by L. T. Ryan
Schreiber cleared his throat.
“Our meeting is concluded now?”
Noble turned his back on the window. The thought that he hadn’t studied the windows across the street passed through his mind, and he stepped out of the line of sight. He gave the journalist a slight nod.
“What if I don’t do this?” Schreiber asked. “Suppose I go to MI-5 or MI-6 and hand all this over and let them do what they wish with it?”
Jack eyed him for several seconds, offered a shrug. “Then nothing changes. Skinner remains a hero gunned down by his onetime protégé. No one will investigate his dealings over the past decade. Those who profited from those dealings will remain unnamed, planning God-knows-what against my country.” He paused a beat, then added, “Yours too, I suspect.”
“No repercussions from you?”
Jack felt his lip twitch into a slight smile. “You won’t know that until it’s too late.”
The color drained from Schreiber’s face as he fumbled his navy-blue bag open and stuffed his pen and pad inside. He retrieved his cell phone from the table.
“Don’t turn that on until you are two blocks from here,” Jack said. “They’ll eventually figure out we were here. But we need as much of a head start as possible.”
Schreiber stuffed the device into his back pocket. Like most phones Jack saw people handling, Schreiber’s was too big for his front pocket with his keys and wallet shoved in there.
“How should we do this? Leave together? Separate?”
“There’s one security camera on this floor. Turn left and go to the end of the hallway. I’ll be right behind you. There are three doors in the lobby that lead outside. You take the one on the left and keep going that way down the street.”
Schreiber nodded as he threw his bag over his shoulder and started toward the door.
“One more thing.” Jack pulled a burner cell phone from his pocket. He handed the phone and two disposable SIM cards to the journalist. “It already has one in it. After our first call, you melt the SIM and replace it with the card marked with a red X. Got it?”
Schreiber took the phone and went to place it in the same pocket as his own cell. He handed it off to his other hand behind his back and tucked it away. “When will you call?”
“Two days. That should be enough time for you to make contact.”
The journalist turned without responding. Noble grabbed his arm.
“Don’t back out now, Schreiber. That phone rings, answer it.”
Schreiber nodded without looking back. He headed straight to the door and exited the room. Noble didn’t linger behind. He followed the journalist out and down the hallway to the gunmetal grey door leading to the stairwell. The sound of it opening echoed throughout the twenty-story steel and concrete chamber. It sounded as though there were an entire company of soldiers racing up or down the steps.
A few minutes later, they entered the lobby. Schreiber first, then Noble ten seconds later. They avoided eye contact, but Jack remained a few steps behind and to the right so he could keep the journalist in his peripheral. He lost a few steps when a woman looking the other way bumped into him. Once outside, he’d lose that view, and if the man decided to call it off, reach out to the authorities, Jack would be unaware.
He paused at the tinted door and inhaled the disinfectant-laden air. It carried a hint of lemon. The street outside was mildly busy. Enough people milling about that he would be able to absorb himself and become anonymous. He thought of his longtime partner and best friend Bear Logan. If the big shaggy man, who stood six-and-a-half feet tall, were there, they’d stand out amid the clean-cut pedestrians.
Jack pulled the door toward him. A rush of cool air whispered past. The incoming rain drenched the breeze. He stepped through the opening and was met with the crack of a gunshot.
Chapter 3
Riley “Bear” Logan gripped the cold metal rails spanning twenty feet with both hands. Sweat-soaked palms threatened to slide off. He squeezed with the tips of his fingers.
Fingers that at one time could snap a man’s arm in two. Gouge eyeballs out. Hold Sasha close.
Now they could barely flex.
His weight bearing down on useless legs that no longer knew how to walk became too much for the big man. His right hand slipped off the rail. His pinky flexed back two inches further than it was meant to. Sasha or Mandy gasped. He couldn’t see either, not as his right knee buckled and he began the long fall forward, twisting at the waist in an attempt to come down on his side.
If the left hand could keep its grip, then maybe, just maybe, the landing wouldn’t be so rough. But the left one functioned worse than the right. It had been the palm press than kept Bear’s left side supported. And so, as he went down, his left hand slipped outside the railing, resulting in an awkward bend of his elbow, but he didn’t feel it.
The side of Bear’s head collided with the floor. That floor with the dated parquet design that made him dizzy when he stared at it. Did it do that when he toured the facility before his surgery?
He couldn’t recall.
Bear couldn’t recall most things these days.
Sweat coated his face, dampened his hair and his shirt. He lay on his side, on that damn parquet flooring, a warm trickle of salty blood seeping from his lips, down his cheek, onto the ground.
What next? How do I get up?
“Bear, are you OK?”
He felt the hand, delicate, soft, on his thick forearm. The one stretched beyond his head that his face rested on.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Mandy said. “You’ll get back to the way you were.”
Would he? Would he ever?
“Get the hell away from me!”
It was more than a growl. And the sharp intake of breath from both Sasha and Mandy, plus the nurse and therapist, told him his words had hit harder than any physical action he could have taken.
