Inside Man

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Zima let go. His fingers came away bloody.

  Involuntary tears dripped from Cain’s eyes. He shuddered, hyperventilating as the pain passed through him.

  “See?” Zima said, his voice gentle, as if he was explaining something to a two-year-old.

  Cain couldn’t have spoken even if he wanted to. Only, his thoughts were clear—clearer than they had ever been in his life. If Zima thought anything would make Cain give up Agata, he would be disappointed.

  Zima’s chin jerked sideways, as if he’d heard a shout which Cain had not. “Where?” he demanded sharply.

  Cain realized the man had an earworm, like Cain’s security detail used. He had been contacted and now he listened with narrowed eyes. “Follow her,” he snapped. “I don’t care. Find a way across.” Then Zima got to his feet and cocked the pistol. “Get up.”

  “Why?” Cain was happy to stay right here.

  “Your use hasn’t expired. Get up, or I’ll make you.”

  “How, by shooting me?” Cain asked and laughed. It was a strained sound.

  Zima stomped on the fingers of his left hand, holding them flat, exposing Cain’s palm. Zima’s boots ground the fingers into the cold snow.

  Calmly, Zima shot Cain through the palm.

  The fresh agony stole his vision and his breath. For what felt like a small ice age, Cain swam in the pain, nothing else registering. When he could pay attention once more, Cain stared into the blank black eye of Zima’s silencer.

  “Get up,” Zima told him.

  Cain had no idea how he was supposed to do that. His left arm was useless and pain had stolen all his strength.

  “You have a second hand,” Zima reminded him, “and a great many non-vital points in your body for me to use next.”

  Cain breathed hard, then forced himself up. He screamed as he came up. Screw being iron-jawed. This wasn’t a strained tendon.

  He planted his right hand on the snow and got his feet under him. He stood, swaying, breathing hard.

  The avenue where the Laredo sat with its shot-out tire was directly ahead. Scott laid face down on the sidewalk, blood all around him. Had Zima presumed he was dead, or had he made sure? Cain couldn’t tell from here.

  The cars on the avenue were still, their occupants crouched behind them or running for safety. White, strained faces watched Cain rocking on his feet. Police sirens were close, but not close enough to help Cain now. Zima wouldn’t be stopped by a few local gendarmes, anyway.

  Zima didn’t look back at the avenue. He probably figured the people there were harmless and didn’t require monitoring. He waved with the gun, motioning that Cain should turn around.

  Cain turned, the back of his neck crawling, even though he knew Zima wouldn’t shoot him until his use as leverage was done.

  “Move,” Zima said, his tone conversational.

  Cain took an experimental step and found he could stay on his feet if he concentrated on it.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, not for information, but to keep his mind off the black agony in his shoulder and the white-hot shrieking in his hand.

  “We’re going for a ride,” Zima told him, sounding very happy about it.

  When Dima answered, Agata said quickly: “Zima shot Scott and Cain. They’re on Boulevard Clemenceau. I’m drawing Zima away.”

  A heartbeat pause as Dima absorbed that, then she said calmly, “To where?”

  “Some castle thing across the river.”

  Another tiny pause. In the background, Noah said, “The Bastille. It’s a dead end.”

  Agata dismissed the grim fact. There was always an alternative. She just had to think laterally.

  “Hold on as long as you can. We’re coming,” Dima told Agata and ended the call.

  Agata thrust the burner phone in her pocket and zipped it shut. The other pocket remained open. She clutched the front edge of the slatted wooden seat she was on. The bench circled the center post of the globe-shaped gondola. The other three passengers were out of sight on the other side.

  As the gondola swung out over the river, the view was as spectacular as the posters had advertised. Grenoble was to the right, a busy warren of old, crooked streets and low buildings. On the left was the imposing defenses of the Bastille, up high on the side of the mountain.

