My Spy (43 page)

“I've always wanted to win. Our family doctor told my father I had an overdeveloped competitive instinct, even at six.”

Sam had seen that part of Peter when they'd been roommates in college, but he'd managed to explain it away. Football was football, after all. Winning was what they trained you to do.

“Stop moving,” Peter snapped, the gun jerking against An-nie's pale throat.

Sam went still, calculating angles and distance and hating the conclusion. He'd never be fast enough to save her. Not from here.

He gave his old friend a cool stare. “They sent me to check
out the China Lake research team, I remember that much. I also know that I didn't like what I saw. There were a few too many projects being scrapped as over budget or structurally flawed.”

“The Navy's loss was our gain.” Peter smiled grimly. “Thanks to China Lake we've got some amazing technology in our private pipeline now. It's a damned shame my father can't appreciate how good I am, but he was always too busy trying to pound the rules into me and talk about you.” Peter shrugged. “He always considered you superior son material, especially when you made the cut for the SEALs and I didn't.”

“You're crazy,” Sam snapped. “No one could be more proud of you than your father.”

“What does it matter? Emotions just get in the way of doing the job. As a big, bad SEAL, you know that, McKade. I remember the first time I stole information. It felt amazing. Almost as good as that time I was hit by lightning during practice in college. Remember that?”

Sam nodded. The freak accident had put his roommate out of the game for a year, but made him a college hero. “You milked it for all it was worth.”

“Something I also learned from my father. You were lucky down in Mexico,” Peter continued irritably. “If my people had done their job right and contacted me sooner, I'd have stopped you then and there. Whose idea was it to put you undercover as a prospective buyer for our newest gadgets?”

“Your father's, of course. Maybe he suspected it was you even then. Maybe he hoped I would go easy on you.” It was a risk, but Sam had to take Peter's attention off Annie.

“The old man never wants anyone to go easy. He knows how to play the game, I'll give him that. He taught me more than he knows.” Peter's voice was icy. “By the time I checked out our newest ‘buyer’ and realized who it was, you were almost at the yacht.”

Sam nodded slowly.

Gunshots in the darkness.

The voice, horrifyingly familiar. A man Sam had always trusted.

He remembered his blinding sense of shock when he'd realized that Peter Howe was part of a chain that stretched from Washington to several of the Navy's most advanced research programs. He remembered how hard he'd denied it at first, how he'd refused to say a word to Admiral Howe until he had all his proof.

He was on his way to turn over that proof to the admiral in Washington, only he'd jumped aboard a runaway bus instead.

The past was coming back to Sam in pieces now, his months of undercover work that had revealed long-term tampering with Navy research. Once a project was scrapped by the Navy, the technology made its way into the private sector, where the problems were eventually corrected.

Peter Howe was part of a new wave of industrial espionage, Sam thought grimly. His people didn't steal weapons and sell them to the enemy. Instead they tampered with military records, manipulated research, then sold the “defective” technology to carefully screened businesses. For the insiders who knew what was coming, the purchase became wildly lucrative, and Peter Howe's group had spread their successes over dozens of companies worldwide to make the pattern harder to trace.

The Navy had footed the bill, corporate and government backers had profited obscenely, and good men had died trying to stop it.

“Smart of you to duck into the Metro in D.C. We had three men in place to take you out when you arrived for your meeting at the Pentagon. We were taking no chances.” As he spoke, Peter Howe pulled Annie to her feet. “Then you jumped that damned school bus. Being a hero saved your life, McKade. We could hardly shoot a man surrounded by police cars and news choppers.”

“What happens now?”

Howe moved toward the door, holding Annie in front of him. “For me, more of the same. Our group has a long and lucrative future. For you, I can't be so optimistic.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Annie's finger slant down toward the big blue exercise ball he'd left there before dinner.

“Logistics dictate speed, Howe. She's bound to slow you down, and my people will be here any minute.”

Howe pulled Annie closer toward the door. “She's the price, McKade. You want me, you've got to take her out first. Remember what you told me that day after my fourth losing game? If you want to win, there's always a price.”

A
DMIRAL HOWE
SAT
IN
HIS
STUDY,
WREATHED
IN
CIGAR
SMOKE.

Strangely uneasy, he stared at the photos on his desk, stopping at the faces of Sam and his son, grinning and muddy after a rough game of tackle football. Nearby was a college photo of Peter taken during his junior year losing streak.

His jersey read sixty-one.

Howe stiffened.

Sixty-one.

Sam had remembered the number sixteen.

Was there a connection?

Howe couldn't think any further than that. He felt poised on the brink of an abyss …

He sat up, suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that things were going wrong on that mountain. He had to find out what was happening.

He punched in a string of numbers on his cell phone and grabbed his coat. He was already at the door, waving curtly to his driver, when the line clicked in.

“I
BELIEVE
MY
RIDE
IS
WAITING.
” LT.
PETER HOWE
REACHED INTO the inner pocket of his raincoat. “Recognize this Smith and Wesson
?”

“It used to be mine. I lost it right after I went into the SEALs.”

The cool eyes turned even cooler. “Exactly. And everyone knows that covert operations can drive men over the edge.”

“So you'll make this look like a suicide.”

