Jack Be Nimble: Gargoyle

by English, Ben

  *

  It was the older of the two watchers. Jack exhaled evenly and put on his best poker face as the man’s head and shoulders cleared the trapdoor. The conductor’s jacket draped a form still angular and powerful, notwithstanding the amount of gray peppering his beard. His eyebrows jumped when he saw the younger man, though from surprise or amusement Jack couldn’t tell. A smile played at the corners of the man’s mouth, and his eyes went from Jack’s gun to the cases in his own hands. He made an apologetic expression. “He of course leaves me to carry the equipment, eh?”

  Jack squeezed the trigger just past the first safety in his pistol.

  “I know what you are thinking, monsieur Flynn. Whether I will live or die, no?” He was calm, smooth, affable. “You could kill me with so much of a thought, though you’re better with your hands than with that Glock you have there. So I’ve heard.” He tested the weight at the end of his arms. “Just let me put this down first, before you begin. I was afraid that you would never show up, but then, how to go about this?”

  Jack blinked. He’s actually delighted to see me. The man before him looked to be on the brink of laughter. Jack shifted his grip on the pistol, and the Frenchman rose the rest of the way into the narrow passage. Under the jacket he wore a dark turtleneck, so midnight black in the attic’s dimness he might not have existed at all below the face.

  He sat at the edge of the trapdoor, the cases of surveillance gear at his back, and regarded Jack with a smile bordering on fatherly affection.

  Jack wet his lips. “You know who I am?”

  “I know that you are someone who spends the balance of your life trying to do the right thing. No, Jack Flynn, we’ve never met, you and I, but I think you comprehend what I am. Kill me and no doubt you’ll save the lives of many people you’ll never know. Perhaps a few you do.”

  Jack shook his head dismissively. “Why were you watching the café? Who is ‘Michael?’”

  The man ignored the first question. “I think ‘Aleks Stefanovich’ is a name you’ll find more interesting.” Before Jack could say anything, he continued. “If your computer expert over there,” he nodded in the direction of the street, “is as good as he thinks he is, have him weasel into the newest declassified intelligence vault at CIA headquarters. Your Freedom of Information Act can make things so much easier for people in our line of work, no?

  “And this isn’t your only occupation, is it, Mr. Flynn?” Despite his relaxed demeanor, the older man spoke rapidly, leaping from subject to subject nearly without taking a breath, as if his time was limited and he was fast approaching its end. “You make movies as well.” The smile was becoming unnerving under the cold, intense eyes. “I had tickets to see one of yours, a premiere tonight in London, but it looks now as though I will have to wait.” He leaned forward on the heels of his hands, allowing his legs to dangle over the floor below.

  Jack motioned with the pistol. “Don’t try to--”

  “To jump? Or you’ll ‘fill me full of lead, pardner’?” The Frenchman had a passable Southern accent. “No doubt. But I’ve already answered your questions, Jack Flynn, and you’ve got to let me go. I’ve already stayed too long. If I arouse suspicion, we are both dead men, and you are not yet close enough to the little girl you are trying to find, eh?”

  “What do you know about that? Why are you watching us?” Jack felt his face grow red.

  The other man shifted back, out of the light falling from the stained skylight. Clouds overhead dimmed the dusty attic another notch. “If I turn up missing, the man I’m currently indentured to will know you are coming, and that will be the end of the little girl.” He smiled, eerily composed, calm. “Then again, if you let me go, who knows what will happen?”

  Jack lowered his arm. The Frenchman obviously had no fear, and brandishing the gun at him was making Jack feel vaguely foolish. He might as well be flourishing a cucumber in the air. He worked his jaw and tried another tack. “And this is your idea of helping me? A few cryptic clues and some conspiracy innuendo? Why?”

  If anything, the bearded man grew more intense. “Let’s say I’m trying to be in the right place at the right time. Just like you.” He swung his feet onto the stairs. “Now, I am going. You are either going to shoot me or let me go.” He grunted under the weight of the two cases. “Remember: Stefanovich. Try the keyword, ‘tesla’.”

