The Blowback Protocol

by Lars Emmerich

  Sam awoke from a fitful slumber. It took her a moment to regain her bearings. She was holed up in an impoverished flat one floor beneath El Anwar’s penthouse estate, awaiting a reasonable opportunity to escape without being nabbed by the muscle squad that El Anwar had undoubtedly called in to find her.

  The flat’s occupants hadn’t returned, a continued stroke of good fortune. She’d been asleep for just under an hour, and during that time the building’s sounds had quieted as evening turned to night. She heard an occasional bark from a small dog several floors down and heard the creak and groan of under-insulated plumbing contracting in the cool evening air. But there were no human sounds to speak of. It was as good a time as any, she figured.

  She rose, stretched, twisted her torso, and did several squats to get her heart rate up and shake the remaining cobwebs from her mind. Then she pulled a knife from her sock, hoping to solve any potential conflict without the noise of a gunshot, and made her way through the Spartan flat that had been her hideout for the past few hours. She listened for a moment at the hallway door then opened it slowly.

  She walked silently through the hall to the stairwell door, listened again, and peered through the rectangular window cut into the door near the jamb. Seeing no one, she pushed gently on the release bar. It moved an inch or two, then stopped. Sam applied more force.

  Clack. The retreating latch’s loud report echoed in the hallway and stairwell. Sam cursed silently and moved through the door as quickly and quietly as possible.

  She paused against the far wall, slowing her breathing, listening for signs that anyone had heard the noise. After a long moment, during which she was pursued only by figments of her imagination, she descended the stairway, knife clutched in her hand.

  As she made her way down the stairway floor by floor, the smells became stronger and more pungent, a slightly sickening mixture of rancid cooking oil, burnt meat of indistinguishable provenance, and piss. The smells combined with a painfully empty stomach to produce an altogether disagreeable effect. She needed fresh air.

  As floor after floor passed uneventfully, Sam’s tired mind turned from tactical matters to strategic. There had been no further updates from Dan regarding the Jackrabbit message she’d injected into the Doberman group’s communications network. The message’s terminus remained in Cagliari, reinforcing her decision to travel to Sardinia as quickly as possible. She couldn’t figure out how to apply any leverage to the CIA for information about their unexplained interest in her or about their relationship to the Doberman group, so pursuing the Doberman people seemed her best option.

  The group communicated in code, so she and Dan had uncertain knowledge of what their messages contained. They knew only that the recent missives included the code word “jackrabbit.” But Sam felt reasonably certain they were talking about her. She’d inserted herself into the middle of their business and had announced herself as a significant threat to their operations.

  In a way, that was good news. It made their next move somewhat predictable. The cleaner in Sardinia would undoubtedly travel to Libya to hunt her down, but she intended to be long gone by the time he arrived, and she intended to take full advantage of his absence in Sardinia to extract as much intelligence as possible about the Doberman organization. After all, in the digital age, an email address led almost without fail to a physical address. It required only a little bit of effort.

  Sam rounded the corner between the fourth and third floors and stopped dead in her tracks. A giant of a man paced in the stairwell. His back was turned to her. His shoulders were rolled forward and his elbows flared out from his sides, his joints evidently surrounded by too much muscle to attain a normal posture.

  Sam tightened her grip on the knife. She took a small, quiet step backward, aiming to retreat up the stairs and regroup, but that wasn’t in the cards. Her left foot made the tiniest of scuffs against the uneven concrete floor and the giant whirled to face her.

  His voice came in a low rumble of rapid-fire Arabic. Sam caught the gist: “Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you”—a woman—“doing walking around unescorted after dark?”

  She intended to tell him that she was going to visit a sister’s apartment, but she couldn’t remember the Arabic words for “sister” or “apartment.”

  The man reached into a pocket and pulled out a phone. The jig was up.

