The Bourne Dominion (11 page)

“
¡Ponga sus armas hacia abajo!
” Bourne shouted as he drove the commander forward.

When they hesitated, he slammed the barrel into the soft spot behind the commander’s right ear. Blood spurted and the commander cried out. The rebels put their pistols down on the hood of the flatbed truck.

“
¡Ahora se alejan de los jeeps!
”

“
¡Haz lo que dice!
” the commander shouted through a fit of coughing.

The men backed away from the jeeps; Bourne shoved the commander forward into one and climbed in beside him. A rebel lunged for his pistol
and Bourne shot him in the shoulder. As he spun away and fell to the ground, Bourne said, “
¿Tu turno?
” Your turn? The other rebel raised his hands and did not budge.

“
¡Si vienen después de nosotros
,” Bourne called back to the men as he started the vehicle and put it into gear, “
lo mato!
” If you come after us, I’ll kill him.

He stepped on the accelerator and they sped away from the smoking tunnel.

T
HE MOMENT PETER
got back to Treadstone HQ, he fired up his computer, logged in his code name, using the algorithm of the day, and scoured all the clandestine services’ databases for the word
Samaritan.
He wasn’t surprised to receive a null finding. He sat staring at the blank screen for a moment, then typed in “Indigo Ridge.”

This time he got an immediate hit. He read the government assessment with mounting fascination. Indigo Ridge, an area in California, was ground zero for the mining of rare earths. Rare earths, he read, were essential for rechargeable nickel hydride batteries—something he used every day, but never gave a thought to. The real name was lanthanum nickel hydride—a rare earth. Rare earths were used in every laser as well as in electronic warfare, jamming devices, the electromagnetic railgun, the Long Range Acoustic Device, and the Area Denial System used on the Stryker vehicle. The list of cutting-edge weapons needing rare earths was staggering.

The next paragraphs dealt with NeoDyme, the company created to mine the rare earths at Indigo Ridge. NeoDyme had just gone public, but it had the backing of the US government. Peter immediately understood
the strategic importance of NeoDyme and Indigo Ridge. In that event, Samaritan was linked in some way with the rare earth mine. But what was its purpose?

Peter got up and stretched. He waved away Ann, his secretary, as he emerged from his office, went over to get himself some coffee and a stale doughnut. He stirred sugar and half-and-half into his mug, took it and the doughnut back into his office to have a think.

Ever since he could remember, sugar had been a great stimulator of creative thinking for him. As he chomped down on the doughnut, he thought about the meeting between Hendricks and Danziger. And then the thought came: What if Samaritan was an interagency initiative? That would make it huge, indeed. And again, Peter felt the sharp pang of being left out. If Hendricks didn’t trust him, then why did he want Peter heading up Treadstone? It made no sense to him. Peter didn’t like mysteries, especially when they cropped up in his territory. And then he thought of something else that made him sit up straight. In trying to find out about Samaritan he’d been able to access all the clandestine services’ databases. Hendricks had told him that, almost as an aside. Odd, considering, so far as Peter was aware, it was an unprecedented coup. The various services were notoriously zealous in guarding their own data, even after the well-publicized revamping following 9/11. Being on the inside, Peter knew that plan was for PR purposes because the American public had to be calmed and soothed. The fact remained that when it came to interagency intel sharing nothing much had changed. The clandestine services community was still a feudal nightmare of separate fiefdoms, lorded over by political-minded mandarins jockeying for congressional funding while desperately staving off budget cuts and staff downsizing forced by the current economic climate.

Dusting off his fingertips, he took a swig of coffee and dived back into the top-secret soup he had at his fingertips, courtesy of his boss. At some point, he wondered whether Hendricks had had an ulterior motive in getting this access for Treadstone.

He couldn’t help but wonder why Hendricks had told him about it
in such an offhand manner. He was trained in suspicion, to see ulterior motives, to peer into the dim interiors of what people said and did. Had Hendricks been giving him a subtle clue to hunt around the database soup? But for what?

What if it had to do with Hendricks himself? He navigated to Hendricks’s own computer and sat there for a moment, staring at the blinking box that asked for a security code. He thought about words that his boss might use. Sitting back, he closed his eyes, pondering the briefing at Hendricks’s house this morning. He went over everything that had been said, every move the secretary had made.

