Burnt Sienna
There damned well had better be survivors, he thought, steering sharply toward the right. It no longer mattered to him that he had been making arrangements for Sienna’s death. Now, more than anything, he wanted her alive. And Malone. He wanted to see their faces. He needed to study the fear in their eyes when he made them pay.
“I see movement!” The guard next to Bellasar pointed toward the right, toward where Bellasar steered.
Even the toughest civilian four-wheel-drive vehicle would have long since broken its suspension, so punishing was the rocky terrain. But one of Bellasar’s engineering teams had developed a military version that had civilian styling, rode well, was heavily armed, and would survive just about any hardship demanded of it. A number of drug lords and dictators had ordered the armor-plated model, but before making delivery, Bellasar had wanted to test it further. It gave him great satisfaction that its performance this afternoon left no doubt that it was ready.
You think you can get away from me? he mentally shouted toward the two partially glimpsed figures who scrambled up the slope. You think you have even the slightest chance?
Reaching the bottom of the slope, not bothering to reduce speed as he jolted upward, he saw the smoke disperse enough to verify that the scurrying figures were in fact Sienna and Malone. He raised the lid on a console next to him, exposing a button and two small joysticks. The button he pressed opened a port beneath each headlight, exposing the muzzle of a .30-caliber machine gun built into each wheel well.
Each weapon was capable of swiveling within a thirty-degree radius, of being raised and lowered within a similar range, and of firing independently. Bellasar didn’t worry that shots would bring the police. This was still his property; he sometimes tested weapons here. Farmers in the area would think it was business as usual. Judging the distance and angle, he used his right hand to maneuver the right stick, pressed a button on top of it, and heard a brrrrp, its vibration negligible as a stream of bullets tore up the slope to the right of his targets. He didn’t want to hit them. God no. He wanted to scare them and convince them that running any farther was futile. He wanted them alive, to make them suffer.
Sienna and Malone frantically changed direction, angling to the left as they charged up the slope. Bellasar switched to the other stick, maneuvered it, pressed the button on it, and sent a burst of bullets into the slope above them, spraying dirt, shattering rocks, and disintegrating bushes. He redirected the stick, curving the bullets downward to the right, then up again, blocking the next route they tried. Sienna and Malone flinched, bent low, and reversed their direction, sprinting again to the left, heading back toward the wreckage.
Bellasar tracked them with the left machine gun. About to press its button and tear up the slope farther to their left, he had to jerk his hand from the stick and grip the steering wheel, needing both hands to veer around a boulder that loomed ahead of him. The instant he was safely around it, he gripped the stick again and refocused his gaze on the running figures.
Or tried to. In the few seconds it had taken him to avoid the boulder, Sienna and Malone had reached the smoke from the wreckage. His vision obscured, Bellasar steered to the left now, following them, speeding farther up the hill. Without warning, a gully blocked his way. He stomped on the brakes so hard that he lurched painfully forward, his shoulder harness cutting into him. The guards in the back slammed forward. As the brakes gripped, tires skidding, the gully got closer, wider, deeper. Bellasar didn’t realize he was holding his breath until the vehicle stopped, its front end tilting downward. He exhaled.
Immediately he grabbed the microphone from the dashboard’s two-way radio. “Keep after them! Block their route!”
The machine guns in the other vehicles began shooting into the smoke.
“Damn it, don’t shoot to kill! I want them alive! Use your bullets to block their route!” Instantly he changed to another frequency, contacting Potter at the château.
Potter’s voice crackled from the radio. “The second helicopter has arrived.”
“Bring it. I’ve found them.” Bellasar blurted directions to where he was. “I’m activating a homing signal. Follow it.”
Dropping the microphone, Bellasar drew his pistol and hurried from the vehicle. “Spread out!” he ordered the guards. “They’re hiding up there in the smoke! As far as I know, Malone isn’t armed! You don’t need to shoot to kill! Find them! Bring them to me!”
