by Marcus Wynne
Then they smoothly tracked onto their next target, each woman taking her time and full advantage of the sudden shock that stopped everyone, even the bodyguards, for the brief seconds necessary for them to put the next two bodyguards down with neat bursts to the head, avoiding the body armor that bulked them up beneath their business suits.
Four down, two to go and then the drivers, who couldn’t hear any gunshots and had their view of the scenario blocked by the crowd, got out of the cars, aware only that something was going horribly wrong. The team leader was the toughest of all. He sprang and grabbed the principal while pulling out his own pistol and actually got off shots as the point man dropped the painting and went for his gun and died with a diagonal burst across his face at nearly point-blank range from the pixie-cut blonde, who blinked as blood splashed across her face. Her ponytailed partner didn’t flinch as bullets from the team leader’s High Power whipped by her face. She kept tracking and worked a burst first into the team leader’s pelvis, below his vest, dropping him down to be finally anchored with a burst to the head.
Then it was time for the drivers, who waved their pistols ineffectually, trying to aim through the panicked crowd, their leader’s gunshots a signal that all had gone wrong, and the two women had no compunction about shooting into the crowd, dropping a young woman in a Spandex top and shorts, suddenly bloody, and the two drivers were down. The pudgy man stood amid the bodies of his protectors, naked and alone and sadly resigned as he sought out the eyes of the two assassins.
One of them fired to his head, the other to his pelvis, and he dropped to the ground. They speed-loaded their machine pistols with fresh magazines and fired short bursts into his head until his brains and his teeth scattered across the sidewalk.
Then there was a sudden stillness, one of the lulls that come in combat, when the guns fall silent and everyone involved takes in how the picture has suddenly changed.
Charley dropped his cup of coffee, shattering the porcelain mug on the sidewalk, and drew his Glock .45 from beneath his shirt.
Across the street, Dale Miller kicked his table out of the way and came up out of his seat, drawing his Browning High Power as he came.
In the surveillance van at the top of the hill, Sanders shouted, “Marcus! They’re all down!”
“Stay put!” Williams said. “We don’t engage, we don’t engage.”
“They’ll get away!”
“Make sure we’re getting good feed, make sure we’ve got the tape. That’s our job, keep your mind on it.”
Williams’s hands sped over the camera controls, zooming the lens in on the two women.
The pixie-cut blonde dropped her smoking machine pistol into her open courier bag and put both hands on the handlebars of the moped, pushing forward with her feet as she gave the moped gas. Her partner held her weapon in one hand and pushed with her legs as well. Charley sprinted forward, both hands on his pistol extended out in front of him, and cut through the crowd like a football player on a broken field. For an instant he had a clear shot and he took it, a fast snapping shot at the back of the ponytailed blonde.
She hunched suddenly and looked back over her shoulder, extended the Skorpion in one hand and fired a burst single-handed at him, forcing him to duck to one side, then between a building as the silenced rounds whipped around him.
Dale leaped across the low flower planters that separated the courtyard from the sidewalk and crouched behind a car parked directly in front of the coffee shop. From here he had good cover and a stable brace for his pistol. He saw the man he’d been watching come up and snap a shot at the two blond assassins, then duck behind the cover of a building with all the sure moves of a pro.
He didn’t know who he was, but he was on the side of the angels today. Dale braced himself and took a quick shot at the moving moped before fleeing passersby blocked him. He moved quickly along the back of the car, hoping for another shot, but the moped was off and away before he could get set again. Across the street, the man he’d been watching eased out from around the corner of the building and leveled his weapon at the fleeing women.
Charley had the ponytailed blonde in his sights for just a second before an innocent passed in front of him, obscuring his vision. It was no good. The blondes were gone around the corner, and he could hear the moped accelerating away. Pros—and there was no doubt after watching their performance that they were pros—would have a separate vehicle standing off to pick them up. They’d be gone in moments, and the sirens of responding police vehicles hadn’t even started yet. He reholstered his pistol and took out his cell phone to call in. He looked across the street and saw the man in the big sunglasses reholster his pistol and come toward him.
Charley watched him come while he spoke briefly to the dispatcher. There had already been plenty of calls already, the dispatcher said, and Charley could now hear the sound of sirens. Too late for everybody involved.
The man from across the street was of average height but thick through the shoulders and thin-waisted, with the build of someone who trained for strength and not for show. He stood in front of Charley, balanced as though ready to spring in any direction.
“You on the job?” the man said.
“Yeah,” Charley said. “I already called it in.”
“Guess we’ll have some questions to answer.”
“No doubt.”
The man held his hand out. “I’m Dale Miller,” he said.
Charley reached out and took the offered hand. It was hard and strong, and he noticed on the web of the hand the scarring that came from catching the slide of an automatic pistol.
“Hey, Dale Miller,” he said. “I’m Charley Payne. I’m not a cop, but I’m working with Minneapolis.”
“That makes two of us,” Dale said. “What do you do for them?”