  Agata composed herself. For now, she was clear…

  A fleck of mint green caught her gaze. Agata focused on the river, far below, scanning to locate the fleck once more. Perhaps she had imagined it…

  Then she saw the flash of mint green once more, in the rays of the lowering sun. She leaned forward, her heart galloping, as she watched the tiny figure in black and green cross the river on the footbridge, a quarter mile away.

  Her head turned as if it worked on rusty ball bearings. Agata scanned the land at the other end of the footbridge. A path started there and zig-zagged its way up the steep hill, all the way to the Bastille.

  Agata got to her feet and pressed her hand against the Perspex canopy of the bubble, watching the woman jog along the bridge. The woman no longer had the rifle, for no one threw themselves aside as she approached, or ran away from her when she passed. She would be armed in some way, else why would she be trying to cut Agata off?

  Agata returned to the bench and thought. Her thoughts were frightening.

  The gondola bubbles came to a swaying halt, grinding against the platform at the top of the cliff. Dozens of tourists stood waiting to return to the town. They held cameras and phones and chatted and laughed in small groups. They’d had a pleasant visit, taken their photographs and would head back to their hotels, unaware of Agata’s mission.

  Agata wove between them, her gaze up, reading the signage. This was a popular tourist destination, so the signs were plentiful, providing complete directions. Agata found the one she wanted at the top of the stairs up into the Bastille itself. The floor changed from wood to ancient stone. More tourists lingered here, reading the posters lining the walls, which spelled out the history of the Bastille. There was a floor plan of the buildings in one frame and Agata paused to consider it.

  There were keeps and forts and restaurants marked. What she looked for wouldn’t be marked, although she glimpsed the French word for administration, on the diagram at the bottom of the frame. She looked around for stairs which would take her to the bottom level. If this was a medieval structure, built for defense, the stairs would not be easy to find.

  Only, there was signage for the tourists, for the gift shop was in the basement, too. Agata hurried down the corridor, dodging clumps of people. She turned the corner, then another sharp turn into the old circular staircase. She hurried down the stone steps, her heavy boots clopping, then slowed at the bottom and stepped out, trying to make herself look harmless, like a lost tourist. She took out her phone and snapped a couple of shots, which gave her an excuse to look around.

  The gift shop was behind her, a section of the basement which had been glassed in. It was packed with people. On the other side of the shop were more sectioned off areas, with modern walls and doors. The administration section. Agata moved along it, staring at her phone, while looking out from under her brow to check details. Security would not be marked as such. It would be an anonymous door, with a better lock than the simple key locks on these doors.

  It was at the far end of the dead-end area she traversed. The sign was tiny, but said in black and white, Sécurité. So much for not announcing themselves.

  She put her hand on the door and pressed her ear against the painted wood and listened.

  Footsteps, then the round knob turned under her fingers. Agata leapt to one side and flattened herself against the wall, her left shoulder pushed up against the dead-end corner, for there was nowhere else to go.

  The man who stepped out wasn’t wearing a uniform. He did carry a small two-way radio in his hand. He didn’t look to his left, where Agata stood—why would he? There was nothing there but blank wall.

  She shoved her hand around the door ja
mb, holding the door open with her fingers. As soon as the security officer had moved a few feet away, and her movements couldn’t be heard even sub-consciously, she eased around the doorframe and opened the door by another few inches. She peered inside, looking for others.

  The room was full of closed-circuit TVs and desks with keyboards and mouses. She pushed the door open enough to slide through it. Froze as she spotted a man sitting with his back to her, watching a bank of the small screens. He was slumped and looked bored.

  Another room opened to the right, through a doorless frame. Brighter light showed from there. Also, lockers with padlocks. A prep room. She slipped through the outer door to the security suite and let it silently close. Then she moved carefully through the second doorway, walking so her ski boots didn’t knock or squeak on the linoleum.

  The locker room had a slatted bench in the middle, lockers on either side, and the thing she had been hoping for. At the far end of the room was a grill cage with rifles, handguns and ammunition. The guards didn’t wear weapons openly like they would in the States. They had them here as back up.

