The Nowhere Man--An Orphan X Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Evan couldn’t let him get to that weapon.

  Evan’s shotgun lay on the tile next to Marco’s feet, the barrel pointed toward the pool. Evan dove for it, snatching it up and getting off a shot just before Marco drove a heel into his kidneys.

  The beanbag round flew across the spa and smacked into Calaca’s shoulder. The fat man went down again, gurgling water. Evan tried to bring the shotgun with him as he rolled onto his back, but Marco kicked it free. It glanced off Evan’s cheek, then cracked off the thick glass enclosure of the rain shower.

  Evan threw himself up onto his feet. Marco feinted at him a few times, trying to create a reaction opening, but Evan didn’t take the bait.

  Evan’s lower back throbbed where he’d been kicked. His eye watered from the blow. Swelling pressed his cheek upward, a raw-numb tingling.

  Marco was a much better fighter than Evan. If they kept this up, he’d take Evan apart piece by piece.

  Evan had to land a single destruction blow quickly, take out a limb, and press on from there. He didn’t dare glance at the pool, but he heard Calaca surface again. Soon enough the fat man would reach that Kalashnikov.

  Marco’s eyes ticked to Evan’s swollen cheek, broadcasting his next move. His feet set, his shoulders swiveling as he shot out another jab. Evan threw a pencak silat double-hand glancing parry—slap-slap—to an arm trap, grabbing Marco’s wrist and immobilizing the arm. With the heel of his hand, he shattered the elbow, blowing the arm out in the wrong direction. He tried to hold a chicken-wing control, but Marco flailed free, his broken arm dangling limply at his side.

  Over in the pool, Calaca forged through the water, taking another unsteady step toward his AK-47. Evan had to slow him down again.

  Marco bared his teeth, blinking sweat out of his eyes. Evan weighed the odds, knew he’d pay either way. Turning his back on Marco, he snatched up the shotgun and fired off another round at Calaca. The beanbag ricocheted off the fat-padded base of the man’s skull, knocking him back underwater.

  Evan braced himself, knowing that the strike would come, and sure enough, Marco’s side kick hammered him into the wall. He heard himself grunt as if listening from afar. Marco’s next kick was aimed not at Evan but at the shotgun, jamming Evan’s finger in the trigger guard and sending the gun flying. It crashed off the wall barely a foot from David’s face and fell to the tile.

  Evan and Marco parted in the corridor, took some space. Marco cradled his broken arm across his stomach. Evan only had to watch his feet now. They circled each other, breathing hard. Marco set for a roundhouse, starting to throw his right leg. Evan thrust his lead foot forward into a jeet kune do oblique jam, striking Marco’s inner thigh at the junction of his hip. The counterstrike caused a crazy stop-motion effect, halting the kick before it started, Marco’s bent leg hinging away in reverse—a slammed door wobbling back from the frame.

  Behind him Evan heard Calaca rise from the depths again, heard him paddle toward the AK. Evan let his eyes dart toward his dropped shotgun, but Marco moved swiftly, sweeping it across the slick tile with his instep. The gun plopped into a Jacuzzi.

  Evan watched Calaca’s thick hand grab the far lip of the pool and pull his body to the edge. There was nothing Evan could do now until he got through Marco.

  Marco had only one move, and Evan waited for him to take it.

  He kept his eyes on Marco’s rear leg.

  Again Marco tried for the roundhouse. This time Evan let it come. Ducking, he tucked his head behind his elbow and pointed the tip of his ulna at the incoming knee. It struck the patella precisely, shattering the kneecap. Marco screamed, skipping back on his good leg.

  Evan had his first chance to square up. He got off a graceless shotokan front kick, a pure-force delivery of the ball of his foot to the middle of Marco’s chest. Marco flew back, banging through the glass door behind him and into the sauna. He landed in a crumpled heap across the sauna by the cedar bench.

  David remained flattened against the wall of the corridor like a piece of art, frozen, still clutching the Bacardi 151 bottle. Evan grabbed the rum from his hand and hurled it through the open door into the sauna. The bottle shattered against the heater, flame already chasing the high-proof spray. Fire rained down on Marco. He gave a shriek that sounded more animal than human.

