by Barry Eisler
“Because you could argue we’re not doing it to save the lives of others. You could argue we’re doing it so we can live with ourselves.”
Larison didn’t answer. He knew Rain was deliberately echoing what Larison had told him in Vienna, about the nightmares. It had been weak of him to tell Rain that, and he wasn’t sure why he had. But…the idea that there was something he could do, that there was a way to beat back those awful dreams…he wanted to believe it.
“I didn’t know it when I agreed to this op,” Rain said. “At least, I didn’t know it consciously. But I need to take all the shit I’ve done and the horror I’ve inflicted and do something good with it. And yes, Horton used that notion to manipulate me, and even though it turns out I was wrong about what the op was really about, it also turns out that maybe I’m going to get my chance anyway. And I don’t want to blow it.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because if we make the wrong choice here, I don’t think there’s a way back. I’ve come close before, very close, right up to the edge of the abyss. I don’t want to fall into it. And right now, I’m teetering.”
Larison swallowed. He thought he’d never been so confused. Or so suddenly exhausted.
“I need…a little time,” he said.
Rain nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, I remember the shock of trusting someone. It fucked me up, too. You get used to it, after a while.”
Larison shoved the Glock in his waistband. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “What the hell did you just talk me into?”
“I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. You were just trying not to hear it.”
Rain held out his hand. After a moment, warily, Larison shook it.
Dox drove the Honda Treven had stolen east, toward Union Station. From there, Kei could catch a Red Line train and be home in no time.
He’d hated having to zip her back into the cargo bag to get her to the car, but Treven was right, no sense taking chances about her figuring out where they’d held her. The truth was, he was less worried about her being able to run to the police than he was that she’d feel bad if she didn’t. Better to just deny her the ability, and therefore save her the guilt.
The worst part of it was how willingly she’d let him do it. He’d taken the headphones off her and said, “Darlin’, I’m not comfortable waiting around for the bogeyman to get back here. He’s just too unpredictable for my tastes. So, with your permission, I’d like to take you home now.”
She’d looked into his eyes, smart enough to search for a lie, trusting enough to want to believe none was there, insightful enough to see that none was. Then she’d nodded and said, “Okay.” And that was that. He carried her out in the bag, unzipped it inside the trunk, closed her inside, and drove off, taking care to use an indirect route with plenty of bridges and underground parking garages along the way.
He’d been driving for nearly an hour when his mobile phone rang. He picked up. “Yeah.”
Treven’s voice: “All right, they’re back. The stones are real.”
“Well, that’s good news. What’s going on with our friend?”
“I don’t know. Your friend is alone with him right now. Trying to talk him down, I think.”
Dox didn’t like the sound of that. “Talk him down?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. He asked me to step out and call you from a payphone. And to tell you we’d meet as planned as soon as the three of us can get there.”
Dox hoped there would be three left. If whatever talk Rain was trying didn’t work out, there would likely be only two. Or one.
“All right, thanks for letting me know. I’ll see you in a little while.”
He clicked off and finished the route on Ducommun Street, an empty cul-de-sac a few blocks from Union Station, where he parked in front of the busted chain-link fence in front of an abandoned warehouse. He got out with Kei’s mailbag and looked around, squinting against the sun and the heat. Someone had spray-painted No Parking, Tow-Away in now-faded red on the boarded-up doors of the building, but amid the weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement and the garbage collecting at the bottom of the teetering loading dock, he didn’t think he was likely to encounter any objections.
He walked around to the trunk and opened it. Kei shut her eyes and lifted a hand to shield her sweaty face from the sudden invasion of light.
She squinted up at him fearfully. “You’re really going to let me go?”
He wondered if he could feel more low. He was never doing something like this again, no matter what the stakes. Never.
He held out his hand. “I promise you, I am. And I’m sorry, that was a long drive. I can see where you might have started to doubt me. Plus, it must have been god-awful hot in there.”
She paused for a moment, then took his hand and sat up. She looked around.
“We’re a few blocks from Union Station,” he said, “but, as you can see, not in the most upstanding of neighborhoods. If you don’t mind, I’ll just follow you in the car while you walk the few blocks to make sure you make it all right.”
She put some weight on his hand and stepped out of the trunk. She looked around again. “Okay.”
She was still holding his hand. He squeezed hers briefly and then let go.
“I know it’s pretty lame under the circumstances,” he said, “but I apologize for what we did to you. I shouldn’t have let myself get caught up in it. It was wrong, and I’m truly sorry.”
She said, “Thank you.”
He shook his head, ashamed. “You don’t have one single thing to thank me for. I did a terrible thing to you.”
She looked at him. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. You were the reason I wasn’t scared.”
That only made it worse. “I don’t think that’s worth very much, actually.”
“It was to me.”
“Darlin’,” he said gently, “are you familiar with a thing called the Stockholm Syndrome?”
“I know what it is. And I don’t have it. If the police had kicked in the door to that room, I wouldn’t have shielded you with my body, I can tell you that.”
He smiled. Ordinarily, he might have taken an opportunity like that to comment on the possible upside of her throwing her body over his. Instead, he said, “Well, now you’ve gone and burst my bubble.”
