Right to the Kill (Harmony Black Book 5)

by Craig Schaefer

  April turned her chair toward the cart. “As opposed to being set up to fail by the demons using us as deniable weapons?”

  “That’s a bingo. Standard protocol was to shred ninety-five percent of the mission reports, to make sure Vigilant’s teams didn’t work too closely together or figure out anything useful. When we opened up the artifact vaults in the Wunderkammer to relocate all our stuff, most of it was long gone: the eastern courts stole anything that might come in handy.”

  “At least they left the hazardous-containment unit untouched,” Harmony said. “Most of the bottled-up spirits in there are sworn enemies of the eastern courts; they don’t want those monsters getting out any more than we do.”

  “We’ve verified the inventory?” April asked.

  Harmony narrowed her eyes. She looked to the rolling cart.

  “Verified it personally,” she said. “Among other delightful inmates, we’ve got the trapped soul of a fifteenth-century serial killer in there. I wasn’t taking any chances.”

  “The lost intel hurts more than the lost stuff,” Kevin said, “but we’re doing our best to catch up. I hereby bring you the bounty of Vigilant Lock’s all-new support division, under the direction of yours truly. The Print Shop is turning out top-notch paper, the Skunkworks is refining your field arsenal, and Occult-Tactical is…doing some really freaky stuff. Last time I was down there, they had a goat. An actual live goat.”

  “I authorized the goat,” Jessie said.

  “Everybody’s working on folding card tables and pulling all-nighters while we get the Basement up and running, but I think you’re going to be happy with the results. First up: new civilian cover identities, for when you don’t want to flash your FBI badges around.”

  Kevin laid a pair of black leather portfolios, like sheaths for a check at a fancy restaurant, out on the cart. Harmony opened hers, running a fingertip along nestled pockets. Her face stared back from a weathered Maryland driver’s license, but the name was “Helena West” and listed her address as an apartment in the Bethesda suburbs. Business cards, crisp black on cream with careful creasing as if they’d been carried around in a wallet for a few months, proclaimed her the manager of accounting for Delaware Mutual Insurance.

  “I sell insurance?” Jessie said, holding up one of her own cards. “Really?”

  “Director of sales,” Kevin said. “Setting up Delaware Mutual was our first priority, once we picked out a new HQ. It’s a solid cover and a verifiable, legitimate company on every level. Except for, you know, not actually having any customers. You do have company credit cards. You also have a good reason to be poking around in Tampa.”

  “What’s our story?” Harmony asked.

  “Annual gathering of the American Associated Insurance Vendors’ Lobby, being held at the Tampa East Holiday Inn. It was last minute, but by the time we land you should have attendee credentials and a reserved room waiting.”

  “You’re making us stay at the Holiday Inn,” Jessie said, her voice flat.

  “With any luck we won’t be here that long,” Harmony said. “We get in, we get the job done, we go home.”

  She couldn’t tell them about the faint, nagging gnaw in her gut, like she’d been fasting for most of a day but the real hunger hadn’t set in yet. And with any luck, they’d be done here—and she’d be on her way for a rendezvous with Romeo—before it did. She focused on the paper, committing details to memory. A new address, a new birthday, the sketched outline of an imaginary life. The Print Shop hadn’t skimped on details; they’d even given her a little pocket litter to carry around, a monthly rail pass and a rumpled receipt from a meal at an Italian restaurant near the office, dabbed with an artful blotch of dried marinara sauce.

  Kevin leaned under the cart and carefully picked up his next offerings, laying them on the top shelf: a pair of buttery calfskin shoulder holsters and twin pistols, with matte-black grips and barrels the color of desert sand.

  “Courtesy of Aselia’s buddy in New Orleans, meet your new backup: the Sig Sauer P320. This is the X-Series model. Chambered for nine-millimeter, you’ve got Viking Tactics day and night sights for around-the-clock violence, and Skunkworks made a few modifications. Namely, they machined a threaded barrel for”—Kevin reached under the cart and held up a pair of storm-gray tubes, almost longer than the guns—“new suppressors. These babies are grade-nine titanium, but light as a feather.”

