The Fall (30 page)

He understood, of course, but what she didn't understand was the time component. But still, the scientific process was the scientific process, and he of all people knew that fact after a lifetime in this world, from his years at Stanford and NASA.

After expressing his gratitude for her work so far and giving her full access to any equipment she needed—while maintaining secrecy due to the nature of the discovery—Pete left Gayle to her work and returned to his office, feeling that the answers were coming, but not nearly fast enough. He needed Angela and Jack, plus whatever device they had taken with them, to accelerate the learning process. The sooner he got hold of the full picture, the quicker he would be able to determine the best way to take advantage of this technology.

Unfortunately the team in Miami had underestimated Jack—even after Pete had warned them all—and allowed them to get away. Even Dago had vanished. Contractors had spotted his truck parked in front of his shop but the large biker was nowhere to be seen. And to make matters worse, five minutes later, over a dozen bikers arrived at the shop, went inside, and all came back out wearing helmets with visors, before getting back on their bikes and taking off in separate directions, making it impossible for the surveillance team to decide which to follow.

Screw the biker,
Pete thought, returning his focus to Jack and Angela, who would have to surface sooner or later, especially with the number of eyes searching for them.

Pete had already accessed Angela's list of personal and professional contacts from her account at the Florida Institute of Technology, and he browsed through it slowly on his screen.

The personal list was quite short, starting with him and continuing with her biker friends already under surveillance and a few loose hackers from her days with Anonymous. The professional list, however, was quite extensive. As chief scientist for Project Phoenix, Angela had managed the activity of many subcontractors, each responsible for a specific component or technology incorporated into the Orbital Space Suit.

And add that to her contacts at FIT,
he thought, browsing through the roster of professors and students.

While Pete certainly had a lot of foot soldiers, he didn't have enough to place tails on everyone on that list. So it would come down to priorities.

“Who would Angela go to for help besides Dago?” he asked his reflection on the flat screen.

And the answer came to him a moment later.

*   *   *

Dago followed his instructions, using the oldest trick in the book to lose his surveillance, driving with two of his guys in a large truck to a storage unit on the outskirts of Melbourne, where one of NASA's many subcontractors kept a supply of high-altitude balloons not just for the agency's experiments in low-orbital insertions but for an increasing number of commercial and industrial applications.

They reached the warehouse at night, just as Jack had told him, breaking in from the rear, disabling a lone security guard before rushing inside and making their selection, using a hand loader to haul the heavy crate, weighing close to four hundred pounds, to the open bed of their truck, before driving away.

Interestingly enough, news of the midnight theft barely made it to page six of the local paper and wasn't even mentioned in the following day newscasts.

*   *   *

It didn't take long.

He spotted the first sign of surveillance about thirty minutes after arriving at the FIT campus.

Wearing jeans, an FIT T-shirt, a matching baseball cap, dark sunglasses, and a student backpack he had purchased at a shop outside the university, Jack tapped his Bluetooth earpiece connected to the disposable phone in his jeans while stretching a finger toward a middle-age man reading a magazine at one of the tables in the patio of a coffee shop at the large Denius Student Center in the middle of campus.

Only he wasn't reading anything except the movements of Dr. Jonathan Layton as the elderly professor, dressed in a white button-down shirt, a light blue pair of slacks, and a matching bow tie, enjoyed a late-afternoon coffee while discussing some papers with a colleague.

Angela, also dressed in FIT attire, sunglasses, and a backpack, gave him a slow nod from her assigned spot roughly twenty feet from Jack, sitting by a bench near the entrance to the student center.

The college clothing, combined with her petite build, truly blended her with the thinning crowds of kids leaving the building. The day was almost over and students were headed for their dorms, apartments, nearby cafeterias, or the local bars. Some talked on their phones or listened to music while others chatted as they walked.

Jack also pretended to read a free student newspaper he'd picked up inside, though he made sure to avoid sudden head movements while his eyes scanned his surroundings every few seconds before returning to the opening paragraph of an article on student health stressing the need to use condoms to avoid sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancies.

He sighed.

Hopefully these kids were smarter than Angela and he had been just a few hours earlier, going two rounds of unprotected sex before it was time for a short nap followed by a shower, where they ended up going a steamy third round.

Focus.

He shook the thought away as his eyes slowly gravitated from the article to Layton, then to Angela, and finally to the tail, who seemed to be alone this late afternoon, as the sun turned burnt orange while slowly sinking toward the horizon, bathing the campus with its dying light.

Careful, Jack.

Given Pete's deep resources, he had a difficult time believing that the man wearing khakis and a Tommy Bahama silk shirt—clothes loose enough to hide a small arsenal—represented his former friend's sole team on the FIT campus, one of the obvious places where Angela would have turned up for answers.

Keep looking.

And he did, for fifteen more minutes, while Layton continued his discussion, finally getting up, shaking hands with his colleague, and heading east, presumably toward the Harris Center for Science and Engineering, where, according to Angela, he had his office and labs.

Mr. Bahama also stood, stretched, and glanced about, allowing a gap to his mark, before resuming his task, folding the magazine and tucking it under his left armpit, remaining roughly a hundred feet behind the professor.

Layton continued down a narrow walkway flanked by palmetto thickets connecting the student center to the academic quad, a large courtyard surrounded by the main library and a host of other buildings, at least according to the map Jack had memorized on the way up from Vero Beach.

He frowned. Jack didn't like corridors, limiting his options, especially when operating in hostile territory, which was exactly how he viewed this university.

Angela looked at Jack, her light olive skin glowing in the wan sunlight.

He whispered, “Show time,” into his headpiece, and she started down the pathway, remaining a hundred feet behind the operative, per Jack's instructions, backpack hanging casually from her left shoulder.

