by Brian Parker
She nodded as she tapped her computer screen with the tip of her fingernail. A receipt appeared on the bar in front of him and he dropped a fifty dollar bill to cover the drink and her tip.
“See ya next time,” the bartender called after him as he rushed down the stairs.
Grady sidestepped a couple coming up the stairwell and examined the faces in the small crowd on the first floor bar. The two men weren’t in the room, meaning they hadn’t gotten a drink from the bar upstairs or the one downstairs. His suspicion deepened.
He walked along the sidewalk toward his apartment. The wind was cold as it blew through the streets, all of its force channelized between the buildings instead of dissipating and running out of energy like it would if it were in the open. Grady turned up his collar, hunched his shoulders to cover more of his head, and crammed his hands in his pockets. At least it isn’t raining, he thought. He didn’t really mind being cold or wet, but when he was both cold and wet, he was truly miserable.
Grady waved at Tim, the apartment building’s security guard, who sat watching a small television behind the desk in the lobby. “Good evening, Mr. Harper,” the old man stated.
He lifted his chin in a hello and then stopped. “Hey, Tim, you didn’t happen to see two Asian guys come through here a few minutes ago, did you?”
Tim scratched his chin through a clump of white hairs and nodded slowly. “Maybe. I saw three men that I don’t remember seeing before come through the lobby about ten minutes ago, couldn’t see if they were Oriental.” The non-politically correct word didn’t bother Grady personally, but it probably wasn’t what the building’s management wanted him to use. He didn’t want Tim to get in trouble because of it later on, so he’d have to talk to him about it when he had time.
“They had the code for the elevator though,” Tim continued. “So I figured they were going up to see somebody they knew. Is there a problem? Do I need to call the police?”
Grady held up a hand and smiled. “No. I was just asking if you saw a couple of guys. You didn’t happen to see what floor those guys went to did you?”
“No, Mr. Harper. I didn’t.” He pointed to the ancient corded tan phone on his desk. “You sure I don’t need to call the police, just to be safe?”
“It’s fine. They were probably going to meet someone upstairs, like you said.” Grady patted the old man’s desk. “See you later, Tim.”
“Good night, Mr. Harper.”
Grady considered taking the stairs to the eleventh floor where his apartment sat, but reconsidered. There was no sense in getting winded if something actually was up. He waited patiently for the elevator, watching the lobby behind him in the stainless steel doors’ reflection.
Finally, the elevator chimed and he stepped into the empty box. His finger lingered over the ‘11’ button for a moment, and then he changed his mind, holding the ‘10’ button down until it lit up. “No sense in walking into an ambush like a country bumpkin,” he muttered under his breath, and then immediately felt silly for talking out loud to himself. As a further precaution, he also hit the ‘11’ button to hear if the people upstairs—who may or may not even be there—would do anything.
When the doors opened on the tenth floor, he stepped out and looked around. No one was in the hallway, so he waited until the doors closed and the elevator continued to the eleventh floor. He heard the faint chime of the car arriving above. No sounds of struggle or preemptive gunfire reached him and he shook his head. That shit only happened in movies.
Grady walked confidently and purposefully down the hallway as if he were accustomed to being on the tenth floor. When he came to the exit stairwell, he glanced around once more to ensure that the corridor behind him was still clear. He depressed the locking bar on the door to the stairwell slowly and then slipped quietly inside, shutting the door soundlessly behind him.
He pressed himself against the outside wall, sliding along as he stepped softly up the stairs. Grady reached the landing and peeked around the curve. The stairwell was empty, so he began to walk up quickly.
Wait!
A tuft of black hair passed in front of the window in the door leading to the eleventh floor. Grady stopped and retreated a few steps to where he was less visible from the window, but could still see. After a moment, the person he’d seen earlier passed by the window again. This time, Grady saw the eyes of a small Asian man as he raised himself higher to see through the window. Satisfied the stairwell was empty, he lowered himself down so that only the top of his head was visible once more.
