by Tom Clancy
Studied it for another long, long moment.
Then he dropped his knife hand from the soft white flesh of Julia’s throat, went behind the chair, cut the ropes around her wrists with one quick slice, crouched, severed her ankle bindings, and straightened. Only the gag remained uncut.
Ricci nodded slowly.
“There’s been no circulation in her legs,” he said. “Step away from the chair — two steps to your right — so I can help her up.”
The Killer stepped back.
Still covering him with the gun, Ricci moved toward the chair, slipped an arm around Julia, and eased her to a standing position, not letting her stumble, holding her erect with his own strength, gradually feeling her legs take over. Above the gag, her face remained composed.
“You can make it on your own now,” Ricci said to her. Then he tilted his head back toward the door, raised his voice. “Glenn… you hear me?”
From outside the door: “Yeah. Hearing you fine. Sounds like they’ve got things under control downstairs.”
“Good,” Ricci said. “I’m sending Julia out. Stay away, don’t come near the door. Don’t let anybody else get close to it, either. No matter what, got me?”
“Ricci—”
“Got me?”
A pause.
“Yeah,” Glenn said, then. “Yeah, man. I do.”
Ricci backed toward the door, his gun on the Killer, his free hand on Julia, steadying her, guiding her along with him. He reached behind him again, opened the door just wide enough for her to pass through and nodded for her to leave.
She hesitated, looking at him.
“Go,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”
Julia held her gaze on him for another moment. Then she nodded and went through the opening.
Ricci slammed the door shut behind her.
“We’re almost ready,” he said. His weapon pointed at the Killer. “Better slide that chair across to me.”
It was pushed forward. Ricci swept it around his body and leaned it against the door, wedging its back under the doorknob. Then he set his gun down on a small table he’d seen out the corner of his left eye.
Outside the door, he could hear Thibodeau’s voice shouting up from downstairs, then Glenn answering him, telling him Ricci had gotten Julia out, that she was free of any threat. There were some more words exchanged between them, followed by the tread of heavy ascending footsteps.
Ricci saw something like a smile on the Killer’s face as he dropped his knife to the floor, and then pushed it aside with his foot.
“Now,” the Killer said, “we take our chances.”
Ricci nodded.
“Now,” he said.
* * *
Kuhl and Ricci advanced on each other, sidling for position as they moved into the center of the room.
His fists clenched, his sinewy arms raised to protect his head, Ricci bounced a little on his knees to loosen them up. His opponent had a good three inches on him, a longer reach. Probably twenty or thirty more pounds of muscle slabbed over his broad frame. He would have to get in close and tight, rely on speed to overcome those advantages.
Kuhl shifted now, feinted toward him. Ricci didn’t buy it. His hands still blocking, he wove around him, found an opening under the massive arms, came in low with a right uppercut meant for the chin.
Faster than he looked, Kuhl parried the blow sidearm, tried grasping hold of Ricci’s outthrust wrist to pull him off his feet. But Ricci slipped the grab, got back away from his reach, and then rounded again, setting himself to throw another punch across Kuhl’s body.
This time Kuhl was even more prepared, his left foot snapping out at the moment before contact, getting between Ricci’s legs to kick the inside of his opposite shin and throw him off balance. Before Ricci could recover, a right hook came smashing hard against his cheek.
Ricci went staggering, the side of his face exploding with pain, blood filling his mouth, his vision momentarily dimming. And then Kuhl was coming in on him again, hitting him with a series of powerful jabs, his fists repeatedly, brutally pounding Ricci’s face and neck.
Ricci felt gravity pulling him down, dragging at his legs and head, and managed to resist it barely in time to duck an overhand right that seemed to shoot straight for his eyes out of a grainy nowhere. He sucked in a breath to fill his chest with air, inhaled again, again, and then shuffled a little to get his heart pumping and dispel the motes of swirling nothingness from his vision.
