Calypso Directive

by Brian Andrews

  The organ blast gave Kalen the opportunity he needed. During the few seconds Zurn turned his head to look at the organ balcony behind him, Kalen closed the distance between them. Eyes forward, arms and legs and churning, he sprinted down the center aisle like an Olympic athlete out of the blocks. He decelerated to a stop in front of the bounty hunter.

  Kalen saw shock in Zurn’s eyes when he returned his gaze to the front and found the priest’s face mere inches from his own.

  Kalen grunted and smashed his forehead into Zurn’s right eye socket.

  With his left hand, Kalen pushed Julie’s face to the left, away from the gun barrel pressed into her cheek, until her jaw was parallel to the muzzle. He then slid his fingers down her throat and into the small triangular gap between the piano wire and the two outside ligaments on either side of her neck. He pulled the wire away from her throat with both hands. The razor sharp wire sliced into the fleshy pads on the underside of his fingers as he created a triangular opening slightly larger than her head. He wailed in pain—a guttural primal bellow—but it was drowned out by the thunderclap of two successive gunshots.

  Stunned by the priest’s precision head butt, Raimond wobbled and blinked his eyes. Coming to, he squeezed the trigger of the Sig Sauer, twice.

  Julie yelped as the muzzle flares seared her left cheek, but the bullets sailed harmlessly by. The acrid smell of scorched hair and skin wafted through the air. She opened her eyes. The hot steel barrel of Zurn’s weapon was resting next to her left ear and cheek. She became acutely aware of her lips, her tongue, and her teeth, all intact and unmolested. She had not been shot. Thanks to the foresight of the priest, her face had been clear of the line of fire.

  She wasted no time. This was her chance, and she knew it. The priest was holding the wire several inches away from her face, and suffering greatly for it. Julie tucked her chin to her chest and squatted. She felt the wire scrape against her ear, nose and forehead as she ducked her head through the triangular opening, but she was free.

  Raimond yanked the wire noose, a split second too late to foil Julie’s escape, but before the priest could extricate both his hands. The razor wire cinched tightly around the priest’s left hand, compressing and cutting deeper into his fingers. Raimond grinned with sadistic pleasure as the priest dropped to a knee in front of him. With the butt of his gun, he struck a powerful blow across the priest’s face.

  “Goodbye, Father,” Raimond sneered. Then, pressing the pistol against the priest’s forehead, he added, “See you in Hell.”

  AJ and VanCleave crouched side-by-side, peering around the corner of the main entrance into the nave. VanCleave had his laptop open, balanced precariously on his thighs, while he wirelessly piloted the spiders toward the scaffold. Each spider was equipped with an internal self-destruct charge, designed to erase any trace of the device after the completion of a data-reconnaissance mission. VanCleave’s plan was to use this self-destruct charge as the detonator for the payload of plastic explosive each spider carried on its back. In theory, his tactical improvisation should work, but it had never been tested.

  A baritone organ blast caused him to bobble his computer, and he nearly dropped it onto the marble floor. AJ ducked by his side. Recovering their wits, both men turned and looked up at the organ balcony in time to see a female shape—bathed in moonlight—fall onto the organ keyboard and then collapse to the balcony floor.

  A. Archer—RS:Bio: “Oh, God. Social must have used the organ to distract the sniper, but I think he just shot her!”

  R. Parish—Coordinator: “Social, this is the Coordinator, over … Social, this is the Coordinator, do you copy?”

  E. VanCleave—RS:Technical: “She’s not responding. Bio, go help Social. But don’t be stupid. Stay below the balcony railing, or the sniper will take a shot at you too.”

  A. Archer—RS:Bio: “What about the spiders?”

  E. VanCleave—RS:Technical: “They’re almost in position. I can handle this. GO.”

  VanCleave glanced to the center aisle, where a scuffle had just broken out. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and plopped onto the keypad. Every passing second could be Kalen’s last. Were he a religious man, VanCleave thought to himself, he would be praying.

