“Go.”
The path was dusted with snow, a mild breeze stirring the soft flakes. Cassidy ran for ten meters and then stopped and turned to appraise the bulk of the house behind them.
The first faceless man stared down at her from the top floor, hands gripping the rail of the balcony he had just walked onto; a second dark figure studied her from an adjacent window. And judging by several shadows crossing other windows, Carl Kirke had been awakened to the fright of his life. Cassidy saw a shadow fall, then shook her head as it was dragged back up again. Through the open door she heard a faint scream.
“Wait,” she said. “These men are hurting Kirke.”
Bodie slowed. “Can you see a way back to him?”
Cassidy eyed the faceless, motionless watchers and remembered their firepower. “Sure, I can do anything.”
“That’s a negative,” Heidi broke in. “The op will maintain its priority. Get that compass here now.”
“I could meet you at the airfield.” Cassidy rated her chances pretty low but hated to see an innocent man left behind. She also hated being told what to do by the CIA.
“Kirke is a criminal.” Heidi appeared to read her mind. “Didn’t you wonder why we were able to locate him so easily? Shit, the man’s been sticking our noses in it for years. Boasting about acquisitions in certain circles where he knew word would eventually reach us but always a step removed, always out of reach. Don’t waste this hard work on him.”
Cassidy tore herself away, vowing to find out if Heidi was telling the truth about Kirke, and to take it out of her hide if she wasn’t. She ran decisively, turning one more time to look back at the house.
Nothing. No men standing on the balcony. No sounds. The visage was as empty as a ghost’s face and now just as haunted.
Bodie started the car. The team piled inside. The engine roared as he swung it around in the direction they’d originally come. A beam of sunlight pierced the distant horizon, illuminating the side of a mountain and slowly burnishing the length and breadth of the skies.
“I remember cursing the sunrise a few times before,” Cassidy said as she buckled up. “But not as intensely as this.”
“I’ve never seen you with your knickers in such a twist, Cass,” Bodie said.
“My what? Forget it, just step on the gas.”
He drove urgently. Cassidy stared back through the rear window, her edgy mood soon infecting the rest of the team. Gunn was at her side, searching the roads with frightened eyes, and a worried Jemma sat next to him. But when Cassidy saw what terrifying wickedness chased them she quickly reached for her gun.
“Load up, people,” she said. “We’re about to become roadkill.”
The midnight-black Toyota 4Runner tore up the road, barely slowing for the twisting bends that climbed higher and higher. Alpine passes and towering peaks stood all around, snow-capped, emerging faster as the sun rose higher. Sweeping through the skies in pursuit came three motorized paragliders, large chutes filled with air, each one carrying two men in the buggy-like frame that hung beneath. Cassidy saw front and side wheels and a tubular framework, but most of all, she saw the occupants leaning out, leaning down, semiautomatics aimed.
Gunfire rang out. Cassidy saw Bodie turn the wheel involuntarily, sending the tires bouncing from the tarmac onto the hard-packed soil at the side of the road. He corrected immediately and everyone saw a line of bullets make a suture across an upcoming bend in the road.
Cassidy used the grab handle to steady herself. Bodie gunned the car’s engine, now seeing a straightaway leading to an apex. The paragliders came lower, three abreast and weighed down with firepower.
Bodie hit the crest of the hill just as the paragliders opened fire again. Deadly lead slammed into the road behind their rear tires, bombarding the paintwork with fragments. Bodie kept it straight even as all four tires caught air. The body bounced down an instant later, jostling Gunn right out of his seat and into the footwell.
“Stay there,” Cassidy growled.
Gunn struggled. Cassidy pressed the button to lower the back windows, then leaned out, sighted up toward the eastern skies and the rising sun. The glare was blinding and she fired off a couple of shots. Bodie swung the car hard right, and she found her cheek mashed against the window frame.
“Call it out!” she cried.
Cross took the command to heart. “Straight, sixty feet,” he cried. “Then easy right.”
Cassidy steadied herself. At that moment the lead paraglider swooped and crossed over to the other side of the car. The second descended, firing relentlessly. A bullet clanged off the nearby framework and another penetrated the lower skin. Cassidy loosed a shot that broke one of the paraglider’s upright struts, rendering it unstable but nothing worse. The masked occupants didn’t flinch, drifting lower and lower.
Bullets raked the other side of the car. Gunn cried out. Jemma leapt away. The window next to her head imploded, showering everyone with glass. Bodie swung the wheel and the paraglider shot overhead, looping and spinning around to come back at them. Cassidy saw only one behind them now, and watched it carefully line them up in its sights.
“Hard right, thirty feet,” Cross called.
She fired two shots. The paraglider shifted unhappily as the pilot flinched, losing line of sight. Her third shot winged the passenger, sent his weapon hurtling away and spinning to the ground.
The man hung on with grim determination.
Now Bodie turned the wheel again, and the other two paragliders shot right over them, bullets flying from their weapons and passing harmlessly to the right. Cross swore and then shouted, “Switchbacks coming up! A dozen of them!”
Cassidy turned in disbelief, thinking Cross might finally be losing his mind. From their vantage point, at an elevation above the road below, she saw a twisting ribbon, a crazed snake of hairpin bends and switchbacks, flowing sharply down to the valley floor below.
To her right ran a chaotic row of small concrete posts, the only barrier preventing them from flipping end over end down a thousand feet.
“We came up here in the dark?” Jemma asked, voice unsteady.
“Yeah, aren’t you glad we did, though?”
Cassidy waited for the car to slow, then used the first hairpin to sight on one of the paragliders. Bullets sprayed from both parties, but none came close. The second bend replayed in much the same way, tires squealing as Bodie struggled to keep control around the tight curve. Cassidy reloaded on the straightaway, giving Jemma a long look as she slammed in the spare mag.
“Would work better with backup.”
Jemma breathed deeply and then nodded. The rest of the team, except her and Gunn, was proficient with firearms. This was way outside her comfort zone.
“Don’t worry, girl,” Cassidy emboldened her. “Just point and squeeze. Whatever you hit in the sky, it’s good.”
Jemma inched her way out of the open window, as ungainly as a newborn gazelle on a treadmill. Cassidy tried something new as they hit their fifth hairpin, now about a third down the mountain. Cold wind blew between open windows, scouring the inside of the car. Cassidy leaned out, farther this time, using one hand to take firm hold of the grab strap and the other to steady the gun.
Hanging out of the car that way, she waited until Bodie straightened and let the lead paraglider drift into her sights. There! She squeezed the trigger three times. The first bullet flew high, but the second took the pilot right between the eyes. The man’s head jerked back, blood spraying the passenger, and then the machine took a nose dive. Cassidy saw he had become entangled in the guiding rope, placing pressure in multiple places. The glider became unruly, shifting this way and that. The dead man hung over the front, dragging it down. The passenger tried to climb over him and cut him away, lost his balance, and plummeted to the ground. Cassidy watched and held on, keeping her aim steady in case either of the remaining two paragliders came into view.