by Declan Finn
He sighed and sat down in his favorite chair—one that still lightly held the fragrance of Inna’s regular perfume of vanilla sugar.
What was it from Dune? I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. It is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear…And kill it…Well, maybe that wasn’t the exact line.
He rose with a sigh, headed for the CD player, and looked through Inna’s collection of Loreena McKennitt, laying his finger atop each one as he read the titles.
“There are easier ways to relax, you know. I prefer Gregorian chant, meself.”
A CD slid off the self, into Ryan’s hand, and he flung it across the room like a Frisbee, making the stranger in the shadows flinch, elegantly tilting her body to let the jewel case fly by.
“That’s not much of a way to treat guests in your home, now is it, Mr. Ryan?” she said with amusement and a light brogue. “A nice Irish boy like yourself shouldn’t be tossing things at women unless it’s a ring.”
Ryan already had his baton out and at his side. “First, it’s not my home. Second, you’re an intruder, not a guest. Finally, my girlfriend wouldn’t like me throwing jewelry at strange women.”
“Ay, am I strange?” she asked, stepping into the light. She was an inch shorter than Ryan, with hair as black as his flowing down her shoulders, snow-fair skin and emerald-green eyes that glowed in the starlight seeping through the windows. Her body was tightly wrapped in a black raincoat, obviously meant to obscure her form, making her appear as almost a slender shadow darting between raindrops.
“You’re strange to me. I’ve also had some bad luck with my fellow Micks recently. So if you wouldn’t mind, you better have a good explanation for breaking in here, or else I’m going to take this”—he raised the baton—“and use it as a suppository.”
“How colorfully sodomite of you.” She slowly unwrapped the raincoat’s belt, keeping her pale hands in plain view at all times. She reached inside, withdrew a leather case and tossed it at Sean’s feet. He cocked his eyebrows at her. She sighed, opening her coat as though to flash him, showing that she had no weapons in her two-piece black catsuit, which was perfect for keeping clothes from catching on inconvenient objects.
Still wary, Ryan slowly lowered himself to one knee and reached for the case with his free hand. She waited as he retrieved it.
He opened the case to reveal a badge with the word “Interpol” in black capital letters, her photo, and the name “Maureen McGrail.”
“Interpol? You must be kidding. First the Boys from the Old Brigade, now you?”
“You’ve recently had contact with Misters Boyle and O’Riordan. After you destroyed their network, they have to be pretty hard up for friends. They’d want you because you’re smarter than they are, and they think everyone with a drop of Irish blood is a natural ally who can’t refuse ’em. Tag, you’re it.”
He rolled his eyes and slowly rose, tossing McGrail her badge. “Fine. Might I ask why you couldn’t just knock?”
“ ’Tisn’t subtle enough. Your idea of subtle is blowing up a house, but most people object to that.”
Ryan growled. “You do something once and they never let you forget it…and I just set the house on fire.” He quickly collapsed the baton and tucked it away in a sheath under his left arm. “So you want my help catching those bozos?”
She shook her head. “I’m just letting you know you’ll occasionally see me behind ya. I doubt you’ll notice too often, but just in case, I thought it would be healthier if I said something. Cops talk to each other, you know.”
“So I’ve heard. And you know my tactics down to the letter? And what would that be? Creative destruction?”
“Nah, that’s just a mindset: accept no help; retreat when the shooting starts; fight when necessary; and when fighting, throw everything but the bathroom sink at them.”
“Works for the Secret Service.” He turned back to the CD collection for a moment, scanned it, and looked back to where McGrail had been standing. All that was left of her were shadows.
And people hate it when I do that. People have been watching far too many Batman cartoons. He looked at the CDs, then the shadows again. “Fockmall. I’m going to bed.”
***
Maureen McGrail settled into a chair, closing her eyes to settle in for her nightly meditation. Before meditation set in, she let her thoughts drift briefly to Sean Ryan. He was an interesting fellow. Most of the time, from what she had heard, he was far more relaxed than he was now.
