Shot Clock

by Mark Parragh

  He was silent for a long moment. Josh’s attention wandered. Crane had finally found a pair of pants he could live with, and had moved on to the heavy jackets.

  Maybe you should think about that. He did say we’re headed up to the glacier, and you’re still wearing a suit and a five-hundred-dollar pair of shoes.

  “For a long time after,” Redpoll suddenly said, “I told myself I would get her back. I would break away from my father, or one of his enemies would finally manage to kill him. I would choose my own path, and Ana would join me on it.”

  “But that didn’t happen?”

  “Bit by bit, it fell away. Step by step. And eventually I realized, even if I could go back and change what I had done, if I could stay with her, that I would be giving up so many things that happened since then. Goals I had accomplished. Battles won. Lessons learned. In time, I realized that the path I was on, even if it wasn’t the path I wanted once, was a good path, and no longer would I change it, even if I could.”

  Josh sighed. “So your old college girlfriend is on par with the collapse of global civilization? Is that the lesson I’m meant to take from this? We should just let it all fall apart because eventually we’ll decide we’re okay with living in the rubble? That kind of sounds like bullshit. You probably don’t hear that much, because you rule the world and everybody’s scared to death of you. But I’ve got to call it like I see it, dude. That’s bullshit.”

  Redpoll laughed weakly and gestured for Josh to come closer. When he did, Redpoll whispered, “You’ve got spunk.” There was a beat of silence while Josh tried to figure out what the hell that meant. Then Redpoll suddenly barked, “I hate spunk!”

  Then Redpoll laughed with delight until the laugh trailed off into a hoarse breath.

  Josh looked at him in disbelief. “Was that…was that a Mary Tyler Moore Show reference? I mean, I’m kind of impressed, but are you kidding me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Redpoll said around wheezing breaths. “I haven’t seen much American TV since the seventies.”

  “Well, you work with what you’ve got, I guess.”

  “If we make it out of here, perhaps you will send me some DVDs to catch up.”

  “I don’t know,” said Josh, “that’s a lot of catching up. Do you think you’re going to have time for all that, what with the world ending and all?”

  “I suspect after tonight, that will no longer be my concern.”

  “Oh, right,” said Josh, “you’re passing the torch. How’s that working out for you?”

  Redpoll shook his head. “Not as I anticipated,” he said sadly.

  “If I understand correctly,” said Josh, “the reason we’re in this mess in the first place is because, turns out, your organization selects for sociopaths with delusions of grandeur. You think that might represent a flaw in your basic strategy?”

  Redpoll said nothing for a long moment.

  Yeah, that’s what I thought. Not much of a comeback for that one, huh?

  Josh sat back with a sigh.

  Why am I babysitting this monster anyway? This is Swift’s job? Where the hell is she?

  But he knew the answer. She was with Crane. Josh’s instincts were pinging. He could sense that Crane wasn’t telling him everything. But even the connections he knew about had him worried. Brno was random. They’d never even seen each other there. Buenos Aires was coincidence. But Mexico? The thing Crane had done for her in Venice? Now this? No, not coincidence. She had a plan. She always did. And Josh very much doubted she had Crane’s best interests at heart.

  Or anyone else’s, for that matter.

  Chapter 28

  Crane set the lantern down beside a rack of expensive hiking pants and began checking what was available in his size.

  “You’re a fun date,” said Swift. She was on the other side of the lamp, digging through sweaters stacked on a shelf. “Candlelight dinner, field surgery, a firefight, and now you’re taking me shopping. You really brought your A game here, didn’t you, John?”

  Crane smiled at her. There, at last, was a flash of the woman he had admitted—to himself, at least—he was falling for. It was good to see she was still in there behind the single-minded ruthlessness she’d shown since this started. He hoped it would last, but he suspected this was a temporary reprieve.

  “Only the best for you,” he said.

  She put the sweaters back down. “Is this the best? Should we see what’s in the back?”

