by Alex Archer
A man in the lower left quadrant of the computer screen took a glass-cutting tool from his vest. He knelt and worked quickly, inscribing a five-inch circle in a pane of glass with quick confidence. He tapped two fingers against the scored section and the glass dropped to the tile floor inside.
The tink of glass striking the tile and shattering sounded a long way off.
Racz looked at her. “What do you want to do?”
“Not be here when those guys get inside. They’re not here to talk. Not politely, at any rate.”
The professor nodded. “Agreed. They haven’t yet broken into the garage. Perhaps that is a possibility for our escape.”
“Can we get there from here?”
“Of course. It’s attached.” Racz picked up his luggage and sprinted from the room.
Heart hammering in her ears, Annja followed him through the house. She didn’t like that she couldn’t see the progress made by the men breaking into the house, but she was certain the cordon around them was tightening.
She and Racz raced through the large, spotless kitchen and saw a uniformed man standing near the door leading out into a small courtyard. His head turned as he tracked them and he spoke sharply. Even though she couldn’t hear the man’s words, Annja knew someone could. He leveled his assault rifle, but they were past him before he could fire. If that was what he intended.
The door off the kitchen led to a remodeled utility room filled with gleaming technology. Racz walked through that door and pulled a set of keys from his pocket as he stepped out into a neat, well-kept garage that contained a small dark blue SUV and a red 1950s Corvette convertible. She wondered fleetingly if the sports car was something Grandpa Racz had left behind along with his house and journals.
Racz used the key fob to unlock the doors and the mechanisms thunked dully. He started to haul himself up into the vehicle, but Annja shouldered him aside and plucked the key from his hand.
“What are you doing?” Racz glared at her as if she’d gone mad.
“Have you ever had to escape in a vehicle before?” Since he wasn’t moving, Annja shoved him into motion.
“No, of course not.” Racz trotted around to the other side of the SUV.
“Trust me. Today isn’t a day you want to learn. There’s not going to be a do-over.” Annja pulled off her backpack and tossed it into the backseat. She slid smoothly behind the wheel, inserted the key and switched the ignition. The powerful engine blared to life, but the muffler subdued most of the noise.
Racz fumbled with his luggage for a moment, trying to heft the bag into the vehicle, having trouble in the narrower confines on his side.
“Leave it.” Annja pulled the transmission into gear.
Scowling, Racz dropped the luggage and clambered in. He was breathing hard and his eyes were wide.
“Buckle up.” Annja followed her own advice and pulled the seat restraint into place.
Racz fumbled for the seat belt and pulled it down.
From the corner of her eye, Annja spotted one of the uniformed men running toward them from the utility room. He had a machine pistol in his hands and was shouting something.
Hoping that the man had no orders to shoot to kill, Annja took her foot off the brake and dropped it onto the accelerator, aiming the SUV at the closed wooden garage door.
23
Pinned down by sniper fire, Garin watched in helpless frustration as Victor Volpi and Tarsila Innecco sprinted from the cargo container. Both of them had pistols in hand and were running crouched over to make smaller targets of themselves.
Ignoring the sniper fire for a moment, Garin leaned forward, took deliberate aim and squeezed off a shot at Volpi. The man saw Garin at the last moment and tried to take evasive action, but it was too late. The bullet caught him a glancing blow on the hip, lower than Garin had intended because at that distance pistol accuracy wasn’t a sure thing.
The impact partially spun Volpi and he stopped to regroup a few yards from the sports car. He pressed a hand to his side and his fingers came away wet with blood.
“Surrender,” Garin ordered, holding the pistol steady before him. If he could recover the money he’d lost, that would be fine. But it wasn’t necessary. Still, recouping his losses would add injury to insult for them. Not that the feelings would last long afterward.
Volpi glanced up and took a fresh grip on his pistol, raising it to fire.
Garin settled his sights over Volpi’s midsection again, cursing the pistol’s lack of range. If things had gone as Garin had hoped, he would have been shooting Volpi and Tarsila up close and personal, giving her time to see death coming for her. Her subterfuge had cost him a few million, wealth that he didn’t have to have, but the blow to his ego had been far worse and he wouldn’t suffer that. He didn’t like thinking of himself as weak or feebleminded.
And over a woman, at that.
He started to squeeze the trigger, staring down the barrel of Volpi’s gun and trusting the Kevlar body armor he wore under his clothing. Then a sledgehammer blow struck him in the ribs, knocking the wind from his lungs. Already falling, he managed to scramble back into the safety of the cargo container. The bullet had struck too fiercely to have come from Volpi’s weapon. The round had come from the unseen rifleman.
“Sir?” Portinari’s concerned tone cracked over the comm link.
“Get that sniper.” Garin sipped his breath back into his lungs. The Kevlar had kept the round from penetrating into his body, but only just.
“Yes, sir.”
Knowing he had no chance at the sniper, Garin turned his focus to Volpi, who staggered toward the car. Ignoring the pain in his side that threatened to squeeze the breath from him again, Garin fired once more, this time catching Volpi in the upper arm. The man’s gun dropped to the ground.