Maybe it was because of his last client. She nodded to herself. Most people had heard about the only failure of the firm of Sean A.P. Ryan & Associates—the death of one Mr. McCullough, who had once worked with Boyle and O’Riordan.
It had been all over town and the tabloids—the Irish actor had given himself a fatal OD, and Sean Ryan was the one with his head in the crosshairs. His competition was trying hard to destroy his firm with the incident.
As though the man is supposed to protect the idjits from themselves. What do they want him to do, measure out their heroin for them so they don’t kill themselves? Probably.
She sighed. It was a fine waste of material, if Ryan was going to be so high strung for a while. Ah well… she let herself sink into her mind…
And then the dreams began.
Chapter 2: Rehearsal for Murder
Back in Los Angeles, California, in a rather neat and tidy suburb, were two women of some outstanding qualities. One happened to be famous, and the other happened to be lethal.
Most people couldn’t guess Mira Nikolic’s age, even though it was public knowledge that the actress was forty-seven. She was only a slight built woman of 5’3”, but had survived the former Yugoslavia long enough to get out, and smart enough to speak four languages fluently—Serbo-Croatian, French, German and English.
Mira looked up… and up…and up… at one of Sean’s partners, Athena Marcowitz. “May I ask you a question?”
Athena Marcowitz was built like her namesake—she was a 6’2” Afro-Cuban-Irishwoman. That day, Athena wore a simple ensemble of jeans and blouse, and spent a few minutes carefully sculpting her fingernails with a serrated-edge combat knife.
Athena smiled, leaned back in Mira’s armchair and stretched out like a large cat. “Sure.”
Mira thought a moment, grateful that she could stop looking up at the woman—any longer, she would have had a sprained neck. “Is Sean usually so…?” Mira struggled with the English words.
“Uptight? God, no… He’s usually having way too much fun. And I mean an obscene amount of fun. It doesn’t seem like a fetish to me, but if you told me otherwise, I’d not be hard-pressed to believe it.”
Mira’s nose crinkled with mild disgust. “I cannot understand how any man could enjoy such… such things.”
Athena shrugged. “You want sense, you don’t talk men, and you don’t talk Ryan. Winston Churchill once said the most exhilarating feeling is to be shot at without effect—that’s Sean. He's not a junky, because he goes out of his way to avoid the bullets, but thrashing the bad guy—that’s what he enjoys. And now…” She sighed. “He lost a client, David McCullough, real charmer, a druggie and drunk. He had made a reputation in Hollywood about being a tough, former IRA gunman, only he didn’t tell anyone that his IRA splinter group consisted of three people. One was a Dennis Boyle, the other a Francis O’Riordan; the third was Dave McCullough, the client.
“Sean spent three months with this guy. He brought him home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, made him hang out with the family, kept him so far away from needles, Sean even confiscated a sewing kit. Once he was off the bottle and the needle, he was a great guy. Then the bully boys closed in, and he cracked. Sean had a time-sensitive source, and left it in the hands of Edward to look after him.”
Mira nodded. “And Edward would not come out of the car unless he needed to.”
“Bingo.”
“A fine Catholic expression.”
Athena laughed. “You�
��ve been listening to Sean too much. Now where was I? Yes, Sean left him in his trailer with Edward outside. McCullough apparently had a secret stash, and he mainlined himself to death. Sean took it hard, and personal; after all that, the bastard betrayed him. End of story.”
Mira cocked her head. “Would it not have been wiser to take on an easier client?”
She grinned. “You met Sean a bit; take a guess.”
The actress paused. The smile made Athena’s green eyes light up, which looked out of place on the face so dark she could have been Sicilian—although, given the ethnic backgrounds Athena boasted, she could be that, too. “Because he could? Because I need to be protected?”