“Forensic photographer. You?”
“Special reserve, work with the training unit and the ERU.”
“Running and gunning, eh?”
“Yeah. You?”
“I’m too old to play with those guys. I can’t keep up anymore.”
“Did you get a make on those two?”
“Not much. Real pros, though . . . I wonder who the hell they were?”
In the surveillance van, videotape hissed as the two operators recorded the conversation between the two men. Williams zoomed the camera in on them.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Sanders said. “You know who that is?”
“I used to work with him,” Williams said. “He was one of us.”
“They’ll be going bugfuck over this back at base,” Sanders said.
“No kidding,” Williams said. “What are the odds? Dale Miller and Charley Payne on the same street on the same day as a major hit. There’s more to this than meets the eye.”
“They weren’t shooting at the BGs . . .”
“No, they weren’t, were they? Check the computer for any other faces in the crowd.”
A cell phone trilled in the back of the van. Williams picked it up and said, “Hello?”
After a moment he said, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I recognized him once we got a clear picture of him. We got it all on tape and we’ll send it via satellite feed. We’re out of here now.”
He set the phone back into its charging cradle and said to Sanders, “Let’s break it down and get out of here before the cops get set up.”
“Is that it, then?”
Williams said, “No, young Jedi. That’s not it. This is just the beginning.”
Four blocks away, the blondes drove their moped right up the ramp of a small parcel delivery truck. As they rode in, the driver shoved the ramp up behind them and pulled the door down and shut it. He got into the front, started the vehicle, and pulled away even as the two women laid the moped down on its side. They stepped clear, then kicked off their shoes and pulled the dresses off over their heads. They stepped into matching overalls set out for them, pulled them up and zipped them closed. Then they checked the Skorpions, charging the wea
pons with fresh magazines. One went to sit by the backdoor, the weapon in her lap, the other one crouched in the well behind the driver.
The driver had a portable police scanner set on the floor beside his seat. The van’s occupants could hear all the instructions, directions, and call information coming across the police secure net.
“We’ll head south on France Avenue,” the woman crouching behind the driver said.
“Right,” said the driver.
“Marie?” the crouching woman with the ponytail said. “Would you like some water?”
“Please, Isabelle. I need to rinse my face. Some of that last one’s on me,” the pixie-cut blonde said.
Isabelle reached into a bag behind the seat and pulled out a bottle of drinking water and tossed it underhand to her partner, who caught it one-handed, then opened it.
“Do you have a napkin?” she called to Marie.
“On the other seat,” the driver said. Isabelle reached onto the seat and took several napkins from the small stack there, then scuttled into the rear of the moving van and handed them to Marie, who poured some water on them and dabbed at the blood spray on her face.
“Did I get it all?” she asked.
Isabelle took the damp napkin from her, and touched a few spots beside her nose.
“There,” she said with satisfaction. “Good as new.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips against Marie’s. “How are you feeling?”
Marie smiled and pushed her away gently. “We’re still working. Go on, get back up front.”
Isabelle pouted, then went back to the front, her Skorpion handy. “Who were those two, you think? The two shooters who came at us?”
“I don’t know,” Marie said. “I’m glad we got free of them. Perhaps off-duty police.”
“They were professionals,” Isabelle said. “I don’t think most policeman would have been that fast.”
“I don’t know,” Marie said. “But no worry. They’re behind us and we’re away. We won’t see them again.”
TORTURE REHABILITATION CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF
MINNESOTA CAMPUS, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
The Torture Rehabilitation Center is a large Victorian house surrounded by a few outbuildings in a green and out-of-the-way corner of the University of Minnesota campus. Within its quiet, pastel-painted rooms, some of the best medical and psychological practitioners in the country went about their business, which was the rebuilding of human beings. To this quiet place came people whose screams had beaten on walls in Guatemala, Iraq, Iran, Rwanda, China, and other places. Either thrown out of the country, or bought out by relatives, the broken ones found their way to the Center, which worked on only the worst cases, those in the profoundly broken psychological state that only the worst forms of torture could manifest.
Dr. Rowan Green was a slight woman in her late forties, with a perpetually frizzled hairdo untidily pulled back from her face. She wore her glasses round her neck with a chain for the practical reason that she would otherwise forget them in her rounds of the patients’ quarters and therapy rooms. Today she walked briskly down a polished hallway, her low sensible heels clacking a quick cadence, and as she walked she twisted her eyeglass chain around her finger again and again.
She came to a patient room and stood outside the door for a moment, listening, then opened the door gently and went in. Inside, a man in an expensive sweat suit and running shoes sat in the armchair beside the powered bed. The man was dark complected, with shaggy black hair, and he was thin in the way of someone who had once been bigger. His shoulders, seemingly too wide for him, were hunched forward as though he were a ball player protecting the ball clutched tight to his chest. He stared at the small television mounted in the wall which was set to a local news station.
“Mr. Uday?” Dr. Green said. “Mr. Uday? What are we watching?”
