Pacific Burn

by Barry Lancet

  I stood helplessly by as the Walker charged in for a body blow with shoulders lowered. When he rammed into me, I latched on to him, the soles of my shoes skating backward. He pinned my gun arm with one hand and slung the other around my waist. The muzzle pointed between our feet. I tried to angle it up, but my shoes slithered around under me. The Walker’s hand glided down my forearm to my wrist. Then he applied pressure to my trigger finger. The firearm discharged. A cloud of dust geysered between our feet. The struggle continued. My shoes slid over pumice and pebble, captive to the Steam Walker’s thrusts. He struck my trigger finger again and we both heard an empty click. My last advantage disappeared.

  I managed to find a tentative balance and took my free hand off the Walker, but before I could strike out, he drew up short. And released my gun arm. That’s all he had to do. I tilted back, floating away over the rubble underfoot. Arms flailing, I clawed the air. In one last desperate attempt, I snatched at the Walker and came away with his ball cap—and a handful of hair.

  The movement whisked my feet out from under me. I flopped over on my back and slid headfirst down the slope, but not before I lifted my eyes and caught a glimpse of shoulder-length brown hair.

  I stared down at the wad in my hand.

  A hat—and a wig.

  Then I glanced back at my assailant. The Steam Walker was a woman. An attractive one at that.

  My downward slide continued unabated. I dropped the hat and hair and snatched at the earth, but like Noda before me, I had no success. Thirty yards down, the slope flattened for about ten yards before continuing its descent. Noda had come to rest on the shelf. My downward momentum stalled in the same stretch and I found myself lying alongside the chief detective. A film of volcanic dust had turned him a ghostly white.

  “You see that?” I said.

  He nodded. “Another reason for the body harness.”

  We looked back up the slope. The Steam Walker had reached the edge of the crater.

  He—she—planned to escape downward, into the volcano.

  CHAPTER 65

  WE discovered what the Steam Walker was carrying in the daypack.

  From our lower perch, we watched helplessly as she retrieved a lightweight harness with dangling parts attached—what I imagined were belay devices and pulleys and quickdraws.

  She came fully prepared to descend into the mouth of the volcano.

  Only this time without her prey.

  “Naruhodo,” Noda said. It figures.

  The Steam Walker fastened the harness around her waist, then slipped into the leg loops. Her movements were assured and economical.

  I said, “Wish we could make another run at her.”

  We couldn’t reclaim the lost ground in time. Even if we could catch her, we were ill equipped to take her down.

  Noda grunted unhappily. “Clever lady.”

  “She goes in, she has to come out.”

  “Eventually.”

  Gloves and a climbing rope appeared next. Once the gloves went on, the Walker straddled the lip of the volcano and wedged what must have been a camming device in the rock. Cams are clips with a miniature lever system that expand to lock themselves in place. The climber’s own downward pull anchors its position in a crack. They come in a series of sizes to accommodate a range of crack and crevice sizes and have mostly replaced the pitons of decades past, which were hammered into the cracks and fissures. Pitons tore up the rock and became permanent fixtures on a mountain trail. Cams could be retrieved and used again and again and left few if any visible marks of the climber’s passing.

  The Walker looped the rope through a cord attached to the cam in the lead stone, fired a grin our way, and disappeared into the crater.

  * * *

  It took three long, painful minutes for us to hike back up to the rim of the crater. Both of us had shred some skin on the slide down.

  We grappled with the last upward sweep and peered over the rim.

  The crater dropped straight down for two hundred feet, then became a curved slope, which ended in a narrow footpath. Beyond the path was a further drop of incalculable depth.

  Before us lay an off-planet scenario. There was rock and sand and pumice. There were deposits of ash. There were cragged striations etched into the sides by fire and steam and hot expulsions of lava. In places, the rock exhibited vivid coloring, some no doubt courtesy of the irregular cycles of gas vapor. The rugged downward sweep before me was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Photographs of extreme terrain on the moon came to mind.

