An upright piano sat flush against the back wall of the front room. Family portraits of father, mother, and young daughter were propped on either side of the fireplace mantel while an old-fashioned grandmother clock occupied the center. Heavy furniture dominated the middle of the room, armchairs set off against each other for friendly conversations, a Navaho-themed throw rug spread beneath. Everything appeared bland and normal, exactly the way every house of every family in every community should appear. But he could still feel it … the frangible atmosphere of a dispirited household.
Quiet settled like acid. Birds began to sing a sunset symphony. His eyes followed the lines of the ceiling beams and settled on a set of French doors leading to the family room, and beyond that, rear-facing patio doors that framed a pittoresque setting of variegated greenery. Twilight filtered through those same doors.
The grandmother clock chimed the quarter hour.
“All right. I’ll go. But can I use your bathroom? It’s a long drive back.”
Everything happened very quickly after that. Like a jet taking off. Or a gas leak exploding. Or a locomotive barreling down on a car stalled on snowy tracks.
A man appeared in one of the archways. A calm man. A calculating man. A man with black eyes and shiny black hair pulled off his brow and gathered in a ponytail. A man with a maddened grin splashed across a beautiful, almost feminine face. A man who looked nothing like Simon Brodey but everything like the maniac in the Metro station. The earlier disguise was gone but the essence remained. Jack would have recognized him anywhere.
He moved swiftly, grabbing the woman by her ponytail and dragging her into the front room, the suddenness almost knocking her off her feet. A keenness for survival kept her upright enough for him to put the blade of a sharp knife against the base of her throat. He stretched her head back. Her eyes shot toward Jack, an appeal for rescue. Her legs buckled at the knees. Only the grasp her captor reasserted came between her and the floor.
In the same timeframe, Jack rushed forward and leveled the semiautomatic at him, like they do in the movies, arms braced and forefinger squeezing the trigger. The stranger didn’t seem to care. He was tranquil as a summer breeze and cold as winter ice. Jack should have pulled the trigger. He was a good shot but not good enough. He could have hit the woman. He didn’t want to chance it.
“Put the gun down or I’ll slice her throat.” He spoke with a French accent, not bothering to hide his foreignness the way he had before, his words pronounced with constricted vowels and garbled consonants. His English, though, was very good and the message unequivocating. He didn’t give Jack time to process the information, or to act. With a malevolent grin, he drew the blade across the woman’s throat the way an ordinary person would draw the point of a pen across a sheet of clean white paper. In the next instant, he flipped the knife across the room.
The automatic fired with a loud BAM! Plaster rained from the ceiling.
The man released his grip on the woman. Astonishment kept her balanced over her feet. She reached for her throat and fingered the wetness. She raised bloodied hands in front of her eyes and studied the brilliance of crimson. She smiled a rueful smile as if to apologize for the mess. Her legs finally gave way. She fell into a tidy heap, onto her knees and shins, torso bent forward, head striking the planked floor, arms slack at her sides, blood forming a puddle.
Only then did Jack feel a stabbing pain over his pectoral muscle. Red-hot coals burned the right side of his chest. Flames ran down his arm and into his fingertips. The semiautomatic dropped from his numbed hand and clattered to the floor. He reeled backwards, his legs feeble, and landed with a hard whack, the wind knocked out of him. The Frenchman ambled forward, leaned down, extracted the switchblade embedded in Jack’s breast, and wiped it clean on his jeans, smiling the entire time. Jack saw the rip in his shirt and blood spreading from the wound beneath. He struggled to get up, strained to find a foothold, but only managed to brace his good hand on the floor and bring himself into a sitting position, legs crossed Indian-style, head too heavy to hold upright, but eyes watching the silly smile on the Frenchman’s pretty face.
He squatted in front of Jack and claimed the semiautomatic, turning it over and examining the weapon the way a collector of fine antiques might. “I must hand it to you. You are smarter than I thought.”
