The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  Finally, with both in the car, Ian moved. He walked quickly to the driver’s side, opened the door, and closed it behind him with much the same feeling he used to get as a small boy running up the stairs from the darkened basement.

  As Ian pulled on to the street, a car three lengths behind them flipped on their lights and began slowly, almost leisurely, to follow them.

  “Jesus. Fuckers don’t waste time, do they?” Kayla quipped, squinting over her shoulder.

  “That can’t possibly be them,” Ian said, his eyes flicking from the mirror to his front view and back again. ‘Right outside of the house? We passed right by them!”

  “Of course it’s them,” Kayla said, chambering the first bullet of her clip.

  “How much time until the moratorium expires?” Pyper asked, leaning down and across the back seat, away from the rear window.

  “Twenty minutes. My guess is they start shooting in twenty minutes.”

  “Then so do we,” Pyper said.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  FRANK YOUNGSMITH WAS TIRED. He hadn’t shaved, returned to work, or been to his apartment in nearly a month. His beard had grown in patchy and unevenly, and the tight curls of hair that ringed his head frizzed wildly out in all directions. Although both of his eyes sported impressive bags, his right looked more tired than his left, and he walked about with an off-kilter half-squint, suggesting a drunken pirate. He had a few buck-shot sized holes in the crotch of his trusty Dockers, and both buttons on the seat of his pants had come off some time ago, their threads left to dangle like tassels.

  He was literally falling apart.

  When he’d slept, he slept poorly, and since he was paid only through this weekend at the Lucky U motel off I-70, just west of Topeka, Kansas, he had resigned himself to many more nights of little to no sleep. It wasn’t his fault. They were after him. They were after him, and the more he learned about these people, the more he felt the need to run.

  He couldn’t trust anyone. Literally nobody. He was convinced now that no one on earth was out of their reach. The police? Please. The police were in their pocket. Their people were peppered about the municipal, state, and federal government at every level. He was convinced that half the time he picked up the phone they were listening on the other end. The internet was an open book to them; they flipped through the whole damn thing at their leisure, ripping pages from it like paper when the content didn’t suit them. More and more he was catching looks out of the corner of his eye. He could feel people watching him with undue curiosity. Truck drivers and hotel lobby workers, convenience store clerks and bums on the streets. Even a father of three on a road trip in his minivan seemed to watch him unnaturally as he passed by Frank’s battered coupe. The Tournament was everywhere once you knew how to look, and it was Frank’s singular misfortune to know how to look. He knew he was most likely on the cusp of insanity. He walked a strand of hair in his mind. It was only a matter of time until it snapped.

  Thank God the report was done, or as done as it was gonna get, anyway. He was sure he was fired by now, naturally, but the report was submitted. He wasn’t sure why he’d kept at it except to say that the doctor’s words placed enough of a burden of guilt on him to look a bit deeper into the organization that was the Tournament—and from there he’d fallen of the cliff. They learned who he was, ransacked his apartment and probably harassed his hapless neighbor. He smiled to himself as he sat against the thin headboard of a twin bed in his ratty hotel room. Then he frowned. That was no reason to smile. For all he knew, Andy could be dead.

  Presidents, heads of state, rulers and kings were involved. Frank knew he was less than nothing to them. Hell, he was less than nothing to most people he knew, much less to them. If they found him, they’d kill him. Few people were more easily disposed of than himself. At this point really a loud Boo! ought to do it.

  On the other hand, there was still so much more to discover. It was worldwide, for God’s sake. He’d done a whole report on it and was sure he’d barely scratched the surface. Right? There had to be more, right? But he needed money. He needed money, and he needed to shave and to brush his teeth. In fact, he’d worry about the money later. First, the teeth and the shaving. The money would come. Hopefully. An evening shave would do him good, both a literal and a symbolic cleansing.

  He flopped out of bed and padded over to the yellowish bathroom and grabbed his stained daub kit. He lathered himself up and fussed around to find his old razor. Then he heard a knock on the door.

