Riggs nodded. “On it, Captain.”
Lakota cocked a brow. “Can you keep up with me?”
Brent snorted.
Suddenly, she was gone, bulleting down the road.
He cursed and charged after.
Fifty yards later, sweat was already pouring off his face. Lakota could run, he’d give her that, and she showed no signs of slowing. They darted by the main building, its light casting a faint glow over a jagged fence of palms, and then they followed the narrow road as it curved down again toward the beach. Brent was losing his breath. Lakota seemed comfortable, hardly panting. As she tried to kill him with her pace, he divided his attention between the road and his HUD, checking on the two figures and their escape.
“Captain, Lakota, hold up there. Take cover!” Schleck finished his warning a second before the tree line erupted with gunfire.
Targets flashed red in Brent’s HUD, reticles zooming in on the red outlines.
Brent was down, and he and Lakota were thinking the same thing as rounds tore through the bushes on either side of them, splintering limbs and echoing loudly off the hills.
They reached into their web gear and withdrew one of their new L12-7 heat-seeking grenades shaped like small missiles.
“’Nades away!” he cried.
They lobbed their grenades, and within a second of leaving their hands small fins popped out, tiny engines ignited, and the devices’ explosive payloads were about to be delivered on time, on target, strike three, you’re out!
The grenades shot off toward the tree line with a whoosh, whoosh, boom-boom!
The gunfire dropped off to nothing.
“You got ’em,” cried Schleck.
Lakota tugged down her balaclava and flashed him a smile. They high-fived and got back on their feet.
This time Brent took lead, but he felt her there, right on his back, and he wondered if she thought he was too slow. He’d show her the “old man” could still run and bounded off down the long, dark stretch, with the sounds of the breakers echoing in the distance.
Stones and scrub pockmarked the rugged dunes above the beach, and the Snow Maiden turned off the main road and ducked behind a row of larger, waist-high rocks, her tennis shoes quickly filling with sand. She wove through rows of tropical plants and coconut trees better known by the locals as coco de mer, found a ditch behind one particularly thick patch of hibiscus or something akin, and hunkered down there, unmoving, to catch her breath.
She swallowed. Damn. Haussler had come this close to capturing her. First France and now this. What was wrong with her? Was she, as Patti had suggested, getting too careless? Too tired? Too sick of it all?
Now Haussler would have all the GRU’s toys at his disposaclass="underline" infrared tracking, portable radar, nanobot trackers, you name it. He may have already dusted her with the ’bots. She could not rest for much longer.
Well, at least she’d tagged Chopra. All she had to do now was escape from the German. But who was the woman? Could she be an American member of the Green Brigade? And if the Brigade was involved, why had they attacked Haussler? Then again, maybe the Russians had not told them about Haussler, so the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing… perhaps the Euros and Americans had new teams after her now?
She checked her own radar and saw that Haussler had turned south up the main road running parallel with the beach. No, he had not dusted her. Not yet.
Her GPS map showed the Lazare Picault hotel lying to the north. From there she’d hail a taxi. There would be no flying off the island. Haussler already had the airport under his lock and key. As much as she dreaded needing the help, the Snow Maiden would need to call Patti to arrange for an exit by sea.
But one last task. From her sling bag she withdrew a battery-operated device that resembled a cell phone. She switched it on and plugged in her height and weight, and the device began to produce a heat source that would be detected by an IR sensor and draw attention. From a distance, the source could be mistaken for a person, although the closer you got, the more readily identifiable the unit became. She left the decoy in the bush and trotted off, nearly running straight into a tall man dressed in a plain green uniform. He had a rifle pointed at her chest.
The man spoke in Russian, obviously his native tongue. “He runs that way, I run this way. I get lucky. He doesn’t.”
“Oh, really?” she asked, the Russian rolling off her tongue and feeling like an old friend.
“He wants us to take you alive.”
“You’re Spetsnaz?” she asked.
“The best.”
“But you work for Haussler? A German? Then you’re just a dog.”
He took a step forward. “Put your gun in the dirt.”
“I like my gun right here, in my hand.”
“Then I’m going to shoot you.”
“I thought you were taking me alive.”
“I’m going to shoot you in the leg. You have nice legs. Too bad.”
He was in the middle of his grin when she shot him in the head so quickly that even she gasped.
His head snapped back, and he thudded to the ground. She seized his rifle, then swore through a chill. It was worse than she’d thought. Haussler had a team of Spetsnaz at his beck and call.
She took a deep breath.
And ran.
SEVEN
“It’s coming from right there,” said Lakota, pointing toward a narrow patch of shrubbery cutting across the back side of the dunes like a jagged scar.
They’d been drawing up slowly on the heat source in an attempt to ambush the operator lying in wait. The Cross-Com was still unable to ID friend or foe and superimpose a targeting reticle over the person.
As they drew closer, the signature got weird.
“Fire?” Brent guessed as they shifted farther up into the dunes, then crouched even lower as they neared the source, now glowing brilliantly in their HUDs.
“No, it’s not fire,” said Lakota. “No scent. No smoke. I think I know what we have here…” She moved ahead, leaned over, and picked up the device in her gloved hands.
Brent hurried up beside her. “Wow, decoy.”
“Just to slow us down.”
“Schleck?” Brent called. “Launch the drone.”
“Roger that.”
From his vantage point high in the hills, Schleck would activate and send airborne one of Ghost Recon’s latest UAV6a Cypher drones, no larger than the size of a Frisbee and equipped with a comprehensive array of high-tech sensors, including chemical and radiation detection. Brent had been holding off on using the device because he never had much luck with them. They’d crash or get whacked by the enemy before he collected any usable data. His colleagues used them with great efficiency, but the gods of technology never smiled down on him. And worse, after each mission he’d have to answer for the cost. It didn’t matter whether he was the operator or one of his people. He had no luck, but that excuse wasn’t good enough for his superiors.
But what the hell; he’d take another gamble now…
“Drone away,” announced Schleck.
As Brent and Lakota set out once more, following footprints that still held the slightest trace of a heat source, Schleck said the drone was closing on the enemy operators. There were, according to his count, six men remaining. Although the drone’s little motor was relatively silent, Brent knew that if Schleck took the bird in too close, one or more of the bad guys would go duck hunting. He warned Schleck about that.
“Roger that, Captain. Got news on the primary target and pursuer. They’ve split up. One’s heading north, the other south. Not sure who’s who, though… Would you like me to follow one?”