“Shit,” Gil muttered. “That means infrared. Sounds like maybe I brought a knife to a gunfight. What was he doing out of the hide?”
“Stretching his back, I think.”
“At least he’s careless. That’s something.” Gil relaxed and proceeded to piss his pants to solve that nagging issue. This was more difficult to accomplish while remaining stock still than most people might have imagined, but Gil had more or less mastered the art by this point in his career. An operative had to drink a lot of water in Afghanistan to stay alive and alert, and a sniper couldn’t be jumping up to hit the head every ten minutes.
Now he was ready to engage. “I need to eliminate this guy before Umarov comes out. Guide me to him.”
“Find the northern water tank.”
“Got it.”
“He’s beneath a hide made of plywood and debris thirty feet south of— Look sharp! He’s shifting his aim!”
Gil adjusted his own aim ten degrees right. His blood froze when he saw the enemy sniper, perfectly visible beneath the hide, silhouetted in the greenish-black field of vision.
“Shit!” He flinched away from the scope a mere instant before it shattered, the enemy round passing directly through the optic tube without touching the sides. Splinters of glass stung the flesh of Gil’s neck as the deadly bullet streaked past his ear. He let go of the Remington, rolling across the roof of the railcar to drop off the far side just as the enemy’s second round grazed his hip. He twisted midfall to land feetfirst like a cat in the gravel, ducking for cover behind one of the great steel wheels of the railcar.
“Christ Jesus, that was close!”
“Are you hit?” the overwatch asked, slightly unsettled.
Gil took a moment to pull down his jeans partway for a look at the wound. “He nicked my hip. Nothing serious.”
“Good,” the voice said grimly, “because you’re about to be hip deep in shit. You’ve got a few dozen French gendarmes converging on your position from the north and west. Two hundred yards distant. They’ve got a pair of German shepherds.”
Gil didn’t want any part of German shepherds. He might handle one if he was willing to take damage, but a pair of them would drag him down and rip him apart. He took off at a dead run to the south, running parallel to the train through the loose gravel. “What’s the fuckin’ sniper doing?”
“Forget him,” the voice said, slightly distracted now. “He’s pulling back.”
Gil adjusted the earpiece as he ran. “Is it possible the gendarmes are here for Umarov?”
“They’re not moving toward the warehouse. Hold on a second.” Another pause. “Umarov and his people are leaving out the back. You must’ve been set up, Gil.”
“Goddamnit, by who?” Gil demanded, running through the darkness with the shouts of the pursuing gendarmes drifting down on the wind.
“The dogs are loose,” the voice said. “Closing fast at a hundred yards.”
“Fuck!” Gil leapt onto the ladder of a railcar and scrambled to the roof, sprinting along the tops of the cars, jumping the gaps between them as he made toward the locomotive still a half mile ahead at the front of the train.
“They’re going to see you up there.”
“Well, if you got a better idea, Bob, I’m all ears.” The dogs were barking, catching up fast, the hollow thudding of Gil’s footfalls clearly audible; the microdroplets of his perspiration heavy in the air and impossible for canines to miss.
“Widening the angle for a look ahead,” was the response from his overwatch.
Gil could feel the titanium implant in his right foot beginning to bite into the muscle tissue, and he wondered how long before something inside the foot broke loose. He wasn’t exactly built for escape and evasion anymore, and the fact became more evident with each leap from one railcar to the next. The German shepherds were directly below now, barking their asses off to let their handlers know they had caught up to the suspect.
A pistol shot rang out, and Gil cut a glance over his shoulder to see a gendarme fifteen cars back, also running along the rooftops.
“What happened to ‘Thou shalt not shoot a fleeing felon’?” Gil muttered aloud.
“You’re in France,” the voice reminded him. “They don’t have that law over there.”
“Bob. I’m running out of train, and that gung-ho prick back there is faster than I am.” Another pistol shot. “I’m pretty sure they aim to kill me.”
“They do. Somebody called a tip into the Sûreté about a terrorist in the train yard.” The Sûreté Nationale was the French national police force.
“You’re channel surfing?” Gil leapt a gap between cars, almost stumbling upon landing.
“I have to find out what you’re up against,” the voice said calmly, the faint sound of fingers running over a keyboard. “Okay, you’re in luck. The tracks span a wide canal about ten cars ahead. The dogs won’t be able to follow you across, so you can hit the ground and do some open-field running.”
Gil jumped another span and stumbled, expertly summersaulting back to his feet, the footfalls of his pursuer growing ever closer. “I have to shake Carl Lewis back there.”
“Run, Gil. If you’re captured alive, you’ll do life in a French prison.”
“Thanks, Bob, no shit!” Gil ran across the car that spanned the canal way, leaving the dogs barking at the edge and scrambling down a ladder to the ground. A quick glance, and he saw the gendarme only six cars back, closing fast with pistol in hand. He disappeared into the shadows of a stockyard full of shipping containers stacked two high. The shouts of more gendarmes became audible as they gathered at the canal’s edge, the beams of their flashlights flickering wildly.
Gil pulled up around the corner of the nearest shipping container to wait for the gendarme. As the younger man rounded the corner in the darkness at full speed, Gil delivered him a vicious strike to the throat with the V of his forefinger and thumb, temporarily collapsing the esophagus and taking him off his feet.
The pistol fell to the ground, and Gil snatched it up. He didn’t want to kill anyone, but the possibility of life in prison was not acceptable to him, so he would have to play this fucked-up mission as close to the edge as it came, dancing along the razor until he finally escaped or was forced into making some fatal decision. He jammed the pistol into his waistband and kept moving, leaving the gendarme choking in the dirt.
“Find me a way outta this fuckin’ rat maze!” It was moments like this that Gil was relieved that he and his wife were separated, and that she wasn’t at home worrying about him.
“Keep moving straight down the row until it dead-ends, then break right. A few of them are crossing the canal over the train now. The rest are moving west with the dogs toward a footbridge.”
“Where am I in relation to the embassy?” Gil asked.
“You can forget the embassy,” the voice answered. “It’s being cordoned off as we speak. Somebody knows you’re an American, and they’re expecting you to head that way.”
Gil dashed down a narrow passage between the containers. “Where is Umarov?”
“Never mind him. We have to find you a place to hole up.”
“Fuck that!” Gil snapped. “Vector me back toward Umarov!”
“Gil, no. It’s—”
“Bob, your Paris contacts are compromised. I’m completely on my own down here. So vectoring me toward Umarov is as good a direction as any — and it’s the last thing he’s gonna expect!”
The overwatch remained silent, so Gil kept moving toward the end of the row, reaching the dead end. He looked up into the starry night sky. “So what the fuck up there? Am I turning left or right?”
“Oh, hell,” the voice said. “Break left!”
Gil took off down the row. “Did Umarov go far?”