C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “Be advised, the police have just issued a pursuit call on the police band to units in your vicinity.”
K. Immel—RS: Physical: “That’s just fucking great. I need real time routing.”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “Standby for routing… In four hundred meters execute a U-turn. Three hundred. Two hundred. Standby for the turn. Mark the turn.”
K. Immel—RS: Physical: “Turn executed. I think I… ooooh, that’s a four, no five-car pile-up in my wake.”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “And your bogie?”
K. Immel—RS: Physical: “Checking… he made it through. Still on my ass.”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “In five hundred meters execute a left turn. Three hundred. Two hundred. Standby for the turn. Mark the turn.”
K. Immel—RS: Physical: “The light is red, do you have traffic cameras? Can I burn it?”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “Negative, take the sidewalk.”
Kalen braked the bike hard and turned left onto a sidewalk just before the cross street of the busy intersection. A twist of the throttle and he catapulted the bike forward on the new vector, blowing past 100 kilometers per hour in three seconds. Kalen bobbed and weaved between potted trees and shrieking pedestrians on the sidewalk like an alpine skier negotiating the flags on a downhill run.
Udo braked late, wrestled his bike through a skidding turn, and scraped along the side of a parked Audi as he recovered his balance. He accelerated in pursuit of his quarry, electing to drive against the flow of traffic in a narrow gap between a row of parked cars and on-coming vehicles in the right lane. Horns blared and tires squealed as drivers reacted to the reckless motorcycle racing past.
Kalen jumped the curb back onto the street; the rear tire squealed as it grabbed asphalt. Udo shot through a gap across two lanes of ongoing traffic, a red blur, and merged into the southbound flow behind Kalen and Foster. Three police cars were now in pursuit, dodging and weaving clumsily behind the more agile racing bikes. Kalen took up a position precariously piloting the divider line, overtaking two lanes of moving traffic between the cars. Udo followed two hundred meters behind, steadily closing the gap. The light at the upcoming intersection was green.
K. Immel—RS: Physical: “Shit, I still have my bogie… I need a blocking fullback. Where the hell is Bavarian One?”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “Bavarian One is in egress with Bio and Social. Do you want me to reroute?”
K. Immel—RS: Physical: “Shit… umm, hold on.
Kalen glanced to his right, looking down the cross street, checking the flow of traffic. The front cars were crossing, but the lagging cars were slowing.
The light ahead changed to yellow.
K. Immel—RS: Physical: Never mind, Coordinator, I have a crazy idea.”
This was his chance — the transition — the two-second period when the intersection was vacant between the switching of traffic flows. He would need to time the maneuver perfectly. If it worked, he would trap the police cruisers behind the blockade of stopped cars at the light and peel his bogie off into the grill of a crossing vehicle moving into the intersection. If his timing was off, or if some bastard ran the light, then it would be him and his precious cargo that the EMTs would be scraping up off the pavement.
Kalen twisted the throttle, accelerating toward the column of cars ahead slowing at the intersection. The space between the doors of adjacent cars was just wide enough to permit the clear passage of a motorcycle and rider, provided, he maintained a perfectly straight trajectory… and nobody opened a car door.
One hundred meters to the intersection.
The light changed red.
Braking was not an option.
Kalen clenched his teeth.
Headlights flashed.
Someone was about to die.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Check her,” Raimond Zurn ordered Stefan.
Stefan walked over to the chair where Julie was bound. Her body sagged, like a wet paper doll. Only the duct tape they’d bound her with kept her from sliding off the seat onto the floor in a heap. Stefan leaned over at the waist and put his right cheek next to her nose and mouth. Her faint warm breath caressed his smooth, boyish skin.
“She’s alive, and still unconscious,” Stefan said.
“Wake her.”
“How do you suggest I do that? The chloroform is still in her system.”
“Slap her, yell at her, use the smelling salts, I don’t care. Just wake her!” Raimond yelled.
Stefan tensed. He was not accustomed to seeing his brother Raimond in such a manic state. Then again, fieldwork was rare for Stefan, so it was possible that Raimond was always this way in the field. Stefan preferred to stay behind in Munich, functioning as a one-man computer command center for the brothers’ assignments. He left the wet work for his two older brothers; they seemed to enjoy it immensely. Stefan did not have the stomach for it. Tooth and nail were not his weapons of choice; the pain Stefan inflicted on his victims was in the form of ones and zeros. The anonymity of his firewall was his shield, the software hack his blade.
Stefan stared at the American woman. She was completely vulnerable, oblivious. He had never held a position of power over a woman like this before. Stefan Zurn had been dominated by women his entire life, starting with his mother and then followed by every woman he had encountered ever since. Women were an enigma — enchanting and enraging — and Stefan was a boy of a man. Even at age twenty-four, he had yet to know a woman. Now, at this moment, he had the sudden urge to strip this woman of her clothes. Make her naked, while he stood over her, clothed. Dominant. Erect. Powerful.
“Stefan!” Raimond yelled, startling his brother out of his trance. “Wake her up. I’m not waiting for Udo any longer. I want answers.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I was just…” Stefan stammered.
He pulled a tiny sealed container of pungent smelling salts from his pocket. He unscrewed the black cap, held his breath, and wafted the open container beneath Julie’s nose.
Her head jerked once, but her eyelids did not open.
He repeated the process, this time letting the open vial linger beneath her nostrils several seconds longer. Stefan was not sure if smelling salts could wake a person from drug-induced unconsciousness, but he had no intention of arguing with Raimond about the point. She would wake up as soon as her body metabolized the sedative compound in her bloodstream, and not one second before. Until that time, he would appease his brother by trying his damnedest to wake her.
After several attempts, she made a gurgling noise and pulled her face away from the source of the piquant odor. Her eyelids opened a crack, and then quickly shut again.
“Julie Ponte. Julie Ponte, wake up,” Stefan said in her ear, shaking her by the shoulder.
“Sleeping,” Julie moaned. “I want to sleep.”
Stefan put the salts under her nose again. This time her eyes popped open.
The warehouse where they had taken Julie was empty. Once a storage facility for a plastics company, all that remained inside were rows and rows of barren metal shelving. Each storage rack was ten feet tall and stretched off into the darkness. Julie sat, duct-taped to a decrepit metal chair. The only light in the warehouse emanated from the headlamps of the van, parked ten feet away and facing Julie. Raimond had cut a rusty padlock from one of the loading dock doors, and Stefan had pulled the van completely inside so they could not be seen.