The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  “People! People!” Kayla shouted from the floor, “Calm down, now! Calm down! We’re not trying to blow up the fuckin’ plane or anythin’! We only want to shoot the wogs!”

  Rather than mollify the crowd, this increased the shrieking. Ian tried to gauge the reactions of those nearest to him. None would meet his gaze or even look up from between their knees. They reminded him of ostriches trembling in the sand. One, a teenage boy, had replaced his headphones and was humming softly, eyes squeezed tight against tears rolling down his face. Another woman seemed to be hyperventilating. Ian thought about speaking to her but was afraid of inducing some sort of fit.

  The panic level in the cabin was palpable, as if the air itself had thinned and couldn’t be consumed fast enough. If even one person snapped, they would undoubtedly have a small scale stampede on their hands—an ugly event inside a Boeing 777. Ian took all of this in with an unsettling detachment. Part of him felt sick. Part of him knew he’d made a terrible mistake, but a larger part was eager to keep moving in order to stave off reflection, for he knew that if he stopped to think, the crushing weight of what he’d done to endanger these people would smother him. There was no denying that he’d fired the first shot. He tried to console himself with the fact that if they did indeed drop out of the sky, he wouldn’t have to feel guilty for long.

  Suddenly, Pyper Hurley was heard over the com system. She had somehow gotten hold of the aft cabin phone. Calm and resolute, its pacifying effect was instantaneous, like a cold cloth on the brow.

  “Unfortunately, you’ve all been caught up in a conflict that isn’t yours,” she observed sadly, as if reading aloud a poignant passage in a children’s book. “And while we won’t hurt you, you can hurt yourself. I beg you to please stay seated, and for the love of God keep your heads down.”

  She clicked off.

  Ian could breathe clearly again.

  “You hear that, you whore?” Kayla screamed. “That means you can’t unload entire clips at nothing! How ‘bout you shoot at us instead of the wall!”

  “You have a foul mouth you little pixie bitch,” Tessa snapped back, her voice hoarse. She popped out into the aisle with remarkable agility and fired two shots at Kayla before any member of Green could think to respond. Both were angled too high; one slammed into the headrest in front of Kayla, ripping the fabric slightly. The other slammed into the console above with a loud rap, like a knuckle on wood.

  “Kayla,” Ian hissed, loud enough for her to hear across the middle isle. “Hold tight. Stupid shooting gets us nowhere.”

  Ian had to get back to Pyper. She could see everything from the rear galley. She could stand behind cover when everyone else was plastered to the floor. He marveled at the clear, quick thinking of his captain—the opposite of his own. He slid over to the aisle and chanced a glance backwards. Pyper was right there looking at him, barely visible behind the wall of the galley, as if she had been anticipating him. At first he tried to explain himself, make amends for losing his cool.

  “Pyper, I—”

  “Let’s just win it and get back on the ground, Ian,” she said coolly. She was truly a Mother Superior.

  “You and Kayla need to move up the two aisles in shifts. One dashes while the other fires. Quickly, before they realize what’s happening.”

  Ian slid back to the ground in front of his seat.

  “Kayla,” he hissed again, just above the whining of the engines and the moaning of the people. “To the other aisle! Then forward in shifts! Five up, five down! Wait for my fire!”

  He started counting down. Five, four, three, two...

  He was firing before he was up on his knees, alternating from where he knew Tessa to be, over to where he thought Lorenzo Aldobrandi might be, and back to Tessa. He fired five shots, one for each count. He didn’t get a chance to see if it was working or not. He could only duck and shove himself into position to dash forward again, like a sprinter on a platform. Sure enough, seconds later Kayla was firing from her new position over on the other aisle, several rows up. Ian scrambled forward like the floor was hot pavement, covering his head and pawing his way onward. He counted down five seconds then slammed himself sideways into the nearest row of seats and people, knocking knees together like swinging pendulums. He shoved his gun into all three of the unfortunate passengers’ faces, taking the offensive in case anybody tried to be a hero.

  “Don’tmovei’llbegoneinasecond!”