  Crane considered it. The selection was weighted heavily toward Arc'teryx, which Crane considered acceptable, if a bit trendy these days. In his experience, that tended to lead to a decline in quality. “I’d prefer Fjällräven if it was up to me. But I guess burglars can’t be choosers.”

  “Who better?” she said. “If you’re going to steal, why bother stealing the cheap stuff?”

  She moved to a rack of jackets and took a black Icebreaker soft shell from its hanger. “But this will do, I guess.”

  Crane settled for a pair of pants, and added a Patagonia shirt and a pair of Scarpa trail boots. By the time he was done, Swift had her own gear picked out. They headed back to the checkout counter to change.

  “Come here,” Crane said softly as he set down his clothes. She turned to him, and he held her. “Are you all right? We’re going to make it out of here.”

  He felt her nod against his neck and shoulder.

  “What are you going to do, then?” As soon as he’d said it, he regretted it. He’d backed away from what he’d meant to say. Whether or not Redpoll survived, his organization would be in chaos. There would be no better time for the two of them to run away, go off the radar. They could take some time for themselves, find a hut on a beach in some remote paradise and explore this thing they were sharing. Then they could decide when and how to come back, how to re-engage with Josh, how to put their skills to the best use, helping clean up the mess that would surely follow from what had happened here.

  That was what he’d meant to say. He’d meant to ask her to slip away from the hotel with him once the danger had passed. But he didn’t. Instead, by some instinct, he’d asked her what she meant to do. And he realized that was because he wasn’t sure she would go with him now.

  She still hadn’t answered him. Finally, she took a breath.

  “I’m afraid, John,” she said so softly, he could barely hear her. “I don’t know what matters to me anymore. I don’t know what I want. I thought I did, but now everything’s changed.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” he said. “You’re still you. I’m still me, and I’m still here.”

  “But it does!” she said. “Don’t you see? It does! As long as he was running it all, driving me hard, sending me off to do his dirty work, that was one thing. But now…he’s all I’ve got, John.”

  That hurt a little, Crane realized. “You’ve got me.”

  She pulled back and looked into his eyes with tenderness. She nodded. “Thank you. That means…It means a lot. But this is so new, John, so new. Right now, I need to rely on something without thinking, and I can do that with him. Even if I hate it sometimes, it’s what I know. What I know I can trust when things come apart. I don’t know what will happen if I put all my weight on us. Not when it’s still so new.”

  “Trust me,” he said.

  “I’m trying.”

  Then he heard movement among the racks and saw the glow of a flashlight. They pulled apart and started changing clothes as Beverlee Couillard emerged from the racks. She’d already fitted herself out for moving through the mountains, and she’d found an elbow brace for her injured arm that would give her a better range of motion.

  “It’s dark enough,” she said, “and it’s raining like mad. Not fit for man nor beast, but a good time to slip out if you’re going.”

  “You’re leaving?” Crane asked.

  “Places to be,” she said. “You know how it is. I just wanted to say good luck to you.”

  “Do something for me,” said Crane. “Take a message back to
Chris Parikh?”

  “Sure.”

  “When you see him, tell him I’m not left-handed.”

  If she was nonplussed by it, she didn’t let it show. “You’re not left-handed,” she said. “Got it.”

  “He’ll know what to do.”

  Crane hoped that was true. It wasn’t a prearranged signal, but his initial friendship with Chris Parikh was built on those five days in Peshawar, watching The Princess Bride over and over. Chris would remember the swordfight scene where Wesley and Inigo dueled, each man starting with his sword in his left hand before revealing he wasn’t really left-handed at all. Crane hoped he would take it as a warning, an indication that things weren’t as they seemed. He hoped Chris would get in touch, and then they could talk about the grounding of his new agency, CIRC, and the possibility that it had been infiltrated by Redpoll’s organization. He hoped it would work that way. Right now, it was the best he could do.