Jack grinned. Then he chuckled. He was drunk with the madness of the situation along with the shock overtaking his body and brain. He decided he must be as nutty as this madman dressed in crisp black slacks and immaculate black shirt, looking clean and pressed and shower fresh. The Frenchman grinned uncertainly, wondering what the joke was. The joke was on him. He was still grinning when Jack flexed his good hand, his left hand, normally his weaker hand but now his stronger hand. With a growl and a roundhouse punch using the heel of his hand instead of breakable knuckles, he pounded the Frenchman very solidly and very swiftly across the side of his throat, his half-closed fist following through and grazing the knobby side of the square jaw, wiping the smile clean off his face. The Frenchman rocketed to his feet, stumbled away, lost his balance, and crashed onto his backside. The floor shook. The gun kicked loose from his slack grip and skidded across the hardwood floor. Jack saw an opening. He scrambled forward, using elbows and knees for leverage, and again threw out his good arm, this time aiming at the man’s Adam’s apple with a snapping jab. The Frenchman reached up with both hands, choking and gagging.
It was a ruse.
In a rush, he pounced on top of Jack and pinned him to the floor, knees straddling either side of his torso and trapping his arms. He whacked him across face, neck, and head, first with one open hand and then with other, his palms stiff as boards, rough as nails, solid as mallets. Smack after smack arrived until Jack released a surrendering groan and played dead. It was easy to play dead. Only the pounding of flesh remained, repeatedly, until he experienced nothing at all. No pain. Or regret. Not even anger. On and on it went until the room shrank to the size of a pinhole. And then the pinhole disappeared.
He came to seconds later, eyes slits and scarcely tracking, incapable of moving so much as a finger. The Frenchman was still on top of him, seated on his haunches, his weight heavy and hands lax at his side. He was shuddering, breathing hard, collecting himself. He had slipped into a zone of rage. Now that he was coming out of it, he had to shake himself back to clarity. He had to get a grip. He had to return to the here and now. He had to think about what should be done next.
He fell away from Jack, braced hands and knees on the floor, and crawled away on all fours, huffing and shaking his head, a rabid wolf in the form of man. He looked over at the woman. Smiled at his handiwork. And said something in French, something about his manliness, his quickness, and his agility. In English he said, “There-there, you will soon go to a better place.” Finally, he lifted his eyes heavenward. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord … for dust you are and to dust you shall return.”
Having found one last gasp of strength, Jack bounded off the floor and went for the him, jolting him full bore in the gut with a lateral kick. Instead of debilitating the Frenchman, the attack energized him. He sprang to his feet and rushed at Jack with curled hands, intent on strangling the breath out of him. Momentum slammed both against the nearest wall. Framed family pictures tumbled from dislodged hooks. Splinters of glass shot across the floor. Unable to draw breath, Jack kicked, groped, kneed soft parts, and hooked heels around ankles before angling his elbows upward and outward, leveraging the Frenchman’s arms apart and thrusting him away. Jack bent over, wheezing and catching his breath.
The Frenchman drove towards him, coming in for the kill, a wounded bull, head down, throat growling, eyes afire. He rammed Jack in the belly, head first, and took him down. Jack landed with a jarring crack, arms and legs thrown asunder, a forceful Woof! escaping his lungs. The Frenchman groped for the gun, fully intending to use it. Jack scuttled forward, punch drunk and pushing past pain. He poun
ced on the Frenchman, wrestled him for possession of the weapon, and with a grinding grab and crushing grip, wrenched back the pretty man’s arm. The Frenchman yelped, crumpling under the pressure and singing an operatic solo. The semiautomatic dropped to the floor with a thud. With the agility of a dancer, the Frenchman slithered loose, spun onto his back, punched his legs high into the air, and kicked out a foot, catching the toe of his boot just beneath Jack’s jaw, thrusting it up and back. Jack crumpled. The Frenchman pressed his advantage, using a second well-aimed kick, and clipped Jack across the temple.
Firecrackers exploded. Everything stopped working. The world went dark.
When next Jack opened his bleary eyes, the Frenchman was bending over the woman and checking her pulse. He shoved her onto her belly, arms and legs thrown athwart. Wearily he picked up the gun, shuffled back to Jack, and aimed the barrel pointblank between his eyes. One second went by. Two. Three.
