Free The Bourne Betrayal by Robert Ludlum, Eric Van Lustbader

on going as if nothing were amiss. Bourne, threading his way through the last of the traffic between him and his quarry, once again drew close to the vehicle.
    He saw Soraya and two other CI agents emerge from the body of the helicopter with police riot helmets on their heads and shotguns in their hands. Swerving abruptly, he drew alongside the Hummer. With his cocked elbow, he smashed the driver’s-side window.
    “Pull over!” he shouted. “Pull over onto the rotary or you’ll be shot dead!”
    A second helicopter appeared over the Potomac, angling in very fast toward their position. CI backup.
    The Hummer gave no indication of slowing. Without taking his eyes off the road, Bourne reached behind him and opened the custom saddlebag. His scrabbling fingers found a wrench. He’d have one chance, he knew. Calculating vectors and speed, he threw the wrench. It slammed into the front of the driver’s-side rear-wheel well. The wheel, revolving at speed, went over the wrench, launched it up with sickening power into the rear-wheel assembly.
    At once the Hummer began to wobble, which only jammed the wrench deeper into the assembly. Then something cracked, an axle possibly, and the Hummer decelerated in a barely controlled spin. Mostly on its own momentum, it ran up over the curb onto the rotary and came to a stop, its engine ticking like a clock.
    Soraya and the other agents spread out, moving toward the Hummer with drawn guns aimed at the passenger cabin. When she was close enough, Soraya shot the two front tires flat. One of the other agents did the same with the rear tires. The Hummer wasn’t going anywhere until a CI tow truck hauled it back to HQ for forensics.
    “All right!” Soraya shouted. “Out of the vehicle, all of you! Out of the vehicle now!”
    As the agents closed the circle around the Hummer, Bourne could see that they were wearing body armor. After Hytner’s death, Soraya wasn’t taking any chances.
    They were within ten meters of the Hummer when Bourne felt his scalp begin to tingle. Something was wrong with the scene, but he couldn’t quite put his mental finger on it. He looked again: Everything seemed right-the target surrounded, the approaching agents, the second helicopter hovering above, the noise level rising exponentially . . .
    Then he had it.
    Oh, my God, he thought, and viciously twisted the handlebar accelerator. He yelled at the agents, but over the noise of the two copters and his own motorcycle there was no chance they could hear him. Soraya was in the lead, closing in on the driver’s door as the others, spread apart, hung back, providing her with a crossfire of cover should she need it.
    The setup looked fine, perfect, in fact, but it wasn’t.
    Bourne leaned forward as the motorcycle sped across the rotary. He had a hundred meters to cover, a route that would take him just left of the Hummer’s gleaming flank. He took his right hand off the handlebar grip, gesturing frantically at the agents, but they were properly concentrated on their target.
    He gunned the engine, its deep, guttural roar at last cutting through the heavy vibrational thwupthwup-thwup of the hovering copter. One of the agents saw him coming, watched him gesturing. He called to the other agent, who glanced at Bourne as he roared past the Hummer.
    The setup looked right out of the CI playbook, but it wasn’t, because the Hummer’s engine was ticking over-cooling-while it was still running. Impossible.
    Soraya was less than five meters from the target, her body tense, in a semi-crouch. Her eyes opened wide as she became aware of him. Then he was upon her.
    He swept her up in his extended right arm, swung her back behind him as he raced off. One of the other agents, now flat on the ground, had alerted the second chopper, because it abruptly rose into the spangled night, swinging away.
    The ticking Bourne had heard hadn’t come from the engine at all. It was from a triggering device.
    The explosion took the Hummer