Preparing to hurry down into the gully and up the other side, Bellasar took a second to admire the two vehicles beyond it as they sped up the slope on his left, veering among bushes and boulders, easily handling the rough landscape. The sound of their engines was solid and powerful. Five minutes from now, Alex and the second helicopter would arrive. Bellasar would order the pilot to hover over the wreckage. The downdraft from its whirling blades would disperse the smoke, making it easy to find where Sienna and Malone were trying to hide among the rocks. It’s only a matter of time, Bellasar assured himself. Soon I’ll have them. In fact, for a moment a deep sound blended with that of the vehicles and made him think that the second helicopter had arrived more quickly than he expected. As the deep sound became a rumble, he realized how wrong he was.
13
Coughing so hard that he feared he might vomit, his eyes watering from the smoke that swirled around him, Malone heard the vehicles roaring up the slope toward Sienna and him. The burning wreckage and the smoke from it temporarily shielded them, but the relentless vehicles would soon burst into view.
Hunched next to him behind a boulder, Sienna coughed as hard as he did. “Let’s see if we can move this thing,” she said.
“What?”
“This boulder.”
As the vehicles charged closer up the hill, Malone suddenly understood. The smoke thinned enough for him to see a glint of hope in her raw, red, irritated eyes. They rose to a crouch and pressed both hands against the boulder, shoving against it.
Harder! Groaning with effort, Malone felt something in him thrill as the boulder shifted.
More! The boulder tilted, rolling, gaining momentum, rumbling out of sight through the smoke.
They raced toward another. Desperation fueling their strength, they got it rolling faster than the first one and immediately rushed to another and then another, crisscrossing the slope, protecting both sides of the flaming wreckage.
The combined rumble reminded Malone of thunder. But the thunder became distant. The boulders were taking too long. They must have passed the vehicles and continued toward the bottom. At once, a crash of rock, glass, and metal echoed from below. A second crash was even more violent. Before the engines died, Sienna was already in motion. She ran up the slope, coughing, straining to break free of the smoke. A third crash made Malone’s spirits soar as he hurried after her.
Gagging, he left the smoke, but he was too distracted to enjoy the sweet, clean air he sucked into his lungs. The crest of the slope was only thirty yards ahead, but it might as well have been a mile. He had no way of telling how damaged the vehicles were. He didn’t dare waste time looking behind him to check. If the machine guns haven’t been disabled, we don’t have a chance, he thought.
Indeed, he did hear gunshots, but they were single fire, not from automatic weapons, and the bullets were ricocheting off rocks below him. That meant the gunmen were aiming as if they were on level ground. To hit a target moving uphill, they had to aim slightly above what they were shooting at, letting the target rise into their sights. But they would soon make that adjustment. Of that, Malone had no doubt.
Sienna was so propelled by fear that he had trouble keeping up with her. The top of the slope seemed as far away as when he had started. The single-fire bullets whacked closer behind him, and he realized with alarm that the gunmen weren’t making a mistake. They’re aiming low on purpose, he thought. They don’t want to kill us. They’re shooting toward our legs. They want to cripple us so Bellasar can take us alive.
What sounded like superfast bumblebees sped past
his legs. One of them nicked his jeans and stung his left calf. Racing harder, he stared toward the top. He swore his eyes were playing tricks. Everything seemed to become magnified, the crest suddenly close before him. He saw Sienna disappear over it, and a moment later, chased by bullets, he joined her, lurching onto a flat ridge that led to a gradual descent to olive trees in a valley. In the distance was a gray ribbon of concrete flanked by a handful of matchbox-looking buildings: the airfield.
14
The crunch of metal and the shatter of glass sent a wave of nausea through Bellasar. His sick feeling quickly changed to the most intense fury he had ever known. His engineers had assured him that these vehicles could withstand an attack from assault rifles, grenades, and even a glancing hit from a rocket. But the boulders had crushed the front of the cars and bounced up to strike the bullet-resistant windshields, smashing through and crushing the men in the front seats.
