The Blowback Protocol

by Lars Emmerich

  “Paranoia pays,” Dan said, “but don’t give me any details. The higher-ups are interviewing me again tomorrow.”

  “Under oath?” Sam asked.

  “Not yet, but I’m sure that won’t be too far in the future.”

  “You don’t have to lie for me,” Sam said.

  “I’m not going to lie for you. I’m going to lie for me. I’m into this up to my eyebrows already.”

  “I’m sorry, Dan. You’re in a hell of a spot.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’d like to think you’d do the same for me.”

  “You know I’m not that stupid,” Sam said, and Dan laughed. “But I’m worried. I mean, they might be right. I might not be the right person for this job anymore. I’ve been over it a thousand times in my mind, and I can’t seem to convince myself that I’d make a different choice next time around.”

  Dan was quiet for a while. “Sam, I don’t know what to say. You didn’t kill that little girl. Sometimes things just go sideways. Nobody knows that better than you.”

  Sam shook her head. “This feels different.”

  She didn’t hear Dan’s reply. It was drowned out by the sound of an approaching car. Underpowered, under-maintained, and under a lot of strain, struggling up the hill.

  “Gotta go,” Sam said. She ended the call, dropped the phone into the pocket of her shawl, made sure her body language screamed decrepit old woman, and trained her eyes in the direction of the sound.

  33

  Hayward parked one address away from his target and got out of the car. He shoved his hand into his coat pocket and grasped the pistol, leaving his trigger finger just outside the trigger guard.

  He left the car unlocked for a quick getaway and walked toward the front porch with as much nonchalance as he could muster. The house was ancient and expansive. He rang the bell and heard labored footfalls from behind the door. The latch turned and the old door opened several inches. A pair of hard, dark eyes peeked out from a weathered face. Mustache, hairy nostrils, rotting teeth. The man said something that Hayward didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter. Hayward wasn’t there to chat. He forced his way into the house.

  The old man turned and tottered toward a shotgun hanging on the wall.

  “Stop,” Hayward commanded, displaying the handgun. The old man froze.

  Hayward held his finger to his lips, indicating silence. “Wife?” he asked.

  The old man shook his head.

  Hayward motioned toward a chair and tied the old guy up using the man’s own belt and suspenders. He searched the rest of the house. It was large and musty, full of old books and old things and the smell of an old man who obviously lived alone.

  Hayward returned to the entryway, reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of bills, peeled away a fistful, and shoved them in the old man’s shirt pocket. “Grazie,” he said.

  “No problem,” the old man replied in English. His Italian accent was noticeable but his pronunciation was clear and precise.

  Hayward sat down and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” he said. “You speak English.”

  “I used to teach English in the school in town.”

  Hayward gestured with his hand, indicating the large house. “Hell of a place to afford on a teacher’s salary. What else did you do?”

  A smile. “Invested.”

  “Of course. What do you do now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nobody does nothing,” Hayward said.

  “Everybody does nothing sometimes,” the man replied. “Why are you here?”

  “Do you pay attention to the house next door?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Nobody lives there,” the man said. “Only occasionally do workers appears.”

  “Appear.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Appear,” Hayward said. “Workers appear, not appears.”

  “What does it matter?”

  “You said you’re an English teacher. You should speak it correctly.”

  The old man laughed. “My wife is dead five years. My children don’t visit. The young people have all left. Only the old people remain here. I haven’t heard English in years. What do you want?”

  “When was the last time a worker appeared at the house next door?”

  The old man shrugged. “Two days ago, maybe. Three of them.”

  “What were they working on?”

  “They hauled in two rolls of carpet.”

  Bingo. Hayward rose to his feet. “When did they leave?”

  Another shrug. “Same day.”

  “All of them?”

  “This is very strange,” the old man said. “If you want to know about the house next door, why don’t you ring the bell and ask?”

  Hayward looked askance. “You said nobody lives there.”

  The old man wore an expression like oops.

  “So who lives there?”

  Silence.

  Hayward shoved more money into the old man’s shirt pocket. The man seemed uncomfortable.

  “What’s your name?” Hayward asked.

  “Giuseppe Turcoe.”

  “Giuseppe, this is very important. Who lives next door?”

  The old man nodded toward the cash stuffed in his shirt pocket. “I am sorry. I cannot take your money. And I cannot help you.”

  That told Hayward everything he needed to know.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, wrapping his arm around the old man’s neck. He used his other hand to apply pressure. Just enough . . . not too much. Giuseppe Turcoe’s skinny arms and legs flailed for a bit, then went slack.

  Hayward laid him gently on the floor and felt his neck. The old man’s pulse was strong. He’d wake up with a headache, but no lasting damage. Hayward left the cash in the old man’s pocket.

  He went downstairs to the basement. It smelled like a tomb. He turned on the light, looked around, stepped over piles of household junk accumulated over eons.

  Then he saw what he was looking for. Storm doors, set at an angle, just like in the American Midwest. Apparently they got their fair share of nasty weather on Giuseppe’s little island.

  Hayward worked the latch but it didn’t budge. It struck him that he would probably have a similar problem on the next set of doors he encountered, and those doors would be the ones that mattered most.

