by Tom Clancy
Ricci broke in. “You sell any lately?”
“That’s just what I was about mention,” Anagkazo said. He was still scratching his shepherd. “If you’re interested in blacks I’d have to say this is crummy timing. The deposit on the pair of dogs came a few days ago from a big-time movie director who’s got a South Hampton estate in New York. And I sold my only other three beauties a couple weeks back to a photographer who’s staying right over on the Peninsula… well, actually, drove out and delivered them to his cabin, way off the beaten path in Big Sur country. Three dogs. Some guys who work for him had prepaid last month. I guess while he was getting settled into the place.”
Ricci looked at him.
“He have a name?”
“Estes,” Anagkazo said. “Nothing confidential. He’s new in the country, I think… from Europe.”
Ricci kept looking at him.
“Where in Europe?”
“Didn’t say. Or I don’t remember him saying, anyway. But I got the sense he’s one of those people who’s lived everywhere. Money to spend, you know. Has an accent you can’t place… sort of a worldly mix, reminded me of how Yul Brynner, the actor, used to sound. It’s why he could play the part of a pharaoh, the king of Siam, or a Mexican bandit, and it always seemed believable.”
Ricci felt something unnameable rear inside him. Felt its teeth.
“The photographer,” he said. His eyes were on the breeder’s face. “Describe him to me.”
Anagkazo straightened a little in his chair. The curiosity he’d first shown at the door had become laced with a certain unease.
“Square chinned. Tall. Strong-looking… a real hard-body type.” He moved his hand up from his shepherd’s neck to his armrest. “Has this fella done anything wrong?”
Ricci’s jaw muscles worked. It was as though, suddenly, his brain had locked around whatever words he might have given in answer, perhaps even his ability to articulate any response at all.
Glenn glanced his way, saw his fixed expression, and turned toward Anagkazo.
“John,” he said. “You’d better tell us exactly where we can find him.”
* * *
Thibodeau had spent the morning at his desk answering phone calls, but as each hour passed he had grown increasingly convinced the one call he’d been hoping for wouldn’t come.
When his latest jump at the receiver proved him wrong, he immediately found himself wondering whether to be glad or sorry.
“Ricci. Where’re you now—?”
“Never mind,” Ricci said. “All you need to worry about’s what I tell you.”
“I been leaving messages on your voice mail, waiting to hear from you for hours,” Thibodeau chafed. “Same goes for Megan—”
“Save it and listen.”
Thibodeau reddened. “We got Erickson poking around, trouble piled on top ‘a trouble. And you act like keepin’ in touch be something gonna stunter you—”
“You want to find Julia Gordian and the murdering scum you like to call the Wildcat, you better shut up and listen.”
Thibodeau fell silent, breathing hard. After Erickson had phoned him that morning to ask questions about a break-in at the animal clinic, he’d immediately known Ricci was in it up to his neck… known and only wanted some sort of accounting before he could hang that miserable neck from a rope. But he’d taken care not to alert the detective. Even in his anger, he’d wondered if Ricci might have found something to go on.
Julia, he thought. The Wildcat… le Chaut Sauvage.
Thibodeau would not in his wildest stretch of imagination have believed he would hear them mentioned in the same sentence.
“Go on,” he said. He was almost panting now. “Can’t waste time.”
“I’m headed to Big Sur. It’ll take me maybe an hour to get up there, and I’ll need support. Ed Seybold from my old team. Newell and Perry if you can get hold of them. Maybe a half a dozen other men, but no more… have Seybold pick the rest.”
Thibodeau swallowed. “Big Sur cover a lot of ground, you gonna narrow it down—?”
“Just make sure those men are pulled together, I’ll be in touch with you,” Ricci interrupted.
And then the line went dead in Thibodeau’s hand.
* * *
Siegfried Kuhl was pensive.