She laughed, just a little. “It could have been a lot worse for me. You made it better. I kept looking at that scary guy, Larison, and thinking, ‘Dox wouldn’t let him.’”
He wondered if she was playing him. “You really thought that?”
She nodded. “I did.”
He looked down at the ground. “If I did something to make this a little less worse of an ordeal for you, I’m glad. But it was still an ordeal, and I was still a part of it. Trust me, I know you’re bursting with relief and gratitude right now, but later? It’s all going to settle in. You’ll realize what you’ve been through. Being held like we held you is no joke.”
“You sound like you know.”
He wondered whether he should say more, and then did anyway. “Not so long ago, some men held me. I’m not going to tell you what they did, other than that it involved electric shocks, repeated drownings, and threats to Nessie. So yes, I’m not unacquainted with what you’re going to be dealing with in the coming days and weeks. I wish there were something I could do about it, but I can’t, other than to say again I’m sorry.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Nessie?”
He shook his head, knowing he shouldn’t have joked like that, determined not to follow up. “Never mind.”
He handed her the mailbag. She took it.
“What did my father do to you?” she said.
He shook his head again. “I don’t want to talk about it. It never should have had anything to do with you. I want you to tell me something else, instead.”
“What?”
He looked around at the cracked road, the barbed wire, everything baking unde
r the unblinking Los Angeles sun.
“What are your plans? I mean, for the future. Film school…you want to make movies?”
She smiled. “That’s what I want. Pretty far afield from my dad, huh?”
“I’d say. But I’m glad. I like movies. When am I going to get to see yours?”
“I don’t know. I wrote a script I think is great. But financing is hard these days. We’ll see.”
“Financing, huh?”
She shook her head slightly as though not understanding what he was getting at.
“When you get home,” he said, “check the bottom of your mailbag. There are a bunch of little stones in there. They don’t look like much, but they’re diamonds. I don’t know what movies cost, and probably what I put in there wouldn’t be enough for Harry Potter, but I think they’ll get you started.”
She looked at him, then said, “Are you serious?”
He gave her a mock-stern look. “In the short time you’ve known me, have I ever not been?”
She looked at him for a moment longer, then stepped in wordlessly and hugged him. He hugged her back, but tentatively. He was ashamed to receive her gratitude, and he also didn’t like how good she felt in his arms. The Wilson Combat was in his front waistband, coming between them, and he supposed that worked as a metaphor.
After a moment, he broke the embrace. “All right, you.” he said. “Now git. I’ll follow you to make sure you reach the station all right. And I’ll keep an eye out for your movie.”
She hesitated. “Am I ever going to see you again?”
He shook his head. “That’s Stockholm Syndrome talking.”
“The hell it is.”
He smiled, and tried not to show how crappy he felt. “Well, I know your cell phone number. Who knows?”
“Will you call me someday? Not right away. Just…after this has started to seem unreal.”
He kept the smile in place. “I’d like that.” The way he’d phrased it, it wasn’t even a lie.
He followed her to the station as planned. When he was satisfied she was in a safe area, he pulled out alongside her. She turned and looked at him, and he thought she was going to come to the car. So he gritted his teeth and held up a hand in goodbye, and pulled out into traffic. He checked the rearview as he drove and the sight of her standing on the sidewalk, alone and watching him leave, made him feel sadder than he’d felt in a long time.
The next morning, the four of us stood on the tarmac at sleepy Santa Monica Airport. Kanezaki had flown commercial to LAX that morning, where he was changing to a chartered jet that would pick us up here. We could have met him at LAX, but security at major airports was extreme at the moment and we didn’t want to risk it—even if we’d been willing to leave the firearms behind, which we weren’t. So I’d dropped the others off at Santa Monica Airport and then driven the truck to a nearby U-Haul place, hoping Kanezaki would only be hit with a penalty for accidentally returning the truck on the wrong side of the country, rather than the cost of replacing a truck he’d failed to return entirely.
We’d spent the night at another downmarket L.A. motel. Kei was gone, and it was a relief—even, I thought, for Larison. Larison and Dox had spoken, but they’d been out of earshot and I couldn’t hear what was said. At the end of it, though, Dox had pulled the obviously stunned Larison in for one of his big hugs. Larison seemed as surprised and discomfited as I’d been when it had first happened to me. I wanted to tell him he’d get used to—Dox would say enjoy—it after a while, but I supposed he’d work that out on his own. In the meantime, it was good he was figuring out that while there might not be a worse enemy than Dox, there was also no better friend.
I hoped I’d done the right thing in tossing Larison that Glock. When I looked back on it, I felt like I wasn’t entirely sure of my own motivations. It was either the noblest, or the stupidest thing I’d ever done. And the problem was, it was still too early to tell.
I’d checked the secure site that morning. There was a single message from Horton:
Call me. This thing has got to be stopped.
And thank you. I won’t forget it.
The last part must have been about letting Kei go, and maybe specifically for saving her from Larison. Probably, in the overwhelming relief that must have washed over him after several nights of the worst fears he’d ever grappled with, he’d meant it. But I doubted his gratitude would last. I decided not to call. Larison had been right. Horton was an inveterate manipulator, and I didn’t want to give him another chance to lay out a line of bullshit.
