Silent Assassin

by Leo J. Maloney

  “We handed it over to U.S. government intelligence, which we managed to do without revealing the precise nature of the organism. They have better man power and resources to deal with this kind of search. We got lucky with the mycologist. But the kinds of paper trails we’re talking about takes a little more than we have here. For now, anyway.”

  Morgan didn’t respond, but he filed away that for now in his head.

  “Meanwhile, why don’t we take a little walk to Barrett’s workshop?” she said. “We’ve got a little something for you.”

  Morgan followed her through the corridors of Zeta Division, then upstairs. Bloch put her hand on a panel, and the door opened to Eugenia Barrett’s workshop. The space itself was cavernous and brightly lit, with numerous worktables and electronic devices lying open with their innards exposed. There was a truck-sized door on the far end that Morgan knew opened up into the building’s garage. Heavy metal was blasting from speakers in the middle of the room, reverberating far and wide in the enormous room. In the middle was a something large. It was covered by a tarp, but the shape was unmistakable.

  “You got me a car?” he asked.

  “Hold on,” said Barrett. “Let me get the fanfare ready.”

  “That’s unnecessary, Barrett,” said Bloch. “Just show it to him.”

  Morgan’s eyes were already tracing the shape of the vehicle, making conjectures about what it was. Even covered up, he had a pretty good idea.

  “Just wanted to add a little theatricality to the mix.”

  Bloch shot her an impatient look.

  “All right, all right.” With a flourish like a circus ringleader, Barrett pulled the tarp to reveal the vehicle underneath.

  Morgan’s face lit up as he realized it was a black-on-black Ford Shelby GT 500 Cobra. Barrett then said, “We had it customized just for you. I haven’t gotten around to writing a user manual yet, but I can show you the ropes. It has a six-fifty HP supercharged V8 capable of more than two hundred miles per hour, with a six-speed manual transmission. It has nineteen-inch front and twenty-inch rear wheels, which will give you much better handling at high speeds.”

  “Holy crap,” he said, like a kid on Christmas. “It’s . . . perfect.”

  And Morgan knew perfection. He had loved muscle cars since his teenage years. He had approached his cover job as a classic car broker with the passion of the enthusiast. He could rattle off car stats from memory, and he had personally taken apart and put back together a few.

  “I thought you might like it,” said Barrett. “It’s totally custom-made. Heavily armored with overlapping titanium alloy plates. Lightweight, and still it laughs in the face of assault weapons. In fact, anything not mounted on a tank is not going to pierce this bad boy. The tires are made of carbon nanotubes. Ridiculously strong. They can’t be shot out and won’t go flat.”

  “Plus,” she said, “I’ve added a few personal touches. The exterior appears to be completely stock, but the headlights swing open and are equipped with heat-seeking missiles. The parking lights drop down and can fire lasers. Both of these have steering-wheel controls that will recognize your palm and thumb prints to prevent anyone else from activating these weapons. And then you have two nozzles hidden under the back bumper.”

  “The old oil slick trick?” said Morgan.

  “Oil slicks are for sissies,” she said. “This has an amazingly potent rubber solvent. A car behind you runs over it, and whichever tires touch this thing are going to become streaks on the asphalt. The inner tubes give out pretty much instantly, too.”

  Morgan got into the car to get a feel for the leather seats and layout of the controls. Barrett continued her description, “Both front seats can be ejected. It is fitted with a state-of-the-art onboard computer system linked to several satellites and programmed for voice commands. Once we get you registered, it will respond to you, and you alone, and allow you to send audible text messages. It has detection radar and a GPS with 3-D mapping with a tracker so we’ll always be able to find you. It also has a remote or sixty-second-delayed self-destruct button, if you should ever need it.”

  “Cobra,” said Barrett, “this car has the most advanced technology known to man, and if used correctly can be as deadly as any agent. Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “How soon can I take this baby out on the road?”

  Morgan pulled up to his driveway as twilight became night, and parked in the garage. The car was a magnificent machine. He had torn down the highway, getting a feel for its handling. He even tested out some of the more exotic features—at least the nondestructive ones. Eventually, he came home, but not because he ever wanted to stop driving.

  As he was getting out of the car, Jenny opened the kitchen door and stood against the doorjamb, looking pleasantly at him.

  “What’s that?” she asked. “New car?”

  “Yeah, company perk,” Morgan said. “It’s called a Cobra, which I thought was appropriate. What do you think?”

  “Very sexy,” she said. “Very you.”

  “You’re very friendly,” said Morgan. “Frankly, I thought you’d be angry, after last night.”

  “Let’s not talk about last night,” she said. “Just come here.”

  She fell into his arms, and they kissed. They walked into the kitchen together as he pulled the door shut behind him. He put his hand on her back and pulled her close. They kissed again.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said. He had. He had missed her warmth and her smell. Being close to her made him feel truly at home.

  “I’ve missed you too,” she said, smiling between kisses. She pulled him close and ran her hand through her hair. “Alex is out.”

  “Hmm,” he said. As they kissed, her breathing became heavier.

