Face Off

by Robert Stanek

  The chief was shouting something Scott could almost hear. Movement near the heliport caught his eye.

  Edie let out an apologetic sigh. “Our escorts, I don’t know. I’m sorry, truly sorry. We barely got out ourselves. It was chaotic. The shooter took us by surprise.” She cast a worried look at Scott. “There was nothing I could do. Scott and I had to slip out another way or we might be wearing toe tags too.” More shouting and worried looks. “Look, you may need to smooth things over for us with the military and local authorities. Scott had a little—your team?” She paused. “I see... That’s good, I understand. Do you have a position on Jones?” She paused. “What? How is that possible? Do you have a last known?”

  Scott gulped at the air, his eyes not believing what he was seeing. Just as Edie was hanging up, he clamped a hand over her mouth and pulled her roughly to the ground. Her protestations and kicking didn’t do any good. He felt like a superhero and was as strong as one too, riding high on whatever she’d given him. “Stop it,” he hissed in her ear, his eyes wide from what he was seeing. “Look!”

  When she finally saw what he saw, she stopped struggling. “What?!” Her fingers groped and pried his away from her mouth. “It’s her, the mystery woman, isn’t it? But what’s with that getup? It’s like she robbed a Victoria’s Secret.”

  Scott nodded, certain it might be, if the mystery woman had put on a black wig. “Looks like we’re not the only ones who want that helicopter.”

  “Wied Babu?” Edie said. “Isn’t that near Blue Grotto?”

  Scott frowned. “It is. What about it?”

  Edie’s brows bunched together. “It’s where Jones was headed.”

  He slipped the Beretta out of its hiding place and clicked off the safety. “You ready for this?”

  “Oh, you don’t know the half of it.” Edie readied her pistol. “This bitch is going to get a bullet between the eyes.”

  Chapter 13

  Mediterranean Sea

  Morning, Wednesday, 20 June

  “The who and the what are everything,” Alexis said to herself as she rolled up the sleeve on her left arm. She’d gotten herself off the navy ship, no thanks to the cleaner the director sent after her.

  She was angry with herself and had grown tired of watching and waiting from her vantage point inside Saint Vincent De Paul Residence. Her plan had been to put the director out of the picture by appeasing him. He cared only about the job and its completion. By eliminating the target, she would have bought time. Time for herself. Time for the world. A scant handful of hours perhaps, but it would have been enough. She really only needed until nightfall, for the clock was ticking, counting down to an inevitable tomorrow.

  She sensed the surprise in his voice when she spoke to him. Surprise that she would call. Surprise that she lived. Surprise that she wasn’t where he expected her to be.

  The calls though were all about pushing his buttons enough to make things personal—or at least more personal than they were. He may have told her that she was like a daughter to him, but she’d known better. She wasn’t a fool. The director was a man who ordered death with a snap of his fingers. His only care now that the task was botched would be to see it done himself and that was something she counted on.

  “Eyes everywhere. Don’t forget, don’t forget,” Alexis whispered, flicking the crook of her elbow twice. There was no other way. He knew where she was, but would arrive too late to do anything to stop her plans. She counted on him being the creature of habit he was. She knew exactly where his ship was off the coast of France and exactly how long it would take his yacht to get to her if he tried.

  “Going off the reservation,” she said, chuckling to herself as she injected the needle into the vein she’d readied. Pushing down the plunger, she felt the liquid coolant shoot into her arm. Demerol wasn’t her pain medication of choice, but it would do until she needed to start on the liquid Oxycodone.

  The air in the tiny space was stifling. Sweat dripped down her face. Her shirt was soaked too, especially under the pits of her arms.

  The blade missed her heart but only by millimeters. Alexis pulled up her shirt, bit into the emergency pack with her teeth and ripped it open. Then she pulled off the blood-soaked bandages and put the new gauze in place. Rolls of medical tape were beside her on the floor and she wrapped the tape across her stomach and around her back.

