Day of Wrath

They headed east for several blocks before turning south again. Once they had gone far enough that way, they swung back west down a trash-filled alley. It took them the better part of ten more minutes to work their way closer to the target intersection, approaching it from the south this time.

They were within a hundred meters of the rendezvous point when Thorn felt Helen stiffen slightly. Her hand closed around his arm — and tugged him off the street into another alley between two brick tenements.

“Shit,” she said under her breath. “I don’t frigging believe it.”

She looked up at him, eyes wide in the darkness. “There are two more up ahead fifty meters or so. Standing in a doorway on our side of the street.”

“Describe them,” Thorn said.

“Dark leather jackets. Jeans. One’s wearing a baseball cap. The other’s bareheaded.” Helen shook her head in disbelief. “How the hell did they know where to find us?”

Thorn spread his hands. “Maybe there’s a leak in the Bureau’s Berlin office. Or in D.C. somewhere. Hell, maybe Mcdowell’s phone’s being tapped …”

She grimaced. “I can’t believe that. The phone lines into and out of the Hoover Building are checked and rechecked practically every day.”

“Well,” he said slowly, “all I know is that these people have been all over us every time we get close to their goddamned operation.

As to how exactly they’re doing that …” He shrugged.

“We should start doing some serious thinking about it later. After we get ourselves out of this fix we’re in right now.”

Helen nodded.

Thorn looked intently at her. “So, if you were setting up a tight surveillance net around that intersection, how would you do it?”

She didn’t hesitate. “I’d cover all four approach routes, and I’d use at least two foot teams and two cars to do it. That way I’d be set, no matter how my targets entered the zone.”

“So we’re facing around eight hostiles here,” he concluded.

“At least.” Helen looked troubled. “We’re outside the net now, Peter.

We could just back off quietly and slip away. God knows, that would be the smart move.”

“Yeah.” Thorn knew she was right, but somehow the idea stuck in his craw. Fading back meant ceding the initiative to their unknown adversaries — again. And it would leave them right where they’d started: stuck in Germany while what they suspected was a stolen Russian nuke was sailing into an unsuspecting American port city.

He suddenly realized that Helen was watching him closely.

“You getting tired of playing it safe, Colonel Thorn?” she asked quietly.

“Playing it safe’s not exactly our forte, is it, Special Agent Gray?”

“No, I guess not.”

He nodded toward the unseen intersection. “Okay. Pretend you’re running that op out there. One of your teams spots someone who might be one of the two people you’re after — but this person is heading away from the place you’ve staked out. What would you do?”

Helen hesitated for only a split second before answering. “I’d detach a team to investigate.”

“But not your whole force?” Thorn pressed.

She shook her head. “No way. Not with so many variables still in play. I’d want confirmation first.” A wolfish smile crept across her face. “You want a little personal contact with a Couple of these folks, Peter?”

He nodded grimly. “You could say that.”

Two minutes later, Thorn waited alone inside the dark alley — near the opening to the street. He could feel the damp, dirty brick wall right at his back. A dog barked somewhere off in the distance. Soon now, he thought.

Helen strode right past the opening — heading straight toward the intersection they knew was under surveillance. Her eyes didn’t even flicker in his direction.

Good work, he thought.

She left his field of view. Her footsteps faded.

Thorn ran a slow countdown in his head. She must be forty meters from the closest two-man surveillance team. Thirty meters.

Twenty.

Adrenaline flooded into his bloodstream — distorting his sense of time.

Seconds passed with agonizing slowness. Doubts crept in and multiplied. Had they spotted Helen yet? Would they react the way he hoped?

Helen came back into sight, walking faster now. She stopped, looked toward the alley as though seeing it for the first time, and then darted in. She slipped into the shadows beside him.

“Two on the way,” she whispered.

Thorn listened carefully — trying to screen out the dull rumble of background traffic noise to pick out the sound of any nearby car engine starting. If the people out there looking for them started pulling the whole surveillance net around them, he and Helen would have to bug out fast. He listened harder. There. He heard the sound of footsteps ringing on the pavement, coming closer.

Soon. Soon.

Two men appeared at the entrance to the alley. Both wore leather jackets and jeans. One had a baseball cap pulled down right over close-cropped hair. Without hesitating, they plunged into the narrow, dark, trash-strewn passageway. They walked right past him.

Now!