Ultimate Weapon

by Shannon McKenna

  Traveling could be dangerous. A woman always needed options.

  Then, the computer. Dried tear tracks tickled her cheeks as she pinned down the first e-tickets she could find. Seattle to Hawaii, Hawaii to Auckland. Fine for now. Nice and far. She and Rachel could play on a warm beach and try being Kiwis. She closed her laptop, packed it.

  She packed everything into the fogeymobile, an antiquated, butt-ugly beige Ford Taurus that the McClouds’ computer geek buddy Miles had sold to her some time ago. Invisible cars came in handy sometimes.

  And then the hard part. Waking Rachel, dragging her out of a warm bed, dressing her, wrestling her into the car at this ungodly hour of the night. It would be an insult to anyone, let alone a toddler.

  Rachel was as unhappy about it as Tam had anticipated, but once she got the kid strapped into the car seat, the worst of it was over. There was nothing like earsplitting wails of rage to keep a woman awake and alert on the road—and incidentally, to distract her from any impulse to look nostalgically back over her shoulder, as the closest thing to home she’d had since she was fifteen receded into the distance.

  Back to zero again. What a bore. And she couldn’t even vow revenge on that goat-fucking bastard.

  Her stomach burned, her chest was tight, her throat ached. She’d considered herself detached, but she needed a pair of bolt cutters to detach from all this. Snip, snip. Watch her bleed.

  After a half hour, Rachel had shrieked herself into an exhausted doze, leaving Tam in blessed silence. She had less than two hours to come up with a clever plan for stashing her jewelry, other than the trunk of the car, abandoned in the long-term parking lot. There were worse places. No time to do anything else with them and still make the flight.

  Either she’d get back to them, or she wouldn’t. Let it go. It was only hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in pure gold, platinum, precious gems, and creative designs that she’d spent years of her life developing. No biggie. Snip, snip with the bolt cutters. Let it go.

  Rachel was sleeping when they got to the airport. Tam tucked her into the stroller and watched her breath fog around her pale, tiny face as they waited for the shuttle. Long in coming at this desolate hour.

  The lines weren’t bad once they got to the terminal. She willed Rachel to stay asleep until the security gate. Not a chance that the kid would sleep through getting pulled out of her stroller, having her shoes removed and going through the bomb-puffing portal, but if Tam could hear herself think up until that point, she would count herself lucky.

  Things went smoothly at the e-ticket kiosk as she put Rachel’s ticket info through, but it choked on her own. Tam hissed through her teeth as the message on the screen told her to talk to a ticket agent. Now for an interminable fucking wait in a long, slow line. The back of her neck was crawling madly as it was.

  She spent the time in line analyzing everyone she could see, including the airline personnel, identifying potential attackers. One never knew. She wished she could have disguised herself, but then again, why bother? Rachel was a dead giveaway. It wasn’t as if she could pass the kid off as a bag lady or a Hasidic banker.

  When she got to the head of the line, Rachel was awake, and starting to fuss. The apple-cheeked woman at the counter looked over their passports, tapped into her computer, and frowned.

  She tapped some more, blinked, and shot a furtive glance at Tam. The woman’s eyes slid quickly away. Tam’s stomach clenched.

  This, too. Janos must have accessed her computer, intercepted the data somehow. He’d red-flagged her. Shit. Tens of thousands invested in travel documents for Rachel and herself squashed in one deft move, and now what the fuck was she going to do?

  This meant that Janos and God knew who else knew exactly where she was right now. Her heart sped up. She looked over her shoulder and reassessed everyone she’d studied before.

  “Um, ma’am? I’m sorry, but there’s a problem with your passport.” The woman blinked nervously, as if expecting Tam to sprout horns. “I’m afraid you’ll have to, um, talk to security.”

  “Security?” Tam made her eyes innocently big, and pulled Rachel out of her stroller. The toddler wrapped her arms around Tam’s neck in her octopus hug. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s just a little glitch in the system,” the lady assured her. “But if you’d just step over there to the side and wait, I’ll have ’em come right on over and sort this out for ya right away, OK?”