  Jessie scooped up one of the pistols, holding it low as she eyed the sights, lining up a trio of luminous green dots. Harmony gave Aselia an uncertain glance. She didn’t have to say a word.

  “I know,” she said, “you don’t like people messing with your weapons.”

  “Not if my life might depend on them,” Harmony said.

  “I ran a box of rounds through both of those guns personally, with and without the cans, and I cleaned and oiled ’em when I was finished. They check out.”

  Harmony shrugged off her jacket and reached for the shoulder holster. “You I trust.”

  “Skunkworks wanted to set you up with something smaller, like a P225 designed for concealed carry, but considering we don’t know what you’re walking into and Bobby Diehl’s got a track record of using unconventional troops—”

  “Like zombie Terminators,” Kevin muttered.

  “—I want you packing as much punch as possible. To that end, sending you out with three magazines each. One is loaded with Freedom Munitions HUSH rounds. Subsonic ammunition. Combine those with the cans, you can take out the trash without raising too much of a ruckus. If you need to get loud and nasty, the other two mags are carrying RIP.”

  Aselia held up a single bullet for their inspection. The bright copper tip was ridged like the serrated blades of a saw.

  “That’s RIP as in ‘Radically Invasive Projectile,’” she said, “and there is truth in that advertising. They penetrate deep, explode into fragments of twisted metal, and dig wounds like trenches on a battlefield. Against a human or a cambion target, it’s going to ruin their day. Against an incarnate demon, at the very least it’ll hurt like a mother and slow them down.”

  Jessie whistled. “You do not mess around.”

  “When it comes to my team? I do not. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life playing possum in Des Allemands, working charms and smuggling reefer to make ends meet. You didn’t just pull me out, you gave me a shot at payback.” Aselia shot a glance at the silent, dark video wall. “Still think we should have put two bullets in the back of Linder’s head, but he’s held up his end of the bargain. For now.”

  Harmony was navigating the labyrinth of her new weapon. Checking the sights, judging the weight, sliding a magazine home and popping it out again, getting a feel for the gun. Having something mechanical in her hands helped her focus. She split herself in half; while her surface mind had a task, something to practice, hands in constant motion, her deeper thoughts took on sharpness and form. A weapon in their own right, poised to attack the problem ahead of them.

  “I’ve got one other thing for you,” Kevin said. “Back in LA, I didn’t like how you almost got stuck out on the side of the building.”

  “Says the man who told us to get onto a window-washing rig,” Jessie replied.

  “Hey, the plan worked. But only because you were able to get through the glass, and it could have been a real big problem. Got me thinking that you need some kind of multi-tool in the field. A general-purpose escape kit.”

  “That would be nice,” she said. “Old Vigilant was never big on giving us useful gear. Cheaper to recruit new humans than it was to keep the ones they had alive.”

  “I talked to Skunkworks. They already had an unrelated project underway and I thought we could merge ideas, whip up a quick-and-dirty prototype.”

  He pulled back another layer of cloth and unveiled the results. A pair of fountain pens nestled on white linen. Their chrome bodies were just a little too fat, a little too long, and the clip on the cap had an unnatural bulge. They’d pass muste
r at a glance, but anyone giving them a thorough look would realize there was something off about them.

  “We put our heads together and, well, this is the very rough alpha.” He picked up one of the pens to demonstrate. “It doesn’t actually write, which should be a baseline goal for a secret spy pen. We’re working on it.”

  “So what does it do?” Harmony asked.

  He shoved his finger under the clip. It ratcheted upward. A concealed curve of steel glinted beneath.

  “For starters, the clip has a tempered and serrated blade. It’s small, but sharper than a Ginsu; it’ll saw through rope, thick nylon, you name it. It will cut glass, we tested, but you’ll need time and a lot of elbow grease.”

  “Could be useful,” Harmony said.

  He tapped the belly of the pen. “Ultimately there’s going to be a hollow compartment in here. So, for instance, Jessie could use it to tote her lockpicks around.”

  “But there isn’t one yet,” Jessie said.

