by Ben English
The Italian deliveryman came in then, through his own gauntlet of police questioning. She tipped him twice and he left far earlier than his concern or curiosity wanted.
They brought her the single coin from her pool fountain; the only solid proof anything unusual had taken place. Mercedes waited while it was tested, but all the police found was that it had recently been in the same pocket with several other coins.
Not enough of a fingerprint to trace, and at last, Mercedes had the house all to herself again. Blinds drawn and alarm system activated. Harry Connick once again melted into the air. A squad car would stay in the cul-de-sac until dawn, and officers would drive by a few times a day for the next few days, but that was all the law could allow its servants to do. No evidence of break-in, nothing taken from the house, not even a footprint.
She couldn’t sit still. She craved motion. Mercedes cleared the house, returning her father’s files to their drawer. The raw ingredients on her kitchen counter went back to their shelves, and eventually Mercedes felt herself start to unwind. But not much. She leaned against the edge of her dining room table, staring at the coin. A shiny, new French euro.
*
The Jeep could really move, for a civilian vehicle. Bryce slept, curled into something like a fetal position. When they stopped for a red light Jack took a good look at his eyes and face. No concussion, but Bryce would have a long, dull bruise the shape of Thiel’s hand.
Everything was canted, askew. Next step, next step. Jack gripped the wheel as the vehicle accelerated south. His quick layover in L.A. had just complicated itself by a power of about 10. He felt strangled, overwhelmed. But he had to plan, let the pieces of all the strangeness slide together somehow before his adrenaline wave subsided and the inevitable crash began. What did he have? A duffel full of clothes. A phone. The gun from the shorter killer, history unknown but probably sterile, untraceable. Half a dozen white papers on high-order electromagnetism. And—
Mercedes.
—That thought threatened to derail the train right there, just like old times. Push it down, Jack, he thought. The husband (Jack couldn’t keep from casting a critical eye at his slack passenger) needed to be attended to. Bryce Westen needed something to keep him busy, something that would make it convenient for him to forget Jack, and here he was, about to carry the man into a firefight.
The pieces slid together, Jack knew what he was going to do, and Bryce groaned.
*
He’d always come up strong after a few drinks and a little sleep, but this time Bryce felt as if a tiny, disagreeable dwarf were throwing anvils at his head every few seconds. Wait. Hang on, the swaying—the surfaces of a car seat. He tried to open an eye on the side of his face that hurt the least.
It was dark enough, but thanks to the headlights and lampposts sliding by he could see he was in his SUV, in a nice section of the city. The maniac was driving, ferociously intent on the road, slipping in and out of holes in the traffic that seemed to open just at the final second before impact. Images, a torrent of recent memory swept Bryce into full consciousness, and he groaned.
“You feeling all right, old mate?” The eyes flicked from the road to the passenger, and back. Shapes blurred past the windows, and the car rocked. The rear wheels spun against the road, though the car was already far past the speed limit, and the Jeep leaped into oncoming headlights, then back again, neatly passing a heavy Suburban. He’d spoken with an accent, slight but definitely there.
The muddle in his head kept Bryce from moving his swollen tongue, but his brain was beginning to function, however slowly. He remembered the man, the driver, back in Mercedes’ house, laughing and holding her towel, then a few minutes later—could this be right? —smiling again, without humor, dancing around the edge of another man’s knife, moving at angles and speeds he’d never seen before. As his head continued to clear, Bryce realized more and more that this oddly affable maniac couldn’t be the actor. It wasn’t like he could really look at the other man closely. His eyes kept shooting back to the road, as if by their own volition. The passing scenery flowed and twisted by.
They slid under a light turning red to green.
Bryce flailed for his seatbelt; saw he was already buckled in. “Where did you learn this?
“This what, mate?”
“This insane—” Bryce gripped the dash, “Driving!”
“Clarence Tufts Stunt School, up in the Valley. Willow Springs. Sorry if it’s giving you a turn, but we’re in a bit of a hurry.”
