by S J Hunter
The shooting continued as the heavy door swung open, the chair and its remaining burden of pots and pans went over, and Louie yelped sharply and dashed past. Immediately behind Louie, a smallish figure in an armored tunic staggered backwards into the room, floundered briefly in the scattered remnants of his trap, and went down. The door started to swing shut.
Chris slid the chair into the door gap and grabbed the Stinger from Livvy’s hand, thumbing it to rapid fire mode. Standing behind the door, he aimed the Stinger in the location that he imagined for the approaching shooter and sprayed the duoloads across the hall in a fan pattern, while behind him, Livvy scrambled to her feet and started groping through the contents of a small pack she was carrying over one shoulder.
Chris put a finger to his lips and Livvy froze. There was an interval of disconcerting silence during which they gazed at each other while listening for sounds of approaching footsteps.
Chris started to poke his head out to check but Livvy forcibly tugged his arm and, frowning, pointed to her faceplate and took his place at the door.
Guard Eight was sprawled across the hall. Livvy put another duo-load into his hip just to be sure.
When she tried to step over the chair and back into the hall, Chris put a hand on her arm and held her back. She opened her mouth to tell him it was clear, but he put a finger to his lips again.
He opened her faceplate and asked very softly, “You okay?”
“I’m wearing a vest under the tunic, and I’m damned warm,” Livvy whispered back. “Shouldn’t we be leaving before someone shows up or wakes up or something? Wait… did Louie get hit? I thought I heard him get hit.”
That’s when they both noticed the blood. There were drops of it starting at the door and scattered across the room to the area near the kitchenette, where Louie was cowering under the small mahogany table.
“Louie, come,” Chris said, and held his breath.
Louie crawled out from under the table and over to Chris, who had him lie on his side so he could get a good look at the wound. He was bleeding from a deep furrow on his rump, but he had walked with only a minor limp.
“It’s not too bad,” Chris said, still talking under his breath. “Wait here. You might hear some shooting. I’ll be right back.”
“What…” Livvy started to say softly, but Chris put a finger to his lips a third time and disappeared into the hall, leaving her to rummage in her pack for a packet of clotting agent/antibiotic powder to use on Louie’s wound.
From further down the hall, there was the sound of an automatic weapon firing repeatedly.
Within moments Livvy, cursing under her breath, had pulled Louie with her and braced against the wall behind the door.
“Hutchins, you can come out now.” Chris called from the hall.
“What the hell?” Livvy said, stepping over the chair in the door opening and putting her hands on her hips.
“I just took out the equipment in the Security Room. LLE…” Chris said.
“Naturally. It’s the way LLE handles it. Camera shy. Destroy any record of its activities. Avoid publicity at all costs. I get it.” She kicked a pot out of her way.
“It’s not just to destroy the record of your raid, which might, with narrative supplied by a skilled legal monkey, be misinterpreted. There are probably remote feeds, and wherever Bedford is, I want him blind.”
“Understood. But you could have warned me. I mean warned me better. I thought that there was another man. Never mind. You know what I thought.”
“I… sorry,” Chris said, surprising her.
“You aren’t used to a partner. I get that, too,” Livvy said, relenting. They were both tired.
“What are we going to do with all of these guards?” she asked. “Please don’t say we have to take them in.”
“The guards? Take them in for what? So they can sue LLE for putting Stingers in them while they were just doing their jobs? No, we don’t want to take them in,” Chris said. “I wasn’t conscious when they brought me in, so I have no idea of who knew what. Besides, the fewer…”
“The fewer people involved, the better. I get that. LLE hates to actually arrest people or even acknowledge that they are fighting crime. I do get that,” Livvy said. She’d found a fresh clip full of duoloads and handed it to Chris.
“Yes, but you have to be able to work with it,” Chris said, exchanging the fresh clip for the spent one in the Stinger Livvy’d given him.