  The cabinet wasn’t locked, for the security suite had a controlled entrance. She eased open the cabinet and selected the short Remington Bushmaster. Boxes of shells were stacked on the shelf beneath. She put a box of the tailored 6.3mm shells in her pocket, beside the Glock, which made her coat jut unnaturally, but couldn’t be helped.

  Movement in the front room caught her attention. She listened as the bored man spoke softly. A radio crackled.

  The officer who had just left was reporting back.

  The man who remained lifted his voice. “Can’t you deal with it?” He was irritated.

  The radio crackled again. The voice emerging from it was too low for Agata to make sense of the words.

  The bored man sighed. “Fine. On my way.”

  Agata slid the short rifle beneath her coat, tucking it up under her arm. It was too heavy to not keep hold of it, so she couldn’t go far this way. She didn’t need to.

  She moved out into the other room, as the outer door swung shut with a soft click. She waited for a few seconds, until the guard would be a dozen or more steps away from the door, then opened it herself and moved out.

  The guard didn’t look behind him. He was too annoyed at having to get off his ass. He turned at the stairs and trudged up them. People emerged from the gift store, chattering loudly. Agata followed them up the stairs to the main floor, then up to the next level. There was a narrow corridor at the top which only led in one direction. Daylight showed ahead, which she had expected from her quick study of the map on the wall.

  She hurried out into the Glacis, the open area on the top of the fort. In summer, it was a grass-filled stadium sized area, although the grass was deceptive, for this was actually the roof of the fort. Beneath the centuries of earth which had accumulated, the fortifications and passageways ran back into the mountain.

  Now, though, the earth was covered in snow, trampled by hardy tourists. The trees were bare skeletons. The sky was low overhead, threatening more snow. At the back of the Glacis, a road broke through the old fortifications and wound down to the banks of the river and the forts at that level. It was used as an access road, now.

  The mountain rose directly behind. Holes pock-marked the front of the rocky wall. They were the Mandrin Caves—and looked to be even older fortifications than the Bastille, although Agata knew it could be deceptive.

  The rear of the front wall of the Bastille was earth-filled. In summer, it was likely covered in grass, too. She raced up the slope, which was minor compared to the valley walls she and Cain had climbed in the last two days.

  There was no safety fence at the top. Just a foot of stonework at the front. Agata looked over the front of the wall. There was a section of more modern buildings in front of the fort, and to the right, the arrival shed of the lift. The five round gondolas were just passing the last support post, heading for the fort.

  Agata turned and ran in the opposite direction, moving along the edge of the wall. The footbridge and the path up to the Bastille were on this side. She sighted the outer bend of a loop of the path, and halted, looking down, tracing the path.

  She spotted mint green and her heartrate shot upward. The woman was far closer than Agata had expected. Agata pulled out the rifle and loaded it. She was familiar with the model, which was the second reason she had taken it.

  Then she spread her feet, one ahead of the other, and tucked the butt of the rifle into her shoulder and took aim.

  Agata had practiced this a hundred times. Directions whispered at her, in the voices of dozens of instructors. Don’t pull the trigger. Squeeze it. Take a breath and hold it before you fire. Account for wind, drop-off, the time it will take the bullet to reach the target. Let the moving target run into your sights…

  Even Cain’s voice whispered softly. They’re just another type of target.

  She trembled, her heart screaming, as she tracked the mint green coat with the sight at the tip of the rifle. The trick, she had learned, was to track just ahead of the moving target, just slow enough for the target to run into sight…

  The green coat ran into view, picked out by the tip of the front sight.

  They aren’t fucking around. You can’t either. Shoot, you chicken-shit geek! Agata railed at herself. Her armpits prickled painfully.

  The target was moving beyond her sights.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Agata breathed, and tracked forward along the path, until she was ahead of the green coat once more.

  These people shot Cain, she reminded herself, and pulled the trigger as the green touched the tip of the sight.