Tarsila leaned over the sports car’s roof and took deliberate aim. Her first round burned through Garin’s hair and caught the top of his left ear with a hot, burning kiss. Warm blood trickled down his cheek as he took a step to the side and fired another round, this time aiming at the woman.
Coolly, Tarsila held her position as both of Garin’s rounds skimmed across the hood of the car. Her next shot caught Garin in the same side as the sniper round, only a few inches higher. Spots danced in Garin’s vision as he forced himself to move again, barely escaping her follow-up round.
Volpi staggered into her field of fire as he reached the door to open it. After succeeding in pulling open the door, he sank down inside and began yelling at Tarsila. “Let’s go!”
Tarsila fired the final rounds from her pistol in rapid succession, barely missing Garin with her fusillade of shots as he retreated along the cargo container. When her weapon was empty, she clambered into the car and slid behind the wheel. The rear tires spun and screeched against the pavement as she floored the accelerator and came at Garin.
Trapped between the rows of containers, Garin knew he couldn’t have outrun the sports car even if his lungs had been pumped with oxygen and his ribs weren’t burning with pain. He drove himself forward and managed to reach a narrow opening between two stacks of cargo containers an instant before the vehicle overtook him.
The car’s fiberglass fender shredded as it kissed the rough hide of the corrugated cargo container. The deafening noise hurt Garin’s ears until Tarsila steered away from the shipping box.
He leaned from the opening after the car rushed past. Settling the pistol’s sights over the vehicle’s rapidly retreating rear, he emptied the magazine. Holes appeared in the back windshield but he was certain Tarsila and Volpi had escaped unscathed.
Ignoring his wound, Garin raced through the opening between the cargo containers. The path Tarsila had taken ended only a short distance farther on. A stack of three blue containers marked the area where an opening had been left for service vehicles to g
et through. She would have to turn back to him.
“The sniper is down,” Portinari reported.
“Good,” Garin growled as he stared at the immense loading crane standing high above the cargo containers two rows over. He ran for the crane, reached its base and sprinted up the steps leading to the control center. At the top, he pulled open the Plexiglas window and threw himself inside.
A squat man in jeans, a T-shirt and a soccer ball cap sat in an abbreviated seat at the controls. He stared fearfully at Garin when he leveled the pistol at him.
“Go!” Garin ordered in Portuguese, gesturing with the pistol, indicating the man should exit through the door.
Eyes wide, the man abandoned his post immediately, crouching against the wall in the small space until he was through the door. Then he slid down the rails on his palms and hit the ground running, never once looking back.
At the far end of the rows of containers, Tarsila gave the sports car too much acceleration and skidded out of control around a tight corner. She backed away from the container she’d collided with and left pieces of fiberglass in her wake. Then she was shooting forward again, gaining speed as the tires found traction.
Garin hated that he didn’t get to tell the woman that she deserved what was coming, that the only person she’d truly managed to fool in the long run was herself. But he knew she would get the message all the same. He hoped that she still felt as if she was going to get away with her life, that she had no idea of the fate that awaited her, right up until her last dying moment.
After holstering his weapon, Garin familiarized himself with the crane’s control levers.
The crane shivered like a great beast as he moved it around more suddenly than he should have. The forks at the end of the thick cable held a long green cargo container. If events had been within his control, Garin would have liked to have dropped the container on his prey. But that wasn’t as certain as he would have liked.
Instead, he swung the container into a collection of other metal cargo units and managed to topple them over with a loud bong followed by a series of harsh clangs. For an agonizing minute, Garin thought the impact wasn’t going to be enough to knock the stack of containers sideways.
The cargo containers slid but didn’t immediately fall. It looked as though Tarsila and Volpi were still going to get away, barely escaping under the avalanche Garin had hoped would block their path.
Then the containers succumbed to gravity and toppled like a child’s toys onto the expensive car. The vehicle came to an instant stop, flattening under the weight of the containers that had hit it.
Getting out of the crane’s seat, Garin left the machine and slid down the boarding rails on his palms just as the operator had. When he reached the ground, he kept moving, lengthening his stride because events were uncoiling quickly. The pain in his side was already lessening and he thought maybe nothing was broken.
“Sir, patrols are en route,” Portinari stated.
“Slow them if you can, but prepare for exfiltration.”
“Affirmative, sir.”
Garin wasn’t overly concerned, as long as the official didn’t shoot first and ask questions later. He kept law firms on retainer for sticky situations like this. The case could be made that he was protecting his goods as long as reparations were made for property damage. He was willing to do that if necessary.
He took the AMT .45 pistol from his leather and exchanged the spent magazine for a fresh one. He tripped the slide release, and the pistol stripped the first round from the magazine and seated it as it slid forward. Keeping the weapon at his side, he trotted toward the wreckage of cargo containers two rows over. One of the cargo containers near the top of the heap lost its fight with gravity and balance and slid down. Gashes opened in its side as it caught a corner before burying into the asphalt.
