Hard Fall

by Ridley Pearson

  She paced the small room, hands in her pockets. There was more in this for him than for her. One of the men he intended to kill, the present chairman of EisherWorks Chemicals, was the man he held responsible for his child’s birth defects and the destruction of his family. He needed Monique in order to accomplish this operation. Tackling an operation this size, alone, was nearly unthinkable.

  “What operation? You must be kidding? We are crippled. We are nothing but a three-legged dog.” She glanced over at him suspiciously.

  “We may be a three-legged dog, but we still can bite!” He tapped the briefcase, indicating the detonator, and stepped toward her. He felt a wonderful sense of power. Was it the result of the briefcase and its contents, or her? He wanted to take her. Right here. Right now. It had nothing to do with love. Nothing to do with feelings. It was power. He wanted her to submit to him fully, to open herself for him, to surrender. She had the face of a little girl when she climaxed—almost as if her pleasure was pain. He remembered that clearly. God, how he wanted her.

  “A two-legged dog,” she corrected. “It is just the two of us now. No?” She collapsed to the edge of the bed. He sat next to her.

  “A two-legged dog can still drag itself. A one-legged dog can only lie down and die. I won’t do that. I refuse to do that.”

  She leaned herself against him fully. “So what now?”

  He felt triumphant. “Now, we have some time to kill.” He reached over and unbuttoned her top button. She slapped his hand away but he knew she didn’t mean it.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  He unfastened the next button. “I’m going to drop a couple of planes. First here, and later, one in Washington. EisherWorks is finished.”

  “You said the same thing at Frankfurt.”

  “True.”

  “And just exactly how do you intend to do this? You killed Eisher; they replaced him—”

  “With Hans Mosner,” he interrupted. But whereas this name meant everything to him, it could never mean as much to her. Mosner had been in charge of the Duisberg factory at the time of the contamination emissions that had poisoned his community and his wife’s pregnancy. Mosner was now chairman of EisherWorks. “Mosner is going to be in Washington. He is one of our prime targets.”

  She looked at him skeptically. “More than one target?”

  A pigeon landed at the window. Its wings were discolored by the polluted air. You couldn’t see a half mile, it was so bad out there. He felt tempted to point out the pollution to her. It’s what Michael would have done. “It’s complicated. You’ll see. In good time, you’ll see.”

  “See what?” she asked.

  The less she knew, the better, and yet he was anxious to tell her because the plan was complex. Its complexity added to his sense of power, of superiority. He was anxious to tell anyone. The loneliness of the past month—his weeks in hiding prior to the operation—nearly fell prey to the comfort of her company. “It’s better you don’t know everything. What I can tell you is this: The plane we are dropping today is carrying key ingredients in the manufacturing of pesticides that can’t be sold in the U.S. because of Food and Drug regulations. So, to get around the law, an EisherWorks American subsidiary makes the ingredients here and flies them to Mexico where they are combined to make the exact same pesticide that is outlawed. That pesticide is then used on Mexican food crops that are later harvested and eventually shipped back for consumption in the U.S. Around and around it goes. It stops today, this hypocrisy. And this is only the prelude.”

  “Meaning?”

  He hadn’t meant to explain this much, but he was started now, and it felt good. “There’s to be a meeting in Washington. Heavies. Mosner will be at this meeting, William Sandhurst of BiGeneer, Matthew Grady of ChemTronics, Douglas Fitzmaurice, Elizabeth Savile, Howard Goldenbaum. The heads of the biggest companies. I’m sick of cutting off fingers and limbs. It’s time we cut off the head.”

  Her voice filled with excitement. She recognized all the names, just as he knew she would. “Kill them all? What … they are all going to be on the same plane or something?”

  “Or something. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Didn’t your parents ever tell you that? You’ll see.” He had the third button undone. Anything possible indeed. She hardly noticed. He reached in and cupped her breast. She filled his hand fully with a warmth that he felt in his groin. “With something like this, you take your time.”

