Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Imperative (51 page)

It was this intent, so fervent, that caused him to miss Bourne’s right heel hooking into his. As Bourne drew back his leg, the agent lost his balance. But even as he fell, he swung the Tavor around, aiming it at Bourne’s chest. He pulled the trigger as he landed, the bullets firing wide when Bourne smashed the butt of his weapon into the agent’s face. The second strike shattered his sternum and rib cage, driving a rib through his chest. It must have punctured a lung because pink foam boiled between the agent’s lips, followed by a gout of blood, thick and clotted.

Colonel Han, having given no indication that he had registered Ben David’s barb, inserted the drive into his tablet and switched it on.

Maceo Encarnación’s lips twitched. “Believe it or not, Colonel Han is an expert in physics and in laser excitation in particular.”

The two men watched as Colonel Han brought up the files on the USB drive and scanned them.

At that moment, Colonel Ben David’s satphone buzzed. He listened for a moment, the frown on his face deepening. “No, do nothing. Just keep him in sight.” He closed the connection before saying, “Our vehicle has been sighted. Only one man is in it.”

“Bourne?” Maceo Encarnación said.

“He’s wearing Dov’s uniform.” Ben David shook his head. “But I doubt it’s Dov.” He turned to the Chinese. “Colonel Han, I believe it’s past time for you to leave.”

Han looked up from his scrutiny of the equations, nodded, and closed down his tablet. Pocketing the USB drive and sticking the tablet under his arm, he nodded curtly to the two men, then stepped smartly out of Ben David’s field tent.

Bourne, wearing the agent’s clothes, drove the vehicle toward the Mossad encampment outside Dahr El Ahmar. The loaded launcher lay in the footwell behind him. He had a clear idea of the layout of the camp, having seen it from the air on his previous visit with Rebeka.

He found his mind, normally so calculating and pragmatic, turning back to Rebeka. He remembered the first time he had seen her, on the commercial flight to Damascus, a flight attendant about whom swirled a mystery he wanted to unravel. It was only later that she revealed herself as a Mossad agent. During their joint assault on the terrorist Semid Abdul-Qahhar’s stronghold, she had proved herself to be fierce, intelligent, and brave. He felt her loss as keenly as if Maceo Encarnación had knifed him in the ribs. Constanza Camargo had told him that Maceo Encarnación was protected by the ancient Aztec gods, but the truth as he knew it now was something both more mundane and more sinister. Maceo Encarnación was protected by all those people he had seduced, suborned, coerced, tricked, and beaten into submission. Armor enough for the modern world.

As he drove, Bourne became aware of sharp glinted sunlight reflected off coated glass lenses. He was being observed by the Mossad, by Maceo Encarnación’s men, or by what was left of the Chinese military contingent.

Maceo Encarnación followed Colonel Han out of Ben David’s tent, walking beside him as he headed for the aircraft that would take him and what remained of his cadre back to Beijing, where Minister Ouyang waited for the bounty for which he had delivered thirty million to Maceo Encarnación.

“You played your part well,” Colonel Han said in the condescending tone of the true Celestial that set Maceo Encarnación’s teeth on edge.

Encarnación, imagining himself swinging a machete in the powerful horizontal arc that would sever Colonel Han’s head from his body, replied, “I’ll take my fee now.”

Colonel Han, looking straight ahead as if he walked alone, tugged out a thick envelope from the inside breast pocket of his tunic. He held it, apparently not ready to hand it over. “What is it you did to deserve this generous payment, Encarnación?”

Feeling the blood rushing through his head, Maceo Encarnación pressed his fingertips to his temple where he could feel a distended vein beating like a second heart. He calmed himself before answering. “I acted as the go-between. I introduced Minister Ouyang to Colonel Ben David and oversaw the negotiations. Ouyang never would have got to Ben David without me.”

“He might have.” Colonel Han slapped the envelope against his knuckles. “
Minister
Ouyang is both powerful and resourceful.” He shrugged, as if he had his orders to fulfill even though he did not agree with them. He held out the envelope, and Maceo Encarnación, made to feel like a paid employee instead of a partner, took the envelope and, in the Colonel’s presence, laboriously counted the bills.

“The five million is all there,” Han said in precisely the same voice he had used inside Ben David’s tent.