  And Jack watched the older man stride into the darkness. Faint nausea twisted inside him, and he looked again at his pistol. As he clipped it into the nylon holster in the small of his back, Jack’s eyes fell on a sky-blue rectangle of paper where the older man had sat. He snatched it up.

  It was a premiere-issue ticket for his latest film, And Caesar Whispered, redeemable at the Illuminatus Cineplex, in London.

  *

  Alonzo pressed against the crowd. Nothing on the street could move! The traffic had worsened along with the crushing mob in the past few minutes, and he hadn’t seen the pale ghost in the black coat for nearly twenty seconds. Damn!

  “Do you see him?” The major nearly had to shout in his ear above the cacophony of automobile horns and flatulent exhaust.

  Instead of answering, Alonzo swore again and jumped onto a lamp post’s base, wrapping a free arm around it and daring a blatant look in the direction of the vanished man. Nothing, nothing, nothing but a churning mass of irritable Frenchmen!

  He shouldered off the streetlight and into the road, ignoring the withering insults of a pair of drivers as he rolled across the hood of their delivery truck and stepped up onto the roof of the cab. Alonzo saw an anorexic French woman with three children in tow; he saw a serious, bearded musician with a pair of metallic cases; he saw a pair of nuns.

  But no pasty-faced cipher in a leather jacket.

  The major was yelling something from the side of the street, and Alonzo heard the doors below him slam shut. Someone threw a red vegetable at him, probably a tomato. He glared one more time at the teeming street, then let himself down off the back of the truck and slipped into the crowd, cursing.

  Further Up and Further In

  San Jacinto State Park, California

  6PM

  The blond photographer with the unbelievable rack was the final target on the list. When they finished with her this afternoon, they’d be done before all the other teams, even those last-minute sweepers in Boston.

  If things went well, maybe they’d finish tomorrow.

  The two men in the rented Audi hung back far enough that those in the pickup truck ahead wouldn’t know they were being followed, but found they had to narrow the chase distance considerably as the truck led them further and further up into the San Jacinto Mountains.

  Both men dressed similarly; light brown slacks, pale yellow shirts, and comfortable shoes. They both wore simple expressions, simple expressions on forgettable faces. Both had been named for angels, but neither was in danger of making it to Heaven. The only thing remarkable about either was the level of sheer focus each brought to the task at hand.

  The driver’s eyes never left the pickup truck, as he slowed slightly around a turn. The other held a laptop computer on his knees and a booster antenna near the window. “The wireless is still having trouble,” he said.

  Same trouble with the cell phones. Signal had trouble reaching this far into the wilderness. On the ridgetops and upper saddles they’d have no trouble getting a clear signal back to L.A., but every canyon they entered put another ridgeline behind them, and the man on the computer had to reestablish contact with the company node and the hack that let him into a myriad of databases back in civilization. Scheduling reminders kept popping up onscreen.

  They were at the end of their timetable. Company intelligence regarding Westen said she only possessed documents; she wasn’t one of the chief scientists on the master list. Simply harvesting the files and loose documents wasn’t enough for the higher-ups; for some reason, the woman was to die. Another suburban breaking-and-entering-that turned into assault, then rape, and final
ly murder. The two angels didn’t care either way. The list was long, and the deadline for completion was reasonable. They’d both been doing little jobs like this for a long time.

  “Why is it that the easiest target always becomes our biggest problem?” asked the driver.

  His companion didn’t look away from the screen. “Don’t take it personally,” he said. “How could we know she’d vanish off the face of the earth for so long?” He shook his head. “Idaho. Who goes on vacation to Idaho?”

  The pavement gave way to a dirt road. “Good thing they let us take care of the others first, then come back for her,” the driver said. He eased off on the accelerator, and the car slowed. The follow was always easier on dirt-and-gravel roads, with all the loose dirt kicked into the air by the lead vehicle. Even if the target pulled off onto one of the side roads, its dust cloud trail would be hard to miss. “We should have followed and done her in Idaho,” he said.