  Evan swung the sauna door shut, snatched a Jacuzzi net skimmer from its mount, and rammed it under the handle, seating the end against the opposite wall of the corridor. The door was pinned shut, Marco trapped inside.

  Evan picked up Marco’s shotgun and started toward the pool. Behind him the muffled screams in the sauna reached a pitch he felt in his bones.

  Seemingly dazed, Calaca was still in the pool, hunched over the lip, straining to reach the AK-47, which remained just out of reach. Evan stepped onto the artificial turf, his boots crunching audibly. Calaca turned, and Evan hit him in the collarbone with a baton round, the impact punctuated by the splintering of the thin bone. To his credit, the guy kept his feet, but barely, sagging against the concrete edge. One beefy arm slapped the concrete behind him as he held his head and torso above the surface.

  With wide eyes Calaca peered back over his meaty shoulder. Then he turned to grab again for his gun. His fingertips edged it farther away. Grunting against the pain, he drew back for another lunge.

  Evan reached the paisley-shaped bar with its decorative Christmas lights arrayed across the surface. He smashed a few of the colorful oversize bulbs against the sustainably farmed rain-forest wood, then tore the string free.

  “Espera,” Calaca said. He was shivering in the water, clinging to the concrete edge, his grooved skull glistening with droplets. “Por favor—”

  Evan slung the string of broken lights over and into the pool.

  The effect was half explosion, half sound effect, a massive foomp that knocked Calaca upright. His body jolted a few times and then sank below the surface. A moment later he bobbed up, floating on his back, arms in a Christlike spread, his gold necklace glittering in a tuft of chest hair that had escaped the collar.

  Two dogs, eight guards, two snipers, one doctor, and Dex.

  In the corridor David remained where Evan had left him, frozen against the wall, arms raised. In the barred sauna across the space, flames continued to crackle, but Marco’s screams had ceased.

  As Evan approached, David held out his hands, shrinking away. “Please don’t kill me. I’m a victim, too. I’m—”

  Evan grabbed his jacket, ripping the slender remote free from the inner pocket, taking the fabric along with it. The force of the motion spun David around, and Evan kicked him into the Korean mist room. He vanished into a billowy sheet of white haze, landing with a satisfying crash.

  Up the corridor a Kalashnikov coughed out a burst and pebbled glass flew into sight, raining across the tile.

  René’s men breaching the spa door.

  Evan jogged back over the fake turf, upgrading his less-lethal shotgun to Calaca’s AK-47. On the bar the tray of snacks was gone, replaced by a basket of apples. Evan pocketed two. One of the guard’s heavy jackets was looped over the back of a lounge chair.

  He grabbed it as he ran by, heading for the elevator.

  The car was there and waiting, and he slid inside just as the cavalry spilled into view, weapons raised. Evan and René’s men had a half second to stare at one another.

  Evan gave a little shrug as the doors rolled shut.

  The elevator whirred its way slowly to the basement.

  Arming sweat off his brow, he aimed the barrel of the Kalashnikov between the bumpers, waiting for them to part. They did.

  He had expected almost anything.

  But not this.

  38

  A Bad Night’s Work

  Bags of blood.

  Dangling from mounts inside glass-fronted medical refrigerator units, the shiny IV bags bulged like glossy red fillets.

  There was medical equipment, too, complex elephantine machines with tangles of cords and smooth be
ige casings. Enough gurneys for a warfront triage center. And Dr. Franklin sprawled across one of the mattresses, his jaws loose around a rubber strap, blinking languidly.

  Evan threw the emergency stop lever, freezing the elevator, and stepped out into the basement. It seemed unreal, a warehouse of dream imagery. He stared through the refrigerator windows at the chilled bags, coded by date and donor name.

  They hung like shiny fruits, an orchard of blood.

  Evan stopped in his tracks in front of one of the blood-storage units. To his side rose a gleaming, chrome-plated industrial safe. Five feet tall, heavy-duty steel hinges, bolted to the floor.

  Curious.

