The Phoenix Egg

by Richard Bamberg

  Becky caught his eye.

  John gave her a half grin and touched the brim of his hat with the silencer. He turned quickly and walked into the hallway.

  Caitlin waited at the back door.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  John stopped beside her and looked back toward the bar. “Holdren made me as being with you.”

  She seemed to notice the gun in his hand for the first time. “Did...did you kill him?”

  “No, just put him down for awhile. Enough time for us to get out of here.”

  John popped the magazine from the little Ruger .22 caliber and checked it by the light of the exit sign. There were five more rounds. The .22 was an assassin’s handgun. It didn’t carry enough knockdown power for a serious weapon, but more than enough for putting a round in the back of someone’s head. In the hands of an expert, it could deliver a one-shot kill at ranges out to twenty yards, but beyond that luck overtook skill. He snapped the magazine back into place.

  He’d hold onto it for now.

  “Listen, Caitlin, my car is in the same place as last night. I’m going to it. I want you to count to sixty, and then follow me, unless I call you sooner. Understand?”

  “You think there might be more of them?”

  “That’s a safe bet. If so, they may or may not have a guard on the back door. We’ll see in a second.”

  Caitlin nodded her understanding.

  John listened. The bar sounds had returned to near normal. He opened the door casually. Keeping the Ruger down low and just behind him, he stepped out and put on a bit of a stagger.

  His voice came out in a heavily intoxicated slur. “Don’t you worry ‘bout me.”

  He weaved a little, spinning about as if he had trouble with the short step-down while he covered the wharf for signs of a watcher.

  There was movement in the shadows at the corner of the building. One, maybe two men waited there.

  John held up his keys in his left hand, ignoring the burning in his shoulder, and shook them at the closed door. “I don’t need anyone telling me when I’m too in–intoc– drunk to drive. No, sir. Not me.”

  He staggered back away from the door, moving indirectly toward the corner where the watcher waited.

  Twice he used the wall to steady himself.

  “Damn right. Gotta drive home tonight ... ain’t in no condition to walk.”

  He reached the corner and acted as if he were seeing the watcher for the first time. Swaying back on his feet, John put his hands out, balancing, and then shook his keys at the watcher.

  “Essuse me, there sonny. How ‘bout fetching my Caddy. I seem to have misplaced it.”

  The watcher, a man of stout build, and close-cropped hair had a bulge under his left arm and a receiver in his ear. He watched John dangle the keys in his face for a second, then spoke into his left cuff. “It’s just some damn old drunk.”

  He moved his left hand away from his face and made a motion over his shoulder. “Go on, get out of here.”

  “That’s no way to talk to me. I...”

  John swayed again. He bent at the waist and made what he hoped was a horrible retching sound.

  The watcher’s tone was disgusted. “Ah, Gees. Don’t do that here....”

  He stepped forward and put a hand on John’s shoulder as if to push him away. John straightened quickly and brought his left fist upward into the man’s abdomen.

  With an explosive grunt, the man doubled over in much the same position John had just left. While he was still bent, John raised the Ruger and chopped it hard against the back of the man’s head. The man sprawled unconscious to the pavement.

  John heard the door opening behind him. He turned quickly, the Ruger outstretched.

  It was Caitlin.

  He lowered the gun.

  She caught sight of him, noticed the body at his feet, and then swept the wharf with her gaze.

  John motioned toward his car and then unlocked the doors and disarmed the security system with the remote. He bent and quickly patted down the unconscious man’s clothing. John found a Sig/Sauer 9 mm strapped in a shoulder holster, and his pockets held a handkerchief, some keys, and a thin leather wallet. John transferred the wallet and keys to his jacket pocket and pulled the Sig from the holster.

  It was a good weapon. It was the weapon of choice for the FBI and numerous police agencies around the country. It gave a little more credence to the chance that these were federal agents.

  There was also no point in leaving it behind.

  Standing, he trotted over to his car. Caitlin waited by the passenger door. Her eyes didn’t hold on him. Instead, they jumped from the building’s corner to the rear door and back.

  “It’s unlocked. Get in,” John said.

  He climbed behind the driver’s seat, fastened his shoulder harness, and cranked the engine. Caitlin put her bag on the floor and sat down.

  “Buckle up. This may get interesting.”

  John put the car in gear and eased around the corner of the bar. He drove slowly, looking for any sign of Holdren’s accomplices. There were bound to be more. The street looked deserted, but there was a suspicious van a half block toward the right.

  The van was facing The Gleaning Cube. John considered, then immediately turned in that direction. He flicked his headlights on bright. As the lights fell fully on the van, John pointed out across the bay toward distant Oakland.

  “Would you look at that,” he said.

  Caitlin reflexively turned her face.

  “What is it?” Her voice was edgy.

  “Nothing, but keep looking that way for a few seconds.”

  John accelerated smoothly until they were past the van. “All right, you can stop looking.”

  Caitlin turned and stared at him. “What was that about?”

