Wet Work

by Dayton Ward

  Lona once more had become one with her environment, immersing herself within a line of thick foliage, part of the landscaping that formed the outer perimeter of the recreational park at the center of this quiet, gated subdivision. All of the houses within her lines of sight looked to be cared for in similar meticulous fashion, along with lawns manicured to exacting specifications. The park itself contained a walking path and playground equipment, as well as sufficient open space for field games.

  Apparently satiated, the mosquito lifted away from Lona’s hand, leaving behind a small, reddening welt as evidence of its visit. She sensed the minor irritation but ignored it, just as she ignored the late-day heat and the oppressive humidity, and the sweat running freely down the insides of her black bodysuit. Putting all of that aside, she instead concentrated on her surroundings.

  The public nature of the park had made it somewhat challenging for her to insert herself into the hasty sniper’s nest she had prepared, compounded by the fact that she was without all of the gear she might normally employ on such an assignment. Time also had been a factor, given that she was racing NTAC and other assisting law enforcement assets to reach McFarland. Lona knew that the information she had acquired regarding the safe house locations used to hide the CIA director would only be useful for as long as it took NTAC to revise their protection scheme and put into motion a plan for moving him. She suspected that they would not attempt to relocate McFarland without a significant armed presence, owing to their fear of her and the incredible power she wielded.

  Power I still don’t completely understand, and therefore still can’t control.

  The vivid imagery of what she had done to the NTAC agent, Osborne, still haunted her, never venturing far from the forefront of her conscious memory. Her ears rang with the anguished cries of pain and terror the man had experienced in his final seconds as her time-bending ability ripped decades from his life. Until that horrifying moment, Lona had believed her extraordinary talents were limited to time’s effect on her own body. Of what possible use could such a power be put? What had been the thinking behind that, to say nothing of the motivations of whoever had endowed her with it?

  Her heart racing as she recalled Osborne’s gruesome death, Lona exhaled slowly in an attempt to bring her breathing under control. She found herself once more dwelling on the constant throbbing in her right bicep, still in pain from the bullet wound inflicted upon her during her escape from NTAC. The discomfort was not helped by her current prone position atop the hard, uneven ground and the grip she maintained on the stock of her rifle. What bothered her more than the injury itself was the momentary effect on her ability to conjure the time-bending field. That power had failed her at a critical moment, nearly resulting in her capture. Survival instinct was all that enabled her to regain her senses and put aside the pain from the wound long enough to make her getaway. It was yet another indication that she still had much to learn about handling her so-called gift.

  The bullet from the NTAC agent’s weapon had passed cleanly through her flesh, allowing her to treat the wound with the first-aid kit she acquired from a fire station not far from the agency’s headquarters building. Pain-reducing medication was out of the question, of course, at least until she completed her mission. For now, she would have to use the pain itself as a means of keeping her head clear. Once McFarland was dead and she was away from this place, she would take the necessary time to heal both her body and her mind. She only hoped that the nameless entity that drove her would allow such a sabbatical before once again calling upon her.

  Enough, Lona reminded herself. There were other concerns now warranting her attention, many of which were visible through her rifle’s scope. Peering again through the sights, she watched the hive of activity taking place at the opposite end of the park, at the center of which sat a two-story house. Painted an unassuming light blue with dark blue shutters and a wood-shingled roof, there was little to distinguish the home from the dozens of others littering the subdivision—aside from the perimeter of government vehicles arrayed before it.

  Though she was able to use her purloined data on McFarland to locate the safe house where he currently was concealed, what Lona had not counted on was the agency’s ability to adapt to what had become a fluid, evolving situation. NTAC had mobilized with impressive speed, deploying an armada of black SUVs that now clogged the street.