The bodyguard grinned. “All that and more: because he needs to do it.” She leaned back in the chair. “You may have noticed—he’s compulsive. Enough to be great at the job, but not debilitating; Sean does good deeds, compulsively so. He has plenty of choices, but he wouldn’t be him if he did otherwise. Someone picks his pocket, he’ll grab their hand and twist a little; if they need a job, he’ll give one to them, and if not, well, he breaks the hand. If he sees someone in need, he helps them; that’s why he does this.”
“I thought he did it because he would be doing something more worthwhile than with his previous occupation.”
“That’s how it started anyway.” She looked at her watch. “Time to get you packed.”
***
Andre Dragov pulled the stolen UPS Truck outside of Mira Nikolic’s house. He put on his coat, and smiled. The tall, pale, bloodless Serbian assassin smiled at the house. He was going to leave a little message behind for Sean Ryan and his team of miscreants. He had a very simple plan—first, kill Mira’s protective detail, then her husband, and then, for the very end, gut her baby while she watched, and leave her tied up like a calf at a rodeo. He'd kill her later, when there would be cameras.
Dragov was wearing his tactical shirt, which he got out of Quartermaster magazine—it had little inside pockets within the shirt itself, providing enough cover to carry at least three small guns in front. And that’s just in the shirt.
He passed by the car in front, looking inside. There was a half-knit, lime-green blanket on the passenger side of the car. Dragov cocked his head, and then looked closer. The blanket was half-knit, but there weren’t any knitting needles.
Probably inside. He looked over his shoulder at his backup man in the car, who looked…like he had a knitting needle driven into his temple.
Andre dropped to one knee and scanned the area.
Probably hiding behind the truck. He grinned, then reached inside his coat for a transmitter attached to a bomb inside one of the truck’s packages. He tapped the button for a ten-second delay on the bomb, then slowly straightened and began walking backwards away from the truck.
And then the package came flying out from the other side of the brown truck. Dragov blinked, then turned and sprinted as fast as he could away from the bomb.
A 6’6” black male stepped out from behind the truck and started firing for Dragov’s back as the Serbian screamed like a little girl, bullets zinging all around him.
Andre thought about how much time was left on the bomb. Maybe seven, six, five, four, three, two, one… No boom. Why no boom?
***
Little did Andre know, Edward “Call me Eddie and you Die” Murphy, had disarmed the bomb before even killing his partner with the knitting needles.
Edward stepped forward calmly, shooting at Dragov as he stumbled, tripped, and crashed over half a dozen lawn jockeys, footballs, and assorted toys strewn over the lawns of Mira Nikolic’s neighbors.
Dragov disappeared around a bend, and Edward sighed.
Athena Marcowitz came out of the house, gun in hand. “What happened?”
Edward smiled slightly. “Not much. Someone just tried to ruin my blanket. That’s all. They got blood all over my needles.”
Athena smiled as she lowered her weapon, about to reply in kind to his facetiousness, when there was a squeal of tires as a car rounded the corner. Her gun when up. “This them?”
Edward shook his head. “Different car—a second team?”
A hand poked out of the rear window, a flaming rag from the top of a bottle, trailing smoke. The passenger cackled as he threw the bottle at them.
Edward dove to one side, and Athena simply stood still a long moment. With a sudden motion, she sidestepped out of the way of the car, snatching the bottle out of midair. She whirled around to face the fleeing car, and hurled the bottle with a happy cry of, “Return to sender!”
***
Luan Mulliqi drove as if he were on fire—thankfully, it was his backseat passenger who was alight, not him. Fucking infidel. I’ll cut out her heart and feed it to a pig…once I put out the car.
He turned around a corner, and barely missed a police car, which immediately gave chase. Mulliqi ground his gas pedal into the floor mat, speeding out into the pedestrians, running over a dog and knocking a shopping cart over, driving through a telephone pole and a truck carrying rubber balls.
Then Luan noticed something: he couldn’t see anymore. He glanced into the rear view mirror and found his colleague had become a mere ashtray of his former self.
He immediately lowered the windows, creating a smokescreen behind him.
And then he heard the LAPD helicopter shouting at him.