  “That van back there. I thought they might be inside, watching for you to show.”

  Caitlin turned in the seat and looked back.

  “No!”

  Caitlin jerked back around. “What? What’d I do?”

  “They could have been watching.”

  “They couldn’t see my face from here.”

  “Did you ever hear of night scopes?”

  In the rearview mirror, John saw the van’s tail lights come on.

  “Shit.”

  He took the next left and punched the accelerator to the floor. “They hadn’t gotten a good look at you before because the headlights would have washed out our images. They were bound to keep watching until either they had a good view of you or we were out of sight.

  “If I didn’t know better I’d swear you were trying to let them see you.”

  Behind them, the van turned the corner and accelerated. John took the next right, sliding on wet pavement in the curve, before straightening.

  “How can you suggest that?” Caitlin asked.

  “I can suggest a lot.”

  “It’s me they’re trying to kill.” Her voice quivered.

  “Well, I did say I knew better, but it does seem damn strange that you’d turn around to look at them.”

  John reached behind him and fumbled through the canvas bag he’d set on the floor. His fingers closed on the goggles, and he pulled them out.

  “What’s that?”

  “Haven’t you ever seen night vision goggles?”

  “Is that what those are? I thought they were big bulky things.”

  “Used to be, most still are, but these aren’t. Isn’t technology grand?”

  John slipped them over his head with one hand but didn’t pull them down. His fingers found the on switch, and he activated them.

  The van was just coming around the last corner when John reached the alley he’d been aiming for. He opened the center console and flicked the middle of three toggle switches.

  The toggle switch energized a relay disconnecting all of the car’s lights, including the brake lights.

  “Hold on,” John said.

  Jamming on the brakes, John slowed quick
ly in the darkness between two street lamps and took a sharp turn into an alley. The interior of the alley was pitch black.

  Caitlin let out a little screech and grabbed the dash as she saw the narrow gap John was aiming for.

  John pulled the goggles over his eyes.

  The greenish cast, typical of starlight devices, was disorientating if you weren’t used to it. John drove through the alley, still accelerating, the big V-8 booming off the brick walls like thunder. In the mirror, he saw the van flash by the alley’s entrance without slowing.

  At the next street, John slowed and turned back in the direction they’d come. He flicked the toggle switch back, and the car’s lights came back on. John pulled the goggles off his head and tossed them back in the bag.

  He turned to Caitlin. “Now then, where were we?”

  She stared at him for a moment. “Have you done that before?”

  “A couple of times. It’s quite a rush without the goggles.”

  “Without the goggles?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t want to take the chance of them hearing anything. The last time I did it without the goggles I had to have the paint touched up on your side.”

  John took a left and turned toward one oh one.

  ***

  Dewatre munched on a sandwich as he watched Blalock maneuver to elude his pursuers. He admired the man’s forethought. Such careful planning explained how Blalock was able to do so much damage to French recherché operations. Perhaps such a formidable antagonist would have to be neutralized even as one of his compatriots was moving to neutralize the competition from the Japanese.

  Dewatre had already called in a support team. They would arrive within twenty-four hours. Until then, he’d have to keep Maxwell and Blalock under surveillance to make sure they didn’t pass the material to someone else. He might also have to look at having a false trail laid down to lead the men of NCIX away from their mutual quarry.

  CHAPTER 19

  Caitlin watched the traffic flowing along the northbound lanes of one oh one. It still amazed her that even near midnight the freeway was as crowded and possibly even more crowded than Albuquerque’s at rush hour.

  She didn’t say much to John on the thirty-minute trip down the peninsula. Occasionally she found herself staring at him. Although the scar wasn’t visible from this side, he hardly looked like the same John Blalock she’d known. He was too young to have developed crow’s feet, but there were the first signs of them around his eyes. He was always squinting, could he need glasses? Somehow, she didn’t think so. Something in the way he had changed had given him a perpetual squint. It was as though he was suspicious of everyone and everything.

  Strangely enough, she was still attracted to him. It wasn’t his physical appearance although he was still handsome, even with the scar and the squint. No, the attraction was on a deeper level. Could it be just because he had saved her life once and was doing a good job of repeating the deed?

  Stop trying to analyze your feelings. You’re not some kid on an adventure. You’re a grown woman whose husband was just killed, and if you don’t keep your mind clear, you may follow him down that path sooner than you want.

  Caitlin felt the car slowing and saw John was taking the exit. “Who are we going to see?”

  “Louie Grayson.”

  “And you think he can decipher the encoding on this disk?”

  “If anyone can.”

  They went over a couple of streets, then turned south on Camino Real. A few blocks later they turned into a neighborhood of older apartments and few houses. The few houses there looked much older than even the apartments.

  “Not exactly the cutting edge of development,” Caitlin said.

  “No, Louie’s grandparents left him the house they bought when they moved out to the Bay Area after the Second World War. These apartments were built in the seventies. Students at Stanford take up most of them.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah, you ought to see this neighborhood on the weekends. Drunken parties everywhere.”