That was it, then. The resemblance to the actor really wasn’t that close, shallow at best, and whatever it was that had happened back in Studio City – but then Bryce realized he hadn’t found an answer to anything, and he was still headed into a completely unknown situation, head pounding, drenched in icewater, or old sweat.
“Give over your jacket, eh?”
“What did you say?”
“Take off your bloody jacket.”
Bryce did as he was told. They were driving through a neighborhood like the one his parents lived in. The homes were at least ten thousand square feet, roofed in red tile with cupolas, built in a style aiming for Mediterranean but ending up more Taco Bell. New money, not like his father’s. The driver didn’t slow, but stared at one particular house as they passed.
They drove past the end of the block and made a wide, gentle half-turn in the intersection. The driver continued to watch the house, now from an oblique angle. The streets in four directions were empty of traffic.
A sedan was parked modestly in the drive. Only a few lights on downstairs, but the rear upper rooms were lighted, the curtains firmly closed. As they watched, another light went off downstairs. Before Bryce could ask another question, the Flynn lookalike breathed and said, “They’re already there, but we’re in luck, Bryce. They haven’t started yet.” He pulled out a pistol, an automatic, and caught the clip as it fell from the handle. It was black, older, with grey plastic grips and nubby sights. The only gun Bryce had ever seen that close had been pointed at his face a few minutes, or hours, earlier. The driver replaced the clip, threw the slide to fill the chamber and cock it, and with his thumb eased the hammer back to its seating.
He did it all with a brusque manner, matter-of-fact and quick. From somewhere he pulled a silencer and screwed it around the barrel. The maniac slipped Bryce’s jacket on over his dark t-shirt. “Don’t forget to blink, now. Come on, your eyes look like deviled eggs.”
The Cherokee was moving, down a tree-lined avenue at a right angle from the house’s street. “Where are we going?” Bryce asked.
“Recon,” came the abrupt answer. “Never enter anyplace until you know all the exits.”
They left the intersection, driving at a right angle from the house, and Bryce realized they were heading toward the ocean. The block of houses, including the one they’d briefly watched, was bordered on the rear by a golf course; gently rising and falling hills, no undergrowth but for smooth thickets and bushes sculpted out of the unmoving sea of grass. At the far end of the course the land lapsed into California dunes, tall sandy grass, and scrub.
Another sedan passed them, a blocky Volvo headed the other way. Bryce caught a glimpse of men with identical grim expressions, and a glint as of something long and metallic. Hard eyes roamed over him, a few stared back. His companion kept his expression bucolic.
“Well, Bryce, old man, I figure a 50' radius turn at 35 mph gives us maybe 1.25 gees of acceleration.” He turned. “What do you figure?”
“Are you asking me a question?”
“Mind your head,” he said, offhand, and stomped on the accelerator until they were nearly even with the next intersection, at which point he twisted the wheel, stomped both feet on the brake pedal, and jerked the parking brake as far and fast as he could.
Bryce thought of himself as a real driver, as a man who drove all his machines to their limits, but as his head bounced off the passenger side window, rubber shrieked off the tires, and loose papers whipp
ed around the inside of the truck, he wailed and nearly wet himself again. When he stopped screaming to breathe, the driver spoke up. “Sorry, mate. On a film shoot we’d have a five-point belt to keep our eggs together.”
Before they’d completed the 180, the maniac stuntman was gunning the engine. The truck squealed an exclamation point on its new tires and jumped into the opposite lane, as if fused to the blacktop. The back of the sedan flashed up at them, and the driver warned Bryce, “Now, there’s going to be a bit of a jolt.”
“What?”
“Sure glad we decided to take your car.”
He held the same gear, letting the Cherokee power through its acceleration sweep. Heads turned in the car ahead of them. He slid up, fast, through the driver’s right blind spot, actually grinning. Bryce held on to the dash with both hands, grimacing, unable to look away. At the last minute the stuntman yanked the wheel to the left, driving their left front corner into the Volvo’s right rear corner, just behind the wheel.