He sighed and jackknifed the car, parked it in the middle of the street, and leapt out, running. He made it a block when he heard even more sirens, then pivoted, firing for the car’s gas tank. The car did not explode, and Luan kept running. The exploding car blasted him—and everyone else—off his feet.
Saddam must have ignited the gas tank. Salaam aliekum, my friend.
He ran off into the sunset… And tripped over the cardboard sunset someone had put in the middle of the street as an advertisement for a play.
“Hey, dude, something wrong?”
Luan looked up. It was what Americans called a “stoner” or a “hippie.” Excellent. “Yes, the pigs are after me!” he spat, trying to get off the ground.
The druggie’s eyes narrowed. “The cops? Fuck them, man, racial- profiling bastards. Come here.”
Luan followed him inside of a building, into a loft above an odd-looking arboretum with many potted plants.
“Thank you, very much, may I ask who you are?”
The stoner waved the gratitude away. “No problemo, man. Call me Moore, everyone else does.”
“And why do they do that?”
“Because I look like Michael Moore, can’t you tell?” he asked.
Mulliqi looked over the pale, drawn shadow of a man. “Of course.”
“My father’s a real big star, a human shield even. I mean, that was real cool, he went over to save all of those lives in Iran, when the fuckers in Washington invaded.”
Luan nodded, confused. When did the infidels invade Iran? He sighed, raised his silenced pistol, and shot the stoner between the eyes twice, to silence him.
He leaned back and smiled, thankful that he had a place to stay. Allah, thank you for these useful fools.
Luan looked at his watch. He had a plane to catch.
***
Middle Earth’s Most Wanted Elven Assassin looked up from sharpening his blades as he heard the news—someone had just tried to kill Mira Nikolic.
He narrowed his eyes, listening to the radio. The bastards had tried to cook her with a firebomb, destroy her…bodyguards? How dare they!
His eyes flashed as he listened to one lawyer on the radio criticize the LAPD for both not catching the criminal, and for chasing the man in the first place.
The Assassin noted the lawyer’s name. I will kill that one later.
***
An elbow snapped into the solar plexus, followed by a knee to the lowered forehead, pivot, and a snap kick to a different throat.
Maureen blinked. Her typical meditation routine never included dreams, even though it served as a replacement for sleep; two ho
urs of meditation served as fourteen for anyone else, and she could slip in and out of that altered state of consciousness at any given time. But dreams were, at the least, uncommon. Some night, when she was really tired, meditation would drift into sleep, and that’s when the dreams came.
Although, she realized, it was more of a memory than a dream. There had been a long, drawn out fight on the Falls Road, and she had been in the middle of it by accident. She had meant to be in on the take down: it had been her right; she had worked the case and gotten the entire Belfast police force to that one address. The problem, however, had not even been the primary targets—who, for once, had not been the IRA, the Real IRA, or any other mutation, but Irish drug dealers—and the locals on the street didn’t even interfere with the operation, because good Irish Catholics didn’t like drugs; the problem had been the other locals. The Orangemen had come in, shouting the usual bits of threats, this time twisting reality so that the drug dealers were actually “a Catholic plot to ruin the youth of Ulster.”
Then the killing had started.
***
After his shower, Sean Ryan strode out of the bathroom, still drying himself from his shower at ten in the morning. Let’s see if I can actually get through the day without someone else mucking it up. His cell phone rang. He sighed. Too late. “Murphy’s morgue, Eddie speaking.”
“Don’t call me Eddie.”
Sean didn’t know whether to smile or grimace. “How are you this morning?”
“Well, someone tried to cap your girl last night,” Edward said. I got one, the other escaped. The dead man is brain-dead local muscle. The other guy’s a pro, Semtex and everything. It looks ex-Soviet; then again, I haven’t been there for years.”
“The USSR fell quite a while ago, no one’s been there in years.”
“Point taken. The thing is, we have the transportation for the hitter, but he didn’t even leave hair. I think the guy’s a real pro. I’ll look into it a bit more later. Talk to you after we land.”