The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  Elena skirted around a small frozen lake, which gleamed in the pale light, as black as the night around it.

  It was the train wreck she was headed for.

  The details of this she also knew by heart, because of that night with Robert McCall in the Jupiter Hotel in Split, Croatia, when they’d talked in the darkness about staying alive in the field. Control had also confirmed the location of the Disaster Park at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel that day in their 4:00 P.M. briefing. There were eight passenger cars from the 2007 Nevsky Express bombing. The high-speed intercity passenger train had been heading to Saint Petersburg from Moscow when a bomb had exploded just before it reached Malaya Vishera. No one had been killed, although the line had been blocked both ways for several days. These eight railway cars were deemed beyond repair, so they were transported, crushed and dented, to the park and laid to rest. It was a foreboding triangle of mangled death: the helicopter perched on the power lines on the left, the derailed train in the middle of the park, the crashed Aeroflot transport plane on the right.

  Only the Russians would think a Disaster Park would be fun for tourists to visit. She’d heard the park had been closed since 2011.

  Except as a backup safe house for The Company.

  Elena braked to a stop near the derailed train. She thought it was amusing they’d also brought the railway tracks along. The wheels needed to sit on something. The middle four cars listed to one side, as if they were going to topple off the track. But she could see the steel wires pinning them in place. She killed the car engine and picked up her Beretta. She took a pencil flashlight out of her black jewelled bag, checked that the small silver flash drive was still in there, an irrational fear, she knew it was. She put the jewelled bag over her shoulder and climbed out of the Lada.

  She stood for a moment, shivering in the cocktail dress, but savoring the cold on her bare left arm and leg. The burning had died down a little. She searched the darkness. Nothing moved. She listened. The wind howled and blew the very light snow flurries around. She heard nothing. She turned and ran the short distance to the crippled first passenger train car. She kicked off her black Italian pumps and climbed aboard.

  The door to the passenger car was buckled. She squeezed past it into the cold, somber interior. She watched the shadows jump in the light of the pencil flash. It made her heart jump. She walked along the main aisle, past the rotting and split seats on both sides. She was counting the ones on her left. Now she faltered. How many had McCall told her? Five or six? It was six, hadn’t Control confirmed that?

  She reached the sixth set of seats and knelt down. She felt along the panel below the two seats. It was cracked and the paint flaked like on all of the other wooden panels below the seats. Her fingers whispered along the top.

  Nothing.

  She had the wrong seats.

  And her time was running out.

  She was pretty sure she’d given the slip to the FTB agents following her, but she’d had no time to check out other cars leaving the explosion site. She didn’t believe she’d picked up a tail, but she couldn’t be sure. And every moment wasted in this creepy, desolate tragi-park was working against her.

  She found it.

  Her fingers touched a raised area and pressed it to one side. The panel below the seat fell open. She reached in, felt around, and touched an oblong object that was cold and damp and slick. She pulled it out: something wrapped in black shiny polythene. She took off the elastic band holding it together and unwrapped two passports. Both of them had her name in different nationalities: American and Russian. Two pictures of her, one with her hair down, one with it up. ID papers, credit cards, pictures of a family she did not have, receipts from Moscow stores she had never been in, letters of recommendation from CNN and the U.S. Department of Justice. She put them all into her jewelled bag.

  She reached in farther and felt around. Cold, hard, gun-shaped. She pulled out another Beretta, wrapped in plastic, a box of ammunition, a switchblade knife with enough attachments to send a scout troop into ecstasy. And a small envelope.

  She tore it open.

  Car keys. To a gray Volvo XC60, five cylinders, six-speed manual transmission. There was a square piece of paper attached to the key fob. She shone the tiny light onto it: a crude map to where the Volvo was parked behind the derailed train in the shadow of an abandoned building.

  Elena smiled.

  Had she looked up, through the grimy train window, she would have seen the black Gaz-3102 Volga drive through the moonlight, its engine noise covered by the storm. It parked behind the steel ladder leading up to the crippled helicopter sitting precariously on the fake power lines.

