by Jim Heskett
“Ten seconds.”
Layne grips his rifle and pushes air out between pursed lips. Across the street, Alicia winks at him.
Despite the decade he’s been doing this work, his adrenaline threatens to choke him, and he has to control an urge to retch. Why is this happening?
The screeching of tires echoes down the street. Then, headlights appear. Two Chevy Suburbans come rolling into view. Those black behemoths, the same type of car government spooks use on every cop show ever. He doesn’t have time to wonder if the cars are armor-plated. He has to assume they’re not, for the safety of the captives inside.
Front vehicle or back vehicle?
Layne can’t see into the tinted windows, but he senses people are in there. In a half a second, they’re about to find out what’s waiting for them.
The first vehicle hits the brakes, careening toward the blockade in the street.
“Go!” Oleg says.
Layne races forward, mindful of the slick streets and any potential crossfire with Alicia. She moves in tandem with him, circling around to the rear of the second vehicle. She drags with her the barricade, hemming them in. It’s a non-damaging barricade. Trying to keep the captives’ safety first and foremost.
The doors of the forward vehicle open. Out steps the driver, submachine gun in hand. A single person returning fire. But the rear doors stay shut.
That means traffickers are in the rear SUV. The doors of the front vehicle would all open to return fire if it were so.
“Rear!” Layne says, barking it into his microphone. “Hostiles in rear. Captives are in the front. Move around to keep it in place.”
Before Layne knows what’s happening, the street brightens in a hail of gunfire. And then, Alicia does something insane.
She steps out from behind her cover, fully exposing her body. She opens fire. Within a fraction of a second, Alicia is hit. Her slim body jiggles, blood puffs out from holes in her chest and back like jets of steam.
A teammate is down. Layne didn’t even see where the bullets came from.
Alicia is hit. Layne’s mouth drops open.
She twists and dances, her body made a rag doll by a steady stream of bullets. The rifle in her hand slips and clatters onto the wet street.
He sees the hostiles now leaning out the door of the SUV.
Layne lifts his rifle and squeezes the trigger in a few quick bursts, but in the chaos, he can’t get a clear shot at the hostiles firing from the open doors of the vehicle. Above him, Oleg also spits a few shots, but nothing seems to connect.
It seems as if a layer of fog has now obscured everything. Layne pops up, trying to get a sense of the area. It’s a big mess, and he can’t organize and catalog the visuals.
The doors of both SUVs shut. The rear barricade is no longer there. Tires spinning, the front car plows forward, smashing through the debris. At the same time, the rear car backs up.
The captives are in the front car. Layne turns toward it as it escapes out of the alley and onto a nearby street. Head down, he runs after it.
“No,” shouts Daphne in his ear. “Get the traffickers. Rear car.”
“The captives are leaving,” Layne says as he skids to a stop. “I’m going after them.” He lifts his rifle to shoot low. His odds of hitting the tires are slim, but if he shoots any higher, there’s a good chance he might accidentally shoot the women inside it.
“Negative,” Daphne says. “That’s an order. Go after the hostiles.”
This is wrong. The captives are leaving. But, he has to follow orders.
Layne grits his teeth and spins, chasing after the rapidly escaping rear car. The suburban rolls over Alicia’s body, trying to back up.
Layne fires, pelting the grill of the Suburban with bullet holes. He worries if he aims for the driver, he might hit the innocents inside. Engine revving in reverse, it backs out of the alley and spins onto the next street. In a flash, it’s gone.
Layne stops next to Alicia’s lifeless body. Her eyes are open, staring up at the night sky. In the stillness, her blank face appears almost at peace.
Why did she step out into the open like that?
She’s dead, and their targets are all gone.
The lead car, the one containing the Russian captives, has disappeared from their barricade, now lost in the streets of London.
“What the hell happened?” Daphne snaps in his ear.
“You let them get away,” Layne says, growling. “You let them take those women away, and now they’re as good as dead.”