  “What?”

  “We’re going to end up in the woods, anyway.”

  His companion’s expression didn’t change. “I’m glad we saved her for last.” The woman’s file opened on the screen before him. Plastic surgery or no, Southern California women exercised like maniacs, and this one was as toned as some of the women killers working for Raines and Lopez. “She’s going to last awhile.”

  The driver didn’t smile, but his voice turned jocular. “Thinking about a little dessert? What about the kid driving?”

  “According to the DMV,” he said. “The truck belongs to one of her employees. He’s not a skilled climber, though, so either she’s not taking him with her--”

  “Or he’s dropping her off and she’s going to be alone.”

  “No.” He closed the computer and began screwing a silencer onto his pistol. “She’s not going to be alone.”

  “If he drops her off on a dead-end road and then doubles back--”

  “We do him quietly, then her.”

  The driver nodded. “So how long before she’s missed?”

  “The studio isn’t expecting her to check back with the office until tomorrow morning, but the birdwatchers she’s supposed to meet might call in tonight if she doesn’t show.”

  He shook his head. “The people she’s meeting are forest-types, right?”

  The other man consulted his computer. “Graduate students, they met while working at the California Raptor Center at U.C. Davis. Registered members of the Green Party. They both drive electric vehicles, and every year they max their credit cards at R.E.I. and Any Mountain.”

  “Tree-huggers. You really think they own a satellite phone?”

  The other man shrugged. “The university expects them to stay in contact. Why not kill them as well?”

  “Not unless you fancy a climb.” They were dressed for an urban hit. The business-casual attire was perfect for blending into L.A., but beyond the suburbs both men felt exposed. Each knew they’d been selected for this mission based on their expertise in urban situations.

  “Hold up, they stopped.”—but the driver had already killed the engine and let the car coast to a stop in the shadows of a stand of pines.

  They watched the woman exit the truck and begin strapping gear on. She wore thick canvas pants and a heavy cotton top, which she peeled off in the summer heat to reveal an aqua-colored sports bra.

  “That’s a very noticeable blue.”

  “We’ll burn it with the rest of her stuff.” It had already been decided that they’d bury the body in several locations, without teeth or clothes, to make postmortem identification that much more difficult. Research into the target’s background turned up close ties with L.A. homicide. Her cousin was a crime scene investigator who apparently kept close tabs on the Westen woman.

  Most of her equipment, at least two cameras, went into a small backpack. Both men didn’t move as she adjusted herself for the woods.

  “Did she just put climbing shoes into her pack?”

  His companion finished assembling the silencer. “Why?”

  “What’s she wearing on her feet?”

  The woman waived to the driver of the truck, turned, and jogged straight into the forest.

  “She’s running?”

  The pickup pulled cleanly away, and both men dashed up through the dust to the head of the trail, pistols out. The path lead down through pines, and then around a hill. The underbrush wasn’t that thick, but everything was green, leafy, and growing. They heard a rhythmic swish-swish from somewhere ahead. Her pants legs brushing against one another.

  Neither man flustered easily. Operational difficulties were nothing new, surprises in the target’s behavior merely flavored the rich experience inherent to their profession. Neither had ever pursued a woman into the woods before, certainly not while wearing new, stiff dress shoes designed for everything but running through the country.

  She was already a good two hundred feet ahead of them, and moving fast. They caught a glimpse of bright blue, and a bouncing ponytail, and then she was around the hill.

  “The rifle would work better here.”

  “You want to take the time to dig it out and put it together?” his companion replied. “Take the trail. I’m going to cut her off at the top of that hill.”

  They couldn’t really see the top of the embankment; it disappeared past the tops of the nearby trees. Nevertheless, his companion started off, cracking and snapping loose bits of fallen branches as he did so.

  The remaining man hesitated. He really was much more comfortable back in the car, using the computer. Nothing to be done now; he started down the trail as quickly as he could. At least he could get out of the dust.

  Spring had thrown off any sign of winter, and everything was in bloom. He moved further into the deep green, twisting his feet around in the new shoes.

