by Jon F. Merz
“My father was a soldier in England. He served in the British army and spent a lot of his time overseas.”
“World War Two?”
Vanessa shook her head as she turned the car down a darkened boulevard. “No, a little bit later than that. I was born in 1975 and he’d already been in the Regiment for several years.”
“The Regiment?”
Vanessa looked at him. “I suppose you haven’t heard of them before, the SAS - Special Air Service?”
“Nope.”
“They’re the best special operations troops in the world. They’ve been doing it longer than anyone else and they do it better as well.” She smiled again. “My dad was one of the best of them. His assignments took him all over the world. Got a fist full of medals for his trouble, too.”
“So you went into the SAS?”
“I wish,” said Vanessa. “But that’s not the way it works. Women aren’t permitted to serve in the Regiment unless it’s in a support role. Too demanding apparently, although my dad would have argued differently.”
“From the little I know about you, he’d be right.”
“Thank you. My father raised me to be as tough as any man. He put me through his own version of Selection – that’s what volunteers go through to try to become part of the Regiment – and I passed it.”
“What sorts of things did you have to do?”
“Long hikes carrying all sorts of loads on my back. Forty-mile tabs with bricks in a rucksack. Cross-country navigation. Survival training in places like Borneo. Escape and evasion in the Welsh countryside.”
Jimmy whistled again. Imagine learning all of that, he thought. “Sounds pretty cool.”
“It wasn’t all that bad, actually. It was tough. In some ways it was the toughest stuff I’ve ever done. But I loved spending so much time with my father. I think I always knew that he wouldn’t necessarily be around all that long given what his job was.” She grew quiet then and Jimmy saw her jaw tighten.
“He died, didn’t he?”
She nodded. “His patrol was compromised during the first Gulf War. They were operating hundred of miles behind enemy lines and were forced to make a run for the Syrian border. My dad and two others perished.”
Jimmy frowned. If he’d known that, he might not have been so anxious to know about Vanessa’s past. “I’m sorry.”
She tried to smile at him, but he could tell it was tough talking about it. “It still hurts, I won’t tell you differently, but I’m getting on I guess. Happened when I was a teenager, so there was this gaping hole in my life. My mum just went into a deep funk. Got all depressed and ended up in a home for people who don’t know how to cope.”
“Is she…?”
“Yes, she’s still alive, although I really think most of her died when my dad got killed. Can’t say I blame her. Part of me died that day as well. In a lot of ways, my dad was the exception to the general rule with the Regiment. A lot of the men there have a horrible family life. They get divorced and remarried all the time. But not my dad. He kept his family together. He and my mum loved each other desperately and I cherish all the times we had together.”
Silence filled the car for a few moments. Jimmy felt like he ought to give her that time to reflect before continuing the conversation.
Vanessa turned down another side street and brought them back onto the boulevard they’d been driving down earlier. Jimmy glanced around.
“Hey, didn’t we just go down this road five minutes ago?”
“Yes, we did.”
“But-?”
“I double-backed on our route to make sure we weren’t being followed. It’s vital that we reach the next part of our journey without anyone knowing where we are. Otherwise, we’ll be sunk.”
Jimmy slumped back in the seat. He suddenly felt his bladder urging him to visit the bathroom. He cleared his throat. “Uh, Vanessa?”
“You’ll have to wait.”
“What?”
“The bathroom thing. You’ll have to hold it a while longer. I’m not stopping the car right now.”
“How’d you know I need to go?”
She smiled. “You’ve just been through a series of harrowing encounters. Adrenaline makes you want to go to the bathroom once the situation is over.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s either that or you vomit.” She looked over at him with a wink. “But you don’t look too green to me, so I guessed it would be the first option.”
“Great, now I have to go even more.”
“Keep talking to me, it’ll take your mind off of the urge.”
“You sure? I felt bad about bringing up your father there.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know, y’know?”
“It’s all right. I actually like talking about him.”
Jimmy stared at the storefronts they passed. In this part of town, everything seemed closed or vacant. Maybe it was a good idea Vanessa wasn’t going to pull over. They might get jumped in a place like this. “So, you joined the army?”
“What makes you say that?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. Just sort of thought that you might want to join up and make your father proud of you. Seems like something you’d do.”
Vanessa grinned. “Oh, so you know me well enough to predict my behavior now?”
“It’s not that, I just thought-“
“Well, you’re right. I did join the army. I knew I couldn’t try out for Selection because the Regiment would never take me. But there were other alternatives.”
“Like what?”
“The Det.”
Jimmy shook his head. “What’s the Det?”
“Stands for ‘Detachment 14,’ an intelligence branch of the military. Recruits are drawn from all branches and put through a type of Selection that’s similar in some respects to the Regiment training. I passed and went to work with them.”
“Where?”
“Northern Ireland was where the majority of the work was. This was around the time the terrorist group the Irish Republican Army and its various splinter segments were in the process of giving up their violent ways. But we still needed to keep tabs on them. I was trained to blend in, pick up valuable nuggets of information, pass it along to the proper authorities, that sort of thing.”
