The Spy I Loved (33 page)

The skid
crashed to the floor, raising a cloud of dust as Liam stepped back.
It must have weighed a good hundred kilos.

Borz
looked at him again.

“
It’s not like we can cause any more damage. Eh, Mister
Kimball?”

“
I suppose you have a point.”

“
No. Not really. But two of my men died for this thing. It
really doesn’t seem worth it sometimes, does it?”

“
I know exactly what you mean. Where’s the girl?”

Borz
raised his voice.

“
Bring her.”

Whoa.

All hell
was breaking loose back there.

Borz’ jaw
dropped and so did Liam’s, as he went into a crouch, hand hovering
over his weapon.

Borz’s
hand went to his armpit as the sound of a fight came from a
ground-level room just inside the big door, off to the right of the
opening.

Emil Borz
turned and looked at Liam, a look of pure awe on his
face.

His face
split wide in a grin.

At that
moment the men heard the unmistakable smack of a really good punch.
There was a slack moment in time and then the upper half of Beryl
Bernstein fell limp in the door opening. Her mouth was slack
although she was still moving and her eyes were open. Her raised
arm dropped with a thud.

“
Perhaps you’d better get the young lady, Mister Kimball.”
Borz slapped his thigh and laughed. “That one is quite a
handful.”

There
were shrill voices and more struggle. The thin wooden partitions
boomed and it seemed as if the foreman’s office walls rippled with
a heavy impact.

“
Lindsey!” Liam stepped forwards, trying to keep an eye on
Borz.

The man
just stood there with a big grin on his face.

Liam
wondered what the hell was going on with him. The whole set-up
stank. Lindsey came out of the doorway with the reedy Mister
Bernstein still grappling with her. When he saw Liam and Borz
standing there, he let go abruptly.

“
Liam! Liam, oh, Liam…” She broke into a run, slamming into
him so hard she almost bowled him over.

“
Lindsey.” He turned, expecting to see a semi-circle of jerks
with Uzis or Mac-10s but it was just Borz, standing there beside
the vehicle.

It was
impossible to move with her clinging to him, crying and still
babbling incoherently. And they still didn’t shoot him.

It was an
odd moment.

“
Get in the truck and leave now, Mister Kimball.”

“
Come on, Lindsey. Get in the truck.”

“
Shoot them! Shoot them! Shoot all of them fuckers!” Lindsey
was grabbing at him now.

She
desperately tried to pull his weapon as he awkwardly fended her
off.

“
Fuck you! You pricks! I’ll get you, I swear!”

Borz looked on, as if to say,
tsk,
tsk.
What a naughty little
girl.

She was raging. Liam forcibly dragged her to the passenger
side, stuffing her in even as she cursed, clawed and spat at him.
She spat out the door at
them.
Liam belted her in, where she sat there, head
down, bawling her eyes out. Lindsey was oblivious, having escaped
to another world momentarily.

“
What? Just like that?”

Borz
grinned. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of
change, quarters, loonies and toonies.

“
Here, get yourself a car-wash.” He threw his head back and
laughed maniacally, although the echoes were dampened by a million
layers of sawdust and the sheer moldering age of the building. “And
promise you won’t bore me to death, Mister Kimball. You’ll be okay,
young lady. Now get going, you stupid people, before I change my
mind.”

Liam
hopped in, throwing the change on the passenger side floor. He
started the vehicle, backing straight out, keeping an eye on them
as best he could. He still needed to hit the door at the relatively
high speed he was doing. As soon as the glare of daylight washed
over them, he spun the wheel, slammed the gearbox into forward and
jammed the throttle to the floor. The lugged tires spurted dirt,
gravel and green grass. The last thing he saw was a third party, a
red-bearded man (Lom?) bent over Beryl Bernstein, who appeared to
be coming to. The gentleman was helping her to sit up. She would
have a black eye and a fat lip come morning for sure—if she wasn’t
coughing up blood.

For whatever reason, something very strange had just happened
and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out
what.

The only thing he knew for
sure,
was that a man like Borz would
have an escape plan.

Whatever
that plan was, it would have to be very, very good.

Liam
Kimball had the terrible feeling that he might have missed
something.

Turning
to the still sniffling girl beside him, he spoke.

“
Nice work, incidentally.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Their
enemy had timed it well.

Liam and
the girl had barely gotten three kilometres down the track when the
sky opened up and the rain came down in torrents. Forced to slow by
sheer lack of visibility, Kimball pulled out a cheap phone provided
for the purpose, which was better than having one of their own
units captured in the event of a double-cross.

Touching
number one on the speed dial feature, someone he didn’t recognize
picked up immediately.

“
Hello?”

“
It’s Kimball. I’ve got Lindsey. We’re coming out.”

The
message was relayed in excitement.

Ian’s
voice came on the line. In the background Liam heard a ragged buzz
of talk coming from multiple mouths.

“
Liam.”

“
Yeah. Lindsey’s all right. No tricks, no double-cross. Unless
the road is mined or something. We’re still a few kilometres
out.”

“
We have police and ambulance standing by.” Lindsey’s
abduction would be treated as an ordinary criminal offence for the
time being.

