The Machiavelli Covenant (50 page)

The three machines slowed, then stopped as they reached the river. The Llobregat here was probably fifty yards wide, muddy and fast-flowing from the runoff of winter rains. Miguel looked at Hap in the sidecar.

"There's a gravel buildup beneath the water. It looks deep but isn't. Still, anything could happen."

"Cross it," Hap said without expression.

Miguel signaled Amado, and the first two motorcycles started across, Amado first, then Hector driving the second machine. Partway across Hector nearly lost it in the rush of water. Then he gained control, gunned the engine, and made it across, stopping to wait with Amado. A half second later Miguel twisted the throttle, the motorcycle inched forward and entered the water and started across. The rush of swift water threatened to sweep them away but Hap's weight in the side car steadied it and with a bounce and roar of the engine they crossed to the others. Again Miguel signaled Amado, and the young man led off, taking them up a steep gravel trail.

Rough as it was on Hap, the motorcycle had been the thing to use. They were going up into the foothills and then to mountain trails beyond. A car was useless and walking would take far too long. Moreover, Hap hardly had the stamina to walk very far anyway.

•
7:10 P.M.

The sun dipped over the mountain ridges just above them, putting the dirt trail they climbed into full shadow. Hap was leaning forward, trying to find some way to ease the pain in his wounded shoulder as the motorcycle bounced mercilessly over the rough terrain, when his BlackBerry sounded. He took it from his jacket and looked at the source of the call. When he saw it was Bill Strait, he clicked off, then turned off the ringer. In that instant he thought of the encrypted text message Strait had sent him at 4:10
P.M.

Hap. Trying for hours to reach you. Where the hell are you? Chief of staff reports at 4:08
P.M.
from Madrid that Crop Duster was not, repeat NOT, at the monastery at Montserrat. CIA ops took brief hostile fire from unknowns at monastery office of a Dr. Merriman Foxx. Our mission to Montserrat aborted mid-flight. Returned to base at Barcelona. CNP and Spanish intel investigating hostile fire. WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? ARE YOU OKAY?

Hap glanced at Miguel as he guided the motorcycle up a narrow rain-rutted trail in the increasing darkness. Until a few hours ago he had never seen this man in his life. Now he was trusting him and three young Spaniards with his life and that of the president, if he was still alive. It was something he should have been able to call Bill Strait for; order him to fly a full contingent of Secret Service, CIA, Spanish intel, and Spanish police out here on the double to scour the hills and mountaintops looking for any passageway that would give them access to the areas below where Miguel believed the president and Nicholas Marten might be, and at the same time demand a demolition crew be sent to blast through the rock from inside Foxx's office complex.

There was, and always had been, an iron bond between Secret Service agents, trust beyond measure. That was until now, until all this had happened, and where he, like the president, had no idea how far this thing went or who in God's name he could trust. So as much as he wanted to, as much as he should have been able to do so under any circumstances, Bill Strait wasn't contacted, his message not replied to.

"Damn," Hap swore bitterly to himself. How he hated mistrust, especially when it was his own and he didn't know who or what to believe.

"Hap," Miguel said suddenly.

"What is it?"

"There," Miguel pointed at the sunlit crest of the mountains four or five miles in the distance.

At first Hap saw nothing, then he did. Four helicopters were coming in over the top of the ridge and then dropping down into the shadow on this side of the mountain.

"Who are they?"

"Not sure. Probably CNP, the federal police. Maybe Mossos d'Esquadra. Maybe both."

"Coming this way?"

"Hard to tell."

"Miguel!" Amado shouted and was pointing behind them.

Both men turned to see five more helicopters. They were still in the distance but coming toward them fast at just above ground level.

Hap looked to Miguel, "Get us out of sight! Amado, the other guys too!"

•
7:17 P.M.

Miguel signaled Amado and the others to follow, then gunned the engine and the motorcycle literally flew up the face of the steep rocky embankment. The machine roared and bucked and spit, kicking out loose stones for what seemed an eternity and then they reached the top and the terrain leveled off. Miguel drove another twenty yards, then saw the sharp, cavelike overhang of an enormous
sandstone formation and pulled in. Seconds later the others joined them.

"Cut your engines," Miguel said in Spanish.

They did, holding their breath and looking back, waiting in silence. All they saw was the darkening rocky terrain of the high sprawling mesa where they were. For a full minute nothing happened, and they thought maybe the helicopters had flown off in another direction. Then suddenly and with a thundering, ground shaking roar they appeared. All five of them. Coming over the ridge-line toward them. In seconds they passed overhead, not twenty feet above the overhang where they were hidden.

The first four were Spanish CNP, the fifth, Hap knew only too well. The big U.S. Army Chinook they'd flown in from Madrid to Barcelona. It meant the Secret Service was here and that the detail would be under the command of Bill Strait.

Immediately he dug out his BlackBerry and switched it on hoping Strait had left a second text message that would give him information he did not have. The text was there: What he saw was not what he was hoping for but not wholly unexpected either.

Hap, tried to reach you again! We've been advised by U.S. Madrid that Crop Duster may have been at the monastery after all and is possibly trapped inside old mining tunnels by landslide. CNP units, CIA and USSS on route now.

   More.

   Informed it was you who exchanged hostile fire with ops at Montserrat and that you may have been hit. Where the hell are you? Please confirm location and condition.

   More.

   Ops were not CIA. U.S. Madrid was misinformed. Ops
were S.A. Special Forces commandos under covert orders to repatriate Dr. Foxx to South Africa.

   S.A. government has apologized to State Department and to U.S. Madrid.