  Couillard slipped away through the clothing racks, and Crane heard the doors open and then swing quietly shut.

  Swift was changing into her outdoor gear, so Crane followed suit. They didn’t speak.

  “You were right about the terrain,” she said at last. “No way we’re getting the wheelchair through there. We’ll have to carry him.”

  “There’s a tent over there,” Crane said, nodding over his shoulder toward a back corner of the shop. “We can rig something out of that.”

  “Okay,” she said, “good. Is that something you and Josh can handle? I should talk to him.”

  “Yeah,” said Crane. He looked out into the dining area in front of the snack bar and saw the dim shape of Josh leaning close to Redpoll’s wheelchair, the two of them murmuring softly to each other. That seemed to be Josh’s way of dealing with the constant low-grade tension. He was distracting himself by assaulting Redpoll’s philosophy of life. He doubted Josh would change the old man’s mind at this point, but it gave him something to focus on, to keep his attention off the danger all around them. It would do.

  “Yeah, send him over here, would you? I need to get him kitted out, anyway.”

  By the time Crane had finished changing, Josh had arrived. Crane explained that they were heading out into rough weather. It was going to be cold outside, and colder still where they were going. He asked a few questions and determined that Josh didn’t have a lot of experience of the outdoors beyond short day hikes that didn’t require anything beyond jeans, a T-shirt, and athletic shoes. He took Josh around the racks and got him properly outfitted for rain and cold weather in the mountains.

  “I don’t feel great about us basically stealing this stuff,” Josh said at one point.

  Crane tossed him a pair of gloves. “Here, take these. Well, maybe you’ll be rich someday, and then you can pay them back.”

  Josh snatched the gloves out of the air. “That’s funny, John. I forget how funny you are.” He looked dubiously at the gloves. “Do I really need these?”

  “You’re going to be carrying a man over rough ground on an improvised stretcher. Yeah, you’re going to want those. Now come help me break down the tent.”

  It took the better part of an hour to craft a workable stretcher from the tent’s aluminum poles and synthetic fabric. As a test, Crane and Swift carried Josh the length of the building in it. There were no grips; Josh would definitely want those gloves before they got very far. But it seemed as though the fabric would hold a person’s weight, and their improvised stitching held well enough. Crane decided they were ready to move.

  Swift and Josh would carry Redpoll on the stretcher while Crane covered them and checked the route ahead. He checked his weapon again and switched out his nearly empty magazine for one they’d taken from the dead soldier in the tunnels.

  Finally, they got Redpoll out of the wheelchair and laid him gently down on the stretcher. He tried to suppress a groan as Swift and Josh picked him up, but he couldn’t entirely hide it. He had to be in pain. Crane wouldn’t admit it to Swift, but he was surprised Redpoll had made it this far.

  “Down,” said Swift, “set him down.”

  She prepped a shot from the trauma kit. “This will help,” she said.

  Redpoll shook his head. “No, save it. There’s not much left. I can go a little longer.”

  “Bullshit,” said Swift. “You’re slowing us down. Take the shot and shut up.” But her expression belied her tone as she injected him. He couldn’t begin to imagine the pressures that had warped their relationship into the form it had taken, but there was love there, as well, even if they didn’t always know how to express it.

  “All right, yes, I’m sorry,” Redpoll murmured as the drug took effect. The last words drifted off into a slurry of vowels, and he fell silent. His eyes closed, and his breathing grew more shallow and regular.

  Swift nodded, and then she and Josh lifted the stretcher. Josh grunted and shifted his grip, searching for a comfortable way to hold the poles. Then they headed for the entrance that looked out across the end of the lake toward the glacier.

  Crane wasn’t sure why he turned and went back to check the other entrance, the one that faced a line of trees along an access road and, beyond it, the hotel. Something he didn’t consciously notice must have triggered an instinct, some long-buried bit of Hurricane Group training. But as he swung the glass door open and stepped out into the white noise hiss of the rain, he knew he wasn’t alone. He sensed more than saw the figures moving out of the trees in an open skirmish line.