  She lunged, leapt, and carried her rear foot forward in a vicious roundhouse kick toward the large man’s jaw. His arm flew upward in defense. Her foot smashed against his forearm, which felt stone solid. She’d put just about every ounce of her strength into the kick, but the man didn’t seem to budge.

  She sensed motion at the edge of her peripheral vision and instinctively dropped to her knees. A fist the size of a cooking pan sailed inches from her head. If the punch had connected, it would have broken her in half. There really was no way to win this fight fairly, she surmised.

  Sam let her downward momentum carry her all the way to the concrete floor. She had to roll to avoid a deadly but telegraphed kick, and she found herself positioned obliquely behind the big behemoth. There wasn’t much of the man’s critical infrastructure available to attack from that position . . . but there was enough.

  It took just a single slice with the cooking blade to sever the man’s heel cord. He fell to his knees. He grunted, but other than that, there was no acknowledgement that she had just maimed him. The guy was tough as nails. She dodged another improbably large fist and parried with a slashing cut to his slab-like forearm. She felt the blade push and then rip through a sizable chunk of meat, but again the man made no sound.

  “You should quit while you’re ahead,” Sam said, breathless from the exertion. She really wanted to shoot him between the eyes, but she feared the noise would bring more attention than she could possibly escape.

  “Infidel harlot,” came the heavily accented reply, followed by an off-balance and ill-considered kneeling lunge toward her, hands spread as if to clasp around her neck. It wouldn’t have taken much effort for him to sever her spine, and Sam was eager to avoid giving him the opportunity.

  Fortunately, the giant Libyan might have been strong and tough, but nimble he was not. Sam ducked, rolled beneath his outstretched arms, and came to rest abeam the giant’s hips. She twisted, swung her arm, and slammed the knife home into the small of his back. Warm blood flowed over her hand as she pulled the knife clear. His clock was ticking.

  She rose and backed away from him, knife brandished in front of her, lungs burning, legs a little shaky. “Stop now and you can get help,” she said. “You need a doctor. Um, tabib.” Why the Arabic word for “doctor” popped into her head while “sister” and “apartment” had eluded her just moments before was a mystery. “Otherwise, you could die,” she said.

  “Inshallah,” the man replied.

  Sam shook her head. There was no reasoning with some people. She decided to try to make the man’s last moments meaningful by helping her eviscerate the Doberman group. “El Anwar?” she asked, studying his face. Nothing registered. “Mercer?” she tried.

  Bingo. Anger flashed and the giant Libyan rolled, planted a knee and a fist on the ground, and tried to charge at her. But he was weakening and he had half the number of functioning appendages he’d started with. His effort was less than effective and Sam had plenty of time to whip up an extremely solid roundhouse kick. It landed at an angle against the bridge of the man’s nose, which gave way with a wet crunch. He fell in a heap of tangled limbs.

  Sam wasted no time searching him. Cell phone, cash, no identification, a small-caliber revolver strapped to an ankle holster. Why he hadn’t used the gun, Sam would never know, but people did strange things when you surprised them, and Sam wasn’t one to look a gift horse too closely in the mouth.

  She also found a set of car keys attached to a fob with a Mercedes logo. It looked stylish enough to be a late model. What kind of lowbrow knee-capper drove a new Benz around Tripoli? These guys must have pi
cked the right cookie jar to dip their fingers in, Sam thought.

  She made a much more careful exit from the building than she had managed earlier in the day. She spotted no one and made her way carefully to the parking garage. She pressed the button on the key fob, spotted the flash of parking lights several rows over, and made a stealthy approach to the goon’s car. If there was anyone else around, they did a good job of staying out of sight.

  Sam searched the car for signs of tampering. It wouldn’t do to survive a fight with a giant only to be blown up starting his car. Finding nothing, she sat in the driver’s seat, used the electrical adjustment to let her feet reach the pedals, held her breath, and pushed the ignition button.

