Part 5 (1/2)
He swerved around a minivan. ”Did Hytner make it?”
”Tim's dead because of you, you sonovab.i.t.c.h.”
The chopper landed on the island rotary, and the infernal noise level dropped abruptly as the pilot cut the motor. The black Hummer kept on going as if nothing were amiss. Bourne, threading his way through the last of the traffic between him and his quarry, once again drew close to the vehicle.
He saw Soraya and two other CI agents emerge from the body of the helicopter with police riot helmets on their heads and shotguns in their hands. Swerving abruptly, he drew alongside the Hummer. With his c.o.c.ked elbow, he smashed the driver's-side window.
”Pull over!” he shouted. ”Pull over onto the rotary or you'll be shot dead!”
A second helicopter appeared over the Potomac, angling in very fast toward their position. CI backup.
The Hummer gave no indication of slowing. Without taking his eyes off the road, Bourne reached behind him and opened the custom saddlebag. His scrabbling fingers found a wrench. He'd have one chance, he knew. Calculating vectors and speed, he threw the wrench. It slammed into the front of the driver's-side rear-wheel well. The wheel, revolving at speed, went over the wrench, launched it up with sickening power into the rear-wheel a.s.sembly.
At once the Hummer began to wobble, which only jammed the wrench deeper into the a.s.sembly. Then something cracked, an axle possibly, and the Hummer decelerated in a barely controlled spin. Mostly on its own momentum, it ran up over the curb onto the rotary and came to a stop, its engine ticking like a clock.
Soraya and the other agents spread out, moving toward the Hummer with drawn guns aimed at the pa.s.senger cabin. When she was close enough, Soraya shot the two front tires flat. One of the other agents did the same with the rear tires. The Hummer wasn't going anywhere until a CI tow truck hauled it back to HQ for forensics.
”All right!” Soraya shouted. ”Out of the vehicle, all of you! Out of the vehicle now!”
As the agents closed the circle around the Hummer, Bourne could see that they were wearing body armor. After Hytner's death, Soraya wasn't taking any chances.
They were within ten meters of the Hummer when Bourne felt his scalp begin to tingle. Something was wrong with the scene, but he couldn't quite put his mental finger on it. He looked again: Everything seemed right-the target surrounded, the approaching agents, the second helicopter hovering above, the noise level rising exponentially...
Then he had it.
Oh, my G.o.d, he thought, and viciously twisted the handlebar accelerator. He yelled at the agents, but over the noise of the two copters and his own motorcycle there was no chance they could hear him. Soraya was in the lead, closing in on the driver's door as the others, spread apart, hung back, providing her with a crossfire of cover should she need it.
The setup looked fine, perfect, in fact, but it wasn't.
Bourne leaned forward as the motorcycle sped across the rotary. He had a hundred meters to cover, a route that would take him just left of the Hummer's gleaming flank. He took his right hand off the handlebar grip, gesturing frantically at the agents, but they were properly concentrated on their target.
He gunned the engine, its deep, guttural roar at last cutting through the heavy vibrational thwup-thwup-thwup of the hovering copter. One of the agents saw him coming, watched him gesturing. He called to the other agent, who glanced at Bourne as he roared past the Hummer.
The setup looked right out of the CI playbook, but it wasn't, because the Hummer's engine was ticking over-cooling-while it was still running. Impossible.
Soraya was less than five meters from the target, her body tense, in a semi-crouch. Her eyes opened wide as she became aware of him. Then he was upon her.
He swept her up in his extended right arm, swung her back behind him as he raced off. One of the other agents, now flat on the ground, had alerted the second chopper, because it abruptly rose into the spangled night, swinging away.
The ticking Bourne had heard hadn't come from the engine at all. It was from a triggering device.
The explosion took the Hummer apart, turned its components into smoking shrapnel, shrieked behind them. Bourne, with the motorcycle at full speed, felt Soraya's arms wrap around his ribs. He bent low over the handlebars, feeling her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressing softly against his back as she molded herself to him. The howling air was blast-furnace hot; the sky, bright orange, then clogged with oily black smoke. A hail of ruptured metal whirred and whizzed all around them, plowed into the ground, struck the roadway, fizzed into the river, shriveling.
Jason Bourne, with Soraya Moore clinging tightly to him, accelerated into the light-glare of monument-laden D.C.
Four.
JAKOB SILVER and his brother appeared from out of the dinnertime night, when even cities such as Was.h.i.+ngton appear deserted or, at least, lonely, a certain indigo melancholy robbing the streets of life. When the two men entered the hushed luxury of the Hotel Const.i.tution on the northeast corner of 20th and F Streets, Thomas, the desk clerk on duty, hurried past the fluted marble columns and across the expanse of luxurious carpeting to meet them.
