Hero Engine

by Nader, Alexander

  We walk a few yards away from the house in case anyone happens to look out the window. Safe money says Andy got McCarthy’s warning and he could have any number of security keeping watch of his racist ass. The mountainside doesn’t believe in a gently increasing angle. Nope. Rock told Soft Rolling Slopes to fuck off when it decided to stretch straight up to the heavens like a goddamned French Babel.

  I use as much of my upper body as I can to hoist myself up. Trees, big rocks, shrubs, and small animals all act as temporary hand holds on my trek. By the time we get parallel with the back of the house, my arms feel like jelly and my hip has numbed itself into oblivion. I’m sure I will pay for this later.

  The back of the house is darker than the front. There are only two lights shining on the second floor, none on the first. I give Ann a look and she nods. She’s already got a pistol in her hand, ready to go. I draw my weapon and we creep to the open back patio. The porch has a concrete floor with a cinderblock fence that holds the mountain back.

  We cross the deck to a tall glass door. There’s no light coming from the room inside and we take a position on either side of the entry. I hold three fingers up…

  Two…

  One…

  My left hand tries the knob and the door swings in. Too silent silence greats us. No feet scuffling across tile, no attack dog, no TV blaring late-night television. I have a half-second to wonder what Jimmy Fallon sounds like in French before Ann steps through the door into a pitch-black room, weapon raised. Gun at the ready, I step in behind her. We pause, waiting, listening for sounds of life.

  The lights in the room come on full blast, blinding me. A hand grabs the wrist of my right arm and torques it in a direction it’s not meant to go. I turn my body to relieve the pressure and an arm—or a piece of iron for as soft as it feels—strikes my throat with all the delicate touch of a jackhammer. I cough. I gag. Try to swallow air, get bile instead. Someone screams. Hack. Cough. I heave peanut butter onto the floor.

  My gun is out of my hand, but I’m still more worried about the lack of oxygen. Something sweeps my feet. My back hits the ground with what would be enough force to drive the air out of me, if I had any air to drive out.

  The lights beam straight down. I turn my head to the side. Ann is on the floor, both hands wrapped around her stomach. Her mouth is open and I think she might be screaming, but my ears don’t seem to register sound right now. A booted foot connects with Ann’s face, spinning her around so she’s facing away from me. Her body convulses with each breath, but she’s not moving other than that.

  I follow the leg attached to the boot. Black cargo pants, gun belt, black shirt stretched tight across a chest that would make a linebacker look svelte. His hand is wrapped around a nightstick that I’m guessing found its way into Ann’s stomach.

  My throat finally remembers how to open and close and I manage to squeeze a gulp of air in. The inhalation burns my esophagus and my chest. A hollow ‘whoamve’ sound reverberates in my eardrums. Did I get hit in the head too? It all happened so fast. My eyes burn. I blink and turn my head. A pair of matching black boots are stationed right next to my limp body. A matching muscle-man stands in them.

  The toes of the boots rotate, heels clicking together like a third of Dorothy on steroids. Fuck, I wish I were home.

  “Madame, we found these two sneaking in the house.” The man standing over me has a thick accent, but not French. Czech maybe? Croatian?

  The distinct sound of heels clacking on tile nears. “Do they have any form of identification?” The woman’s voice has the smooth French accent of the diplomat we spoke to earlier. Her English is perfect, with the exception of replacing ‘Th’ with a ‘Z’ sound.

  Rough hands pat and grab at me. He lands on the wallet in my back pocket and pulls it free. I’m too worried about breathing to argue much. “His name is James Quig,” the guy over me says. “A police officer from the state of Georgia.”

  “Her name is Ann Pretorius. She works for SHI,” a similarly-accented voice says. Matching bodyguards. That’d be cuter if I didn’t think they might be about to kill me.

  The woman clicks her tongue. I imagine a cringe to go along with it. “These must be the two McCarthy warned me about. Kill them.”

  Wait, what? McCarthy warned her? No, that’s not right, McCarthy warned Andy Donovan. Who is this woman?