Grady waited until the man repeated the movement again a couple of minutes later. He was definitely watching the stairwell.
When the guy turned away, Grady rushed up the stairs to the side of the door. He glanced down; the door opened toward him into the stairwell, so there wasn’t an option to smash the guy behind the door… He had a momentary thought about that same thing happening to him, but pushed it aside. The guy on the other side of the door was five-foot-three, a hundred and twenty—maybe. It wasn’t a concern for him at five-eleven, two-ten.
Since beating the shit out of the lookout with the backside of the door wasn’t an option, Grady dipped under the window to reposition near the handle. He watched the window, concerned that the angle would be off and he couldn’t see the guy, but when he stood on his tiptoes once again, Grady yanked the door inward with his left hand.
Springing up, he snatched the lookout by the throat and hauled him into the stairwell, crushing his windpipe. A knife appeared instantly in the smaller man’s hand and Grady barely got his opposite hand up in time to block the jab, but he missed the thin arm, allowing the man to strike again if he didn’t end this quickly.
He squeezed harder on his adversary’s throat and then smashed the back of his head viciously against the wall. The knife clattered to the concrete floor and the fight began to drain from him. Grady rammed his opponent’s head one more time, then dropped the unconscious man. Using the guy’s shoelaces, he tied his hands behind his back around a thick pipe running up the wall in the stairwell.
He glanced at the man’s features; he was definitely Korean, but it was impossible to determine whether he was from the North or one of our supposed allies in the South. What was apparent, though, was that the man was well trained. Grady had clearly gotten the jump on the guy and he just rolled with it. If it hadn’t been for the American’s size and strength, the smaller man could have done some serious damage at the drop of a hat. Grady knew the type. Special Forces, lifelong fighters, and bodyguards were the only types of people who were trained to react like that, without a moment’s hesitation like this guy had done.
He peeked through the window and then pulled the door open. His apartment was about five or six doors down on the left. He had a moment to think that the situation was entirely surreal. The fact that he’d accepted an under the table contract to infiltrate a North Korean government facility and now he was fighting Koreans in his apartment building told him that there was a mole somewhere in this operation.
That was a problem in itself. As far as he knew, the only people who knew about the contract were the team members, Pete Thompson, and Bill Kizer. If one of them was selling information, they were all in trouble. He preferred to think that it was the Brits, or even someone from the Agency, who’d sold them out. It was a mystery for later. Right now, he had to put a stop to the team in his apartment.
Fuck! That wasn’t good. He put those thoughts aside for now. Letting himself be distracted was a good way to get dead.
Chi-Chi bounded from side to side on the sidewalk, going from bush to trashcan, and then over to a bus vestibule before making his way to a grate blowing warm air from the Metro tunnels below. The dog’s energy was inexhaustible, even if Hannah’s wasn’t.
“Chi-Chi, stop,” she scolded, reeling his leash in tighter.
He pranced along beside her, anxious for the slack in his leash that he knew she’d eventually give him when she got tired of holding him back.
Hannah walked her usual evening route, a three-mile loop that took her down by the Capitol along the war memorials and back home. It helped her to clear her mind, and Chi-Chi obviously needed the exercise after being cooped up in the house all day.
She went through the mental checklist of things she needed to do before her newly formed team flew to Japan this weekend, time to be determined. First, and always on her mind, was little Chi-Chi. She’d called and scheduled an extended boarding with his groomer. Her best guess was that they’d be gone three to four weeks, so she booked six, just to be on the safe side.
Next, Hannah had to tell her mom that she was leaving the country for an unknown length of time, so she’d called and scheduled dinner with her for that evening. Her dad was on a golfing trip in Florida, probably scouting out the neighborhoods for when they eventually decided to make the full-time flight southward. She glanced at her watch; she was going to cut it close. Need to speed up this walk, she thought.