  Beside the safe was a tall metal filing cabinet, one drawer slightly ajar. He flicked it the rest of the way out. Medical files, each tab with a “patient” name. He snapped one up from the rack, flipped it open. A full medical workup of a girl listed as seventeen years old. Blood screening and analysis, pathogen reduction and purification, red-blood-cell and platelet count.

  Franklin seemed barely to register Evan’s approach. His skin had a gray, stoned pallor. Stubble fuzzed his cheeks and neck. A needle dangled from his left arm just below the cinched rubber strap, the tip still embedded in a swollen vein. Vials neatly lined a metal medical tray at his side.

  Evan set the heavy coat on the neighboring mattress. “What is all this?” he asked.

  The doctor’s chapped lips moved, but no sound came out.

  Evan grabbed one of the vials. Fentanyl. He threw it across the room. That brought the life back into Franklin’s eyes.

  “What is all this?” he said again.

  Franklin’s slender hands spread open as if bestowing grace. “This is René’s secret garden.” He smiled. “It’s how he’s fed.”

  “Fed. He transfuses himself with this blood? For what?”

  “Studies. There are studies…” Dr. Franklin’s gaze loosened, and he drifted off.

  Evan cuffed him across the face.

  The elevator shaft conveyed raised voices from above, distorted shouts and radio static.

  Evan looked at all those bags, all those donor names. “He kills these people?”

  “No, no. Unless…” A smile flickered across Franklin’s face, an inside joke. “Unless there are accidents.”

  His eyelids fluttered. Evan traced his dilated pupils to the ancient brick fireplace across the basement. Beneath the log holder, mounds of dark ash.

  Only now did Evan feel the cold of the room seeping through his skin, sinking into his bones. Crossing the space on deadened legs, he dropped to his knees on the hard concrete before the fireplace. He swept a hand through the ash. Came up with a metal hoop the size of a silver dollar.

  A gauge earring.

  He thought about the black smoke he’d seen pouring from the chimney two days before.

  Evan drew his hand through the heap one more time, let the ash sift between his fingers like sand. A dental bridge remained on his palm.

  He wished now that he had killed David for helping lure the victims here.

  It was not, however, too late for Franklin.

  Half turning, Evan unleashed a volley of rounds at the refrigerator units, shattering the glass and ripping through the IV bags. Shards and red droplets filled the air, raining down on the concrete floor. He shot up the equipment next, riddling the oversize units, sending forth showers of sparks. Only the safe remained impervious, the bullets pinging off the chrome exterior.

  From his languid recline, Franklin watched Evan approach.

  A clanking echoed down from above, the guards up in the spa forcing open the elevator doors. Evan could hear René’s men monkeying down the shaft.

  He stood over Franklin, backlit by the dim glow of the shot-to-shit unit behind him, his shadow falling across the doctor’s face. A drop clung to the lower lid of Franklin’s left eye, but he didn’t look sad. He looked relieved.

  “Yes,” Franklin said with a wan smile. He swept an arm toward the sparking machines. “It deserved it.” He blinked, and the tear gummed on his lashes. “I deserve it.”

  Evan raised the AK.

  The single report echoed around the concrete.

  Across the room a series of thuds announced the men’s landing on top of the elevator. From the sound of it, they had numbers. Evan had succeeded in drawing them here to the belly of the chalet.

  He buttoned up the guard’s heavy coat. Kicked over a medical cart beneath one of the basement windows. Readied the slender remote in one hand, the Kalashnikov in the other.

  He shot out the basement window, then hopped up on the cart and dove through the opening in the glass. As soon as he hit the snow, he clicked the remote, turning on the outdoor lights.

  The chalet and grounds lit up like day.

  A pair of approaching guards reeled back, clutching at their night-vision goggles, the sudden brightness scalding their retinas. The sniper on the northern slope behind his night-vision scope would likewise be blinded.

  With the last of his bullets, Evan stitched a line of holes across the guards’ critical mass, spilling them forward into the snow.

  As he tossed the weapon aside, swept up a set of night-vision goggles, and bolted for tree cover at the base of the southern slope, he ran his mental tally.

  Two dogs, six guards, two snipers, David, and Dex.

  Not a bad night’s work.

