by Declan Finn
Sean hung up.
“A late riser, are you?”
He whirled around, about to whip his towel in the face of Maureen McGrail, who stood behind him wearing a neat black turtleneck and matching pants.
He relaxed slightly. “Can’t you try using the doorbell? Besides, how the hell did you get back in? After last night, I made sure this place was impregnable.”
“True, but you should have made sure that I’d left first. I was in the basement.” She smiled.
He made a note to write that down and absentmindedly started drying himself again. “To answer your earlier question, it may be 4pm in Dublin, but it’s only 7am in LA. So this is actually quite early for me…would you like to come downstairs for some breakfast?”
McGrail smiled, her eyes glowing with amusement. “Aren’t ya fergetting somethin’? Clothes, perhaps?”
He shrugged. “Most of my body can be seen swimming on a beach, so you can not look, and if you do, I really don’t have anything to be embarrassed about.”
More like bare-assed, at the moment, she thought. Nice bum, too.
The scars, though, were not something that happened via cigarette butts. “The burns are from the incident with the Cartel and the burning house?”
Sean smiled and chuckled. “Trapped inside a burning Orc suit that wasn’t supposed to be on fire. Breakfast?”
She shook her head. “Had a protein bar. I just wanted to remind you I was around.”
“You had to stay in the basement for that?”
“No, but I wanted to make sure no one else would be breaking in.”
He nodded. “In which case, start making a reservation out on Long Island. I’ll be there for the next few days.”
McGrail smiled. “You want me around that much, eh?”
“No, I want you out of my girlfriend’s house.”
***
Luan Mulliqi smiled as his weaponry came into the country at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport, via Logan Airport in Boston. The Bostonians were not an issue in terms of security. Move in, act normal, smile, and act like you’re from out of town. They were so busy being politically correct, that Luan and his fellow Muslims needed to show off their Islamic faith and speak with thick accents in order to make sure they would not be searched.
Ah, America! He smiled at his small troop of Albanians. He wasn’t very comfortable with any action with less than sixty people, but he would tolerate it for once. After all, he was only going up against one man, and that would be nothing in comparison to what he’d do with the woman he protected.
Luan had the plan all laid out. He and his men would have the incident recorded at an event already being filmed. One man would confiscate the tape afterward, and add it to the rest…
The rest of the tape would be him, and his men, in an apartment, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere—somewhere in Ohio, or maybe Indiana. Everyone would have at least one turn at her, and when every one of his men finally tired, then the blood would begin.
He laughed to himself. There had been a time in Kosovo when he had been shot at by a brigade of Bosnians from the infamous Red Berets, when a missile strike veered off course and blew them all to hell.
And for that reason, Luan was there today, in America. Thank you, Mr. Clinton.
Luan Mulliqi glanced around, making certain that no one was paying any attention to him and his team. There weren’t even that many people in the airport, but one could never be too certain.
Then again, aside from the blonde fellow reading the science fiction magazine, there wasn’t even anyone worth remarking on.
He turned back to the conveyor belt and collected more of his luggage.
***
Middle Earth’s Most Wanted Elven Assassin looked from the back of MacArthur Airport, reading through Sci-Fi magazine as he watched for Mira with his peripheral vision. The odds of dunedain Ryan bringing Mira the shortest, direct route to Rockycreek was about as small as a troll being able to walk on water, but that didn’t stop him. After all, there was nothing that said a Ranger had to be right about everything. After all, look at some of the mistakes made during that mess with the ring…
Middle Earth’s Most Wanted Elven Assassin blinked. The rest of the elves had gone West, hadn’t they? Then what was he still doing there?
He smiled. Cleanup work, of course. We never did see the rest of the Orcs get killed, did we? I have to finish what everyone else left behind.
He sighed. It was uncharacteristically sloppy the way his elvish kin left all those Orcs and goblins lying about. Then again, they had been in an uncharacteristic hurry.
Oh well, everyone makes mistakes.