  VanCleave’s computer screen flashed a message.

  POSITION GEOMETRY OBTAINED

  PRESS “ENTER” TO INITIATE SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE

  COUNTDOWN TIMER: 0 SECONDS

  Prayer answered.

  He pressed the ENTER key.

  The explosion roared through the cavernous main hall of the Karlskirche like a twelve gun salute from a battleship. The power of VanCleave’s shaped-charge blew out a two-meter section of steel in the southwest corner of the scaffold frame, causing the platform tiers at each level above to tip abruptly downward in the direction of the break. Stefan Zurn was jolted out of his prone shooting position into a sideways slide; his body skidded uncontrollably toward the dipping corner of the platform. Reflexively, he let go of his sniper rifle with both hands and flailed desperately for a handhold. The sniper rifle sailed off the platform edge and bounced on the marble floor below with a triple clack. Like a thousand burning needles, splinters from the plywood decking raked the pads of his fingertips and palms of his hands as he clawed wildly for his life. His right forearm contacted a metal strut. He tried desperately to grab the strut as he slid by, but the side of his head slammed into the corner post, knocking him senseless. His limp body rolled over the edge and started to fall, before abruptly jerking to a halt. Nearly five stories above the unforgiving marble floor of the Karlskirche, Stefan Zurn swung, upside down and unconscious. He was saved by the calf strap of his ankle holster, which snagged a protruding bolt on a scaffold clamp affixed to the corner post. Seven detonations of plastic explosive, erupting simultaneously, provided Kalen a stay of execution. Raimond, who was facing the scaffold when the charges blew, stumbled backward in shock.

  “Stefan!” he cried, as he watched his younger brother fall off the scaffold platform into shadow.

  Taking a page from Kalen’s playbook, Will seized the moment.

  He picked up Kalen’s walking cane, closed the gap to where the others stood, and swung it at Zurn’s head.

  The blow connected squarely with Raimond’s mouth; blood exploded from his lower lip like a bursting piñata. His head snapped back and then forward. Howling in pain, Raimond pulled the trigger on the Sig Sauer, but Kalen had already moved clear of the line of fire. Kalen performed a scissor kick, sweeping the bounty hunter’s legs out from underneath him. Raimond landed flat on his back; the impact jarred the handgun loose from his grip, and sent it spinning across the marble floor, until it came to rest at Julie’s feet. She bent and picked it up.

  Julie looked at the pistol in her hand with a glassy, distant stare.

  All three men fixated on her. She was standing in the middle of the center aisle, six feet from where they were clustered.

  Her face flushed, and her eyes erupted with fire. Her neck and chest glistened with her own blood, and her disheveled hair glowed like a golden halo in the moonlight.

  She pointed the gun at Raimond.

  Will shivered.

  “And behold, the angel of death came to pass judgment upon him,” Kalen mumbled under his breath.

  “You’re a monster,” she seethed, her eyes fixed on Raimond.

  “And you’re a traitorous bitch.” He laughed and raised himself into a sitting position, his legs extended in “V” in front of him. “Should I tell your boyfriend how you betrayed him? That you’ve been working with Meredith Morley all along.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “We’re on the same side, you and me. We’re both working for the same goal—to put this lab rat back in his cage.” Raimond turned to Will. “Don’t look so surprised, Yankee. Never trust a beautiful woman. Just an hour before we came here, she was begging me to fuck her like a whore.”

  Will looked at Julie. Her lip was quivering; her hand was
trembling. “Julie, don’t do it. He’s not worth it. This guy is a psychopath. His words are poison …”

  The muzzle flashed, illuminating the church like a strobe. Raimond jerked and reflexively clutched his crotch as the bullet ricocheted off the marble tile in between his legs, inches from his groin.

  Will walked to where she stood and peeled the pistol from her grip before she could fire another round. She turned and faced him, tears streaming down her cheeks. He put his arm around her and pulled her into his chest.

  “It’s over now,” Will said softly.