  There barely had been enough time to perform the most cursory reconnoiter of the area, even with the advantage she possessed. Still, it was enough to determine that the only viable avenue of egress from the house would be through the front door to a waiting vehicle. One of the SUVs—armored and equipped with bulletproof glass, Lona surmised—had been backed up to within a few feet of the house’s porch, leaving only a small gap of open space from the front door to the back of the vehicle. McFarland had not yet exited the house, but when he did he would only be visible for at most two or three seconds. Lona was not concerned with that. At this distance, it would be more time than she would need.

  Other vehicles had arrived on the scene since she had taken up position in her sniper’s nest, all of them flashing crimson lights as they added to the gathering before the powder blue house. Lona watched as uniformed NTAC special agents dispersed around the house to form a defensive perimeter, and in the distance she could hear the drone of an approaching helicopter. It seemed that little if anything was being left to chance. There were indications that the uniformed officers, each of them brandishing what looked to be M4A1 carbine assault rifles, might begin spreading out in lines away from the house, perhaps even to conduct a search of the park. If that happened, Lona would be forced to abandon her position, after which finding McFarland again would be difficult if not impossible.

  She had considered using her ability to close with McFarland and engage him directly, but had quickly dismissed that idea. After the incident with Agent Osborne, Lona had no desire to mete out a similar fate to anyone else. No one deserved to die in such an appalling fashion, particularly anyone who was not a designated primary mark. For that reason, she had elected to go with the sniper rifle, in the hope that she could eliminate McFarland from a safe distance and disappear before anyone could even begin to react to what she had done.

  You might not have a choice, she thought as she watched the NTAC agents continuing to establish their perimeter. Let’s just get this over with.

  Through her scope, Lona recognized the dark-haired female agent she had last seen while escaping NTAC headquarters now wearing a bulletproof vest beneath a dark blue Windbreaker with a white cord running from her left ear beneath her shirt collar. Standing next to her was a man of slight build, with gelled blond hair and dark-rimmed eyeglasses, and Lona realized that she had seen him before. It was the man from Las Vegas, the one she had elected not to kill. Had he somehow assisted the agents in identifying her? How was that possible? What could he know?

  For a moment, Lona wondered whether she might somehow have erred by not killing him during their previous encounter. Searching her mind turned up no hint of a directive or impulse driving her to target him. She had seen the faces of Darren Abbott and his little band of misguided renegades, but her unknown masters had for whatever reason not selected this other man for elimination. Might they have made some mistake?

  Forget it, Lona ordered herself. Focus on the objective.

  She watched as the female agent held her left wrist close to her mouth, speaking into a radio microphone. Other agents were performing similar actions, and Lona at first was pleased that she had kept the radio set she had taken from the security guard, thinking she might be able to overhear the agents’ conversations. The short-lived notion evaporated as she attempted to listen in on the radio’s different frequencies and heard nothing but distorted gibberish, an obvious indication of an encryption scheme in effect. Someone at NTAC was thinking, clearly suspecting that she would find McFarland’s location and possibly threaten their attempts to relocate him.

  Be
hind her, wood snapped.

  In defiance of experience and training, Lona jerked her head toward the sound and saw a man standing less than twenty feet from her. So engrossed was she in the scene at the safe house that she had not heard his approach, and she cursed herself for her lapse. He also wore a blue Windbreaker and was pointing a pistol at her, and Lona realized she had seen him before, during her escape from NTAC.

  “No!” The yell was involuntary, born of shock as she pulled herself from her firing position and started to turn toward the new arrival. Already she sensed the energy field forming around her, her metabolism starting to race as she began to accelerate.

  Then she felt a sharp stab in her neck. She stopped moving and reached up to her throat, her fingers running over the smooth surface of the projectile the agent had fired at her. An intense, heated sting radiated outward from the point of impact, followed by an immediate loss of focus and sensation of nausea gripping her. Through blurry eyes she saw the NTAC agent moving toward her, arms extended and aiming his weapon at her and shouting something she could not understand. She fell to her knees, her body gripped by whatever substance the dart contained while at the same time struggling to respond to her pleas for the time-bending field to generate.

