The Fall (44 page)

Damn it, Jack,
he thought, once more chastising himself for having underestimated his former friend, and perhaps wondering if he should have done the deed himself. He certainly had the training to put him down. Maybe then he could secure Angela and the missing component from the suit.

But first I need to locate them again.

And that's where Hastings might be able to assist.

But Pete needed to be careful on a number of fronts. First, coming out with a way to spin this to the general to avoid pissing him off for having left him out of it for nearly a week. Second, doing so in a way that Pete could still retain control over the project. And third, getting Hastings over the first two fast enough to stop Jack and Angela before they somehow managed to reverse the tables on him—something he knew Jack was quite capable of doing.

He checked his watch.

Seven more hours before Hastings's C17 transport landed on the runway a few blocks away, the same runway used by the shuttle for so many returns from space.

His gaze landed on the suit, which Gayle Horton and three more of his trusted scientists had dissected to the core, extracting the information they would need to reproduce it—except, of course, for the missing module.

He'd had them lay out the disassembled suit across three lab tables, including the small membrane-like solar antenna, which Gayle had left for him on its own table ready to be activated by a pair of LEDs in case he wished to put on the show for Hastings.

Pete yawned. He was tired. No, strike that. He was downright exhausted, having not returned home since getting that call from Angela in the middle of the night, which meant sleeping in his office in KSC's headquarters for the past several nights.

And with Hastings arriving on an early morning flight, it meant yet another night with little or no sleep, especially if he planned to have everything ready to break the news to the general about his discovery.

And it also meant he needed to decide how he would present it to his boss.

Pete walked away from the windows to face the tables, gazing at the various components, at the damaged helmet, the outer shell, the boots and gloves, amazed at how much more advanced it was from their last prototype.

We were certainly busy in that other world,
he thought, wondering how much time it would take them to catch up.

He stopped when reaching the last table, where Gayle had set up the stage for the membrane. Everything was there.

Everything except for the membrane.

What the hell?

He first thought it was a shadow shifting in the corner of his left eye, perhaps the reflection of streetlights diffusing through the lab's large windows.

“Looking for this?”

Pete turned around and froze. Standing in front of him, looking larger than life, was his former friend, Jack Taylor. And in his hand he held the miniature solar antenna, which he stowed in a pocket of what looked like a very advanced version of the same battle dress he had worn on that ill-fated mission in Afghanistan a lifetime ago.

*   *   *

Jack observed Pete from a short distance before shifting to the right, though not fast enough to avoid telegraphing his position. In an ideal world, he would have preferred doing this SEAL style, sneaking into his office while Pete was looking away, stealing the membrane, and getting the hell out of Dodge before he even knew it was gone.

“Jack!” Pete said, facing him just as he was about to walk out the door. “Wait. I can explain.”

He didn't reply, measuring Pete up as he approached him slowly.

“That's far enough,” Jack warned, remembering all of those trophies in his house, before reaching for his sidearm and leveling it at Pete.

“Jack? Who are you talking to?” Angela asked through his earpiece.

“Pete,” he replied.

Pete looked at him funny as he stopped a few feet from him and raised his hands, asking, “Who are you talking to, Jack?”

“Your old girlfriend,” he replied.

“Who?” asked Angela.

Jack shook his head, said, “Hold on, Angie. I'm having a little chat with Pete.”

“Please don't kill him,” she said.

Jack sighed. He could end it right here so damn easily. But a promise was a promise. Although he truly didn't get it, he still had to respect her wish, however irrational it seemed at the moment.

“Turn around slowly,” he said.

Pete complied.

Jack got right behind him and was about to knock him out when Pete dropped to a deep crouch an instant before Jack realized his mistake. In making him turn around, Pete faced the large windows and saw Jack behind him in the reflection.

Jack stepped back, but not fast enough.

The turning roundhouse kick landed on the side of his face, right behind his left ear, striking him in the exact spot still tender from that female operative kick three days earlier.

