The Final Twist
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри
- Серия: Colter Shaw #3
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: G.P. Putnam's Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-525-53913-1
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Final Twist». Краткое содержание книги:
Following the enigmatic clues his father left behind, Shaw plays cat and mouse with the company’s sadistic enforcers, as he speeds from one gritty neighborhood in the City by the Bay to another. Suddenly, the job takes on a frightening urgency: Only by finding the courier bag can he expose the company and stop the murder of an entire family — slated to die in forty-eight hours.
With the help of an unexpected figure from his past, and with the enforcers closing the net, Shaw narrows in on the truth — and learns that the courier bag contains something unexpected: a secret that could only be described as catastrophic.
Then, rising, rising, was the sound of a vehicle engine, growing louder.
Insistent.
He found his Glock in the brush, and he thought: Helms, Stone and Braxton had had their phones in the chaotic moments after she figured out the trap. She might have a speed-dial button on her mobile: need backup or distress.
Shaw’s team had a good defensive position where they were.
But the black Escalade was plowing unexpectedly over a pedestrian trail.
“Ty!” Shaw called. “Hostiles.”
The big man nodded and clicked off the safety of his H&K.
He glanced at the Colt in Victoria’s grip and, digging into his pocket, handed her ten loose shells. She reloaded and slipped the live shells in her pocket, then crouched, looking toward the approaching SUV.
A smoke grenade spiraled from the window of the SUV and popped, filling the area with dense gray cover. Shaw couldn’t see for certain but he believed at least two men were out, firing automatic weapons — loud, unsilenced — in three-shot bursts. Shaw and Victoria rolled to cover behind a fallen tree. Ty was behind a low berm of grassy earth.
But he and Shaw lowered their weapons. It was impossible to acquire a target. Shaw squinted through the raw, pungent smoke, Victoria too. She said, “Flank them?”
A nod. He started left, she right.
But they got only a few feet before the relentless machine-gun fire tore into the air and ground around them, spitting dirt and rocks and branches high into the air. The stream of slugs swept toward her.
“Victoria!” Shaw called, as he saw her go down.
69
Too much incoming fire, too much smoke to acquire targets.
Angry shouts from the attackers. “Move it, move it!”
Both Victoria and Ty were hidden from sight by the smoke.
“Victoria!”
No response. Shaw’s heart was slamming.
He tried to find a target. But it was impossible to see anything clearly through the thick, creamy cloud.
He knew they were in the SUV because the machine-gun spray had ceased. Shaw couldn’t hear the doors slam — the weapons fire had partially deafened him — but he knew the Escalade was speeding away along another trail, a narrow one.
He stared in that direction but holstered his Glock.
Never discharge your weapon without a clear target...
He turned back. “Victoria!”
Still no response.
Jesus...
He’d gotten her into this.
Coughing, spitting out the vile fumes, he strode through the cloud to where he’d seen her fall.
“Victoria!”
Still nothing.
Come on, come on... Please.
He pushed through the smoke.
No body, no blood trail.
Had she been wounded and then snatched by one of the attackers?
Then... Did he hear a voice?
Again: “Here.”
“Victoria.”
A bout of coughing.
“Here!”
Then he saw her on her knees in a clump of sedge grass. He ran to her and helped her up. She clutched her torso. Then lowered her hands. No blood. No bullet wounds. She’d fallen hard to the ground, it seemed, the breath knocked from her lungs.
Arm around her shoulders, he helped her out of the haze. They were both coughing and wiping tears from the smoke, which wasn’t the sort from wood or paper; the grenades spewed corroding, chemical fumes created by burning potassium chlorate or hexachloroethane and zinc. While not intended to debilitate, the thick clouds stung and choked.
“Ty!” Shaw called, looking around.
The broad-chested man was staggering from the berm behind which he’d taken cover, coughing and spitting as well.
Now that the smoke was drifting away on the breeze, they could see, probably a hundred yards away, the SUV was rocking along the pedestrian trail, about to turn out of sight.
Shaw said to Victoria, “You okay to go after them with me?”
She nodded. Shaw looked to Ty, who did the same.
The three of them started out of the dissipating cloud.
Then, suddenly, the Escalade lurched hard to the left, narrowly missing a tree. Something had flown from the right front tire.
A muted boom rolled over the landscape. Shaw knew it would have been much louder had his ears been functioning better. Then the windshield of the SUV blew to pieces. Another boom.
The Escalade stopped entirely. Several more booms, several more lurches.
Shaw said, “Engine’s gone. It’s dead.”
You can’t shoot a car motor by hitting the block, not with ordinary rounds. But all it takes is one well-placed bullet to destroy the delicate electronics under the hood that make today’s cars such miracles of modern transportation — and so vulnerable to hackers.
Ty, Victoria and Shaw moved forward slowly, using trees for cover.
Shaw called, “Everyone, out of the vehicle now!”
Ty: “This is your last warning. Weapons on the ground. Step out with your hands raised. Now!”
A moment passed.
A huge ring as another rifle slug hit the driver’s side door, low, tearing into the seat just beneath where he sat.
As the echoing report of the shot from the rifle rolled over them, all at once the doors opened and guns flew out. Soon everyone was on the ground.
“Let’s get them bundled up.”
While Victoria covered them with the Python, Shaw and Ty searched the whole crew: the Latino driver and another BlackBridge op, a redheaded, muscular ex-military sort, as well as Braxton, Helms and George Stone. Zip ties for the newcomers. The other three remained bound.
More vehicle noise, another SUV approaching, coming down the trail. This one was a Lincoln.
Its arrival didn’t trouble Shaw in the least. Or surprise him.
The driver climbed out and walked toward Shaw and the others, leaving in the vehicle the McMillan TAC-338 sniper rifle he’d been using as he covered the takedown. He now had his own pistol in hand. He saw that the hostiles were down and slipped away his gun.
Shaw introduced Victoria to his brother.
70
Two hours earlier, as Shaw had sat in his father’s Naugahyde chair, having learned that the San Leandro lead to finding the identity of the SP family had not panned out, he had glanced around the safe house and his eyes rested on the tape recorder.
With little time left until the family died, he’d forged a plan to ensnare Braxton and Droon and force them to abort the attack on the SP family.
He’d needed someone he could trust, a woman, and someone who wasn’t afraid of combat. Russell’s resourceful Karin was not a tactical op, and his group had none available. So Shaw had called Victoria Lesston and wondered if she’d help him out in an operation he was putting together.
She’d replied, “There’re two types of people, Colter.”
He’d laughed.
She said, “I’ll get the next flight out.”
“No time. My brother’s organization’ll send a chopper for you.”
“Organization. What is it?”
“Don’t know. He’s tight-lipped.”
“Have to say, Colter, with you not here, I’ve been feeling antsy. Not used to staying in one place for very long.”
A Restless Woman...
He explained what he had in mind. Her role was to pretend to be Julia, the audio analyst Russell had called from the diner in Quigley Square. Victoria would call Shaw on his iPhone, which was compromised. If Braxton didn’t tip to the fact he was using this phone, and not the encrypted Android, she would learn that there was incriminating evidence on the cassette and about the furtive meeting between Shaw and “Julia” at the park in San Bruno. She’d learn too that Russell was elsewhere — an assurance that only Shaw and the audio engineer would be present.