“His name was Ripley. Brian Lee Ripley. Recruited into the United States Marine Corps at age twenty-one. Special Forces training, followed by sniper school. During his first two years as a USMC grunt, he showed rather high proficiencies in a number of skills, both physically and intellectually that are prized by both the military and intelligence communities and was therefore recruited into a program call the Fifth Corner. Ripley was last seen alive a few seconds before a bomb was detonated outside a small bistro in Paris. That bomb detonated by order of the administrators of the Fifth Corner with the sole intent of terminating Ripley. Unfortunately, his body was never produced nor was he officially identified among the dead in or near the blast zone.”
Eva waited, listened for additional details. There were questions she knew not to ask.
Mockingbird continued.
“For reasons of national security, I cannot provide any further details of his military career. The reason you are here is because our system received a hit early this morning. Ripley’s name had been cycled through federal criminal databases by an NYPD detective as a possible suspect in a murder that occurred late last night in New York City. A witness claimed to have seen Ripley with the victim shortly before her death. He has been off our radar for fifteen years. He is officially dead, but unofficially MIA. We need his status verified and, if still alive, to have him terminated.”
“How certain are you that the sighting was legitimate?” she asked.
Mockingbird said, “There is no way of knowing until it’s confirmed. Our policy is to not take any chances.”
“I understand.”
“You are to leave for New York immediately. Any questions?”
Eva nodded. “Only one,” she said.
“What is it?”
“If Ripley is alive, should he be considered armed and dangerous?”
“Very.”
20
Coburn heard voices but thought he was dreaming. It felt like a dream because he couldn’t open his eyes. He lay still and waited for his mind to fill with images from the dreamscape but he was greeted by only ongoing darkness. His skull rattled with pain. The darkness behind his closed eyes was absolute. He concentrated, focusing to make out what the voices were saying but they seemed too far away. The voices sounded distorted, as if he were hearing them through a wall of water.
He took several long deep breaths. His mouth was dry. He had a vague recollection of the final moments before blacking out. He’d been surrounded by Ripley’s men. Then he remembered the sting of the syringe in his upper arm. Coburn was well schooled on the nervous and respiratory systems and the effects specifically engineered chemicals could have on them.
“How long does Smith want us to keep him alive?” The voice came from miles away.
“Said to wait. Don’t kill him yet.”
“Waste of time.”
“We have orders.”
“Who is this guy? What does this have to do with anything?”
“Beats the hell out of me, but Smith is freaked out. We aren’t paid to think, we’re paid to follow orders. So we sit and wait.”
The words were slow to register through the drug-induced haze, but Coburn still managed to process and comprehend enough to know he was in serious trouble. The world around him remained a gauzy blur. A wave of nausea rolled through his chest and rose into his throat. The room tilted. The ceiling and walls shimmered. Whatever they had injected him with apparently wasn’t yet through working its magic.
Coburn could feel consciousness slipping away and was seized by the sensation of spinning through space. The voices receded. The sounds in the room faded.
Coburn blacked out. Again.
21
A door slammed.
Coburn again awoke. He heard Ripley’s voice.
“Bring him out,” Ripley said.
Coburn turned toward the sound of approaching footsteps. The door opened and light washed in. Coburn was on his knees, with his arms fully extended upward. He was bound at the wrists by plastic zip ties and suspended from a metal closet rod beneath a wooden shelf.
He turned his eyes toward the open door and saw three men, Ripley plus two he didn’t recognize. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the light.
“Where am I?” Coburn asked.
No reply was immediately forthcoming. The man in the open doorway stared down at him. He had broad shoulders and a thick neck. His hair was long and held back in a ponytail and he was dressed in a hooded sweatshirt with a Puma cat on the breast. Coburn squinted up at him but the details of the man’s face were mostly obscured by shadow. The man in the hooded sweatshirt leaned in and cut him free with a knife. A second man came forward and helped drag Coburn from the closet. They dumped him on the floor.
Coburn was on his back staring at a bare white 60-watt bulb in the ceiling. It was the only light in the room.
“Good morning, Johnny.” The voice belonged to Ripley.
“Where am I?” Coburn asked for the second time.
“You are a long way from home.”
“What did you inject me with?”
“A little something to help you sleep.”
“The cops told me you were dead.”
“Why did you go to the cops?”
“Because of the girl. You killed her.”
“Had to be done, Johnny.”
“Who was she?”
“None of that matters.”
Coburn was looking for an escape route.
“I know what you’re thinking, but forget it,” Smith said. He took a step closer, looming over Coburn, silhouetted by the glow from the 60-watt bulb. “There’s no way out of here. Don’t burn the calories. I could have killed you hours ago, and only brought you here out of courtesy, because you are an old friend. I wanted a few minutes to talk, to tell you this is nothing personal. This has nothing to do with you, Johnny. Just plain damn bad luck. I’d rather send you packing and trust that life will move on without a wrinkle, but at the end of the day I simply cannot let that happen. Can’t afford to.”
“Why not?”
“You are full of questions.”
“You don’t have to kill me.”
“In a perfect world.”
“Who was the girl?”
Smith glanced at his watch.