  “Wait, wait,” she said, gently pushing him away. “Hold on. I thought I could leave this conversation aside for the night. Only for tonight. But I don’t think I can. I need to talk to you, Dan.”

  Morgan pulled back, concerned. “What is it, Jen?”

  “I can’t just—look, Dan. Two days ago. I had a crisis, a perfect storm of a day. Mom had a breast cancer scare, Alex went off again, and I ended up losing my temper and yelling at a client.”

  “Oh God, Jen, is she—”

  “She’s fine, thank God,” said Jenny. “It turned out to be a benign mass. But I could have used you here, Dan. I needed you. At least to be able to call you, to hear your voice. But you were gone, and I had no idea where you were.”

  “Look, I really can’t tell you,” he said.

  “It doesn’t even matter,” she said. “You weren’t here. You left for days without telling me where. Leaving me not knowing if you would ever come back.”

  “Jenny—”

  “No, Dan,” she said. “Don’t say anything. That happened, and then this Alex thing. I didn’t really know what to say about that. But look, the truth is, I just can’t fight anymore. I don’t like what you do. As a matter of fact, I hate it. But I’m tired, Dan. Fighting with you is exhausting. I can’t stand not being able to talk to you. I miss things just being okay and normal between us.”

  “Me too,” said Morgan. “I want that more than anything in the world.”

  “Not more than you want to be a black op,” said Jenny. “That much is clear. Though for the life of me I can’t imagine why.”

  “Jenny . . .”

  “So I don’t understand, and I can’t really say that I’m okay with it. You should know that I’m not. But . . .” She sighed. “I promised that I would love you and stay by your side, when we got married. In sickness and in health. And unfortunately, that includes your stupid decisions as well.”

  “I suppose that’s really the best I could hope for,” he said, and then smiled warmly.

  “I’ve missed you, Dan,” she said, relief flooding her voice. “I’ve missed you so much.” She pressed her small frame to him as they hugged. “I can’t stand not talking to you, not sleeping next to you. You’re already away too much.
I can’t stand not being with you when you’re here on top of that.”

  “I’ve missed you too,” he said, lost in the warmth and closeness of her body. Her hair was soft against his face. They held each other for a long time with closed eyes. Then she released him and smiled at him with misty eyes.

  “So you got a new toy, huh?” she said, with just a trace of joy creeping into her voice. “When are you going to take me for a spin?”

  CHAPTER 50

  Andover, February 27

  Alex Morgan got back from her run energized, with legs burning and breath ragged from the effort of the last sprint. The sun was low in the sky, and the wind was starting to pick up. Her sweat was beginning to turn icy cold and the cold was beginning to hurt her lungs, so she was back just in time. She saw as she was coming in that her father’s car was not in the garage.

  “Mom, I’m home!” she said, closing the kitchen door behind her.

  “Hi, honey!” her mother called out in response.

  Alex went straight upstairs to her room to practice her self-defense drills in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom. She did her elbow strikes and palm strikes. She had started her shaolin kempo karate training at a dojo in Boston a little over a year ago. She’d known nothing about defending herself back then, but she had shot to the top of the students in her class. She had learned how to strike with her hands, elbows, and forearms, how to break her opponent’s balance, and how to take them down. She had also become proficient with knives, swords, and nunchakus.

  She practiced removing the switchblade she had taken to fastening to her arm just below her wrist with an elastic headband and bringing it to an attack position in one fluid move. The she practiced the jabs and the slashes. When she had started training, she had cut her hand badly. She’d managed to hide it from her mother until it healed over—she didn’t want anyone to know about the knife. Now, she never cut herself anymore. In fact, it looked like she could really do some damage with the short blade.

  Up until recently, her room had still been a little girl’s room. Her stuffed animals had occupied almost half the bed, which had a pink ornamented headboard, and she’d had a pink dresser to match, covered with old stickers that she had put up in her preteen years. It had undergone a drastic change since. There was nothing pink to be found at all. She had a plain adult bed with no headboard now, and a simple wooden dresser. On the walls she had posters of rock climbers and runners. On one wall she had her exercise routine, and a calendar where she had checked the days that she had performed it. The chain of checks was unbroken for three months now, and she was going strong. She had become obsessed with physical training, with the goal of being able to defend herself in any situation.

  Once she was done, she took a shower, dressed, and made sure that the blade was secure and well hidden under the sleeve of her fleece shirt, then she went downstairs to the kitchen to get some water. She mixed cold with room-temperature water in a glass and downed it. As she put the glass down, she thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah, Alex?” her mother called out from her room upstairs.

  “Nothing,” Alex replied. “Never mind.”

  As she walked back up to her room, she thought she heard footsteps downstairs. She stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Dad?” He was supposed to be in the city again, but it was always possible that he would come back early. “Is that you?”