Bellasar screamed in outrage. With the men from his car and the survivors who lurched from the other cars, he fired toward Sienna and Malone. Determined more than ever to take them alive, aiming at their legs, he emptied his pistol, but before he could eject its magazine and shove in a new one, they disappeared over the crest.
Cursing, Bellasar leapt back into his vehicle. The men with him barely had a chance to jump in before he rammed the gearshift into reverse, tore up dirt backing away from the gully, spun the steering wheel, and sped up the slope.
But the incline steepened, and the ground became more uneven. The engine, strained to its limit, could no longer propel the weight of the reinforced body. The more it slowed, the more Bellasar pressed the accelerator, until, with a bang that shook the vehicle, the transmission failed, the vehicle rolling backward. Bellasar stomped the brake pedal, twisted the steering wheel, and yanked the lever of the emergency brake. Slamming a fresh magazine into his pistol, he charged out and ran for the top.
15
As Malone reached the cover of the olive trees at the bottom of the slope, he risked a precious few seconds to catch his breath and check behind him. But any hope that Bellasar might have been left back there was destroyed when he saw the tiny figures of men hurry over the crest. At their lead, his suit and tie somehow more threatening than the rugged clothes of the guards, his broad shoulders and strong chest unmistakable, was Bellasar.
Malone raced on. The olive trees were dense enough that he couldn’t see Sienna, but the snap of branches and the crunch of footsteps ahead told him where to run to catch up to her. Despite his excellent physical condition, he had trouble narrowing the distance between them. At once he glimpsed her, the earth colors of her skirt and top helping her blend with the trees as she fled through them. He managed to join her as the trees gave way to a field, a fence, Quonset huts, and the airstrip.
All the while he and Sienna raced across the field, Malone was intensely aware of the cold spot on his back where he expected to be shot. Sienna got to the fence first, dropped to her back, pushed up the lowest strand of wire, and squirmed under. Shouts from the trees behind Malone added to his speed when he gripped a post and vaulted the fence to catch up to her.
The Quonset huts were rusted, he saw when he reached them. Cracks in the airstrip were choked with grass. Christ, it’s abandoned, he thought. Jeb, what have you sent me to? But even as unnerving doubts seized him, he and Sienna rounded a corner and almost bumped into a pickup truck. Past it were an old Renault sedan and a beat-up station wagon. Three single-propeller planes stood at the side of the runway.
About to hurry into the largest building, Malone bumped into a bearded man coming out dressed in mechanic’s coveralls and carrying a greasy rag.
With his limited French, Malone tried to blurt his apologies, quickly adding, “I’m looking for a man named Harry Lockhart.”
The man raised his eyebrows and hands in confusion.
“Harry Lockhart.” Malone couldn’t help noticing the frown Sienna gave him. “Do you know a man named …”
The mystified expression on the Frenchman’s face made Malone give up.
“Speak English, monsieur. I don’t understand your French. I’ve never heard of anyone named Harry Lockhart.”
“But he’s supposed to meet me here!”
Sienna’s frown became more severe.
“Are you certain you came to the right airfield?” the Frenchman asked.
“Is there another one around here?”
“No.”
“Then I’m in the right place.”
“You’re bleeding, monsieur.”
“What?”
“Your face. You’re bleeding.”
Malone had assumed the moisture he felt was sweat. For a moment, he feared he’d been shot. Then he realized that the blood came from the scabs on his cheek and mouth. The exertion had opened them.
Two other men stepped from the building. They, too, wore coveralls, and although one was a little heavier than the other, they looked like brothers.
The first man turned to them and asked something in French.
At the mention of the name Harry Lockhart, they shook their heads no, then looked puzzled at the blood on Malone’s face.
Damn it, Jeb, you promised he’d be here! Malone thought.