  AJ knelt beside Albane’s fallen body at the base of the organ. She faced away from him, sprawled on her right side. He stroked her left cheek with his hand.

  She stirred. “Oaagghh.”

  “Albane? Albane, can you hear me?” he whispered.

  “It feels like someone ripped my spine out of my body,” she moaned. “I think the round hit my upper back. How long have I been out?”

  “I don’t know. Not long. Do you have your vest on?”

  “Yes. Kalen made me wear one with ceramic armor inserts.”

  “Good. Can you feel this?” AJ asked, squeezing her right hand.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you feel this?”

  “Yes, that’s my foot.”

  “Very good. Next, we need to check if the bullet penetrated through your vest. To see if you’re bleeding. Also, we need to determine if you have any broken vertebrae; if you do, moving you could damage your spinal cord.”

  “That would be bad. How do you know this stuff, AJ?”

  “Before grad school, I was an EMT-in-training for two years.”

  “You’re full of surprises today.”

  He smiled. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I want you to stay very still; I’m going to slide my hand underneath the vest to check for blood.”

  “You just want an excuse to get your hands up my shirt, don’t you Bio?” Albane said feebly.

  “You’re right, I should probably check your chest first to see if the bullet passed clear through.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Albane chuckled and then moaned in pain.

  AJ slid his hand along the small of her back and felt for wetness under her vest. He gently pulled his hand out and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. Dry, nothing slippery. He then held his fingers up into a beam of moonlight, to double check himself.

  “No blood. I think the vest did its job. But that doesn’t guarantee against a broken back. The force of a round at that velocity is like getting hit with a crowbar. We need to get you out of here.”

  “What about the shooter?”

  “He’s been neutralized. You have VanCleave to thank for that. And Abbey’s spiders.”

  “Do you hear that?” Albane asked in a hush.

  “Sirens.”

  “The police, no doubt.”

  “It sounds like they’ve brought a chopper too.”

  “Time to go.”

  “The authorities are coming. We should go. Now,” VanCleave yelled to Kalen.

  “What about Zurn?” Will said, keeping Raimond on the ground and at bay with the Sig. “We can’t just let him go.”

  Kalen glared at Raimond as he freed his bloody left hand from the piano wire noose. “Tie him up. Leave him for the police.”

  “And him?” Will asked, glancing up at Stefan Zurn, who was still hanging upside down precariously from the scaffold platform.

  “Leave him. He’s not going any—”

  Before Kalen could finish his sentence, the calf strap on Stefan Zurn’s ankle holster gave way, and the unconscious sniper plummeted head first to the ground.

  “STEFAN!” Raimond screamed. He looked at the broken body of his fallen brother, splayed unnaturally across the marble tiles, surrounded by an expanding pool of dark red blood. Hatred welled up in his eyes. He had nothing left to lose. Nothing left to live for, nothing except for revenge. Zurn slipped his right hand inside the flap of his button down shirt. His fingers found the grip of a Glock 26 9mm pocket pistol concealed snugly in an underarm holster. He looked away from his fallen brother to Will, the man who had ruined his life.

  “Weapon!” VanCleave yelled, but it was too late.

  A single shot reverberated like a thunderclap inside the church.

  Will buckled.

  Julie screamed.

  She looked from Will to Raimond, expecting him to fire another shot. Raimond’s eyes twitched; he had a strange vapid smile on his face. Then, he collapsed prone onto the marble floor: his shooting arm extended, the barrel of the Glock still smoldering.

  Kalen knelt and withdrew a small dagger from the base of the bounty hunter’s skull. He could not bring himself to look at Julie; his were eyes lowered in shame. He had failed, delivering the death strike a split second after the impulse from Raimond’s brain had traveled to his trigger finger. The 9mm round had found its target and pierced Will’s chest.

  Julie ran to Will and knelt at his side. His face was already going pale. She cradled his head in her hands, tears streaming from her eyes.

  He reached up and touched her cheek.