  He froze. A glop of shaving cream plopped from his chin into the basin. He suddenly had to urinate. There was absolutely no one else it could be. He contemplated forcing his ample gut through the small bathroom window, but he was too tired and too asthmatic to run, he’d only embarrass himself. He looked about for a weapon: he saw the rough towel, he saw a spare roll of toilet paper, he saw his frayed toothbrush.

  Then the door opened. Frank turned, white faced and dumbfounded, to face two men standing in his room. They were dressed entirely too professionally to be frequenting the Lucky U. Their expressions were indecipherable, the masks of the professionally anonymous.

  “How did you get in here?” Frank moaned, spraying flecks of shaving cream out upon the floor.

  “You didn’t lock the door Frank,” one said, shrugging.

  “Please,” Frank said, holding his hands up as if to ward them off. “Please, I have...” What? A wife? Nope. Kids? Nope. He didn’t even have a dog.

  “... I have a, a neighbor,” he stuttered, “and he worries.” Frank backed up onto the toilet and sat down hard upon its seat. The men continued towards him. He looked from one to the other, breathing heavy, panicked-animal breaths. He slowly brought his fat legs up and hugged them, his paunchy belly pressed against his knees. The shaving cream was beginning to sting his upper lip.

  “Relax, Frank,” one of them said. “You of all people should know by now that we aren’t in the business of killing people forever in this organization. We also bring people back from the dead.”

  The other chuckled as he looked about the hotel room.

  Frank blinked several times. Was that a joke? The man didn’t look like the joking type. He closed his eyes and rested his head back on the scummy linoleum tiling of the wall and waited for the cold press of a gun to his temple. Instead, he got the sharp hammering of a fist, and everything went dark.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  THERE WERE FIVE MINUTES left in the moratorium. Five slippery minutes was all that stood between them and the hell that tailed them. The Irish knew that when the time was up, Black would erupt with the ferocity of the storm now battering every side of their car.

  Green hadn’t gotten very far. The downpour slowed traffic out of Dublin to a crawl, and up ahead the runoff had pooled deeply in a depressed section of the road. The few cars that chanced it had stalled out, their hazard lights blinking worthlessly into the roaring rain. They’d gone a measly two kilometers on the westbound N3, and the dark car close behind them had followed every step.

  Ian Finn was watching the clock and driving, the knuckles on his right hand white on the steering wheel while he cooled his left palm in front of an air vent. Kayla was chancing frequent glances behind her and holding loosely to her gun. In the back Pyper lounged across the seats as if asleep.

  Four minutes. The traffic slowed further, then limped, then stopped. The freeway had turned into a parking lot.

  “Park the car,” Pyper said, her eyes still closed.

  Glad to finally be doing something, Ian threw the car into park and pulled his gun from his holster, where it had been digging into his lower ribs as he hunched over to see through the sheets of water pouring down the windshield.

  “When the time comes, we need to get out of this car and fan out into a line. Use other cars as cover, duck and run. Keep the line. I’ll be in the middle. Ian you get to my left, and Kayla you stay to my right. We’ll slowly sweep down the highway towards them.”

  The ra
in drummed loudly on the windshield. The wipers couldn’t keep up.

  “Is that clear?” Pyper asked.

  Ian and Kayla nodded.

  “Good. Ear pieces in.”

  All three of them popped small, blinking com devices into their ears and secured them with a plastic wraparound strip.

  Less than one minute. The car close behind them idled innocently, its passengers impossible to discern. No matter. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind who sat within. With seconds left, Pyper grabbed a door handle. Ian felt his blood tearing about his veins. Everything seemed very damp and close and there was suddenly little air in the car. A strange, roaring stillness descended; all the cars seemed frozen, as if the water were molasses. Kayla also positioned herself to run, her face suddenly pale once more. Then, with no flair whatsoever, the clock flipped.

  The moratorium was over.