The sports car’s right side was crushed under a corner of a container. One of Volpi’s arms hung outside a window that had clamped down like teeth. Blood ran down his arm and rained down onto the ground, soaking in on contact.
Keeping the AMT trained on the front of the car, Garin stared through the shattered windshield at Volpi’s bloody face and blank, staring eyes. He was dead and gone, an empty shell.
Tarsila, on the other hand, remained still very much alive. Bloody and fearful, she sat pinned in her seat by the front section of the car where it was crushed by a cargo container. One of her eyes was nearly swollen shut and her nose was broken. Taking in the blood-covered face and the panicked eyes, Garin moved toward her.
“Tarsila?” Garin spoke softly even though warning sirens were going off.
She stared at him and raised her pistol in a shaking hand. “Garin?” She smiled and blood leaked from the corner of her mouth to her jawline.
“I’m here.”
She spit blood as she held her pistol steadier. “I knew I shouldn’t have left you alive after I took your money. I knew you were a dangerous man.”
“I am.”
Sirens closed on their location and the sound shimmied between the rows of cargo containers.
For a moment, sympathy touched Garin. During the past five hundred years, he’d been reminded again and again how fragile life was. He couldn’t even guess at how many lives he’d taken over the centuries.
Tarsila Innecco had been fun, intelligent and vivacious. He’d known it wouldn’t last. These affairs never did. Human life was too fleeting. He’d become used to enjoying what he could of them.
“You shouldn’t have betrayed me.” Garin looked at the pistol in her hand and felt certain he could move before her finger tightened on the trigger.
A thread of blood spun from the corner of her mouth to her chin and hung there for a moment before a drop splashed onto her shoulder. In her hand, the pistol shook.
She tried to smile, but her face was bruised and swollen, and the expression looked twisted. “Under other circumstances, maybe I wouldn’t have betrayed you.” She blinked and struggled to concentrate. “You never loved me.”
“If I didn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to do what you did.”
She tried the smile again, but she had less control over it. Her eyes glazed slightly and she had trouble focusing. “Maybe you did love me, but you wouldn’t have stayed in love with me.”
Garin thought about lying to her, offering some final comfort, but he knew she would recognize a falsehood immediately. “No. It’s not you. It’s me. I have issues.”
“So here we are.”
Garin shrugged.
“Sir,” Portinari said into his ear. “We have to go. Now.”
“I’ve got to leave.” Garin holstered his weapon. Watching her die made him feel sadder than he’d thought it would. Until he’d seen her so broken and helpless, he’d thought of her only as an enemy that needed to be put to death.
Tarsila tried to take a fresh grip on her weapon, but it almost slid through her fingers. “I could kill you.”
“No.” Garin shook his head. “You can’t. You’re already too far gone.”
Anger firmed her jawline and a fresh trickle of blood spilled from her mouth. She squeezed the trigger.
Even from only six feet away, the shot went wide, plucking at the loose folds of Garin’s shirt as it passed. The recoil knocked the pistol from Tarsila’s hand. Frustration tightened her eyebrows for just a moment. Then her head fell back against the seat as she relaxed in death.
Garin tapped the comm in his uninjured ear. “Get me an escape route.” He turned from the car and ran back between the rows of cargo containers, where the police vehicles couldn’t go.
Following the directions given to him by Portinari, Garin fled through the maze.
* * *
SEVERAL MINUTES LATER, a few streets in back of the harbor, Garin stepped off the corner in front of a clothing con
signment shop catering to blue-collar workers and met the black Land Rover coming down the street. The driver halted long enough to allow Garin to enter, but Garin got in so quickly that the vehicle never completely came to a stop. He slid into the backseat across from Portinari, who checked his employer for signs of injury.
“Bruises and a nicked ear.” Garin shifted slightly in the leather seat. Pain still laced his ribs and made breathing an irritating chore. “Nothing more.”
Portinari nodded. “I am glad that you are well.”
“Thank you.”
“Will there be any blowback from the woman or the pharmaceuticals?”
“Some, perhaps, but nothing that can’t be rectified with money. I’ll make sure your working account has enough capital in it to smooth over anything that might be a problem.”
The driver took an easy course in the direction of the small airport where Garin had a private jet waiting. He drove just under the speed limit.
Portinari produced a small attaché case and opened it in his lap, revealing a new pistol, a satellite phone and all of Garin’s personal identification. Garin swapped out the things he had, knowing the pistol he’d used to ambush Volpi and Tarsila would end up in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean before the sun set.
There was only one missed message on the phone, so something had hit the network that couldn’t be handled at his offices. He held the phone to his ear and played the message.
“Mr. Braden, I have received a phone call from a man named Sabre Race, who says the nature of the call is important.”
Garin knew that the call would be important. He and Sabre had been close for a time, still were in some respects but were now separate. Sabre wouldn’t call unless he had a problem.
“As you know,” the message continued, “you flagged Mr. Race’s name for your personal attention. He is calling in regards to Annja Creed, who is also flagged similarly.” The woman went on to give Sabre’s phone number.