   More.

   A lot of this doesn't make sense. As you know USSS info on Crop Duster's probable presence at Montserrat and CIA ops mission to retrieve him came from White House Chief of Staff at U.S. Embassy Madrid. How could COS and CIA station chief confuse CIA ops with S.A. Special Forces unit? Also how could original Crop Duster mission have become one to repatriate the S.A. doctor and then to finding Crop Duster at same site? Was he in the tunnels all the time then got caught in the landslide and nobody knew it? Is this something at executive level we don't know about? Maybe some kind of meeting between Crop Duster and the S.A. doctor? Have attempted to make contact with USSS assistant director Langway reported still in Madrid. So far unsuccessful.

   More.

   If you are able, you are directed to contact Jake Lowe or National Security Adviser Marshall immediately for debriefing. Maybe they'll tell you what's up.

   This is a direct order from VPOTUS. Please acknowledge.

   More.

   Very concerned personally. Where the hell are you? Have you taken fire? Do you need help? Dammit, Hap, please acknowledge or have someone do it for you!

Bill Strait's confusion about the info from COS U.S. Madrid was wholly understandable. That was if any of it was true, which was highly unlikely. The ops he'd ex
changed fire with at the monastery were sure as hell not South African commandos; they were as American as Kansas. They knew the president was there and it was him they had come to get. The Foxx thing had to have been a sidebar, part of something else.

As for Bill Strait, it was impossible to tell if he was caught in the middle and just trying to do his job or if he was on their side and involved with it. Did he want to find Hap as badly as he did because he was a Secret Service brother he genuinely cared about or because Hap was trouble and they wanted to make sure he was out of the picture?

Hap grimaced at the thought, then put the BlackBerry away and looked to others grouped under the overhang and now bathed in a harsh shaft of golden light as the setting sun found an opening between distant mountain peaks.

"Ask Amado how far it is to the first chimney or tunnel opening," he said to Miguel, "and if we can get there on foot without being seen."

Miguel turned to his nephew and spoke Spanish, then turned back. "It's only one air shaft of many, and we have to start somewhere. They chose this one because they think that this is about how far they might have come inside the tunnel since the landslide."

"Where is it?"

"About a half mile. We can go the minute the sun sets."

Hap stared at Miguel, then motioned him closer. "If the president and Marten are in there," he said, trying not to have Amado and his friends overhear, especially if they understood English, "we have to find them and get them out before the Spanish police do."

"I know."

"What you don't know is that there are CIA and U.S. Secret Service agents with them. Most, if not all, both Spanish and American, think they are on our side. That their mission is to rescue the president and bring him to safety."

"You mean they might try to kill us."

"No, I mean they
will
kill anyone who gets in the way. We're talking about the president of the United States. You saw those helicopters. There will be more, a lot more. We're up against an army of people who think they're doing the right thing."

"One man, a thousand. To me that is my family in there. It is the same with you. Yes?"

Hap took a breath. "Yes," he said finally. Standing up against covert ops was one thing, but having to exchange fire with a legion of innocently involved Spanish police, CIA, and his own Secret Service agents, some of whom might be covert themselves, was something else. Still, they had no choice. "What about the boys?" he said.

"I will take care of the boys."

"You have the first-aid kit from the limo?"

"Yes."

"Take out the survival blankets. You take three and give me four."

"Alright," Miguel nodded, then watched Hap a half second longer. "How is your shoulder?"

"It hurts like hell."

"The pain pills."

"This is no time or place to be drugged up."

"Any more bleeding?"

"Not that I know. Your doctor did a good job."

"Can you walk?"

"Yes, I can walk, dammit!"

"Then let's go," Miguel stood abruptly and went to the motorcycle. He snapped open its storage compartment and took seven of the small folded, Mylar-coated survival blankets from the first-aid kit and a half dozen health bars. Next came a water-filled camel-pack, two large flashlights, and the Steyr machine pistol. He gave four of the survival blankets and half the health bars to Hap, handed him a flashlight and stuck the other in his belt, then slipped the camel pack over his shoulders and slung the machine pistol across his chest. As he did, the shaft of sunlight abruptly dimmed to the deep purple of twilight as the sun passed behind the mountain peaks. Immediately he signaled to the others. A half beat later the five started off across the rock and scrub mesa.

•
7:32 P.M.

Twice Marten and the president had picked their way over and through enormous piles of dirt and rock, the result of underground landslides. It would have been difficult under any circumstances, but in the pitch black it had been impossible to know how far the slide reached and if what they were doing was nothing more than removing stones from a mountain, all the while eating up precious time. Still, they'd done it, then broken through and kept on.

Somehow we will find a way out. Somehow you will address those people
.

Marten's emotional promise to the president had
concentrated their efforts on a search for an air current that would lead them to a passage large enough to squeeze through, break through, or climb out of. To do that they needed an open flame that would burn far longer than a match, and to that end Marten dedicated his cotton undershirt, rolled up tight, with one end torn loose and hanging down to serve as a wick. It took two of the precious few matches left to get it going. When it did it burned long enough to get them several hundred yards farther down the tunnel, where they stumbled on a pile of long-abandoned tools. Most were rusted through or rotted away, but among them they found three they could use. One was a sledgehammer with its handle still secured to its head. The other two were picks, or rather a pick and a pick handle that held angled down served as a kind of torch and replaced Marten's undershirt, which had burned to little more than a rag and had to be abandoned. The pick handle's light was merely a glow compared to the burning shirt but in the unbearable darkness it enabled them to illuminate the tunnel a good fifteen feet in front of them.