“But is it real?” Maceo Encarnación removed three bills at random and, using eyedroppers from tiny vials he carried, subjected them to two chemical tests.

“Satisfied?” Han said with a wry smile. “They’re real. Unlike the thirty million you delivered to the Zionist Ben David. He sold his precious formula for a suitcase full of counterfeit money.”

With a minimum of effort, Maceo Encarnación produced a smile of complicity. “But the bills are so well made it will take him some time to realize that he has been swindled.”

“And by then,” Han said triumphantly, “it will already be too late.”

His plane was dead ahead. He signaled to his three remaining soldiers and they climbed on board.

“What about your other men?” Maceo Encarnación asked. “Don’t you want to know whether they’re dead or alive?”

“Once Bourne was spotted, they became a liability.”

“Wasn’t stopping Bourne part of your mission?”

“An adjunct.” Colonel Han began to mount the stairs up to the plane. “I have the formula. That’s all that matters.”

“Not to Minister Ouyang.”

“No,” Colonel Han said. “But it is to my superior, General Hwang Liqun.”

So saying, Han mounted the steps, disappearing inside the fuselage of the plane. A moment later, one of his soldiers swung the door closed, locking it from inside. The engines started up, obliging Maceo Encarnación to step backward at a rapid pace. He wasn’t quick enough to avoid getting a face full of jet fuel backwash. Particles flew into his eyes, making them tear. He turned then, jogging back to Ben David’s tent.

Bourne heard the roar of jet engines, and he diverted the vehicle in that direction. If a plane was taking off, it was a sure bet that the deal for the SILEX formula had been concluded. He was too late.

Stepping hard on the accelerator, he roared through the periphery of the camp, shattering a wooden barrier and causing agents to fire at him even as they scattered out of the way. Seeing the jet, he accelerated away from them. It was a civilian plane with Chinese markings.

These thoughts passed through Bourne’s mind like swiftly flying birds as he dug in his backpack. He was nearing the plane, which had taxied to the head of the makeshift runway and now sat, panting like a chained animal impatient to be released. He turned the vehicle hard to his left, paralleling the plane’s path. Shots were being fired off to his left, and he ducked down as bullets spanged into the side of his vehicle.

He was coming up on the tail of the jet when he heard a roar off to his left. A quick glance revealed a Jeep with a driver and an armed agent riding shotgun. The agent leveled the Tavor TAR-21 at him, and Bourne jerked the wheel hard over to his right so that the offside scraped the plane’s fuselage, giving the agent no chance to fire without hitting the plane.

At that moment, the jet’s brakes came off and it started to taxi down the runway. Bourne, drawing closer to the plane, had pulled out the grenade Robbinet had procured for him when the agent’s Jeep slammed into him. He turned back, his arm swinging out, connecting with the agent, who was jolted backward. His Jeep continued on its course, scraping along the side of Bourne’s vehicle. Bourne turned right, then made a sharp left, bringing the near-side front corner jabbing into the Jeep. Both men stiffened; as the driver was about to haul the wheel hard over, the armed agent leaped into Bourne’s vehicle. The Jeep, jolted hard, ricocheted away. The agent slammed Bourne in the back of the head.

The jet began to pull away.

Colonel Ben David laughed like a loon when Maceo Encarnación re-entered his tent. His fingers were hauling up handfuls of American dollars out of the suitcase. “Look at these,” he said merrily, “all crap.”

“Very fine crap,” Maceo Encarnación said, crossing the tent. “Exquisite craftsmanship.”

“Of course.” Ben David nodded. “It’s the work of the Chinese. Expert counterfeiters, those shitbags.” He smirked. “The SILEX formula for thirty million in bogus bills. Ouyang thought he had pulled one over on me.”

“He might have, without me.”

Ben David nodded. “True enough. But when that formula is implemented, it will level the laboratory it was made in. Quite the joke on Ouyang.” Reluctantly, he inclined his head. “I’m in your debt.”

“You hate being in anyone’s debt, Colonel,” Maceo Encarnación said shrewdly.

“Especially yours.” Ben David’s expression had turned sour.

“It’s not so bad. You could be in Ouyang’s debt.”

The Mossad agent was so powerful that he dragged Bourne halfway out of the driver’s seat.

