A Hostile State by Adrian Magson (reading eggs books txt) 📗

can be filled with danger from back-up units or other emergency powers, all conspiring by chance to muddy the water. If the call has gone out that there’s been a firefight, and there’s no clear source of the threat, police and security lines tend to coincide in a rush to check the surrounding area to see who might be in play.

With the rash of extremist events occurring around the globe, it doesn’t take much to get counter-terrorism departments involved almost as a matter of course, even if the problem turns out to be purely criminal. The anti-terrorist net spreads wide, immediately tapping into all available sources for potential names and claims. By its very nature, any reaction is a beat or two behind the clock, running down informants, seeking out local mouthpieces and finding out who might be the obvious suspects. That surge of activity often brings in whoever happens to be in the area, like stray fish in a wide net.

Like Lindsay and me.

‘Where are we going?’ she said, huddling against the car door. She looked pale and drawn, not surprisingly shaken by what had happened. I guessed that would last a while. Internal CIA staff are not trained to deal with armed assaults against themselves or buildings, and although she’d been quick to pick up the Beretta and loose off a few rounds, I figured she was now experiencing the residual effects of the action and not feeling too cool about it.

‘Somewhere busy,’ I said. We were about twenty miles out of the main Paris suburbs on a quiet section of road between villages. I was juggling ideas about where to go to ground. It was clear that whatever forces were after us were not short of daring or resources, and as we’d just witnessed, that would probably hold true just as much in a busy city like Paris as it would somewhere relatively quiet like Épernon. The main difference was, as long as we remained out of the spotlight, a big city would make it harder for them to locate us.

What I didn’t know was how much more damage the opposition would take before they gave it up as a lost cause … or they got lucky. So far they had lost well over half a dozen people, either killed or out of action. But did that mean they would grow more or less determined to finish the job? I had no idea.

‘We need to eat,’ I said, easing the car between a couple of large trucks. Hunger when stressed was a fast way to have the body running down, sapping energy and focus. We also needed to get rid of the rental. With no rear window and several holes in the back, we were unlikely to get far now before someone called it in or we ran into a cop. And with the obvious bullet damage it would eventually be no ordinary traffic cop, but a no-messing unit with muscle and manpower.

I spotted a sign for a town called St-Rémy and turned towards it. We got close to the centre and I pulled into a side street, grabbing our stuff and leaving the car. If we were lucky it would be picked up by a local chop-shop, if such a thing existed around here. If not the local cops would have a field day figuring out who had been through a small shooting war. I couldn’t help that my DNA and prints were all over it; some things you can’t cover up. If they looked hard enough, they’d find plenty, although how far they got to finding me would depend how keen they were.

I stopped at a retro-style food van selling sandwiches, open rolls and pizzas and bought us enough to keep us going along with fruit juice and water and a bag to carry it in. It wasn’t haute cuisine but would keep us mobile and alert for a good few hours yet.

The St-Rémy station was on the RER rapid transit or Réseau Express Régional commuter line which crossed Paris through to the north-east. I bought tickets and we had a short wait for the next train. We used the time to have a clean-up in the washroom and make ourselves look a little more respectable, including me cleaning out some stray bits of rear-window glass from Lindsay’s hair and washing a slight cut on her cheek. I also swept the area for signs of surveillance or cops. After the shooting in Épernon it was possible the local cops would have put out a bulletin for unusual activity throughout the region, to include roads and rail stations in and out of the capital.

The train wasn’t busy, with a mere handful of travellers heading towards the city. The interior smelled of stale deodorant or cleanser and the musky aroma of work clothes and seat fabric seemed to fit our mood. Neither of us felt like talking, which was fine by me, so we ate instead. Whatever we had to say would likely sound too interesting if anyone overheard us, and any good citizen would be on the phone to the police within minutes. The silence also gave me time to formulate where we were going and what we were going to do.

As we drew out of the station I felt a measure of relief that we were on the move. Having to stand still when every instinct tells you to get out of an area as quickly as possible is never good on the nerves. Our alternative would have been to keep going in the brutalized rental car, but that would have been a case of diminishing returns; sooner or later we’d have been caught in a net with no way out.

That feeling of relief didn’t last long enough. After a mile or so the train slowed and inched along the track, the click-clicking of the wheels serving to taunt me with the idea that we were just pawns in a game and nothing we did