One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [145]
The hallway was empty. She felt her knees begin to buckle and threw her hand up to the doorjamb for support. Jesus, why don’t I listen to Pike? Leaning against the frame with her eyes closed, taking quick, shallow breaths, she didn’t even notice that the door had opened until she heard someone speak.
Standing in front of her in his underwear, black socks held up by garters on his skinny legs, wearing a stained wife-beater T-shirt, was a man of about sixty. The man looked at her suspiciously and said something in Serbo-Croatian.
Feeling nauseous, Jennifer said, “Sorry, wrong room.”
She speed-walked back down the hallway, taking care not to make any noise as she opened the door to the stairwell. Reaching the street outside, she walked as fast as she could without breaking into an overt run, not conscious of the direction she was going or the people she bumped into in her haste to put some distance between herself and the hotel. She made it about ninety feet before the enormity of the close call hit home. She stopped, reaching toward the nearest wall for support. She leaned over and threw up, splashing vomit on her legs and causing people on the sidewalk to immediately avoid her.
Racked with dry heaves, she sank to her knees. A crowd began to gather around her, with several people asking her questions in Serbo-Croatian. Get out of here. You’re making a scene. You’re going to blow this whole thing. She stood up, brushing off the help and looking for an escape route. She heard a man on the street yelling something, then recognized it was Pike. Thank God.
She ran to the SUV as Pike opened the passenger door. She leaned back into the seat, shaking and gasping for air as if she had just run a marathon. Pike gunned the engine, pulling away from the hotel.
“You all right? What the fuck happened?”
“I’m okay.” She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, repeating the phrase as if to prove it to herself.
“I’m okay.”
86
In his Crystal City office, Lucas pinched the bridge of his nose, wanting more than anything to smash his computer into little pieces. No sooner had his team landed in Norway then the beacon had shown up in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Through Standish he had confirmed that Kurt Hale was still in D.C., which led him to surmise that Hale had passed the device to Pike. This was a net positive, provided he could keep a bead on the pager and get his team in position quickly. The first update of its location had been Oslo, causing an immediate launch of the team. Now the damn thing was saying it was in Tuzla. This is turning into a wild goose chase.
On top of that, someone here in the States was making inquiries about the death of the analyst and the shooting at the Four Courts pub. He hadn’t been able to determine who it was but knew it wasn’t official law enforcement. Someone had made a connection between the two and was closing in on his operation.
Regardless, he still had a mission to accomplish. He gave the order for the team in Oslo to redirect to Tuzla at their earliest opportunity. He then turned to his Rolodex and compiled a list of names for a backup team. There was no telling where this was going to lead. He needed the flexibility to launch from inside the European continent while maintaining a reserve. He would fly with the backup team, directly coordinating the mission on the ground. It was becoming impossible to command and control the complex twists of the operation from five thousand miles away, and getting out of the country right now had a certain appeal. Not to mention the chance of getting out of the office and into the hunt.
I WAITED FOR JENNIFER to finish brushing her teeth before continuing the debriefing. When she