“Were you good at it?”
Vanessa nodded. “If I say so myself, I was quite good at my job. So much so that I came to the attention of MI-6.”
“Let me guess, they’re another spy unit?”
Vanessa nodded. “British equivalent to your CIA. I learned a lot working with them and found myself traveling all over the world on missions. Most of it was rather routine, I’m afraid, but every now and again, there was a bit of excitement.”
Jimmy smiled. “So my 'aunt' is like a female James Bond. That’s pretty cool, actually.” He frowned. “I mean, if you really were my aunt.”
Vanessa patted him on the arm. “If you want to think of me as being your real aunt, I’d be honored. Really, I would.”
Jimmy nodded. “You know, I might do that. Provided you manage to keep me alive and all.”
“You're doing a pretty good job of keeping yourself alive. You've more than lived up to expectations.”
"Whose expectations?"
"Your family's." Vanessa winked. "Now enough. I need to concentrate on driving here.”
“Oh, come on, you can tell me a little bit more, can’t you?”
“Jimmy, it’s not that I don’t want to tell you, but it's not my place to.”
“Well, who will then?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. But you’ll have to trust me.”
Jimmy sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I get the whole trust thing. I hate it. But I understand, I guess.”
Vanessa turned down another side road, slowed the car and nodded. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, I was kept in the dark about a lot of this stuff when I first started out as well. And if I recall, I didn’t like it much better than you do right now.”
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Jimmy looked at her. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He felt a smile break out across his face in spite of himself. “All right, I guess I can put up with it a little longer if you had to put up with it, too. I mean, I’m dying to hit the can, so if I can handle that, I suppose I can add one more thing to the list.”
“That’s the spirit, Jimmy.” But her smile turned to a frown when she saw the expression on Jimmy’s face. “What’s the matter with you?”
He pointed to her neck. “What’s that red dot doing there?”
But then the windshield exploded and all the peace and quiet shattered in an instant.
Chapter Nine
But even as the windshield exploded, Vanessa was already screaming at Jimmy. “Get down!” She jerked hers and Jimmy’s seat belts off and threw herself on top of him, dragging them both down behind the dashboard.
Glass showered down on top of them as the bullets continued to hit the seats where they’d been sitting upright seconds before.
The car kept rolling forward although it seemed to be curving toward one side of the street. Vanessa’s voice was harsh in Jimmy’s ear. “Hang on, the car’s going to crash into something. Once it does, we’ll have to move. Stay low and stay close to me, okay?”
Jimmy nodded his head and prayed he wouldn’t lose control of his bladder. The urge to relieve himself was almost intolerable right now. “Can’t we just get the car going again? Drive to wherever we’re going? They wouldn’t be able to keep up with us, would they?”
In response, the car rattled as a stream of automatic gunfire ripped through the engine block. Jimmy heard the engine sputter and the switch off, its electronics completely beyond hope of operation.
The car continued to move, however, until Vanessa tightened her hold on Jimmy and the car bounced into something solid and finally stopped moving.
“Now, Jimmy!”
Jimmy reached up and pushed the door open.
No bullets tore through his hand. He risked a quick look and saw they had crashed into a metal dumpster that was taller and wider than their car. “I think we’ve got some cover.”
Vanessa snaked her way over the seat and slid out of the car. Jimmy retrieved his hanbo from the back seat and noticed Vanessa had a dark savage-looking knife blade in her hand.
“Where’d you get that?”
Vanessa crouched down near the car. “Under my driver’s seat. I usually keep a few things in the cars that only I know about.”
“Any chance you’ve got a submachine gun in there, too?”
“No. Can’t risk a firearm falling into the wrong hands." She pointed to the bank of storefronts close by. “I think we can make that entrance without exposing ourselves too much. You ready?”
“That door looks locked.”
“Let me worry about that. You stay here until I get it open and then when I tell you to run, you run, okay?”
“Okay.”
Vanessa moved before the word was even out of his mouth. A single shot splanged off the sidewalk and its sound registered a moment later. Vanessa made it to the entryway, though and immediately drove her elbow through the plate glass and twisted the lock. A second later, the door sprang open. She turned back and waved to Jimmy. “Come on.”
Easy for her to say, he thought. She’s already there. Jimmy thought about the gunman somewhere out there, perhaps on a roof looking down at them through a sniper scope on his rifle. Maybe he was peering at the car right now, ready to fire a slug right into Jimmy’s heart as he ran.
That wouldn’t be good.
“Jimmy!”
He bolted.
He felt something sharp lance his cheek, heard the sound of the shot, but by then he was already into the storefront, heaving and gulping next to Vanessa.
“He shot me!”
Vanessa peered closer at his wound and shook her head. “Fragment of concrete is all. Ricochet. You’re fine. Now stay close, all right? We’ve got to make this look good and panicked.”
Jimmy frowned. What was she talking about? But he dutifully followed her past the display counters full of antique lamps and watches up a set of stairs at the back of the shop he hadn’t noticed before, but that Vanessa apparently had spotted.
