Michael Walsh: Early Warning

Devlin climbed into the back and lowered one of the fold-down seats, keeping his HK trained on their unwilling passenger. “Farid, are you all right?” he asked his unwilling passenger in Arabic.

There was no sound from the trunk. Devlin turned the Nokia backlight on and peered in. Belghazi was relaxed, his eyes open, but he didn’t look happy, and no sound came from his mouth.

“Maybe he didn’t understand you,” suggest Maryam. “I told you to polish your street Arabic.”

“Yeah, well, let’s see how you do in the back alleys of Magdeburg with that Bavarian honk,” he said. “In the meantime, let’s move. Pop the trunk.”

Cautiously, Devlin switched off the dome light, opened the door and slid out, concealing himself between the other cars. Senses on full alert, he listened for the sound of a motor, but heard nothing. He moved around to the trunk and, standing, hoisted Farid out, and slung him over his shoulders. Maryam was already out of the car, weapons over her shoulder, searching for a place to hide.

European cities were not like American ones, full of open spaces, wide streets, and generous yards. Here, they nestled up against one other, sharing walls on both sides, and you were lucky to get a garden the size of a postage stamp in the back. Not that you entered the garden from the street: what gaps there were between buildings were closed off by high cement and stucco walls, their gates tightly locked. This part of the world had seen too many conquerors come and go to trust the good nature of their fellow man, or his benign designs.

A row of big European trash cans stood near the curb, the kind into which you could easily stuff a body or two. Devlin dumped Farid into one of them and closed the lid, marking it with a felt-tipped pen he produced from one of his pockets. He didn’t care how unpleasant it might be inside, with the coffee grounds, rotten vegetables, and soup bones; that was Farid’s tough luck. He should have thought ahead, before he started stealing secrets from CERN and passing them along to al-Qaeda. If that, in fact, was what he’d been doing. But with the rapid proliferation of nuclear technology, this was no time to take chances. The apocalyptic genie that had been confined to the bottle, largely successfully since the day after Trinity, was now well and truly loosed upon the earth.

Devlin scanned the street-and didn’t like what he saw; at either end of the road, blocking access and egress, were the two SUVs. They were trapped.

Devlin checked the Surge. He punched a couple of buttons and the video display suddenly turned to a four-block map of the area, right down to the smallest detail. He thought a moment, then entered a series of cipher codes and hit send.

In the distance, he could hear the sounds of one of the SUV’s doors opening, and voices. As they approached they would be close enough to scan, but he didn’t need a device to tell him what he already knew; they were outnumbered at least two to one, and there was no way out. Softly, Devlin cursed in Italian under his breath. He liked cursing in Italian. There was music to it, and somehow the mellifluousness of the language made almost every situation seem not so bad. He was hoping that was still true.

“Over here.” He turned to see Maryam in a stairwell that dipped below the surface of the pavement. There was a door at the bottom of the stairs, one that Devlin knew would lead into the old building’s ancient cellar. Devlin dashed over to her and spoke rapidly in French. “They’ll be here in a less than a minute. They’re going to find me. They are not going to find you, but that’s okay. Trust me, they won’t have time to think about it. Now blow the lock on this door, get in and get out.”

He took a quick look at the area map; her instincts, as usual, were impeccable. “There’s a garden in the back, which connects through to the buildings on the other side of the street. You can crawl out the cellar window, sprint across. The fence on the other side shouldn’t be a problem and then you’re out on the utca and away. Now ditch the wig and get out of here.”

“What about you?” There was no worry in her eyes, just professional curiosity. That was part of their deal.

“I have to wait for Duke Mantee.” He sensed, rather than saw, her look of incomprehension. “An old friend,” he explained. “Now get out of here. Seriously.”

She hesitated, for just an unprofessional instant-

“Arnaud’s, just like we planned. Bienville Street.”

“Order for me,” she smiled. And then she was gone.

Devlin slipped back into the car. “Duke Mantee” had his instructions. It was all going to happen very fast, it was all going to happen all at once, and it had better damn well work.

They were almost upon him now. He could hear voices, speaking in different languages. There was no point in listening to what they were saying. It would be over soon, one way or another. But, even though he’d never met him, he trusted “Duke Mantee” more than he trusted anybody else, except her.

He strained his ears above the voices, listening for the Duke.

The men came closer to the Prius, weapons drawn. They wouldn’t be expecting to see him sitting there, big as life, which is what he was counting on. All those crazy spy books and their Rube Goldberg plotting devices-he’d trade them all for the element of surprise. Naked was always the best disguise.

They’d have suppressors, of course, and a silencer was something he lacked, but if the Duke was punctual, he wasn’t going to need one. It was like trying to unwrap candy in a movie theater: never make a series of little noises when you can make one big noise and get it over with.

There-now he heard it. The thwack of a helicopter, approaching rapidly.

The men heard it, too. They stopped for a moment and looked up at the sky. Budapest was not Los Angeles, and the sound of a helicopter in the middle of the night was not a normal occurrence. They were amazed when the chopper roared over the buildings, dipped down, and hovered just over their heads.

Now-

Devlin opened fire with the shotgun, bringing down two of the men with one blast as the other two scattered and returned fire. He could hear the pock marks as the bullets slammed into the Prius, but he was already out of the car, rolling, the shotgun abandoned now in favor of the HK and one of the Armalites. He got off two quick rounds, heard one of the assailants groan. And then an extraordinary thing happened.

A lifeline descended from the chopper. But no ordinary lifeline. Instead, it was more like a grappling hook, rocketing down a winch and heading straight for-

The trash can. It latched on and began winching the thing up.

Devlin shot the fourth man with the HK and sprinted away, in the opposite direction from Maryam. Op sec came before everything else, and he had planned the operation with multiple outcomes in mind.

One of the four was still alive as Devlin passed him, but there was no time for mercy. He shot him as he ran, heading straight for the other SUV at the end of the street, the two-man team. He could see they were out of the car now, firing at the helicopter. Devlin said a quick prayer that none of the rounds would clip Farid, but he kept running, staying on the sidewalk, in the gloom of the old 19th-century blocks of flats.

Now one of the men spotted him, redirecting his fire. Bullets gouged out chunks of the buildings. Devlin somersaulted twice and came up shooting. He dropped his man with two shots, even though it should have only taken one, and dashed for the SUV. He had time for a quick glance back, and saw that the trash can had disappeared into the chopper’s interior, and the big bird was already whirling away.

He was in the driver’s seat of the Benz before the last man standing knew he was there. Devlin popped the clutch and squealed into first gear as a bullet clanked off the rear window. Bulletproof. Good-he didn’t need to be driving around Budapest in the middle of the night with a rear window punched out. The man was still pursuing him, firing. Devlin caught a glimpse of his face in the side mirror-it was the Hungarian he had seen with Farid up on Castle Hill.