Looking out through his terrace doors into the rain, watching it spill down the precipitous wall of the cliff in windblown whirls and ripples, his mind had returned to his abduction of the robin who was now bound to a chair across the room from him, his mind bringing him back to the moment Lido had been attacked by the greyhound.
The bite had done little to injure the Schutzhund, its thick coat preventing the other dog’s teeth from sinking too deeply into its flesh. And Kuhl had been quick to finish things with his weapon. Yet he had wondered ever since if the true harm might have been to his plans, occurring the moment the animals made contact.
The dead flesh and bones of the dog he had shot — might it not hold clues that could eventually lay a path to him? He had been unable to dismiss the thought that there might be blood, fur, or other traceable physical evidence that could identify the shepherd. It was an uncommon creature, after all. And if the evidence were direct enough, and the breeder Anagkazo spoke to those in search of Gordian’s daughter…
If he spoke to them before Kuhl’s men were able to take care of him, the time left until he needed to head out to the fallback might very well be limited to hours, if not minutes. And though the storm would make travel there difficult, he had ordered Anton and Ciras out to fill the Explorer with basic supplies — water, protein bars, first aid — so that he might vacate the cabin as soon as possible.
After all Kuhl’s preparation, it staggered him to think the success of his task might be threatened by a simple miscalculation of how the greyhound would react to his forced entry of the rescue center.
Kuhl turned from the terrace to his captured robin. He looked into her eyes over the cloth gag knotted around her mouth. That particular restraint had been unnecessary except as a precaution, he mused. Realizing she was in a place where cries for help would be of no use, she had held a silence Kuhl found admirable. She had showed no frailty, done no pleading save for the lives of the woman and infant at the rescue center, and the dog that attempted to protect her.
Even now, Kuhl thought, her steady gaze did not present him with any sign of weakness.
He moved away from her, went to the desk where he had sat long nights at his computer, and looked inside its top drawer. Waiting there was the tool steel combat knife he would use when the moment to dispose of her finally came.
Her head pulled back from behind without warning, a deep cut across the throat…
In his admiration, Kuhl would give Julia Gordian as sudden and painless a death as his expert hand could render.
It was, he thought, the very least she deserved.
The clouds had reasserted themselves throughout the morning to form a massive gray band that stretched along the coastline from Half Moon Bay southward to Point Conception and was widest from the Santa Lucia Mountains on east across the Ventana wilderness and Los Padres National Forest. By midday, rain was falling heavily again, the charcoal gray sky cat-clawed with lightning, thunder rumbling like great millstones in its turbulent lower and middle altitudes.
Ricci and Glenn watched two men exit the cabin and stride toward a white Ford Explorer parked only a few straight yards from where they were crouched side by side under cover of the trees. One of the men carried a portage pack, his companion a couple of nylon zip duffels.
Ricci’s eyes briefly went to Glenn.
“I’m betting that’s survival gear,” he whispered.
Glenn nodded.
“Looks to be,” he said.
Water spilling from the porous roof of leaves above them, they observed the pair in silence. In what had seemed almost a reenactment of their previous night’s work at the animal hospital, they had left their car about a half mile ba
ck and then climbed the rest of the way up the hillside on foot. The thick frock of woodland on the slope offered vital concealment and also made for some tough going — steep grades, impassable thickets, streams swollen by the unrelenting rains, and patches of soggy ground with unsafe footing had forced several detours. But they’d pushed forward and were mostly able to stay within eyeshot of the paved road, sticking close whenever possible. After about an hour’s hike, they had finally seen one of the huge limestone gateposts described by Anagkazo off to their left, picked up the dirt route that led to the crest of the bluff, and then stolen alongside it to their present spot.
Now they continued to watch as the two figures from the cabin strode around back of the SUV, keyed open its hatch, raised it, loaded the bags inside, and then pulled the cargo shade over them.
Ricci unholstered his sound-suppressed Five-Seven from his belt.
“You set?” he said.