  When she reached the bottom of the stairwell, two men in black ski masks appeared in front of her. She screamed, but it was cut short when one of them grabbed her and put her in a chokehold from the rear. She could feel his breath in her ear, and was disgusted by the warmth of his body against hers.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other man heading upstairs. Alex tried to elbow and kick the one holding her, but it was no use. In training, she could break anyone’s headlock—but this wasn’t training. There was no sensei to call off the strike here. Thinking quickly, she slipped the switchblade from under her sleeve, just like she had just practiced. Clutching it in her right hand, she thrust the knife backwards, into left side of the man’s neck. She felt his blood splattering on the side of her face and head. He roared and released her. He fell to the ground, grasping at his neck to stop the bleeding.

  Without thinking, she went straight out the back door. She jumped over the fence and just kept on running, through the Harrisons’ backyard, from there out into the street, just running farther and farther away. She cried as she ran, choking with ragged breaths. The tears streamed down, her mind filled with the single purpose of getting as far away from the house as possible. Far, far away. She ran for minutes, but it felt like hours to her.

  Her wits started to return to her, and the first thing that came to her mind was her mother. Her mother was in the house. Alex had panicked and left her mother there with the other masked man. The horror hit her all at once. She stopped running and, for a moment, just stood there, her fear on a perfect balance with her need to do something. Then she turned to run back to the house.

  She ran as fast as she could, her already fatigued legs burning with the effort. The pain made her grit her teeth, push harder, go faster, each moment of ache a barb that, in her mind, was penance for having run away. As she ran, she imagined having done something different: that she had used one of her father’s guns and taken the other man out by herself. This fantasy sharpened the pain, because in reality what she had done was flee.

  As she turned onto her street, she heard the police sirens in the distance, approaching. She got to her front door and took a deep breath. She was doing this. She had to, even if it meant that she would die or be taken.

  She opened the door and ran inside. There was a pool of blood where she had taken out the man who had attacked her.

  “Mom?” she called out. “Mom!”

  She ran up to her parents’ bedroom. There was no one there. She checked her own bedroom and every other room in the house. There were signs of struggle, things on the floor, a broken mirror, but no one was in the house. The other man had left, and had taken her mother with him.

  She was so frantic that it took her several minutes to calm down enough to call her father.

  CHAPTER 51

  Boston, February 27

  Morgan raced home probably as fast as he’d ever driven before. He sped up I-93 North out of Boston, weaving through traffic. He took his exit, nearly tipping over as he made the curve, then ran every red light until he reached his house. He arrived to find Alex, by the headlights of his car, sitting on the lawn in the dark, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Dad,” she cried as he got out of the car. She ran to embrace him, and he took her in his arms. “Dad. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t save her. I just ran. Dad. I just ran out of there and I left her.”

  “Calm down, Alex, honey.” He hugged her, and felt the skin of her face against his. “Honey, you’re freezing! Tell me what happened. Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m not hurt—”

  “There’s blood on your face,” he said.

  “It’s not mine,” she said, reflexively touching her face where he was looking. She sobbed. “Dad! They took Mom!”

  “Who did?”

  “Two men in masks,” she said. “They were in the house. I stabbed one and managed to get away, and then I ran and left her—” She broke down in tears. “Why did I run?”

  “Did you check the house?” he asked. She nodded. He held her by the shoulders and stooped slightly so that his eyes were level with hers. “Alex. Alex. Listen to me. You did the right thing. You were faced with an impossible situation, and you ran. You did the right thing. You lived.”

  She nodded weakly.

  “Now,” he continued, “I’m going to find your mother. I need you to be strong for me and look after yourself while I do. Can you do that?” She nodded again, this time more calmly.

  He took out his secure phone and dialed. It rang half
a dozen times before he heard Lincoln Shepard’s voice on the other end. “Y’ello.”

  “Shepard, it’s Cobra. I need your help.”

  “Listen, I’m just running some test on a new thing I’m hacking together—”

  “Right now,” said Morgan.

  Shepard apparently took note of Morgan’s tone, because he asked, “What happened?”

  “My wife’s been taken.”

  “What?”

  “Abducted. From my house. About half an hour, forty minutes ago. I’m going to need your help on this.”

  “Can I get an address?”

  Shit. There goes anonymity. “Yeah, sure, it’s—” He gave Shepard his home address and heard him typing it through the comm.

  “I’ll scare up whatever surveillance I can get,” he said. “Any idea on the color, make and model of the vehicle?”

  He turned to his daughter. “Did you happen to see what car they came in?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a negative,” he told Shepard.

  “All right. I’ll look at traffic cameras in a pattern radiating from your location. Running some algorithms to narrow down the search.”

  “All right,” said Morgan.

  “Hold on,” said Shepard. “Bloch’s here.”

  “Cobra,” came Diana Bloch’s voice. “What’s going on?”

  He explained.

  “Do you think it was Novokoff?” she asked.

  “The thought had occurred to me.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m diverting all our resources to this. I’m calling Bishop and tactical in. Meanwhile, I think it’s a good idea if you sit this one out.”

  “Not a chance,” he said. “I’m coming back down to the city. Keep me posted.” He hung up, then looked at his daughter, who was shivering with her arms wrapped around herself.

  “Alex,” he said. “I wish I could take care of you right now and take you somewhere safe, but every second counts right now. Listen carefully. I want you to take your mother’s car and go to the Mullinses’, over in Burlington. You remember where that is?”