The high-pitched squeal morphed into a buzzing drone that faded in and out. He turned his right hand down so the palm planted on the floor. Pushing through his fingertips, his upper arm rose. Using his forearm for support, Bear pulled his right knee up, rolled over into a sorry-looking child’s pose, his cheek pressed against the floor.
Through his heavy panting, he heard Sasha consoling Mandy, who tried to conceal her sobs, choking them down.
Good girl.
He had trained her to hide her emotions, no matter the situation.
“Sweetie,” the nurse said—or was it the PT gal? Bear couldn’t be sure. They all had the same French accent. “Come with me. We’ll get a treat.”
Did treats work anymore? Mandy was hardly a child now.
Bear lifted his head high enough to turn it. His other cheek slapped the floor with a thud. The small puddle of blood was inches from his nose. He inhaled the acrid smell.
“Go with her.” Sasha had an arm draped around Mandy’s shoulder. She turned the girl toward the PT gal and gave her a little push to set Mandy on her way.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
The blood pushed through Bear’s head hard enough his vision pulsed. Sasha closed the door and spun on her heel. She gazed at something beyond him. Her lips tightened, a slight shake of her head. She slipped out of his view. Her footsteps echoed around the silent room, rising above the whoosh.
And then she was there. Crouched in front of him, head turned sideways to match his. Looking him in the eye. Her eyebrows almost knitted together, separated by a crinkle above her nose.
“You bloody asshole.”
She rose, turned, headed toward the door.
“Sasha.” He knew it sounded like he had spaghetti in his mouth, wrapped around his tongue. Probably came out more like “masha,” but what could he do?
She stopped, her hand on the knob. She debated whether to stay. Whether to hear him out again. These outbursts had been a daily occurrence since the surgery. The operation to remove the tumor. Partially successful, the surgeon had said. Best he could do, under the circumstances, conside
ring Bear couldn’t travel to where the doctor routinely practiced.
They had removed eighty-five percent of the tumor. The rest, they said, was too deeply rooted. However, there was good news. As good as could be in such a situation. There were two tumors, and the one they could not fully remove was benign.
For the time being.
Recovery had not gone as expected, though. By this point, Bear should’ve been on his feet, talking smoothly all the time. Instead, he could hardly support himself. And his words at times came out well, and other times presented themselves as a miss-mash mush-mouth sounding plate of scrambled eggs.
“I’m waiting,” Sasha said, her fingers grazing the handle. She looked over her shoulder at him. He could see the pity in her eyes. That damn look she’d worn since the surgeon said this might be the new normal for Bear. “Do you have nothing to say for yourself?”
Bear’s head felt like a boulder attached to his neck by a prehistoric hinge. He fought to keep his cheek an inch or two off the floor. He’d shuffled over enough that the puddle of blood and drool was beneath him.
He forced the word out through his dry mouth. “Sorry.”
“Yes, you are.” She turned and walked back over. Staring down at him, she continued, “The man I knew, that I fell in love with, would not allow this to get him down. Yet look at you. A defeated mass lying there.”
“I’m trying.”
“Then try harder. And I don’t mean keeping yourself up. I mean getting your ass back up off the ground after you’ve fallen. Not lashing out at the one person in this world who looks up to you and trusts you completely.”
Her biting words did not miss their mark. Bear fully absorbed what she said.
“For Christ’s sake, Bear. If you need to lash out, then you save it for when you and I are alone. I’m a big girl. I can handle anything you can say. But Mandy is still a child in a lot of ways. You need to show her how a real man handles this problem.”
“I’m scared, babe. Frightened that I might—“
“You might what?” She folded her arms over her chest. “Stay like this forever? Not be able to control yourself? Die?”
A chuckle escaped Bear’s lips. A foreign sound that took both of them aback. “I haven’t feared dying in years. There’s ways I don’t want to go, sure. Hell, if I want to pass on wearing a diaper, shitting and pissing myself. But no. It ain’t death.”
She dropped her chin and let out a long sigh. Eyes closed, she lowered herself to the ground. A silent nod to the nurse sent the woman hurrying to exit the room.
Bear eased his head down as she stroked his hair. He was careful to avoid the blood on the floor.
“I know this isn’t easy, Bear. Probably the toughest battle you’ve ever waged. But you have to relish in the love and support. Fight for us when you can’t muster the strength to do it for yourself.”
“What if they’re wrong? What if this thing burrowed into my brain continues to grow or turns cancerous?”
“Then we deal with it.”
We.
An amazing word. Since the age of eighteen, he’d had few we’s in his life. It came down to the trio of Jack, Mandy, and Sasha.
“Why don’t you go find Mandy?” he said. “Bring her back so I can apologize after I get my big ass down this walkway.”
Sasha reached out with both arms. Bear grabbed her hands and together they got him back to his feet. Through laborious breaths, he latched on to the railings. He’d never been this out of shape in his life. A man who remained on the move with a quickness that belied his size and frame.
Sasha watched as Bear sucked in breath after breath, steeling himself for the short trek. It might as well have been miles. He hadn’t completed it yet.
“Help me back to the start,” he said.
“You don’t have to,” she said.
“I want to.”
She held his gaze for a moment, hers growing as steeled as his. With a single nod she returned to his side, helped him do a one-eighty and move back to the other side of the room.