The whole store smelled of musty mothballs as if it hadn’t been used in years. Thick cloying spider webs draped about the doorways and corners of the rooms, sending Jimmy in shuddering fits every time they had to pass through one, which seemed far too often. He imagined hairy spiders dropping on his neck and plunging their fangs into his soft skin.
“Stay close.”
They moved into what looked like a storeroom full of cardboard boxes. Jimmy heard scurrying in the corner and saw sets of eyes staring at him in the dark. Rats? Mice? Had they claimed this place as their own? Jimmy wanted to shout at them, but Vanessa’s hand squeezed and pulled him along.
Another set of stairs led them higher up now. Thick dust on the steps left clear marks from their feet in their wake. Jimmy frowned. Anyone who wanted to track them would have no problem doing so. That didn’t seem like such a great idea to him, but as yet, no one had asked him what his opinion was.
He stifled a sneeze as they crested the steps and entered a long passageway with a sloping roof on either side of them. Vanessa had to stoop a little bit to keep from hitting her head. They passed a row of windows and Jimmy’s stomach seized each time they did as he expected a bullet to tear through and into them.
But nothing happened.
And then he heard a sound from somewhere far behind them. Vanessa froze.
“Fast,” she whispered more to herself than to Jimmy. But then she tugged him along further. “Come on, we’ve got to get clear of this building.”
Down the passageway they went until Jimmy could just make out a dim yellow light bulb hanging forlornly over a set of steps leading down. Vanessa aimed for the steps and Jimmy followed quickly.
They descended and scared up more dust in their wake. Jimmy frowned. “He’s going to be able to track us in the dust. We’re leaving all sorts of tracks behind.”
“That’s the point,” said Vanessa.
“It is?”
“Just keep moving.”
At the bottom of the stairs, a thick heavyset door with a reinforced back window frame sat on sturdy hinges that looked as though they hadn’t been oiled in years. Vanessa undid the lock smoothly and opened the door.
The night air tasted like cold water to Jimmy who stifled another sneeze as the dust drifted away from them. Vanessa’s eyes scanned the streets, which were devoid of all life seemingly.
“Where is everyone?”
Vanessa frowned. “They’re out there. Trust me. This is not the sort of neighborhood you want to get stuck in at night by yourself.”
“Especially with a gunman hot on your heels.”
Vanessa cracked a grin. “Yes, well there is that, isn’t there?”
“Where are we going?”
She pointed at another building across the street. “Over to there.”
Jimmy looked at the two story concrete building and frowned. This one looked even less inviting than the one they’d just been in, but Vanessa seemed to know what she was doing. Or at least she seemed to know her way around the neighborhood.
Jimmy sniffed the air. He caught a scent of brine on it. “Are we close to the ocean?”
Vanessa nodded. “We’re near the harbor, yes.” She glanced up and down the street both ways and then yanked Jimmy along. “Come on.”
At the entry to the next building, Vanessa examined the lock, pulled a hairpin out of her pocket and picked the lock inside of a minute. While she did, Jimmy kept staring back the way they’d come willing his eyes to pick out any signs that the sniper was getting closer.
Jimmy heard a hiss and ducked as the rifle shot tore through the wooden frame of a window nearby them. Vanessa jerked the door open and dragged Jimmy inside.
A solid beeping noise started somewhere in the ba
ckground. Vanessa nodded. “Alarm. That’ll bring the cops along in short time.” She pointed at the back of the office. “Come on then.”
Jimmy followed her toward the back and then through an interior door that led them down a flight of stairs into a basement. He could smell the salt water even more now, as if this entire block had been built on a mass of pilings or piers.
A few seconds later, he heard water gently lapping and then Vanessa flicked on a light switch.
They were in an underground walkway that skirted a river of sea water running alongside them. “What is this place?” asked Jimmy.
“Parts of the neighborhood were built around the ocean so they had to be creative,” said Vanessa. “This used to be used by smugglers to bring their goods ashore without the police being any wiser.”
“And you know about this how?”
Vanessa winked. “I know about it because I have to know about it, silly. Now come on, we don’t have much time until the police show up.”
But Jimmy had heard something else. “Listen!”
Above them, the sound of heavy boots tramped over their heads. Vanessa nodded. “All right then.”
She kept moving down the walkway. Jimmy followed her. “How much longer do we run for? When do we stand and fight?”
Vanessa paused. “You fight only when you have to, Jimmy."
Jimmy frowned and kept after her. They moved quickly down the planked walkway, their footsteps echoing painfully loud back the way they’d come. Jimmy kept looking back and expecting to see the dreaded image of the sniper looming large behind him.
Vanessa stopped short. Jimmy almost bumped into her.
“What’s the problem?”
“Dead end.”
He looked and saw nothing but ocean below them. In front, the whole area suddenly gave way to the Pacific. The walkway simply ended without any sort of gate to keep someone from falling in.
“Interesting. Now what? We swim?”
“We wait.”
Jimmy frowned. “Uh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news and all but that guy’s back there somewhere and I don’t think he’s going to be all that forgiving when he gets here, you know?”