Their own wheel exploded under the crushed bumper, and the sedan shimmied wildly in the street. Its left tires hit flush against the curb, flipping the car high into the air, ungracefully twisting it over on its top and then side. The car bounced and spun through the lower reaches of a eucalyptus and slammed into the ground.
The driver didn’t even wait for the Cherokee to fully stop, but yelled at Bryce to stay down as he vaulted from the truck. The truck was still in gear, still in motion, and Bryce had the presence of mind to scrabble into the driver’s seat and guide it to a stop.
One of the occupants of the smashed sedan staggered on the grass, already out. He was short and puglike, bloody, dazed but not quite enough to stay down as he brought some kind of gun over and around to bear on the Flynn lookalike. Bullets cut through the branches above his head as the stuntman himself opened fire, placing three hits across the sedan’s underbelly into the man’s chest, dead center. He fell, collapsing backward and into himself.
Noise rushed back in as the stuntman fell prone, facing the car. The Volvo still ran, idling. The Jeep’s engine ticked in counterpoint to the sedan’s crinkling windshield, crazed and webbed and nearly gone. Two dogs were barking, far off and hysterical. Bryce could hear himself breathing laboriously. The shots had been quiet and metallic, and not as silent as they were in the movies.
No one in the sedan was capable of breathing. Bryce’s abductor reached in and fished around in the backseat, pulling out several items. He’s getting my jacket filthy, Bryce thought, then twitched and whined as the gunman turned back to the truck, his face concentration and ferocity made flesh. The pistol seemed fused to the end of his arm. A pistol instead of a hand. Smoke drifted up from the gun, thick from the mouth of the barrel, which he kept pointed away from Bryce and the car.
Bryce turned the ignition, grinding the starter and missing pedals. He reached for the door handle, but the other man was there, killing the engine and yanking the keys out. Everything felt numb, happening several times too fast, and Bryce could barely keep his legs underneath him as the killer pulled him from the car. “Come on, then. Keep quiet and do as you’re told, and we’ll see if we can’t fix this.”
“What, why me?” Bryce heard himself ask.
“I’ve been asking myself that very same question long as I’ve known you, mate. Now, you want to stay here with the dead guys?”
*
With Bryce Westen in tow, Jack returned to the Volvo and shut off the engine. The weapons had been silenced, and the wind crashing through the trees above might cover the sounds of the rolling Volvo. Might. The handful of bullets fired at him had ended up in the trunk and branches—thankfully so; Jack’s greatest fear had been stray bullets ending up in the houses fifty yards behind him. That gun had been awfully silent. Jack saw it was a suppressed Spectre M4, one of the quietest and well-balanced submachine guns in the world. Even fitted with a suppressor, there was almost no climb or vibration, even when fired on full auto. The magazine felt about half-loaded, so about 15 rounds left. There was extra ammo—he packed it away in the inner pocket of Bryce’s jacket, which was a pretty good fit. He motioned the other man to follow.
The roof was visible above a low hill with a precise ridgeline—that would be good—nearly a quarter of a mile away. At the base of the low ridge, Jack whispered for Bryce to stay put, then squirmed up the hill. The grass had been cut within the past few days, and all he could smell, everything around him, felt alive and growing. Someone had barbequed earlier.
A few of the houses along the concrete skirt of the golf course had brick and tile walls the color of old blood in the scant light, but the physicist’s patio sloped right up to the manicured lawn. A brief glow, a pinprick of orange, and he saw the form of a man standing, facing the house and a covered patio. The black-garbed figure took another long pull on a cigarette butt, then flicked it into the rosebushes. There was someone else under the patio, indistinct, who spoke. Cigarette man grunted in quiet mirth.
At least two below, at least two above. Jack relaxed, and felt his mind race toward a plan.