“You executed her,” Coburn said.
“Do you know what it feels like to take a 9mm round in the back of the head?”
Coburn didn’t blink.
“It feels like nothing.” Smith said. “The brain cuts off all relays to the rest of the body. Everything short circuits. There’s no pain, no anguish. It’s like taking garden snips and severing the spine. The nerve endings are toast. That was the most painless form of death she could have asked for. I did her a favor.”
Coburn glanced at the plastic zip tie around his wrists. His fingers felt like wood. The flesh around the plastic was white. He glanced to his left. The room was long and narrow. A tiny kitchenette was built into one end. A metal bed frame stood a few feet away along one wall. Wiring and plumbing showed through holes in the sheetrock. Dark stains were visible on the wall above the kitchen countertop where mold had spread. Beside the closet was a bathroom with linoleum that had bubbled and peeled.
Coburn turned his head a bit more and saw a door. It was metal with metal hinges and there had to be a hallway beyond it, then stairs nearby that would lead to a door to outside. But he was a long way from that door to the outside world. In fact, he was a long way from the door right there in front of him, the metal one hung on cheap metal hinges. His best strategy at the moment was to buy time. Every minute was an extra minute to scrabble together a survival plan.
“What did you tell the cops?” Smith had squatted beside him, forearms resting at an angle across his thighs.
Coburn wet his lips. “That I walked into a bar and said hello to an old friend. And that the girl he was with was the dead girl they found in the park this morning.”
“Sounds unlikely.”
“They showed me the body.”
Smith didn’t flinch.
“I saw what you did to her.”
“Sounds like you’ve jumped to some rather far-fetched conclusions.”
“I gave them your name.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Told them the girl was with Brian Ripley, a kid from Omaha I used to room with.”
“Were they impressed?”
“They put your name through a database and said you died long ago. That you were swept away by snow on a mountainside.”
“Interesting story.”
Coburn’s eyes lifted to the ceiling. It was water stained and sagging where pipes had burst. They had stripped him to his jeans and turned out his pockets. He chest was bare. The slab floor was cool against the bare skin of his back. They had taken his shoes. The air was musty and stale. He remembered them grabbing him inside a loading dock somewhere in lower Manhattan, but he could be miles away now, or even in another state. He tipped his head back slightly and saw sheets of plywood nailed to the wall, covering where windows used to be.
“You should be somewhere delivering babies or giving flu shots,” Smith said. “That’s what doctors do, Johnny.”
“Where did you go after you left school?”
“I lived life.” Smith shrugged, eyes roving dismissively.
Coburn studied him. It was clear he was looking at a man who’d been places and seen things. He’d done the kinds of things that were best forgotten quickly.
“Tell me about the avalanche.”
Smith stood. “Life is complicated. Sometimes drastic measures are required.”
“So all these years later, the same guy who went through the effort to fake his own death kills a beautiful young woman in New York City. There is a big piece of this puzzle missing.”
They could hear muted sounds of traffic through the walls. A dog barked in the distance.
“If Ripley is dead,” Coburn said, “who are you?”
“Call me Smith. I like that. It’s totally forgettable. And that’s the way I’ve tried to live the bulk of my life, to be easily forgotten.”
Coburn raised his hands to his face. The tape had partially peeled away from his nose and the pain had returned.
“What happened to your face?” Smith asked.
“It was a gift from one of your pals.”
“Sorry about that.” Smith showed a row of teeth when he grinned.
“What did you want with the girl?”
“Don’t worry about that, Johnny. It’s just business.”
“You killed her because of me, didn’t you? She heard me call you Ripley. That freaked you out. Still gave you a scare after all these years. What are you running from?”
“I’m not running.”
“Ok, you’re hiding.”
“Hiding in plain sight, maybe.”
“That scared the piss out of you last night. Hearing my voice. Hearing me say your name.”
The light in Smith’s eyes dimmed. The humor of the moment had left him. Whatever brief sentimentality he had felt toward Coburn was gone. It was back to business. His gaze panned away from Coburn. He turned to his men.
“I’m done with him.” Smith said. “I need to get back uptown.” He gestured to the man in the hooded sweatshirt. “Davis, you deal with him. Make it quick. Pop him and leave the body in the closet. No one will find the body for months, or years, if ever.”
Davis nodded.
“Take care of Coburn, and Lewis will be back up here in a few minutes to help you handle the body if needed. Got that?”
“No problem,” Davis said.
Lewis followed Smith to the door.
Smith turned and made brief eye contact with Coburn. “It’s a shame, Johnny.”
Then the door opened and closed, and they were gone.
22
Davis had put the knife away. His hand came out of the other pocket of his hooded sweatshirt with a gun. It was a revolver with a black rubber grip. Davis opened the cylinder and loaded it. The 60-watt bulb was hidden by the silhouette of his head. He pointed the gun at Coburn’s face.
“Close your eyes.” he ordered.
“No way.”
“That’s your choice.”
“Never shoot a man in the face.” Coburn said.
“Whatever.”
“There’s no dignity in that.”
Davis cocked the hammer.
“At least do this right,” Coburn said.
“Do yourself a favor. Shut your mouth and die like a man.”