Stunned but conscious enough, Jack rolled back into the hallway, his head throbbing, his eyesight blurring as he stood, taking a step back, tripping on the bodies of the two guards he had disabled before sneaking into the lab.

“Jack!” Angie screamed into his ear now that she could see him on the security camera in the hallway.

“Get up!”

He stood with difficulty, realizing that he no longer held the Sig.

Pete rushed into the hallway clutching the 9mm semiautomatic.

“He's got the gun, Jack!”

Realizing he had a second, maybe two, before Pete turned the gun on him, Jack sprung into action, rushing across the few feet separating them, his left hand sweeping the space in between them in a semicircle, striking the shooting hand with the edge of his palm, pushing the gun out of the way just as Pete pressed the trigger.

Jack's left arm stung, but the battle dress deflected the shot, punching a hole in the wall next to him. He ignored it, following the chop with a palm-strike to Pete's sternum, which he blocked with his right hand just as Jack grabbed the shooting hand, twisting the wrist, forcing him to drop the Sig.

Pete pulled his arm free and turned sideways to Jack, recoiling his left leg, faking a low kick and spinning toward him, bringing his right leg up in a stretch that reminded Jack of that same female operative at FIT, agile, lightning fast.

This time Jack was ready, shifting back and sideways, missing the roundhouse kick by inches, feeling the air in front of his face as Pete's foot rushed past him.

Angela screamed for an instant, before the earpiece popped out of his ear, dangling from its coiled cord behind him as Jack stepped in, connecting a palm-strike to his sternum, pushing him back.

Pete fell, rolling away, scissoring his legs, landing on his feet, hands in front, pivoting to the right, the left, the right again, faking with his left fist before swinging his right hand at his temple.

Jack barely had time to duck, the hand caressing his bandanna before he shifted to his right, recoiling his left leg, extending it toward Pete's midriff, heel high, toes pointing down.

Pete drove his right elbow down, driving it into his attacking ankle, connecting at the same instant as Jack, pushing him into the door to his lab.

Still recovering from that first strike to his temple, Jack blinked, retrieving his throbbing leg, wincing in pain, thankful for the battle dress, which cushioned the elbow counterstrike, and surprised again at Pete's nimbleness, at his ability to move so fast and precise.

Both men reached their striking poise again, eyes narrowed, hands in front.

Pete lunged first, spinning, hands slicing the air like a cyclone, whirling, feigning to go high before extending a leg and driving it toward the side of Jack's left knee, aimed at the anterior cruciate ligament that controlled rotation and forward movement of the tibia.

Jack jumped at the last second, saving his ACL, getting out of the way, before stretching his left leg, striking a perfect jumping sidekick to the side of Pete's face, between the jawbone and the chin. He felt it crushing bones.

Pete rolled away, a hand on his cheek, his mouth bleeding, his feet staggering as he tried to force control.

Jack landed and spun, closing the gap, swinging his right arm around to deliver a finishing blow to the back of his neck, to knock him out by triggering a vasovagal episode.

Pete shifted back like a ghost, avoiding the blow while delivering a painful palm-strike to the same side of Jack's face, exactly where his first kick had landed, shocking Jack's auriculotemporal nerve, the branch of the mandibular nerve that ran with the superficial temporal artery providing sensory input to the side of his head.

Jack nearly collapsed, his legs trembling, but he somehow managed to roll back, to get away from the next two strikes, as Pete followed him down the hallway, trying to finish him, kicking, spinning, throwing blow after blow.

Jack shifted, ducked, and jumped, forcing savage control to ignore his pounding head, the crippling headache that almost made it impossible to even keep his eyes open as his jaws suddenly contracted from the extreme pain, as the stressed nerve system prevented him from moving his mouth, forcing him to breathe through his nose.

Jack continued retreating, avoiding what would certainly be a final blow as Pete kept coming at him, hands and feet swinging with precision, each attack carefully aimed at disabling him, like a professional.