  They begged for their lives but Ian had no time to listen. It was his turn to give cover fire. He popped up and pulled the trigger five more times, once a second. He saw Kayla briefly as she threw herself forward down the opposite aisle. He then ducked down and placed himself on the mark once more. Kayla stopped firing and Ian was about to dash, but he heard someone else dashing instead. He chanced a look out in time to see the wounded Ignazio Andizzi retreating backwards at a severe angle, literally falling his way to the front rows and managing to force his way into the same aisle his captain had holed herself up in.

  Ian dashed into an empty seat, immediately threatening all nearby. Someone retched on the floor near him and he was hit by a sprinkle of bile. He was close: ten rows from Tessa and the wounded Andizzi. Up until this point, the Italians had been strangely silent, especially the sweeper, somewhere over on Kayla’s side of the plane. This worried Ian. He was more cautious with his cover fire when his turn came; he popped out from the side of the seat in front of him, and then the top, then the side again. He still couldn’t pinpoint Lorenzo’s exact location. What was he doing? Why hadn’t he made himself known? Kayla had to be close to him, probably fewer than ten rows away.

  ————

  Javier Renaldo was on his third flight in two days. He was coming back from a disastrous sales pitch in Dublin that he was sure would net him nothing, and was contemplating how to break the news to his regional manager. He was under his parts quota for the month, hadn’t slept more than six of the last forty-eight hours, and had terrible cuts on the inside of his nose from the cabin’s dry air. Even worse, he was positive that the seat in front of him was broken; it seemed to recline a good five inches farther back than anyone else’s. When he heard the first pop, he was sure the airplane was exploding. It fit perfectly with the current trend of things.

  Several loud pops later, it was clear he was in the middle of a hostile takeover. Then some woman had gotten on the loudspeaker and actually told them all to calm down. Calm down! As if he could just shut out the gunfire! Javier wasn’t calm, yet strangely enough, Javier wasn’t that scared.

  Javier was pissed off.

  And now he was forced to sit, like a constipated child, with his head between his bony knees and watch through his legs as one of the crazy gunmen—actually a woman—dashed up the aisle towards him.

  He thought about the loans he was still paying off. If these crazy assholes slammed the plane into a building he would die in debt. And that was what they were going to do, he was positive; he’d seen the footage of 9/11. He’d watched the made for T.V. movies. They were heading for the fiftieth storey of some building, and when they slammed into it, he’d die without a nickel to his name.

  And the whole time he could only watch as his death approached, a few rows at a time. She looked about 18 years old.

  Javier blinked.

  She was just a girl. She was actually kind of cute. Was she really the one making all this noise? He watched as she popped up like a groundhog, fired five swift shots, and then ducked down again. He shivered over his knees as the woman to his right screamed again and then cut herself off just as quickly. Yes, she was making the noise. This girl was a cold blooded killer. A vixen. She was going to get to the cockpit, shoot the door open, and fly them all straight to hell.

  Unless he could stop her. He wasn’t screaming or crying or pissing himself like the rest of them. He had his wits. She was just a girl. He could be a hero. They’d give him the key to some city. He’d be on cereal boxes and cable news channels. He might even get a
book deal. Goodbye debt!

  She wasn’t that far back now. She’d be next to him in half a minute. Through his legs he assessed her stature. She looked maybe a hundred pounds. He wasn’t a big guy, but he could handle a hundred pound girl. He’d knock her out and take her gun. No problem. Surely by then people would see his heroism and be inspired to follow.

  Very slowly, Javier unfastened his safety belt.

  Lorenzo Aldobrandi also saw Kayla MacQuillan approaching his row one dash at a time. Twice he moved to shoot her when she popped out to run, and twice Ian Finn’s cover fire kept him pinned in his seat as surely as if he’d forgotten to unbuckle. Finn didn’t know exactly where he was, but his shots were close enough. They moved quickly as a team, sweeping the plane from aft to fore. Every time he thought he saw one of them, the other started shooting and forced him to hunch over in his seat again. If you didn’t notice the gun he was holding right at the pit of his stomach, you might mistake him for another hapless bystander, just like the terrified couple to his right, heads bowed low and stuck together, hands intertwined. Aldobrandi wasn’t sure, since they were speaking in English, but he thought they might be praying.

