by L. T. Ryan
Bear stood watch as I opened the top locker on the last column.
Empty.
I slid the next open.
Same.
I reached for the final locker.
The double doors banged open.
CHAPTER 22
The security guards burst into the room wielding batons and yelling in a threatening tone. Confuse and conquer, I supposed. I rose and stood straight with my back against the cold stainless steel. They barked orders at me.
“Sorry,” I said, taking a step forward. The move kept their eyes on me and away from Bear. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
The two men shared a glance. One spoke up. “Get on the ground.”
I looked down at the linoleum-tiled floor. “Afraid I can’t do that.”
The guard sheathed his baton and placed his quivering hand on the butt of his pistol. The department must not have required a lot of drilling, because he hadn’t unsnapped his holster.
“Get down,” he said with far less conviction in his voice than required. “Now.”
The guards hadn’t been aware enough to step past the wall. They remained in front of the double doors, oblivious to what went on in half the room.
When Bear jumped out from behind the corner with his pistol drawn, the two rent-a-cops stumbled over themselves in an effort to back away from the big man. The guy on the right regained his balance first. He made the mistake of going after Bear with his baton. The instincts of most men would kick in and they would react by throwing their arm out to protect themselves.
Not Bear.
He lived for the attack.
Bear turned sideways and stepped into the guy, negating the force of the blow. He wrapped his left arm around the guy’s right, hooking it under the armpit. He slammed a right uppercut into the guard’s stomach. The guy let out a spectral howl as he dropped to the ground like a bag of sand. Bear freed his arm and threw a left cross that caught the other guard on the chin. The man slammed into the wall. He collapsed on the ground before his eyes finished rolling back in his head.
Bear turned toward me. Blood seeped from his middle knuckle. He took a couple deep breaths, said, “Hurry up and get this over with.”
“The hell?” I said. “That’s a workout for you now?”
“Shut up.” He piled the men on top of each other. The first guy finally caught his breath. Bear delivered a kick to his abdomen to remedy that situation. He ripped an electrical cord from the wall and used it to tie their wrists together.
The three live bodies outnumbered the corpses I had seen so far.
I glanced around the room in search of security cameras. There were none. I found it odd, considering the purpose of the place. Then again, by the time the bodies made it to the morgue, they were stripped of all personal effects. Perhaps it was out of respect for the dead they didn’t monitor the morgue. Whatever the reason, it worked in our favor tonight.
I pulled the last locker open and removed the sheet that covered Katrine Ahlberg. There were three bullet holes. Two in her chest, and one to the side of her head. All from a high-powered rifle.
Bear walked over and stood on the opposite side of the corpse. We stared down at the woman we thought we had killed a decade prior.
“Guess it’s done now,” Bear said, wiping blood from his hand on the inside of his shirt. “That’s her.”
I continued to take in the woman. Like the pictures in Frank’s office had indicated, she had aged well despite a decade of stress that went along with living in hiding.
“Why do you think she became so public again?” I said.
Bear thought it over. “Maybe she figured enough time had passed. Hell, the people with the resources to find her could have figured out where she was. It wasn’t like it was all that secret to begin with.”
A voice poured out of the guards’ radios. The request was repeated a couple times. Neither of us understood what was said. The meaning was not lost, though.
“Guess we should get a picture.” Bear retrieved his phone and snapped a couple photos of the body. “Let’s get out of here, Jack. They’re gonna send another team soon to see what’s going on.”
“If there’s another team,” I said.
“You really want to wait around to find out?” There was a door behind the doctor’s desk. Bear walked over and checked it. He opened it a crack. A slight gust blew past, rustling the sheet covering the lower half of Ahlberg. “We’ll go out this way.”
Shaking my head, I grabbed the end of the locker and began to slide it in, watching as Katrine’s body disappeared into the dark.
I took one last look down at the woman.
Then it hit me.
“It’s not her.”
CHAPTER 23
Bear was halfway out the door. He stopped, re-entered the room, let the door fall shut. The breeze died. The smell of the alley continued to overtake the sterile environment.
“What?”
I slid the locker out and pulled the sheet all the way, exposing Katrine’s full body. “It’s not her.”
“The hell you talking about, Jack?”
I pulled out my phone and found the pictures I’d taken of Katrine’s file. With Bear looking over my shoulder, I opened a photo of Katrine and Birgit. It had been taken the year before the original mission. They stood side-by-side, hip to hip, thigh to thigh in white sand on the edge of an emerald green sea. Waist high waves crashed in the background. I remembered the picture from a decade earlier. The only difference in the women at the time was their hair length. Birgit wore hers much shorter than her sister. This was verified through other surveillance footage that placed Katrine and her waist-long hair with Awad. Birgit’s was rarely ever shoulder-length. In the picture on the beach Katrine stood on the right and Birgit on the left.
“Look,” I said.
“The hell is this?” Bear said. “Looks just like her. Both of them do.”