  “I never betrayed you,” she said.

  “I know,” he whispered.

  “Can you hear those sirens? Help is coming. You’ve just got to hang on until they get here,” she pleaded, stroking his forehead.

  He managed a fragile, tentative smile. “My legs are cold.”

  “Don’t you leave me, William Foster. Do you hear me? Please, please don’t leave me.”

  “I love you, Julie.”

  She held him tight against her chest as she wept. “I love you too.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Boston, Massachusetts

  “WHAT I’M SAYING is that I don’t fucking believe you, Robért,” Meredith hissed.

  “Believe what you want, Meredith. It is what it is,” Nicolora said.

  She glowered at him from across the table.

  “I’m not Jesus; I can’t raise Foster from the dead,” he added, and then casually stuffed a whole piece of spicy tuna roll, dripping in wasabi-infused soy sauce, into his mouth with a pair of chopsticks.

  A waiter approached the couple and asked if they would like another bottle of sake for the table. She ignored him. He shook his head no, and the waiter skittered away with prudent haste.

  “Failure is the last thing I expected from your organization on this assignment. I’ve seen your teams negotiate impossible situations, solve intractable problems, some beyond mortal comprehension. But this? This was easy. A simple search and rescue, and you couldn’t pull it off. I don’t understand,” she ranted.

  “Meredith, what you fail to recognize is that this outcome is entirely your fault. If you want to blame someone, then blame yourself.”

  “My fault! My fault? I hardly see how this is my—”

  “You were lazy and cheap. You hired amateurs, when you should have hired professionals from the beginning,” he interrupted.

  He thrust a scolding finger at her and continued.

  “Haven’t you learned anything from me? The most efficient way to solve a problem is to eliminate as many variables from the equation as possible—not introduce new ones, for God’s sake. Especially independent variables over which you have limited or no control. The Zurn brothers were absolute wild cards. You set a brush fire to try to catch your rabbit, but ended up burning down the entire forest. If anyone should be disappointed, it should be me.”

  She bit her lower lip. Abruptly, her expression softened. She blinked coyly, flashing him her best bedroom eyes.

  “No,” he reprimanded.

  “Tell me where he is,” she begged.

  “I said no.”

  “What did you do with him?”

  “I didn’t do anything with him. After he was shot by your man Zurn, the Austrians intervened. I had no choice; I pulled my team.”

  “You must know something.”

  He shrugged. “My sources tell me that Foster died a
nd was discreetly laid to rest. That’s all I know.”

  “Where? I’d like to pay my respects.”

  “No, you don’t. You want to dig him up!”

  “Robért! How could you think such a thing?”

  Nicolora stuffed another piece of sushi into his mouth, a rainbow roll this time. “This place is brilliant. Best sushi in Boston.”

  “You’re really not going to tell me, are you?” She pouted.

  “No.”

  “I could still salvage things if you just—”

  He cut her off. “Enough, Meredith! There’s nothing left to salvage.”

  She looked down at her lap. “This will ruin me, you realize.”

  Nicolora wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin from his lap. His thoughts drifted to the sample vial Kalen had lifted from Foster’s pocket in the Karlskirche that fateful night. Contrary to the charade he was now playing with his ex-client and ex-lover, all had not been lost. At this very moment, AJ was working late in his lab at The Tank trying to replicate Vyrogen’s work. And while it had never been Nicolora’s intent to pirate Meredith’s research, circumstances had left him no choice. The real FBI had since fixed its spotlight squarely on Vyrogen and Meredith, and he would not permit the greatest medical discovery of the twenty-first century to be confiscated away into some government black hole. No. He would be the secret’s custodian. Both the Nicolora Foundation and The Think Tank could reap great rewards from this golden seed. He would leverage phil-anthropic and commercial opportunities to bring his public and private faces esteem and wealth. He was confident his new RS:Bio would succeed where Meredith’s team had failed. In his experience, any problem could be solved with enough time, resources, and money … all of which he possessed in abundance.