A horizontal line of bullet holes appeared in the steel.
Jack rolled back on his heels, then onto his back, and took aim on the control booth.
Wait, Jack. Wait . . .
A figure appeared in the window. Jack pulled the trigger. The man’s head disappeared in a halo of red mist.
There was at least one more man on the other side of this door, and unless Jack was willing to backtrack and look for another way into the control booth, his only option was to suck it up and go.
He stood up and pressed himself as tightly against the handrail as possible, then mounted the steps and grabbed the doorknob. Stop. He needed a little misdirection. He pointed the AK up at the control booth window, fired a short burst, then swung open the door and charged through. He found himself in a short passageway of white-painted cinder blocks. At the end was an open door. He headed for it. Halfway there, a figure dashed past the opening from right to left. Jack almost opened fire, but caught himself. The man hadn’t been armed. Klugmann, maybe?
At the door Jack peeked left, saw a set of steel steps that led to what he guessed was the control room. To his right was a yellow door with black lettering that read MAINTENANCE LADDER. Jack stepped left, crept up the steps to the control room door, where he paused.
Don’t stop, don’t think, he told himself. Giving himself a chance to weigh the odds and rethink tactics would consume time he didn’t have.
He swung himself through the door. The room was empty.
The wall to the left of the windows was dominated by a long control console, its buttons and built-in screens a sea of flashing warning lights.
Too late, Jack thought.
Whatever was happening was beyond his abilities to control. Clearly the dam’s flow control systems had already fallen prey to Klugmann’s virus. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water were already gushing down the Omatako River toward the farms and villages downstream.
If he couldn’t stop it, he needed to at least be able to prove who started it.
—
Jack left. As he turned onto the stairs, he saw a rifle butt plunging toward his face. He jerked his head to the side, and the butt slammed into his cheekbone, then slid down the side of his head and clipped his ear. He heard rather than felt the tearing of cartilage. Blood gushed down his neck. He stumbled sideways. His AK fell through the railing and crashed to the floor below. Blind in his right eye, Jack reached up, bear-hugged the figure standing there, then pushed off, sending them both down the stairs with the man’s rifle sandwiched between them. As they fell Jack caught a glimpse of the yellow maintenance door swinging shut.
Still entwined, he and his attacker smashed into the floor, with Jack on top. He raised himself, gaining some maneuvering room, and slashed the point of his elbow across the man’s nose, breaking it, then into the side of his neck, and continued punching until the man went still. His face was a mask of blood.
Jack got up, grabbed his AK, and headed toward the yellow door. On the other side was a ladder leading up to a fluorescent-lighted opening. He was at the opposite end of the tunnel he’d found on his way in.
At the top of the ladder he crawled into the tunnel. He stood up and started running. Ahead of him, two figures disappeared around a curve in the tunnel. Jack was there a few seconds later, just as the second man stepped left through a door. He was unarmed.
Jack lifted the AK, took aim, fired. The bullet punched into the back of the man’s right thigh. He collapsed through the door and out of sight. Jack sprinted ahead and peeked around the corner. A stocky, bald man with a pasty face lay on his back, both hands clutched around his bleeding hamstring.
The man was wearing a black T-shirt. Emblazoned across the chest in red German Fraktur-style letters were the words Game of Thrones. Winter Is Coming.
“Gerhard Klugmann,” Jack said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
—
Half dragging, half carrying Klugmann, Jack hurried up the steps to the parapet.
René’s body was gone.
“Over here,” Jack heard.
He turned to see René sitting with his back against the bunker. His left arm was bloody and bent backward at the elbow. Jack dumped Klugmann onto the parapet and asked René, “Möller?”
“That way, toward the Hilux.”
Jack walked to the center of the parapet. Stephan Möller, still bearing the limp from Jack’s bullet at the Alexandria nature preserve, had only gotten a hundred yards toward the Hilux.
“Möller, stop!” Jack shouted.
Möller kept going.
Jack lifted the AK to his shoulder and fired. The bullet smacked into the concrete to the left of Möller’s feet. The German glanced over his shoulder, shouted something at Jack, and then tried to pick up the pace, his limp now a penguinlike hobble.
“Last chance,” Jack yelled.
René said, “Just kill him already.”
“We can use him. He can hand us Rostock.”
Jack laid the AK’s front post over Möller’s legs and fired a short burst. Möller went down. He writhed, then rolled onto his belly. Jack started walking down the parapet toward him.
He’d covered half the distance when he heard the roar of an engine. A horn began blaring. Jack turned, raised the AK. He lowered it.
With Effrem behind the wheel, the Toyota Land Cruiser swerved around Jack, straightened out, and sped toward Möller, who’d managed to get to his knees.
“Effrem!” Jack shouted. “Don’t. We need him!”
The Toyota eased left as Effrem aimed the hood at Möller, then began picking up speed. Möller, apparently hearing the approaching engine, looked over his shoulder.
Effrem never hit the brakes.
PARIS, FRANCE
True to his word, the same day Jack appeared at the front gate of Hugo Allemand’s estate with René in tow, his arm in a wrist-to-shoulder cast, the marshal opened his black leather-bound address book and started making phone calls.