“It’s bad mojo, shooting a man in the face.”
Davis held the gun steady. “Mojo?”
“You know, bad karma. Bad luck, whatever. Everything comes full circle. There are rules.”
“Mojo, my ass.”
Coburn held his hands at his chest. He shook his head. “I’m just telling you, mojo matters.”
Davis hesitated. He frowned and lowered the revolver one inch, two inches.
“So, you’re gonna tell me the proper way to kill a man?’
“No way. Not at all. But you never shoot a guy in the face.”
Davis shrugged, backed away two paces.
“Fine. All right, pal. We will do this execution style then.”
“What do you mean?”
“Stand up. Get on your feet.”
Coburn rolled onto his side, worked his way to his knees, and then managed to stand.
“Good.” Davis gestured with the gun, made a little circular motion.
“That’s a tiny gun. Like something a chick would carry around in her purse.”
“You’re just full of all kinds of wisdom, aren’t you?”
Coburn shrugged.
Davis took a step toward him and raised the gun. He placed the barrel six inches from the back of Coburn’s head. Davis was getting angry. Coburn could hear him breathing hard through his nose, and used the respiratory sound to gauge approximately how far away Davis was standing. Davis leveled the gun at the back of Coburn’s skull.
It was all about timing. He had to time the move exactly.
The 60-watt bulb was behind Davis, so his body cast a long shadow on the floor. Coburn watched the shadow, watched the shadow arm holding the shadow gun and listened to the beats in Davis’s breathing.
Coburn timed the move with Swiss precision. He ducked, his head dropping down and away at the last possible instant, and a half a second later the gun went off. Davis pulled the trigger. The pistol bucked. It sounded like a cannon. Coburn had dipped his shoulders but was already on his way back up. The lead from the gun punched a hole in the sheetrock. Coburn didn’t give Davis time to process.
Coburn brought his hands up, raised his elbows, and threw his arms backward over his head. He pressed his body into Davis and hooked his wrists behind Davis’s neck. Then heaved forward with all the strength in his body. Davis’s head snapped forward. The arm with the gun flailed wildly. His feet lifted an inch off the ground. Coburn thrust his shoulder into the soft flesh of the man’s throat and used the momentum to lift Davis up and over and completed the flip. Davis went over hard.
Coburn buried the plastic zip tie in Davis’s windpipe. He jerked and held, listening to the wheeze of Davis gasping for O’s.
The gun went off again. The pop shook the room. Bits of plaster dropped from the ceiling. He clawed at Coburn’s face, clawed at his eyes, clawed like a crazy man, swinging the gun, pulling the trigger with nothing to aim at.
They wheeled to the left a hundred and eighty degrees. The zip tie drew blood that streaked the slab floor. Davis coughed and gagged, digging his nails around the edge of the zip tie. The wet sounds of gagging faded then rose again.
Coburn never let up. His wrists bled. The veins in his neck stood out.
The revolver fired until the hammer hit an empty chamber, the last bullet throwing sparks off the bed frame. Davis dropped the gun.
Coburn, hands now completely pale from zero circulatio
n, wrenched the zip tie deeper into Davis’s windpipe. Davis’s body went limp. He twitched for a few seconds and then it was over.
Coburn exhaled and released his death grip. Davis folded to the floor like a rag doll. Then Coburn pushed the corpse aside and sprang up onto his knees. Found the lock-blade knife in the pocket of the hooded sweatshirt and made quick work of freeing his hands from the pull-tie.
Coburn stood and glanced around. What had they done with his clothes? They had taken his cell phone and wallet. He went to the door and opened it an inch. He heard footsteps echoing up a flight of stairs. He poked his head into the hallway and saw no one. The hallway had fallen into decay, ruined acoustic tiles sagging from the aluminum ceiling grid.
Coburn eased the door open and ducked out. The footsteps on stairs echoed louder. Lewis was headed back up and maybe Smith was with him. Surely they had heard the six shots ringing through the walls of the building. He had to pick a direction and went left.
There was an open door ahead and a flight of stairs. He was breathing hard, his adrenaline surging. His pulse was loud in his ears. Now the footsteps coming up the stairs were louder, and he realized too late that he’d chosen poorly.
Five feet from the door to the stairs, he spotted Lewis. Lewis was two steps from the landing when he looked past the rail and locked eyes with Coburn. There was only ten feet between the two men.
Coburn was already moving forward, and made his decision without thinking or slowing. His only realistic choice was to try to charge Lewis before Lewis had time to react.
Lewis stopped mid-step and reached a hand behind his back for his gun. But Coburn was on him in less than a second. Coburn lowered his shoulder and drove it square into Lewis’s sternum. They went down the stairs together, a tangle of arms and legs. They slammed into a wall at the next landing.
Coburn sat up, his nose again pushed to one side, the taste of blood in his mouth. He’d been thrown clear. Lewis sprawled a few feet away, groaning, eyes blinking wildly. He reached again for his gun, but he had lost it in the tumble down the stairs. Coburn scrambled to his feet and took the stairs two at a time, letting gravity do most of the work on the way down. He heard Lewis start down after him.
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