Agent Zero. Джек Марс

the rear security door squealed on its hinges as he shoved it open. He leapt out into the darkness with the AK leveled. There was no one there, not behind the building, but they had certainly heard the telltale squeak of the door.

      His throat was dry and his heart was still pounding like a kettledrum, but he kept his back to the steel façade and carefully eased his way to the corner of the building. His hand was sweating, gripping the dead man’s switch in a death grip. If he released it now, he would most certainly be dead in an instant. The amount of C4 packed into that bomb would blow the walls of the building out and flatten him, if he wasn’t incinerated first.

      Yesterday my biggest problem was keeping my students’ attention for ninety minutes. Today he was white-knuckling a lever to a bomb while trying to elude Russian terrorists.

      Focus. He reached the corner of the building and peered around its edge, sticking to the shadows as best he could. There was a silhouette of a man, a pistol in his grip, standing sentry on the eastern façade.

      Reid made sure he had a solid grip on the switch. You can do this. Then he stepped out into plain sight. The man spun quickly and began to raise his pistol.

      “Hey,” Reid said. He lifted his own hand—not the one holding the gun, but the other. “Do you know what this is?”

      The man paused and cocked his head slightly. Then his eyes went so wide with fear that Reid could see the whites of them by the moonlight. “Switch,” the man muttered. His gaze fluttered from the switch to the building and back again, seeming to come to the same conclusion that Reid already had—if he released that lever, they’d both be dead in a heartbeat.

      The bomb-maker abandoned his plan of shooting Reid, and instead sprinted away toward the front of the building. Reid followed hastily. He heard shouts in Arabic—“Switch! He has the switch!”

      He rounded the corner to the front of the facility with the AK aimed forward, the stock rested in the crook of his elbow, and his other hand holding the dead man’s switch high over his head. The sprinting bomb-maker hadn’t stopped; he kept running, up the gravel road that led away from the building and screaming himself hoarse. The other two bomb-makers were gathered near the front door, apparently ready to go in and finish Reid off. They stared in bewilderment as he came around the corner.

      Reid quickly surveyed the scene. The other two men held pistols—Sig Sauer P365, thirteen-round capacity with fully extended grips—but neither pointed them. As he had presumed, Otets had made his escape through the front door and was, at the moment, halfway to the SUV, limping along while holding his hurt leg and supported under one shoulder by a short, portly man in a black cap—the driver, Reid assumed.

      “Guns down,” Reid commanded, “or I’ll blow it.”

      The bomb-makers carefully set their weapons in the dirt. Reid could hear shouts in the distance, more voices. There were others coming from the direction of the old estate house. Likely the Russian woman had tipped them off.

      “Run,” he told them. “Go tell them what’s about to happen.”

      The two men didn’t have to be told twice. They broke into a brisk run in the same direction their cohort had just gone.

      Reid turned his attention to the driver, helping along the lamed Otets. “Stop!” he roared.

      “Do not!” Otets screamed in Russian.

      The driver hesitated. Reid dropped the AK and pulled the Glock from his jacket pocket. They had gotten a little more than halfway to the car—about twenty-five yards. Easy.

      He took a few steps closer and called out, “Before today, I didn’t think I had ever fired a gun before. Turns out I’m a really good shot.”

      The driver was a sensible man—or perhaps a coward, or even both. He released Otets, unceremoniously dropping his boss to the gravel.

      “Keys,” Reid demanded. “Drop them.”

      The driver’s hands shook as he fetched the keys to the SUV from his inner jacket pocket. He tossed them at his own feet.

      Reid motioned with the barrel of his pistol. “Go.”

      The driver ran. The black cap flew off his head but he paid it no mind.

      “Coward!” Otets spat in Russian.

      Reid retrieved the keys first, and then stood over Otets. The voices in the distance were getting closer. The estate house was a half mile away; it would have taken the Russian woman about four minutes to reach it on foot, and then another few minutes for the men to get down here. He figured he had less than two minutes.

      “Get up.”

      Otets spat on his shoes in response.

      “Have it your way.” Reid pocketed the Glock, grabbed Otets by the back of his suit jacket, and hauled him toward the SUV. The Russian cried out in pain as his gunshot leg dragged across the gravel.

      “Get in,” Reid ordered, “or I’ll shoot your other leg.”

      Otets grumbled under his breath, hissing through the pain, but he climbed into the car. Reid slammed the door, circled around quickly, and got behind the wheel. His left hand still held the dead man’s switch.

      He slammed the SUV into drive and stomped the gas. The tires spun, kicking up gravel and dirt behind it, and then the vehicle lurched forward with a jolt. As soon as he pulled back onto the narrow access road, shots rang out. Bullets smacked the passenger side with a series of heavy thuds. The window—just to the right of Otets’s head—splintered in a spider web of cracked glass, but held.

      “Idiots!” Otets screamed. “Stop shooting!”

      Bullet-resistant, Reid thought. Of course it is. But he knew that wouldn’t last long. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and the SUV lurched again, roaring past the three men on the side of the road as they fired on the car. Reid rolled down his window as they rolled by the two bomb-makers, still running for their lives.

      Then he tossed the switch out the window.

      The explosion rocked the SUV, even at their distance. He didn’t hear the detonation so much as he felt it, deep in his core, shaking his innards. A glance in the rearview mirror showed nothing but intense yellow light, like staring directly into the sun. Spots swam in his vision for a moment and he forced himself to look ahead at the road. An orange fireball rolled into the sky, sending up an immense plume of black smoke with it.

      Otets let out a jagged, groaning sigh. “You have no idea what you’ve just done,” he said quietly. “You are a dead man, Agent.”

      Reid said nothing. He did realize what he had just done—he had destroyed a significant amount of evidence in whatever case might be built against Otets once he was brought to the authorities. But Otets was wrong; he was not a dead man, not yet anyway, and the bomb had helped him get away.

      This far, anyhow.

      Up ahead, the estate house loomed into view, but there was no pausing to appreciate its architecture this time around. Reid kept his eyes straight ahead and zoomed past it as the SUV bounced over the ruts in the road.

      A glimmer in the mirror caught his attention. Two pairs of headlights swung into view, pulling out from the driveway of the house. They were low to the ground and he could hear the high-pitched whine of the engines over the roar of his own. Sports cars. He hit the gas again. They would be faster, but the SUV was better equipped to handle the uneven road.

      More shots cracked the air as bullets pounded the rear fender. Reid gripped the steering wheel with both hands, the veins standing out stark with the tension in his muscles. He had control. He could do this. The iron gate couldn’t be far. He was doing fifty-five through the vineyard; if he could maintain his speed, it might be enough to crash the gate.

      The SUV rocked violently as a bullet struck the rear driver’s side tire and exploded. The front end veered wildly. Reid instinctively counter-steered, his teeth gritted. The back end skidded out, but the SUV didn’t roll.

      “God save me,” Otets moaned. “This lunatic