by Titan Books
Please, he begged, raising his eyes to the distant, dimming surface. Please.
Suddenly, a dark silhouette crashed through the fading rectangle above, a person diving down to him. He recognized the shape—it was his mother. Now he did concentrate, willing the darkness to draw back as he reached out to her. She always came to save him… but she didn’t always make it.
The darkness fought him, overpowered him, held him. The water was very cold, much too cold for a pool. He tasted salt not chlorine because this was the ocean and his mother wasn’t coming. She wasn’t around any more; neither was his father. This wasn’t Philadelphia, this was a different place and time where he had discovered worse things lying in wait for him. His arms and legs were so heavy he couldn’t even flail, couldn’t scream, not even in his head. He could only keep sinking into the cold and dark.
A high-pitched, continuous whine cut through the silence. Henry knew it was a machine and the noise meant he had flatlined. Not for long, though—he was about to come back. He had been saved but not by his mother. This next part was going to hurt like hell. Just as the defibrillator paddles touched his skin, he woke with a start. His relief at finding himself in his own bed was short-lived; he could still hear that high-pitched whine.
Henry grabbed the iPad on the nightstand and shut off the breach alarm. Someone had set off one of laser tripwires at the edge of his property. If he didn’t get his ass in gear, he was going to flatline for real.
There was a flicker in the mirror on the wall facing the bed, a shadowy movement reflected from the window to Henry’s left. A tiny red light appeared, floating in the dark in search of a target.
Without making a sound, he grabbed his cell phone and dialed as he slid out of bed onto the floor. Please, he begged silently, opening the trapdoor beside the bed and slipping down into the crawl space under the house. The burn bag was right where he’d left it—dusty on the outside but (he hoped) still nice and dry on the inside. The number was still ringing. Please. Please. Please—
“Please tell me this means we’re back in business,” Monroe said by way of hello.
“Where are you?” Henry whispered.
“Surveilling a goddam car,” the beagle said, very unhappy about it.
“Listen to me. Get away from there,” Henry told him, still whispering as he pushed himself over the ground. He had ignored the funny look the builder had given him when he had said he wanted the house two feet above the ground on concrete pillars; builders didn’t have to be ready to make a fast getaway in the middle of the night. “Don’t go home, don’t go to your girl’s house. Get to a bus station and pay for a ticket in cash.Only use cash, nothing else. Steal it if you have to but don’t take any money out of an ATM. Then go some place where nobody knows you.”
“Shit,” Monroe said, shaken. “You’re sure?”
“They’re outside my window,” Henry said. “Sorry, man. I made you a loose end.”
“I’ll be fine,” Monroe replied, trying to cover the fear in his voice with bravado and failing utterly. “But how do I get in touch with you?”
“You don’t,” Henry told him. “Don’t call me if you want to live. In fact, you don’t call anyone. Ever. Least of all the DIA. Just dump your phone. You copy that?”
For a moment, Henry was afraid Monroe might try to give him an argument but he didn’t. Monroe said nothing at all. Instead, there were two loud bangs followed by the sound of a cell phone hitting the ground. Henry squeezed his eyes shut as images of the human beagle whirled through his mind: Monroe as he’d been when Henry had first met him, Monroe showing him that awful photo of Dormov on his phone, Monroe young, happy, and full of himself, sure that he’d live forever and never get old.
Henry rolled his grief up into a tiny ball and shoved it into a deep distant place in his mind. There was no time to mourn. Right now he had to concentrate on staying alive. He opened the burn bag and took a quick inventory: clothes and shoes, check—good thing, because no self-respecting agent would be caught dead shirtless and barefoot in pajama bottoms, not even in retirement. Nestled among the clothes were a few bundles of currency, a passport, a Glock, and best of all, two IWI ACEs. You had to love those Israelis—if you were in need of an assault weapon that would fit in a burn bag without any suspicious bulges, the Israelis had you covered.
He took out one of the rifles, made sure it was loaded, then elbow-crawled his way through the dirt until he was under the deck. Okay, you assholes, come and get me, he thought.
As if on cue, there was a barely audible footstep above him. Henry rolled onto his back and fired upward. The body fell heavily onto the splintered wood; at the same moment, he caught a motion in his peripheral vision, rolled over onto his belly again, and found another attacker through the sight. He fired; the guy fell to his knees. Henry took the head shot, then rolled out from under the house.
Immediately he spotted a third guy on the roof of the garden shed, aiming a sniper rifle at him. Henry fired and saw the scope explode along with his face. You snooze, you lose, he said silently, holding very still as he scanned the area directly in front of him. Was it over now?
Nope—there was a fourth guy, several feet away from the shed, almost invisible in the shadow of one of the larger trees. Almost invisible but not to Henry; he took careful aim and fired. The guy went down, leaving most of his head dripping down the bark.
Again, Henry scanned his surroundings but instinct told him he’d gotten them all. Now it was over.
Only four guys, he thought, dressing quickly, but as always, without rushing. Like four guys had a chance against him. Not even a week since he’d retired and the agency had already forgotten what he was capable of. What was the assassin industry coming to?