  Sam sighed with relief as the engine turned over. She exited the parking garage, drove east along the Second Ring Road, turned north on Tariq Sayyidi al Misri Road, navigated around Martyr’s Square, and turned northwest onto Al Shat Road, a name that earned a mild guffaw. She drove a tad faster than the speed limit, relaxing a little bit more as each kilometer clicked away.

  The aftermath of the fight and flight left her mildly sick to her stomach. She needed food and rest, but she knew those things would be hard to come by over the next few days. And despite all that she had endured already, she had a feeling that the hard part of the whole thing was still ahead of her.

  22

  Hayward surfaced from unconsciousness in fits and starts. A throbbing at the base of his skull penetrated his awareness. He peeled his eyes open to discover that a deep blue blanket of darkness had been heaved over everything.

  His face rested on something hard and coarse with a mild mildew funk—a carpeted floor. He lifted his head and an explosion of pain rocked his senses. A wave of nausea crashed. He winced as he touched the cantaloupe-sized lump in the back of his head. A sharp sting pulsated on top of the dull ache. The skin had been broken and he was bleeding a bit.

  “Goddamn,” he said, his mind reabsorbing the context—his search of the Ferdinand-Xavier estate, the blood on the floor of the wine cellar, Katrin’s gold-and-diamond flower brooch, his frenzied road race to Malaga on the Costa del Sol, his search of the beach condo where, a few short months before, he and Katrin had spent a weekend in sublime entanglement.

  The safe. The ID card.

  The blow to the back of his head.

  He listened. If his malefactors were still within earshot, he didn’t want to alert them to his alertness . . . or quasi-alertness. He was still miles away from full capacity. His head hurt like hell, he had one arm in a cast, and they had probably taken away his pistol. His options were limited.

  He held his breath, straining to hear signs that he wasn’t alone, but only the distant hum of centralized air-conditioning filled the room.

  Faint moonlight spilled in through the window. Bookcases lined the walls. He smelled the ocean. Where had they taken him?

  He rolled over onto his side, wedged his body upward with his good arm, brought first one knee underneath him then the other. He entertained notions of standing, but only briefly. The movement made his head throb. The dark room spun.

  Hayward sat back on his haunches. His right buttock reported strong discomfort. He was sitting on something hard. He reached down and felt . . . seriously? Was he hallucinating? Had they really left his pistol?

  He grasped it by the handle. He could tell by its weight that it still contained a full magazine. His thumb confirmed the safety lever was still off, ready to fire. A lot of good it had done him before, but it was a good omen. It meant that he was unlikely to be entertaining company.

  He rose unsteadily and reached for a dark shadow with very straight edges to steady himself, which turned out to be a finely veneered desk. He let the wave of pain and nausea subside then stood to his full height, breathing into the vertigo that eased as his blood pressure adjusted.

  The ocean. The bookcases. The desk. The study. I’m still in the study in the condo! Joao Ferdinand-Xavier’s study, where Katrin had draped her gorgeous lines over the desk and offered herself, months before, and where Hayward had both filled and consumed her.

  Katrin. Dread filled him. How long had he been out? Minutes? Hours? They still had her, were still having their way with her, forcing her to endure . . . He stopped his mind from imagining the horrors, because it would only fill him with worry and guilt and impotence.

  He gripped the Beretta tightly in his hand, his finger extended at the side of the trigger guard and ready to spring instantly to the firing position, and walked slowly to the door. He peered out into the hallway. It was brighter than the study, filled with moonlight and dust motes and a small bric-a-brac table with family pictures. But no company.

  Hayward took his time searching the remainder of the condo. He was alone. The front door was closed and locked. He attached the security chain, then returned to the study, closed the window shade, and clicked on the desk lamp. All was in order. Nothing appeared misplaced. His eyes found the wall with the picture hanging ajar like a door, and nested within the picture’s extent, the safe. It too was open, thick and steel and serious.

  Hayward expected the safe to have been emptied of its contents. It was, presumably, the reason his attacker had allowed him to open the safe before knocking him out cold. The attacker wasn’t interested in Hayward, but was undoubtedly interested in the contents of the safe, which implied something ominous.