Peter Howe nodded. “A messy one, I'm afraid.”

Sam heard a sound down the hall. He prayed it was Weaver or Izzy. “You won't have time to get the ballistics right, Peter. Besides, your father will never believe it. He knows I wouldn't wimp out.”

“My father might not believe it, but he won't be able to prove anything else. Not when I've finished torching the house,” Peter added icily.

He gripped Annie's waist. “Time to go, Ms. O'Toole. We don't want to miss that chopper.”

“Bastard.” Annie wrenched vainly at his arm.

In that same instant, a pale shape flashed across the floor. Teeth bared, Donegal leaped at Annie's captor, gripping his hand. Howe cursed as Annie shoved him back against the blue exercise hall, then dropped out of sight behind the sofa.

Howe staggered as Sam got one shot off. Howe knocked Donegal to the floor as he fell.

He fired wildly, splintering the parquet floor. Outside the window came the chatter of automatic weapon fire, followed by the flare of headlights.

A helicopter roared out of the darkness.

Howe's ride. As Sam crawled toward the door the wind gusted hard and a branch hit the huge picture window, shattering the glass. In the moment of confusion that followed, Sam charged forward, tackling his enemy.

There was an odd quality to his movements in the darkness, a sense of time both compressed and infinitely stretched out as
he grappled for Howe's gun. A second blow to the shoulder knocked him backward, and when he staggered upright, Howe was running toward the corridor.

Sam blocked out the agony at his shoulder.
Annie
, he thought fleetingly, but there was no time to find out how badly she was hurt.

He came across Weaver's body slumped on the floor, blood matting his face and neck. Grimly he forged ahead, hesitating outside the kitchen.

A knife hissed past his head and sank into the doorframe. His instinct for caution had been dead on.

He felt his shoulder bleeding again, thanks to Howe's last carefully aimed kick. Howe had exploited every weakness in the system and he had played to win, every step of the way.

Wounded or not, Sam was going to stop him.

Crouched low, he made his way along a row of wooden cabinets. He saw that Donegal was right beside him, weak but mobile. Before they could cross the room, bullets struck the breakfront, shattering the glass.

The back door banged open.

Howe, moving fast.

Sam ran for the basement. The kitchen door would take him out into a killing zone.

As he emerged at the storage shed, he saw a helicopter hovering above the hillside, with Howe struggling against the wind barely twenty yards away. Ignoring the agony it caused him, Sam tugged away a wallboard and took down the rifle concealed inside. Time seemed to stretch out as he crawled outside, taking cover behind a low stone wall.

The helicopter's rotors kicked into high speed.

“Circle,” Sam ordered Donegal, and the dog slipped away, heading up the slope above the chopper, sent out as backup in case Howe tried a last-minute retreat toward the cars parked in the upper driveway.

The chopper began to lift, barely a meter off the ground,
and Howe sprinted closer. Sam took a breath and sighted, watching Howe's arms pump as he leaped aboard the chopper. The big blades chattered, beginning a swift ascent.

Sam fired.

The fuel tanks ignited, bathing the chopper in flames. Three dark figures struggled for an instant inside the orange-red fireball before the chopper exploded.

A
NNIE
HEARD
THE
SOUND
OF
A
GUNSHOT,
FOLLOWED
BY AN
Earsplitting explosion. Izzy reached the window before her, clutching his right arm tightly, his face grim.

Through the glass came the furious glow of a fire, all that remained of the helicopter they had heard near the lower slope. Black-clad men ran up the hillside and car lights flashed from the road.

Annie tried not to consider the possibility that Sam had been near that helicopter when it had exploded.

“Get to cover,” Izzy said.

As they moved through the kitchen, Annie grabbed the heaviest iron frying pan she could hold. Not that it would be much use against an assault rifle, but it made her feel safer.

Looking at Izzy's harsh features, she realized that no one would be getting past this warrior alive. Moving swiftly, he pulled a tall display of crystal glasses away from the wall outside the pantry. Amazingly, not a single piece shifted.

“They're glued on.” Izzy stood back, revealing a staircase leading down into darkness. “There's a bunker down there where we'll be safe.”

“I don't know who your architect is, but I'm glad he has a good imagination.”

There was a sound behind them in the kitchen. Instantly, Izzy swung in front of Annie, weapon raised. The door opened, and in the hellish glow of the burning helicopter, Annie saw a tall silhouette.

She bit back a cry.

Sam's field jacket was streaked with dirt and drying blood.
He struggled to hold Donegal in his good arm, while the dog licked his face weakly.

“The area is secure,” Sam said, trying to avoid Donegal's tongue.

“About time. Get over here and let me look at that shoulder.” Izzy pulled a high-beam flashlight from his jacket pocket. Annie closed her eyes as she saw how much blood darkened Sam's jacket.

“You first.” Sam sank awkwardly into a chair at the counter, Donegal wriggling against his chest.

“No way.” Izzy managed a cocky grin. “Age before beauty, pal.”

“Will you two stop being idiot macho heroes,” Annie hissed. “Fix yourselves up. You're both bleeding like pigs. Even Donegal has more sense than you do.” Hearing its name, the big dog barked excitedly and pushed up to lick Annie's face.