  Tam exchanged a big, fake, golly-gee-aren’t-thesemachines-a-pain-in-the-behind smile with the woman and walked the way she’d been pointed. Leaving behind the survival suitcase full of medicines, toys, equipment. Leaving behind the stroller and the compromised passports. Keeping only the diaper bag, her purse, and Rachel. Snip, snip went the bolt cutters. She walked past the place the woman had indicated.

  “Um, ma’am? Wait right there, please,” the woman called out anxiously. “Security’ll be right with ya!”

  “Sorry, but my daughter needs the bathroom,” Tam called back. “Urgently, or we’ll have an accident. I’ll be right back, OK? Gotta scoot!”

  She ducked around the corner, circled a crowd of Japanese tourists being herded into the ticket line by a harrassed tour operator, and sprinted down the escalator to the ground transportation area. There were several people in line for the taxis, and no taxis to be seen. She could not wait in that line. They would be on her in minutes.

  The shuttle to the other terminals and the long-term parking lot was in the far lane. She darted across the road and climbed aboard the short bus, slumping down in the seat to be less visible. A minute or so later, a tall guy in an army jacket with a battered knapsack, long tangled brown hair and a bushy beard climbed aboard. She’d seen him in the terminal, asleep in one of the chairs, legs sprawled, mouth hanging open. Shaded John Lennon glasses covered his eyes.

  He slouched promptly down into his seat and fell asleep again. The reek of his patchouli and marijuana filled the shuttle. He must be going somewhere in Asia, to smoke massive quantities of weed and dream his days away in the Himalayas, or the sun-drenched beaches of Phuket. The lucky bastard.

  “Is this bus leaving?” She couldn’t control the edge in her voice.

  “Two minutes,” the guy said.

  Two minutes were a goddamn eternity. The next passenger to board was a tall, burly guy with a square chin, and a thick neck, and a swollen, reddened face that screamed steroids. Late thirties. Long, layered blond hair. Big white teeth. Hulking shoulders. No suitcase, just a knapsack. He slumped into the seat opposite hers. His thick thigh muscles bulged, straining his tight jeans.

  Tam’s neck crawled. She had no guns or knives. They were out of the question for anyone hoping to fly. She had nothing helpful on her except a topaz-studded sopor-spray barrette with a very small reservoir. A one-squirt deal. Maybe two squirts, if she was lucky.

  Rachel was starting to tug at Tam’s coat and ask questions she could not focus on sufficiently to answer. Two more guys got on the shuttle, both suspiciously young, fit and unencumbered. One was a lanky black man with a hooded sweatshirt, a duffel bag over his shoulder. The other was a crewcut jock type in polar fleece with a backpack. Both of them had cold, hard faces. Neither looked at her.

  That, in itself, was strange enough to warrant alarm, even at an airport at the crack of dawn. In the normal universe, any straight man who saw her looked at her and then looked again. It wasn’t vanity, just a simple fact of life. The fact that three men in a row had not done so was a very bad sign.

  In the very second in which Tam decided that throwing herself on the mercy of airport security was preferable to the ominous possibilities of these strange men, the bus lurched abruptly out onto the road.

  She leaped up. “Hold on. Wait! I’m getting off here!”

  The driver accelerated and cleared the end of the terminal, easing the bus into the chute of an exit ramp. No escape.

  “Too late,” he said, his voice faintly triumphant
. “You can get off at the next terminal, or you can make the loop.”

  Tam sank back down into her seat, jaw clenched, and fought with the urge to panic. She murmured something senseless but soothing to Rachel’s inquisitive babble, and she started rummaging in the diaper bag for her jewelry case. Her hands were cold, shaking.

  She was an idiot for having put Rachel into this situation. For not finding a solution sooner, not doing the hard, necessary thing before it came to this. There were some possibilities in her purse, but she disliked the thought of spraying toxic substances in an enclosed area near Rachel. She identified each by touch, discarding one after the other as too risky. The barrette she currently wore was her best bet. It was a small dose, and just a soporific, not a poison or a corrosive, if Rachel should accidently take a hit.

  She pulled it out of her hair, positioned it between her fingers.

  Maybe she was being paranoid, she thought. These men might just be mercenaries off to Iraq or Afghanistan. Men like that tended to have that hard, suspicious vibe. They kept to themselves, traveled light.