  Elsewhere around the rim, the drop began as a crescent-shaped slope rather than a sheer plunge. But even the curved sides of the crater would require a rope and climbing gear. No person could walk down unsecured.

  Which gave me an idea. I gazed over at the rock to which the Steam Walker had anchored her line. On which her life had hung, and which she’d need to climb back out of the crater. What if we cut it? Severed her lifeline? Not a nice idea, but eminently practical.

  But the Steam Walker was way ahead of me.

  She had secured the rope to a second cam thirty feet down, then severed the rope above it, leaving the beginning length dangling from the first cam.

  I stared at the abandoned stretch of line. It signaled that she planned to exit the volcano the same way she’d entered. Which couldn’t be. It was too simple. The assassin I’d been tracking would not be so careless. The strand left behind was meant to be a decoy.

  On all levels, the Walker was a master. As we watched, she navigated the foreign terrain of the crater like a natural. She scampered along an impossibly slim footpath. The trail was no wider than two feet, and at times narrowed to half that width. To her left was the ascending slope of the cone. To her right was an unfathomable drop. At a large, craggy outcropping, she retrieved a second line and attached it to another cam and rappelled farther into the interior.

  “You want to follow or should I?” I asked Noda.

  The head detective growled. Which said it all. We were both angry and frustrated. We could not go any farther unless we had a death wish.

  I said, “We’ve got to find her again. Ideas?”

  “Working on it.”

  “She won’t stop, will she?”

  “Not that one. Unless the contract’s canceled.”

  Fifty yards down, the Walker halted. Hanging from the rope over the central pit of the crater, she glanced at her sleeve, then delved into her pack and pulled out a gas mask, tugged it into place, and continued her descent.

  I cast a look at my own patch. It had begun to flicker, its earlier neutral color of pale beige giving way to a brightening orange-red.

  Then the mountain began to talk. It gurgled and groaned and grumbled, as if it were waking, or turning over in its sleep, or about to belch. A blast of air brushed our hair aside. The strip turned darker.

  I said, “We have to get out of here.”

  CHAPTER 66

  WITH very un-Japanese exuberance, Naomi flew into the arms of her husband. There were tears on both sides, as well as enough bows and other expressions of gratitude directed our way to last a lifetime.

  Relief at Naomi’s safe return was rewarding on several levels, yet I remained on edge. We’d rescued Ken’s third child from the brink—literally. His daughter was once more on safe ground, but the Steam Walker was still loose, and the kill order on Naomi—and me, for that matter—was still in effect. Hoping to mine some additional fragments of information that might point toward the assassin, Noda and I questioned the couple closely, but unearthed no new nuggets. Disappointed, we left the reunited pair alone.

  Outside in the hall, Noda instructed the guards to stay alert. We’d added a second man to each shift. I gave them an updated description of the Walker, telling them that she could appear in male or female dress. Brodie Security had set up a camera in Tad’s room that broadcast straight to the nurses’ station, keeping him under the eyes of the staff twenty-four/seven. A second feed went to our office. In addition,
we installed a lock on the door, which was to stay engaged at all times, and set up a procedure by which doctors and nurses could attend Tad only in numbers of two or more. The approach of any solitary figure would trigger an immediate alert.

  Even with the upgraded security, I was not reassured. The Steam Walker was that good.

  During the Q&A session, my phone had buzzed with an incoming call from Stockton in Washington. I’d let it go to voice mail, but now I listened to his message. It was a curt Call me. Which I did.

  Without preamble, our DC affiliate said, “Dust off your magic carpet.”

  “You found something.”

  “Oh, yeah. A big something.”

  DAY 11, WEDNESDAY, WASHINGTON, DC, 9 A.M.

  Noda and I disembarked at Reagan National Airport, the second time for me in less than two weeks. Stockton met us outside of security. I scanned the terminal behind him. No alphabet boys in sight.