  At once all three of them popped open their doors and dashed out into the downpour, Kayla and Pyper on one side and Ian on the other. If they’d thought to catch Black unawares, they failed. Three men popped out of the car behind them. As soon as Ian saw the black door of the old Cadillac glint with rainy movement, he fired as fast and as true as he was able while scrambling for his life behind the front bumper of the nearest car.

  The electrical charge of his diodes snapped and popped as they slammed into the water pouring down Mazaryk’s car door. One hit the driver’s side window and the entire pane flashed a brilliant electric-blue before exploding outward, a thousand tiny fragments vanishing into the rainfall. Water and glass: two things the guns didn’t work well with.

  The car he ran to for cover was closer than he thought, and he hadn’t been watching for it as he shot. He hit it awkwardly and bucked himself over the front hood like a deer. He heard the loud honk of the surprised driver and sucked in a gulp of rainy air as he landed hard on his hip. He brought his gun around and froze for half a beat, trying to make out any sound at all, but the rain was deafening, like God was pouring out sacks of marbles from on high. The car honked again, right into his face, and he scrambled back and away.

  Two shots narrowly missed his head and crackled into the rear bumper of a car directly behind him. He’d stumbled back into their line of fire. He vaguely registered the wet heat of an exhaust pipe bursting smoke as a nearby car shot forward and directly into the car ahead of it. He heard a muted crash in the distance, but he was already running again. Up and over cars. Sliding and slipping on hoods. He sliced his shin on the sharp edge of a protruding license plate and backed up into another car’s side-view mirror, snapping it clean off. Then he was on the wet concrete again, water already pooling about his hands and body, and someone else was honking at him. He pointed his gun at their windshield without thinking. The rain was loud and the honking was loud and he could barely see despite the eye protection. His shin was warm with blood.

  “Shut up!” he screamed, and then he ducked down again. His ears were ringing with the racket and the adrenaline as he tried to position himself. He’d done his best to fan out in a straight line like Pyper said, but he’d been in a partial panic. He couldn’t be sure he’d gone where he wanted. Nobody was shooting at him any longer, which was a good thing—and a bad thing. He depressed a small button on his earpiece and spoke directly to anyone on the team that could hear him.

  “Did we get away? Where is everyone?”

  Pyper’s voice chimed in. “Ian, you’re not far from us. See the speed limit sign? Work your way back down the side of the highway to that point. They’re still in the middle...” Her voice crackled out for a moment. “—get to either side of them.”

  Ian pushed his dripping hair back from his forehead and popped up into a crouch. He dashed past the passenger side of the car that was providing him cover and stopped just back of the brake lights of another car. He chanced a glance out and down the center of the highway. He couldn’t see anyone; the rain blurred even the cars very near to him. He looked warily at their darkened passengers. Any one of them could fly at him in a panic, thinking he was going to hurt them. Staying in one place here was dangerous in more ways than one.

  He bolted away, always low, towards the concrete barrier marking the left most edge of the highway. Thankfully, this far from their initial exit the motorists couldn’t possibly have seen the fight, and no sound, even gunfire, could penetrate the loud rain. Hopefully they just assumed he was some sap running from his swamped car.

  He ran up and kept left, popping and ducking like a groundhog until he reached the concrete barrier and there he crouched. He was instantly awash up to his lower calf with runoff sweeping down the street. Perhaps four cars ahead of him stood the speed limit sign Pyper spoke of, waddling in place with the force of the rainfall. He peered past it and to the center of the highway but all the cars blended into one ill-defined mass. There were people in those cars. So many people. He’d pointed his gun at one of them without even thinking. He wondered if Eddie Mazaryk thought of all these people as anything more than obstacles. It suddenly became very clear to him that he would never survive this night if he paid these bystanders any more accord than Eddie Mazaryk did.

  Wide eyed, a small child looked at him from a rear window as he passed, her breath fogging the glass. He turned away. It was no good looking at them. He had a job to do.

  He tried to make out any shape that moved, but could see nothing. He pressed the com button on his earpiece with one dripping finger and held his gun loosely with the other. Water poured down his sleeve and off the barrel like it was a squirt gun. He blew the rain out of his nose. He badly wanted a cigarette, but his jacket was soaking and his softpack was a mush of tobacco and paper. These cravings hit him at the worst possible times.

