The Paris Option - Страница 31

As he watched, she dropped again, this time behind bushes. Simultaneously, bursts of gunfire and a round of swearing showed that the terrorists had arrived at the oak and found she had flown.

Smith remained motionless, hidden behind a poplar tree, as the sense of familiarity grew. Her face was wrong, her hair was wrong, and yet? Her body in the slim coveralls, the way she held her head, the sure, powerful hands. And then there were her movements. He had seen it all before. It had to be her. What she was doing? Being here. CIA was in on this, that was certain. Randi Russell.

He smiled briefly, feeling the same surge of attraction he experienced every time he saw her under any circumstance. That was because of her close resemblance to her sister, Sophia. At least he always accounted for it that way, knowing he was not being completely honest with himself.

She glanced away over her shoulder, clearly planning her next move, a certain angry desperation on her face. He would have to help her, despite the fact that if they survived, she would interfere with his investigation. In fact, she already had. But her chances of getting away alone were minimal.

The terrorists had stopped their frontal assault and were moving around her in two arms, while holding her pinned down from in front. Smith could hear the men padding through the murky woods on both flanks. She glanced nervously right and left, listening, too, her desperation deepening. It was like the jaws of a trap closing in on her, and if she was caught alone, she would be unable to recover.

The first man slipped into view. It was time to remind the Fulani and his men that they were dealing with more than just one opponent.

Smith unscrewed his Sig Sauer's silencer and opened fire. As the sound of his gunshot cracked like a thunderbolt in the quiet, woodsy air, the terrorist spun back, clutching his wounded firing arm. Another man appeared suddenly to the first one's right, still not understanding the danger. Quickly, Smith shot again. As the new man screamed and fell, there was a babble of shouts, scurrying feet scrambling for cover, and the angry voice of the leader. Almost simultaneously, Russell squeezed off three bullets aimed at assailants on her other side, where Smith could not see.

More shouts followed, and then more noise of feet in retreat. Smith turned to run when a flash of white attracted his attention, from the direction of the farmhouse. He looked more closely and saw the dark Fulani had arisen to his full, erect height and was standing defiant in his white robes at the edge of the windbreak. His voice was furious as he raged at his people to hold their ground.

Then Smith heard another sound and turned again: Randi Russell was speeding toward him. "Never thought I'd be glad to see you." Her whisper was filled with both relief and annoyance. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

"Seems like every time we meet, you're on the run."

She glowered at him, and they bent low and bolted in the direction of the main road.

He was on her heels. "What did you do to your face?"

She did not answer as they tore through the timber. Their pursuers were momentarily disorganized, and that was going to be their only break. They had to make time while they could. They pounded onward, ducking under tree branches, dodging patches of scrub, terrifying the wildlife with their ferocious pace.

At last they dove over a stone wall, scrambled back up to their feet, and ran onward, gasping for breath, sweating, until, finally, they found the main blacktop road. They lurked inside the woods and studied the road both ways, weapons ready.

"See anything?" she asked.

"Not two-legged and armed."

"Smart-ass." In the shadowy trees, she looked at him as a crooked smile of greeting curled up the corners of his mouth. He had a great face, one she had always liked. His high, flat cheekbones and chiseled chin were very male. She pushed that from her mind as she continued to study the road, the woods, the shadows.

Jon said, "We'd better move on back toward Toledo, try to keep ahead of them. And I really do want to know about your face. Please don't tell me it's plastic surgery, I'd be devastated." They trotted off again, alongside each other now on the dark road.

"Hold out your hand."

"I have a feeling I shouldn't." He stuck out his free hand anyway.

She reached inside her upper lip, left side, right side, and removed inserts. She extended her hand, intending to drop them onto his palm.

He yanked his hand away. "Thanks, but no thanks."

She grinned, unzipped a pocket on her web belt, and slipped them inside. "The wig stays on. It's bad enough you're running around in that neon Hawaiian shirt. At least it's a dark blue. My blond hair would be like a beacon."

She really was good; she knew how to use very little cosmetic change to great effect. With the inserts, her features had been lumpy and wide, making her eyes seem too close together, and her chin too small. But now her face was the one he remembered. Her wide-set eyes, straight nose, and high forehead radiated a kind of sexy intelligence that he found intriguing, even when she was her usual prickly self.