  Had the Agency assholes planted Katrin’s brooch in the wine cellar? Did they understand its significance and surmise, correctly, that it would lead him to the condo? Did they need him to open the safe for them? Had Joao Ferdinand-Xavier and his family resisted, refusing to open it for them? God, what it must have cost them.

  The safe wasn’t empty. In fact, it was quite full. Hayward removed a thick stack of bearer bonds, typed in English and denominated in dollars. Bearer bonds were as good as cash—better, some would say. He thumbed through the stack, shaking his head, his spirits falling further. Whoever attacked him could have walked out with over a hundred thousand dollars in bearer bonds, but they’d left all that money in the safe.

  There was also a healthy stack of Euros, a set of keys dangling from a Ferrari keychain, and a photo album, which Hayward didn’t open. He knew what would be inside, and seeing pictures of Joao and Maria and Katrin would do nothing to help him find and free them.

  If they were still alive. He shuddered, digging deeper into the safe, searching for what he knew they were searching for. He wasn’t sure of the precise form it would take—flash drive, hard disk, laptop, tablet, DVD—but he was sure he’d recognize it if he saw it. Data storage of some sort. You wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at the vessel, but the contents would be earth-shattering.

  It wasn’t there. Had his attackers taken it? If they had, the Ferdinand-Xaviers would no longer be necessary. In fact, Joao and Maria and Katrin would be worse than unnecessary. They would be liabilities, and they would be long dead by now.

  A glimmer of hope wormed its way into his psyche. Maybe the Agency assholes hadn’t found the ChemEspaña data. Maybe it hadn’t been in the safe at all. Maybe they had followed Hayward, waited for him to discover the safe, and waited for him to open the lock with Katrin’s security badge. Maybe they had struck at the moment he unlocked it for them, only to find that what they were looking for wasn’t inside.

  Hayward drew a breath, furrowing his brow. Hope was never a course of action, but if he didn’t hope, didn’t bank on the chance that his employers hadn’t found what they were looking for, then what was left? Katrin and her family would be long gone by now, wiped away forever, probably in a fiery car accident or tragic boating mishap or something equally unsuspicious.

  Something wasn’t right. He wasn’t right, he realized. It wasn’t right that he was still alive. He was a loose end, and they had promised him that his life was over. Why hadn’t they killed him when they had the chance?

  The answer was obvious. They still needed him.

  He didn’t have time to pond
er the implications. A sound startled him, making him jump. It was loud, insistent, penetrating. It was the goddamned phone, sitting on the desk, four feet from his pounding skull, bleating at an unreasonable volume.

  It wouldn’t stop. He thought an answering machine would pick up, or voicemail, but the phone just kept ringing. How many times? Twenty? Thirty?

  He stared at it, suddenly more tired than he had ever felt before. Finally, he picked it up.

  “It’s your lucky day, fuckwhistle,” a rasping, obnoxious voice said.

  Hayward reacted viscerally long before his cognitive processes produced a name to match the voice. A look of disgust crossed his face. Bill Fucking Fredericks. “You,” he seethed, gauzy images of DC and Caracas and Cologne and the Farm flooding his mind, reminding him that as far and fast as he could ever run, the Agency would always be one step ahead.

  A loud cackle. “Who’d you expect?”

  Hayward could picture the man: fat, balding, jowly, sweaty, vile in fundamental ways.

  I’d rather be dead, Hayward thought. “What do you want from me?”

  A snort. “Asked and answered,” Fredericks said, “a dozen times over. They want everything.”

  “They?”

  “We . . . they . . . what’s the difference?”

  Hayward shook his head but didn’t respond.

  “I’ve been asked to relay a new set of marching orders,” Fredericks said.

  “Why you?” Hayward asked. “I thought you ripped off some hacker and retired to Bosnia.”