‘Cover me,’ Cobb said as they ducked behind an SUV less than twenty feet from the ambulance. ‘If they rigged the van to blow, you’ll be safer here.’
‘Screw safe,’ McNutt growled. ‘I want blood.’
‘You can get it from here. Now cover me.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Cobb took a deep breath and sprinted toward the ambulance, ready to return fire, but there was no sign of the man in black, the medic, or the driver. Still, he knew he wasn’t out of danger. There were a thousand different ways for the bombers to rig the rear doors. He realized any action he took from here on in might be his last.
Still, he had to know.
He carefully pulled the latch, hoping that the next sound he heard was a simple click rather than the deafening roar of a bomb followed by the singing of angels.
Instead the door swung open, revealing nothing.
The ambulance was empty.
35
Garcia was relieved to be back on the yacht. He had viewed his time on the speedboat as a necessary evil. Not only did it take him away from the gadgets and gizmos of his command center — the only things that helped him feel connected to the world — he simply wasn’t comfortable on the open water.
Never had been, never would be.
It wasn’t just because moisture was the mortal enemy of electronics. It had far deeper roots than that. His uneasiness had developed long before he had written his first lines of code. Even as a young boy, swimming in anything but a shallow pool had felt unsafe, no matter what his parents said to comfort him. He knew when he was out of his element, and he preferred the constant steadiness of the land to the uncertainty of the sea.
He had swallowed his fear to rescue Sarah.
But not enough to actually dive in the water.
Thankfully, Papineau had jumped in and saved the day.
Garcia was deeply troubled by his indecision but he didn’t have time to worry about it now. The only thing that mattered was his current task.
His search would start with the video footage recorded on Jasmine’s hard drive. That is, if he could salvage what was left of it. To speed the drying process, he took apart Jasmine’s and Sarah’s flashlights and spread out the waterlogged parts on a lint-free pad on his desk. To aid the recovery process, he dipped the memory cards in a vat of fresh water before he placed them in a natural desiccant to pull moisture from the circuitry.
‘How’s it going?’ Papineau asked as he entered the room, freshly showered and wearing a different suit than before — one that wasn’t wet. He glanced over Garcia’s shoulder and tried to figure out what he was doing. ‘Is that rice?’
‘Yep,’ Garcia said as he placed the last few components in a paper bag and added several cups of uncooked rice. ‘I would have preferred packets of silicon dioxide — it’s a gel that sucks up moisture like a sponge and has a lot less dust than grain — but time is the most important factor when rescuing data. The clock was ticking, so I had to act fast.’