“We will meet again,” the Frenchman said, spitting blood and baring fanged teeth. “I’m sure we will meet again. Adieu for now.” He opened his hand. The weapon clattered to the floor. He kicked it into a far corner. Then he limped to the front door and walked out, leaving it wide open for moths and mosquitoes to swarm inside.
A minute later, the utility vehicle roared down the gravel road, tires kicking up stones.
Jack lay immobile. Blood spread across his shirt. He winked in and winked out. The grandmother clock chimed. The stars came out. And the cicadas sang themselves to sleep with a final dying gasp.
25
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Monday, July 28
HE RANG THE doorbell … insistently … repeatedly … while the ball of his fist hammered the door panels. House lights flickered on. The porch light followed. Voices murmured from within. A shadow darkened the peephole. A silhouette filled the side window panels.
When Vikki Kidd opened the front door of her house, she was stunned by the grotesque vision standing before her. A man covered in bruises and blood. A man barely able to stand. A man swaying unsteadily. A man who could only look at her with one working eye. A man who blessedly collapsed into her outstretched arms. She fell with him, catching his upper body to cushion the blow. His head came to rest in the soothing warmth of her lap. The face looming above him was one of concern, angelic in aspect. She said his name and stroked his hair. Jack decided to let everything go. He closed his eyes in the pre-dawn dark.
When he came to, he was lying on a narrow bed. The room was dark. Only the glow from the hallway light filtered inside. It was a cocoon of safety. Peaceful. He wanted to stay here forever. He swept his eyes around. Made an inventory of teenage gear: piles of sports equipment, team pennants tacked to walls, rock memorabilia lining bookcases, and an electric guitar tucked in a far corner. It was still dark outside. Water ran in the hall bath. Voices murmured in conspiratorial tones. He turned his head toward the curtained window and made out streetlights beyond the fabric. Someone switched on the overhead light. The glare hurt his seeing eye. He turned his head aside and covered his good eye with his good arm.
“My son’s room. He’s away at school.” Her earthy fragrance blended with the lavender essences of hand soap, a heady mixture. When she sat beside him, the mattress sank with her weight. He rolled against her, groaning with the first stabbing pain he felt since leaving the house in the woods. Shock was wearing off. Maybe the pain was a good thing … if it didn’t get any worse. Several hands helped her pull off his bloodied t-shirt. Calmly, methodically, she wiped away the blood. There was a lot of it. He grimaced and grunted throughout, keeping his eyes shut and his comments to himself.
Somehow he dragged himself out of the house, clambered into Liz’s car, fumbled for the car keys, and started the engine. He had the presence of mind to take the semiautomatic with him. He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel and waited for the dizziness to subside. He couldn’t erase from his mind the vision of Janice Brodey’s lifeless body, yet another ghostly woman to haunt his night dreams. Parts of him weren’t working. Miraculously he stayed on the road without getting into an accident, attracting the attention of a squad car, or losing his way. Even after arriving in safe harbor, some things still weren’t working. Like his arm. It tingled all the way down to his numbed fingertips.
He gazed at his concerned nurse. Her body was swathed in a terry robe. Though belted tightly about her waist, the robe still revealed the tantalizing slopes of her breasts. Even if nothing else worked, it comforted him to know his libido was still intact. The way she reached and stretched and clucked and sighed while making a cursory examination of his injuries seemed intimate and motherly, even though she was anything but a motherly woman.
“You remember Alex.” She nodded toward the other side of the bed. “And this is my daughter Grace,” she said, looking up at the girl. “I need more towels and water.” A carbon copy of her mother except for brown hair instead of burnished red, the teen was barely out of braces. She shot bullets from her tapered eyes, cautioning Jack to watch himself. Like her mother, she wasn’t a pushover. Vikki noted the interaction and patted her daughter’s arm, telling her with an encouraging nod to do what she asked. She returned to poking and prodding her patient. Jack suppressed the bellows of pain he wanted to make, instead settling for swallowed yips and yaps. Her impatient clucking gave him a small boost of confidence. It appeared he wasn’t going to die anytime soon. “Were you shot? Is this a bullet wound?”
He moved a swollen tongue around a tender palette and managed to say, “Knife.”
“Jesus Christ,” she muttered. “It looks as though it only punctured muscle. The bleeding has stopped, but I’m not a doctor. God knows I’m not a doctor.”