Kuhl was not about to give him that opportunity. He launched forward, his fingers pointed outward, going for Ricci’s eyes, trying to blind him, gouge his eyes from their sockets with the tips of those stabbing fingers. Ricci shifted back, bobbed down under the hand, swallowed more air, got more of the blackness out of his face, and then came up under the Killer’s throat, came up fast, jamming his cocked right elbow into it with all the strength he could muster, connecting with it right below the knob of his Adam’s apple.
Kuhl grunted, swayed a little. A small, moist sound escaped his throat. Ricci pressed him, knowing this might be his only break, needing to make the most of it. Chin low, feet planted wide, he bored into Kuhl, pistoning his fists into Kuhl’s stomach and sides, pounding him with lefts, rights, jabs, pressing, pressing, his knuckles hammering him with one blow after the next.
Then Ricci felt the Killer loosen up, or maybe slip, he wasn’t sure, didn’t care, just knew he had him where he wanted him, and rammed his kneecap up between his legs, digging it into his groin.
Kuhl went down to the floor, kneeling, sagging forward, attempting to brace himself from going flat on his face with his outspread palms. But Ricci stayed on top of him, kicking his face, arms, legs, and body, making him bleed, opening wounds all over him, watching the redness spurt from his torn, lacerated flesh.
Wanting to bring him down as low as he possibly could.
And then, suddenly, coming up in the Killer’s fist, a bright flash of steel.
The combat knife.
He’d gotten the knife off the floor.
It flicked up, and then out, as Kuhl successfully thrust the blade in Ricci’s direction, jabbing its point into the back of his right leg.
Ricci felt its hot/cold penetration deep in his thigh muscle, swung a final kick at the Killer’s hand with his opposite foot, managing to land it between his wrist and elbow.
Kuhl’s fingers opened, dropping away from the knife handle. Lurching forward, his head bowed, blood and saliva pouring from his mouth, the Killer propped himself on his knee, tried to thrust himself to his feet, failed, and started to topple forward.
Ricci caught him by the front of the shirt on the way down.
“Here, murderer,” he said, the knife still sticking out of his thigh. “Here’s a little help for you.”
He hauled Kuhl up onto his rubbery legs, simultaneously turning him toward the terrace, forcing him backward, standing him up against the glass doors, using his own weight to prop Kuhl’s limp, weakened body against the doors as he reached out over his shoulder, slid one of them partially open by its handle, and again pushed him backward — through the opening now, into the wind and rain, back and back and back across the terrace to the guardrail.
The rain swirling around them, lashing them, washing their blood down onto the terrace floor so it mingled together in flowing, guttering cascades that went spilling over the lip of the terrace into the drop, Ricci held the Killer up and looked into his face, shaking him hard, his fists around the bunched wet fabric of his shirt, holding him, holding him there against the iron guardrail above the vertiginous, storm-swept plunge of the canyon and staring into his eyes for one last, long moment of time.
“You son of a bitch,” he said. “You son of a bitch, we did this to each other.”
And pushed him over into the abyss.
* * *
Thibodeau had heard the crashing in the room on the cabin’s second floor and wondered what in the name of everything holy was going on.
&nbs
p; Upstairs now, working his way down the hall past Derek Glenn, Julia being hustled out of the cabin behind him, it was the room’s sudden dead silence that had gotten his mind racing everywhere at once.
Thibodeau tried to push in the door, found it blocked, and ordered the men behind him to put the ram to it.
Moving through the splintered doorframe into the room, he noticed two things that made his eyes grow wide.
The first was Ricci sitting on the floor, rain blowing over him through an open terrace door. He had propped himself back against the wall, a wide pool of blood under his right leg, a slick reddened knife on the floor beside him.
The second thing Thibodeau noticed was that he was alone.
Thibodeau put away his questions for the moment, rushed across the room, and crouched over him.