“Louie, stay close,” Chris said as Louie clambered over the chair that was holding the door jammed open and into the hall. His wound had stopped bleeding.
By now wisps of smoke were drifting down the stairs and lending the whole place an eerie atmosphere, especially around the sprawling forms of the three fallen guards.
When they had stepped over the first body, Livvy touched Chris on the arm again and, holding his attention, said soberly, “Mickey Bedford and her bodyguard were killed last night. Jesse was kidnapped.”
Chris met her eyes, his expression grim.
“Hell. The bastard did it. He actually did it. We need to find Jesse. Now. Even though I think we may still have some surprise on our side, it’s going to be daylight. And unless I’m mistaken, the man himself will be there. Your obviously well-honed ninja skills,” Chris said, looking her over, “aren’t going to be enough.” He lost the brief trace of a smile. “That cold-blooded, arrogant son-of-a-bitch.”
*****
But as much as they wanted to, and Livvy was quite sure that Chris wanted to head directly after Bedford at least as much as she did, they couldn’t leave right away. They searched the rest of the rooms in the basement, finding staff quarters, which they ignored, and a hotlab, which they totally demolished. Then, on the slight chance that Josephson and Jesse were somewhere in the house, they searched room by room, counting on Louie to let them know if there was someone lurking behind a door or the drapery.
If the underground level had been eerie, the ground floor and upper floor were downright creepy. Disturbed by drafts from the windows Livvy had destroyed across one side of the house, the smoke was drifting over marble floors and opulent furnishings and wreathing the fallen forms of the guards like mists on a moor. Louie stopped and sniffed each sleeping man’s face, as though he was creating a record for his own file, but he didn’t alert them to anyone still active in the house.
“That was creepy fun. A haunted house. I kept expecting one of those guys to reach out and grab my ankle,” Livvy said as they walked out the front door.
A few of the Spritzers were still sputtering out on the lawn and in the flower beds, and there were some pink clouds in the east. Although the perimeter wall was too high to see it, the sun had come up while Livvy had been inside.
“Do we worry about the neighbors? Bruno said they wouldn’t even call.”
“Bruno’s right. They’re either with us, and glad to see us doing our job, or, sad to say, all too anxious not to draw attention to themselves,” Chris said.
“Even if they didn’t pick up your badge, they’ll assume that if it was anything other than LLE, or at the very least, if Bedford had nothing to hide, that his security would call it in. If they know Bedford at all, they’ll dismiss it as a raid on a hotlab.”
For Livvy the strangest sensation yet was walking out the ornate front gate as though they were revelers departing after a very long night. Now that they were on the street they could see the sun, a brilliant yellow with an orange halo easing into red highlights under the few clouds. A new day, her sixth in LLE.
“Where are we going to start?” she asked as they approached the car. “Bedford has three more properties in the immediate area, another one in D.C. proper, and two in Adams Morgan. These are his high-end apartment buildings. Then there are the warehouses and retail properties which, as far as I could tell from the official records, are all currently leased to active enterprises. Of course, he could have easily falsified some of that information. He also owns a horse farm out near Lexingto
n, which he appears to use as his private country residence.”
Chris was already on the new comu Livvy had given him, studying a map as he walked. When Livvy mentioned the horse farm, he looked up.
“That’s where we go first,” Chris said. “Bedford’s been paying Josephson for years. He needs someplace isolated and pleasant where he can maintain another hotlab and keep the doctor happy and where he can live in safe and comfortable seclusion while he stages the identity switch. A nice place in the country where he’d be less likely to be spotted accidentally.”
“Do you think he’ll have a lot of guards?” Livvy asked plaintively.
“If Josephson and Jesse are there, probably at least as many as here. How many clips did you bring for the Stingers?”
They’d reached the car. Louie jumped into the back and Livvy set her pack on the floor in front of her seat so she could rummage in it.
“I’ve got plenty of duoloads and I saved some Smokes. By the way, you need to tell your friend Cara, the next time you see her, that I am half in love with her husband. Bruno thought of everything.”