This
mobilized all forces within Canada, spread the nets as widely as
possible and got everyone with a badge involved in the
manhunt.

“
What about the road?” Ian was worried about
ambush.

“
I—I don’t know, but I don’t think so. They could have had me,
us I should say, right on the spot.”

With no
knowledge of what was going on inside, there would be an inevitable
delay while they figured out whether or not to go in…

The
wipers were making a lot of noise, set on their highest speed and
still unable to keep up. Confronted by a raging white-water stream
coming off the higher ground to his right and then following the
road-bed, he slowed up to examine it.

Liam
cautiously kept the wheels on where the higher parts of the rutted
track should be. If that got any deeper, it would push them right
off the road. The little river turned abruptly right again at the
base of the next hill and disappeared down a rocky gorge, choked
with streaming trees, hanging on every angle due to erosion and
land-slipping.

“
What about the Predators?”

“
We have two in position and another ready to
launch.”

“
Thank you.” Leaving the phone turned on, Liam reached for
Lindsey’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

She
looked up for the first time, face stained with dirt, blood, sweat
and tears.

“
Liam?”

“
You’re safe now.”

“
Thank you.” She clung onto his hand and he had to forcibly
peel it away.

“
Those people will never bother you again.” He put the phone
back up to his ear. “What are the conditions?”

Ian
consulted with somebody elsewhere by the sounds of it.

“
Still flyable, but the rain is really cutting down on the
visibility. They’re bringing them in as close as they
dare.”

Liam
nodded.

The road
crested, and then the downslope was greasy mud with another small
stream tearing up the surface and foaming up in a series of
standing waves below the bigger boulders.

“
Okay, Ian, we should be out of here in a half an hour or
so.”

“
Shit.”

“
What?”

“
Something’s just taken out one of the drones.”

Tension
mounted as Liam waited.

“
It had to be some kind of surface-to-air missile. They’re
saying it wasn’t a malfunction. They’re launching the
backup.”

Liam’s
jaw dropped with the surprise of it. There was only one real
possibility, and only one more drone on scene. The enemy had to
move. They had no choice, and now neither did he.

“
All units. All units. Move in, I repeat. Move in.”

The bad
guys were making their break. This was confirmed when the signal
from the second drone cut out and Ian was too busy to talk to him
anymore.

Drone
Three was still winging its way across from Mackinac Island and it
was probably going to be too late to do anything about
it.

***

The old
sawmill swarmed with investigators after a cautious search by
bomb-detection and bomb-disposal people. No booby-traps or
explosive devices had been found. So far they had located three of
the miniature remote cameras. Two were in the building itself, and
one was a hundred metres up the road.

When more
personnel became available, they would look for more.

Jenkins
uttered a deep sigh.

Liam and
the other investigators had set up a command post in the centre of
the large factory space. The other rooms were sealed while
forensics specialists went through looking for fingerprints, hairs,
any material evidence that might identify their suspects. Always
building a case, they were nothing if not thorough.

Cases
were good—even if never brought in court. If a suspect was killed,
shot in self defense for example, a case against them often brought
a lot of comfort to the enforcement officers involved.

It was
better than blowing away the innocent. It was better than always
having a doubt. It was better than trying to live with it for the
rest of your fucking life.

“
Liam.”

He looked
up from their conference, a large-scale terrain map of the area
spread on the damp hood of an Ontario Provincial Police
cruiser.

“
Yes?”

“
We’re getting reports of a seaplane—the witness calls it a
ski-plane, but by the description I’m thinking it’s more like a
flying boat.”

“
When?”

“
They’re saying maybe forty-five minutes, half an hour
maybe.”

“
Shit.”

Predator
Three orbited overhead, using its camera pickups in pure
reconnaissance and search mode. If only they could narrow it down,
the aircraft might become useful again. For the time being, it was
checking out fishing boats and looking for people going overland.
This was an almost impossible task given the terrain and the
season. They were getting hits all over the place.

There
weren’t any hiking trails in the immediate vicinity.

“
Where?”

“
Right here.”

All heads
turned to the far end. The door at the end of the mill, closed when
Liam was there, had been open wide upon the arrival of the
authorities.

The
theory was that a boat had been used in the escape, the weather
possibly giving it more chance of success than perhaps it deserved.
With that end of the building in darkness, Liam hadn’t seen any
aircraft. That proved nothing.

“
Are we sure?”

Jenkins
made a face and shrugged.

“
Quite a few people saw it. They’re saying it came from
here—the old McKerlie Sawmill.” According to witnesses, a dull grey
plane had taxied out, taken off into the southwestern wind at about
six or six-thirty a.m. As usual, witnesses weren’t exactly looking
at their watches and writing things down.

They said
it circled to the right and then turned to the northeast, keeping
just below the cloud-base, which Environment Canada was listing at
six hundred metres, or just clearing the tops of the tallest hills
in the area.

Ian was
already on the phone to the military. Hopefully the message would
travel quickly.

The look
on his face was not a happy one. In his assessment, it was already
too late.

“
In the meantime?” It was a very good question.

“
They might not all be in the plane.” The land and water
searches must continue. “That could have been anyone—anyone at
all.”

Junior
operative were looking for a flight plan, but of course there
wouldn’t be one.