Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

Jack didn’t see the man’s gun hand punch the starter button but he heard the engine roar to life. Jack twisted and turned, trying to land harder punches but his big frame wedged in the tiny car window blunted any force he might have generated. The gun hand slammed the car into gear and his foot stomped the gas.

The car lurched forward, tires squealing. Pain shot through Jack’s torso as it twisted, whipped around by the car’s momentum. Jack yanked himself away as hard as he could, and the combination of his remaining strength and the vehicle’s trajectory freed him from the other man’s grip. He crashed to the ground.

Jack scrambled for the next car and dove behind it, expecting Broken Nose to pull his weapon and begin shooting, but the squeal of tires and the stink of burning rubber told Jack to turn around just in time to see the Audi disappear around the corner.

Jack picked himself up off the pavement, the pulled muscles and bruising injuries providing yet another painful reminder that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face, or in his case, tossed out of a moving car.

—

Jack made his way back to his apartment, informing Gavin on his AirPods that things hadn’t quite worked out the way he’d planned. Gavin commiserated with him, and suggested Jack get the hell out of Dodge before the intruder came back with some friends.

Jack agreed. As he quickly gathered up his stuff, Gavin made arrangements for him at a luxury hotel in L’Eixample, the part of town just north of the old city that had some of Barcelona’s trendiest shops and bars.

The first thing Jack did was snatch up the listening devices, smash them under his boot, then toss them into the trash underneath the sink.

He then grabbed everything he’d packed for Spain and crammed it into his leather satchel, then shoved his laptop into its carry case. He pulled out a hundred-euro note and left it on the kitchen counter as a tip for the cleaners.

He dashed out the front door and into a waiting cab that Gavin had summoned. He’d text the owner later with an excuse for an emergency back home and thank him for the extended stay.

In the taxi ride over to the hotel, Jack formulated another plan—one that he hoped would survive another punch to the head.

A plan that might even keep him from getting punched in the first place.

He needed to identify Crooked Nose definitively, including an actual name. He saw the man’s uncovered face inside the Audi but the only photo he could give Gavin was a masked face.

Was there anything Gavin could do with it?

He uploaded the photo and called him.

“Well . . . hate to brag,” Gavin said, “but yeah, not really a problem.” He then began to explain the work being done at places like Google’s DeepFace, and the FBI’s Next Generation Identification project, and how “machine-learning algorithms were being married to neural networks to measure and compare the fourteen major points of facial recognition, and how it was possible using—”

“Gav, can you just ballpark this for me?” Jack finally interrupted.

“Sorry. Sure. Even though the guy’s nose and mouth are covered with that mask, there’s still enough of his face to determine the depth of his eye sockets, the distance between his eyes, the overall shape and format of his face, and a few other points. That gives us a sixty-nine percent chance of re-creating the rest of his face.”

“Seriously?”

“If this mystery man of yours is in any database we have access to, we have a really good chance of finding him. But it’s gonna take some time.”

“Speaking of which, any more progress on identifying the Dylan Runtso project? RAPTURE?”

“Still working on it.”

Jack heard the frustration in his voice.

It matched his own.

34

Brossa sat on a chaise lounge on the patio of a modest, two-story stucco rental on a hillside in the Sarrià–Sant Gervasi neighborhood. She overlooked the city below bathed in the soft, fading light of a cool evening. Her father, Ernesto, was already fast asleep in his bed. The caretaker she’d just hired over the phone, a mexicana , should be arriving within the hour to spend the night, and watch over him while she was away on the raid tomorrow.

She had just finished up a piece of tortilla her father had left in the refrigerator and was now sipping a glass of Espinaler vermut, her favorite . Her kit was ready and packed for the early morning flight up north. Time to unwind a little and forget her troubles.

Her phone vibrated on the glass tabletop. She swore under her breath when she saw Jack’s number. She started to reach for the phone, then decided against it. Too many people— too many men, she corrected herself—were putting too many demands on her lately. Jack was nice enough but he was also too presumptuous. If he really was a civilian and not an American agent, he was the most aggressive tourist she’d ever met. Even if his passion was fueled by his sense of justice for his friend, it was still a thorn in her side that she didn’t want to deal with at the moment. Tomorrow night or even the next day would be soon enough to speak with him, and she would have good news for him after the raid.

The phone stopped vibrating as she poured herself a little more vermut, irritated by Jack’s interruption of her last quiet moment. The phone buzzed again, signaling a text. Not Jack, please, she thought as she picked up the phone.

She swore again. The text was from Jack. Against her better instincts, she opened it. It included a picture of a man’s face taken at an odd angle by what appeared to be a security camera of some sort. He wore a black Nike ball cap and a mask covered his face. The only distinguishing feature she could discern was the glare of his hazel eyes.

Beneath the picture Jack had written THIS MAN IS YOUR BOMBER. I DON’T KNOW WHO HE IS BUT HE WAS AT L’AVI.

She started to call him for more details. How did he know it was the bomber? Where did he get the photo? But she decided against it. The picture was hardly enough to go on. If Jack was right, she’d see the man tomorrow when she arrested him. If he wasn’t there, she’d deal with him and Jack some other day.

She set her phone back down on the glass table and sat back, savoring the last of her drink. She watched a flock of seagulls winging toward her, away from the sea.

A storm was coming.

OCTOBER 27

35

The heat from the turbine felt warm on her neck in the cool of the predawn morning as Brossa climbed into the Eurocopter EC135. Within moments she was at altitude and winging her way north.

Twenty minutes later the chopper set down on the grassy airstrip in Gurb. The airstrip was fit only for ultralight and small civilian aircraft, and in this case, a helicopter. She grimaced at the sight of the six URO VAMTACs—Spanish versions of Humvees—with their Browning M2 12.7×99mm NATO machine guns. She had spoken with Captain Asensio by phone yesterday and thought they had agreed to a quiet insertion, rather than a provocative show of force. Clearly he had changed his mind. The CNI was an intelligence-gathering unit, not a law enforcement agency per se.

She wasn’t entirely surprised by the change of plan, either. Asensio began his career as a Spanish Army paratrooper in Afghanistan before transferring to the Guardia Civil. Quiet insertions weren’t exactly his style.

Fortunately, the captain wisely decided not to assemble his assault team in Vic, a hotbed of Catalonian separatism. He’d even had the good sense to move his combat vehicles at night to avoid detection.

Vic—pronounced Bic locally—was a small, ancient city of some thirty thousand people and the capital of the district. It was also the gateway to the Pyrenees Mountains, toward which they were soon headed. Brossa had been in the main square market just last week. It was a festive affair, crowded with farmers and merchants selling their infinite varieties of delicious cheeses, olives, and jamón to locals and tourists alike. But the surrounding windows and balconies above the square were festooned with banners demanding the release of the Catalonian prisoners, independence flags, and even revolutionary slogans.