He started instantly. One hand sliding down the railing. His feet dragging on the floor. First his right, then left. The other hand joining the rest of him.
“Go find her.” He almost choked on the words. His lungs burned from the effort and exertion.
“You’ll be OK alone in here?”
“What’s the worst can happen?” He offered a smile that did little to un-furrow Sasha’s brow.
“I think we saw that earlier, didn’t we?”
“If that’s the worst, then I’ll be fine all alone.”
She shook her head, raised her hands so her palms faced him, and spun on her heel. A second later the door shut behind her.
Bear pushed on, his will driving him forward, the only way he knew to go. He’d beat this.
He passed the center point, where he’d had his fall. Another foot and he’d have gone further than at any time during his rehabilitation. Two months and he still couldn’t walk more than a few steps on his own. If these people couldn’t figure it out, he’d do it himself.
The overhead lights flickered a few times before shutting off. Fluorescent yellow gave way to the midday sunlight streaming in through the parted blinds. Bear glanced through the window at the duck pond. He had a view of it from his room and spent many mornings watching the fowl as the ducklings grew.
Right hand forward. Left foot. Right foot. Left hand. Again. His sweaty palms slid along the cold railing.
All at once he stopped and swung his head toward the door at the unmistakable sound of gunfire.
Chapter 4
Schreiber spun toward Jack, hovered there as the life drained from his body, his brain no longer capable of telling his heart to pump. The perfect black hole in the center of his forehead looked like a third eye for a brief moment. He collapsed to the ground in a heap.
The woman behind him caught not only blood and brain matter, but the remainder of the round that tore through Schreiber, and dozens of skull fragments. Some large enough, they penetrated and protruded an inch or two. She fell a few seconds after Schreiber.
An innocent bystander who should’ve hit the snooze button one more time. A husband, three kids, and the family dog will wait anxiously for her return. It’ll be nightfall at the earliest before they stand beside her lifeless body at the morgue.
Jack processed the information in a split second while the crowd surrounding them ran and screamed and knocked one another over in an attempt to get to safety.
A single round, likely fired from a perch. This wasn’t a bolt-action Winchester either. The shooter used a high-powered, high-caliber sniper rifle. A pro, cloaked in shadows looking for Noble.
He took cover behind the thick stone middle pillar which offered an escape route into the lobby. The lobby that contained several security cameras that would surely be pored over by detectives and analysts from multiple foreign agencies once someone identified Jack.
He chose Luxembourg and specifically Luxembourg City because the streets remained surveillance-free. He only had one eye in the sky to contend with. Unfortunately, that one likely peered through a scope in search of his face.
The chaos died down in the absence of further shots. A crowd of five or six people hovered over Schreiber and the dead woman. Fools, all of them. They were likely to suffer the same fate. And they offered Jack cover from the sniper.
Noble dropped to a knee, worked his way around the pillar and scurried across the void to the bodies.
“I’m a doctor,” he said. The people standing there reacted to his commanding tone by backing away. He was about to lose his human shield. “No, stay put.”
Jack peeled back the man’s sport coat, the one he had complimented when they first met. He tugged the notebook free from the inside pocket and jammed it into his own.
“What are you doing?” a man with thinning brown hair and an uncomplimentary haircut said, taking several large steps back and placing Noble in view of the shooter. “Yo
u’re no doctor. Police!”
“Shut up,” Jack said. “You’ll get yourself—”
The warning couldn’t come fast enough. The sniper fired another round and hit the man with the thinning brown hair in the middle of the back. The bullet exited on his left side, just under his armpit. Naturally, his humerus should have absorbed the shot, but he had his hands up. The round hit an old man standing there in the abdomen. The worst possible place. A soft spot incapable of deflecting the weakened fragment. A crimson bloom formed, and the man bowed forward as he clutched his gut.
Another life taken. A wife, kids, maybe grandkids, old German shepherd, all without a patriarch. And the old man didn’t look promising either.
“Everyone get down!”
Without hesitation, Noble rose and sprinted behind the columns, drawing the attention of the sniper. Chucks of concrete exploded into plumes of dust. Windows erupted sending glass shards everywhere. Several pelted Jack on his right side. The expected pain remained at bay. Safety glass. Dull on the edges.
The sniper would anticipate Jack’s next moves. At the final pillar, he’d have three choices: stay put, head inside, or venture out into the open. Remaining in place was not an option. The police would arrive soon. Noble would be taken into custody. He’d be easier to kill in jail. The sniper knew this and would be happy to keep Jack pinned down.
He eased around the column, keeping it between him and the sniper. Beyond the landing, the wide sidewalk stretched over ten feet and met the road. Two lanes of traffic and parking on either side. Not quite to the standards of the US, but not exactly an alley either.
He had no chance. A quick peek in the shooter’s direction confirmed when a round slammed into the column inches from his face. Fragments of concrete pelted his left eye, reducing his vision to muddy clouds.
Getting back inside would prove simpler but had the potential to be life-ending as well. He leaned against the column. There was no door directly in front of him. Right or left. Five feet of travel, minimum. To the right, he’d be exposed the entire time.