The men kept going on the other path. He patted her arm and said, “Let’s go, but not as fast. Just fast enough to get there. I need to hear.”
They did so, and eight minutes later Dunkin saw the harbor, then the iconic Sydney Opera House. Four minutes after that they were through the gate and in a plaza at the back of the giant structure, dodging tourists wandering around trying to get a nighttime selfie. Dunkin glanced behind him at the gardens and saw nothing. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Nicole led him around to the front, and they entered a swirling mass of people on a promenade next to the Circular Quay of Sydney Harbour, the Sydney Harbour Bridge framed like a postcard across the water. They disappeared into the crowd, and she said, “What now?”
He said, “We need to put some distance between us and them. I don’t want to stay here. Do you know of any other place where we can sit and think? One that’s full of people close to here?”
She thought a minute, then said, “Yeah, I do. The oldest pub in Sydney. It’ll be packed tonight.”
Chapter 26
When she heard my words on the phone with Dunkin, Jennifer leapt out of bed and began slapping kit into her pockets, saying, “Where are they? Which way did they go?”
I shoved the suppressed pistol I’d taken from the man in Adelaide into my waistband and said, “I have no idea. All he yelled was that they were there. We need to get to the apartment. Maybe he’s holding them off.”
We exited our room and ran down the indoor balcony overlooking what was once a working dock, but was now full of tourists and others living in the apartment complex that flowed out from the hotel. I’d have liked to see Russell Crowe eating some vegan appetizer as I went by, but that wasn’t going to happen.
We ignored the elevator, taking the stairs of the old wharf, bouncing down them two at a time and bursting out into the lobby. The front desk person and concierge looked at us like we were insane, but as far as I could tell, we were the normal ones, the desk clerk having dreadlocks and painted nails on his hands and the concierge pink hair and two rings through her nose. Crazy is as crazy does.
We hit the pavement outside and stayed on the wharf side, not going to the stairs that led to the upper level with the roads, but instead running next to the water toward the apartment complex. We came within fifty meters and I put a hand on Jennifer’s arm, slowing her.
Her eyes scanning the building, she said, “We never got his room.”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s a single stretch of building, one condo after another. They’re all two-story, and they all face the water. If he’s still there, we’ll see activity.”
She said, “There! On the end! Two from the end!”
I saw three Asian men come running out of a condo and jump the wall that was supposed to keep people out. The wall that was designed to force you to the front gate where you proved you belonged.
They raced around the back of the complex to the road that separated the building from the bluff of the botanical garden. I saw a pair of headlights stab the darkening twilight, and then heard tires squealing. The illumination from the headlights disappeared.
I said, “They’re not in the apartment anymore. Either those guys are going to stash a body, or Dunkin got out.”
Jennifer pulled my shirt and started jogging to the stairs that led up to the gardens, saying, “Well, they didn’t get out the front, or those guys wouldn’t have run to a car. They’d have been chasing Dunkin. If he escaped, they went out across the roof. We need to get to the gardens. If they’re on the run, that’s where they are.”
We ran to the stairs that we’d found earlier in the day and took them two at a time, reaching the top and cutting back the way we’d gone before.
We crossed a road and I said, “The park is closed now. Remember the big iron gate?”
She pointed in the twilight and said, “Gate’s still open.”
I saw a jogger exit and realized “park closed” probably meant nothing more than a sign to ward off people. I glanced around, didn’t see anyone looking to stop entrance, and fast-walked through it, entering the gardens proper. I stopped at a large tourist map on a post and said, “This place is huge. It runs all the way to the opera house. We’ll never find them here.”
She had her phone out, calling someone and pointing at me to continue on down the path. I did so, my head on a swivel. I heard her say, “Creed, hey, it’s Jennifer. I need a lock on a phone.”
And smiled. She was finally breaking the rules, all because she liked Dunkin. I was rubbing off on her.
The feeling was short-lived, because she handed me the phone, saying, “I’m getting stonewalled about ‘sanctions’ and ‘mission set.’”
Bartholomew Creedwater was also one of our “network engineers,” meaning he was a hacker just like Dunkin. He’d worked with Dunkin in the Taskforce and was a friend, but tracking a civilian phone in a foreign country using Taskforce assets was making him skittish. He wanted an official order from the command to do it. Or an ass-chewing from me.
Which is what he got.
“Creed, damn it, I need that phone lock right now. Dunkin’s on the run from some Chinese assassins. They’re going to kill him and you’re going to let them.”
Creed had been hired when he’d been caught hacking government systems as a lark while he was in grad school. Not our systems, but NSA and DIA. We’d noticed the arrest, and had intervened surreptitiously, offering him a way out. Work for us and don’t go to jail. The point being, I knew he didn’t really care about breaking the law. He just wanted to make sure it was worth it.
And Dunkin’s life was worth it.
He said, “Pike, with all the shit that’s gone on after Kurt’s death, I’m not sure about this. There’s a new sheriff in town. He might not be as amenable to your tendency to leave the reservation. I don’t want to get caught in the back blast.”
I reached the small bridge that led to the apartment complex over the road the other car had escaped from, saw nothing, and squeezed the handset like I was choking out a competitor in MMA. I said, “Get me that lock, or I swear to God I’m coming back and kicking your ass. He’s in here somewhere, and he’s on his own. I’m his only chance.”
I read out the number to the girlfriend’s phone and waited. Jennifer kept looking at our six, checking the area. She grabbed my arm and said, “There’s a team. Two guys. They’re locking down the edges.”
I looked where she indicated and said, “That’s them. And they’re still working. Which means Dunkin’s still on the loose.”
I returned to the phone and said, “Creed, I need it now. I’m running out of time. These guys are ahead of me. They have the lock, and I don’t.”
He came back and said, “Pike, there isn’t a lock. His phone is off. It’s dead.”
Shit.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure that number you gave me is turned off. No signal.”
I said, “Okay. Stay alert. I’m going to call you back with a new number.”
I hung up and Jennifer said, “What was that about?”
I looked north and saw the two men were gone. I started walking down the path toward the last known sighting, saying, “We don’t have any idea where Dunkin is in this maze, but those fucks do.”