by Blake Banner
QUANTUM KILL
Copyright © 2020 by Blake Banner
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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One
He came at me with a speed that was hard to believe. He didn’t kick high to the head. He was too good for that. He stamped with his heel at my knee and as I pulled back he lunged, drove his right fist into my floating ribs, drove a left hook into my kidneys, trapped my right arm with the back of his left fist and smashed his right fist into my jaw. I went down on my back.
He smiled down at me. “You’re improving.” He said it without irony. “But with you it’s either forward or backward. Sometimes you can go to the side, you know? Step left, block my elbow, cross to the ear.”
“It might help,” I said as I pulled myself off the floor, “if you didn’t appear to be in two or three places at the same time.”
He wagged a finger at me and grinned. “You know what Bruce used to say, Harry: you have to be like water, fluid, moving, adapting to the shape of your attacker. When he expands, you contract. When he contracts, you expand. Then strike! Pow!”
“Pow?”
He lunged at me again, his fist flashing too fast for the eye to follow. “Pow!”
By the time I had reacted he was already doing a little dance, relaxing his arms by his side and laughing. “In Jeet Kune Do, we are intercepting the attack. For that your hands and feet need to be fast, that’s true,” he tapped his forehead, “but your mind needs to be faster. Your imagination and your fists need to talk to each other, without your intellect joining the conversation.”
I gave a small laugh. “How do I do that?”
Again the finger. “Don’t think! Don’t think about my attack, feel it.” He began to dance around me, ducking, diving, and weaving from side to side. “When I expand…” He threw a right cross and as I leaned out of the way he threw a left, fast. I weaved again. He said, “Good, good. When I expand you contract. Feel the attack. Where is it coming from? Feel it and intercept…”
And there it was. I knew the kick was coming. I didn’t think, I knew, and my feet went on their own. They sidestepped and as he drew in after the attack I exploded forward, trapping his right wrist with my left palm and driving a right cross over the top to his jaw.
Unfortunately, by then I had started thinking again and failed to feel his left hand grabbing my right wrist, the cutting edge of his right hand to my throat and the sweep that knocked both my feet from under me and landed me on my back again.
“That,” he said, pointing down at me, “was much better!”
He gave me his hand and pulled me up, talking as he did so. “In war you must think very carefully, but combat is too fast. Your intellect has to shut up and take a back seat. Release the Dark Dragon. You know what that means?”
“No.”
“Allow your unconscious, your dark mind, to fight for you. See, hear, above all feel, but do not have that internal dialogue going.” He put his finger to his lips. “Shh…silence the mind. And when you feel your opponent’s attack, explode to intercept it. Allow your unconscious mind to design and lead the attack. That is the Dark Dragon.”
“Thank you, Zamudio Shifu, I will try.”
He laughed and slapped my shoulder. “You remember Yoda? ‘Try not! Do, or do not. There is no try.’”
I smiled. “From Master Yoda himself, huh?”
He pointed across the tatami toward the changing room. “Your telephone is ringing.”
I arched an eyebrow at him and crossed the floor at a run. My jacket was hanging on a peg on the wall. I pulled my cell from the pocket and saw it was Colonel Jane Harris, the head of operations.
“Yeah, Bauer.”
“Bauer, I have a job for you.”
“The brigadier said you were giving me some time off…”
“This takes precedence over everything else.”
“Yeah? Why? Says who?”
“You at home?”
“No.”
“Then get in that fancy car you bought yourself on the company card and drive to the Minneford Yacht Club, on City Island. There will be somebody waiting for you there. Do it now, Bauer.”
I crossed the gym back to where Zamudio was stretching.
“I have to go, Shifu.”
“Work?”
I nodded. I had known Zamudio for a long time and he knew what “work” meant. He crossed his legs into a loose half-lotus and wagged a finger at me.
“I do this in the gym, but you do this for real. I know when you are in the field, facing the reality of combat, you do not hesitate or think. You use the Dark Dragon. So why not in training?”
I smiled and shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe I have too much respect for you, Zamudio Shifu.”
I dressed, packed my sports bag and stepped out into the New York fall night. Valhalla Drive was dark and quiet. Two streetlamps were visible through the black foliage of trees I could not identify. And out over the water, half of a moon hung low in the sky, tingeing a straggly cloud with silver light. I slung my bag in the trunk of the Cobra and paused a moment to smell the air. It smelt like rain, maybe a storm, but not yet. Out, over the Atlantic. I climbed behind the wheel, fired up the massive 427 Ford big bore engine, heard the seven hundred and fifty horses pawing the blacktop and growled away toward the Bruckner Boulevard. I followed it east across the bay onto Shore Road, and then turned south down City Island Road, all the way to the yacht club.