She kept Chi-Chi’s leash tight and increased her pace to a few steps below a power walk. Continuing with her list, she needed to pre-pay April’s rent, probably May as well, and hold her mail at the post office. She’d also need to consider putting her utilities into low-usage. Then there was the packing. How the hell was she supposed to fit a month’s worth of clothes into a rucksack? They were supposed to be going undercover, so it wasn’t like she could just wear a military uniform every day and spot clean herself with baby wipes. That long of a mission and she’d have to shower or else risk getting a nasty, potentially life-threatening infection—the joys of being a woman.
Finally, there was her Jeep. She supposed she could just leave it in her parking spot at the apartment. But she knew from previous deployments that leaving a car parked in the same spot for long periods of time, even in a normally safe parking lot, only invited criminals looking to break in to an easy target—or worse, vandals who just wanted to cause as much destruction as possible. Maybe her mom would let her keep the Wrangler at her place, it didn’t take up a lot of room.
She made it home and jogged up the stairs to her apartment—she hated taking the elevator when the stairs were a built-in exercise platform right outside her door. Chi-Chi bounded up the stairs happily, he knew that the end of the walk meant a treat.
The inside of her home wasn’t necessarily Spartan, but the studio apartment didn’t lend itself to a lot of clutter. She had a full-sized couch in her television-slash-yoga room—which was a win in her book for a downtown apartment—a small café table with two chairs at the end of her galley-style kitchen, a nook that served as her bedroom, and a bathroom that boasted a tub, not just a shower. Not bad for four hundred sixty-two square feet and only thirty-eight hundred bucks a month.
Her bedroom held a modest queen-sized bed with a light blue upholstered fabric headboard that she offset with tan pillow cases, white sheets and a white down comforter. The bed was miraculous, as always, since she made it every day. She’d been a cadet at West Point when Admiral William McRaven gave his famous commencement speech about the keys to success in life. One of those was to make your bed every day. Accomplishing that simple task would allow you to want to complete another task and another throughout the day. It was a message that she’d taken to heart—even after leaving the Academy and no longer being forced to do so.
Unfortunately, it had been all too easy to make her bed each morning for the last year since she only shared it with Chi-Chi. Her dry spell could officially be labeled a drought at this point.
Hannah had made the excuse that she was deployed all the time with the 160th at first, then it was that she was getting out of the Army and it wouldn’t be fair to a guy if she moved away, then it was that she was trying to get settled in DC. She had an excuse for everything, even now, when she’d gone on a few casual dates, she hadn’t allowed things to progress beyond a good night peck on the cheek. She wasn’t a prude—far from it if she thought about her extremely wild lieutenant days—but she wasn’t willing to waste her time with bullshit.
“Maybe I should add getting laid to my to-do list, huh, Chi-Chi?” she called from the bathroom as she touched up her makeup. The dog barked at hearing his name.
“Is that a yes or a no?” This time Chi-Chi didn’t respond. She should have fucked Grady the night before, Hannah mused. Just to get the juices flowing down there once more.
She only took a few minutes to get ready and then picked Chi-Chi up, snuggling his head in the crook of her neck. “Momma’s gotta go to dinner. You be a good boy,” she told him, setting him down lightly on the couch.
Hannah turned on the television, so Chi-Chi wouldn’t get lonely and left the lamp beside the couch on for him. She glanced once more around her apartment, everything was put away, nothing that he could chew or get hurt on.
She closed and locked the door to her perfectly organized little home. It was the perfect place for her and Chi-Chi; she had everything she needed. Right?
Grady padded silently down the hallway to his apartment. He glanced at the door. It was pulled tight, so he continued on to the elevator. Nobody waited there to jump him as he’d feared. He peered down the hall until it turned a corner and he couldn’t see anymore. Besides the guy at the stairwell door, he was fairly certain that there were no more lookouts.