There wasn’t much traffic at the tiny airport, and I had no trouble recognizing the plane Kanezaki had told me to watch for: an oddly bulbous private turboprop with a set of stubby wings under its nose and the main wings set way back. A Piaggio P180 Avanti. It came in from the northwest, taxied, turned, and stopped. The door opened and Kanezaki walked out onto the tarmac. He saw us and waved.
We all climbed on. I paused to shake Kanezaki’s hand; Dox, naturally, suffocated him with a hug. Kanezaki closed the door behind us, and five minutes later, we were airborne, the pilot on course for Lincoln.
“Damn,” Dox said, reclining in one of the plush, leather-clad seats. “I might have to get me one of these.”
The strange thing was, he could. But I didn’t think he really meant it. The money still didn’t feel real. We had too much heat on us, for one thing. And we were too focused on stopping this horror we’d inadvertently helped start, for another.
“I was right about Gillmor,” Kanezaki said. “He’s in Lincoln now.”
“Your friend is tracking his cell phone?” I asked.
He nodded. “Which means we need to divide the labor. We’re expecting four shooters on-site, and a ground team—presumably one man—operating the drone from somewhere else. You guys need to decide how to take it all down.”
“Depends partly on what toys you brought us,” Dox said.
Kanezaki got up and went to the back of the plane, then came back with a couple of long canvas bags. He set one on the floor and handed the other to Dox.
Dox unzipped the bag and grinned like it was Christmas morning. “Well, goddamn,” he said, extracting and hefting a long black carbine. “Knight’s Armament SR-25, integral suppressor, twenty-round magazine, and oooh, the Leupold Mark 4 HAMR. Haven’t played with one of these before. Gonna be somewhere I can zero it?”
“We’ll find a place,” Kanezaki said. “Lots of open fields where we’re going.”
He knelt and unzipped the other bag. “Here’s your commo,” he said. “INVISIO Digital Ears X5 Headset and X50 Multi-Comm. Hands-free, in the ear, boom mic. All encrypted and we’ll all be able to talk to each other.”
“Other weapons?” Larison asked.
Kanezaki reached into the bag and took out a pistol I was quite familiar with. “HK MK23 SOCOM, Knights Armament suppressor. One each.”
He handed it to Larison, who reflexively checked the load. Treven said, “Great gun, but with the suppressor it’s the size of a rifle. What do we carry it in?”
Kanezaki went to the back again and came back with a large black attaché case. He opened it. An HK with attached suppressor was held in place with foam inside. “I know there’s no good way to conceal one of these on your body in an urban environment,” he said. “But you can access it inside the bag in less than a second. By the time it’s out, it won’t matter who sees it. And if the attachés aren’t the right cover, I have gym bags, too.”
Treven nodded, satisfied.
I said, “Body armor, I hope? You know, just in case.”
“Dragon Skin vests,” Kanezaki said. “Capable of stopping multiple 7.62 rounds.”
He pulled out a folder and opened it. “This is a satellite and street view of the school and environs,” he said. “Some of it is Google; some is military. It should at least give you some ideas. I have a van waiting on the other end. After we land, we’ll do a drive-by.”
We looked at the maps. The school was a s
quare brick building outside the downtown, two stories, surrounded mostly by dirt and grass fields. It had one main entrance, but secondary points of ingress and egress on the other three sides.
“If all four shooters plan on using the front entrance,” I said, “then we’re good to go. But if they split up, we’ll need a man on each side of the building. Which leaves us one short to engage the drone operator.”
Kanezaki looked up. “You’re not counting me.”
“That’s right,” I said, “I’m not. Tom, we’ve been through this before. You’re a great intel guy but you’re not a door-kicker. Pick the wrong entrance to cover, and you might wind up in a one-on-four. It doesn’t make sense.”
Dox said, “I think there’s a better way.”
We all looked at him. He said, “Look at these buildings around the school. What do we have here…a church, a video store, car dealer, and a Holiday Inn, it looks like. Nothing but flat fields in between, and from any one of those vantage points, I have full coverage of two sides of the school. With a spotter on the ground for target confirmation, and my new friend the SR-25 here, and with the distances being so short, I could drop four targets in four seconds. If Tom here does the spotting for me, I say that would free up Treven and Larison to cover the other two sides of the building. And free up Rain to engage the drone operator, wherever he’s set up shop.”
I didn’t know whether he really needed Kanezaki to do the spotting, or if he was just giving him something to do to placate him. I said, “Either the spotting for you, or the driving for me. Depends on where and when we locate Gillmor, and what the terrain is like.”
No one objected. I thought it was a sensible approach. Treven and Dox were the two best combat shooters, Dox was the only sniper, and that left me for the guy operating the drone, who would likely be alone and, even if armed, distracted by the task at hand.
“What’s security like at this school?” Treven asked.
“In ordinary times,” Kanezaki said, “nonexistent. But with all the speculation about attacks on schools, a lot of towns are putting police in place at the entrances. I think we’ll see some of that.”