  The girl was going to pay for what she’d done. She didn’t care what would be said. It was too late for anyone’s ministrations. Her earlier hesitation almost cost her everything. The only person she trusted now was herself.

  What happened afterward though was jarring, primal. The girl picked up the knife after letting it drop to the floor. Then she knelt down beside her and whispered. Not the last words that were her trademark, written in blood beside her kills as often as not, but something else entirely. Something that was almost a kindness. “Your fight is over, struggle no more,” she said. The words were a mercy. A mercy from the beautiful demon looking down on her and seeing perhaps herself in that moment.

  Alexis felt a chill. She’d never forget what followed. She expected a finishing blow. Instead, the girl took the blade in both hands and pressed it into her own stomach, grinning while she sliced and jabbed. After, the girl staggered off toward the forward section, leaving her behind to bleed out on the floor.

  Wiping her bloody hands on the boxes beside her, she forced herself to stand. A sink at the back of the medical closet helped her wash the rest away. A white hospital coat rested on a hook to the right of the sink. She removed it and slipped it on.

  Opening the door a crack, she paused to assess and then slipped out into the hall. She needed a weapon if she was going to see out the day and she knew exactly where to get one.

  She went to the stairwell and climbed to the second floor. Evers was in a room at the end of the hall, a pair of security escorts had marked the place for her before. Now though, they were coming down the hall with Evers.

  Without hesitation, she opened the door to her left and stepped inside. With the door between her and them, she waited until the sound of the wheelchair and feet faded.

  “X'qed taghmel?” an elderly man said, sitting up in his hospital bed.

  “Mur lura ghall-irqad.” Go back to sleep.

  “Jien ma ghajjenin,” he said protesting.

  She stepped from the door, all expression gone from her face. Picking up the pillow from the empty bed opposite him, she held it out as if she was going to give it to him. “Min hu li fl-istampa?” she said, asking him about the picture on the stand beside the bed.

  “Tan-neputijiet tieghi.” My grandchildren.

  She could never imagine living long enough to have so many grandchildren. When he smiled at her, she pushed the pillow into his face and held it there while his feeble hands fought to free himself. The deed done, she fluffed the pillow and tossed it onto the other bed.

  After opening the door, she kicked the foot locks off all four corners of the hospital bed and then rolled the old man into the hall, keeping as far to the left as she could without hitting the walls. Evers hadn’t gone far. His escorts were standing vigil outside the men’s room. She passed the first guard, a little too close, turning her lips into a pout as their eyes met. Death was a sad thing.

  The bed in her hands veered toward the wall, so close the rear wheel rolled over the second guard’s foot. “Mi dispiace, mi dispiace tanto!” she said in Italian and she was sorry as she reached for his gun, flipping the safety, chambering a round, and firing even before she fully yanked the gun from its holster.

  While the knee-capped guard howled, she swiveled and planted a round in the other’s chest. A second swivel and a third shot finished what she started.

  “Knock knock,” she said, softly rapping against the men’s room door. “Ready or not, here I come.”

  Chapter 14

  Mediterranean Sea

  Late Morning, Wednesday, 20 June

  Scott heard the wind up of the
helicopter’s engine. He approached from the north while Edie approached from the south. Both were heading diagonally from the rear, out of the line of sight and peripheral vision. Industrial buildings around the heliport made a loose U with an unobstructed view to the east.

  Thankfully, cold starting a chopper wasn’t like starting a car. You couldn’t just turn a key and go. Everything needed a moment to warm up and with the mystery woman and her gun doing the talking the pilot was shaking visibly.

  Their steps were in sync. He braced himself before sliding up to the door, flinging it open and shouting, “Fermare! Don’t move!”

  The woman pressed her gun to the pilot’s right temple. “Back away or I put a bullet in his brain.”

  Scott didn’t hear the shot ring out, but he heard the bullet shatter the windshield and strike the center console. The woman rolled out of the chopper at the same time the pilot did, dropping to the ground and trying to spin away, but Scott was too quick and his gun was pressed against the back of her head before she got in two steps.

