Alex pulled furiously on the towline, dragging the watertight bag closer. The swimmers reacted, splashing toward him. He kicked in the opposite direction, bringing the bag into his hands. He fumbled with the holster attached to the bag’s external webbing, drawing his suppressed pistol just as one of the swimmers reached him. A sharp burning creased his upper left arm, and Alex kicked out hard, turning onto his back. He caught the faint reflection of a knife just above the surface of the water.
The figure lunged forward, and Alex pressed the trigger, snapping his head back. The second attacker swam for the shoreline. Alex took a deep breath, floating on his back, and lined up the glowing tritium sights on the splashing. He fired twice, and the frantic swimming stopped. Alex drifted with the three bodies toward the esplanade, hoping that this had been the extent of his welcoming party. He doubted it.
His feet sank into the soft river bottom, and he pushed off toward the riverbank, clawing up the steep muddy slope. He pulled the black bag through the mud, exhausted, but not daring to pause. Alex opened the zipper and pulled his rifle clear, chambering a round. His night vision goggles came out next, pulled tightly over his head. He swept the esplanade with the goggles, verifying no immediate threats. He dragged the bag to a small park bench, searching the contents for his first aid pouch.
Alex washed his arm with the CamelBak hose and removed a small packet of the same powder the corpsman had used on him in Harvard Yard. He tore it open and dumped it on his upper arm, hastily rubbing it into the deep cut and grimacing. He’d properly bandage later. Right now, he needed to gear up and get as far from the esplanade as possible. He was on the move within sixty seconds, sprinting from tree to tree on his way toward Storrow Drive.
A bullet snapped overhead, and he dropped to the mud. It was impossible to determine who had fired the bullet, and there was nothing to gain by assuming it had been the marine sniper. He scanned forward and saw a figure slump against the side of the pedestrian walkway over Storrow Drive. Alex raised his rifle and ran through the mud, eager to get off the esplanade.
A green laser appeared to his left, marking the base of a tree fifty feet away. A snap passed through the branches above, hitting the metal fence behind the illuminated tree trunk. Alex knelt in the soft mud and thumbed his IR laser, placing the green line at the edge of the trunk. He rested the rifle magazine on his raised knee and eased the laser an inch past the edge of the tree. A dark blob peered around the trunk, and Alex fired, striking the figure in the head. Time to put some distance between himself and the river.
He jogged toward the waist-high, metal picket fence separating the esplanade from Storrow Drive, clearing it with little difficulty. Across the road, he jumped onto the raised concrete wall beyond Storrow Drive, and grabbed the bottom of the chain-link fence above it. He hung there for a moment before pulling himself to the top of the concrete and scaling the fence. His drop holster snagged on the top of the fence, knocking him off balance and pitching him prostrate into the mud. He lay immobile for several seconds, breathing heavily—his eyes heavy.
I could fall asleep here, he thought for a few more hazy moments. The distant sound of a vehicle engine jarred him back into action.
He pulled himself up by the chain-link fence and jogged to the nearest street corner, leaning against a brick wall. An engine roared nearby, somewhere deeper in the city. He glanced around the intersection for a street sign, wasting precious time. Street signs were a rare sighting on side streets in Boston. He considered the GPS, but with the pedestrian walkway behind him, he was pretty sure the street in front of him was Silber Way. The Warren Towers were less than two city blocks away.
A raised pickup truck careened onto Silber Way from Commonwealth Avenue, tearing through the mud. A figure with a rifle swayed behind the cabin, holding onto the truck’s utility rack. The truck raced in his direction without headlights, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the road ended before Storrow Drive. Alex triggered the IR laser and aimed at the truck, placing several tightly spaced shots through the front windshield.
The truck swerved into a line of parked cars and rebounded into the street, turning sideways and flipping. Alex pulled back from the wall just as the truck careened past, tumbling over the pedestrian walkway and crashing down onto Storrow Drive.
This was insane.
Chapter 43
EVENT +46:19 Hours
Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts
Alex crouched between two cars in the parking lot across from the Warren Towers, waiting for the slow-moving SUV to pass Granby Street. Beams of light randomly stabbed through the darkness above him, gradually moving left through the parking lot and disappearing. He risked a look, catching the taillights turning off Commonwealth Avenue.
Gunfire erupted in the distance—the familiar thunder of a marine fifty cal. What he wouldn’t give for some heavy-machine-gun support. Nothing said “everything’s going to be all right” like the sound of a fifty. He eased onto Granby Street and approached Commonwealth, pausing behind a low hedge at the corner to visually sweep the wide road.
The four-lane road looked still. He craned his head back and stared at the Warren Towers, noticing that the rightmost tower was crooked, leaning several degrees to the left. Maybe that was just his angle of view. His son’s tower, to the left, looked straight, but he couldn’t shake the marine’s description of the towers. Dominos. He had to get Ryan out of there.
Glimpses of flickering green light played across dozens of windows, advertising occupants. Ryan would know better than to give his position away like that. They’d talked about these things. He counted six floors up on Ryan’s building and scanned across. Two of the windows shimmered. He had no idea which room was Ryan’s. Room 622 didn’t mean anything to him from the outside. They’d only visited his room once, and he’d been too busy hauling boxes to pay close attention to the room’s location. He couldn’t wait any longer.
Alex raced across the street, passing underneath the “T” wires that cut a path down the middle of the wide street. He reached the other side and ducked into a vestibule, checking the street. Nothing moved, though he doubted that his trip across Commonwealth had gone unnoticed. The vestibule contained a door with a keycard reader. He pulled on the handle, which failed to budge the door. No surprise there. All of the external doors would be equipped with the same electronic system, all designed to prevent unauthorized access in the event of a power failure.
He was familiar with two ways into Warren Towers. The parking garage, which he had used to offload most of Ryan’s college possessions, required a housing card to access the stairwell or elevator. That left the front door. Not the stealthiest entry point, but the large floor-to-ceiling windowpanes next to the double doors would have undoubtedly shattered, allowing easy access to the lobby. “Easy,” of course, being a relative term on this side of the river.
Keeping his rifle pointed forward, he shuffled along the front of the building, his damp, mud-lined pants grinding away at his inner thighs. He arrived at the entrance, scanning the street for any onlookers, then stepped through one of the missing windowpanes. The lobby was empty. The couches and tables he remembered were gone, replaced by a mud-streaked tile hall. He activated the IR designator and probed the room with the green laser, walking steadily toward the escalator bank.