The vehicle began to swerve crazily, throwing the agent off balance. Instead of resisting, Bourne flipped backward, using the agent’s clasped forearms, somersaulting over his back. The agent twisted his torso, driving his elbow into Bourne’s side just as the vehicle swerved again. Bourne was thrown half out of the vehicle, one leg and hip flying just above the ground.

The agent was about to pound Bourne’s head with the butt of his rifle, but another, wider swerve brought the vehicle in contact with the fuselage of the plane. The agent abandoned Bourne for the instant it took him to vault over the seatback, get behind the wheel, and regain control of the vehicle.

Bourne managed to hook one leg up over the side of the vehicle so that he was lying more or less horizontally. The plane was very close, the jet outtake just in front of him, over the agent’s head. The fuel made it virtually impossible to breathe, difficult to see. Nevertheless, Bourne knew that he was as close as he was ever going to get to his target. Pulling out the safety, he swung his arm back and let go of the grenade just past the apex of the arc. It spiraled through the air like a thrown football, but the engine’s outtake hurled it away, so that the plane was unharmed by the explosion.

Seeing the agent distracted by the blast, Bourne clambered back into the rear compartment. The plane was lifting off now, gaining in both speed and elevation in order to clear a stand of trees. Bourne swung the shoulder-held missile launcher up, aimed through the sight, and pulled the trigger. The missile launched, speeding directly toward the plane.

The agent, shocked, turned to see Bourne leap out. As he rolled over and over, he covered his head with both arms, curling into a protective ball just before the missile exploded, rupturing the entire side of the plane, sending flames and billowing dark, oily smoke high up into the sky as it crashed back to earth and split apart. The Jeep had wandered too close. Caught in the periphery of the blast, it was lifted off its wheels. Fiery, it turned end over end, spilling the two agents, then coming down onto them in a tangle of overheated metal and burning fabric. The gas tank ignited, sending shock waves across to where the shattered plane was burning. Then it, too, burst asunder with a massive roar, incinerating everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity.

Colonel Ben David stared at Maceo Encarnación. “And the payment?”

Maceo Encarnación smiled. “And the formula?”

Ben David held up a 32-gigabyte SD card. “The real one, this time.”

Maceo Encarnación opened a second envelope, spilling its contents onto the bottom of the suitcase. The diamonds sparkled and glittered in the lamplight. “Thirty million worth of perfection.”

Ben David nodded. Handing over the SD card, he said, “When you insert that directly into your mobile, everything will be revealed.”

Maceo Encarnación clutched it tightly in his fist. “And Core Energy will corner the market on both nuclear fuel and weaponry.”

At that moment, they both heard the roar of the first explosion. They were halfway out of the tent when the shock waves from the second and third detonations threw them backward off their feet.

A flaming tire arced downward from the conflagration, heading directly for Bourne.

Scrambling away, he rolled onto a patch of snow to keep the flames from getting to his clothes. By the time he raised himself up onto one knee, three armed Mossad agents were sprinting toward him. As the first shots were fired, he leaped behind a storage shed just past the edge of the makeshift runway.

The intensity of the fire incinerating the plane and the Jeep kept the agents from coming any closer, and Bourne took the opportunity to run in a half-crouch to the next building, which housed the scientists working in the camouflaged laboratory several hundred yards to his left.

Though well armed, Bourne had no particular desire to shoot the agents except in self-defense. It was their commander and Maceo Encarnación he was after. He’d much prefer to keep hidden and out of their way while he searched for his quarry.

No sooner had he entered the building than the door slammed shut. One of the windows shattered and a thick tongue of flame set the bedding on fire. The sharp odor of chemical fire filled the interior: someone was using a flamethrower.

The blaze leaped up, engulfing the interior almost immediately. Bourne turned back, but the door through which he had slipped in was bolted shut from the outside. He tried to make his way to one of the windows, but the fire had spread so quickly and the flames were so hot that he could not get to even the nearest of them. Ripping off a pillowcase, he held it over his nose and mouth, dropping to the floor, where the air was several degrees cooler. Acrid smoke billowed like storm clouds, obscuring the low ceiling.

He heard a sound over the spark and crackle of the burning wood. A figure filled the shattered window, then stepped through. It was clad in a flame-retardant suit with its own breathing apparatus. The figure held the flamethrower as it looked to his right, then his left. From his position hidden away beneath one of the beds, Bourne could make out the features of Colonel Ben David through the glass face-plate.