  He slowed and turned into a driveway. As he killed the lights and the engine, Caitlin looked around.

  “Not exactly pretentious,” she said.

  The yard was nearly dark, and the nearest street light was a half block away. Even in the dim light, she could tell the yard needed mowing, and she could see the darker shadows of various sized clumps of leaves. The trees and shrubbery hadn’t been pruned in years. From all appearances, the house may have been vacant for months.

  “Louie has never been one to care much about appearances,” John said.

  They got out of the car and John walked toward the rear.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got to get something from the trunk.” He unlocked it, reached in, and pulled out his overnight bag.

  “We’re staying here tonight?”

  “No, I just need some of my things.”

  They left the car and walked toward the porch and stopped beneath the single yellow light that glowed above the front door.

  “You think he can help us?”

  John rang the bell. She could hear its distant chime.

  “Yeah, he can help us. Smile at the camera.”

  Caitlin followed his gaze and saw a security monitor mounted in the corner of the ceiling.

  “Louie, it’s John with a friend.”

  A few seconds later, she could hear footsteps. The door opened, and a man stepped into view. Louie was a balding, middle-aged man with the physical stature of a fourth grader. His large nose and long beard gave him the appearance of a Tolkien dwarf, but his garish Hawaiian shirt, knee-length purple shorts, and orange and blue sneakers spoiled the illusion making him look more like a David Dorman rendition of a Tolkien dwarf.

  Caitlin had to suppress a chuckle. He did dress like a software nerd.

  “Hi, John. Who’s the lady?” he asked.

  “Louie, let me introduce Caitlin Maxwell, a friend from way back. Caitlin, this is Louie Grayson, the best computer man in the Bay Area.”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Charmed,” said Louie with a perfunctory bow.

  “Mind if we come in? We have some business to discuss.”

  “My door is always open to you or your friends, John,” Louie replied and stepped back from the door.

  John motioned for her to go ahead. She took a brief look around the street, more out of nervousness than because she thought they might have actually been followed, and then walked past Louie.

  Louie closed the door after them and reset the locks. “Can I get you anything? Drinks? Have you eaten?”

  “Not just now, Louie,” John said. “This is a business call.”

  Louie seemed almost disappointed. “Uh huh.”

  He looked John over for a moment and then shook his head sadly. “Are you going to need help with that?”

  John lifted his bag and passed it to him. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Very well, come on.”

  Louie led them into the kitchen.

  “Take your coat off,” Louie said as he set John’s bag on the counter and opened it.

  What was going on?

  “John?” Caitlin asked.

  As he shrugged out of his trench coat, she saw the fresh blood stain that ran down his shirt.

  “My God, were you shot?”

  “Yeah. It’s not much.”

  “Not much? You’ve been shot.”

  “Yeah, I think we’ve determined that.”

  He loosened the Velcro closures on his vest.

  Caitlin stepped close to him and pushed his hands away. “Let me do that.”

  She lifted the vest from his shoulders and was surprised by its weight. While he watched, she unbuttoned each button on his shirt and pulled its tail from his pants. She lifted it carefully off his shoulders and felt her stomach get queasy as the puckered wound was revealed.

  It was a tiny thing, red and raw around the edges and surrounded by the darkening c
ircle of a bruise. Blood still seeped from it and trickled down the outside of his arm.

  Caitlin stepped behind him and gingerly pulled the shirt down his arms.

  John examined the wound as she draped his shirt over the back of a chair.

  “Not too bad,” Louie said.

  Caitlin saw he was carrying a dark bottle and a gauze bandage.

  “You should sit down if you want me to work on it.”

  Caitlin pulled another chair from the table and held it for John.

  “Thanks,” he said as he sat.

  Louie soaked the bandage in something from the bottle that resembled iodine and used it to clean around the edges of the wound. He went back to John’s bag and returned with a small aerosol bottle and a sealed plastic bag that contained forceps. After shaking the bottle for a few seconds, he sprayed a fine stream of liquid into the center of the wound.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Topical anesthetic. It’ll cut some of the pain.”

  He set the bottle to one side and raised the forceps.

  Caitlin found herself staring at the floor.

  “Hey.”

  She looked up and met John’s gaze. “Yes?”

  “You had better watch this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you may have to do it yourself,” Louie said.

  “What?” Caitlin asked.

  “If you’re one of John’s clients then there’s always the possibility that something like this is going to come up again. You never can tell when you may have to learn a new skill.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “He’s serious, Caitlin. Now please watch, I don’t like doing this sort of thing either, but the ability comes in handy.”

  Caitlin stepped closer. John raised his right hand, and she took it in both of hers.

  Louie probed the interior of the wound and the forceps sunk more than two inches into John’s shoulder. Caitlin’s hands tightened around John’s.

  He seemed so calm, so relaxed. He even smiled and gave her hands a light squeeze, but Caitlin could see a line of sweat beading up on his forehead. The anesthetic wasn’t blocking all the pain.