  Quickly, he rummaged through Giuseppe’s belongings until he found a crowbar. He wedged the curled end beneath the latch and applied pressure. The wood groaned, creaked, then yielded.

  Hayward pushed open the doors. Daylight and fresh air rushed in. The mansion next door was fewer than two dozen paces away. Its cellar doors faced Hayward, offset just a little away from the road.

  She’s in there. At their mercy. What were they doing to her? He suddenly felt overwhelming urgency to get inside the house next door.

  He surveyed the large wall. There were three windows, and he realized he’d be exposed for a few yards as he scampered toward the cellar doors. Should he wait for nightfall? Unequivocally yes, if he wanted to raise his odds of a successful one-man assault to something above zero. Then he thought of Katrin, battered and bloody and hanging on by a thread. He knew he didn’t have the luxury of waiting. She needed him right now.

  34

  Hayward tiptoed from Giuseppe Turcoe’s basement to the cellar door of the manor next door. He found the latch, lodged the crowbar beneath the cross member, slowly added pressure. The rotting wood splintered and cracked. The screws groaned and backed out a little.

  Noise was a problem. Hayward went more slowly. It was quieter, but there was another risk. Someone might happen by and spot him breaking into the house, or one of the Agency animals inside might make a routine sweep of the perimeter and spot him.

  Sweat beaded on his brow, more from nerves than exertion. There were a thousand ways for the situation to spin out of control and only a few ways for it to go right. He might not get another chance to find Katrin and her father.r />
  He applied a little more pressure to the latch, wiggling the crowbar from side to side. He winced as the screws groaned again. Just a little more.

  The latch fell to the gravel with a tang.

  Slowly, carefully, Hayward opened the storm door and pulled his gun from his coat pocket. He descended the steps into the darkness below.

  “Stop right there,” he heard.

  His eyes snapped to the assault rifle aimed at his chest. It was gripped by a pair of strong hands. Behind them, wearing a smug smile, was a square-jawed goon Hayward didn’t recognize. American, ex-military, hired muscle. The man wore a black Kevlar ballistic vest over a khaki shirt and cargo pants.

  “We figured it was only a matter of time,” the man said.

  “Where is she?” Hayward’s voice was loud and anxious.

  The man laughed. “You’re joking, right? I mean, all this time and training, and you’re really still that naïve?”

  Hayward exhaled. He felt extreme tiredness. It was suddenly difficult to stand. He tried to focus on the problem standing in front of him, but his mind was stuck. Katrin isn’t here. It landed like lead in his stomach.

  The smile disappeared from the gunman’s face. “Hand over that fucking data, creampuff.”

  Hayward shook his head. “You don’t think, after all of this time and training, that I would be naïve enough to bring it with me, do you?”

  This earned a harsh, barking laugh from the man with the assault rifle. “Doesn’t matter. It’s at your hotel, or in some safety deposit box at the post office, or in a locker at the train station. We’ll pull out a couple of fingernails, you’ll tell us where it is, and we’ll go bribe whoever needs bribing. Game over. You lost, big guy.”

  Hayward shook his head. He tightened his grip on the pistol in his hand. His palm was a little sweaty and his body tingled with nerves but he steeled himself, steadied his voice. “Maybe it goes down the other way. Maybe I pull out your fingernails and you cry like a bitch. Then you tell me what the hell you’ve done with Katrin and Joao.”

  Another laugh. The man adjusted his ballistic vest and re-gripped the assault rifle in his hands. “Shaking in my boots here, tough guy. But I work for a different department.” The man shook his head. “Dumbass.”

  Hayward locked eyes with the man. “You spend a little time at a safe house, you learn a thing or two. I’m willing to take my chances that you know more than you’re pretending.”

  The man in tactical gear motioned with his rifle. “Enough bullshit. You know the drill. Bend over slowly and set the gun down. Then stand up and raise your hands like you’re surrendering. Because it’s over, and you’re done.”

  Hayward didn’t have to think through his options. He’d already been through the scenarios a dozen times. He knew what the odds were. He knew he was outnumbered and outgunned. He knew Katrin was on borrowed time and he’d be no good to her dead or captured. He couldn’t afford a mistake, couldn’t risk a rash decision, couldn’t let anger and fear and hatred and love and guilt and hope cloud his judgment.

  He pulled the trigger.

  The explosion was loud and angry in the confined space. He’d have sworn he blew out an eardrum. He watched the man fall to the floor with a slug through the abdomen, a good two inches below his protective vest. Extremely painful and probably lethal without the proper medical attention. Hayward wanted to draw things out, to lean on the smug knee-capper for information about Katrin and Joao, but he couldn’t take the risk. He had no idea how many goons were upstairs. Hayward pounced on the man in a flash. He hoisted the cast on his arm high in the air and brought it down onto the bridge of the man’s nose with malice aforethought.

  Game over. One fewer asshole in the world.

  Hayward listened intently for any additional motion upstairs. He heard nothing.

  He took the dead man’s rifle and started his search of the house.

  35

  Sam gave up. Nothing was happening. She’d seen one car in the last half-hour, and it stopped at the wrong house. To linger any longer would be poor tradecraft.

