Immortal

by Dean Crawford

  Ethan huddled against the side of a low ridge of bushes some fifteen yards from the concealed vehicle and peered over the top. Nothing moved, and there wasn’t a sound. He gently levered himself up off the ground.

  ‘Don’t move.’

  The voice was calm, controlled and icily cold.

  20

  ‘Get on your feet, slowly, hands in the air.’

  Ethan obeyed, turning to see Saffron Oppenheimer standing with the sawn-off Beretta pulled deep into her shoulder, the barrel pointed unwaveringly between his eyes.

  ‘You found me,’ Ethan said. ‘Saved me a job.’

  ‘I’ll do the jokes,’ Saffron snapped. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Car,’ Ethan said, aware that Saffron might not know of Lopez’s presence and deciding to tell the best kind of lie, one that involved telling as much of the truth as possible. ‘I came out here looking for you and found one of your lackeys limping down the road.’

  Saffron’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Colin Manx. He okay?’

  ‘He’s got a dent in his nose and an even bigger one in his pride, but he’ll live.’

  Saffron glared at him from over the barrel of the shotgun for a few moments, and Ethan decided to try her patience and see what he got. He lowered his hands.

  ‘Keep them up!’ Saffron snarled.

  ‘What for?’ Ethan asked, keeping his voice reasonable. ‘You’re not a killer, Saffron, and you don’t want to be.’

  ‘What the hell would you know about it?’

  ‘15th Marine Division, Iraq and Afghanistan,’ Ethan said. ‘Two tours in each theater. I know what someone looks like when they’re trying to kill you, and you’re not it.’

  Saffron shifted her weight to the opposite foot, glancing down the hill for anyone else backing Ethan up.

  ‘There’s nobody else,’ Ethan said. ‘I dropped Manx off with a patrol car and came out here. He’ll be giving a statement by now in Santa Fe.’ He looked at the barren hillside around them. ‘There’s nowhere to run, Saffron. The game’s up.’

  ‘I’ll decide when the game’s up,’ Saffron snapped, but the venom in her voice had weakened.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Ethan said. ‘Once word gets out about the attack, you’ll have the entire state police on your ass, maybe even US Marshalls. You’re effectively a fugitive with an already high profile. How long do you think you’ll last out here before you quit, or somebody else sells you out for a lenient sentence?’

  Ethan saw the barrel of the shotgun slowly dropping, not from resignation but from muscular weakness as the weight of the weapon strained Saffron’s arms. Saffron saw the direction of his gaze and yanked the barrel up, and as she did so Ethan made his move and lunged forward, one arm outstretched as he tapped the shotgun barrel sideways and up into the air to point over his head.

  Saffron leapt backwards to avoid his charge, but Ethan was already inside the weapon. He shoved the barrel further up as his other hand slammed down across the stock, smashing it out of Saffron’s grip as her wrists failed her. Ethan leapt backwards as he twirled the heavy shotgun through his hands to point upside-down at Saffron, his finger finding the trigger.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  Saffron’s shoulders sank, and she sighed. ‘About?’

  Ethan opened his mouth to speak, just as he realized that she was feigning. Her left boot whipped up and knocked the shotgun barrel to one side as she plunged inward and drove her right boot into Ethan’s belly with ferocious force. He barely got clear of the blow, catching it on his midriff hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. Saffron danced forward in a graceful pirouette as Ethan staggered back and drove one flat palm up toward Ethan’s jaw. He whirled the shotgun in his grasp, the butt of the weapon smashing her wrist aside with a loud crack. He heard her cry out but she did not fall back. Instead she rushed closer to stamp one boot painfully onto his right foot as her left elbow snapped round to catch him on his jaw.

  Ethan saw the world quiver as he toppled off balance and slammed down hard onto the unforgiving earth. Saffron was on him in an instant, grabbing the shotgun and twisting it sideways before pushing the stock down onto Ethan’s throat, leaning all her weight in behind it. His eyes bulged and he gagged as the weapon crushed his windpipe. He pushed back hard, lifting her slightly, and then drove his knee into her side. Saffron lurched off balance as Ethan pushed the shotgun upward and then yanked it sideways between them, hurling her off him. Saffron relinquished her grip and rolled neatly away, reaching to her waist as she did so. Ethan scrambled up onto one knee in time to see a Bowie knife flicker in the bright sunlight. He aimed the shotgun at her.

