The Fall (26 page)

But budget cuts over the year had stripped the agency of its talent, of its punch, including the elimination of any vehicles capable of delivering astronauts to the International Space Station, forcing Americans to rely on fifty-year-old Russian Soyuz technology to reach orbit.

How far we have sunk,
he thought, wondering if the technology in that suit could be a way back, the spark to reignite the dream that had been Project Phoenix, injecting new hope into an agency long hooked up to life support and forced to play Hastings's deception games just to get any semblance of substantial R&D funding.

But to achieve any of that, Pete needed the missing module back, along with Angela's brilliant mind and Jack's fearless nature.

He needed his former friends, and he made his decision to use every resource at his disposal to find them.

He had already frozen her accounts, narrowing her options, and he would follow that by planting tails with every possible person Angela would consider asking for help, starting with the last phone call she had made before shutting off her phone.

To Daniel Goodwin.

Dago.

Pete shook his head, remembering the oversized biker who never did warm up to the concept of Pete dating Angela.

He frowned, his mind focusing on the problem of finding his former friends, and doing so while keeping it from Hastings. If there was one thing he had learned from the general in the past few years, it was how to play the shell game when it came to funding, siphoning resources to special projects.

And the potential of this technology certainly qualified as the mother of all special projects.

Pete reached for his mobile phone and made a single phone call, in an instant channeling government funds to a selected list of private contractors—mercenaries—activating his covert plan to locate Jack and Angela.

He would find them and bring them in.

Wherever they were hiding.

At any cost.

*   *   *

He adjusted his buoyancy compensator device, or BCD, to maintain a depth of fifty feet, deeper than the standard SEAL underwater transit depth of just ten feet, but it was a clear day in very clear waters, and Jack didn't feel like being spotted from a surface vessel.

He held a course of two five zero, according to the navigation compass hugging his wrist, which he expected to take him within a thousand feet of his target by the coast of South Miami, two miles away, after adjusting for the Gulf Stream's strong northerly current.

The distance fell safely within the ninety-minute charge of the SeaDoo SeaScooter RS1, the bullet-shaped handheld scuba propulsion system he kept in front of him, droning at almost four miles per hour.

Although not nearly as sophisticated as the systems he had used in the SEALs, the SeaScooter provided an effective—and even relaxed—mode of underwater transportation, especially since Jack hadn't slept much in the past thirty-six hours.

But it felt good to be submerged again, especially in the waters off the Florida coast, warm enough not to need anything but the swimsuit Angela had found in the Tiara's main cabin.

SEALs belonged in this quiet world, among coral reefs and blue ocean, detached from the noisy and hectic surface and the dangers it presented.

Down here, Jack was his own ruler, hunted by none, respected by all sea creatures, even the pair of black-tip sharks he had seen swimming parallel to him five minutes ago, checking him out, probably attracted by the steady hum of the SeaScooter, before opting for easier prey.

Jack had thought about going deeper to make himself a harder target, but that meant taxing his compressed air supply more than necessary. Besides, he had his SOG knife strapped to his ankle for defense in case a shark decided to take a closer look.

Jack watched the black-tips vanish from view as he continued on his westerly course.

The decision to part ways with the comfortable Tiara had been easy, since Jack was convinced that by sunrise the yacht would be reported stolen, and its description passed on to the Coast Guard, which would probably search the area.

So after leaving Angela and their hardware—minus the scuba gear he would need to swim back—in the hands of a very shocked Dago, Jack had steered the Tiara out to sea and pointed it north, toward Fort Pierce, estimating that the remaining fuel in the tank would take the yacht close enough to the marina to hopefully fool the Coast Guard into thinking that the vessel might have gotten loose from its moor and drifted out to sea.

It was a stretch, especially with the empty gas tank, but at a minimum it would lessen the chance of anyone knowing where they had gone—assuming that anyone was still looking for them.