  “Drop it, move slowly,” he said. “Put up your hands.”

  Edie was on the pilot instantly, grabbing him by the collar and whipping him around the front of the chopper to Scott.

  A bullet struck the ground at Scott’s feet. The second shot helped him identify the general location of the shooter, but he saw nothing where the shooter should be. In truth, he hadn’t even heard the sound of the gun firing, only the sound of the bullets striking.

  Silencers could be pretty good but they didn’t really make gunshots silent. They muffled and distributed the sound, making it difficult to locate the gun and the shooter, but not impossible. With a scoped rifle, there was a cost to the silence. Bullet speed and distance, usually.

  “You put your hands up,” the raven-haired beauty said, but Scott wasn’t buying any of her desperado act. She didn’t carry herself like a hired thug.

  “I don’t think so,” he started to say, just as another round was planted at his feet. The shot, like the previous one, seemed to come out of nowhere and anyone that good with a scope and a trigger had his full attention. He raised his good hand, letting the Berretta swivel around his thumb as he did so. “Okay, okay, I got the message.”

  The pilot said something in Italian that Scott didn’t quite hear. Edie responded by bouncing his head off the side of the helicopter. But a round planted at her feet got her to surrender her weapon. Unlike Scott, who held onto his pistol, she dropped hers to the ground and kicked it over to the woman.

  “You’re a hard man to kill, Mr. Evers,” the woman said, collecting the guns.

  Soon Edie, the pilot and Scott stood facing the woman, lined up as if for a firing squad.

  A voice called out in greeting behind them. “I second that, Mr. Evers.”

  “You have me at a disadvantage,” Scott said, turning toward the sound of the voice. “You know my name, I don’t know yours.”

  The tall dark-haired man surveyed the scene with his green eyes. “Call me the director. It’s what others do.”

  “Okay, director,” Scott said. “I assume you’re him, are you not?”

  “Him,” the director said, playing with the word on his tongue, much as Scott had. “If you’re wondering whether I’m the one who’s working the strings, I can assure you things have gone as frighteningly awry as you think they have.”

  Scott stepped toward the director. In response, the woman pushed the barrel of her gun under his chin.

  “Now, now, Mila, we don’t want any more accidents,” the director said, sweeping away the gun. With the gun out of her hands and into the man’s, Mila crumbled to the ground in tears, practically popping out of her red bikini top as she did so. The director consoled her by reaching down and cupping a hand to the side of her face. To Scott, he said, “See what you’ve done?”

  Scott studied the director. “I’m guessing not long till the authorities arrive, better talk more quickly.”

  The director chuckled, raised his arms. “Look around. Do you see anyone coming to your rescue? You don’t even know what’s going on today, do you?”

  Scott moved beside Edie, who was strangely quiet. “Was this some ruse to get my attention? Well, you’ve got it.”

  “Today’s a new day. Yesterday, we were enemies, Mr. Evers. Today, we can be something else,” the director said, ejecting the round in the chamber, dropping the magazine into his hand and then twisting the gun around for Scott to take. “Truth be told, I’m as unhappy as you are about how things have turned out.”

  “Oh, we’re on to truths now, are we?” Scott said, glancing again at Edie. “Well then, how long until your sniper opens my head like a ripe cantaloupe?”

  The director let out a groan. “Dear God, it’s been a long couple of days. This little show wasn’t for your benefit I can assure you. Well, at least not at first. I also can assure you that our goals are now perfectly aligned.”

  “Aligned?” Scott said, his brows raising. “Perfectly?” He laughed out loud. “That’s not even remotely possible.”

  “I assure you it is not only possible, but true, Mr. Evers.” The director showed no emotion. “My operative betrayed me, Mr. Evers. I sent in another to try to clean up a horrendous mess. That operative failed as well. Suffice to say, at this point—”

  Scott shouted, anger flushing his face red, “You call the murder of dozens of civilians and soldiers a mess? Who the hell are you?”