“There’s a difference,” I said.
“Which one is Katrine in this shot?”
“Long hair.”
He looked at the picture, then the corpse, then back at the picture. It took a few seconds longer than I thought it would take him. He was rusty.
“Jesus,” he said. “That’s not her.”
I zoomed in on the picture, then placed the phone on the corpse’s abdomen. The pose the women struck in the photo allowed their matching tattoos — Katrine’s on the left, Birgit’s on the right — to merge together as one. It was an elaborate piece, colorful, and Norse or Celtic in design. Must’ve had some meaning to the twins. They each wore half of it. It stretched from above their hips, down their thighs, stopping right above the knee.
The woman lying on the table possessed no such markings.
“Laser removal?” Bear said.
“On a piece that big?” I said.
“It’d leave a scar,” he said, nodding and tugging at the hair on his chin.
“There’d be something visible. No plastic surgery would completely eliminate a tattoo like that. Especially with all the color.”
I grabbed my phone off Ahlberg’s abdomen and took several pictures of the corpse, including a few head shots. Perhaps Brandon could use them. The face appeared to be a match to the eye. Algorithms showed no bias, though. His program could see past the superficial.
“Who you suppose it is?” Bear said.
“Another sister, maybe?” I said. “A cousin? Hell, I don’t know. As soon as we’re away from here, we need to get Brandon on the phone. He can run these pictures and see if there’s a relative that matches.”
“What if that doesn’t work?” Bear said. “What about Frank?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Frank will be expecting an update from us soon. “Let’s get out of here before we worry about him.”
Bear knelt and checked on the doctor. The man didn’t move. “Think he’s dead?”
I shrugged. The man meant nothing to me. Bear gave him ample opportunity to si
t down.
Bear slapped the doctor’s cheek. “Maybe I gave him a heart attack?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Check on the guards.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about this. It reeks of a setup. The guys following us around. The disgusting house in the woods. Our target getting taken out when we’re so close. Then this, her turning out to be someone else?”
“I know,” I said. “Taken as a whole with how things went down ten years ago, it isn’t hard to imagine someone’s working against us.”
“Frank,” Bear said.
“I know that makes sense, but let’s not rush to judgment.”
“We gotta figure out a way to lure them out.”
“Let’s start by getting out of here.”
We left through the back door. The alley was tight and dark and smelled of ammonia in some spots, urine in others. Perhaps they dumped something back there instead of disposing of it properly. Or maybe a few of the homeless took up back there from time to time.
I checked around the front corner. There was no activity there or anywhere in view. The two guards Bear took out were probably the only ones on patrol, and it might be hours before they were found. I doubted the cops were involved with hospital security. Likely the ones we saw at the ER were passing by and decided to stop and talk with the nurses to kill some time.
The unlit space behind the morgue kept us hidden as we stealthed across the deserted parking lot. A cool breeze swept past. It dried the sweat that lined my forehead and cleared out the lingering smell of the alley. An eighteen-wheeler idled nearby out of view.
When we reached the alley where the car was parked, Bear stopped.
“Let me go alone,” he said. “I’ll meet you up ahead.”
I handed him the keys and walked another couple blocks. The night was still now. I found a large Willow to hide underneath. Slices of orange light covered the area. I watched the apartment building across the street. Most of the windows were darkened. I didn’t notice any movement in any of the others.
A car approached. I backed up against the tree. The bark scratched at my back. Bear slowed the vehicle and pulled up to the curb.
“Notice anything?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You standing under a tree?”
“Other than that?”
“Nah, it’s pretty quiet out here.”
“Ironic, I guess.” I rolled down my window and perched my elbow on the sill. “Here we are, trying to figure out what the hell happened, perhaps on the verge of pissing off several foreign intelligence agencies, and the immediate world surrounding us is still and calm.”
“Yeah, well, enjoy it.” Bear shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb. “I got a feeling things are gonna get pretty damn crazy around here.”
The knot in my gut told me he was right.
CHAPTER 24
We drove southwest to the A58, then went west to Eindhoven. I kept my eyes on the rearview mirror most of the way. I found it difficult to watch for a tail that night. The headlights on the freeway blended into one another after staring at them long enough. Nothing stood out, but that didn’t mean anything. Frank knew where we went. He gave us the location. I had no doubt there had been someone nearby watching us. And I was almost certain he told them to follow along. Whoever he sent was a pro. They wouldn’t be detectable.
We found a place to eat nearby and parked in an empty corner of the lot. I wanted to head inside to the restroom and scrub the smell off my hands and face. Once that morgue-odor invaded your sinuses, it was near impossible to get rid of.
For five minutes we sat in silence with the windows rolled down. The breeze pushed grill smoke through the car. I barely noticed it.
No one else entered the parking lot. No cars passed on the road leading to it. There were no looming headlights nearby indicating a car idling.
I powered up one of the phones and punched in the number. My finger hovered over the send button.