A light breeze swept in from the sea, swirling her hair as Jack saw movement to his far left that seemed abrupt, breaking the pattern of students and faculty moving about.

A man emerged from the shadows of the building, fast-walking down the path, heading straight for Angela, who continued her stroll, entering the corridor-like path formed by dense palmetto clusters and the towering sidewalls of two adjacent buildings facing the quad.

A second tail.

Jack jumped into action, moving fast, but without attracting attention, keeping his head down, closing the gap to a man in his forties, shorter than Jack, fair-skinned, bald, with very wide shoulders and thick arms and legs, dressed in loose cargo pants, sneakers, and a Miami Dolphins football jersey. He resembled a pit bull, strong, moving with purpose, focused on his target.

And completely missing Jack, who reached the narrow passageway, the palmettos' fan-shaped leaves swaying in the breeze, his eyes shifting from his mark to Angela, checking his rear, making sure they were momentarily alone, before sneaking up from behind, reaching for his Sig Sauer, and pressing the muzzle against the man's back while tapping his headset, muting the microphone to keep Angela from listening.

“Enjoying your walk?”

The man stopped, arms hanging free by his sides, ready.

Jack kept the pressure on the gun while risking another backward glance.

“What are you going to do?” the operative asked in English with a heavy Slavic accent. “Shoot me in the middle of an American university?”

“No need,” Jack said, glad that he was dealing with a professional, who remained relaxed.

In a single swift move, the former Navy SEAL delivered a quick and short blow with the edge of his left hand to the upper side of the operative's neck, right under the ear and just below the jaw line, where the carotid artery divided to supply blood to the brain and face.

Jack instinctively shoved the gun back in his jeans the moment he felt the palm-strike connect, using both hands to keep the heavy operative steady as the blow stressed the vagus nerve, causing temporary inaction of the heart and breathing organs, triggering a vasovagal episode. The muscular Slav stiffened for a moment, before fainting right into Jack's arms, who simply shifted his downward momentum to the right, shoving the man directly into the dense thicket that reminded him of his time in Colombia.

An ocean of green leaves swallowed the operative, who dropped out of sight from the pathway, among sprawling trunks, landing hard on a ground littered with spikes and fallen vegetation.

And who would wake up ten minutes later in a world of hurt.

One down.

Jack checked his back again as the sun went down, as darkness fell across campus, before resuming his walk, shortening the distance to Angela just as Layton emerged on the other side of the pathway, by the quad, followed by the operative.

Jack emerged last, passing a pair of female students going in the opposite direction.

He forced a smile, if only to continue blending in, but kept walking without looking back, figuring that if the girls spotted the fallen operative in the thicket, he would hear their screams.

His eyes returned to Angela, now a dozen feet away, and Jack counted to thirty, the time he expected the sorority girls would take to walk past the unconscious mercenary.

All clear.

He slowed down to survey the quad, once more searching for telltale signs, scanning the benches, the clusters of kids hanging around, the ones walking alone, a dozen of them on bicycles, a girl on Rollerblades, a couple holding hands, a guy lying on a bench watching a video on his phone.

Jack looked at everyone and at no one, hunting for anomalies, for abrupt movement, for anything that suggested a break in the pattern of college kids relaxing after class.

Satisfied that they were clear, Jack got off mute. “Stop, lean down, and pretend to tie your shoes,” he whispered. “Then remain ten feet behind me and keep this channel open.”

She did, and Jack walked right past her, taking the lead as the first stars appeared in the indigo sky, reaching the other side a minute later, and continuing down another palmetto-infested corridor.

Jack closed the gap with the operative tailing Layton, almost catching up to him at the end of the pathway, crossing the tree-lined street, a blend of magnolias, oaks, and towering palms. He spotted the professor almost a full block ahead of them, walking toward a parking lot separating this part of campus from the science buildings to the east.

Night descended, streetlights flickered and came on, forking through branches overhead, projecting ragged shadows across the street, obscure crisscrossing shards on the pavement that often merged into pockets of near-darkness among the dim yellow glow.

Jack checked both sides of the street, squinting.

Darkness was a SEAL's best friend, but it could also be a double-edged sword, which for the moment worked to his advantage as he closed in on the operative, who occasionally checked his surroundings while Jack moved from shadow to shadow, like a ghost, his mind on automatic now, measuring his advance.

Twenty feet.

Jack dropped to a deep crouch, accelerating, pointing his momentum straight for the middle of his target's back.

Ten feet.

The operative continued his stroll, the loose clothing betraying him in the evening breeze, his shirt lifting above his waistline, revealing a black semiautomatic tucked in the small of his back.

Jack charged, closing the remaining distance in two seconds, the edge of his right hand aimed at the vagus nerve.

The operative shifted at the last minute, turning sideways to Jack, who managed a slight adjustment of his own angle, but his hand missed the sweet spot, striking the ear instead.

“Jack!”

He shifted his gaze from his quarry, who had now produced a small knife, clutching it like a professional, with the blade protruding from the bottom of his fist as he turned sideways to Jack, like a cobra, ready to strike.

A third mercenary, huge, like a massive linebacker, had grabbed Angela from the back ten feet away, picking her up with ease, an arm around her chest and the other clamping her mouth as he turned around and started carrying her away. She kicked and fought to break loose to no avail.

The operative grinned at Jack, before shifting to the right, then the left, faking with his knife hand before throwing a punch with his right toward Jack's solar plexus.

Jack blocked it with his left hand while driving the palm of his right hand straight up the man's nose, pushing cartilage and bone into his head.

The operative shuddered, stunned, but still held on to the knife as Jack finished him off, clapping his palms hard over the man's ears in unison, creating a sudden increase in pressure inside the inner ear canals, bursting the tectorial membranes, shocking the basilar system, inducing spasms.