Glenn took a breath and gave him another nod. He had a leather slapper flat against his palm, preferring its directness to the DMSO spray.
They shuffled over several feet to put themselves behind the Explorer, then waited a moment. Ricci pointed to the man on the left, pointed to himself, and got a final affirmative nod from Glenn. He held up three fingers and started to sign the count.
His third finger ticked down and they sprang.
Though large and muscular, Glenn was clear of the dripping brush and on top of Mr. Right in a flicker. He struck the back of his head with the sap, his blow pounding onto the base of the skull, and the man buckled in a heap.
Ricci had simultaneously rushed out behind Mr. Left, locked an arm around his throat, and put the bore of his gun against his temple. The guy snapped back his head, trying to butt him hard under the chin despite the choke-hold and pressure of the nine mil — guts, good reflexes. Ricci slipped the move, spun him around by his shoulder, and brought a knee up into his middle below the diaphragm.
Mr. Left sagged back against the Explorer, the wind knocked out of him.
This time Ricci got the nine right into his face, pressed its barrel to the side of his nose, right about at the nub of the tear gland. Quickly patting the guy down, he found a Sig.380 in a concealed shoulder holster and a card wallet in the back pocket of his slacks.
Ricci tucked the Sig under his belt and flipped open the wallet’s ID window.
“Barry Hughes,” he said, glancing at the driver’s license. “That who you are?”
As Mr. Right started to nod against the upward pressure of his gun, Ricci tossed the wallet into a puddle and drove a fist into his cheek. Something gave at the hinge of the jaw.
“Give me your real name,” Ricci said.
The guy was silent, blood overspilling his lower lip.
“Your name.” Ricci stared into his face, pushing his Five-Seven deeper into the corner of his eye. He could see the skin below the socket crinkle under the end of its barrel. “Let me hear it or I’ll kill you.”
The guy looked at him without answering for perhaps three more seconds.
“Anton, you fucker,” he said at last, front teeth smeared red, his speech already distorted from the fractured jaw. It came out sounding like Antunnn yfuker.
Ricci nodded. At the periphery of his vision, he saw Glenn unlock the Explorer’s passenger door with the key he’d pulled from its hatch, reach in to give the ignition a quarter turn, then lower the window and cuff the other guy’s wrists around the vertical bar of its frame.
Grabbing his man by the shirt collar now, Ricci pulled him off the flank of the vehicle with a sudden wrench.
“Anton, I know your mouth hurts, but you’ll need to talk to us about a few things before giving it a rest,” he said.
* * *
There was a door at the side of the cabin that offered admittance to the kitchen and, directly beyond it, the living room.
Ricci had Anton lead the way to the door at gunpoint, one hand clamped over his shoulder, the other holding the Five-Seven to his ear behind the loose, misshapen swell of his jawbone. Behind them, Glenn had the stock of his VVRS cradled against his upper arm as he held it forward at the ready.
“Open the door,” Ricci said. He nudged Anton with the gun. “No surprises.”
Anton turned the knob, pulled. The rain was a constant susurrus that muffled the sound of its opening. Listening carefully, however, Ricci could hear a faint rustling in the brush to his right.
Okay, he thought.
Standing at an angle to the door, hidden from within behind the outer wall of the house, Ricci flung a glance around Anton through the small unoccupied kitchen. Past the living-room archway, three men were at a table playing cards. A fourth seated on a sofa to the extreme right seemed to be dozing there, arms folded behind his head, his legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. The sables were lying at rest on the carpet between them. One of the dogs raised itself a little at the sound of the opening door, recognized Anton’s familiar presence across the length of the two rooms, then lowered its shaggy head back onto the floor.
Ricci turned slightly, motioned with his chin, and side-stepped.
A burly hand came around Anton’s bloodied mouth from behind, clapped over it, and pulled him back into the rain. Ricci heard the hiss of released aerosol to his left, then a shifting of foliage as Anton was ditched out of sight.