  Despite its own best efforts, Lona’s body was failing her.

  THIRTY-THREE

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  THANK YOU, DR. HUDSON.

  “I don’t…” Callahan said, reaching up to pull the dart from her neck and dropping to the ground, her expression one of confusion and disorientation. “How?”

  Dropping the now-empty tranquilizer pistol, Baldwin reached for the holstered Glock on his hip and trained the weapon’s muzzle at Callahan’s head. “Don’t move,” he said, noting how she watched him with eyes dulled by medication. Only her face was not covered by her black bodysuit, her gloved hands held up and away from her, demonstrating that she was not armed. The sniper rifle lay abandoned on the grass behind her. “Stay on your knees, and keep your hands where I can see them.” Raising his left wrist to his mouth, he said into his radio mike, “Diana, I found her. Send backup units to the far end of the park, southwest of the safe house.”

  “On the way, Tom,” came Skouris’s reply through his earpiece.

  Baldwin nodded in approval. “And tell Twenter he was right on the money.”

  Both he and Skouris were certain that Callahan would go after McFarland when NTAC attempted to retrieve him for transfer to another safe house. What remained unknown was how or precisely when she might make her move, at which point Skouris proposed the idea of using Twenter and his telepathic abilities to assist in locating the assassin. Baldwin had made clear his skepticism regarding any lingering, tenuous telepathic connection Twenter might retain with Lona Callahan—an apparent result of their encounter in Las Vegas—but with options dwindling he had been open to any ideas, no matter how outlandish. Such doubts were quashed upon arriving in the subdivision, and Twenter quickly reported being able to sense Callahan’s presence. From there it was a game of hide and seek, with Twenter directing Baldwin on a search of the surrounding area, hunting the professional killer while avoiding being detected by her.

  It was surreal, Baldwin decided, staring down the muzzle of his pistol at Lona Callahan, the Wraith. International assassin and wanted fugitive for nearly twenty years—including the twelve-year gap in her life thanks to her abduction, of course—here she was, ten feet from him and all but in federal custody. Baldwin never had considered the case as any sort of lingering failure on his record from his time with the FBI, mostly in light of the fact that the events leading up to the Wraith’s last known assassination in 1992 had occurred so early in his career. He was one of hundreds of agents working the case, nowhere near the links in the chain of command tasked with overseeing the manhunt. Even his onetime mentor, Ted McIntyre, lacked that sort of visibility. After the Wraith’s apparent disappearance and the case went cold, and Baldwin was transferred to his next assignment, it was easy to relegate those events to the bottom of his filing cabinet as well as the back of his mind.

  Twelve years later, and the case was over, just like that.

  McIntyre’s going to be pissed.

  “What did you do to me?” Callahan asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  The noxious potion provided by Max Hudson—a potent, fast-acting, and still-experimental compound developed by the U.S. military as a nonlethal weapon to be employed during urban pacification operations, as the doctor had described it—seemed to be working. Surprisingly, she had not been rendered unconscious, and Baldwin remembered what Hudson had offered about how the tranquilizer targeted a subject’s metabolism, and that in time its effects might be mitigated by whatever modifications Callahan’s body had received. Still, it had stopped Callahan in her tracks almost from the instant the dart hit her. That was enough for now. She seemed content to obey his instructions, and Baldwin saw her shake her head as though trying to clear it of dizziness.

  “Face down on the ground, now,” he said, ignoring her question and keeping the pistol aimed at her head while she rolled onto the grass, her hands away from her body. Closing the distance between them, Baldwin retrieved the handcuffs from the holster clipped to the back of his belt, then moved to place his right knee on Callahan’s back in order to facilitate restraining her.

  When she moved, it was with nowhere near the incredible speed he had seen in the NTAC corridor, but it was still damned fast.