Though Effrem, now back in Brussels and working with Mitch via phone, was still weeks away from fully assembling what Jack suspected would be more than enough evidence to prompt a German and EU investigation into Rostock Security Group, René Allemand’s account of his ordeal at the hands of Rostock had been more than enough to spur his father into action.
Despite the fact the marshal had retired from the military and withdrawn from the social limelight, his clout was significant. By midafternoon the first reports of anonymous allegations against Rostock Security Group and its founder were surfacing on European news networks and radio stations. The beating of the drum had begun. Marshal Allemand would soon be calling a press conference. He assured Jack he would not be the only person of influence standing before the microphones. Apparently Rostock had visited his hardball tactics on other VIPs across Europe: From Italy to Great Britain, Marshal Allemand had little trouble convincing his peers of what Rostock had been up to. Those who had balked at supporting the German’s endeavors but had failed to speak out were now only too happy to join the growing coalition. And before Allemand was done, Jack guessed, those who had covertly supported Rostock would have to choose between coming forward of their own volition and being exposed by the looming investigation.
Jack had gladly accepted Marshal Allemand’s invitation to stay at the estate for as long as he wished. With a deadline looming, he needed the time to think—but not about his decision, which he’d made even before they left Namibia. Playing shepherd to the impulsive Effrem and erratic René had been a brutal, eye-opening crash course in personnel management. Jack knew where he belonged.
While the choice was an easy one, the road he’d taken to it had been painful and costly.
Jürgen Rostock would fall, of that Jack was certain. Taken alone, that was a victory that would save lives in the future, but it had also taken lives beyond those of Peter Ha
hn and Kaitlin Showalter.
Three hundred twenty-two, to be exact.
Jack’s failure to stop Möller from sabotaging Kavango Dam’s flow control system had cost the lives of three hundred twenty-two men, women, and children who’d been unable to escape the deluge before it engulfed their villages and farms. Inevitably and predictably, Jack found himself replaying the same question in his mind: If he’d been quicker or smarter, could he have stopped it? There was no answer, he knew, but he also knew it would be a long time before he stopped asking the question.
—
As he had for most of the past several days, today Jack slept until mid-morning, then jogged around the estate and swam laps in the pool before playing a game of tennis with Claude.
When he came back into the house, Jack found René and Hugo seated across from each other in the solarium. Smiling, the marshal waved Jack over to the table and poured him coffee.
Jack asked René, “When did you last talk to Effrem?”
“Not for a few days. I’ve left messages, but he hasn’t responded. I hope that simply means he’s busy digging Rostock’s grave, and it’s not the other thing.”
“Other thing?” said the marshal.
“Möller,” Jack replied.
Back on the dam’s parapet, Jack had been expecting Effrem to swerve or brake at the last moment, but he’d done neither. Möller had died instantly, just as Eric Schrader had outside the Supermercado in Alexandria. For reasons he hadn’t quite fathomed, Jack was finding it hard to enjoy the irony behind the two men’s deaths. Jack suspected that whatever satisfaction Effrem had gotten from killing Stephan Möller had been fleeting and bittersweet. While Möller had tortured Effrem and ordered him burned alive in a hole in the ground, Jack believed Effrem was strong enough to get past that. But could he get past what he himself had done in retaliation?
On the positive side, whatever moral struggles Effrem might be facing, he wasn’t doing it alone. At Marie Likkel’s urging, Effrem had moved back home to the Likkel estate, where he and Belinda Hahn were, according to Marie, “getting to know one another.” Jack was glad for them both.
René, too, had a long, tough road ahead of him. Coming to grips with the damage done to him by Rostock may have already cost René his relationship with Madeline. The wedding was on hold, as was René’s future with the Army. Everything seemed tainted, he’d told Jack.
“Where do things stand with Alexander Bossard?” Jack asked.
Hugo Allemand answered. “One of my attorneys is in Zurich deposing him as we speak. Whatever you said to him, Jack, was more than enough to secure his cooperation. Once we have his deposition, we will make sure it reaches the proper authorities. It will be more than enough to tip the first domino. Jürgen Rostock, I suspect, is about to face a dramatic reversal of fortune.”
Jack had little trouble believing this. Like Bossard, Gerhard Klugmann, now recovering from his gunshot wound and certain Rostock was hunting for him, had been debriefed by Marshal Allemand’s legal team. The hacker was savvy enough to have realized that his former employer was no longer the winning team and that the best way to stay out of both Rostock’s crosshairs and prison was to cooperate. According to Allemand’s lawyer, Klugmann was a disturbingly immaculate record-keeper.
Jack checked his watch. It was three o’clock. Nine a.m. back home.
“Will you excuse me?” Jack said, and stood up.
He walked out the solarium’s side door and onto the lawn. He sat down in the grass. He pulled out his phone and hit speed dial.
The line clicked open, and the voice at the other end said, “Gerry Hendley.”
“Gerry, it’s Jack. I think it’s time we talk.”
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