Brad Thor - Blowback

Harvath was about to protest their innocence and ask what evidence the authorities had against them, when he realized the French police and Interpol would already have more than enough. Security camera footage from Harvey Nichols, though it wouldn’t have revealed much of Harvath’s identity, would have perfectly captured Jillian Alcott’s. Then he and Alcott had been asked to show IDs and have their pictures taken for security badges at Sotheby’s. Having been thrown out for an altercation with Davidson the same day she was killed, he and Jillian were the perfect suspects. Now, they had been caught returning to the scene of yet another murder. While not conclusive, there was more than enough circumstantial evidence to hold them indefinitely. He couldn’t blame the French police; they were one hundred percent correct in what they were doing, but he also couldn’t let them hold him.

As one of the two motorcycle cops stepped up from behind to handcuff him, Harvath swung his head back as hard as he could, shattering the officer’s nose. He followed it up with a right-handed chop to the side of Broussard’s neck, which dropped him like a trash bag full of mud right onto the linoleum floor. As the other motorcycle cop wrapped his arms around Harvath’s waist and tried to tackle him, Harvath laced his fingers together and brought both of his hands down in a lightning-fast snap at the base of the man’s skull. Subduing all three gendarmes had taken only a matter of seconds.

Harvath looked at Jillian, who was completely amazed by the speed at which he had moved. Sliding the Ruger into the pocket of his climbing pants, he started giving orders. “Guns, cash, passports, all of it. Gather it up and put it in the small backpack.”

Jillian nodded her head as Harvath grabbed the car keys, then bent down and cleaned out the pockets of the unconscious French police officers. Relieving them of their handcuffs, he shackled them in a convoluted wrist-to-ankle, ankle-to-wrist Twister pose that would make it impossible for them to move once they came to. After that, he dumped the chambered rounds and magazines from all of their weapons into the garbage, placed their pistols in the oven, and set it to bake.

When Jillian held up Harvath’s KIVA pack, indicating that everything was ready to go, he held his finger to his lips and signaled for her to follow.

If there had been other policemen in the small hotel, they would have come running at the first sounds of a struggle in the kitchen. As none had, Harvath felt it was a safe bet they were all alone. That didn’t mean, though, that more weren’t on the way. Small towns like Ristolas didn’t usually get much action, so a murder was likely to attract a lot of attention. The minute Marie Lavoine’s body had been discovered, word would have gone out far and wide.

The first thing Harvath noticed as they approached the reception area was the blood. It covered half the hardwood floor. Before he even saw the body, he noticed that most of the pictures had been knocked from the wall and their frames lay shattered in pieces. Harvath wanted to believe that the end had come quickly for Marie, but obviously it hadn’t. There had been a struggle, and knowing Alomari, Harvath figured he had taken pleasure in making the poor woman suffer.

When they finally came upon her body behind the small reception desk, Jillian gasped in horror. Marie’s throat had been cut, much in the same way as Ellyson’s, and her face was bruised and horribly swollen. Alomari had beaten her before he killed her, most likely in the process of trying to extract information. Everyone caves under torture eventually, and if Marie had told Alomari where he and Jillian had gone, Harvath couldn’t blame her.

Harvath and Alcott needed to get as far away from the gendarmes and Ristolas as possible. Leaning down, he removed the gold chain with the medallion of Saint Bernard from his pocket and placed it in Marie Lavoine’s hand. At least now she and Bernard were together, he thought as he straightened himself up and stepped from behind the reception desk.

Walking to the windows near the front door, he peered out from behind the curtains and was not happy with what he saw. The tiny driveway in front of the Carré de l’Ours was crammed with provincial police cars. Apparently, Broussard had entered the hotel with the first officers on the scene, the motorcycle cops, and had told the rest of the police to remain outside. From an investigative standpoint it was a smart move. The less people tramping through the hotel, the less chance of evidence being damaged. But from an escapee’s standpoint, Harvath and Jillian were screwed-doubly so, as he noticed teams of officers moving around to secure the back of the property.

“Shit,” said Harvath as he pulled his head back in from the window.

“What’s going on?” asked Jillian.

“It’s crawling with police outside.”

Jillian came up and looked out the window for herself. “What are we going to do?”

“As far as the authorities are concerned, you and I have been on a three-day killing spree. They’re not about to let us just walk out of here, and I’m not about to draw them into any sort of fight.”

“So what do you suggest?”

After thinking for several moments, Harvath looked out the window again and focused on something at the end of the driveway. “Do you know how to ride a motorcycle?”

“No, why?”

“Because I only have one idea on how to get us out of here, and we’ve probably only got a million-to-one shot at making it work.”

Five minutes later, wearing the visored helmets and uniforms of the two unconscious motorcycle cops from the kitchen, Harvath and Jillian exited the hotel and began quickly walking past the officers waiting outside.

When the gendarmes began asking what had happened inside, Harvath held up a plastic evidence bag containing Khalid Alomari’s tactical machine pistol and continued walking. The officers seemed to understand. They knew a murder had been committed, and the presence of such an exotic weapon confirmed what they all secretly believed-that the scene inside was particularly gruesome. Obviously, the captain had dispatched the two motorcycle officers on some important assignment involving the weapon, and they had no time to talk. That was fine with most of them. Hopefully, they would soon be allowed inside and would be able to see the crime scene for themselves. There wasn’t a man among them who had ever had the opportunity to see a murder scene before.

They went back to talking among themselves, but when Jillian climbed onto one of the motorcycles at the bottom of the driveway behind Harvath, and with a backpack no less, several of the gendarmes began to suspect something might be going on.

Please let it start on the first try, thought Harvath. It did, and they were half a block away before the first of the cops had run inside the hotel, discovered his colleagues in the kitchen, and come back outside to send the other officers to apprehend the wayward police motorcycle and its two fugitive riders.

Instantly, sirens started echoing off the stone structures of the small village. As Harvath drove the high-powered motorbike up both streets and sidewalks, he was thankful it was evening and most people were inside.

While he drove, Alcott stuck to her part of the plan. With their rented Mercedes surrounded by police cars in the Carré de l’Ours’s driveway, their only hoping of getting away was in whatever car Khalid Alomari had left behind. All they had to do was find it.

Harvath knew that Alomari was professional enough not to have parked right in front of a murder scene, but needing immediate access to the only route to the Col de la Traversette, he wouldn’t have parked too far away either.

As they drove up and down each of the village’s narrow streets, Alcott repeatedly pressed the remote panic feature on the car key Harvath had found in Alomari’s pocket.