  ‘Paper, scissors, knife, gun. I win.’

  ‘The gun’s empty.’ Saffron grinned. ‘I’ll be off now.’

  Shit.

  ‘Running won’t help anything, Saffron,’ he said, surprised to find himself slightly breathless. She was as fit as she was fast, he’d give her that much.

  ‘Sticking around isn’t a great idea either,’ she snapped back at him. ‘It’s been fun.’

  Saffron turned her back on him just in time to see Lopez rush up behind her.

  ‘Who were you callin’ Chiquita?’ Lopez snarled as her tightly bunched right fist cracked across Saffron’s jaw.

  Ethan winced as Saffron spun a hundred-eighty degrees and hit the dusty hillside flat on her face. Lopez massaged her knuckles and smiled down at him.

  ‘We’ll call that little rescue ten bucks, okay?’

  ‘Where’s Manx?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Taking a nap,’ Lopez uttered. ‘I cuffed him to the door, don’t worry.’

  Ethan crawled to his feet as Saffron dragged herself to her knees, massaging her jaw and glaring at Lopez.

  ‘You’ll regret that, you little squirt.’

  Lopez’s smile vanished as she made a move toward Saffron. Ethan jumped in between them, seriously uncertain of whether he could prevent the two from tearing each other apart.

  ‘Easy,’ he said, giving Lopez a cautionary glance before looking at Saffron. ‘We’re not here to arrest you, we need your help.’

  Saffron got to her feet, still glaring at Lopez.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘We need to find a man named Tyler Willis,’ Ethan said. ‘Know anything about him?’

  Ethan instantly knew he’d hit the mark. Saffron’s eyes flared at the mention of Willis’s name. Not in recognition, he guessed, but more in surprise, as though he shouldn’t have known the name at all. She seemed momentarily lost for words and Ethan took advantage of her indecision.

  ‘You’re in deep shit, Saffron, no two ways about it. The more you can help us, the better it’ll be for you. Whatever the hell’s going on here we need to know about it because before long this whole thing is going to be a government issue, you understand what I’m saying?’

  Saffron’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Who the hell are you people?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Ethan said, and tossed the shotgun back to her. ‘You tell us what we need to know and this might all be smoothed out a lot quicker. There’s no other way.’

  A voice from behind Ethan said, ‘Yes there is.’

  He turned to see a young girl, no more than eighteen with blonde dreadlocked hair parted in the center and hanging in schoolgirl’s braids on her shoulders. She stood with a small revolver gripped in her tiny hands, pointing it between his eyes. Saffron turned and dashed to the girl’s side, grabbing the pistol from her hand.

  Ethan was about to pursue her when perhaps thirty or so dusty, scrawny-looking teenagers appeared on the ridge variously carrying bats, bicycle chains and chunks of rock. Lopez was already moving, but Ethan stalled her with a wave of his hand and looked instead at Saffron.

  ‘This solves nothing,’ he said. ‘The police will track you down no matter where you go. You hit those laboratories, but you weren’t there to free the monkeys, were you? You were there to destroy the mainframes. You’re working for some
body.’

  Saffron smiled coldly, and shook her head. ‘You’re living in a dream world.’

  ‘Really?’ Ethan challenged. ‘Then where did you get the money to buy and activate black-market grenades, the camper, your shotgun and that revolver?’

  Saffron didn’t bat an eyelid, but Ethan saw her bedraggled companions look at her with sudden interest.

  ‘It’s not what you know . . .’ Saffron said simply, and turned away.

  The girl with the dreadlocked hair shot him a venomous glare that looked eerie on someone so young.

  ‘Get out of here. If you follow us, we’ll shoot.’

  Ethan called after Saffron one last time.

  ‘Where’s Tyler Willis? We know you’ve got something to do with his disappearance.’

  Saffron hesitated for a moment, her back to him, and then looked over her shoulder. ‘You call off the police and I’ll tell you where to find Willis.’

  Ethan bit his lip for a moment before speaking.