He was thinking about all that as he watched for the terrorists. He half-expected a truckload of them to roar down the road, a machine gun attached on top, when he heard engines thunder to life behind them from the direction of the farmhouse.

"Hear that?" he asked.

"I'm not deaf."

The noise changed, and the chop-chop of rotors was added to the booming engines. Soon, from behind them in the direction of the farmhouse, three helicopters rose into the night like the shadows of giant birds, one after the other, their red and green navigational lights blinking as they circled and headed south. Dark, bruised-looking clouds scudded across the sky. The moon peeked out and disappeared, and so did the helicopters.

"We've just been abandoned," she complained. "Damnation!"

"Shouldn't that be 'amen'? That was a damn close call for you."

She bristled. "Maybe, but I've been tailing M. Mauritania for two weeks, and now I've lost him, and I damn well don't know who the rest of them were, much less where they've gone."

"They're an Islamic terrorist group called the Crescent Shield. They're the ones who bombed the Pasteur Institute, or had it done by a front group to cover their tracks."

"What front group?"

"The Black Flame."

"Never heard of them."

"Not surprising. They've been out of action for at least ten years. This operation was their attempt to raise money so they could get back to their game. Tell your people the next time you check in, and they can warn the Spanish authorities. The Black Flame also kidnapped Chambord and his daughter. But it's the Crescent Shield who's holding them prisoner, and they have Chambord's DNA computer, too."

Randi stopped running as if she had hit a wall. "Chambord's alive?"

"He was in that farmhouse, so was his daughter."

"The computer?"

"Not there."

They resumed moving, this time walking in silence, busy with their own thoughts.

Jon said, "You're part of the search for the DNA computer?"

"Of course, but peripherally," Randi told him. "We've got people out investigating all known terrorist leaders. I was already surveilling Mauritania, because he'd reemerged from whatever hole he'd been hiding in the last three years. I tailed him from Algiers to Paris. Then the Pasteur was bombed, it looked as if a DNA computer had been stolen, and all of us were put on high alert. But I never saw him make contact with any other known terrorist except that big Fulani, Abu Auda. They're friends from the old days of Al Qaeda."

"Just who or what is this Mauritania that he was on the CIA's to-be-watched list?"

"You'll hear him called Monsieur Mauritania," Randi corrected. "It's a sign of respect, and he insists on it. We think his real name's Khalid al-Shanquiti, although sometimes he goes by Mahfouz Oud al-Walidi. He was a top lieutenant of Bin Laden but left before Bin Laden moved his people to Afghanistan. Mauritania keeps a damn low profile, almost never shows up on intelligence radar, and tends to operate more in Algeria than anywhere else, when we do spot him. What do you know about this Crescent Shield group?"

"Only what I saw in that farmhouse. They seem to be experienced, well trained, and efficient at least their leaders are. From the number of languages I heard, I'd say they're from just about every country that has Islamic fundamentalists. Pan-Islamic, and damn well organized."

"They would be, with Mauritania in charge. Organized and smart." She turned her X-ray eyes on Smith. "Now let's talk about you. Clearly you're part of the hunt for the molecular computer, too, or you wouldn't have appeared at that farmhouse in the nick of time to save my skin, and know what you know. When I spotted you in Paris, the story Langley told me was you'd flown to Paris to hold poor Marty's hand. Now"

"Why was the CIA having me watched?"

She snorted. "You know the services spy on each other. You could be an agent working for a foreign power, right? Supposedly you don't work for CIA, FBI, NSA, or even army intelligence, no matter what anyone says, and the 'I'm only here for poor Marty' story is obviously bull. You had me fooled in Paris all right, but not here, so who the hell do you work for?"

Smith feigned indignation. "Marty was almost killed by that bomb, Randi." Inwardly he cursed Fred Klein and this secret life to which he had agreed. Covert-One was so clandestine black code that even Randi, despite all her CIA credentials, could not learn about it. "You know how it is with me," he continued with a self-deprecating shrug. "I can't not find out who nearly killed Marty. And we both know that won't satisfy me. I'll want to stop them, too. But then again, what else would a real friend do?"