  In the instant before his knee made contact with her back, Callahan rolled to her left, shifting her weight and pushing off the ground so that she caught him on the inside of his left leg and forced him off balance. Baldwin swore, dropping the cuffs and reaching for her with his free hand, but by then she was up on one knee. Her right hand moved and Baldwin saw sunlight glint off a knife’s polished blade, and he twisted away as she sliced the air just to the right of his ear. He fell to the ground, bringing up his pistol and scrambling for a shot as she regained her feet with surprising flexibility and grace. His first round was wide to the left and she ducked in the opposite direction, and by the time he fired again she already had plunged headlong through the line of foliage that had provided her original place of concealment.

  “Son of a bitch!” Baldwin hissed through gritted teeth, pushing to his feet and taking off after her. Breaking through the line of shrubs, he found himself on the sidewalk ringing the park’s perimeter. Callahan was already across the street, still moving at normal human speed but well enough that she had a decent head start on him. The sun was low in the sky to the west, the last rays of daylight fading with every passing moment. The approaching darkness would only assist Callahan in her escape. Grunting in growing anger, Baldwin sprinted after her, trying to close the distance. “Diana!” he shouted into his wrist mike. “I’ve got her. She’s on foot, heading into the subdivision on the opposite side of the park. Get that chopper over here now!”

  “We heard the shots,” Skouris replied in his ear. “I’ve got SWAT teams headed in your direction, and the chopper’s on its way.”

  Baldwin did not answer, saving his breath for the running. Callahan was still ahead of him but he was beginning to close the gap. He heard the NTAC helicopter approaching, its whirling blades slicing through the air. Police sirens wailed from somewhere ahead of him, echoing between the houses. Now away from the park, which at least could have been surrounded in order to contain anyone within its perimeter, the chances of involving an innocent bystander increased. Based on what Baldwin had seen of Lona Callahan’s methods, she seemed reluctant to kill or injure anyone who was not her target unless no other option remained to her, but such a possibility now loomed with great weight as the foot chase evolved.

  Thirty yards in front of him, Callahan reached a six-foot-tall wooden fence situated between two houses. In one fluid motion she leaped up and vaulted over, disappearing into the yard beyond. Cursing her agility, Baldwin followed after her, holstering his pistol to have both han
ds free as he reached for the top of the fence. He jumped up, using his feet to propel him up and over the fence, and as he rolled over the top edge he realized his mistake. Failing to check the other side of the fence before climbing over, he did not see Callahan waiting for him until she grabbed him by his jacket collar, dragging him over and toppling him to the ground.

  Baldwin landed heavily, grunting as his holstered Glock dug into his back. He sensed motion and rolled away, narrowly avoiding Callahan’s leg as she lashed out at his head, her booted foot slamming into the fence behind him. Regaining his feet, he was in time to see that Callahan had drawn her knife again, holding it low and near her right leg. She lunged at him, the blade coming up, but Baldwin anticipated the move and stepped into the attack. His left arm blocked her knife hand, arresting that motion even as he punched at her with his other fist. Callahan dodged to avoid the worst of the strike, and Baldwin only swiped the side of her head. She slashed with the knife and this time he felt the sting as the blade sliced across his left arm. Growling in anger and pain, Baldwin tried for his Glock but abandoned it when Callahan closed on him.

  Damn, she’s good. She was younger and faster, and an obvious practitioner of hand-to-hand combat. His own skills were competent, but he knew she was out of his league. Baldwin had to find a way to end this, and damned quick.

  The sirens were closer now, and Baldwin was sure he heard voices from somewhere nearby. He also was aware of the helicopter hovering overhead, but none of that mattered as Callahan attacked again. He sidestepped her approach and she overextended her reach just enough to leave her flank exposed. Baldwin seized the opportunity, kicking her in the ribs with his right foot, and was rewarded with a surprised grunt from Callahan. She staggered several steps, off balance for the briefest of moments as she grabbed her midsection. Ignoring his own pain, Baldwin charged her, wrapping her in a bear hug and running both of them into the wooden fence. Wood cracked from the force of the impact.