  “You are making fun of me. I hate you.”

  “I’m making love with you.”

  “Not until you tell me what it is we are going to do.”

  “I can’t. I’ve already told you more than I should.”

  “No you haven’t.” She looked him over and her eyes reconsidered. “Then again, there are other ways to make you talk.” She smiled. He skimmed his fingers lightly over her breast and felt her respond.

  He wondered if his erection was the result of touching her, or the enormous sense of power he now experienced. He pointed to the television. “The television is the only thing that talks to the people. The only thing they listen to. So we’re going to fill their screens with a little truth for a change. A few flames on the runway is always good for prime time. CNN is going to love us.”

  She was grinning. She had a beautiful smile, alluring and cunning; a woman filled with sexual secrets. One of these secrets he already knew from personal experience: All you needed to do was tease her lips and it was like lighting her fuse. He had never met a woman so sexually charged—so addicted to it.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “You are a liar.”

  “It comes with the territory,” he said, his finger circling her creamy red lips until she kissed it and then drew it into her mouth and sucked on it, wrapping it in her tongue.

  The talking was over. He slipped his wet finger out of her mouth and, working down her body, found her nipples now fully erect. He felt triumphant—like setting the timer on a detonator. His next chore after this. Forty-seven seconds, he recalled.

  She tugged at his belt buckle. But this was not to be her show. He teased her legs open slightly with his slick fingertip, and spun tiny circles there until she willingly surrendered to her own pleasure.

  Everything was in its place now. Despite the drumming in his heart, the pain in his jaw, he felt himself relax. Things were going just fine. Actually, much better than he had hoped.

  Thirty minutes later, the bed sheets lay in a heap, and the air smelled of her. It had been the frantic lovemaking of two people in a bomb shelter, the lovemaking of no tomorrow. They were bonded. They were a team again.

  “How is it you can remember those things?” she asked, her voice dreamy. “Are women so much the same?”

  Did he dare to tell her that between Frankfurt and now there had been only one woman, and that it had been a complete disaster? Did he dare give her that kind of power over him? He thought not. Once you’ve gained the higher ground, you don’t voluntarily surrender it.

  “You wouldn’t kiss me,” she said, touching his swollen cheek.

  “Be glad I didn’t. I need a dentist. Badly. It’s infected. But it will have to wait. There isn’t time.”

  “It must hurt.”

  “I will live.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said. And they fell silent for a time.

  “We survived Frankfurt,” he reminded.

  “That was different,” she contended.

  “Not really so different.”

  “We were but two of a team in Frankfurt. We had the support of the entire team. Now … It is not the same at all.”

  “Not so different as all that.” He felt good. She had put him in a good mood.

  “Where will you go after this?”

  “Arrangements have been made—for both of us, if need be.”

  “I like it where I am,” she said. “Will I have to leave?”

  “Maybe not,” he lied. “We’ll see.”

  There wasn’t t
ime for him to shower. He toweled off and reapplied some deodorant.

  “You had better dress,” he said, checking his watch. He dabbed some Anbesol into the hole left by the pulled tooth, cringed and waited for it to take effect. When the open sore began to numb, he said, “It’s time we get started.”

  The Los Angeles suburban sprawl swallowed them in blocks of matching three-bedroom homes with attached garages. Many of the lawns had gone brown, the result of the prolonged drought. Two young blond boys, shirtless and tanned, raced by on roller blades. Kort was pleased to be in the comfort of the air-conditioned van. “It was a good choice for a rental,” he said.

  “You said it should be big.”

  He nodded. He hated small cars.

  “Are you going to tell me what it is we’re doing, or am I expected to be clairvoyant? Who is this Dougherty?”

  “A mechanic for AmAirXpress. Being part of the cargo group, the AmAirXpress flights use a different runway. That’s important to me.”

  “But I can get you onto the field, Anthony. It’s all been arranged for weeks. You’ve hired us as consultants. Why did we bother establishing all that if we’re not going to use it?”