  But they would be along shortly. This time, at my urging. I’d already called on the services of one, and anticipated the possible need for two more.

  Stockton led us to a black Pontiac Grand Prix. On the drive into town, as the Washington Monument and then the Capitol dome swung into view, he filled us in on the details.

  “Guy’s name is Noakes. He’s a local fixer. A lowlife the law suspects is doing quite well for himself without their interference, thank you very much. He’s smart. Lives quietly. Guards his secrets. Most of them, anyway.”

  I nodded. I knew how to pry secrets loose. “You have him solid on this?”

  “Very. He’s part of a telephone chain. The last link before the killer, is our guess.”

  “You’re talking a chain to protect both ends—the Steam Walker and whoever is issuing the kill orders?”

  “Precisely,” Stockton said. “Each person knows only the name and number directly before and after. Noakes made a call from the same disposable cell phone two to three days before you or your clients took a hit. Every time. To a pair of different numbers, but that’s the killer changing phones or countries or both.”

  “That fits.”

  Stockton smiled. “ ’Course it does. We’re using superb new software able to leap tall databases in a single bound. It made the connection after the fact. Napa, San Francisco, Kyoto, your warning in Kyoto, the hit on you, Naomi’s kidnapping. Each call narrowed the field. Pinpointed Noakes’s number on the fifth call, but we couldn’t nail down the name.”

  “Were you able to nab a name earlier in the chain?”

  Stockton’s brow crumbled. “Nope. But that’s why you’re here.”

  “How’d you get him?”

  “After the last transaction, he got sloppy. He made three personal calls from the same phone. Probably forgot his real phone that day and got lazy. Those calls were enough for the software to isolate him.”

  “No sign of his skipping since we rattled the Steam Walker?”

  “None.”

  “I like the sound of this.”

  “You should. Doesn’t get much better. We’re a go whenever you two are ready.”

  “Sooner the better,” I said.

  * * *

  Later in the afternoon, I managed to catch the window for calling my daughter.

  “Hi, Daddy!” she said before I could say hello.

  “Hi, Jen. How’s camp?”

  “Best ever. I’m scoring every day.”

  “Great.”

  “Which means I should get more gelato on my birthday.”

  “It means you’re learning at camp.”

  “Daaddddy.”

  I thought, cavities, obesity, no compromise. I wanted to say no. Instead I said, “I’ll think about it, okay?” My daughter was hard to refuse.

  “Guess what else? I braided my own hair for the very first time. Without your help. It was better than you do.”

  “I bet it was,” I said, and inhaled deeply, at once proud of her accomplishment and sad to have missed it.

  CHINATOWN, 6:30 P.M.

  Noda and I slid onto barstools of a faux British pub called the House & Hill. Stockton was hunkered down in his car around the back, ready to tackle any escapees, or come off the bench if we needed him.

  We ordered two pints of Black Sheep Ale on tap, an English brew rare on these shores. The barkeep set us up. We drank. The beer was nutty, with a slight caramel tail.

  “Good choice,” Noda said.

  “Outside of protecting Ken’s family, once in a while I get something right.”

  Noda nodded absently. I looked straight ahead into a mirror that ran across the back wall of the bar. The mirror allowed me to watch everything behind our backs without appearing to do so. Every booth and table was filled with tourists enjoying an evening out after a hard day of sightseeing. A lot of Europeans. A scattering of Asians. A few Americans from the heartland. Not a single local in sight.

  I said, “Stockton’s right. Our man’s got gray matter to go with the muscle. This is the perfect front.”

  “Explain,” the chief detective said, hoisting his beer.

  Everyone but the tourists knew DC’s Chinatown now existed in name only. Echoes of its former life lingered in the stray eatery and the Chinese ideographs edging the signs of the newer chain restaurants and coffee bars. Noakes had figured out that frustrated travelers would settle for a touch of the Union Jack once their visions of a tasty Chinese meal evaporated. He was cleaning up by simply dishing out pints and shepherd’s pie with a splash of atmosphere.