  “Hey, R&D takes time. Like I said, it’s an alpha. Right now the body of the pen is taken up by a very high-powered, single-shot canister of highly compressed air.”

  “And we want that because?”

  Kevin pointed to the base of the pen. The chromed steel was shaped like a circus tent, coming to a hard-angled point.

  “Skunkworks was already developing an updated ballistic-mace weapon. This reinforced tip is designed for maximum penetration.”

  Jessie smothered a snicker behind her hand, passing it off as a sudden cough.

  “Anyway, you can use it as a punching tool if you need to break something open, like so.” He gripped the pen in his fist and pantomimed a thrust. “Focused energy means less force to get the job done.”

  “Definitely useful,” Harmony said. “I can think of a few times when a tool like that would have saved us a lot of trouble.”

  “I haven’t gotten to the best part. Okay, so, first take hold of the shaft. Make sure the tip is pointed away from your face—” Kevin paused. His shoulders slumped as he turned to Jessie. “Go ahead.”

  “What?” she asked, the picture of wide-eyed innocence.

  “Really? No commentary?”

  “There comes a time,” she said, “when a man dunks on himself so hard that no further dunking is required. Please, proceed.”

  “Okay, so. You pull back the slicing clip all the way, like so.” He tugged it back on the concealed hinge. “Then put your thumb at the base of the clip, just under the blade, and—”

  The pen let out a car-crash crunch and bucked in his hand hard enough to jerk his elbow back. The chromed tip lanced across the plane, fast as a bullet, and slammed into the bulkhead on the far side of the consoles, burying itself in a bed of crumpled steel.

  His arm slowly dropped to his side. They stared at the impact crater, no sound but the thrum of the turboprop engines.

  “You shot my plane,” Aselia said.

  “I, uh…thought the trigger press was stiffer than that,” Kevin told her.

  “You shot my plane.”

  “I mean, technically it’s Vigilant Lock’s plane—”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Aselia said. Harmony got between them fast.

  “So, uh, you can see the”—Kevin backpedaled as he talked, slipping around the cart—“the practical applications in the field. It’s a one-shot tool, for now, but if you need to break into something fast, or break out of something, it’ll get the job done. And hopefully you won’t need to, but you can use it as an improvised weapon in a pinch.”

  “It’s got potential,” Harmony said. She juked left, staving off Aselia’s slow and murderous advance. “And we all appreciate your hard work.”

  “Jessie,” Aselia said, “tell your partner that Kevin has to die now. He shot my plane, and he has to die.”

  “Anyway, if you could bring these two”—Kevin stared at the discharged pen, set it down, and swapped it for the intact one—“this one prototype into the field with you, we could really use your feedback to improve the next iteration.”

  Harmony took the pen.

  8.

  The side door of the C-130 swung wide and let in the Florida summer. Hot, muggy air washed over Harmony’s face, so thick she could drink it, and her skin was going clammy before she’d finished walking down the four-step ramp. At the edge of the cavernous hangar, an anonymous blue Nissan sat abandoned on the tarmac.

  “There’s your wheels,” Aselia said. “Keys should be in the glove box, papers are clean, please return it as undamaged as possible. I’m working on a more permanent solution for ground transport, so we don’t have to rely on the locals wherever we go. Well, Marco’s mostly working on it—but it’s not ready just yet.”

  “Should I be worried?” Jessie asked.

  “I talked him out of the ejector seats. I think. I mean, we’ll find out.”

  Insects trilled, their high-pitched drone a constant undercurrent beneath the rumble and roar of jet engines. Kevin hustled along, trying to match Harmony’s long strides.

  “You should take me with you,” he said. “I’m useful in the field!”

  Behind them, Aselia folded her arms. “Oh, no. I’ve got a special project that needs attention back here. Just me and you.”

  “Aselia,” Jessie said, “do not beat up Kevin. That’s my job.”

  “We can make it a group project.”

  “Let’s keep the inter-staff assaults to a minimum,” Harmony said.

  She opened the driver’s-side door of the Nissan. A wave of trapped heat boiled out, washing over her like the backdraft from a furnace door. She hovered, waiting for the inferno to die down. Jessie circled around to the other side.