  CHAPTER 4

  McCall liked this Italian restaurant in his neighborhood. He liked the checkered tablecloths on the tables, the lamps with carefully dripped candle wax around them, the scenes of Venice, Italy, with their glittering canals on the walls, the refusal to keep up with the times. He could have walked into Luigi’s in any of the past six decades and it would not have looked any different.

  It was jammed with diners. There was one boisterous table in an alcove, just out of McCall’s sightline, where the patrons were obviously having a great time. He had been watching couples at other tables around him, vital and exuberant, or subdued and tentative, living their lives. McCall sat alone, at his usual corner table, wondering if he was living his life now, or just going through the motions. It was as if he was waiting for something. Some small, intimate, compelling moment that would change his life. He felt like he was treading emotional water. But then, he’d always done that.

  Jenny, his server, a feisty blonde with an accent as far from Venice, Italy, as you could get, but not far from New York, came over to pour him more coffee and take away his empty pasta plate.

  “You always eat alone, Mr. McCall. There’s no ring on your finger, so you’re not married. Never seen you here with a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Not with any friends. Aren’t you lonely?”

  “Not at all.”

  “If Luigi heard me talking to you this way, he’d kick my ass around the block. But you’re like our compass. You come in at the same time every night, have the same dish, fusilli with zucchini and herbs, two glasses of Schiopetto Rivarossa oh-nine, are always very charming and polite and … I can’t think of the word.”

  “Boring?”

  “Circumspect. Yeah, that’s it. Reflective. Like you’re thinking a lot of deep thoughts. You’re mysterious.”

  McCall smiled. “Am I?”

  “Sure, we can’t figure you out. One of the girls thinks you’re a writer. Sally thinks you’re a commodities broker. I think you’re in the witness protection program. You always sit with your back to the wall, looking into the restaurant. You can see both entrances from this table and the door to the kitchen. But you’re so relaxed. Not like you’re worried some guy might suddenly come in and pull a gun on you.”

  “You’ve been watching too many Bruce Willis movies.”

  She laughed. “I know! I’ve created this entire scenario about you in my head, and I’m sure I’m not even close. But don’t break your pattern. Keep coming into Luigi’s at the same time and having the same meal and the same wine, or time will stop or something.”

  “I might miss a night or two here and there, but I won’t let you down.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “If I told you, I’d no longer be mysterious.”

  “You live in the neighborhood?”

  “Two blocks away.”

  Jenny lingered, perhaps hoping he’d tell her the street name, maybe even throw in the apartment address, but he didn’t. She moved away. There was explosive laughter from the table in the alcove. McCall left money on top of the bill, with a generous tip, got up, and walked to the front of the restaurant. From there he could see into the alcove. There were six young men sitting around a table, in boisterous good spirits, all of them well dressed, maybe Russian, maybe not, good-looking, slicked-back black hair, dark suits, rings
on their fingers. There was an older man with them, in his late thirties: quieter than the rest, not joining in the laughter that followed some hilarious remark. His eyes lifted once, looked at McCall, then looked away with total disinterest.

  McCall picked up his dark gray overcoat from a stand. Luigi, big and garrulous, in his early sixties, an expansive host, rushed over, pumping McCall’s hand.

  “Mr. McCall! The fusilli was good?”

  “Superb, as always.”

  “Excellent. Cold out tonight. They’re forecasting more rain. Like that police sergeant used to say on that wonderful old cop show I watch in reruns…” McCall shrugged on his coat. This was a nightly ritual. He could say it with him: “‘Be careful out there!’”

  “I always am.”

  “We will see you tomorrow night? Molto bene. Be well.”

  McCall walked out into the night.

  Behind him, the man at the boisterous table lifted his eyes again.

  * * *

  He climbed up the steel ladder carefully, carrying the pelican hard case in his left hand, holding on to the railing with his right. He didn’t want to slip. The snow flurries were eddying a little stronger as the wind kicked up and the ladder was becoming slick.