He had good reason to scurry. He, as well as the other desk clerks, had been given a crisp new hundred-dollar bill by Lev Silver, Jakob Silver's brother, when he had checked in. These Jewish diamond merchants from Amsterdam were wealthy men, this much the desk clerk had surmised. The Silvers were to be treated with the utmost respect and care, befitting their exalted status.
Thomas, a small, mousy, damp-handed man, could see that Jakob Silver's face was flushed as if in victory. It was Thomas's job to antic.i.p.ate his VIP clients' needs.
”Mr. Silver, my name is Thomas. It's a pleasure to meet you, sir,” he said. ”Is there anything I might get for you?”
”That you may, Thomas,” Jakob Silver replied. ”A bottle of your best champagne.”
”And have the Pakistani,” Lev Silver added, ”what's his name-?”
”Omar, Mr. Silver.”
”Ah, yes, Omar. I like him. Have him bring up the champagne.”
”Very good.” Thomas all but bowed from the waist. ”Right away, Mr. Silver.”
He hurried away as the Silver brothers entered the elevator, a plush cubicle that silently whisked them up to the executive-level fifth floor.
”How did it go?” Lev Silver said.
And Jakob Silver answered, ”It worked to perfection.”
Inside their suite, he shrugged off his coat and jacket, went directly into the bathroom, and turned on all the lights. Behind him, in the sitting room, he heard the TV start up. He stripped off his sweat-stained s.h.i.+rt.
In the pink-marble bathroom, everything was prepared.
Jakob Silver, naked to the waist, bent over the marble sink and took out his gold eyes. Tall, with the build of a former rugby player, he was as fit as an Olympian: washboard abdomen, muscular shoulders, powerful limbs. Snapping closed the plastic case in which he had carefully placed the gold contact lenses, he looked into the bathroom mirror. Beyond his reflection, he could see a good chunk of the cream-and-silver suite. He heard the low drone of CNN. Then the channel was switched to Fox News, then MSNBC.
”Nothing.” Muta ibn Aziz's vibrant tenor voice emerged from the other room. Muta ibn Aziz had picked his cover name-Lev-himself. ”On any of the all-news stations.”
”And there won't be,” Jakob Silver said. ”CI is extremely efficient in manipulating the media.”
Now Muta ibn Aziz appeared in the mirror, one hand gripping the door frame to the bathroom, the other out of sight behind him. Dark hair and eyes, a cla.s.sic Semitic face, a zealous and inextinguishable resolve, he was Abbud ibn Aziz's younger brother.
Muta dragged a chair behind him, which he set down opposite the toilet. After glancing at himself in the mirror, he said: ”We look naked without our beards.”
”This is America.” He gestured curtly with his head. ”Go back inside.”
Alone again, Jakob Silver allowed himself to think like Fadi. He had jettisoned the ident.i.ty of Hiram Cevik the moment he and Muta had exited the black Hummer. Muta, as previously instructed, had left the Beretta semiautomatic pistol with its ugly M9SD Suppressor on the front seat as they had tumbled onto the sidewalk. His aim had been true, but then he'd never had a doubt about Muta ibn Aziz's marksmans.h.i.+p.
They had run out of sight as the Hummer sped up again, slipped around a corner, and walked quickly up 20th Street to F Street, vanis.h.i.+ng like wraiths inside the warmly glowing facade of the hotel.
Meanwhile, not a mile away, Ahmad, with his load of C-4 explosives that had filled up the front foot well of the Hummer's cabin, was already martyred, already in Paradise. A hero to his family, his people.
”Your objective is to take out as many of them as you can,” Fadi had told him when Ahmad had volunteered to martyr himself. In truth, there had been many volunteers, with very little difference among them. All were absolutely reliable. Fadi had chosen Ahmad because he was a cousin. One of a great many, admittedly, but Fadi had owed his uncle a small favor, which this decision repaid.
Fadi dug into his mouth and removed the porcelain tooth sheaths he'd used to widen Hiram Cevik's jaw. Was.h.i.+ng them with soap and water, he returned them to the hard-sided case that merchants used to transport gems and jewelry. Muta had thoughtfully placed it on the generous rim of the bathtub so that everything in it would be within easy reach: a warren of small trays and custom compartments filled with every manner of theatrical makeup, removers, spirit gums, wigs, colored contact lenses, and various prosthetics for noses, jaws, teeth, and ears.