  Two guns cock in unison.

  “But not here. I want no mess to clean. Take them behind the house. Bury them there, or leave them for the birds, I care not which.”

  Fuck this lady.

  The same rough hands grab my shirt by the collar and yank me to my feet. I catch a clear view of Ann. When the guy grabs her she twists his arm around in a way that looks less than comfortable. The guy grunts, but swings the butt of his pistol against the side of her head. The sound of makes my stomach heave. Ann’s body drops back to the floor where her head bounces off the tile.

  “Fucking bitch,” her guard says. He shakes out his arm before reaching down and throwing her body over his shoulder.

  I glance at the guard standing behind me. When he draws his gun back. I hold my hands up in surrender. “Easy, Killer. I can walk to my own grave.”

  Chapter 24

  I GET ASSIGNED a job where I’m told I have to interrogate and will most likely piss off people with super-human powers, capable of killing me without batting an eye. After a handful of those very same interrogations, I’m going to be killed by a Slovak mercenary.

  The guy carrying Ann leads the way up the mountain behind the manor. The other guy follows me, his weapon trained on the back of my head, surely. I debate the odds of taking both of these guys out before one of them kills me and come back with zero chance of survival. As a police officer, I’ve been trained in a lot of combat situations. I know my way around a fight. Because of this training, I can easily recognize when I’m outnumbered and outgunned. Like right now.

  Fuck, I’m not ready to die, plays in my head on repeat. After every loop I wish I had some more prominent last thoughts. Something groundbreaking, epitaph-worthy. I want some last words that live up to the name Cool Jim Quig. Instead of some poignant parting quip, I’m left with ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuck,’ over and over.

  We crest the hill into some trees covering the plateau. I squint to make my way without tripping over anything. Every time I turn my head, fluid in my ears sloshes around. I almost fall over. I really wish I could remember the point when that fucker hit me in the head. Was it before, during, or after the throat chop? I swallow and the gulp presses against the bruise forming around my trachea.

  “That’s far enough,” says Merc Asshole Number One. He drops Ann off his shoulder. Her body hits the ground and stays there. I’ve never seen anyone hit in the head be out that long. I’d be worried about brain damage if both of our brains weren’t about to get a new lead ornament.

  Other than the little bit of glow from Donovan’s house (Was that even Donovan’s house?) there is no light to be seen. No other houses, no people, no hope of rescue.

  “Any last words?” The merc’s heavy accent makes this whole thing feel like a bad eighties movie. Is he Turkish?

  I face the asshole merc. They both have their guns trained on me. Ann is on the ground behind them. Through the darkness, I catch a slight movement of her head. Her hand rolls a couple times, the universal symbol for, ‘keep them fucking busy’.

  “Do I have any last words?” I say, hoping I am better at stalling than epitaph writing. “Yeah, yes. I do. Are you sure you want to be out here?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be,” Asshole Merc Number Two asks.

  With the patience of a slug, Ann puts her hands under her body.

  “Because,” I say, “you don’t know what I am.”

  Merc One spits. “You’re a cop, from Georgia. You’re nothing.”

  Ann pushes up to her knees.

  “Exactly. Why do you think a cop from Georgia is in France, breaking into your boss’ house?”

&nbs
p; The two mercs exchange a look.

  Ann walks her hands backward until she’s flat on her feet in a crouch.

  “You’re nothing. If you were, you wouldn’t have given up so easily,” Merc One says.

  “Maybe I just wanted to kill you out of your boss’ sight.”

  They both laugh.

  “And how are you going to kill us?”

  I swear I’m waiting for one of them to tell me he’s going to crush me with his fucking super-villain accent.

  “You,” I point at Merc One, the guy who socked Ann with the club. “You’re going to get your neck broken. And you,” I point at Merc Two. “You’re going to be choked until you’re brain dead. Payback, you understand.” I point at my throat.

  “Let’s see you do that with two bullets in your head.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, fellas. I didn’t say I was gonna do it.”