  Yeah, right. Her stomach churned. Rachel picked up on Tam’s unease, and went very quiet, clutching Tam’s collar with damp, clammy kitten claws.

  Thick Neck slid across his seat, across the aisle, and into the seat behind them. He leaned on the back of their seat, grinning.

  Adrenaline ramped up in her overloaded system. Her hand tightened on the barrette. Thick Neck fluttered blunt, bolt-knuckled red fingers at Rachel. “Hi there, cutie,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  Tam gave him a big, sweet, sudden-death smile. Rachel dove for cover in her bosom. He watched appreciatively. “Nice,” he said.

  “She doesn’t like strangers,” Tam said.

  “She’ll like me when she gets used to me,” Thick Neck said.

  The hell she will, shithead, she told him with her eyes. “Why don’t you just piss off?” she suggested sweetly.

  The segue into doom had been so smooth, she wasn’t even surprised when the SIG with the silencer rose up, cleared the top of the seat, and pointed at the back of Rachel’s curly head.

  The guy clicked his tongue. “Rude,” he whispered. “Now listen to me, bitch. Do exactly what I tell you. Move real slow, and don’t make a sound. I’ll let you just imagine what’ll happen if you don’t, because I don’t want to have to say it in front of the little cutie-pie. Got me?”

  Tam’s eyes darted around the bus. The men who’d gotten in after Thick Neck watched what was happening with expressionless faces. Patchouli Pothead dozed blissfully on, head lolling, mouth slack.

  “Listen good. Put the kid down real slow on the seat,” Thick Neck whispered. “Then stand up. Turn your back to me, and put both hands behind your back. Slow . . . slow. Barker, get over here with those cuffs. Wow, they didn’t tell me you were so hot. Look at those tits. We’re going to have to get to know each other, beautiful. Those tits are special.”

  Tam put Rachel down on the seat, detaching tiny, clinging hands from her hair. “Listen, baby,” she whispered in Ukrainian. “These men are bad. Slide off the seat and onto the floor, and stay way down. Can you do that for Mamma?”

  “Shut up, bitch. Speak English,” Thick Neck growled.

  “Shut up, and speak English?” she murmured. “Neat trick.”

  He scowled. “I said, shut up!”

  Rachel stared up into Tam’s face, her dark eyes huge, and slid like a boneless little eel down into the dark well between the seats. Brilliant, smart, good girl, yes, yes, yes. Tam silently cheered. To hell with the stupid doctors who’d warned her that Rachel probably had brain damage. The kid was smart as a whip. She made Tam proud.

  “What’s the kid doing?” Thick Neck whispered furiously. “I didn’t tell her to get on the ground! Get her back up onto the seat. Now. Hey!”

  Patchouli Pothead exploded into movement with a shout. A silenced gun went off—thhtp. Tam took advantage of Thick Neck’s distraction, whipped her arm up under his gun hand, knocked it upward. She squirted the barrette straight into his face.

  Thick Neck’s gun went off. The window next to them shattered. The shuttle veered on the road, bounced against the guardrails, scraping and fishtailing. “What the flying fuck ?” The driver lurched to a shuddering, squealing stop. He turned, and gaped.

  “Drive, you dumb fuck!” Polar Fleece guy snarled. “Move!”

  Thhtp. Another silenced gunshot. Thick Neck blinked stupidly, started to sag. One down, thank God.

  “Get down!” Patchouli Pothead was shouting frantically, and she realized, startled, that he, too, had a gun. “Mettiti giù, cazzo!”

  Holy shit, it was Janos. He squeezed off another shot, ducked as Sweat Shirt popped up and took a shot at him. Crash, tinkle, another window. She dove into the aisle. Thhtp. The driver looked surprised, put his hand up to the hole that appeared in his throat. Blood welled thickly through his fingers. He flopped forward at the waist and dangled like a doll over the gearshift.

  Two more shots. What seemed like a panting eternity of silence followed them. She huddled, plastered to the plastic carpet runner.

  “Get up, Steele. You have to drive.”

  It was Janos’s faintly accented voice. Calm, cool, and even.

