Tracker (Sigma Force 7.5)

Once at the door, he paused. He held her back and checked his cell phone. Video bloomed to light on the tiny screen. Though the sun had set by now, the view through the night-vision camera was grainy but bright. It showed the plaza and the main entrance to the church as Kane stared toward where his partner had vanished, waiting patiently.

Good boy.

Satisfied, he stepped toward the exit, hoping the guard posted out there had been tricked into retreating to the other side of the church, along with their leader.

And apparently his ruse worked, unfortunately not to his benefit.

The door swung open as Tucker reached for it.

The third hunter barged inside, plainly intending to take a shortcut across the church rather than around it, planning to bring up the rear behind his fleeing quarry.

Both Tucker and the man were equally caught off guard.

Tucker reacted first as the hunter’s eyes spotted the woman in the ivory coat and struggled to comprehend how she could be there.

Using that momentary confusion, Tucker lunged and barreled into the man with his shoulder, driving him back out the door and into a narrow dark alley. He slammed him against the brick wall on the far side, driving an elbow into his solar plexus, hard enough for the air to burst from his chest.

The man gasped and slumped, but he had enough wits to paw for a hidden weapon. Tucker spun, swinging his arm with all the strength in his shoulder. He struck the hilt of his KA-BAR dagger against the man’s temple—and drove him to his knees, where he fell limply on his face.

Tucker quickly searched him. The woman stepped out, too, smartly closing the door to the church, looking terrified.

For the moment, with the church mostly deserted, no one seemed to note the attack. He confiscated a FÉG PA-63 semiautomatic pistol, used commonly by the Hungarian police and military. He also found an I.D. folder topped with a badge and flipped it open, recognizing the man’s face, but not the badge, though it looked official. Across the top it read Nemzetbiztonsági Szakszolgálat, and at the bottom were three letters: NSZ.

The woman gasped upon seeing it, recognizing it.

That can’t be good.

He stared up at her.

“He’s with the Hungarian national security service,” she said.

Tucker took a deep breath and stood. He had just cold-cocked a member of the Hungarian FBI. What had he gotten himself into? Right now, the only answers lay with this woman.

He knew he didn’t want to be found crouched over this unconscious form, especially by the guy’s teammates. People still had a tendency to disappear in this former Soviet Bloc country, where corruption continued to run rampant.

And, at the moment, was he on the right side of the law or the wrong?

As he stood, he studied the scared eyes of the woman. Her fear seemed genuine, based on confusion and panic. He remembered how she had crossed the plaza, offering so open a target. Whoever she was, she wasn’t some criminal mastermind.

He had to trust his instincts. One of the reasons he had been paired with Kane was his high empathy scores. Military war dog handlers had a saying—It runs down the lead—describing how emotions of the pair became shared over time, binding them together as firmly as any leash. The same skill allowed him to read people, to pick up nuances of body language and expression that others might miss.

He stared at the woman and recognized she was in real trouble.

Whatever was happening was not her fault.

Committed now, he took her hand and headed quickly for a back alley. His hotel was not far off—the Hilton Budapest, right around the corner. Once he got her stashed somewhere safe, he could figure out what was really going on and do something to end it.

But first, he needed more information. He needed ears and eyes in the field—and in this case, a nose, too.

He recovered his cell phone, tapped a button, and radioed a command.

Kane hears the word in his ear, spoken with authority.

“TRACK.”

He stands and tugs free of the leash, ignoring the clatter of the clasp on the pavement behind him. He slinks behind the bench to where the shadows will hide him. He lifts his nose to the night, senses swelling outward, filling in the world around him with information beyond mere sight, which is keen enough in the dark.

The ripeness of garbage rises from a pail . . .

The tang of old urine wafts from the stone wall . . .

The smoky exhaust of cars tries to wash through it all . . .

But he stays focused, picking out the one scent he was told to follow. It is a blazing trail through all else: the smell of leather and sweat, the salt of skin, the musky dampness held trapped beneath the long coat as the man walked in front of him.

He follows that trail now through the air as it hangs like a lighted beacon through the miasma of other scents. He hunts along it from the bench to the stone corner, staying to shadows. He watches the prey come running, circling back into view.

He slinks low.

The prey and another man rush past him, blind to him.

He waits, waits, waits—only then does he follow.

Belly near the ground, he moves from shadow to shadow until he spots the prey bent over another man. They pick him up, search around, then head away.

He flows after them, a ghost upon their trail.

Tucker hurried the woman through the main entrance to the Hilton Budapest. The historic structure was just steps away from the Matthias Church. They had no trouble reaching it unseen.

He rushed her into the lobby, struck again by the mix of modern and ancient that typified this city. The hotel incorporated sections of a thirteenth-century Dominican monastery, integrating a pointed church tower, a restored abbey, and gothic cellars. The entire place was half modern hotel and half museum. Even the entrance they passed through was once the original façade of a Jesuit college, dating back to 1688.

He was allowed a room here with Kane because of a special international military passport that declared the dog to be a working animal. Kane even had his own rank—major, one station higher than Tucker. All military war dogs were ranked higher than their handlers. It allowed any abuse of the dogs to be a court martial offense: for striking a superior officer.

And Kane deserved every bit of his rank and special treatment. He had saved hundreds of lives over the course of his tours of duty. They both had.

But now they had another duty: to protect this woman and discover what they had stumbled into.

Tucker led her across the lobby and up to his guest room: a single with a queen-sized bed. The room was small, but the view looked off to the Danube River that split the city into its two halves: Buda here and Pest across the river.