Chapter 8 - BLOOD ON THE SNOW
Z
The smell of burnt copper and ozone filled the elevator shaft as emergency red lighting kicked on, bathing the steel walls in an eerie, blood-colored glow. The hydraulic cables above groaned under sudden strain.
I didn't waste a second. I unbuttoned my overcoat, drew my Sig Sauer, and jumped upward, grabbing the edge of the elevator’s top emergency hatch. I kicked my legs up, muscled my body through the narrow opening, and pulled myself onto the roof of the elevator cab.
Above me, twenty feet up the shaft, light poured through the open elevator doors on the ground floor. Shouts, suppressed weapon fire, and the screams of bank employees echoed down the concrete tube.
"Maya!" I roared into my earpiece, but only dead static answered.
I grabbed the heavy steel hoist cable with my gloved hands, braced my feet against the greasy wall of the shaft, and began a rapid, vertical climb upward. Every muscle in my shoulders burned, but adrenaline turned my hands into iron clamps.
I reached the ground floor opening, kicked off the far wall, and rolled through the open elevator doors onto the polished marble floor of the main bank lobby.
The scene was pure carnage.
The glass facade facing Bahnhofstrasse was completely blown inward, shattered crystal covering the wet floor like fresh ice. Two Swiss bank security guards lay motionless near the entrance. Near the center leather sofas, Marcus—one of my SAS contractors—was slumped against a marble pillar, holding his shoulder where blood soaked through his dark coat.
Maya was gone.
"Daniel!" Marcus coughed, spitting blood onto the white marble as I rushed to his side. "Black van... Mercedes Sprinter... three men in tactical gear... they took her..."
"Where?" I demanded, grabbing his collar, my eyes wild.
"Heading south... toward the lake district..." Marcus gasped, pointing toward the shattered street front. "James... went after them on a motorcycle..."
I didn't wait for the police sirens echoing in the distance. I sprinted through the shattered glass doors into the freezing Zurich snow.
Parked at the curb was a high-performance Audi RS6 station wagon belonging to the bank’s private security chief, its engine running, driver’s door open where the guard had been knocked out.
I dove into the driver's seat, slammed the door, kicked the gear shift into manual sport mode, and floored the accelerator. The heavy all-wheel-drive machine roared to life, its tires screaming against the wet cobblestones as I fishtailed out onto the main boulevard.
Snow swept across my windshield in thick, blinding sheets as I wove through afternoon traffic at eighty miles an hour, laying on the horn, ignoring red lights and terrified pedestrians.
On the dash screen, my satellite tablet picked up James’s low-frequency beacon—a tiny blue dot moving rapidly along the mountain road heading toward Lake Zurich.
Ten minutes later, the urban sprawl gave way to towering pine trees and sheer snow-covered cliffs bordering the black, icy waters of the lake. The road twisted sharply into narrow hairpin turns.
Ahead, through the curtain of falling snow, I saw them.
A dark gray Mercedes Sprinter van was barreling along the cliffside highway, flanked by two black SUVs. Just behind the rear SUV, James was pursuing on a heavy BMW motorcycle, firing his sidearm into the SUV’s rear tires.
Suddenly, the side window of the rear SUV rolled down. A passenger leaned out holding a heavy automatic shotgun.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The blasts tore into the front wheel of James’s motorcycle. The bike flipped violently at sixty miles an hour, smashing into the steel guardrail and tumbling over the cliff into the frozen lake far below.
"No!" I roared, stomping on the Audi’s gas pedal.
The twin-turbo V8 engine screamed as the Audi surged forward, gaining on the rear SUV within seconds. I didn't try to shoot. I used the two-ton Audi as a weapon, slamming my front bull-bar directly into the rear quarter-panel of the black SUV at eighty miles an hour.
The SUV lost traction on the icy road, its rear wheels spinning out of control. It struck the snowbank, flipped twice in mid-air, and crashed upside down against the rock wall of the mountain, exploding into a ball of orange fire.
I didn't even look back. I pulled alongside the Mercedes Sprinter van, matching its speed along the narrow two-lane road.
Through the tinted side window of the van, I caught a brief glimpse of Maya, her hands tied behind her back, her face pale but her eyes locked on mine through the glass.
Beside her sat a man in a tactical vest—a operator wearing the three keys emblem on his shoulder. He raised an assault rifle toward my window.
I slammed on my brakes hard. The rifle burst tore through my front hood instead of my chest.
As the van pulled ahead, I veered right, mounting the snow-covered embankment bordering the lake side of the road, accelerating past the van on the inside shoulder.
Ahead was a narrow stone bridge crossing an inlet of the lake.
I pulled twenty yards ahead of the van, slammed the steering wheel left, and pulled the emergency brake. The Audi skidded sideways, coming to a dead stop across both lanes of the bridge, creating an impenetrable barricade.
I kicked my door open, stepped out into the freezing wind, and drew my Sig Sauer with both hands, aiming directly at the approaching van’s radiator.
"Stop the vehicle!" I shouted into the storm.
The Sprinter van didn't slow down. It accelerated directly toward me, its massive grille growing larger by the second.
I fired six precise shots straight through the windshield, targeting the driver’s side.
The van swerved wildly, its tires locking up on the ice. It missed my Audi by three inches, smashed through the concrete stone railing of the bridge, and hung dangerously over the black, freezing waters thirty feet below.
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The front half of the van tilted downward over the abyss, the rear wheels barely holding onto the icy concrete edge.
I didn't hesitate. I dropped my weapon onto the hood of my car and sprinted onto the crumbling edge of the bridge, lunging for the van's open side door before the whole machine plunged into the dark water below.