  Profound relief rushed through her. She kicked herself for feeling it. That man was not her friend or her savior, no matter how things looked right now. On the contrary, he was probably the prime reason she was in this fix to begin with. And she might be obliged to kill him.

  Like it would be so easy.

  She let out a shuddering breath, peering into the darkness under the seat to seek out Rachel’s tiny hunched form in the dark. She reached out, groped until she snagged a handful of Rachel’s coat.

  “Are they dead?” Tam asked Janos. The question sounded shaky, stupid and scared.

  “I’ll make sure. You drive the bus.”

  “You drive the fucking bus, Janos,” she snapped. “I’ve got Rachel to take care of.”

  Janos snarled something in Roman dialect about the sexual depravity of her dead sainted ancestors. She ignored him, shimmying under the seat to drag Rachel out and up into her arms.

  The sickening crack of a man’s neck being broken took her by surprise. Ouch. Grow up, Tam, she scolded herself. She’d gotten soft.

  Janos leaned over, peering down through those goofy round glasses at Thick Neck, who was slumped sideways on the seat. “How long will the drug you sprayed on him last?” he asked.

  “Not long,” she said. “Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Small dose.”

  Janos put his gun to the nape of the guy’s neck.

  She jerked upright. “Don’t you dare!”

  He gave her an incredulous look. “Excuse me?”

  “You asshole!” she hissed. “Not in front of the child! Are you crazy?”

  He rolled his eyes but let Thick Neck be and proceeded to the front of the van. He gently lifted the bloody, dripping head of the dangling driver and peered into his eyes. He reached for the man’s wrist, felt for a pulse. His eyes flicked to hers. He shook his head.

  He grabbed the driver’s big, heavy body under the armpits and heaved him into the first passenger seat without apparent effort. The man’s legs draped obscenely across the aisle. Tam hugged Rachel’s face to her chest. Not that the kid was noticing anything. She was locked in her own inner world, and from the looks of her, it wasn’t a pretty one.

  Janos slid into the driver’s seat and put the vehicle in gear. They peeled out onto the road, tires squealing, and picked up speed.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The lot where you parked,” he said.

  “How do you know where I—”

  “Later,” he cut her off brusquely. “I’m thinking.”

  Oh, indeed. God forbid she should keep a man from actually doing that. She almost said it, but until she knew exactly what the fuck was going on, even she knew how to keep her big mouth shut.

  On a temporary basis, anyway.

>   It scared her that Rachel wouldn’t speak or make eye contact. Nor was she clinging to Tam’s neck as she usually did when she was terrified. She was limp, clammy, and pale, which frightened Tam more than the bullets had. She preferred a screaming, writhing meltdown to this total withdrawal. Cold air blew in the bus’s shattered windows.

  The bus slowed, slewed into a sharp turn, and bumped over the barrier into the long-term lot where she’d left her car. The bar rose for the shuttle automatically. The guy in the window didn’t even look up from his magazine.

  No one was waiting for a ride when Janos braked at the bus shelter. Unheard-of luck. She’d been bracing herself for a nasty public scene when the bus stopped, and she hadn’t been looking forward to it.

  Janos looked over at her. “Get out,” he said. “I’ll deal with the last one when you and the child are clear of the bus.”

  She slung the diaper bag and purse over her shoulder, pressed Rachel’s face to her chest, and clambered over the legs of the driver.

  They climbed out of the death bus into the fresh morning air. Dawn wasn’t far off. She dragged in a breath.

  Thud. She felt the silenced gunshot vibrate in her gut as Janos’s bullet punched into Thick Neck’s nape and finished off the job.

  Janos came out, jerking his chin for her to follow him.

  She clutched Rachel more tightly to her chest. “I’m not going to let you take me to Georg Luksch,” she said, suddenly exhausted. “I would rather die.” It was a pointless declaration, but she made it on principle.

  He stared at her, eyes narrowed. “I’m not taking you to Georg.”

  She blinked at him, bewildered. Her eyes burned and stung in the breeze that kicked up. “Ah . . . no? Then what are you doing here?”

  “I am helping you,” he said curtly. “Follow me. Quickly.”

  After a second, Tam followed him, for lack of a better plan.

  “Somebody’s going to get a nasty shock this morning when she tries to get the shuttle to her flight,” she said.