Then he recalled Hendricks’s curious parting line: “
Oh, by the way, I’ve been able to get Treadstone access to all the clandestine services’ databases.
” He frowned. No, that wasn’t quite it. His frown deepened as he struggled to recall the secretary’s exact phrasing.

“Excuse me, Director.”

He looked up to see Ann standing in the doorway. “What is it?” he snapped.

She flinched. She was not yet used to her boss’s moods. “I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s a problem at school with my son and I need a couple of hours off.”

“Of course,” he said, waving at her vaguely. “Go on.” His mind had already returned to its original train of thought.

Ann was about to leave when she turned back. “Oh, I almost forgot. Before she left, Director Moore asked for an additional server to be added to her—”

“She asked for what?”

Peter had swiveled toward her and was half out of his seat. She turned pale, clearly scared half to death. Through his mounting excitement, he recognized this and willed his voice to modulate more normally. “Ann, did you say that Soraya asked for another server?”

“Yes. It’s going to be installed tonight, so on the off chance you’re going to be working late—”

“Thank you, Ann.” He forced himself to smile at her. “As for your son, take as much time as you need.”

“Thank you, Director.” Slightly bewildered, she turned, grabbed her coat and handbag, and left.

Peter, turning back to his computer screen, thought long and hard about Hendricks’s precise words. Then he had it: “
Oh, by the way, I’ve been able to get the Treadstone servers access to all the clandestine services’ databases.
”

Servers. Peter’s eyes flew open. Why on earth had he said that when the servers had nothing to do with access? The Treadstone servers were where its own data was stored. He stared at the blinking box in the middle of the screen, asking its mysterious question.
Jesus Christ
, he thought,
could it be that simple?

His fingers trembling slightly, he typed in the word: “servers.”

At once, the box was replaced by a file tree. Peter stared in disbelief. He was inside Hendricks’s computer. The secretary wanted him there, he was absolutely certain of that. He’d delivered a coded message to Peter. Why hadn’t he been able to tell Peter outright?

Peter’s first thought was that Hendricks was afraid his house was bugged, but he immediately dismissed the thought. The secretary’s house and offices were electronically swept twice a week. So Hendricks was afraid of something else. Was it someone on the
inside
, one of his own people?

Peter stared at the screen. He had a sense that he would find the answer somewhere within the secretary’s file tree. Leaning forward, he got to work with a feverish intensity.

T
his is utter madness,” the FARC commander said as Bourne hurtled the stolen jeep down National 40.

“How did you know I was in the tunnel?” Bourne said.

“You will be followed to the ends of the earth.” His name was Suarez. He hadn’t been reticent about telling Bourne his name or the ways in which he was certain Bourne would die.

Bourne smiled. “There isn’t one of your men who could get out of Colombia.”

Suarez laughed, even though it caused him some pain in the area behind his right ear. “Do you think FARC is my only affiliation?”

Bourne glanced at him and that was when he saw the gold ring, gleaming on the thick forefinger of his right hand.

“You’re a member of Severus Domna.”

“And you are a dead man,” the commander said flatly.

All at once he grabbed at the wheel. Bourne smashed the barrel of his Makarov down on the back of his hand, and Suarez bellowed like a maddened bull. He snatched his hand away, cradling it with the other.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he cried. “You’ve broken it!”

“Relax.” Bourne hummed to himself as they rocketed along. He deftly moved the jeep around lumbering semis and laden flatbeds.

Suarez, rocking back and forth in pain, said, “What the hell are you so happy about,
maricón?
”

For some time, Bourne occupied himself by flying past vehicles. Then he said, “I know how you knew where I was.”

“No,” Suarez said, “you don’t.”

“Someone at the last roadblock before the tunnel made me and radioed you, someone also with the Domna.”

“This is true, but I am not following orders. Your death is a gift to a friend of mine, an enemy of yours.”

He was whey-faced, the pain causing beads of sweat to break out at his hairline. He stared fixedly ahead, until his gaze strayed to the side mirror. A smile flickered across his lips and, in the space of a heartbeat, was gone. Bourne, who had been checking the rearview mirror every minute or so, saw the two motorcycles flicking in and out of the traffic behind him.