  He had followed her to the safe house, had been a block behind her when the explosion went off. It had irritated him. He knew he was a backup, but he still didn’t want his prize killed right in front of him. He would be paid either way, of course, but she was beautiful and defiant and the thought of extinguishing her life was too sweet. They’d miscalculated. He was glad she had such quick reflexes. She had handled that Lada with style, swerving on and off the opposite sidewalk, avoiding the other cars. He’d been concerned when that huge wooden cutout had fallen right on top of her car, its white cup smashing through her windshield. What idiot would put that kind of a monstrosity on a neighborhood street anyway? It was hardly decorative or pleasing to the eye. But she had navigated that obstacle nicely. He thought she might have been hurt by the flying glass from the shattered driver’s side window, but when she’d got out of the car she had run to the wrecked train with no missteps. He had no idea what she expected to find in a rotting train carriage in the middle of an industrial wasteland. He suspected it was a backup procedure, a last resort destination because her safe house had been compromised.

  It didn’t matter.

  She would not be leaving this desolate place alive.

  Nothing lived here. He doubted that any tourists had been to this gruesome theme park in a very long time. The echoes of death, from the carcass of the airplane, to the twisted carriages of the train, up to the downed helicopter, whispered to him. They were comforting. He heard those whispers often. Usually right before or right after he’d taken a life. Not voices in his head. Nothing as tangible as that. They were more like audible shadows, crossing his mind, reassuring him that death was welcome here.

  His foot slipped on a treacherous step and he held on, his heart suddenly hammering in his chest. What had caused him to slip? He was climbing with great care. He set down the hard case on a slatted steel step, held on to the railing on his left side now, and raised his right hand off the railing.

  His hand was bleeding.

  Not profusely, but he’d slashed it on a nail that protruded from the underside of the railing. There were the remains of a wooden notice attached to the railing. He hadn’t felt the nail slash his skin, of course, but his body had reacted and had caused his foot to slip.

  He steadied himself on the ladder. He hadn’t wanted to put on gloves, but decided it would be better if he did. He pulled black, skintight gloves out of the pocket of his overcoat and slid them on. That would stop the bleeding. He leaned down, picked up the hard case again, and climbed up the last forty feet to the steel platform at the top.

  The wind blew fiercely up there. It would not be a factor, not like he was up in a skyscraper in New York aiming down at a target in the street far below with all the other buildings creating a wind variance. The wind in the theme park meant nothing, except that it was strong enough and cold enough to bring tears to his eyes. He remembered an assignment in Siberia where he’d had to be quick to wipe the tears away in the fifty-below temperature before they froze on his cheeks. The wind ruffled his long black hair, which whipped like snakes around his face. He pushed it back, slick with snow. He took two steps to the helicopter on the steel platform. He realized that it was not just hanging on the fake power lines. It was tightly secured by thin steel wires. He reached out and tugged at two of them. They didn’t move. The helicopter was in no danger of crashing to the ground.

  That was good, because he wanted to be inside the crippled bird. The angle from the platform wasn’t optimum.

  He knelt down, unclipped the catches on the pelican hard case, and opened the lid. He removed the black gloves. Even though they were skintight, he liked to work with his hands. His hands were his strength. The AWC M91 .308 caliber breakdown rifle fit snugly into its foam compartments. He took out the barrel, the fiberglass stock with a Pachmayr decelerator recoil. The action was a Remington 700 BDL, fully accurized with a tuned trigger. He took out two alignment rods and the steel anchor rod. He removed a special MARS6-WPT Night Vision Scope with a black finish and extended eye relief. Its depth perception was phenomenal and it had two-color manual brightness control of the aiming reticle. He could use either a red or an amber dot. Probably red in this weather. He’d flash it on her face for a split second, so she would know. There would be nothing she could do. But it was the realization in that instant that stayed in his mind. The flicker of fear. No more than a flicker, because then her natural survival instincts would take over, telling her to hit the ground, throw herself to one side. But that Kodak moment would be indelible.