  “We are going to use it.”

  “But why Dougherty then? I don’t understand.”

  “The new security measures they’ve enacted.”

  “The head-counting?” she asked.

  “Exactly. You can get me onto the field, but I still need a properly coded ID badge to enter the AmAirXpress maintenance yard from the field side. I could never get into AmAirXpress through their worker entrance. Not carrying what I’m carrying. Besides, the AmAirXpress security guards must know Dougherty by face. So it has to be from the field side. It’s only machines on the field side. Computerized entrances. With his ID card they can be tricked into thinking I’m Dougherty.”

  “We’re going to steal his ID badge?”

  “Providing the Greek’s information is correct—and it was in Seattle—then Dougherty is a drinker. Recently widowed. So we’re going to borrow his ID badge and leave him with a hangover.”

  “I think you’ve overestimated their abilities. During any given shift, there are literally thousands of airport and airline personnel on the field side. Have you ever looked out the window of an airplane?” She grinned. “Oh, that’s right, you don’t like to fly.” When he didn’t say anything she started talking again. Her constant talking bothered him now; it meant she was nervous. “Sure, they have this new head-counting rule, but no one’s paid much attention to it. I know we haven’t. Airport Police know they’re vulnerable from the field, but their security is very tight from the passenger side, which is their greater concern. There’s very little anticipation of a plan as thought out as this. They just aren’t ready for it.”

  “That may be but I’m not taking any chances.”

  “And how do I fit in at Dougherty’s?”

  “You are my assistant,” he informed her. “A man and a woman together are much less intimidating than a man alone.”

  He stopped talking and went about preparing the syringe, hoping she would be quiet. He had to tell her twice to keep her eyes on the road. He had been alone for far too long. It was unnerving the way her mouth went on.

  “What is it you’re giving him?” she asked, once he had the syringe filled and the plastic cap back over the needle.

  “Grain alcohol. One hundred and eighty proof.”

  “It looks like a lot.”

  “If I’ve correctly guessed his weight it won’t kill him.”

  “And are you so good at guessing weight?” she asked, tugging on her blouse.

  He looked her over. “One hundred and six,” he answered.

  She placed both hands on the wheel and looked straight ahead. She was blushing. “You won’t kill him,” she said.

  After that, she was quiet.

  They drove past a group of children clad in Day-Glo swimsuits dancing in the roaring plume of hydrant water. As Monique steered clear of them, Kort raised his hand to block his face. He worried about Monique’s apparent lack of these instincts. The van bounced over trenches of hard-packed dirt and mud that cut across the road. Sewer work. Kort’s sun visor fell down, and he pushed it back into place. As they passed the number 11345 stenciled in yellow paint on the curb, he signaled Monique to pull over.

  The tract house had all the charm of a shoe box with windows. The postage-stamp lawn and the property’s sole bush were victims of neglect. A rusted television antenna leaned rakishly on the roof.

  Monique tied a white chiffon scarf in place and donned a pair of sunglasses.

  “Okay,” he said, feeling his own excitement in his chest. “Here we go.”

  He opened the van’s door, and stepped into an oven. His throat burned. His eyes stung. The air was toxic. It only served to reinforce his allegiance to Der Grund. The people and the politicians treated the environmental issues as if they could be solved without effort—as if twenty or thirty years were available to think up solutions. It was time for action.

  They approached the front door side by side. A garden snail had smeared its trail of slime across the width of the cement stairs that rose to the front door. Kort applied his toe to the snail and ground it to a paste. As Dougherty answered the door, Monique was still staring down at the brown goo.

  Dougherty had the hard, crusty hands of a fisherman. He had bloodshot blue eyes and looked as if he was either battling or working on a hangover. His T-shirt advertised Dos Equis beer. Because he was wearing blue jeans, Kort guessed he had not yet been outside in the heat. Kort addressed him in a bored and impatient voice. “Kevin Dougherty?”