He held the unconscious Korean’s knife along the inside of his forearm with the cutting side of the blade facing outward. If any of his neighbors were to look into the hallway, they wouldn’t notice that he had a weapon. He cursed himself again for not carrying a sidearm, but he’d never needed to have one. Before tonight he’d thought the risk of getting caught in DC with a weapon—registered or not—was too great.
He’d have to rectify that mistake in the future.
As he neared his apartment, Grady wondered if old Tim, the security guard in the lobby, was correct that there were three of the intruders. The man’s shoddy memory was the only intel he had on these guys, besides his own discovery that they most likely were Korean Special Forces. Were there more of them?
He considered calling Pete Thompson for backup, but quickly discarded the idea. It would take too long for any of the Havoc guys to make it all the way out to Petworth, and time was of the essence. These guys were here to get intel on the op and if he didn’t stop them before that happened, the mission could be further compromised.
Grady turned the corner and rapidly crossed the last ten feet to his door. He ducked low, avoiding the peephole in case they observed the hallway through that. With the door shut tightly, his idea of theatrically kicking it open to catch the men off guard was shot. He reached out slowly, trying the handle.
Locked.
He shook his head in frustration. Of course it was locked. His keys jingled slightly as they came out of his pocket. It wasn’t much, but an attentive lookout would have heard the sound. The key slid silently in the lock and he turned it, simultaneously twisting the handle. He surged upward, pushing hard against the door with his shoulder. And then came to a sudden, jarring halt as the security chain reached the end of its length with a loud thud that echoed down the hallway.
Inside his apartment, excited voices spoke quickly in a language that he didn’t recognize. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that it was Korean.
Grady took a few steps back and slammed his shoulder into the door. The sound of cracking wood rewarded his effort. He repeated the process four more times, the chain’s anchoring screws finally tearing free from the doorjamb on the fifth hit.
The door flew inward on its hinges and Grady rushed inside. The living room was empty. His mind registered that his laptop screen glowed on the kitchen table, and beyond that, the window to the fire escape was open.
He ignored both, searching his apartment quickly in case the men were hiding, ready to jump him when he wasn’t looking.
“Everything alright in there?” a woman called from his open doorway. “I called the cops, so you better get out of the building.”
<
br /> Grady cursed and strode out of the bedroom into the dinette. One of his neighbors, the newer one that he’d only seen a few times, stood silhouetted in the doorway holding a field hockey stick. It looked more like a shillelagh than a piece of sports gear.
“Everything’s okay,” Grady told her. “I had a break in.”
“They take anything?” she asked, seeming genuinely concerned as she lowered her cudgel.
“I don’t know yet.”
“I called the cops,” she offered again.
“Thanks,” he replied, looking around the main living area for any obvious missing items. Then he turned and noticed a small rectangular popup window on his laptop screen.
He rushed over and tried to make sense of the Asian characters displayed on the laptop. It didn’t mean anything to him, so he pulled out his cell phone and took a snapshot for one of Havoc’s analysts to examine. Looking at his phone to ensure the image was clear, he noticed an odd shape on the side of the laptop.
A small USB device was inserted into one of the ports. He jerked it out and the computer beeped. Another popup window appeared. “FILE TRANSFER INTERRUPTED. TRY AGAIN?”
The cursor hovered over the “YES” radial button.
“Goddamn it,” he grumbled, already dialing Pete’s number.
”Hey, Grady. What’s up?”
“We have a problem, Skipper.”
FOURTEEN
* * *
TOKYO, JAPAN
ONE WEEK BEFORE THE OUTBREAK
The flight from Dulles International Airport to Tokyo took seventeen hours and they lost a day by the time the Boeing 777 landed on Sunday morning. Grady had ended up sitting beside Hannah for the trip, the two of them pretending to be newlyweds, while the rest of his team was spread throughout the plane.
They were tired and sore by the time they finally disembarked from the plane. The first thing that struck Grady was the cold as he walked along the jet bridge into the terminal. It was a deep, bone-chilling cold and he cursed his luck for coming on a mission to this part of the world in winter.