  He fitted the night-vision scope on to the rifle, snapped on the stock, loaded five .308 M 168gr HPBT bullets into the chamber.

  There was a single metal chain across the platform to the back of the helicopter. He unlatched it, stooped down, and stepped into the stricken chopper. It creaked and shifted position as he did. He grabbed for a handhold and steadied himself. For one irrational moment he wondered if this dead bird could just come loose and crash to the ground below. It had to take the weight of at least one man for maintenance purposes. He was not that tall, somewhat heavyset, weighing 240, but a Mi-38 helicopter could take up to thirty passengers and a flight crew of two. On the other hand, this park was a disaster in every sense of the word and he wondered how long it had been since any maintenance crew had been up into the chopper.

  He walked forward carefully, carrying the M91 rifle in one hand, grabbing for handholds in the padded interior with the other. There were plenty of them, where the padding in the crippled seats spewed out obscenely as if it had been slashed with a knife. He made his way to the door of the chopper. He thought it might be welded shut, but it opened easily. He sat with his back braced against the side of the door. He pushed the steel anchor rod into the floor of the chopper and secured it. He settled in and sighted along the MARS sight. He zeroed in onto the wrecked passenger train and moved slowly across the windows of the first derailed carriage. He wasn’t sure which one she would be in. That kind of intel was for the spies. She was in one of them and she would exit the way she climbed in to run back to her parked Lada.

  He saw her.

  The magnified sight made her figure jump up at him through the filthy train window. It was as if she was close enough for him to reach out and touch her. She had dark hair, was probably five-six, unless she was leaning over, if not, five-eight. He made that mental adjustment. The intel he’d been given had said she was five-foot-five. Her face was beautiful, even diffused through the murky glass. That was good. The more beautiful they were, the more exquisite their pain as it turned their features ugly. As soft, moist eyes became dark with terror. In fiction, heroes faced death with a kind of placidity he had never seen. In real life, fear clawed at a man or woman’s face, distorting it, changing
it forever. It was the last expression of their lives.

  He owned it.

  Then her face disappeared. He thought she was probably making her way to the train door. From there she would climb down the steps that were permanently in place. She had risked a look outside to make sure she saw nothing moving. No betrayal of anyone who had followed her to this place.

  He knew the ex-FTB agents would not arrive. They had received no intel, had just jumped into a vehicle at the art gallery and driven after her. She had lost them easily. They were amateurs. But what of her own people? There would have been an elite cell guarding her, a Control in the field. Where were they?

  He thought they might be back at the bomb site, making certain their precious agent had not been blown to pieces. They could not have been close enough to see her escape, because he had not seen them, and he would have. He would have seen the car, or panel truck, or a nondescript bus, whatever vehicle they were using for surveillance, go after her. No vehicle had left the scene of the explosion after hers except his own.

  He took his eye from the eyepiece of the sight. A couple of deep breaths centered him. He put the eyepiece back to his right eye and focused on the stairs leading down from the first train carriage.

  He hummed a lullaby he had heard when he was a small boy. Not one that his mother had sung to him. He did not remember her at all. But somewhere … maybe a young woman whose throat he had cut, singing softly to herself before that instant of choking horror. He tried to remember. For some reason it was important to him. Soft lullabies were precious memories.

  He waited for her.

  * * *

  McCall bagged his own groceries. It was a mom-and-pop grocery store on the corner of the street and it was a running joke between himself and the old Asian woman who owned it. McCall would pick up his carton of milk, jar of coffee, fruit and vegetables, a six-pack of Diet Pepsi and a bag of M&M’s, which he would put in a bowl on the living-room coffee table. The old Asian woman would start to put the items into two big brown paper bags that looked like they were purchased when World War II ended. McCall would gently move her gnarled hands away and bag the items himself.