“Roberto Corellos has expended a lot of capital with us to have you killed.”

So Corellos was taking revenge for Bourne having lost him face in front of his men. Now they were mortal enemies.

“You’d better buckle up,” Bourne said.

He waited for the motorcycles to break free of the other vehicles behind him, then he accelerated. Putting on speed, they closed the distance between them. At the moment of their maximum acceleration,
Bourne trod on the brakes so hard that the jeep laid a layer of rubber onto the macadam of the highway. The vehicle swerved violently from side to side as he threw it into neutral, its transmission traveling down through the gears as its tires fought to grip the road.

The motorcycles shot past him and then, swerving mightily, braked, turning in a wide circle. Bourne forced the transmission back up the ladder and stomped on the accelerator. The jeep shot forward, slamming grille-first into the right-hand motorcycle, catching it broadside, throwing it completely off the highway. Suarez’s forehead nearly went through the windshield. The motorcycle skidded wildly, the cyclist trying desperately to regain control as he skated across the width of the macadam. An instant later it crossed the narrow shoulder and disappeared over the mountainside.

A gunshot spiderwebbed the jeep’s windshield and Bourne threw the vehicle into reverse, spun it around until it was headed directly at the second motorcycle. The biker was taking aim again with his handgun. The cycle was between the jeep and the mountainside with its vertiginous drop of hundreds of feet. Owing to the FARC roadblock, the oncoming traffic had been at a standstill. Now motorists were scrambling to get away from the chaos.

Bourne drove directly at the cyclist, whose pistol was aimed right at him.

“
Dios mio
, what the hell are you doing?” Suarez shouted. “You’re going to get us both killed.”

“If that’s what it takes,” Bourne said.

“The reports about you are true.” The commander stared at him. “You’re insane.”

The motorcyclist must have thought so as well, because, after firing wildly, he took off in a spray of gravel. Braking, Bourne extended his left arm and squeezed off a shot. The motorcyclist’s arms flew outward as he was launched off the cycle’s seat. It slammed into a stalled car, which slewed into the truck in front of it.

Bourne took off down the highway, which, owing to both the FARC blockade and the fire in the tunnel, was now entirely deserted.

T
HIRTY THOUSAND FEET
in the air, Boris Karpov sat in the jetliner and watched the dove-gray clouds scroll past the Perspex window. As always, he had mixed feelings about leaving Russia. A Russian, he mused, was never truly comfortable outside the motherland. This was to be expected. The Russian people were special—extraordinary, really, once you took into account the terrible history they’d had to endure first under the czars, the Cossacks, then Stalin and Beria, a darkness constantly stalking his beautiful country. Altruism was not a well-known quality in the Russian mind-set—deprivation had made self-preservation the primary motivating factor for so long, it was now hardwired into the Russian psyche—but in this respect Boris was different from his fellows. His love of Russia motivated him to want a better life not just for himself but for those people who were continually looking up at a light they could never attain.

The first-class cabin attendant asked if he had everything he needed.

“We’re baking chocolate chip cookies,” she said, bending over him with a smile. She was blond and blue-eyed—Nordic, he surmised—and had a slight accent. “You can have them with milk, chocolate milk, coffee, tea, or any of a dozen liquors.”

Cookies and milk
, Karpov thought with a wry smile,
how all-American
. “The classic,” he said, making the attendant laugh softly.

“Mr. Stonyfield, you Americans,” she said affectionately, using Karpov’s legend name. And with a hushed whoosh of fabric against pantyhose, she returned up the aisle.

Karpov sank back into his ruminations. Of course Americans were born into the light, so they were used to looking down on everyone else. But what else could you expect from such a privileged people? Karpov did not know what to make of being mistaken for one of them. He waited for the reaction to come, and when it did, he realized that he was somehow humiliated, as if he were a country hick who had by some miracle been momentarily mistaken for a Yale graduate. The attendant’s error had diminished him in some way he couldn’t quite grasp, holding up to him the mirror of everything he had lacked from the moment he’d been born.