“You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, gonna need something to stop the flow,” he said. Then he saw that Ricci had gotten open the tac pouch on his belt and was struggling to fish something from inside it. “What’re you looking for in there? I can help you get it out…”
Ricci looked at him, hesitated a beat.
“Wound-closure gel,” he said, nodding for him to reach inside.
THIRTEEN
SAN JOSE GABON, AFRICA
Entering her dining room, Ashley Gordian glanced up at the wall clock above the Sword op’s head and was amazed to see that morning had turned into afternoon. What sleep she’d gotten since Julia’s disappearance had come only when she let her guard down against it, and in each instance she hadn’t kept her eyes shut for long. Ten minutes here, fifteen there, she wouldn’t let herself yield to more than that. Ashley’s reluctant sub-missions to fatigue had felt more like automatic power-downs than true periods of rest — the physical equivalent of going offline for system maintenance, she supposed — and between them she had lost all sense of time’s orderly progression. Yet afternoon it was. The hands of the clock had moved on since she’d last been in the room… even if the Sword op hadn’t since she’d last entered it.
Seated below it at a mahogany lowboy he’d been using as a workstation, his shirt sleeves rolled up, he was hunched over the laptop computer in front of him, staring at the screen. Ashley wasn’t sure of his name; his ID tag was on his jacket, and his jacket was slung over the back of his chair. There were so many of her husband’s security people around the house and its grounds giving everything of themselves, working well past their scheduled shifts, defying exhaustion in ways she couldn’t fathom. Some were men and women Ashley recognized, others were people she’d never seen until a day or so ago, but all wore the same look of implacable resolve on their faces. Her admiration and gratitude went beyond words, and she’d provided whatever assistance she could, making them as comfortable as possible, bringing them food and drinks to keep them going, little things that made her feel useful in a way she paradoxically thought almost selfish. She needed to do something, needed to participate, even though her participation hardly seemed to measure up to their efforts. The alternative was to succumb to the crushing sense of futility and helplessness that always seemed to be lurking just past the next moment.
Now she stepped over to the op, noticed the remains of a pizza crust on a paper plate at his elbow, and placed a hand on his shoulder to catch his attention.
“I brought you this slice hours ago,” she said, taking the plate. “You look like you haven’t budged since.”
He glanced blearily up at her from the screen.
“Hasn’t been that long,” he said. And paused. “Has it?”
The puzzled expression on his face made Ashley smile in spite of herself.
“Why don’t you take five,” she said. “I can set you up on—”
She broke off, a stir in the adjoining living room turning both their heads toward its entrance. Everyone in the makeshift command post was suddenly moving, exchanging hurried questions and answers, bringing cell phones out of their pockets.
Ashley felt sweat slick her palms, felt her legs tremble beneath her. Whatever news had broken and spread through the command center like a wave was critical, good or ill, and the op beside her could not hide his recognition of it.
“Mrs. Gordian.” He was suddenly on his feet beside her, motioning toward his vacated chair. “Ma’am, why don’t you wait here while I—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m okay, really. Let’s just get in there.”
She rushed toward the living room, almost running into Megan Breen as they converged on the entry from opposite sides.
Megan was gripping a cellular in her hand, tears streaming from her eyes. It was the first time Ashley had ever seen her cry, and the realization seemed to bring her heart to a standstill.
Then she noticed the smile beneath her tears, wet with her flowing tears, and took what she would always remember as the deepest breath of her entire life.
“Ashley—”
“Meg—”
“Julia’s on the phone,” Megan said, and held it out to her. “She’s on the phone, they’ve found her… and she wants to say hello to her mother.”
* * *
The Sedco oil platform. Offshore Gabon. Roger Gordian stood behind a podium in the glare of high-mounted kliegs, grim eyes staring from faces where smiles were to have held, silence around him where festive music was meant to have been played.
In each of his pants pockets was a folded sheet of paper. On each sheet, a different speech: the one near his left hand a scripted concession to madness, the other written in stubborn, unrelenting hope of its defeat.