  And all the while, Kayla was making moves, row by row. She was more cautious now. She knew that he was nearby. He knew that if he made any move, he’d be seen. If he even repositioned his gun to where he might have a shot, much less stood up, he’d be blown away, if not by her, then by Ian Finn from the wide angle. But he was getting desperate. In moments he might have to risk it all. Maybe he could get a shot off before he went under.

  He was steadying himself for his suicidal stand, taking a few deep breaths hunched over in his seat, when he looked to his left and saw a man just two rows back slowly unbuckling his seatbelt. The conspiratorial manner in which he lifted the clasp and gently pulled apart the two ends meant he wasn’t doing this for comfort. He looked bedraggled. His suit was crumpled and his hair was sticking up oddly. He looked like a man at the end of his rope.

  Now this was interesting... he was making a fist, flexing his knuckles.

  Lorenzo relaxed. He was just going to wait. If things panned out how he thought they were about to, this poor fellow might just turn the tables for his entire team.

  ————

  Kayla was going to allow herself two more rows. Two more rows and then she would make her stand. She would be at a good angle to pin down both Tessa and the wounded Andizzi on the other side of the plane, and she was sure that Lorenzo was just four rows up, somewhere on the right side, hunched over like a sissy. She kept her eye on that row, watching for the slightest movement. She waited for Ian to start his Some idiot snapped his leg Some idiot snapped his leis five seconds of cover fire, and she ran.

  She had gone two steps when someone tripped her. Some idiot snapped his leg out into the aisle and tripped her up. Before she could look up at him he’d lashed out a hand, more of a whip than a punch, and caught her right in the eye. There was an explosion of color behind her retina, and then everything started to water.

  “What the—”

  She snapped her gun around and saw a shabby, terrified businessman in a bad suit. She paused, one hand over her weepy eye. There was a break in the cover fire as Ian Finn crouched and prepared to move up again in pattern, totally unaware.

  Lorenzo merely had to reach over with his gun. He fired from one foot away. The diode slammed into the base of her skull, and she collapsed into the businessman’s arms. Her head was thrown onto his lap where she lay limp, like a child asleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  GREER NICHOLS WAS FINDING it a very inconvenient time to be the Master of Ceremonies. Not only was he in charge of maintaining his own team, Team Blue, but for this series of rounds he was also in charge of mediating larger disputes and issues. He had problems hand over fist: there was an unprecedented increase in the number of civilians who found themselves on the wrong side of a gun, he was still trying to explain away a major firefight in the middle of a hotel in Tokyo, and now there were reports of an airplane incident—and all this before the second round! Greer took a deep breath, ran his hand over his gleaming, bald dome, and squared himself once more in front of his guests. There was no time for self-pity. He was paid to facilitate and to mediate. He planned on doing just that.

  “I know time is precious for all of us, so I’ll be brief,” said Greer. “You men will no doubt remember each other,” he gestured first to his left. “Tom Pierson, head of this hemisphere’s intellectual property and contracts division. Tom, the man next to you is Baron Miller, our criminal law specialist. You both are very expensive, and you both round up by the hour. So let’s get down to it.”

  Miller and Pierson nodded respectfully at each other. Both were venerable looking men. Miller was balding slightly, and Pierson was graying slightly more, but doing it well.

  “First things first.” Greer flipped open a dossier marked Youngsmith. He cleared his throat and his voice dropped to its natural baritone octave. “Almost a month ago this guy showed up on our radar. His name is Frank Youngsmith, and he was digging around for his work as a claims adjuster. Now, ordinarily this is no big deal. Occasionally people cross paths with us, but generally this type of stuff is restricted to rumor mills and conspiracy websites. The press often writes us off as gang activity or something of the like, and people go on their way. But our techs flagged him nonetheless and we put a watch out for him.