I found a space to park and pushed through the white picket gate to walk down the path to the clubhouse. The air was rich with those sounds you only hear around boats: the rhythmic slap and clang of shrouds on metal masts, the hum and moan of the breeze through the rigging, and the lapping of small waves against hulls. I believed I could distinguish the sound of wooden hulls from steel and fiberglass, but I also believed I was kidding myself.
As I approached the door a shadow stepped out in front of me. The guy was big, maybe six-two, with powerful shoulders and a narrow waist. His bearing was military, but right now there was no menace in his movements. As I approached, light from inside picked out the features of his face.
“You Harry Bauer?”
“Who’s asking?”
“First Lieutenant Fisher, Marine Corps. Are you Harry Bauer?”
“Are you going to tell me your first name, Lieutenant?”
He frowned, lik
e there was something wrong with me. “No, sir.”
“Then quit calling me Harry Bauer. I am Mr. Bauer, you’re Lieutenant Fisher. Now, take me to your leader, Lieutenant.”
He led me through an empty lobby where a reception desk stood in semi-darkness, up a flight of broad steps and onto a landing where plate-glass doors showed a darkened dining room. They slid open to admit us and I followed him among tables set with white linen to a brick arch that gave onto a comfortable bar illuminated by fat lamps on lamp tables, set beside heavy leather armchairs and sofas. The only occupants of the bar were Brigadier Alexander “Buddy” Byrd, Captain Jane Harris and a guy in a white jacket standing patiently behind the bar. The lieutenant let me in, closed the door and left. The brigadier smiled and stood, with his hand outstretched.
“Harry, very good of you to come. Can’t abide all this elbow-bumping nonsense.” We shook. The colonel watched impassively and offered me a nod when I greeted her, while the brigadier signaled the waiter.
“Macallan, double, straight up.”
She was drinking a gin and tonic. He had a Scotch. I sat.
“I thought you were giving me some time off.”
The brigadier sighed softly through his nose and watched the waiter’s hands as he delivered my drink.
“Heaven knows you’ve earned it,” he said, once the waiter had gone. “But something has come up which, not to put too fine a point on it, requires rapid and decisive action.”
The colonel spoke to the lime in her gin and tonic. “We have other operatives who could handle it, but the brigadier felt you were best suited.”
“I’m flattered,” I spoke to the colonel, then turned to the brigadier, “I am also very tired.”
“I know you are, Harry. I appreciate that. But as I say, this is an exceptional case.”
I took a sip of the whisky. “What makes it exceptional?”
He gave his head a single shake. “I can’t tell you.”
I leaned back in my chair and sucked my teeth for a second. Before I could speak, the colonel said: “This is not a hit, Harry. All we want you to do is go to Canada, collect somebody and deliver them to DC.”
I laughed out loud. The brigadier looked embarrassed. The colonel looked pissed. I said, “What, I’m a babysitter now? Haven’t you got a couple of tame cops on your payroll you can send?”
The colonel set down her glass on the table.
“If we are asking you to do it, you may assume it requires your particular skills. It is imperative that this person reaches DC safely. We have never undertaken a job of this type before…”
“No,” I said, interrupting her, “that’s because we specialize in assassination, not babysitting.”
The brigadier looked at me with serious eyes and spoke softly.
“Be quiet, would you, Harry? And listen to what the colonel has to say.”
I shut my trap and listened.
“You cannot know anything about this person, either when you go to collect them, or after you have delivered them. That will give you some idea of the importance of this person.
“When you depart for Canada you will be given the basic, minimum information you need to be able to collect the package and bring it with you.”
I nodded a few times, glanced at the brigadier, who pretended not to notice me, and turned back to the colonel.
“There is some basic information I am going to need now. If I don’t get it I won’t do the job. I am not putting my life and the client’s on the line in a state of ignorance.”
The brigadier said, “What do you absolutely need to know?”
“Is somebody going to try to hit the package?”
He looked at the colonel. She said, “We have removed the package from where they lived and sent them by a very circuitous route to a very remote place where nobody knows them. The move was conducted by professionals who knew what they were doing. The chances that the package is at risk are minimal.”
“So this person is being hunted, either to be abducted or killed, which?”
The brigadier said, woodenly, “Probably both.”
“Sir!” The colonel was scowling at him with her lips stretched into a tight line. The brigadier frowned. “He needs to know the score, Jane.”
She sighed. “There may be a couple of agencies looking for this person. Some will want them alive, others will want this person terminated.”
“The US Marshals, the Feds, they have a lot of experience and expertise doing this kind of thing. This is not my job.”
The brigadier grunted a noisy sigh.
“Harry, we are not putting you out to pasture. Personally I think you are at the height of your game. This is not a second-rate job. On the contrary, it could be the most important job we are ever likely to be commissioned. We need you to do it because you are the best. And I can personally guarantee you a handsome bonus at the end.”
