I dropped my phone and keyed the radio. “Brett, Decoy, turn around. The Ghost is behind you. Look behind you!”
I saw them whip around, then the man take off running. He circled around the back side of the building, running along a promenade that fronted a giant artificial lake.
Knuckles was already out of the van, waiting for me to give him the word, unleashing the hounds as it were. Instead, I said, “No, you go to Jennifer. Go get her. We’ll handle this.”
He gave me a sour look, not liking at all that he’d be sitting out the chase, but he nodded and moved back to the door.
I took off at a sprint, panting into my radio, “Hit him with the EMP gun. Take out any electronics on his body.”
I was about seventy meters behind the target and forty meters behind Brett and Decoy. Brett was pulling away, running like a linebacker for the end zone. Moving at astonishing speed.
The Ghost flipped a glance over his shoulder, and I was close enough to see the shock on his face when he saw Brett closing the gap. He veered toward the water, and Decoy took a knee, aiming the EMP gun.
I saw him track the target all the way to the water’s edge, presumably firing his body full of electromagnetic pulses. Hopefully scrambling whatever remote detonation mechanism he had.
The Ghost cleared the railing and dove into the lake right at the juncture of a false stream. He started swimming to the far side, looking like a child who had fallen out of a Disney ride, a dark cork in the impossibly blue water.
I saw a bridge crossing the stream, letting tourists continue their promenade along the false sea, and sprinted to it. I reached the far side, and we had a little bit of a “man-in-the-middle,” with Brett and Decoy on one side, me on the other, and a bedraggled terrorist now treading water between us.
When he didn’t move to either side, Decoy jumped in after him, forcing him to choose. He came my way, trying to climb up a maintenance box and jump back onto the promenade. It was easy to beat him to it.
I grabbed him by the lapels and swung him violently onto the ground, surprised at how light he was. His coke-bottle glasses flew off, and he hit the ground hard, knocking the air out of him.
I ripped through every crevice and pocket of his body, trying to find whatever he had that would trigger the explosives in the building. I came up empty.
Brett reached me, saying, “Did we fry the device?”
“There isn’t a fucking device.”
I slapped the Ghost’s face. “What’s the threat? Where is it?”
He looked at me with a sense of calm and satisfaction, as if he’d just won a contest of skill.
“You’re too late.”