  “I’m talking to Human Resources about this,” Kevin said.

  “Harmony?” Jessie asked. “Do we have an HR department?”

  Harmony took a deep breath.

  “At the moment, I’m pretty sure that’s me. So please, everyone, for the sake of my sanity, play nice. Kevin, get patched into the local signals traffic; I want police band, EMS, the works. If anything weird happens in a fifty-mile radius, I want to know about it.”

  Kevin snapped her a salute. She got into the car, wincing as she patted the steering wheel. The Florida sun had turned it into a branding iron. She fired up the engine, put the air-conditioning on full blast—though it ruffled her short-cropped hair with a gust barely cooler than the outside air—and reached for her seatbelt.

  “With any luck, we’ll get this wrapped up by tonight.”

  “Ever the optimist,” Jessie said, slipping into the passenger seat beside her.

  “More hope than optimism. Cooper and Dominguez wouldn’t have gone dark on their own. That leaves two possibilities.”

  “Dead or taken,” Jessie said.

  “And if they’ve been taken by friends of Bobby Diehl’s, every second counts. If we don’t find them and get them back fast, we might not get them back at all.”

  They had landed in St. Petersburg. A curving ribbon of sun-drenched highway led them east, across the endless span of the Howard Frankland Bridge as the road followed the coast and then swung out over the glittering crystal waters of Tampa Bay. The sun was a bright and shining hourglass.

  “We’re headed for the east side of the city,” Jessie said, navigating. “Orient Park, just south of MLK Boulevard.”

  Tampa was a jumble. Harmony was used to cities with clean districts, clear lines of navigation. The street grid felt like a web woven by a spider on meth. The social lay of the land was even harder to read; they passed walled estates and salmon-roofed Spanish houses that looked like celebrity compounds, and two blocks down they hit a snag of traffic along a graffiti-drenched boulevard where all the stores had barred windows and rolling security shutters. Two more blocks and they were prowling through a suburban tract for retirees. Lincolns and bug-flecked Oldsmobiles gathered dust in front of tiny seventies-era bungalows.

  All of the lawns were yellow, scraggly, balding like a Casanova
past his prime. Watering Ban in Effect, read a flyer nailed to a leaning wooden utility pole. $1000 Fine. The nicer parts of town were lush and green. Harmony wondered if they were too rich to be subject to the law, or if they just wrote a check in advance.

  She turned south along a neck of barren lots, the dead turf blistered with clapboard shacks and tract housing. The biggest two businesses along this stretch of road were a bail bondsman and a liquor store, their barred windows standing side by side with competing neon lights. The Rusty Nail was a little farther down. Bobby had described the place to Cooper as a dive bar, and he didn’t lie; the bar was as gritty as the humidity on the dank, muggy air, the edge of the stone porch caked with the remnants of somebody’s last binge. At least they’d staggered outside before heaving it up. This looked like the kind of place where drinking was a professional’s pursuit, and a solo one at that.

  Their wheels rumbled across a strip of gravel parking lot. The engine went silent and the air-conditioning gusted its last breath, replaced by the endless trill of cicadas.

  “Approach?” Harmony asked.

  Jessie slid her dark glasses on, a shield of emotionless onyx over her turquoise eyes.

  “Figure we give ’em the official credentials,” Jessie said. “No reason to think anyone here is working directly for Bobby or his mystery friend, and they might need a little persuasion to talk.”

  That worked fine for her. Harmony took the lead, pushing through the swinging screen door and stepping into the bar. The only relief from the heat came from a pair of overhead wicker fans, their blades wobbling as they ineffectually slapped at the air. Another fan, an old aluminum-clad model, perched on the edge of the bar and swiveled its face from side to side with a rattling whine. A television above the bar was tuned to Fox News. The clientele mostly watched their drinks instead, old men huddled low and staring into the amber depths like they could read their futures there. Harmony could, too. There wasn’t any magic in knowing they’d be right back here tomorrow, trading their pension checks and their livers for a few hours’ solace.