“He does that. I guess you’ve had a long night,” Chris said, easing into the driver’s seat.
“I’ll be okay. Just a little tired. Missed some sleep. Psyched a coworker. Dodged some bullets. You know the kind of thing.”
“The thing is, Hutchins,” Chris said, and shifted in the seat, “I’m not sure I can do this without you.”
“McGregor. You took two 45’s at point blank range. You’ve probably got broken ribs and you’re moving like an old man,” Livvy said as she watched Chris try to get comfortable.
“Like I said…”
“You’re welcome,” Livvy said.
When they’d gotten onto the glassene on their way to Lexington, Chris prompted her, “The coworker…?”
“Agnew, in a moral quandary.”
“Well. Williams is his partner.”
“That seemed to be the focus of the quandary, although no doubt he is eaten up with worry about you somewhere deep inside, too. He said he didn’t really know anything, but he gave me the address, which, strangely enough, Williams visited openly one day while they were together.”
“So we have some strong evidence against Williams. A Forensics investigation into his finances would probably do the rest,” Chris said flatly.
“But you knew already, didn’t you?” Livvy asked.
“No,” Chris said. “He was my only suspect, that’s all. There’s a difference. We still don’t know.”
“Actually, we do.”
“How? I don’t remember seeing who shot me,” he added, “or who took me to Bedford’s, but I owe him. What made you sure that Williams is in Bedford’s pay?”
“As I said, he lead Agnew to the mansion. But he let slip that he knew about the bunker. Is he a stupid man?” Livvy asked curiously.
“No,” Chris said. “Not at all.”
“I didn’t think so either. It was pretty obvious.
“What happens to him? Williams? Agnew should come out okay. At least, I did what I could.”
“Good. He has potential,” Chris said. He grew thoughtful. “So Williams gave himself away, and not unintentionally.”
“Either he wants to get caught, which is what I suggested to Agnew, or it’s a trap somehow. I’m too tired to decide.”
They had reached the section of glassened highway that ran through the countryside. The road had some low spots that were holding a thick fog and the trees on either side were more verdant and lush in the dawn light than anything Livvy remembered from coastal California. She stared out the window, wondering if she could hold up for another skirmish.
“Livvy.” Chris sounded almost apologetic. “I need to hear if there is anything new on our prisoners and that finger.”
Livvy yawned and leaned her head against the window so she could watch the countryside. “Don’t worry, you’re not asking for much. Nothing. Not a thing. Maas still won’t talk, and our two pros, assuming the finger came from a pro, are still anonymous. It takes deep pockets to achieve that kind of… obscurity.”
“It’s another reason for the hotlab. It’s part of the compensation package for assassins on retainer. Free, undocumented resets so they can continue to stay off the grid. Goes a long way towards creating loyalty to an employer. Dust that. They’ve had their last,” Chris said from a long way away.
Chp.15 Combat Escalation (Saturday)
Livvy jerked awake, aching just about everywhere.
“Get enough sleep?” Chris asked without raising his head. They were pulled over by the side of a road just off the highway and he was studying a map again on the new comu Livvy’ had given him as they left Bedford’s mansion.
“Where are we?” Livvy asked, rummaging in her pack until she found a pair of energy bars. She handed one to Chris and, started opening her own.
“About 25 kilometers from Bedford’s place.”
“Please, please don’t tell me you want us to run the rest of the way from here to preserve the surprise.”
“Could you?” Chris asked, lifting his head and looking at her as though to assess her conditioning, then suppressing a smile and turning back to the comu. ‘No, you’re not ready. Too many years in Homicide. We can’t afford the time, and it would put me way ahead of you”
Livvy stopped eating. “Either I’ve just been doubly insulted or you’re not thinking clearly yet. We’re not splitting up again. You’re practically incapacitated. We’re going in together and getting Jesse out.” She started pawing through her pack again.