The assassin noted something. There were a bunch of olive-skinned gentlemen gathered around the luggage area. That in itself did not matter to him, a dozen such groups had passed through in the past half hour, and a dozen more had been through over the course of the day.
But this group was different. He didn’t know why, and he was pretty sure there was a good reason—he always had a good reason, even if he had to make one up. When he had reported this to one of his fellow travelers at C-Con once, he had been told that his “spider-sense” was tingling…which was, of course, patently absurd. I’m not a spider, I’m an elf.
In any event, he knew something was wrong about these men. It almost felt as if they were Orcs disguised as men. He chuckled. It’s not as if it could happen.
***
There are problems with being in a hotel where a science fiction convention has its crowds: Klingons in the lobby; Rangers in the restaurants; and “Martians” invading the hotel, scaring the bejezus out of guests who had never read a science fiction novel. Several had been scared by the guests, who dressed like a cross between a Renaissance festival and the mind of George Lucas on LSD.
There was even more chaos on campus, where vendors brought in boxes of comic books the students wanted to raid, costumes that could make anyone look like a Prince or Princess of Darkness (or the occasional JAPD—Jewish American Princess of Darkness), black capes, and enough fancy daggers and swords to arm the thousand-member cast of The Lord of the Rings three times over.
“The last thing I need; more weapons of mass dissection, brought to you by Lecter’s knife wares,” Sean Ryan said, merely looking around the hotel lobby at all the pseudo-artillery, and very real-looking sharp objects clipped to the belts of the “Fremen” of Dune, whose slightly tattered cloaks bore a great resemblance to those of the “Rebel” Luke's and Leia’s from Return of the Jedi, who in turn related very well with the tall folks who attached what looked like carpets to their bodies, all of whom gave very dirty looks to the men in white plastic garb and called themselves storm troopers, who interacted very well with the men in the black plastic garb and calling themselves Imperial Shock Troops from Dune, none of which interacted very well with the Fremen.
Wow, that was all one sentence. Let my English teacher deconstruct that, leftwing fascist reject from UC Berkley!
***
After Maureen McGrail left Inna’s house the day before, and he explained to Inna exactly why she was even in the country, the love of Ryan’s life merely looked at him. “Why did you not tell me this before?”
“I was hoping not to worry Mira,” Sean Ryan asnwered.
Mira looked up from the baby Marko and said, “Sean, I have been chased out of my country, threatened, and learned how to fire my own handgun. I have not lived a sheltered existence, and since I have met you, that has only become more true. It has become, shall we say, a little late to protect me from facts.”
Ryan sighed deeply, if only because she was right and he was an idiot. “True. I’ve never been in the Secret Service, and I have no intention of keeping secrets from you folks now. But aside from the IRA incident and Interpol breathing down my neck, not much has been going on.” Isn’t that enough?
He spent the next half-hour loading boxes into Inna’s SUV; thankfully, he had already started the process the day before and dro
pped off a few boxes at the hotel before the C-Con meeting.
Inna laid a hand on Sean’s arm, jerking him out of the mindless routine. “Need help?”
He grinned sheepishly. “Thanks, but I’m beyond help.”
“Could either of us help?” Mira asked, Marko in her arms.
“No, not—”
Mira had already handed Marko to Inna, who apparently liked the little person, and tried to pick up a cardboard box. Her eyes widened and she jerked back from it. She looked at it, and then at him, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. “You are stronger than you look.”
After dropping Inna off at her work place, Sean and Mira made their way to the hotel. Once they arrived, they immediately noticed the rather horrid sight of knives and guns literally everywhere. Sean didn’t particularly care about the grand design of the hotel—the fine wood paneling of the lobby, the elevated lounge floor surrounded by brass bars, and ashtrays on every linen-covered coffee table, unlike New York City—but the weapons drove him nuts.
The height isn’t helping either.