  Then he heard a shout, saw muzzle flashes in the darkness, and heard the chatter of fire. He dove to the cement and rolled back through the doorway as bullets smashed into the glass.

  “John!” Swift shouted from the far door. There was little she could do while holding one end of the stretcher. Josh couldn’t carry Redpoll alone. There was only one way to do this.

  “Go!” he hissed. “Move! I’ll catch up.”

  He didn’t wait to see if they obeyed him. He knew Swift would be doing the same calculations and coming to the same conclusion. The initial burst of fire had died down, and the glass doors and side windows were either spider-webbed or simply shattered. To the right of the door, an entire panel of glass was gone. Crane crouched and stepped outside through the gap, moving slowly as his boots crunched on the shattered glass.

  Out in the night, flashlight beams lanced through the rain, sweeping the face of the building, searching for him. There were four. If they were clever, more men were leaving their lights off to hide their numbers. But four was bad enough.

  Crane edged along the wall to the corner of the building. His job now was to reduce the odds, make them slow their advance, buy Swift time to get Josh and Redpoll away. He raised his MP7 and carefully sighted in on one of the bouncing spots of light.

  Then he fired a long burst. The MP7 chattered, and the muzzle flash was a harsh strobe that seemed to freeze the raindrops in front of Crane as it gave away his position. As soon as he had released the trigger, he was moving, sprinting around the corner, keeping low. He barely registered the flashlight beam he’d been aiming at going high, spinning off through the night as its bearer fell.

  There were still plenty more of them out there, and now they knew he was there and armed. He heard return fire in short bursts and the impact of bullets against the wall behind him. Crane moved down the rear of the building and then veered off into the open, counting on the darkness to cover him.

  A flashlight could pick him out at any time, followed by a burst of fire. But taking risks was the only play Crane had left. It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 29

  Crane dove headfirst onto the wet grass and slid to a stop. A moss-covered stone roughly the size of a footstool was about ten feet away, and he crawled behind it. The cold rain spattered the stone as it soaked into his clothes. It was a lousy night for a firefight, but then, he’d seen very few good ones.

  The soldiers had learned from his last attack and turned off their flashlights. Crane could only m
ake out occasional movement in the darkness as they advanced toward the building. If he could get them to fire again, the muzzle flash would give them away. For whatever reason, their guns weren’t fitted with flash suppressors even though they’d come from the factory with the muzzles threaded for them. Crane wasn’t sure why. Maybe they wanted them to be as compact as possible for smuggling in luggage. Maybe they thought guns spitting fire would help terrify the civilians during the attack on the ballroom. For whatever reason, they’d left them off, and that meant his gun wasn’t fitted with one, either.

  Swift would be moving Josh and Redpoll away from the building and toward the funicular terminal, but he couldn’t know how far they’d gotten or what might be holding them up. He had to buy them as much time as he could.

  The gift shop’s wall was about fifty feet to his left. He took a guess as to how long it would take him to cover that distance over the wet grass. His first burst had made them move more cautiously; he’d slowed them down. Another burst from here might divert them in this direction. Then he’d want to get back to the cover of the building. After that, he wasn’t sure. It would depend on what they did, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to lure them back and forth all night. If nothing else, he didn’t have that much ammunition left. There was one more solid burst in the weapon, and one more full magazine after that. He’d need to make them count.

  Crane crouched behind the stone and dug the toes of his boots into the damp ground. He made little divots, like starting blocks, so he could launch himself to full speed as quickly as possible. A slip on the wet grass could get him killed.

  He got himself into position, readied the MP7, and opened up. The gun roared, and the muzzle lit up like a flamethrower, casting his face in harsh relief. He fired until the action clicked empty. Then, without waiting to assess any damage, he pushed off and was sprinting back toward the shadows of the gift shop.