  “Yes?”

  Kort said, “Bill Rembler, SCI—Security Consulting International—Mr. Dougherty. This is Linda Martin,” he said, cocking his head toward Monique, who offered a half-hearted smile. “Business, I’m afraid. I wonder if we could have a few words with you a moment? Inside—out of this heat—if you don’t mind.”

  Dougherty half shrugged and stepped aside, clearly caught off guard and uncertain. Just the way Kort wanted him. The inside of the house was gloomy. Drawn drapes closed out the neighborhood and closed in a sense of desperation. It smelled damp, like an old piece of discarded clothing found in the bushes. The living room was littered with dirty dishes. The television was tuned to a game show in which unhappy-looking has-been celebrities were grilling a buxom housewife who wore too much makeup and spoke in a high, grating southern twang. Dougherty’s eyes drifted to the television and his interrupted program. He asked, “What’s this about?”

  Kort reached inside his breast pocket and pretended to read from a paper he found there. “You work on the Duhnings for AmAirXpress. Maintenance,” he stated.

  “That’s right,” Dougherty confirmed.

  “You and too many others,” Kort continued, playing out his role. “What we got going here is a possible breach of security, Mr. Dougherty. Our agency was called in because Airport Police believes some maintenance identification cards from LAX may have been counterfeited. What we gotta do,” he said, again indicating himself and Monique, “is pick up all the IDs for maintenance personnel. Your people will either have a temporary card for you when you report in, or will return your existing card to you. We gotta make sure that none of the cards have been counterfeited. All right?”

  “My card ain’t been touched,” said Dougherty in a wet voice. “I can save ya the time.”

  “Just the same,” Kort said in a determined tone. “This is the procedure. You can appreciate that.” Kort’s hand found the syringe in his pocket.

  “You better give me your name again—names again,” he corrected, including Monique, “and let me make a call.” He looked Kort in the eye.

  Monique said sharply, “Let me tell you something, Mr. Dougherty. You can make all the phone calls you want, okay? But the bottom line is going to be the same for Rembler and me, no matter what.” She stepped in front of Kort. “We’ve got twenty-seven more of th
ese to do today. It’s a million degrees out there,” she said, circling now, and holding Dougherty’s attention. Kort readied the syringe inside his pocket. This wasn’t exactly the way he had planned it. “Feels like a million degrees,” she added. “And this is my time of month, if you get the message, and I’m not feeling too charitable. So why don’t you skip the phone call and get us the ID tag, okay?”

  Kort reached from behind to deliver his choke hold—not to kill Dougherty as he had mistakenly done with Ward, but to silence him and render him unconscious. At the same time, his right hand withdrew the syringe from his pocket.

  Dougherty sensed him. With a loud roar, the heavy man spun and caught Kort with a forearm, knocking him off his feet. The syringe flew out of his hand and fell to the carpet.

  Dougherty lunged toward the front door. Kort sprang to his feet, intercepting him and delivering a vicious kidney punch. Dougherty stumbled with the blow. Kort drove him down. Dougherty crashed beneath Kort’s weight and sucked for air. Monique passed the syringe to Kort, who stabbed it into Dougherty’s pudgy neck, injecting the contents. Dougherty blinked behind glassy eyes, drooling as he tried to speak. He grew progressively incoherent and lost consciousness a few minutes later. They were long minutes for Anthony Kort.

  “Jesus,” Monique said. She was trembling.

  Kort heaved a sigh of relief. She had done well. He lifted the heavy head by its hair and then let it thump to the carpet, nose first. “He’s out,” he said. “Gloves,” he added, pulling two pair of latex surgical gloves from a pocket and handing a pair to Monique. He gave her his handkerchief. “The door,” he instructed. “His clothing, the skin on his neck. Don’t miss anything.”

  “His skin?”

  “I touched his neck. They can develop prints on human skin. They can develop prints on clothing. On practically anything. Don’t wipe, scrub him down like you’re doing laundry.”