  39

  To the Brink

  Snow flurried even under the canopy of pines. Evan worked a switchback beneath the trees of the southern slope, sticking to a furrow cut into the mountainside to keep his head low. He had a hitch in his step, and his ribs ached; all that fighting had taken a toll.

  He didn’t know the south sniper’s position, so he paused again, snapping the night-vision goggles down over his eyes and peering across the crest. The NVGs cast everything in a green glow.

  He swept his gaze up the hillside, caught a set of eyes glinting back at him.

  He reeled away, banging against a boulder before realizing that the eyes belonged to a white-tailed deer. It stared dolefully at him across the night before bounding off with a twitch of its legs.

  Evan crouched by the boulder, catching his breath and reaching back for the wilderness skills he’d learned as a young man. The three keys to survival: shelter, fire, water. He’d been taught how to pick a spot—high ground, cleared space—and to frame out a hut, shingling leaves over branches. But the current situation wouldn’t allow for that yet. There would be only sporadic rest stops until he was out of the valley and across the range.

  He was running on increasingly numb legs. Any stop could kill him. And yet if he got too cold, his body would lock up and he’d die of exposure. Which meant he had to balance himself on the razor’s edge, running himself to the brink of freezing before pausing to reheat over a fire.

  To the brink but not an inch further.

  He drove on up the slope.

  * * *

  René surveyed the wreckage of the spa, his jaw tensing until he could feel knots at the corners. David stood behind him, an ice pack pressed against his pretty face where it had struck the pebble-studded bench inside the mist room.

  One of René’s men struggled to fish Calaca’s corpse from the pool; another mopped blood from the tile. Manny was downstairs safing the lab, and René had dispatched Dex with the remaining three guards to follow Evan’s tracks. The snow proved helpful, the footsteps clearly marked. A radioed update had informed René that Evan had backtracked a few times to obscure his trail but hadn’t had enough time to pull it off convincingly.

  Dex was good with footprints.

  René rubbed his eyes until they burned.

  David removed the ice pack and pressed gingerly at the bruise coming up on his forehead. “Guy was like a typhoon,” he said. “It was pretty insane.”

  René opened his bloodshot eyes. His thumb and forefinger held dust from the foundation he’d dabbed over the spider veins on his nose earlier. The look he gave David mu
st have held everything he was feeling, because David recoiled from it, blanching. Fear had stripped away the kid’s seen-it-all veneer; he looked his age, not a day older.

  David cleared his throat. “I’ll be upstairs.”

  René said, “You’ll be right here until Manny gets back.”

  For once David offered no pithy retort.

  As if on cue, the elevator doors opened and Manny emerged. He ran a tongue across his gold teeth, one cheek quivering nervously beneath the eye. “You’re gonna want to see this, boss.”

  René felt something inside him turn to ice.

  * * *

  Evan ducked under a half-snapped tree trunk, hurdled a snarl of branches, pressing up the face of the mountain. The crisp air charged his lungs, set them tingling. Though he’d made it halfway up the mountain, the final incline looked to be the steepest.

  As he scrabbled up a cracked sheet of shale, his boots sent pebbles cascading behind him. He tumbled over the brink into a bed of decomposing needles. The sharp tips poked his palms as he shoved himself back up.

  He paused to tie his boots even tighter but had trouble gripping the laces, his fingers fumbling around the cords.

  Another few minutes and he’d be too cold to help himself.

  Though the sun remained below the horizon, a curtain of dirty gray showed to the east, starting to rise across the black bowl of the sky. It was just light enough that he might risk a fire. Given the condition of his fingers, there wasn’t a better choice. He stopped, panting, warring with himself.

  I will get to you. He’d promised the kid.

  And he pictured that yellow shipping bill floating away on the wind outside the holding house in Fullerton, the last record of Alison Siegler.

  He had to heat his body just enough so it could keep driving forward.

  He scanned his surroundings with the NVGs, looking for any sign of the sniper. Nothing.

  Inside a ring of close-set trees, he cleared a small patch of ground. He gathered a few fallen branches. Melting snowflakes clung to the bark, so he used the piano wire to strip the wetness and expose the dry wood beneath. The wire pinched his pink hands. It was a sloppy, imprecise process, but it got the job done.