  “I’m on the far left side, maybe four cars back from the sign,” he said.

  He heard several sharp bursts of white noise before he was able to make out the words “move forward.” He frowned. Either the storm was disrupting the com signal, or the earpieces weren’t waterproof. But if the order was to sweep forward, he would sweep forward. Keeping tight to the barrier, he moved.

  He’d gone fully three steps before the windshield of the car directly to his right exploded with a bright flash and a resonant thud, like a deep sea mine. He ducked with his hands over his head as another shot rang off the metal siding of the car inches from his. The diode popped and crackled and the left side of his face went numb. Just before he fell back he caught the hulking shadow of what could only be Goran Brander crouched ineffectually behind another car in the distance. There was screaming and the slamming of car doors as a group of people hit the concrete and ran hysterically down the highway with the runoff.

  Ian sat stunned with his back to the car and his gun up and out, daring anyone to appear. With the other hand he patted at the left side of his face. It felt swollen. He forced his breathing to slow. He hadn’t been hit. This was just the spray-numbing Pyper had warned them about. It had happened to him once before, albeit on a much smaller scale, and on top of his forearm. When the diode cracked against the metal siding of the car the liquid inside misted out and onto his face. It was worse in rain, when the liquid could spread out with the splash of contact. That a tiny drop could numb him as surely as a shot of Novocain was shocking, but nothing had entered his blood. The feeling would fade, but probably not until whatever happened tonight was over.

  He heard the scratchy, distant voice of Kayla MacQuillan through his earpiece, shouting his name.

  “I saw the flashes! Are you—ight?”

  He pressed the com button.

  “It’s okay, just numb about the face. It was Brander. Do you see him?”

  “—left side... think I see somebody—not sure.” She crackled out.

  “Hello?” Ian pressed and repressed his com button. Nothing but static.

  Before she cut off Kayla had spotted somebody, but whom? Where the hell was Eddie Mazaryk and why wasn’t he shooting? He whipped around and pointed his gun behind him where he saw sev
eral figures scampering to the edge of the freeway. Nothing but stranded motorists. Damn this rain. It was deafening. He couldn’t hear himself think. He yelled into his com once more.

  “Kayla! Pyper!”

  But there wasn’t even static. The com was dead.

  ————

  Pyper saw the flashes to her left where Ian was, two of them, like supercharged fireflies, but she knew Ian wasn’t hit because she caught the tail end of chatter between him and Kayla just before her com died. She removed hers and tossed it to the swamped ground where it was swiftly picked up and washed away.

  In the absence of the com she heard much more. She heard the full force of the pounding rain on nearby hoods. She heard distant snatches of screaming—not, she thought, from anyone she knew. She even thought she could hear, somewhere below the rainfall’s drone, the flat thumping of a hovering tournament helicopter, waiting to rush in and clean up when everything was over. From her position, crouched low behind a car in the very center lane of the highway, the heat of its exhaust wafting over her at intervals with the shifting winds, she took stock of what she knew, and of what she could do.

  She knew that Eddie Mazaryk had not yet fired a shot. She knew that Ales Radomir had not yet fired a shot. Nor had she, or Kayla, who crouched just barely visible to her right. Ian and Goran Brander were tied up to her far left. Ales was somewhere in front of Kayla. That left Mazaryk and herself.

  She also felt very strongly that Mazaryk had somehow gotten behind them, maybe thirty meters or more. Somehow he had deduced their plan to sweep up in a line, and had left his striker and sweeper while he ran down the street and to their other side. She hadn’t seen him go back, but he was there; she could feel it. What was disconcerting to her was that he hadn’t fired at anybody.

  It was her job to find out precisely where he was and what he was doing, and to take him down. With this clear in her mind, she could act. She looked to Kayla to indicate that she was going to drop back and find Eddie Mazaryk, but when she turned to her right Kayla was already gone.