  I added this to what Stockton had told us earlier: The fixer’s full name was Trevor Noakes. British by nationality. “He’s a thug and brawler who slipped past the Immigration watchdogs,” Stockton had said. “Did muscle work in the beginning, moved up to bookie, then parlayed his connections among his better clientele to become a fixer to the K Street lobbyists and other political scumbags. To elevate his image, he channeled some of his gains into the pub.”

  After listening to my assessment, Noda said, “Okay. We go in harder and faster.”

  “Thinking the same thing.”

  Halfway through our brews, a young punk in a classic bomber jacket strolled in the front door with a proprietary attitude. He headed straight for the back rooms. We bided our time. No one else came or went, so Noda and I stood, stretched, and followed Bomber Jacket through the door marked PRIVATE. We heard the bartender shout after us, but we kept going and found ourselves in a long hall with half a dozen doors.

  Noda grabbed my arm. We stopped and listened. A phone rang behind the third door on the left.

  “That one,” the chief detective said.

  The bartender calling to warn the boss.

  We plowed through the door at top speed. First me, then Noda. Sitting at a desk five paces into the room was Bomber Jacket. He held a tumbler with ice and whiskey in his hand. At his elbow stood an open bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, extracted from the top case of a nearby stack of five.

  Bomber Jacket flung the glass at my head. I batted it away with my left hand and sidestepped his grasping arms as he surged up out of his chair.

  I left him for Noda and dashed toward his boss, who sat at a desk farther into the room. The surveillance photos were accurate: Noakes had mean eyes, a large head, close-cropped black hair, and a round, hard body. He dropped the phone that had been pressed to his ear, and sprang from his chair with fists cocked, fury rippling across his features.

  Eyes locked on the big prize, I didn’t notice the punk push his leg out. I tripped and flew across the room. My momentum carried me into the side of Noakes’s desk, both head and shoulder slamming into a wall of taut gunmetal. I slid to the floor with a groan.

  “Bollocks to you mate,” Noakes said, and kicked me in the ribs.

  As he withdrew his foot, I rolled toward him, wrapping my arms around his ankles and wrenching them together. He tottered, then his burly frame tumbled over. I spun away and lifted myself up, wincing at the flicker of pain electrifying my ribs. My head ached. My shoulder throbbed. I took
a moment to collect myself, and glanced back at Noda. He’d contained the punk but had yet to put him down.

  Noakes took advantage of the second I’d let my gaze wander. Up on his knees, he yanked open a side drawer. He groped blindly for something neither of us could see. I kicked the drawer shut just as he started to retract his arm. Howling, he jerked his hand free, jumped up, then barreled into my chest. He forced me against the wall and began pounding my ribs as fast as he could manage with his meaty fists.

  In boxing, this is where the referee steps in to separate the fighters. But there was no referee. My consciousness began to ebb.

  I brought clasped hands down on the back of Noakes’s thick neck. My signature move had no effect. Toughened muscle shifted but didn’t give. The man was a bull. I felt my legs begin to melt. I clubbed him on both ears. More nothing.

  With my remaining strength, I dug my fingers into Noakes’s shoulders and shoved him sideways. He’d been listing to the right as he pummeled my midsection. He stumbled away, needing two large steps to recover his equilibrium. I brought my knee to my chest and snapped my foot up and out, striking him in the solar plexus.

  The kick should have put him down, breathless and gasping. It didn’t. Instead, it slung him back. He bounced off a far wall, staggered forward two paces, and was readying to rush at me again before sinking to his knees. Delayed reaction. He sucked in air. His chest moved in and out like a giant bellows. Color returned to his face. He began to rise. The man was a machine. Mule-solid.

  I disabused him of any further advance with a roundhouse kick angling in from his blind side. It crashed into the side of his head. He went down, and stayed down. But not out.

  “What the hell you want?” he said, hauling himself into a sitting position on the floor.

  “I’m Brodie,” I said.