“Bruno gave me a few more tricks,” she said. “Of course they’ll all be awake even if they haven’t been alerted to what happened in the city, so the advantage I had at the mansion…”
Chris put a hand on her arm and when she stopped and looked at him, he said seriously, “Here’s our problem. I took three Stingers, which means it was too much for my reversal implants and I was out for hours.”
“It could have killed you.” Livvy said.
“Not likely. The point is, whoever shot me probably has access to everything LLE uses on a regular basis, and they had plenty of time to inject a tracer. The tracers LLE uses are unjammable. We have to assume he knows I’m coming.”
“Slick,” Livvy said. “Well, we have to think of a way around it. There must be something…”
She took another bite of her energy bar. When it hit her, she quickly swallowed. “You know Williams is out here and that he tagged you because it’s what you would have done. What you did! You did the same to him. When? How?’’
“Two… no three days ago. His shoes. I set it up in a barbed spike – one of Bruno’s toys – near his desk and he obligingly stepped on it.
“It’s one reason I was so sure we should start in Lexington. I should have been able to pick him up in town if he was at any of the other properties you mentioned, although it was always possible that he’d just go home – he lives in Davie – which would put him off the grid as well. Or worn different shoes, I suppose. I just confirmed that Williams, or at least his shoe, is here in Lexington. Which makes us either right on target or on our way into a trap. What are the odds, do you think?”
“Or Williams is here with his shoe and knows we’re coming, but hasn’t told Bedford. We should start an office pool. You tell me, since you’ve known him longer, would keeping it secret from Bedford appeal to him?” Livvy asked. “Perhaps he’s had it with Bedford and his ego.”
“It’s where I’d put my money,” Chris said agreeably. “Playing the wild card. William’s favorite role.”
“I like my poker pure. So we’ve narrowed it down: Bedford knows we’re coming, or doesn’t,” Livvy said. “This will be fun. We’ll need to be quick and pack efficiently.” She pulled a clip belt out of her pack and started putting it on.
“We’ll go in simultaneously from two directions,” Chris said.
“Don’t you think we should stick together? You’ll need some cover.
”
“No. It wouldn’t help. They may know I’m coming. I’m also not in any shape to be jumping fences, as you so kindly pointed out,” Chris said. “You’re another matter. You aren’t tagged.”
Livvy sighed. “All right. Give it to me. You know, you’ve had a nice long run but I haven’t a clue how, and I’d really like to know,” Livvy said. “Breathing,” she added when Chris looked at her quizzically.
“You get to stealth your way in the back way, neutralize the guards, and find Jesse. I walk in the front door and distract Bedford and talk to Williams.”
“Uh huh. Like I said.” Livvy folded her arms. “My partner, who is straddling the line between merely gimpy and totally laid up, wants to walk in and confront the people I just salvaged him from. You working on a dare, or do you just have this driving need to haze the LLE rookie? Williams is corrupt, no matter what kind of game he thinks he’s playing. In the end, he knows that unless he kills you, and probably me, his career is over and he goes to prison.”
Chris was silent.
“Doesn’t he?”
“LLE handles things differently.”
“I get it, I do. And I’ll never forget it, as long as I live.”
“And more importantly, at the moment, Williams knows it as well.”
There was a longer silence.
“I know LLE reveres the Laws with a capital ‘L’ but operates one step away from anarchy, in secrecy. I understand that it’s all to save everyone else from chaos. But you guys are still all brainsick. Mickey Bedford and her bodyguard are dead, and Bedford has Jesse, and Williams is definitely a bare-bellied snake,” Livvy said slowly.
“Hutchins. Stowe the outrage, or at least focus it. We can’t know that Williams anticipated Mickey’s murder.”
“No,” Livvy admitted, “we don’t know what he anticipated. Williams might have his head where no head should fit and he only heard about Mickey and Jesse when Enforcement did, and he may not be in on the big plan. But he’s out here now, and we think Jesse is too, don’t we? So he has to realize…”