But Jack had something few people did: years of training, of abuse, of conditioning in the unprecedented Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training course, in the harshest environments, developing a physical strength deep in his DNA to earn the coveted trident, his ribbon of honor, his ticket into an elite class of warriors who performed best under duress, under severe stress, even while in extreme agony.

And it was this training, as the world slowed down around him, that allowed him not only to avoid and block, but also to counterstrike, to hit back, hard, unexpectedly, delivering an uppercut the moment Pete spun into position to deliver a front kick, nearly ripping his head from his shoulders.

Jack spun, adding momentum to his turning kick, snapping his leg straight, driving the heel deep in Pete's solar plexus, shocking the radiating nerve fibers just below his sternum, where renal arteries branched from the abdominal aorta, momentarily collapsing his diaphragm, inducing spasms.

He watched Pete fall, retreat, crawl back toward the lab.

Jack considered his options as he grabbed the Sig and aimed it at Pete while inserting the earplug and looking at the security camera covering the hallway.

“Your call, Angie.”

“Shoot the bastard,” she said.

Jack aimed the pistol at Pete's head when he felt a hand grabbing his ankle, almost making him lose his balance.

One of the guards he had disabled was coming around, blood dripping from his mouth as he tugged at Jack's battle dress, his other hand reaching for his holstered sidearm.

Jack kicked him across the temple, knocking him out before returning his attention to Pete, but he had made it to the lab, closing and locking the door behind him.

Damn.

“Get out, Jack!”

He hesitated, staring at the locked door.

“Jack! Get the fuck out!”

He did, sprinting toward the exit, reaching it a moment later, scrambling down the stairs, flying through the double glass doors, where a second pair of guards still lay there unconscious.

And that's when alarms went off across the Kennedy Space Center.

*   *   *

Alarms blared in her head as she hung up the disposable mobile phone and stared at it awhile.

“What's wrong, Angela?” asked Dago, standing by his Harley next to her Triumph at a large gas station off of IH-95, sunlight reflecting from the mirror tint of his large sunglasses. Art-Z was inside getting drinks from a machine while they fueled the bikes.

“Not sure. Pete sounded … strange.”

“What do you mean ‘strange'?”

She looked over at the traffic on the highway. “First he's over twelve hours late calling and when he does … well, he sounded a little weird. He even called me Angie. No one calls me that except for Jack.”

“You think they grabbed him and Riggs?”

She exhaled heavily, a knot forming in the pit of her stomach at the thought. “I have to assume that, for now.”

“So what do we do?”

“We pretend to stick to the plan,” she said. “And in the meantime, we'll light a fire under his ass that's so damn hot he won't have a choice but to come after us … and just to be sure he follows, we'll leave a little trail of cyber crumbs.”

Art-Z returned with two Red Bulls and a Coke.

Dago took the soda, popped the lid, and took a swig before saying, “Ready?”

She looked at her watch. “Yeah.”

Art-Z hopped behind Dago and they started their bikes, heading toward the Vero Beach motel, where she had told Pete to meet up with them, getting off the interstate at Highway 60 East, which turned into Twentieth Street as it reached downtown Vero, steering the bikes into the crowded parking lot behind a restaurant a block from the motel.

Angela walked off alone, leaving Dago and Art-Z by the bikes. She reached the front of the restaurant and was glad to see people waiting to get to their tables, many sitting in the patio in front of the building.

She gave the hostess a fake name, was told it would be around twenty minutes, and blended in with the two dozen waiting patrons, her eyes gazing across and down the four-lane street, waiting.

But she didn't need to wait long.

Two white Ford vans with tinted windows rushed down the street a few minutes later, pulling up in front of the motel.

Four Hispanic-looking men got out of the lead vehicle. Three large and muscular and a fourth one who looked half their size and had a thick beard, and who appeared to be in charge. He sent two men around the back before signaling the second vehicle. The side door slid open and Pete stepped out flanked by two of the men, before all four went inside.