  ‘They might not listen to me,’ he said. ‘They’ll question Colin Manx and they’ll be searching out here for you by nightfall.’

  ‘Better than nothing,’ Saffron snapped. ‘You want to find Willis or not?’

  Ethan nodded.

  ‘He sometimes stays with friends in Hilary Falls, downtown Santa Fe. You could try there for information, but I’d hurry if I were you. You’re not the only people looking for Tyler Willis.’

  Before Ethan could say anything more, Saffron and her army disappeared over the hillside.

  21

  HILARY FALLS APARTMENT COMPLEX

  SANTA FE

  2.15 p.m.

  Enrico Zamora drove his squad car to a nondescript block of apartments on the corner of West 42nd.

  ‘You sure this is the place?’ he asked Ethan, who sat beside him. ‘We searched Willis’s own apartment, came up clean.’

  ‘Willis hid his research data elsewhere, or so we’ve been told,’ Ethan replied. ‘He must have had a reason for doing that, and our best line of inquiry so far is that he was afraid of becoming a victim of industrial espionage. We need to find out what he was working on, and whether he knew who was after his work.’

  Zamora shrugged.

  ‘I thought that these scientists always published their work in journals?’

  ‘They do,’ Lopez said from the back seat. ‘But whatever Tyler Willis had, he obviously felt it was valuable enough to be stolen from him. He clearly went to some lengths to protect it.’

  ‘What about Colin Manx?’ Ethan asked. ‘Anything from him yet?’

  ‘Detectives are questioning him,’ Zamora said. ‘He’s had nothing much to say except to implicate Saffron Oppenheimer as the ringleader. You believe a word he says, he wasn’t even there.’

  Ethan remained silent until Zamora had parked the squad car outside the apartment block.

  ‘Who lives here?’ he asked as they climbed out.

  ‘Couple of students, friends of Tyler Willis. No records, clean as a whistle. They’re up at the laboratories right now but they agreed to the search.’

  ‘Thanks for getting the warrant,’ Lopez said to Zamora as they walked into the block’s foyer and headed for the elevators. ‘We figured it would be easier than just turning up on their doorstep and hoping for the best.’

  The elevator doors opened and Ethan watched two men in smart suits walk out. Businessmen, from out of town most likely. One was a towering, barrel-chested man with a drooping Mexican moustache of silvery gray, the other a younger man of perhaps twenty-five. They smiled politely as they stepped out, and Ethan noticed they shared the same strikingly colored eyes, a hazy blue-gray as though they were father and son. Ethan let them out and then walked in, followed by Zamora and Lopez.

  The apartment was on the third story. Zamora led the way with a key in his hand lent to him by one of the students. He stopped at the door, slipping the key in and turning it. The door opened, and he moved inside.

  Ethan caught the faint odor of unwashed dishes and musty furniture, the hallmark of student digs. The whiff of cigarettes tainted the air in the lounge. Bright sunlight from outside beamed into the lounge, a kitchen off to the left, two bedrooms and a bathroom off to the right. A pile of blankets stacked beside one of the two couches betrayed Willis’s presence.

  ‘Must’ve been staying here for a while,’ Ethan surmised.

  ‘There,’ Lopez gestured to a pair of laptop computers sitting on a narrow table beneath the window. ‘The students would have theirs with them at college, wouldn’t they?’

  Ethan walked over to the table, looking down at the computers. He opened one, then the other. Both screens had been smashed and liquid, smelling like turpentine, poured into the keyboards, strong enough to dissolve the delicate microchips and hard drives. The smell of stale cigarettes seemed stronger and vaguely familiar as he stared at the computers. He glanced round the lounge and realized he could not see any ashtrays.

  ‘You smell that?’ he asked, looking at Lopez.

  ‘Some kind of chemical?’ Lopez guessed.

  Ethan turned and moved to open one of the windows to let some fresh air in. As he did so, he looked down and saw a black Chevrolet Impala parked on the opposite side of the street. As Ethan opened the window one of the sedan’s occupants looked up at the apartment and straight into Ethan’s eyes. Even at the distance, Ethan recognized the big man with the silvery moustache in the elevator. They locked gazes for an instant and then the man looked sharply away.