Thibodeau emerged from the wet vegetation, relieved of the unconscious man, slipping a DMSO canister into his belt holder. The rest of the entry team was in position on either side of the door.
Ricci looked at Thibodeau’s bearded face for the barest instant, then turned toward the open door again. Anton had spilled plenty outside the Explorer, and had seemed scared enough to have been telling the truth when he said the Killer was upstairs — which would mean the dogs would be no threat down here. They would do nothing belligerent without his personal command.
“I’m going in,” he whispered and ran into the cabin without a backward look.
* * *
Ricci’s estimate of Anton’s honesty under the gun proved right on. The flunky had told him the short spiral staircase would be in the living room, past the archway to his immediate left, and there it was, exactly where it was supposed to be.
His Five-Seven out in his hand, he crossed the kitchen in a dash. Ahead of him, the Killer’s men were springing to their feet, but then Ricci swung toward the stairs, and bounded up onto them, and suddenly the commotion and movement was behind and below him. He took the steps several at time, vaulting up them, knowing he had seconds at best to get to the bedroom. There were shouts, exchanges of gunfire, more shouts, all distant echoes outside the narrow, winding, ascending shaft of his awareness. Behind, below, outside, somewhere in another world. Ricci cared only about getting up to the second floor, and the taste in his mouth, the taste of his want.
And now he was at the upstairs landing and off it into a short hall. He paused a beat. How long since he’d entered the cabin? Five seconds? Ten? Maybe he’d have five more. Tops, five. Four, three…
There were a couple of wide doors along the hallway to his right, adjacent to each other. Another narrower one to his left — a closet. That second door on the right, Anton had told him it was the master bedroom, was where the Killer had her, where the Killer would be…
Ricci made his choice, lunged forward, stopped for half a heartbeat, kicked his foot out against the first door at the point where the latch met the hasp. It flung open, crashed back against the wall, and he burst into the room, his Five-Seven in a two-handed police grip—
His back to the open doors of a terrace overlooking the seaward plunge of the bluff, the Killer stood across the room by a plain wooden chair.
She was in it. Gagged. Trussed. Hands bound behind her with rope, bound to the chair.
Above the gag, on her face, an expression of terror without surrender.
Ricci reached into himself for her name, pulled it through the atavistic howl of rage filling his mind.
Julia
.
She. Was. Julia.
The Killer was holding a combat knife to her throat.
* * *
“Let her go,” Ricci said. His eyes on the Killer’s eyes. The Five-Seven thrust out in front of him. “Let her go now.”
The Killer did not move.
The blade in his grip, its honed edge against her throat, he did not move.
Ricci unwrapped the fingers of one hand from the gun, reached back, felt for the door, pushed it shut. Somewhere behind it, on the other side, the shouts and gunfire were fading. There were footsteps coming rapidly up the stairs.
The Killer kept staring at Ricci in silence. He did not move the knife from Julia’s throat.
The footsteps had reached the door now. Behind it, an urgent shout:
“Ricci!” Glenn’s voice. “Ricci you in there?”
Ricci didn’t answer.
“Ricci—”
“Stay out,” Ricci said. “Tell everybody to back off.”
Through the door, Glenn said, “What’s happening? Is Julia—?”
“She’s okay,” Ricci said. “Thibodeau and the others will be right behind you on those stairs. Just keep everyone down the hall. Don’t ask questions.”
Ricci looked at the Killer.
“Let her go,” he repeated a third time. “It’s finished.”
The Killer did not move his knife.
“She’s piecework to you. Nothing. Just another job,” Ricci said. His gun remained level with the Killer’s heart. “You do her, I do you, what’s the point? But there’s still something in this room you want. Something you’ve wanted since Khazakhstan. Since Ontario. And I’m giving you a chance to have it. I’m promising you the chance.”
The Killer watched Ricci’s face.