  The wording clicks into place for Merc One first. His eyes bulge as he glances at Ann. Only she’s not laying on the ground any more. She kicks out a foot, connecting with his stomach. Merc Two catches on and swings his gun. I lunge, throwing my shoulder into him. The gun goes off, but he’s aiming at the less-than-ample moon by the time the shot fires.

  I grab the merc’s gun hand. A rock sticks out of the ground next to his head. I take the sign from God and slam the back of his hand against the jagged object. The gun bounces free, but his other fist connects with my cheek. I see stars—not the ones in the sky. A bone in my face crunches. Goodbye Handsome, hello Rugged Good Looks.

  The merc turns underneath me trying to scramble away. Bad idea. I wrap my legs around his waist, holding his back against my chest. My arms instinctively snake around his neck. We play paddy-cake with our extremities for a few moments before I feel my elbow slide under his chin. I squeeze with everything I’m worth. They say a few seconds of this kind of choke can leave a person unconscious. Let’s see what happens when I hold it a minute. He struggles under my grip, slapping at my face and arms.

  From my position on the ground, I’ve got a good view of Ann and Merc One. She’s got a combat knife in her hand—presumably taken from him. He’s bleeding in more than a couple places.

  Merc Two’s struggles grow weaker until they stop all together. I tighten my grip. My arms scream in protest, my vengeance screams harder.

  Merc One lunges. Ann buries the knife up to the hilt in his abdomen. He bends at the waist. His arms wrap his stomach much the same as Ann had earlier. Ann takes his head in her arms. She twists, snapping his neck, then drops his dead body to the ground and walks over to me with all the calm of a Zen master.

  Ann kicks the shoe of the guy in my choke hold. “He’s dead.”

  I release my grip and shove the body off of me. Killing a man doesn’t seem so hard now that I’ve done it. If I were back home at the department, this would be followed by mountains of paperwork and a weekly visit with a psychologist. Out here, in another country, working for SHI, I have a feeling none of that is going to come up.

  Next to me, a lifeless body waits to be dropped six feet under. That was another human, a person, I just killed. I should feel bad, but I don’t. Him or me. He wouldn’t have felt bad if things had gone the other way. Maybe it’s adrenaline, maybe it’s situational awareness, maybe I’m as sociopathic as Ann, but no matter what, it equates to: I don’t give a fuck.

  I stand up and dust as much of the dirt off my clothing as possible. Ann levels one of the guns and fires a shot into the air. “One shot for each of us. Hopefully that will buy us an element of surprise.”

  Training really makes a difference. Ann’s always been a couple steps ahead of me. “Are you okay?”

  She’s got a black eye and blood running out from under her hair. “Yeah, I’ll be all right. Thanks for that.”

  “Thanks? What the hell did I do?”

  “You kept them distracted.”

  “And you kicked his ass.” I point at the broken-neck merc.

  “And you that one.” She reciprocates the gesture.

  “Fair enough. Not bad for a team that’s been together for less than a week.”

  Ann smiles. Through her beating she looks like someone from the winning side of a hockey game. All she needs is a missing tooth or two.

  “You ready to go back down to that house and figure out what in the fuck is going on right now?”

  Ann is walking before I’m finished asking the question. I bend down, grab a gun and a knife off of the dead merc.

  “Hey,” I say, jogging to catch up, “did you notice that lady said McCarthy warned her about us?”

  “Yeah, I did. I’m surprised you did after that headshot you took.”

  So that fucker did hit me in the head. I should have stabbed him before I choked him to death. “What do you make of that?” Because I know it confuses me about as much as every other part of this damn case.

  “I don’t quite know, but I can’t wait to go down there and ask her.” The ice in Ann’s voice would make me worry if I didn’t want to take a couple of that woman’s fingers for ordering my death.

  “Say, Ann, did you bring those cutters with you this time?”

  Ann gives me one of those appraising looks before she nods.

  We climb down the retaining wall on to the back porch. It’s time to get some answers. I grab the handle and walk through the door of the house, ready to stab the first person who gets near me.