Gordian glanced at his watch, then back at the solemn faces lined in rows before him.
Moments to go, and bitterness sat at the back of his tongue.
He would mouth the words that needed to be spoken. For his daughter’s life, for the slimmest chance at saving her life, he would do that, do anything necessary. Whoever had taken Julia from him, whatever monstrous intent was behind the act, her kidnapper had known an essential truth:
In Gordian’s heart, the Dream had been born. But while the past and present were things of hard reality, only the future lived in a man’s dreams… and Julia was truly, beyond all doubt, the child who carried it on her shoulders.
He stepped forward, took the podium, began to slowly reach for the words in his left pocket.
And suddenly caught sight of movement beyond the faces, the eyes. Someone racing toward him the blinding lights.
An excited shout: “Boss… Gord…”
Roger Gordian stood stock-still as Nimec came closer, pushing between the rows of men and women seated before him. His heart knocking in his chest, Gordian found himself no longer thinking about words that had to be spoken, but only caring about those he wanted more than anything to hear.
“We’ve got her!” Nimec shouted. “She’s safe, she’s okay, we’ve got her!”
Gordian took a breath.
Perhaps the longest, deepest breath he’d ever taken in his life.
And then he reached into his right pocket and carried on.
* * *
The Gulf of Guinea. One thousand feet below the ocean’s surface. The crewed submersible launched from the Chimera ’s hold eeling toward an escape platform off the Cameroonian shore.
In the small aft passenger cabin, Harlan DeVane stared past Casimir and his co-pilot into the watery gloom outside the forward dome. Behind him in abandoned waters, toasts to good fortune were being made on the Sedco platform, its beacon lights radiating far into the night. Broadcast to the world, Roger Gordian’s words of success had been statement enough of DeVane’s failure. Transmitted in secret, his own unanswered communiques to Kuhl had been mere redundant verification.
The robin was free. Father and daughter would be reunited.
Father and daughter.
DeVane stared into liquid emptiness, his bloodless face without expression, despising the thoughts that filled his mind like some baneful toxin. Was there relief from them knowing what was in store for Etienne Begel
a… that before the night was over his brains would pour from a bullet hole in his skull not quite as neatly made as the rondelle he had been given? Or would he find greater comfort in the past?
DeVane pictured his long-ago return to the high tower of his father, its doors unlocked for that second visit by the secret video he had taken of his couplings with the widow Melissa Phillips, and his genetic proof of paternity of the child she had birthed out of wedlock… the misbegotten product of their ardent clasps in the night.
His small teeth bared themselves in what might have been a smile of recovered satisfaction. DeVane had studied his father’s life thoroughly after their first meeting at the long table of glass. There were two legitimate sons, and a daughter…
Her surname at birth had been VanderMoere. After her marriage to the multimillionaire president of an inherited commodities empire, Arthur Phillips, she had adopted her husband’s surname, retaining it after his untimely death.
DeVane learned everything he could about the widow Melissa Phillips… everything he could well before the day he stepped up to his half-sister’s brownstone in New York City and allowed her to think she had begun her seduction of him.
In fact, it had been other way around.
Oh, what flimflam that turned out to be — the father who had taken pains to hide any knowledge of his whore-son’s existence from his family rewarded with a twice-misbegotten grandchild. The payoff DeVane extorted from both father and daughter to keep their vile secret providing ample startup capital for the first of his own business endeavors. And the son DeVane had fathered…
He closed his eyes now, resting his head back in his contoured seat as the submersible sped him away through the depths.
That little bastard had been left to fend for himself in some adoption home.
EPILOGUE
Morning sunshine pouring over Mount Hamilton in the crystal-clear distance, Roger Gordian was about to pop his daily capsule of flaxseed oil — rich in omega 3, good for the pump, Ashley insisted — when his direct line rang.