  Ethan turned from the window as dread flickered through his mind. Seeing the kitchen door, he dashed across to it. As he burst inside he saw a stove against one wall and heard the rasping hiss of leaking gas coming from somewhere behind it. The acrid stench of some kind of accelerant tainted the air in the kitchen. Ethan looked about desperately but could see nothing. No open bottles, no drenched rags or papers. Just a cat-litter tray in one corner. With the dense gas in the air even the slightest spark could ignite the fuel and the whole apartment would be vaporized. He whirled, shouting out of the kitchen door.

  ‘Get out now, and get back-up!’

  He heard Lopez shout something unintelligible and then a loud burst of gunfire ripped through the apartment, three ragged holes bursting through the kitchen wall in puffs of plaster that showered down over him. He ducked instinctively as the shots zipped overhead and smacked into the opposite wall. Ethan crouched down and ran into the lounge, hurling himself flat onto the carpet, praying all the while that none of the bullets would strike a metal surface and let fly the spark that would kill them all.

  Another burst of gunfire punched the air and two bullets smashed through the windows of the apartment, webbed cracks splintering the glass in their wake. Ethan’s first concern was for Lopez, lying flat on her stomach near a large couch, her black hair sprinkled with fragments of plaster.

  ‘Man down!’ she shouted as another crackle of gunfire whipped through the apartment.

  Ethan glimpsed the rounds punching through the walls of the apartment from the hall outside. Automatic fire, three-round bursts. M-16s, probably two of them. He saw Zamora lying on his back, gripping his shoulder, blood spilling thickly onto the carpets. Most of the rounds were being fired high, deliberately it seemed, but Zamora had caught one by chance. Ethan realized that whoever was shooting at them wanted to keep their heads down while starting the fire that would kill them. They probably wouldn’t even have opened fire if Zamora hadn’t gone for the apartment door. They would have let the gas-filled air do its work alone and vaporize the entire room.

  In front of him, he saw Zamora roll onto his side and reach down for his pistol.

  ‘Stay down!’ Ethan whispered to Lopez, before crawling on his belly across to Zamora.

  Two more rounds zipped through the apartment, crossing at an angle above Ethan’s head and smacking into the bedroom door in the far corner behind him and he realized that their assailants were retreating down the corridor outside. He crawled the last
three feet to Zamora and grabbed his pistol before he could aim it.

  ‘Don’t! The apartment’s rigged to blow on a spark!’ Zamora lowered the pistol. ‘You okay?’

  ‘I’ll live.’ Zamora writhed in pain. ‘They’re quitting?’

  ‘No,’ Ethan said. ‘They’re running. And I know why. Call for back-up!’

  Ethan got to his feet and dragged Zamora up into a sitting position, the trooper sweating profusely as he radioed their position in.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Can you walk?’

  Zamora didn’t reply but instead nodded his head, running his remaining good hand through his hair with a trembling motion. Lopez grabbed him under his good arm and gently helped him up.

  A burst of automatic fire shattered the windows of the apartment behind them, letting in a billowing breeze from outside.

  ‘Oxygen,’ Ethan said urgently. ‘Go, get out of here. Quickly.’

  He turned and dashed back to the window of the apartment in time to see the black Impala’s doors slam shut. Ethan squinted to read the license plate, but the vehicle’s tires squealed as it pulled away and shot out of sight down the street.

  Ethan whirled and sprinted for the apartment door.

  22

  DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY ANALYSIS CENTER (DIAC), BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, WASHINGTON DC

  Doug Jarvis strode purposefully down a corridor toward a briefing center deep within the DIAC building, dogged by a sense of foreboding. Being summoned by a department head or senior analyst was one thing, but receiving orders to report to the director of the agency was another entirely.

  The office of the director of the DIA was not quite hallowed ground but it represented the command of one of the most powerful and secretive agencies in the United States’ arsenal. Most everybody had heard of the FBI, the CIA, even the ultra-classified NSA, but the DIA straddled a mysterious line running throughout the Pentagon’s many departments. It was responsible for studying and protecting against all potential threats to United States security, and anything that the other agencies knew about, in all theaters, was also reported to the DIA.