Back to the teenager at the TGV station: If she’d been a tail for Litzman, it was best to assume the German now knew the make, model, and license of their rental car. With the right connections he could easily track them.
Tanner kept one eye on the sun as it dropped toward the horizon, the other on the door, half-expecting it to come crashing in at any moment.
At nine o’clock they left the hotel and headed southeast, exiting and rejoining the highway to check for tails until they reached the town of St. Meen le Grand, where they traded their Renault for the only car the office had available, a three-cylinder, 60 horsepower Peugeot.
“I feel like a clown in a circus car,” Cahil muttered, hunched over. “My legs are falling asleep.”
“Let’s hope we don’t run into many hills,” Tanner agreed.
“Wanna flip a coin to see who gets out to push?”
They toured the town’s narrow streets for thirty minutes and then, confident they were alone, rejoined the highway to Lorient.
They were in the heart of the Morbihan region of Brittany now — Bretagne to the locals — France’s borderlands between the inland and the rugged coastline along the Bay of Biscay. Covered with green fields, apple orchards, and forests of beech and oak, Morbihan’s interior was broken by rolling hills, sunken rivers, and ancient stone walls separating checkerboard farmland.
Seven kilometers northeast of Saint Servant, Cahil was perusing the map when Tanner cast a glance in the rear-view mirror and saw a pair of headlights rounding the bend behind them. It was the first vehicle they’d seen since leaving St. Meen le Grand.
“We’ve got a fellow traveler,” Tanner said.
Cahil glanced back. “He’s moving fast.”
As Tanner watched, the pinpricks grew until the car was only a hundred yards off their bumper. The headlights were widely spaced, and between them Briggs caught a glimpse of heavy chrome and a three-pointed star. Mercedes, he thought. Big engine.
The Mercedes hung back for a minute, then began accelerating again, until it was within arm’s reach of their bumper. The headlights blazed through the rear window. Tanner squinted against it. He stuck his arm out the window and waved them to pass. The Mercedes clung to their bumper, matching the Peugeot’s speed.
“What do you think?” Cahil said. “Just a little road rage, perhaps?”
As if in response, the Mercedes’s headlights flipped to high, casting the Peugeot’s interior in white light. “Doesn’t look like it,” Tanner replied. He began slewing the Peugeot from side to side. Left unchecked, he knew the Mercedes would have no trouble overtaking them and forcing them off the road. “Where are we?” he called. “Anything on the map?”
Cahil peered at the map. “No, I don’t—”
The Mercedes accelerated and crashed their bumper. The Peugeot lurched forward. Tanner felt the back end slipping sideways, the tires stuttering over the gravel. He spun the wheel to compensate and the Peugeot righted itself.
“He’s trying to pit us,” Briggs called, referring to what the police called a precision immobilization technique. If the Mercedes’s driver could jam the corner of his front bumper into either of the Peugeot’s rear quarter panels, the little car would lose traction and spin out of control. “What about the map?”
“No, there’s noth — Wait a second…” Cahil peered out Tanner’s window, shading his eyes against the glare, then glanced back down at the map again. “Yeah, that’s it! Right turn!”
“Now?”
“Now!”
Tanner slammed on the brakes. The Mercedes’s headlights loomed in the rearview mirror. Just before their bumpers touched, Tanner downshifted, punched the accelerator, cranked the wheel over, then tapped the brake, sending the Peugeot into a skidding turn. The steering wheel shuddered in his hands. The glovebox popped open and papers began fluttering around the car’s interior. From the corner of his eye Briggs saw a crack appear in the corner of the windshield.
“I’d say we’ve found her stress limits,” he called.
“Well, hell, it’s a clown car, not a tank!”
The Peugeot’s headlights washed over a grass-covered tract. Two hundred yards beyond that Tanner saw a man-made structure of some kind and got the fleeting impression of a crenellated wall. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the Mercedes flash past the turn-in. Its brake lights flashed on and it skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust.
Wheels pounding over the ruts, the Peugeot rocked from side to side. Tanner’s head bumped against the roof; he tasted blood. Through the windshield he caught a glimpse of a white sign with red lettering. The Peugeot’s lights picked out a concrete wall, ten feet wide, twenty tall, and topped with grass and brush. Flanking the wall were a pair of concrete towers, each three stories tall. Sitting atop each was a small dome with horizontal slits. Fifty yards to his right Tanner could see the vague outline of another tower, and another beyond that.
The wall rose before the windshield. Tanner slammed on the brakes. The Peugeot slewed sideways and came to a stop before the wall. In the side mirror he saw the Mercedes backing down the main road, its powerful engine whining. It stopped, made a Y-turn, then started down the tract.
“Time to run!” Cahil called. He jumped from the car and began sprinting toward one of the towers. Tanner grabbed the backpack into which they’d stuffed all their gear, then followed. At the base of one of the towers they found a pair of eight-foot steel doors. The latch was secured by padlock and chain. Tanner looked around, pointed. “Hammer.”
Cahil ran over, hefted the concrete block, then raised it above his head and let it crash down on the chain. The padlock held firm. Behind them came the skidding of tires. Headlights pinned them. Cahil lifted the block again, raised it, let it drop. The chain clattered to the ground. They put their shoulders to the doors and pushed.
Behind came the sound of car doors opening, then a shout: “Halt!”
If Tanner had had any doubts about the identity of their pursuers, they were now gone. Litzman’s cronies from the Black Boar hadn’t given up.
Cahil grunted. “Let’s hope they don’t have—”
From the Mercedes came three overlapping cracks. Dust and concrete shards rained down on them. “Guns?” Tanner finished.
“Yeah, that. One more time!”
In unison, they gave one final heave. The doors gave a screeching groan, then shuddered open a foot. Through the gap Tanner saw blackness. “Go,” he ordered.
Cahil began squeezing through. Tanner glanced over his shoulder, saw six figures sprinting across the uneven ground. Cahil wriggled through the gap, then grabbed Tanner’s arm and began pulling. Briggs shoved his head and shoulders inside, then exhaled all the air from his lungs, coiled his legs, and pushed off. Together they tumbled into the darkness.
16
They fell together in a heap, then scrambled on hands and knees back to the doors, and jammed their shoulders against the steel. As the doors swung shut, Tanner saw figures rushing toward them. A trio of muzzles flashed. Bullets thunked into the doors, sounding like hammer strikes on the steel.
“Push!” Tanner yelled.
The doors slid shut with a reverberating gong. They were engulfed in blackness. The doors began bucking as boots and fists pounded from the outside.
“The duffel,” Cahil whispered. “There’s a penlight.”
Tanner felt around in the darkness, hand groping over the rough concrete until it found the duffel. He pulled it to him, opened the side pocket, fished around for a moment, then came out with the flashlight. He clicked it on. A small pool of light enveloped them.