Lee Child - MatchUp

Carrying a coffee mug, Max swiveled in his chair and headed toward a kitchenette. “I’m telling you Rambo gets killed in the novel. Colonel Trautman shoots him.”

“No, no, no. Rambo can’t die.”

“That’s what Stallone said. That’s why the movie ends the way it does.” Max poured coffee.

“Then why would Stallone end the novel that way? You’re not making sense.”

“Stallone didn’t write the novel.”

“You’re starting to bother me.”

“I’m telling you.”

“Then who the hell wrote the novel?”

“I can’t remember.” Max returned to his chair and sat.

“You’re making all this up.”

As they talked, she studied the room.

On her left was an expansive gun cabinet in which a dozen M4 assault rifles stood neatly in a line. Boxes of ammo were piled on shelves. To her right a wooden staircase climbed upward. All four walls were made of concrete blocks. There were no windows. The place had the feel of not only being secure but underground.

She focused again on the men at the big console. They were watching a screen twice as large as the others. It showed a grid on which a green dot was slowly traveling along one of the lines.

“He’s on the move,” Max said.

Rudy laughed. “And he’s no Rambo.”

A phone rang somewhere in the chamber.

Max pressed a button on the computer, and a woman’s disembodied voice reported from a speaker, “We’ve got Simon Childs on a leash. I need you to e-mail me a video of Sansborough every couple of hours to keep him motivated, until he delivers the package.”

At Simon’s name, Liz tensed, feeling fresh pain roll through her. Now she remembered. The men had made her beg Simon for help. So Simon was involved and there was a “package.” What was so important that they’d kidnapped her to get Simon to do what they wanted?

“Not a problem,” Rudy said. He turned and grinned at Liz. “You want us to hurt her some more?”

“Not yet. Maybe later.”

Liz stared back at the asshole, refusing to show fear.

But they’d let her see their faces.

No way could they allow her to live.

AS SIMON STARED AT THE phone in his hand, a car horn startled him. He jerked his head up, abruptly aware of the restaurant’s parking lot. A taxi was stopping at the building’s entrance and the passenger was getting out. He ran to the taxi, veered in front of a waiting couple, and lunged into the backseat.

“Hoover Building,” he told the surprised driver.

While the taxi merged into the morning traffic, Simon examined the phone. The woman had told him it had an open mic. In that case Liz’s captors would now have heard where he was going. But he’d been ordered to use his influence, so his destination shouldn’t alarm them.

He hoped.

The time on the phone was 9:54 a.m.

Less than twelve hours remained.

He and Liz were scheduled to be married ten days from now, and by God he was going to make certain it happened.

The FBI’s headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue had been built with a rugged concrete exterior—to create a powerful, dominating impression. But after little more than four decades, the concrete was decaying, and nets enclosed the upper stories to prevent chunks from falling onto pedestrians.

Feeling that something might indeed crash onto him, Simon hurried inside the massive building. He tried not to arouse suspicion by looking impatient while he waited in a long line at the security checkpoint.

Another line blocked his way to the elevators.

A clock on a wall showed 10:28 when he finally entered the third-floor office where the Russian Mafia task force was located. The special agent in charge, a spectacled woman named Cassidy, spoke rapidly into a cell phone while a broad-shouldered man named Grant typed on a keyboard.

Cassidy ended her call and tossed Simon a puzzled look. “I thought you and Liz were finalizing your wedding reception today.”

“The caterer postponed the meeting,” Simon said, not daring to doubt that the phone did indeed broadcast the conversation.

He considered writing a note to alert them to what was happening, but he couldn’t depend on them not saying something that would make Liz’s captors suspicious. Instead he studied Grant’s computer screen and pointed toward a new name on a list.

“Who’s Nick Demidov?”

“Not sure yet.”

Grant clicked on the name, opening an almost blank document that showed photographs of a dark-haired, fortyish man in a black leather sports jacket.

“The police grabbed him last night when they raided a warehouse stashed with stolen prescription painkillers,” Cassidy said. “He has a Virginia driver’s license, but all he claims to speak is Russian. So far there’s no record on him. What’s interesting is he had two hundred thousand dollars in the trunk of his car. A six-year-old car, no less. If he had that kind of money, he should have been driving the best. He seems to be a courier.”

“We sent for a translator,” Grant said. “Maybe Demidov can lead us to somebody important.”

“You know, he’s starting to look familiar,” Simon lied again.

“Oh?” Cassidy asked.

“When I worked on the European task force, he was a bagman for a Russian money launderer in London. If I talk to him, maybe he’ll drop the ‘I don’t speak English’ act and tell me what he’s doing in D.C. Where are you holding him?”

LIZ FELT NAUSEATED.

Her head ached and her face still throbbed. Worse, whatever Max and Rudy had shot her up with had muddled her brain.

Dammit, enough whining, she told herself. Focus.

She heard Simon’s voice. “Where are you holding him?”

She snapped open her eyes and realized his voice was coming from a speaker on the computer desk across the room. Beside it sat the large monitor where the green dot had been moving the last time she looked.

Now the dot was motionless.

They’re tracking Simon.

Another man’s voice sounded from the speaker, answering Simon. “Demidov is in a safe house out by Tysons Corner. Here’s the address.”

She heard someone writing on a piece of paper and tearing it from a pad.

In his chair at the security center, Max grinned. “I love it when a plan comes together. We gotta get Demidov away from the FBI before they figure out who he is. I’m e-mailing this to Marta in case she didn’t pick it up.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

Simon’s voice again.

On the speaker, a man and woman said good-bye to Simon, and the sounds diminished to footsteps and distant voices.

Max chuckled and leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.

“That Simon guy is no Rambo.”

Rudy headed toward the Nautilus multigym. “The first Rambo movie’s okay, but I like the first sequel more.”

He did some upper-body stretches.

“The one where he goes back to Vietnam?” Max asked. “You’ve gotta be kidding. Russians look like idiots in that one also.”

“Hey, it was the Cold War. You need to give the movie some artistic license. How much weight do you think Stallone bench-presses?”

“More than you.”

With a shrug, Rudy sat at the machine, gripped two handles, and exhaled as he pushed his arms out and away from his body.

Weights lifted.

Liz’s wrists jerked up, her zip-tie cuffs caught in the mechanism.

Rudy noticed and laughed.

Inhaling, he returned to his original position and pushed out his arms once more.

Again her wrists were yanked up.

She stared at the cuff and realized it was being pinched. She wriggled her arms around so the tie was in the center between her wrists, and gritted her teeth as Rudy continued the exercise.