Page 19 of Denied Access

“Where… were… you?” Joe said, huffing between each word.

“Getting the car. Get up and get in. Now.”

Joe turned to see the open door to their rented Lada sedan beckoning. His pounding head and rolling stomach suggested he’d been concussed, but his foggy thoughts struggled to make sense of what was happening. Something about leaving didn’t feel right.

“What—” Joe said.

Or at least he tried to.

The contents of his stomach came rushing up right about the time he was searching for the next word. Turning his head, he vomited.

Definitely a concussion.

“I thought you Army guys could hold your liquor. Up you go.”

Once again, strong hands grabbed Joe beneath the armpits, but this time they propelled him into the car. None too gently. Joe kept his pulsing head from crashing into the door, but his face bounced off the dashboard.

“What the—”

A slamming door drowned out his question. Then David was in the driver’s seat next to him. A moment later, the Lada’s little engine revved and Joe smashed into the upholstery as the car accelerated forward. He couldn’t say whether it was a surge of adrenaline or just good old-fashioned anger that cleared the cobwebs, but the result was the same. He found his way through the mental fog.

“What the hell are you doing?” Joe said.

That he’d finally completed the sentence he’d tried three times to voice seemed like a major victory. So did the fact that his shaking hands managed to find and buckle the seat belt.

Progress.

“Chasing Russians,” David said.

“What Russians?”

“The ones who planted the bomb.”

CHAPTER 9

ONCEagain, the words Joe was hearing seemed to be coming from far off. This time, it wasn’t translating them from Russian that was giving him problems. It was the meaning of the words themselves.

“Russians planted a bomb?”

David slalomed to the left in order to make way for a police car hurtling in the other direction. The strobing emergency lights felt like ice picks stabbing into Joe’s eye sockets. He closed his eyes, but the damage was done. Cranking down the passenger window, he stuck his head into the cool air and emptied his heaving stomach a second time. Thankfully, there wasn’t much left to vomit, but the bile still burned his throat and left an acidic taste in his mouth.

“You okay?” David said.

“Peachy,” Joe said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I somehow bounced my head off the cobblestones.”

“Not somehow. I was coming around the corner when it happened. The second bomb must have detonated. The shock wave tossed you tothe ground like a rag doll. A tongue of fire shot out of the door just above your head. You got lucky.”

Joe did not feel lucky, but compared to the bar’s other patrons, he’d won the lottery. Closing his eyes, he began to massage his temples, but the lack of visual references made his nausea worse. David was still driving like a bat out of hell and the way he was jerking the steering wheel made the little Lada bounce around like a rowboat in a typhoon. He opened his eyes just in time to see a motorcycle flash by.

A pair of red brake lights glowed in the distance.

“The bomb,” Joe said. “Tell me about the bomb.”

“Our friends from the bar were waiting outside in an RAF minivan across the street. I thought they were going to help at first, but they didn’t. Instead, one of them flashed me the bird while the others laughed. That seemed strange, but I was having trouble thinking clearly. I knew I had to get the car, but I couldn’t remember where we parked it.”

“Guess I’m not the only one with a concussion.”

David shrugged. “I haven’t puked yet, so I think I’m okay. Besides, I only got blown up once.”