Henry jumped into his SUV and headed for the apartment building near Pelican Point.
* * *
At first, he thought he was too late, that a hit squad had already been and gone, tossing the place for good measure. Then he heard Danny sigh in her sleep and realized that, no, Agent Zakarewski was simply messy on a world-class level. Her one-bedroom apartment looked more like a dorm room. If he had seen this before he’d gotten the photocopy of her ID, he might have believed she really was a college student. Or maybe not—weren’t grad students more organized?
He went to the kitchen, where the coffeemaker was sitting on the counter. The half-full carafe was still slightly warm. Coffee before going to bed? Oh, right—she would have had to email the agency a report about the evening to tell them her new status was toast. Writing reports was one more thing he wasn’t going to miss.
Henry poured some coffee into a mug, then picked his way through the various things strewn on the floor to her bedroom. The cup made only a small noise when he put it down on the nightstand but her eyes flew open immediately. In the next moment, she was standing on the mattress, pointing a Beretta at his head.
“It’s not gun time,” Henry told her matter-of-factly. “It’s coffee time. Where’s your burn bag?”
“First, tell me what you’re doing here.” Her tone suggested his life depended on the answer.
“Someone just sent a team to kill me,” he said in the same conversational voice. “Since you were too busy being asleep and not skipping town, that means you didn’t know. Right?”
She frowned but didn’t lower the gun. “Of course I didn’t. I would have told you.”
“Which means you’re next.” He looked around, spotted a pair of jeans lying at the foot of the bed and tossed them to her. “Get dressed,” he ordered, turning his back to give her privacy. Or to give her a chance to shoot him in the back of the head, but he was betting she wouldn’t. “You’re a pretty sound sleeper,” he added after a moment.
“Clear conscience, I guess,” she told him.
Henry gave a short laugh. “That would explain my insomnia.”
He was about to say something else when he heard the sound of metal rattling. He turned to her, putting a finger to his lips; she nodded at
the front door. They moved soundlessly out of the bedroom together, weapons drawn.
The doorknob was twisting back and forth slightly.
Again Henry looked at Danny and she nodded. He threw the door open, surprising the hell out of the guy on his knees in the hallway, so much so that the lockpicks he’d been using were still stuck in the knob. Henry put him to sleep with the butt of the Glock.
“This can’t be an agency-sanctioned op,” Danny said, her voice small and toneless. She followed Henry as he went to the patio window. “These guys have got to be rogues.”
If it had just been the clown with the lockpick Henry might have been tempted to agree, except for what had happened at his place. Even if those guys hadn’t had much chance against him, they hadn’t been amateurs, either. But there wasn’t time to debate pros and cons. He had to get Danny onboard quickly or neither of them would get out of this alive. “Fine. Either way, they’re rogues with agency assault rifles.”
Now he saw a black SUV cruise slowly through the marina parking lot, lights off.
The marina…
“All the boats have dupe keys in the office, right?” Henry asked. Danny nodded. “Are any of them especially speedy?”
Danny nodded just as the guy in the doorway groaned and began to stir. Henry gave him a kick to the head that put him out for the night. He didn’t so much as twitch when Danny stepped on his back as they left.
* * *
Danny had a quick look through the marina office’s windows; the sky was only beginning to lighten and she couldn’t see very much. But the office wasn’t very large and offered little in the way of places to hide. As near as she could tell, no one had tossed it. To her relief, no one had jimmied the back door lock, either. She would just have to trust Henry to secure the perimeter, she thought as she let herself in.
The cabinet with the rack of spare keys was still padlocked; that had to be a good sign. She unlocked it and found the keys she wanted almost immediately. But just as she took them off the hook, someone behind her cleared his throat and said, “Feeling the call of the sea?”
Mentally kicking herself for not checking the bathroom, Danny turned around slowly. Her heartbeat went into high gear; the man who had come up behind her was dangerously close and the gun pointed at her chest was even closer. She took a breath and, still moving slowly, raised her hands, holding them just far enough apart to make it difficult for him to see both of them at once.
“Where is he?” the man asked.
Danny looked downcast and sighed unhappily, the way she had as a kid whenever her father caught her red-handed and she had no choice but to give up. The man with the gun bought it; she could tell by the smug look on his face. The moment she saw him relax his guard, she went for him, grabbing his gun with one hand and throwing a punch at his throat with the other.
He twisted out of her grip and backhanded her with the pistol. The explosion of pain filled her head with bright flashing light as she flew backwards, one hand automatically going for her own gun. The man knocked it out of her grasp and she heard a distant clatter as it hit the floor. When her vision cleared, she looked up to find him standing over her, aiming his gun at her face. Blood was flowing from her nose, running down her mouth and chin. Face and head wounds bled copiously because of all the capillaries; she’d learned that in first-aid class. The damnedest things crossed your mind at the damnedest times, she thought as she inched her hand toward her ankle.
“You can tell me where Brogan is now,” the man said in a reprehensibly smug tone, “or you can tell me in five minutes minus your teeth. But you’re going to tell me.”