  “Precisely the point,” the director said. “As I’ve already told you, what happened was a terrible, terrible mistake. I was betrayed, my resources were misappropriated. My operatives shall answer for this I assure you. It’s the best I can do. It’s all I can do.”

  Stepping in front of Edie, Scott slapped one of the spare magazines he was carrying into the Berretta, chambered a round and aimed directly at the director’s head. “Oh, I think there’s a whole helluva lot more you can do.”

  “Bravo, bravo!” the director said, clapping and grinning. “If you’re trying to make me kill you, Mr. Evers, you’re on the right track, but I would prefer to talk, to resolve this situation before something even worse happens.”

  Scott started to squeeze the trigger.

  “Don’t, Scott,” Edie said. “I think we should listen to what he has to say.”

  Chapter 15

  Mediterranean Sea

  Late Morning, Wednesday, 20 June

  The sound of the girl’s voice made the director think of times long since gone. Landing at the abandoned airfield to unload his men and equipment had been necessary due to airspace restrictions around Malta International, but he never expected his chartered helicopter to have mechanical difficulties afterward.

  It all seemed some kind of karmic justice for everything he’d done, until the moment he realized things were about to finally turn in his favor. The moment, when against all odds, Scott Evers swerved to the side of the road, got out of a white fiat, and walked right in front of the location where his men were setting up opposite the northeast end of the main runway.

  Initially, the director was in a panic. He thought they were after Mila, but he soon realized they were after the helicopter Mila was forced into chartering at gunpoint. At that moment, it was like God himself giftwrapped Evers and put a bow around his neck.

  The sinner in him was almost repentant for a lifetime of dishonesty and lying for a living. Almost.

  Into the silence, he finally said, “I think you should listen to the lady, Mr. Evers.”

  Evers lowered his gun. “I assume you don’t want to keep standing out here in the open as human targets either?”

  The director agreed, continuing to stand out in the open with guns wasn’t a good idea. They were outside the airport’s restricted zone, covered by the sound of engines from planes and cars, and shielded by several buildings, but there was no sense tempting fate.

  He signaled by swirling a finger in the air. Moments later a long black limo raced onto the heliport with Harry “Hark�
� Watkins at the wheel and Charles “Dutch” Adams in the front passenger seat. Both men got out to open the rear doors of the limo.

  “Get in, Mr. Evers,” the director said. Smiling and tipping his head to the girl, he added, “You too.”

  Evers nodded to the girl, who got in first, and then he slid in behind her. The director got in after Mila and sat beside her. The pilot who thought he was getting off lucky, was stuffed into the trunk by Hark, who then got in and drove away.

  “First,” Evers said. “I have to know what your plans are. Do you intend to kill the pilot? I recognize well trained men when I see them. What is your sniper planning to do?”

  The director, seated backward, facing Scott, smiled. “Nothing will happen to the pilot, but it’s not like I can just let him go until all this is resolved.” He paused. “What the sniper does depends on what else happens today. Trust me when I say no one who doesn’t deserve to die will die. We have to contain this, however, and I think you’ll agree on that point at the least.” He readied three cups in the limo’s bar, used a pair of tongs to drop two cubes of ice into each, and then reached out toward the bottles. “What are you drinking?”

  “I’m not,” Evers said, “but you go right ahead.”

  The director turned to the girl.

  “Scotch,” she said.

  He poured hers and then gave himself an equal measure. To Evers, he said as he poured Scotch into a third glass, “I really think you should reconsider. This single malt is a rare stock and you’re going to want a drink after you hear what I have to tell you.”

  Evers waved the glass away.

  “Suit yourself,” the director said, raising his glass. “Salute!”

  The girl clinked her glass to his and returned his toast. “Salute!”

  Her eagerness only made him distrust her more. Evers, on the other hand, seemed to be someone who spoke his mind. “Where to begin?” He tried to explain about the job. The job that was a contract on a man’s life. “It was business, nothing personal,” he said finishing, “and as I told you, yesterday’s business. Today, we need to work together to correct a terrible wrong.”