The man smiled and looked at her, then his eyes rolled to show the white.
“Some days, they are very close,” he said.
“Who is very close, Mr. Uday?”
“I never know.”
“What are we watching?” Dr. Green looked at the screen. The sound was muted, but the videotape showed ambulances and bodies being carried away. She recognized the area immediately; she spent a fair amount of time in the Linden Hills area, and her children enjoyed going to the ice cream parlor that figured so prominently on the screen. She took the remote control from the unresisting fingers of Mr. Uday and turned on the sound.
“. . . the shooting of a business executive in West Minneapolis today has police . . .”
She turned the sound off again and looked at Mr. Uday.
“They think they are close, but they are not so far,” Mr. Uday said.
“Are they close?”
“Ask the one they found.”
“Who did they find?”
Uday looked at the television set with dark, dead eyes. “They found who they think they found.”
“It’s time for us to talk, Mr. Uday. Would you like to come with me now?”
“They want the talking for themselves. They want to have a sad holiday. They don’t want you.”
“Come,” Dr. Green said. She turned the television off, set the remote down, then took Uday gently by his arm. His muscles were flabby and hung on the bone like overdone meat. “Let’s go to my office, shall we?”
The man rose. He limped as he came forward.
“Yes,” he said. “Let’s go.”
DOMINANCE RAIN HEADQUARTERS, FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA
Ray Dalton was a tall, aquiline man who dressed in expensive custom-tailored business suits when he came to his offices in Fairfax, Virginia. His offices were in a building owned and run by the CIA, and anyone entering the building had to run a gauntlet of security measures, some overt, like the big capable armed guards at the front reception area, others covert, like the hidden cameras and biometric sensors outside the doors to his suite. The security was there for a reason, as Ray Dalton ran one of the most secretive units in the US government, a special project called DOMINANCE RAIN. DOMINANCE RAIN was a black operation run completely off the shelf and reserved for only the most critical and strategic of special operations, which was why he had his pick of the best from Delta Force, the SEAL teams, Marine Force Recon, and the Agency paramilitary program.
He sat behind his sprawling desk and watched with intense interest the videotape of the Linden Hills hit, and quashed the feelings that rose in him when he saw Dale Miller and Charley Payne talking together. He knew of both men. Charley Payne he knew from the records; Payne was a former operator with the CIA’s Special Activities Staff, an elite paramilitary unit that had much in common with his own. The two units had worked together in the past on missions.
But it was Dale Miller who he kept coming back to. Dale Miller had been one of Ray’s best, a hand-picked DOMINANCE RAIN operator. Ray had sent him out after an escaped convict named Jonny Maxwell, who had worked for Ray till he went bad and went to prison. He’d also been Dale Miller’s best friend.
And Dale, as ordered, found and killed him.
And then Dale orchestrated his own retirement and put himself on the outside by choice. Though DOMINANCE RAIN kept track of their own, their attempts at contact had been rebuffed by the bitter ex-operator. Dale had moved in with a woman, a female detective he’d met during the operation to find Jonny Maxwell, and found part-time employment as a firearms and tactics instructor for the Minneapolis Police Department. He kept a low profile and had no known contact with any current operators. He’d burned his bridges and seemed glad about it.
It was sheer coincidence that he was there when the Linden Hills hit went down. But the fact that he was there gave Ray Dalton an insight into how to solve the problem he had before him now. He sat back in his executive chair and riffled through his Rolodex. He found the name and the number he was looking for. The number he dialed was of an elite international security company headquartered in the Washington Beltway, its offices not far from his. He to
ld the secretary who answered the phone his name and that he wished to speak to Michael Callan. After a moment the man came on the line.
“Hello?”
“Mike, it’s Ray Dalton.”
“That’s what my girl said. I looked out the window, but I don’t see any pigs flying. That’s how long it’s been since we talked. What are you up to, Ray?”
“Same thing as when you worked for me,” Dalton said. “Got a job over there for me?”
“I couldn’t hire you, you’d have my job in a week. But if you’re serious . . .”
Ray chuckled. “I’m not quite ready for the life of the corporate security pro, Mike. It’s tempting, but I’ve still got a few good years over here.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing. It’s not just the money . . . we do things right. There’s some politics, but nothing you couldn’t handle.”
“I could use some peace from that. But that’s not why I called.”
“I didn’t think so. What do you need that the G can’t get for you?”
Ray laughed again. It was a pleasure not to have to talk around a subject. “I need you, Mike. I need you to come have lunch with me and talk with me about having a talk with someone else. There’s somebody I need brought in on a job and he won’t talk to me. But he worked with you and would listen to what you have to say.”
“Worked with me but won’t talk to you? Is this a civilian we’re talking about?”
“He is now.”
Callan paused for a long moment, and then his voice grew hard. “That’s a short list we’re talking about. And if it’s who I think it might be, I’ll remind you he’s my friend. I didn’t think much about how that whole thing went down.”