“I made it to your house,” he managed to croak, as if this were the only professional diagnosis required.
“Being on automatic pilot with adrenalin rushing through your system doesn’t count. Who beat you up? Why did they beat you up?”
He tried to explain about the million dollars and the house in Virginia and the terrorized woman and her missing husband and the Frenchman, but it came out like gibberish.
She seemed to understand anyway, placing a caring hand on his arm and saying, “Tell me later.”
He must have dozed off or passed out. When he awoke, birds were making a racket, announcing the first light of day. He was naked. He was covered with a light blanket. A bandage covered his bad eye. A layer of sterile gauze protected the chest wound. Vikki was looking at him from the far end of the bed, her brow furrowed. She was shaking her head—worried and thinking—and finally arriving at a decision. She swept back a swath of hair from her face and with a sigh of resignation, nodded to herself. “You might have a concussion. And you need stitches for that wound. It looks nasty. You could be bleeding internally. You could have a punctured lung. Or worse.”
“I don’t think so.” It felt as if he were floating in a stagnant pond. With every inhalation, he rose toward the surface. With every exhalation, he sank an inch deeper. He worried that eventually he would sink to the bottom and never rise again.
“Tell me the truth. Don’t try to be a hero. How are you?”
“Fine and dandy, Mrs. Kidd. Couldn’t be better.”
She chuckled and seemed relieved. “At least you still have a sense of humor.” She sat beside him, took his good hand in hers, and stroked it, reasoning with him. “You could lose your eye.”
“I can still see you, even if there’s three of you.”
She slapped him across the cheek, a light tap. “Don’t be cute.”
“If I go to the ER, they’ll want my ID. They’ll call the police. They’ll put me back in jail.”
“You could die.”
He licked his lips to work up spit. It was an exertion to form words and string them into coherent sentences. “They’ll put me back in solitary. I’d rather be dead, if it’s all the same to you.”
“If you die on my son’s bed, I’ll have to dispose of your body.”
<
br /> “Fuck you.”
“That’s the spirit.”
He laughed. It hurt to laugh. He stopped laughing.
She patted his hand and said, “Sit tight.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“None,” she said with a sigh, and left.
He drifted off. The face of the Frenchman haunted him. The awkward position of Janice Brodey’s corpse worked into his soul. Every time he shifted or twitched or flexed a muscle, pain stabbed him like the first thrust of that little knife. He wondered what death was like. He decided it must be better than this.
It grew lighter outside. There was movement downstairs. Voices spoke. Lumbering feet climbed upstairs.
Vikki entered the room with a middle-aged man. “This is Doctor …” Her eyes slid sideways. “Doctor Smith.” He was a tall and broad man, dressed in running shorts and a t-shirt, his graying hair mussed, his eyes hangdog. He wasn’t in the best of moods. He seemed to be a normally grumpy man. This early-morning house call made him grumpier. He looked at Vikki. “How’s Rob?” His bass voice was rough and nasally.
“Good. He’s good.”
The physician set down his black bag and sat on the bed. He lowered his broad hand onto Jack’s forehead. He took his pulse. He pressed the cold metal of a stethoscope at proscribed points on his chest and back, helping him move, asking him to cough. He shone a penlight in his eyes, forcing the bad one open with his thumb and telling him to track the path: up, down, left, right. He held up his fingers and asked how many? … and how many now? He asked Jack simple questions to test his mental faculties and gather evidence about his physical condition. He examined the wound with rough though competent hands. He cleared his throat, reached into his black bag, and filled a syringe.
Vikki was kind enough to hold Jack’s hand as the doctor sutured the chest wound. When it was done, the doctor gave her instructions, his voice grave but reassuring. Acetaminophen for pain and headaches. Watch for any weakness, numbness, repeated vomiting, or confusion. Wake the patient every half hour for the first twelve hours and every hour for the next twelve. Call immediately if the patient’s fever spikes, if he has trouble breathing, if he becomes incoherent. He told her he’d return in the evening. He wrote out a prescription.
Cyber Warfare (INTERCEPT: A Jack Coyote Thriller Book 2) Page 17