  Was Dan wrong about the address? After all the effort and trouble, was it a dead end? A wild goose chase? Or maybe Dan was right about the address, but she was too late and the Doberman crew had already packed up and moved on. She shook her head and wandered back down the hill, maintaining her hobbled old-woman affectation despite the blisters starting on her feet.

  She found her way to the rented car and drove toward the city center. Her stomach was gnawing through her spine and she needed something to eat. She also needed a new plan, because this one was looking more and more like a waste of time.

  Sam seated herself at a café several blocks from her hotel and ordered a sandwich. She ruminated on the previous week’s events, her mind once again dredging up the op to nab Tariq Ezzat that had gone so horribly wrong.

  She noticed that her perspective on the events had changed just a bit. Thinking through the factors that led her to the fateful decision was much less an exercise in self-flagellation than it had been over the previous few days. Perhaps she was gaining a bit of perspective. Healing, maybe. Or maybe she was beginning to fabricate the lies that would allow her to move on with her life. Impossible to tell, really, but the effect on her psyche was not altogether unpleasant. She felt like she was coming back to herself, re-occupying her person. Filling out her skin again, maybe. Which was fortunate, she mused. Because if anything, while her confidence seemed to be returning just a little bit, the Doberman situation seemed to be slipping further out of reach.

  Time for a much more direct approach, she decided. Sam finished her sandwich and tossed back the last of her coffee. She returned to her rented car, discarded her disguise, and started the engine.

  She re-checked her pistol and took several deep breaths. There was no telling what she was about to find. Probably nothing, but you could never be too sure. Preparation always paid off.

  She wound her way up the hill, found the now-familiar address, parked at the curb, and got out of the car.

  She walked to the front door.

  36

  Hayward’s search took fifteen minutes. There was nobody home. Katrin and Joao might have been in the house at some point in time, but there was no evidence one way or the other.

  If the address was indeed the source of the video feed that Hayward had witnessed hours before of Joao’s bloody face and Katrin’s fragile, battered body, the Agency men had taken great pains to rid the place of any lingering evidence. There wasn’t even Wi-Fi, and Hayward couldn’t locate an Internet hookup of any sort.

  His hands shook. He felt hollowed out.

  He took out his burner, powered it on, and dialed the number for his control by memory. Artemis Grange had picked up last time. This time, the phone just rang and rang.

  He shook his head. Had they fooled him? Or were they just good at covering their tracks? Were they clever enough to fool the NSA tracking software he’d used to find them? Or were they simply organized and paranoid enough to clean up after themselves in a hurry after the video exchange?

  Why would they leave just one guy behind at the address to confront him? He wasn’t a ninja, but he was very well trained. Wouldn’t they want to stack the odds much more heavily in their favor?

  Or did they expect him to crumble, to grovel for Katrin’s life, maybe bargain for his own? It might have been an appropriate expectation, if he was still the man he used to be. But maybe they had underestimated the man he had become. Or maybe they had an entire ensemble cast waiting in the wings, ready to hand him his own ass. Maybe they were observing him from afar. He hadn’t noticed any of the signs of being followed, but he’d had more than a few things on his mind. Maybe his well-honed antennae weren’t receiving as well as they might have been.

  It was impossible to draw any firm conclusions.

  But one thing was certain: he was dead in the water. He’d come all this way, overcome ridiculous odds, survived, clawed his way through
a murky mess, but he was as far away from Katrin now as he had ever been.

  He sat down in an armchair in the empty safe house, shoulders slumped, pistol dangling loose in his hand, blood-spattered arm cast draped across his thigh. He drifted toward despair. “What the fuck do I do now?” he said.

  A long time passed. No insights struck like lightning from the blue and his mind made no new connections. He had no idea where or how to restart his search for Katrin. His gloom deepened and he thought of giving up, of disappearing, of falling off the earth. But where could he go to hide from himself? Thoughts of Katrin would follow him everywhere. They would never leave him alone. They would taunt him and convict him and beat him into submission. “What the fuck am I going to do?” he asked again.

  Not nothing, he finally decided. I’m going to do anything other than nothing.

  He stood, checked his handgun, and took two paces toward the front door.

  The door burst open in a shower of splinters.

  Silhouetted in the gray afternoon light was a figure with a gun pointed at his chest.

  37

  “Don’t move!” Sam shouted. She stood in the modified Weaver stance, gun trained on the man’s chest. “Drop your weapon!”

  She didn’t look at the man’s face. Instead, she looked at the front sight of her gun and superimposed the sight over the blurry spot on the man’s chest where his heart would be. Just a bit right of centerline—his left—far enough away from center-of-mass to prevent the slug from deflecting off the man’s sternum and missing all the critical pulsing meat just inside his ribcage.

  “Jesus H,” the man said.

  “Wrong gender. Now put the gun down.”

  “This is unbelievable.”

  “Last warning!”

  The man clicked on the safety and let go of the pistol. It landed on the hardwood floor with a heavy thump.

  Sam motioned to a nearby table. “Turn around, legs apart. Lean against the table. Palms out.”