  Chapter 25

  THE LIGHTS in the kitchen are on this time and there’s no goons waiting in the room to jump us. That’s a bonus. From somewhere inside the house, heels click against the flooring. The sound comes closer.

  “Great job, Boys. I’m glad that was taken care of so easily,” the woman’s voice says before she comes into view. The woman from earlier rounds the corner. She’s wearing a business suit and looks a lot like Ann did when I met her, style-wise. Only the lines on this woman are from being skinny whereas Ann’s lines come from hard-earned muscle. Our hit-lady stops in her tracks. Her gaze travels from Ann to me.

  The woman is all cheekbones and sneer. Her sunken cheeks make her disgust at our presence seem greater. She glides over to the large island in the kitchen and grabs a cancer stick out of a pack sitting on the counter. Cigarette lit, she takes a puff with the kind of flourish that would make a stage magician proud. A trail of smoke rises up from her cigarette, squiggling through the air from a shake in the woman’s hand. The shake looks more annoyance than fear. “What do you want from me?”

  Who in the fuck is this lady?

  “Who in the fuck are you?” Ann asks.

  “My name is Ninon Dumont,” she says, “and this is my home. I assume you have been sent by SHI as a result of the explosion that occurred there recently.” She takes a puff and slides a stool out from under the island to take a seat.

  So she knows about the Engine. “What explosion would you be referring to?” Always best to make sure we are on the same page before I go giving away information on accident.

  Her smile is derisive as she says, “The one that disabled your precious Engine. The bomb that that dumb hillbilly Jackson McCarthy built and Leroy DeLaCruz planted.” With her accent the word ‘hillbilly’ sounds more like ‘ill-bill-ee’.

  “You said McCarthy warned you.” Ann paces. “McCarthy sent an email to the Grand Sovereign Mage Andy Donovan.”

  “You are a perceptive brute of a woman, no?” Dumont’s foot bounces, as if she’s already bored with this conversation. “I am Andy Donovan, the Grand Sovereign Mage of the Anti-Hero Alliance.”

  “How is that possible? Why, why go with an alias?” My hand scratches at the stubble of my beard.

  Another suck on her stick makes her cheeks sink farther, she looks like she gave up eating years ago. She sighs out a trail of smoke. “Do you really think those bunch of cape-hating rednecks and geeks would be so devoted if they knew they were following orders from a woman? From a French woman none-the-less? No. So I put on a fake name and a fake accent just to sound lik
e one of the good ol’ boys.” The last part of the statement she drops every hint of French and takes on the hard consonants of someone from the American South. The transformation gives me the chills.

  “So why talk to us now? You just ordered our deaths not even an hour ago.” Ann continues pacing. She’s going to wear holes in the tile with that kind of consistency. “Is this your super-villain monologue where you reveal all of your grand plans to us?”

  Dumont laughs. It’s a hearty laugh full of bitter malice. “No, this is a business proposition. That is all any of this has ever been. Do you think I give a fuck about the capes and what they do? No. But the people who do, you see, those people pay lots of money for direction. Direction I give them. I organize their protests and their actions and in return, they all make generous donations to the cause.” She uses her fingers to put air quotes around ‘the cause’.

  “So this is all about money?” Of course it is. When is everything not all about money?

  “Of course it is. What will it take for you to leave me in peace? You already have McCarthy; he made the bomb. I’m sure it will not be hard to link the materials from McCarthy’s house to the device that destroyed the Engine. From my understanding Monsieur DeLaCruz is no longer with us, and you will have a hard time proving anything against me.”

  “Do you really think McCarthy is going to keep his mouth shut when he finds out who you really are?” Ann’s voice is a poison hand grenade launched in Dumont’s direction.

  Dumont’s bouncing foot falters for a millisecond before she finds her stride again. This lady is as cool as dry ice, smoke and all. “Do you really think McCarthy is the only one working for me? Prison is a dangerous place, lots of potential witness have come to their end behind bars.”

  Stalemate.

  “So,” Dumont stamps her cigarette out on the counter-top, “I will give you whatever you want to leave me alone. I’ll give you information, you take it and deal. This is all just business.”