  At least his job was easier; if the woman panicked and doubled back along the trail, the only route familiar to her, she’d run right into him.

  *

  Mercedes reached the bottom of the second slope and used her momentum to carry her up the next incline. The Forest Service hadn’t spent much time maintaining the trails in this area; instead of the usual switchback style, where the footpath zigzagged back and forth up a hill to prevent erosion, these paths were more direct. She could make good time.

  The two kids from the university raptor program, Eric and Sara Jensen, were scheduled to meet her at the cliffs, at the second level of ascension. They’d climb together to the Jensen’s observation camp, and tonight or tomorrow she’d be shooting film of the baby golden eagles getting fed.

  Three eggs—a nearly unheard of amount—had hatched in a nest in the top of a secluded, precariously balanced sequoia, and Eric and Sara J. asked for her immediately, before predators or the wind cleared the nest of life. Nature wasn’t balanced in their favor--the male was nowhere to be found, and odds were he’d been killed due to mistaken belief that golden eagles are a danger to livestock. The female stayed close to the nest, and food was scarce after the harsh winter.

  Mercedes paused a moment to stretch, and a crash sounded back along the trail she’d just run. It sounded distant, and the weave and weft of the hills made its source indistinct. A shadow of a sound.

  A breeze carried the scent of new mountain sage across the clearing.

  Mercedes’ mind was beginning to relax as her body started to wake up and respond. Even with the light backpack, the run felt great. She started off again, inhaling as deeply as she could, lost in the beauty of the deep green. Only two miles to the base of the cliffs.

  *

  The angel tumbled down the bank in a shower of flinty, flat rocks and loose earth, pain from his ankle forking like lightning up his lower back. Immediately he shrugged off the twinge and concentrated on retaining a grip on his pistol until he came to rest. This was becoming ridiculous. His breathing was the only sound he heard, crowded in and muffled by all the old bark.

  Urban warfare was his specialty, his passion. He’d cut his teeth as a con
tract man in Miami, built his portfolio of skills running with the old Cuban mercenaries, and operated for ten years in cities up and down both coasts of North and South America. But this damn wilderness—he was falling too far behind. Maybe his partner had already caught up with her, flanked the woman and brought her down.

  He stepped directly on an old log to cross over it, and with a wet, rotten pop it broke open in pieces, further punishing his ankle.

  According to his watch, they’d left the road twenty minutes ago, and still no sign of the woman or his partner. What had Mr. Raines told them, something about never leaving your companion? The pain from a twisted ankle he could dismiss, but being forced to move so slowly was maddening. Why hadn’t she turned an ankle?

  He stopped. The area he was entering looked the same as the pile of logs and brush behind, and hadn’t he come down the hill at an angle? What was that old trick about moss growing only on one side of a tree? He hobbled to the nearest tree and groaned; the spongy, greenish growth speckled the entire circumference of the trunk.

  No signal on the cell phone.

  The low foliage blocked the sun; he needed to get higher to get his bearings. Just needed to get a bit higher.

  *

  Mercedes stopped at the base of the cliffs to change shoes. Eric and Sara had left a safety line dangling for her, and a flashlight, but it looked like she’d make it up before total darkness.

  Damn but this country was pretty.

  She clipped in and started up, careful to move one extremity at a time. The crumbly rock face took all her attention, and it wasn’t until the dying light on the rock turned red did she turn and look out over the San Jacintos. Gorgeous. Not a road, television tower, or McDonald’s in sight. Mercedes could easily imagine the world like this, an untouched series of rolling, rocky forest.

  A warm breeze from below felt wonderful on her back, and she knew she should start moving again, while she still had the light, before evaporating perspiration could chill her.

  A rock broke off explosively below her, a dozen feet down and slightly left. Mercedes hoped the safety line was well anchored. It could still freeze this late in the mountains, and cycles of repeated freezing and thawing water, working itself down into the rock, had killed more than one sure-footed climber. Frost reaving, that’s what Grandpa Max called it.