Jack allowed himself to sink back out of sight, then joined Bryce at the foot of the swell. It was cold there, a pocket for stray golf balls and wind off the ocean, and the other man’s teeth had begun to shake.
He looked miserable, hair sweat-plastered to his forehead, moments away from another bout of retching. “I’m going to, I’m going to –” he choked, and fell forward on his hands and knees.
Before he could begin to vomit, Jack moved away, quickly, following the ridge opposite the house. When Bryce finally let go with a wail and a wet choke, Jack had the Spectre up over the lip of the hummock. He checked the safety and settled into a shooter’s position, scanning the lawn below. He was better with a rifle, but this would do.
Bryce cried out, spilling the rest of dinner onto the ground.
A figure in blackout fatigues raced silently, gun in hand, from the patio, along the line of sound. So quiet, almost a specter himself. Jack waited until he was at the base of the hill before squeezing the trigger and making the metaphor reality. Even as the bullets stitched across the runner’s chest, Jack was moving, rolling over the hill, leaving the empty gun behind.
He hit the patio at full sprint, still absorbing information at full speed. A second man scrabbled for his gun, still half in the act of easing himself down onto a shaking young woman, whose eyes registered as the only bright points of luminous white in the dim, cloying gloom. Jack dipped his shoulder as he came in, scooped her assailant as he ran past, peeling the other man up and off. Still at a full run, Jack rammed the other man through the half-open patio doors, splintering the wood frame and shattering the glass. There was a bit more light in the living room, white light, streaming in from the adjoining kitchen. Jack could see well enough to drag the aborted rapist through a low coffee table and send him spinning into a fireplace mantle.
A third man at the refrigerator, mouth wrapped around a cookie, pistol on the dining table between them. Both men lunged for the weapon, but Jack could see the other was closer, so he threw his weight under the edge of the table itself. The killer, eyes wide but hands on the gun, tried to reverse out of his sprawl position and fire, but his feet never found purchase on the marble floor. Jack pushed, and the table rose on its side legs, then flipped completely. On hands and knees, the killer squirmed for the stairs at the back of the kitchen, but Jack hooked the cookie jar from the cupboard and pitched it into his head. Shattered cookies and pottery marked where the killer fell. Jack shut the fridge, cutting off the light.
Her mouth had been duct-taped shut, and wrists and ankles taped to the wrought-iron furniture on the patio. The young woman was barely conscious, but it was apparent the most they’d had time to do was scare her witless. She trembled in misery and terror, but there wasn’t time to cut her free. Jack pulled the tape from a corner of her mouth, so she could breath properly, then covered her with a throw from the sofa. As long as the bad guys were in front of him,
she was safe.
Bryce sounded like he was nearly finished.
Silence held solidly in the upper level of the house, as hushed as a cathedral. Jack unsafed his pistol and headed for the front stairs.
The second floor landing was open, facing the gloomy den and more shadows than Jack liked to have at his back. He reached the head of the stairs and froze when the hall lights clicked on. A tall, spare man in bedclothes walked towards him, disheveled and sweating, hands carefully out to either side.
In the gloom behind, up the stairs that must have led to a master bedroom, something moved. Darkness roiling in upon itself. A hint of a gun barrel.
“Stop,” a voice from that darkness commanded, and the older man halted. “Give your weapon to the doctor.”
American English accent, no regionalisms, but—an easy sway in the vowels. Pacific Northwest?
Jack leaned into the edge of the wall, over a row of switches. He had to blink to keep his vision sharp, his thoughts clear. His strength was failing, sliding away like the last few grains of sand through an hourglass.
The scientist’s lips moved. “My daughter?”
Jack gave what he hoped was a reassuring look, and flicked his eyes back up the hall. His night vision was all but destroyed under the yellow glare. Plan B, plan B. Civilian in the way, a gun aimed at both of them. Can’t even really see target. The doctor held himself well, athletically, despite fringes of grey at his temples. And his hand rested on a doorknob. His weight shifted slightly as their eyes met, and Jack understood.