  She’d missed. She knew it as soon as she pulled the trigger. The woman threw herself across the path, to hide behind the built-up snow on the upside.

  A bullet cracked the stone at Agata’s feet. Startled, she dropped to the snow, her heart hammering. It was a lucky shot. The woman was too far away for a handgun to have any effectiveness. It was a warning, though. Agata swiveled around on her belly, the box of shells in her pocket crunching and digging into her hip. The Glock, too.

  She ignored the painful prodding and settled the barrel of the rifle against the stone edge, and sighted once more. She could see only a pixel-sized hint of mint green above the snow, and only because she knew the woman was there. The woman had settled in behind the snow bank.

  Snow bank. A bank of soft snow…

  Agata dropped the sights down a tiny fraction, aiming for where the women was hidden. She couldn’t see anything of her. She was firing at dazzling white nothingness and didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

  The rifle cracked. The sound ricocheted off the mountain behind her, a mini thunderclap. Agata watched with a nauseating mix of awe and horror as the woman seemed to throw herself backward, her arms tossed in the air. She fell onto the path on her back and laid still.

  Agata let out a shuddering breath and rested her forehead against the rifle.

  The shriek of another bullet gouging the stone beside her made her gasp and roll away from it.

  A white score mark creased the old stonework. The shot had come from behind!

  Agata rolled again as another bullet tracked her movements. She used her impetus to thrust up with her hands and break into a run. There was no cover here, except for the barely adequate trunk of the tree in the middle of the Glacis. She ran for it and slammed her back against it, her heart jumping sickly.

  The shots had come from the Mandrin Caves, in the mountain behind the fortress. It could only be Zima, but how had he got past her?

  Agata cocked the rifle and tried to get her breathing under control. She couldn’t fire straight if she was hopped up on adrenaline and dizzy from lack of oxygen. Only, calm wasn’t within reach.

  “Fuck it!” she declared and bent around the trunk. A flutter of movement in the far left cave. She fired, the bellow of the rifle another small thunderclap. She hoped the sound was sending every innocent tou
rist in the place into a gallop for the exits and away from here.

  She put her back to the tree once more, as two shots whizzed past. They were small caliber. Handgun size, but she was within range. They could still do damage, even from here.

  She couldn’t stand here forever, though. What would be the smart move? What would be unexpected?

  Closer is unexpected. The whisper was a calm, logical tone.

  Agata didn’t give herself time to talk herself out of it. She cocked the rifle, bent around the tree and fired two quick shots at the far cave. Then she ran like hell for the cave at the extreme other end of the line of man-sized cave holes in the cliff.

  A bullet zinged a dozen feet behind her as she got close to the white-painted maw of the cave. Then she reached the cave mouth, which was higher above the Glacis than she had thought. She heaved herself up the cliff face, onto the lip, then threw her leg over the edge. The rifle ground into the pebbles and rocks, as she levered herself up, and onto her feet.

  She had miscalculated. It wasn’t six different caves drilling into the cliff. It was one long, narrow cave running along the cliff, with holes punched out along the length of it…and Zima was at the end. If she stepped out, she’d be in the line of fire.

  Agata clung to the side of the opening, which hid her from his view. Her spit tasted coppery. Panic tapped her on the shoulder.

  She shook her head, denying the panic any footing. She settled the rifle against her shoulder once more, then carefully eased around the side of the opening, scanning the length of the cave as it came into view.

  “There she is!” Zima said happily, as she spotted him at the far end.

  He wasn’t alone. Cain stood in front of him, shielding him. Zima’s spare hand gripped the back of Cain’s neck. The pistol—without a silencer now—was shoved against Cain’s temple.

  Agata jerked back out of view and rested her head against the rough rock wall. She closed her eyes. Cain was bleeding heavily. There had been a pool of blood beside his feet, on the left side. Was it just the shoulder, or more than that? He looked as though he was barely standing on his feet as it was.