But the SEAL in him had no choice but to assume that his little blow-up stunt hadn't fooled Pete, since he was very aware of Jack's skills. And in the back of his head, Jack was still worried about the phone call Angela had made to Dago. If Pete was indeed going to any extreme to find them, he would have certainly searched her phone records by now. So Jack had Angela warn Dago about possible tails using a pay phone at the marina, and asked that he come alone and take a long route to make sure he wasn't being followed. He had waited for the biker to arrive in his truck, and after making sure he was free of any surveillance, Jack had sailed back out to sea and dumped the Tiara.

He continued along, listening to the bubbling sound of his own breathing mixed with the constant droning of the SeaScooter, trying to enjoy the feeling of weightlessness, especially since he wasn't encumbered by the bulky space suits he wore for years in NASA's training pools. This was much more reminiscent of his SEAL days, but without the bubbles. SEAL teams used closed-circuit rebreathers that absorbed the carbon dioxide of the user's exhaled breath, not only eliminating the bubbles that could signal their presence to the enemy on the surface, but also, as the name implied, rebreathing their exhaled air after carbon dioxide removal and injection of a small amount of oxygen into the mix.

He heard the distant sounds of propellers, probably a pleasure cruiser, though it would be difficult, if not impossible, to tell its direction. Sound traveled more efficiently in water than air, reaching his ears almost simultaneously, making it difficult to pinpoint the origin.

Jack looked up and around him, doing so more to keep busy than expecting to find the source since his visibility was limited to around a hundred feet.

Slowly, the ocean floor resolved beneath him as he approached the shore, mostly islands of reefs amid miles of sand. But at least he now had something to look at, including colorful fish, a variety of stingrays, and the occasional shark or barracuda, though the last two always kept their distance.

In another twenty minutes, his current depth met up with the ocean floor, and Jack continued along the bottom, skirting coral reefs for another ten minutes, until reaching a depth of thirty feet.

Time to go up.

Turning off the SeaScooter and letting it hang from the end of a lanyard, Jack inflated his BCD enough to rise to a depth of fifteen feet, his safety stop.

Over the next five minutes, he remained in place, allowing his body to release absorbed nitrogen. Although technically a safety stop wasn't required unless the diver went deeper than a hundred feet, it was always good practice after spending any time below thirty feet to eliminate the chance of decompression sickness.

He surfaced less than a couple hundred feet from the Biscayne National Park, where he swam the rest of the way, removing his fins, tank, and BCD when reaching shallow water by the narrow beach, where almost two hours earlier they had met Dago by the docks lining the entrance to the marina.

Jack was tired and sore as he stepped off the water and onto white sand, walking about a hundred feet to the parking lot, where Dago, still looking surprised as hell, waited for him next to Angela by a black pickup truck.

Angela ran to hug him.

“This is fucking surreal, Jack,” Dago said in his tenor-like voice, dressed in black jeans, riding boots, and an open denim vest full of patches. “It's really great seeing you.”

“Same here. Thanks for the help.”

“Anything for you guys,” he replied.

“No tails?” Jack asked, scanning the parking lot.

“Relax, honey,” Angela said with a grin. “Besides, nobody fucks with bikers.”

“Damn right,” said Dago.

Jack sighed as the large biker, who stood almost six inches taller than Jack, helped him hoist his gear onto the bed, before Angela handed him a towel and his clothes. Jack walked over to the nearest outdoor shower stall and rinsed off the saltwater and sand, before walking into the restrooms, drying off, and changing.

He got in the backseat with Angela, the dark tinted glass concealing them while Dago drove, pretending to be alone.

“I was at your funeral, you know,” Dago said, looking at them through the rearview mirror while Angela handed Jack his favorite pistol from the arsenal, a Sig Sauer P229 9mm semiautomatic, which he quickly checked, making sure he had a full magazine plus a chambered round before tucking it in the small of his back while glancing at the side mirror.

“I heard. Thanks.”

“For what it's worth, I'm glad this little lady's back with you. Never could warm up to that Pete guy.”

Angela sat sideways in the rear seat, facing Jack and slowly shook her head. “I'm never going to hear the end of that one.”