He wrote a figure on a card and handed it to me. He was right, it was a handsome bonus.
I puffed out my cheeks with un-enthusiasm.
“OK, so tell me why you’re hiding the fact that it’s a woman.”
The brigadier laughed but the colonel looked mad. She snapped: “How did you know that?”
“Because you’re trying too damned hard. If it was a guy you’d say ‘he’ and be done with it. But you can only be trying this hard if it’s a woman.”
“Absolutely spot on.” He smiled. “You see, Jane? He doesn’t miss a thing.” He turned to me. “It is indeed a woman. We had preferred to give you as little information as possible until you were due to leave, for the safety of the person in question.”
“Have I got a choice?”
He spread his hands. “Well, in one sense, of course you have! But in another, no, not really. We need you to do this, Harry, and we will be very grateful. This woman must arrive in DC safe and sound.”
“When?”
“Day after tomorrow you depart her home in Canada. I have given DC approximately a week after that as a delivery date.”
“Day after tomorrow? So when were you planning on giving me the sensitive material?”
The colonel answered. “As soon as you quit being an asshole and accept the job.”
“Fine, I’ll do it. Who is she and where is she?”
“No name. She is a woman. She is staying at an address outside Calgary. You will be given the address when you leave New York. Not before. You will ask her no questions and you will avoid all unnecessary conversation. You will choose the most convenient route, and you will not inform us, but you will get her to DC no later than seven days after departure from her home in Canada. Any questions?”
“Yeah, how do I get into Canada. There are restrictions…”
The brigadier said shortly, “It’s been arranged.”
“What about coming back?”
“You’ll both be provided with American passports and documentation.”
“When?”
“It will be delivered to you tomorrow first thing in the morning.”
“You say it’s up to me what route we take?”
“That’s correct.”
“What if I want to come in from outside?”
The colonel snapped. “What do you mean? This is not a game, Bauer!”
“I know it’s not a damned game, Colonel! It happens to be my damned life on the line. What if I want to bring her in from Finland or Latvia, one of those low-risk countries.”
The brigadier spoke before the colonel could open her mouth. “That’s not a problem, Harry. Just make sure you give us time to make the necessary travel arrangements. Some countries can be pretty tricky at the moment. Did you have anywhere in mind?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I was just thinking aloud. What about weapons?”
“You can take your Sig and your knife into Canada, but I can’t guarantee you’ll be able to bring them back. Again, give me as much notice as you can.”
Two
The brigadier needed to pull
strings at the border post where I was going to cross, partly so I could get in despite the COVID restrictions, and partly so they wouldn’t check me for weapons. But aside from that, he had insisted that I tell nobody, not even him, what route I was going to take into or out of Canada. That suited me fine, though he had also insisted that I keep all communication with him and Cobra down to zero, unless there was a real crisis—like I was dead or dying.
I had been given the package’s address at the last minute before I left my house at five AM. I took the Range Rover P525 V8 because I figured it would be less conspicuous than the AC Cobra—or even the VW Golf which I had given a serious makeover. It was going to be roughly two thousand, three hundred miles, almost five thousand round trip, and I thought I’d be glad of the comfort by the time I got there. She was in a small town by the name of Irricana, some twenty-five miles northeast of Calgary, at the foot of the Columbia Mountains.
I crossed the border at Blackpool and took the Autoroute 15 to Montreal. I like Montreal, especially in the fall. It has an old-world elegance you don’t find so often anymore in this hive-world of soulless, standardized pragmatism, especially in Europe. But on this visit I had no time to do anything but cruise through the broad streets and the mid-morning traffic, headed west.
I followed Autoroute 15 for about thirty miles, through the kind of lush, green landscapes that, if you’re on vacation, make you stop your car and get out to look and go “Wow!” And at Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts I merged onto the Trans-Canada Highway, settled back and relaxed. I still had about two thousand miles to go, two days of solid driving.
Just outside Mont Tremblant I pulled off the road into the parking lot of a Tim Hortons. There was a superabundance of lawn and trees, and the sky had that rich blue that comes just before the heavy gray of winter. I had lunch, filled a flask with black, sweet coffee and bought a couple of burgers and some chocolate to keep me going for the next eleven hours.
Canadian cops tend to be pretty human, but the speed limits are tight and strict. Sixty-two miles per hour is the maximum speed limit. If you’re out on open roads and the conditions are good, they’ll turn a blind eye to seventy-five, but if they think you’re putting lives at risk they’ll stop you and impound your car on the spot. So I was going to have to take it easy and not push my luck, and I did the next stretch of three hundred and forty miles to Kenogami Lake in five hours. By the time I got there and turned north, the sky was turning copper over vast pinewoods, and the road vanished up ahead, swallowed by the dense trees.