In one smooth motion, Danny drew the knife from her ankle sheath and swung at his knees. Or tried to—he blocked the movement, caught her wrist, and twisted it till she had to open her fingers. The knife landed on the floor; at the same moment, there was a rifle shot from outside. Two more followed; then silence. The man froze, still holding onto her.
“Well, I counted three,” Danny said chattily. “How many guys did you bring?”
The question confused him, kept him immobilized just long enough to let her sweep-kick his legs out from under him. He went down with a grunt, and for a few seconds they grappled on the floor. He was a fist-fighter, a brawler, used to punching his problems into submission. But he wasn’t as quick off his feet as he was on them and not terribly agile, either—Danny managed to wriggle around behind him and applied a chokehold until he went limp. Shoving him aside, she grabbed his gun as well as her own and when he came to, she was standing over him, giving him a good view of the barrel of her Beretta.
“Okay, let’s hear it.” Her blood was salty and warm in her mouth. “Who sent you?”
He didn’t answer.
“You can tell me now,” she informed him, “or you can tell me in five minutes minus your teeth.” She gave him a red smile. “But you are going to tell me.”
* * *
Waiting on the dock with their burn bags, rifle in hand, Henry was just starting to wonder if he should go after Danny when she came out of the marina office. In the early morning light, he could see she was roughed up, a little bloody, and more than a little freaked out, but not seriously injured.
“It’s Lassiter,” she said flatly.
Henry had already come to that conclusion but he had to ask. “How do you know?”
She was shaking with adrenaline as she took his hand and dropped something on his palm—four broken and bloody front teeth. Henry looked from them to her, showing his own teeth in a wry smile.
He almost expected her to say something like He started it, but she only strode past him down the dock. Impressed, Henry followed with the rifle and their burn bags to slip number seventeen. The thirty-fourfoot Corsair moored there was brand new and whoever owned it had gone with the full package of options—which meant they weren’t going to be terribly happy when they found out someone had taken their baby for a joyride.
We’ll treat her only with the utmost respect and we’ll try like hell to bring her home safe and sound as soon as we can—I give you my word, Henry promised the owner silently. Whether the owner would have thought the word of a retired government assassin counted for much was a different argument, and one that Henry didn’t imagine would go his way. But what the hell—Grand Theft Nautical was pretty tame compared to what he’d been doing for the last twenty-five years.
Danny climbed aboard and motioned for him to load the bags, wiping away the blood from her nose with the back of her hand. Henry did so and untied the Corsair from the piling on the dock before joining her.
He cleared his throat and she turned to look at him. “Before we do this, there’s something you should keep in mind—stepping on this boat is saying goodbye to everything you know. You understand that?”
Danny wiped the back of her hand across her mouth again. “Almost all the people I’ve come into contact with since I got out of bed tried to end my life. Only one decided to save it.” She took out her cell phone and tossed it overboard. Henry couldn’t help smiling as he went to the helm and started the engine.
She took the passenger seat and he saw that, despite her bravado, she was still shaking. Danny noticed him noticing; her face reddened as she folded her arms tightly against her body, trying to still herself.
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being scared. Scared is good,” Henry told her. “Scared means you’re alert and alert means alive.”
“It’s just—” she cut off, took a breath. “I never had anyone try to kill me before.” She sounded as if she were admitting to something embarrassing or shameful. Like she was afraid if the cool agents found out this was her first time as a target, they wouldn’t let her eat lunch with them in the agency cafeteria.
“The important thing is, he didn’t kill you. You whipped his ass—bad enough that he’ll never forget it.”
Danny’s face brightened as if that hadn’t even occurred to her. “I did, didn’t I?” Pause. “So what scares you? Other tha
n bees.”
“Drowning.”
Henry could feel her staring at him incredulously as he pulled the Corsair away from the dock and into the sound.
* * *
Lassiter seldom took special note of the weather. Rainy days never got her down because she was too busy to notice them. She wouldn’t have noticed this one, either, if she hadn’t been forced to spend part of it sitting on a bench next to Clay Verris. At least he had brought his own umbrella so she didn’t have to share hers with him like they were a couple of furtive lovers. The park was practically on the other side of Savannah from her office, which meant she hadn’t been able to stop at her usual coffee shop for her morning latte. Going without her standard morning pick-me-up was bad enough, even before the son of a bitch opened his mouth. And he was taking his sweet time about that.
“So,” the son of a bitch said finally, “this is you cleaning up your messes.”
Lassiter took a breath and listened to the raindrops pattering on her umbrella. “Spare me the lecture.”
“It’s like watching the Hindenberg crash into the Titanic.” Verris made it sound like something he would have enjoyed seeing. Well, he was that kind of sadistic bastard, Lassiter thought. Although she might have enjoyed it herself if Verris was a passenger on one of them.
“I haven’t decided what to do next,” she said stiffly.
“Henry Brogan is like any other soldier,” Verris said, going into full pontification mode. “When they’re young and stupid, they believe anything you tell them. Then they get older. They start to wear out and grow a conscience. This is why we need a new breed of soldier. Gemini will handle this.”