There were, of course, certain advantages to being statistically short, such as the ability to blend in and disappear into almost any crowd, from Chinatown to a reunion of NBA Zulus. However, Ryan’s problem, in this instance, was embodied in every 6’6” male dressed like Count Dooku of Star Wars, and those who dressed up in gray-quilted everything, and assorted makeup freaks.
Why do they all have to be rejects from a football team? he pondered. Why couldn’t they be short Klingons? And why did they have to show up two days before the Con? Hell, my only advantage is that if I throw a punch, it brings them down for a face-to-face chat.
In addition, there were those in full Klingon makeup and armor, some of whom had brought real, sharpened metal knives and those curved, double-sided Klingon swords. Although, at that, he had to smile, thinking about the security provision he had made in the rules while no one was looking: “Bladed weapons must be fully sheathed and peace-bonded at all times. Please bring all peace-bonded weapons to the security desk when you enter the convention for a peace-bond check.” “Peace bonds” were unbreakable white plastic ties the army used as emergency handcuffs and needed to be removed with bolt cutters. Ryan was also especially proud that he could convince them to insert
“Anything else, especially anything that even slightly resembles a gun shape, is not allowed. Projectile weapons are not allowed. The slightest infraction of these rules is cause for immediate ejection from the convention and campus with no warning and no refund. No water pistols, please.”
I still like the “please.” And if they think that’s bad, wait until they encounter the full body pat-downs and bag searches…after, that is, they pay their entrance fees.
Of course, Ryan was certain that the conference attendees would go along quietly with this, if only because they neither had anything to hide nor wanted to make a fuss. But still, to say that all of it was annoying would be to understate the matter; and Janowitz, who lived on Long Island, had to stay in the hotel to manage any crisis at any hour, day or night. It was admirable, but he couldn’t afford to care. Unless someone complained to him about a handgun going off, sorting out petty complaints about who was messing with whose weapon was irrelevant.
In the middle of this lunacy, one very tall Goran Nikolic, who was bigger than the tallest Klingon, stood out. He was quite comfortable surrounded by people who wore his wife’s face on their T-shirts, and charmingly acknowledged the rare person who recognized him, which was a great accomplishment for a director.
Mira crossed the lobby, almost gliding through the fans around her, and made it to Goran. Once she became stationary, the hoards gathered, which required Ryan’s immediate interception of the crowd. For example, one of the Turians…whose hand rested upon his dagger. The way his fingers flexed around the blade’s handle made Sean run toward her.
The Turian grabbed the blade and pulled it out, blade pointed to the ground and poised above his head, ready to strike. He growled and rushed the two Yugoslav nationals, bowling over people in his way. Mira had handed Marko off so she could be sociable with the fans who wanted to shake hands—Goran would have immediately rushed to drop the Turian like a ton of borscht, but his hands were full of baby. She didn’t even see her attacker on approach, because her fans were taller than she was and concealed the rest of the lobby from view.
The Turian pushed aside one of the fans, and with a vicious growl, plunged the knife toward Mira Nikolic’s left breast.
The knifepoint stopped in midair, quivering as though trying to force its way through an invisible barrier. Mira stepped back slowly, looking down to see Sean's left hand locked on the Turian's wrist. There were only two telltale signs that Ryan was doing anything extraordinary: his teeth were gritted, and his electric blue eyes sparked with a burning rage, as though to burn through the Turian’s eyes into his skull.
Ryan slowly lifted the arm, which quivered with the exertion of trying to fight the bodyguard. He stepped forward to face him squarely, and, grabbing the other arm, launched himself into the man’s face, forehead to nose, flattening out the makeup that made the ridges on the alien face. The attacker staggered, and Ryan kicked between his legs, bringing the 6’6” man to eye level with the 5’6” Sean.
“But,” the Turian said in a plaintive, high-pitched voice, “it was just a joke.”
The dagger fell from his hands, and landed point down in the carpet, and the spring-loaded blade slid up into the handle with ease before landing over on its side, once again ejecting to its full length. A prop!