“That's all right. He turned out to be an asshole anyway. At least on this Earth,” Jack added, his eyes watching a white Mercedes-Benz SUV with tinted windows pull out of a parking spot at the edge of the large lot and turn behind them, keeping three cars in between.

They drove past the Homestead Air Reserve Base and reached the entrance to the turnpike, heading north.

The SUV continued to follow them.

“Speaking of assholes … we've got company,” Jack said, looking through the tinted glass of the rear windshield.

“What?” Dago asked. “I even turned off my cell, like you asked. How can they have—”

“It doesn't matter how,” Jack replied with more calm than he actually felt. “We need to lose them.”

“You want me to call for help?” Dago offered.

“No,” Jack replied. “The moment Angela called you, she compromised your cell phone. If you turn it on, it's just going to help them track us, even after we lose that tail.”

“What do you need me to do, Jack?”

“Take us somewhere public … something with a big parking lot filled with cars,” Jack said, thinking quickly. “Is there a mall nearby?”

“I know just the place,” replied the large biker.

They continued on the turnpike for another ten minutes, before connecting to Dixie Highway and turning south until reaching 211th SW Street, which skirted the south end of the Southland Mall.

“They're still back there,” Angela said.

“Good,” Jack replied before instructing Dago to steer onto the mall's parking lot and continue down a row of parked vehicles close to the farther edge of the crowded lot.

Angela shot him a puzzled look.

The Mercedes slowly turned into the parking lot, keeping a respectful distance, which worked to his advantage.

“Go to the edge of the lot and turn right at the end of the row, as if you're coming back around the other side looking for a better parking spot, and slow down so I can jump off.”

“Where are you going, Jack?” she asked.

“To communicate,” he said, smiling, a hand on the door handle as they approached the corner.

“What?” asked Angela and Dago in unison.

“Trust me. This is what I do. They want to mess with us. I'm going to give it right back at them,” he replied, opening the door the moment Dago turned the corner, momentarily losing sight of the SUV.

“Jack … please be careful.”

“Relax, honey. I'll be right back.”

Angela punched him lightly on the shoulder as Jack climbed out and closed the door almost seamlessly, watching the truck go by him as he hid behind a parked van.

The SUV approached the corner slowly, windows rolled up, hiding its passengers.

Jack dropped to a deep crouch while moving to the side of the van just as the SUV drove by, coming around while grabbing his SOG knife, fast-walking right up to the SUV's rear fender on the passenger side, banking that the driver and passengers would be more worried about keeping tabs on Dago's truck than checking their tail.

He was right.

The driver made no attempt to accelerate as Jack slashed the rear tire, the serrated edge slicing through the wall's soft rubber, followed by an explosion of air.

Jack pivoted while dropping back to a crouch behind the SUV, getting out of sight from all rearview mirrors while moving to the opposite side just as the brake lights came on, signaling the driver sensing trouble.

But it was too late.

Jack had already shifted the knife to his left hand, blade protruding from the top of his fist as he swung it hard into the wall of the second rear tire, which deflated with another burst of air, before quickly retreating to the safety of the van.

His SEAL mind quickly weighed the benefits of sticking around in the hope of capturing one of them alive as they got out versus running away, and he chose the latter, taking off in Dago's direction, catching up to the slow-moving truck halfway down the next row.

As he rushed off in a crouch, he heard the SUV doors open behind him, heard someone shout in a foreign language. It sounded …
German?

The biker stopped the truck when spotting him, allowing Jack to climb back inside.

“Let's get the hell out of here before reinforcements arrive.”

The truck leaped forward as Dago punched it and headed back to the highway.

“Jack,” Angie said. “I'm so sorry. This is all my fault. I shouldn't have used my phone to—”

He put a finger to her lips and leaned forward, just inches from hers, before saying, “It's okay. You owe me one.” He winked as she narrowed her gaze, before adding, “They've made us. Miami's no longer safe. We need a way out.”