The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,169

consequences.

She sprang up and flung herself at him from behind, throwing the man down on the concrete, vising his neck in a hammerlock. There was a crunch as his jaw hit the floor.

"Who else you got waiting for me?" she demanded.

"Just me," the man replied. Jessie felt a chill.

He was an American.

She flipped him over and dug the muzzle of her pistol into his right eye. "Who's out there?"

"Two guys on the street, right in front," he said. "Stop! Please! You're blinding me!"

"Not yet I'm not," she said. "When you're blinded, you'll know. Now tell me what they look like." The man said nothing, and she pressed the muzzle in harder.

"One's got short blond hair. Big guy. The other ... brown hair, crew cut, square chin."

She eased up on the pressure. An interception team outside. Jessie recognized the basics of the stakeout. The thin man would have a car of his own on this level: he was here to observe, and when Jessie drove to the exit ramp, he would be in his car, a discreet distance behind her.

"Why?" Jessie asked. "Why are you doing this?"

A defiant look. "Janson knows why - he knows what he did," he spat. "We remember Mesa Grande."

"Oh Christ. Something tells me we ain't got time to get into this shit right now," Jessie said. "Now here's what's going to happen. You're going to get into your car and drive me out of here."

"What car?"

"No wheels? If you won't be driving, you won't be needing to see." She pressed the pistol into his right eye socket again.

"The blue Renault," he gasped. "Please stop!"

She got into the backseat of the sedan as he got into the driver's seat. She slumped low, out of sight, but kept her Beretta Tomcat pointed at him; he knew that the slug would easily penetrate the seat, and followed her commands. They sped down the spiraling ramp until they approached the glass booth and the orange-painted wooden lever-gate blocking the way.

"Crash it!" she yelled. "Do just what I said!"

The car rammed through the insubstantial barrier and roared out onto the street. She heard the footsteps of racing men.

Through the rearview mirror, Jessie was able to make out one of them - crew cut, square-jawed, just as he'd described. He had been stationed at the other end of the street. As the car hurtled in the opposite direction, he spoke rapidly into some kind of communicator.

Suddenly the front windshield spiderwebbed, and the car started to careen out of control. Jessie peered between the two front seats and saw a large blond-haired man several yards off to the side in front of them, holding a long-barreled revolver. He had just squeezed off two shots.

The American at the steering wheel was dead; she could see blood oozing from an exit wound in the rear of his skull. They must have figured out that what had happened was not according to plan - that the thin man had been taken hostage - and resorted to drastic action.

Now the driverless car drifted through the busy intersection, cutting across lines, rolling into traffic. There was a deafening cacophony of blaring horns, squealing brakes.

A tractor-trailer, its powerful horn blasting like a ship's, missed hitting the car by a few feet.

If she kept down, out of range, she risked a serious collision with on-rushing traffic. If she tried to clamber to the front seat and take control of the vehicle, she would likely get shot in the attempt.

A few seconds later, the car, moving ever more slowly, rolled through the intersection, across the four lanes of traffic, and crashed gently into a parked car. Jessie was almost relieved when she felt herself slammed against the back of the bucket seats, for it meant that the car had come to a stop. Now she opened the door on the side nearer the street - and she ran, ran along the sidewalk, weaving in and out of groups of pedestrians.

It was fifteen minutes before she was absolutely convinced that they had lost her. At the same time, the requisites of survival had trumped the requisites of investigation. Yes, they had lost her, but the converse was also true, she realized with a pang: she had lost them.

They rejoined each other in the spartan accommodations of Griff Hotel, a converted workers' hostel on the street Bartok Bela.

Jessie had with her a volume she'd picked up somewhere along her wanderings. It was apparently a sort of tribute to Peter Novak, and though the