Ryan debated hurting the bastard anyway; had the Turian been a little more thoughtful, Sean wouldn’t have had to ruin his makeup and stymie his sexual productivity.
The bodyguard gripped the knife by the handle and tucked it under the Turian’s chin. “Don’t do it again, or else I’m going to hurt you.”
“But the other guy said—”
Ryan released his wrist to grab him by the lapels. “What other guy?”
“Your height, bloodless face, blue eyes! Let me go!”
Ryan let him go, but only at bellow from the other side of the lobby. Ryan kneed the whining Turian in the diaphragm and dropped him to the floor before turning to the next problem.
Ryan whirled to the new problem with Andreas Sarantakos, a six-foot man with a wide build, long, strong chin, black hair, light olive skin, and dark wells for eyes. He stood at the door to the hotel, barely in the door, with a dagger sticking out of his suitcase. Sean quickly scanned the lobby, and came to the conclusion that whoever had stabbed the actor’s luggage had disappeared.
Perfect.
He let himself relax, considering the two possibilities. Either this was mere, semi-harmless Trekkie harassment, or someone had been testing Mira’s security.
And which do I want to place bets on? How about that I’m paranoid?
“Blast it!” Sarantakos yelled in a great, Shakespearian roar. “They’ve done it again! What is this? Does somebody have my conferences up on a website!”
Ryan blinked, filed the statement away for future reference before giving the crowd an intense scan and turning back to Mira. He shrugged. “These Science Fiction folk, aren’t they something?”
She gave him an odd look, and he smiled. Sean said, “You know, ninety percent of these convention attendees are of family groups, and people between fifteen and thirty years old, 40% of whom are Trek Fans, 50% are fans of G5, and more than 99% are sane, normal people: doctors, lawyers, scientists.” He smiled. “And the occasional oddball. Thankfully, most disputes can be handled by campus security. Let's settle in.”
***
The suitcase stabber slipped through the crowd and outside, unnoticed by most because he wore dark colors so favored by the citizens of New York City. These people were so easy to blend in with—dark blue jeans and a black jacket, and you were invisible.
He was a 43-year-old Trek fan of the worse kind, someone who tolerated no other TV show
s to be worshipped before Trek, the original series—or “TOS” in his world. For him, TOS was the lord thy TV show, thou shalt not have any TV shows before it; thou should not take the name of Smirk, thy Captain, in vain; thou should honor The Great Bird; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s costume. He was the type of fan that other “Trekkers” stayed away from. He had also considered creating a guerrilla movement called the Trek Liberation Front, meant to save the other Trek spinoffs from bad writing and Damon Lindelof, but he was content for the moment to remain in his grandmother’s basement, sending email viruses to the laptops of better writers making far superior quality TV shows—basically any show that got better reviews than Trek. He had personally sent the Mad Russian of G5 a computer virus that crashed his computer, replacing it with an infinite line of “Trek Rules” up and down the screen, just for spite’s sake.
“That wasn’t very nice, you know.”
He whirled around, hoping to deck another “’Fiver”; there were half a dozen notches in the phaser he used to knock several G5 fans senseless. The man in front of him was 5’11” tall, with a wide frame attached to several lanky limbs, and dark, slightly graying hair; the only detail he really noted were the cold, ice blue eyes.
“Yeah, so what? You want to make something of it?”
The cold eyes appraised him. “I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to balance business versus pleasure.”
He grinned. “So am I!” he screamed, and lunged at the newcomer, whipping out his type-II phaser, ready to pistol-whip this stranger into a time loop.
The stranger sidestepped the swing and landed the toe of his hard leather shoe into the man’s solar plexus, dropping him to the ground.
Chapter 3: On the Day Before
The nice thing about the arrangements Sean Ryan—and C-Con personnel—found at the local hotel was a floor completely locked off by electronic restrictions on the elevator. No one who was not in possession of or escorted by someone with a room key to the 12th floor would be allowed access, which pleased Ryan’s paranoid mind.