“What happened to you?” the first man asked in English. “Were you in those explosions we heard?”
Sienna kept glancing nervously back toward the field they had run across. “We can’t wait any longer. If this guy Lockhart isn’t here to help us …” She started to run.
Malone spoke more frantically to the Frenchmen. “Did anybody show up here in the past couple of weeks and say he was waiting for Chase Malone.”
“No, monsieur. The only people who come here are the three of us and a few others in the area who like to fly old planes.”
You bastard, Jeb. You swore you’d back me up.
The Frenchman’s gaze drifted toward the sky and the swiftly approaching sound of a helicopter.
Oh shit, Malone thought. He pulled his steel and gold Rolex from his wrist and put it in the man’s hand.
“This is worth six thousand dollars. Show me how fast you can get your plane in the air.”
16
Halfway across the field, Bellasar faltered at the sound of a small plane sputtering, then droning. The engine gained more power, sounding as if it was about to take off. No! he raged, charging forward again, faster. If Sienna and Malone are in that plane …
The engine reached full power, the distinctive thrust of a plane speeding along a runway. I’ve lost them! Bellasar thought. He came to a breathless stop. His sweat-drenched suit and white shirt clinging to him, he stared at the sky above the metal buildings. Raising his pistol, his men doing the same, he got ready to fire the instant the plane soared into view. His intentions were rash, he knew, given that there would probably be witnesses at the airfield. The imprecision bothered him also, the risk of stray bullets killing Sienna and Malone rather than merely forcing the plane down. But, by God, he had to do something. He wasn’t just going to stand there and watch Malone fly away with his wife.
17
When Potter saw the smoking wreckage of the helicopter and then the three abandoned vehicles, two of them crushed, the doors of the third one open, as if its occupants had left in a hurry, he was reminded of the aftermath of an ambush he’d seen in the Balkans a month earlier. Except, in this case, there weren’t any bodies. Where was … About to tell the pilot to keep a distance until he figured out what was going on, he heard his cell phone ring, and he answered it.
“I’m in the next valley!” Bellasar shouted. “There’s an airstrip! Sienna and Malone are in a plane, about to take off!”
As Bellasar told him what to do, Potter felt uncustomarily euphoric. The helicopter increased speed, clearing the top of the hill. Immediately the airfield was in view. So was the tiny outline of the single-prop airplane taking off. Although the airplane rapidly gained altitude, the turbo-charged helicopter climbed much faster, making Potter fee
l energized, pressing his stomach pleasantly against his back.
The airplane leveled off, speeding toward rugged hills to the west. The helicopter raced after it, gaining, quickly coming abreast of it on the left.
Potter studied the shapes of passengers in the back-seat and motioned for the plane’s pilot to set down.
The pilot ignored him.
The plane dipped sharply.
So did the helicopter.
The plane veered more sharply to the right.
So did the helicopter.
“Get ahead of him,” Potter said. “Keep cutting him off. Force him to go back to the airfield.”
But before the helicopter’s pilot could do what he was told, the plane soared.
So did the helicopter.
Unexpectedly, the plane swooped toward the countryside and banked beneath the helicopter, speeding in the opposite direction.
The pilot muttered, chasing the plane, narrowing the distance between them. Now he matched everything the airplane did, dipping, banking, soaring. Each maneuver bringing him closer, the pilot took the offensive and cut ahead of the plane, compelling it to turn. When it dipped, he anticipated which side the plane’s pilot was going to choose and was waiting for him, forcing him to turn again. When the plane soared, the helicopter pilot again anticipated which side he would bank to and waited to block his way.
As the helicopter nudged closer, the bearded face of the plane’s pilot became distinct. Although his Plexiglas window was scratched and dusty, there was no mistaking his alarm. Potter’s French was excellent, and so was his ability to read lips. The pilot was cursing.
The man grabbed his radio microphone. The chopper’s pilot found the frequency he was using. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the Frenchman demanded.