  “For several weeks, there was no further activity from Frank, and it was assumed he had lost interest. But then, unexpectedly, he came back online. He was much more direct this time. He was looking for BlueHorse Limited. BlueHorse, as you’ll know, is Team Blue’s financial holdings firm, and the focal point of investment and betting in the Americas. It’s a legitimate company, but very closed doors, and not one Frank Youngsmith should bother himself with in any case.

  “Because he was already on watch status, Frank was fully reported this time. We shut his office IP down, but nothing stopped this guy. Somehow he caught Lock’s trail as he was delivering correspondence at the UCSD Hospital. Lock managed to lose him, but not before something happened.”

  “What was that?” Baron Miller asked, writing with a brilliant silver pen on a yellow pad in his lap. Tom Pierson had crossed his arms over his chest and was leaning back in his chair, pondering.

  “We’re fairly sure he talked to a doctor out there. Dr. Baxter Walcott, one of our top medical men. Walcott has a history of... disagreeing with what the Tournament does. He says it flies in the face of the Hippocratic Oath.”

  “Did you bring Walcott in?”

  “Walcott has a certain amount of leverage with us. He’s very important. One of the best. Diode hits, they’re pretty brutal. And the learning curve as a physician for treating diode injuries is severe. Many years of training. Bottom line is we need Walcott and he knows it. Especially now.”

  “And this Youngsmith,” Pierson prodded. “Where is he?”

  “I think we spooked him. Either that, or some combination of work stress and what he was learning about us finally caused him to snap. By the time we could send men to his Colorado Springs home, he was already gone.”

  Tom sucked in air through his teeth. “That’s unfortunate.”

  Miller shrugged. “So he’s gone. No harm, no foul.”

  Greer held up a finger. “Here’s where it gets tricky.”

  He reached under his desk and pulled up a leather portfolio. After a moment’s deliberation, he popped open the brass clasps and withdrew two stapled packets. He passed these out to Pierson and Miller.

  The cover page read THE TOURNAMENT, and then, under that, BY FRANK YOUNGSMITH.

  “Oh shit,” said Tom Pierson, his voice flat.

  Baron Miller briefly flipped through about half of the report before he had to close it up again, take off his square framed spectacles, and rub his eyes. He let out a tired sigh.

  “I know,” said Greer, tapping the cover. “He even got the name right.”r />
  “Well, in all fairness, it’s not a very original name, now, is it?” noted Miller.

  “You think this is funny, Baron?” Greer asked. “If we can’t contain this, it’s a shit storm for you, too. People love a good gunfight. They’ll come out to watch.”

  “Jesus,” Tom said, leafing through the packet. “He’s taken it upon himself to document this entire organization.”

  “Something Walcott must have said to him at UCSD sure lit a fire under his ass. He started digging. He got a basic idea of the diode, probably from Walcott, and he went from there. Ostensibly this is a file documenting his company’s investigation of Bill Beauchamp’s death, from the insurance perspective. But it’s thorough—which is not good for us. He also sent copies to his work,” Greer said.

  “It’s hardly complete” said Bowen. “He only has a basic grasp.”

  “True. He’s missing quite a bit, and quite a bit more is clearly conjecture, but it doesn’t matter. This document is public now.”

  “How many copies are out there?”

  “We can’t know. It’s online through Barringer Insurance. God knows who else Frank has told, or mailed, to try and save his own ass.”

  Greer tossed his own copy across his desk in disgust.

  “What can we do here?” Greer asked. “Can we censor this stuff? Sue?”

  “If an individual or an entity came forward and claimed to own the patent for the diode, we might be able to prosecute Frank Youngsmith for divulgence of trade secrets,” suggested Tom.

  “That would never happen. I don’t even know who would come forward.”

  “Of course it wouldn’t. Admitting to the diode would mean admitting to the whole thing,” Tom said, holding up his packet.

  “We don’t prosecute in this organization, Greer,” said Baron. “It’s far too messy. We use our extensive knowledge of the criminal and civil legal systems to pay people off at exorbitant rates. We find what people want and trade it to them in exchange for silence or cooperation. Find out what this Youngsmith character wants.”