“You gonna make the call?” Bear said.
I nodded. “Just centering myself.”
He laughed. “Gone all yogi on me now?”
I ignored him and sent the call through.
“Jack?” Frank said.
“It’s us,” I said.
“Why the different number?”
A man stepped out of the restaurant, glanced our way, then back at the door. A long-legged brunette wearing a sparkling green skirt ran up and threw one arm around him.
“Just being safe,” I said, watching the couple stroll to their vehicle. “Still spooked by the guys we encountered in England. Figured they must’ve been tracking me somehow, why not through the phone.”
Frank cleared his throat. “Good thinking. All right, so how were things at the morgue?”
“Pretty dead, actually.”
Bear chuckled. Frank didn’t.
“I don’t have time for this, Jack. And neither do you two. If you can’t be serious about it I’ll send two guys who—”
“Calm down, Frank.” I looked over at Bear. He still had a smile on his face. The guy was a sucker for a horrible pun. “It was her. Open and shut case.”
“Your word is good enough for me. You know that. But they are gonna want evidence.”
“Who’s they?”
Bear had his chin tucked to his chest. He shifted his head enough to look at me out of the corner of his eye
“Not now, Jack,” Frank said. “Come on.”
“We got pictures. I’ll upload them after our call.”
“Do it now,” Frank said. “And call me back in five minutes.”
I put the memory card in the phone and sent the photos to Frank. After removing the card, I made sure there were no copies of the pictures remaining. The fewer devices the evidence could be found on the better. And at some point I planned on ditching the cell I’d been using to contact Frank.
Bear patted his stomach. “What now?”
“I’ll call back in a few minutes, like he said.”
“Hungry, man.”
“It wasn’t that long ago we ate.”
“Yeah, but I had a workout while you stood around playing patty cakes with corpses.”
It was as though not a day had passed since we were partners in Iraq, D.C., or New York. We were twenty-somethings again and life was a game. Didn’t matter how serious we took our jobs — and we always did — but we knew life was too damn short to take it seriously all the time. Even when we faced a life and death situation, we found ways to lighten it up.
Frank answered immediately when I called back.
“Good work,” he said. “I used software to compare it with the photos I had. That’s definitely her. A perfect match.”
I stared at Bear, nodded slowly. “So we good to come home?”
Frank started and stopped, hesitated a few seconds. I waited for him to proceed. “I need you guys to remain in position a little longer.”
“What kind of crap are you pulling?” Bear said.
“Riley,” Frank said. It sounded as though he were yelling into the mouthpiece. “I’m not trying to pull anything. I need to get this to the right people. They need to confirm through various channels that the target is neutralized. Like I said, this situation has traveled pretty damn high up the chain. You two have been around long enough to know this won’t be cleared up in a couple hours.”
“What more do you need?” I said. “You saw the damn pictures. Should we go back, get the body, and overnight it to you? Huh? You prefer DHL or FedEx?”
“Look, I’m on your side,” Frank said. “I know it’s hard to believe, but you can trust me.”
Bear looked at me and made a rude gesture with his hand. Neither of us said anything.
“Here, do this,” Frank said. “Ditch your phone. Leave town. Get somewhere you feel safe and lay low for a day or two. Call me at noon your time tomorrow. You can do it from a damn payphone if you want. I’ll update you with the current intelligence. All of it. OK?”
“Dammit,” he said. “I was looking forward to eating here. And now I have to wait?”
I said nothing.
“So help me, if we run into whoever he has tailing us, they’re gonna wish they were escorting some politician’s kid to the goddamn Sadie Hawkins dance instead of following us.”
We left the parking lot and started making a series of left hand turns. By the last one, it was clear no one was following us. At least not by sight. There were other ways that made more sense. Hell, for all I knew, Frank had a drone perched six miles up watching us.
I called Brandon and updated him on the situation, then sent the morgue photos. While I had him on the line, I asked if he could create another phantom number that would route to Frank’s line without giving our location away. I was sick of discarding SIM cards after every call. Brandon hesitated because of Frank’s new position. In the end he said he would hook us up with a line that would make it appear we were calling from Tokyo.
“So what now?” Bear asked.
“Drive,” I said. “Let’s head toward Rotterdam while we wait on Brandon and his software.”
The city lights faded to the black of night as we entered the countryside. A random car passing in the opposite direction provided the only light on the barren highway. Every so often another vehicle would merge onto the highway and either race ahead or fall behind.
“We’ll need the police report,” I said.
“Witnesses?” Bear said.
“A place to start. Someone had to have seen something. It was broad daylight when they executed the hit.”
“What if they already got to the witnesses?”
We both knew it was a possibility. There had been times when our missions required us to carry out an assassination in the middle of a busy restaurant, on a sidewalk, and even in the changing room of an upscale men’s store. And every time, Frank, Feng, or whoever had issued the command, cleaned up the mess. No one talked.