But Edgars had come this way. I was positive. That ice had absolutely been freshly broken, and those tracks …
I drove back, shining the headlights on the crossing, seeing ice covering the creek upstream. I used my flashlight to look downstream. The ice there had been broken up to where the stream disappeared beneath a steep embankment, eight, maybe ten feet high, and covered with green and tan vegetation frosted with new snow.
Where the hell had they gone? I couldn’t imagine any machine climbing straight up the side of that wall of …
I looked closer at the embankment. Green plants? That was impossible. The leaves had fallen. The ferns were dead.
I drove into the creek and rolled slowly to the embankment, headlights on and my flashlight playing around. Even through the frosting of snow, I could see I hadn’t been looking at plants but at thin strips of dull green, gray, and brown cloth, thousands of pieces sewn into a huge swath of camouflage fabric that hung from a stout length of black metal bolted into the rocks above me.
I grabbed the radio again and turned it on. The static was weaker. I triggered the transmit button, said, “This is Alex Cross, come back.”
Almost immediately a garbled, oddly familiar voice answered.
“Batra?” I said.
The voice replied, but I couldn’t understand a word.
I said, “Repeat, this is Alex Cross. I am in pursuit of Edgars, who has Gretchen Lindel. I am somewhere in the northeast quadrant of the estate.”
The voice came back even more garbled.
I almost stuffed the radio in my pocket but then had a moment of inspiration and said, “If you can hear me, track me by Find My iPhone.”
I put away the radio that time, traded it for my service weapon. Staring at the camouflage curtain, I hesitated, anxious about what might be waiting on the other side. I killed the headlights, teased the throttle. The bumper touched the fabric and then ripped apart the Velcro that had been keeping it closed.
I held my pistol in my left hand, rested the barrel on the handlebar, eased off the safety, gave the throttle more gas, and went through into darkness.
CHAPTER
107
BREE GAPED AT the smoking Uzi machine pistol mounted on a thin metal post inside the open cabinet. A long banana clip hung below the gun, too big for just ten or fifteen shots.
Mahoney coughed and shifted. The gun pivoted his way, and she saw the thin scarlet line of the laser sight fixed to its barrel pass six inches over the wounded agent’s head. It stopped.
“What the hell’s going on?” Sampson whispered, crawling up beside her.
She pulled back, said, “Remote-control Uzis. Unless …”
Bree peeked around the corner again, flashed the light at the machine pistol and the cabinet, looking for a camera.
Mahoney groaned and shifted, and the couch moved, hitting a table behind it. The lamp on the table wobbled.
The Uzi opened up again, that same left-to-right, right-to-left spray of bullets; it cut the lamp in half, and then the gunfire continued on toward the kitchen. Bree looked up after the shooting stopped, saw that the slugs had hit some of the same things they’d hit during the first barrage.
No, she took that back. They had ripped into the exact same things at the exact same height.
“No one’s operating that gun, Ned!” Bree shouted. “I think there’s a motion detector involved. See it?”
“No,” he grunted, sounding weaker.
An agent yelled down from upstairs that he had to move his wounded men.
“The whole place is booby-trapped!” Sampson yelled. “Hold your position!”
“One’s critical! He’ll die if we don’t move him!”
“You’ll al