34
Serena stood at the pier, looking out over the water, and wiped a spot of dampness from her brow. The rain here arrived more like an amorphous mist than as individual drops. Felt weird. Even though everything around her was wet, she couldn’t see the moisture in the air. She couldn’t feel it pelting her head or shoulders.
She was not a west coast girl, for sure. Never had been.
Serena didn’t turn when a pair of leather gloves gripped the railing next to her. Daphne leaned forward, letting her curly hair dance in front of her face, grinning at the ocean. “Don’t you love it? DC can be so dreary when there’s weather. But here: the smell, the cool feeling, the sounds of the water. It makes my heart sing.”
“I miss my cat, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to meow at me for five straight days when I see him again. I’m ready to go home.”
Daphne shifted against the rail, casting eyes at Serena. “Seems like you haven’t accomplished any of your operation goals. Why should you get to go home?”
“Didn’t you say you only had the budget to keep me here for a few days, anyway?”
Daphne nodded. “Yes, I did. But pretend we have no budget problem.”
“I know I can’t go home yet, Control. But I’ve found nothing but dead ends here. You told me to chase the money, and it seems like it’s invisible. No matter what I do, I can’t put a finger on the man who goes by Z. The blue-eyed Asian. He’s like smoke, or a ghost, or something. I can’t touch him and everywhere I look turns me around in a giant circle.”
“They’re not all successes. That’s the hard truth of what we do.”
“Children,” Serena said. “Innocent kids, torn from their families. I’m not sleeping these last few days.”
“I know. But you have to find a way to remove yourself from it. Like you’re looking down on it. Playing a video game, watching a TV show. Whatever makes you more objective and gives you the stomach to move on when it’s not working.”
“I tried to contact Layne after I found out more about Victoria Overton’s history.”
Daphne swiped a finger along the railing, collecting moisture on the tip of a gloved digit. “Reception up there is still too spotty. I’m trying to get information to him when I can, but it’s an arduous process.”
Serena let the sound of the pedestrians behind them fill her ears for a moment. Men and women, families, each meandering along the walkways. Places to be, things to do, all of them in their own little heads. All those people and their wealth of memories.
“When I was young,” Serena said, staring wistfully out over the water, “my mother and father brought me to California for a trip. I’d seen the ocean in Texas before, but I’d never been to the west coast. I was eight, I think. For some reason, I believed there were sharks in the water, and I refused to go in. My parents kept reminding me how I would go in the ocean without any problem in Corpus Christi, but to me, it was different. Not the same water. It didn’t matter what they said, I refused to believe there weren’t sharks in the ocean in California. I didn’t come back to the west coast for a long time after that.”
“It’s hard to break belief, even when you know it’s wrong.”
Serena spent a few seconds pondering this assertion. She thought back to all the things she used to believe and how stampeding through her teens and twenties had afforded her so little time for reflection. Nearing thirty, she hoped time would slow in the next decade. Probably not, but she could
hope for it.
“How come I never got a handle?” Serena asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Layne was Boy Scout, Harry Boukadakis was K-Books. I’ve been in your service for a few years now, and I don’t have a code name. I like Red.”
“That’s not something we do anymore. It’s much safer to shift them around and assign operation-specific handles. After the op, you drop it, and that makes any paper trail harder to follow.”
Serena shuddered as a wave of cold air passed over them.
“But,” Daphne said, “I thought of one for you, though, if we were still doing that.”
“What is it?”
Daphne grinned. “Not Red. Pepper. You know, Serena, serrano. Serrano pepper. Pepper. What do you think?”
“It’s a bit offensive, but I don’t hate it.”
Daphne shrugged and pulled her coat tighter. “So if you can’t go home, and you can’t be effective because the trail isn’t warm enough, what do you want to do?”
Serena considered this for a moment. “Send me north. Let me go up to Squamish with Layne and Harry. Maybe I can be of use up there.”
“That’s what you want?” Daphne said, with a little wry smile. “You’re sure?”
“I’ve been mulling it over, and it seems like the best way I can contribute.”
“Has Layne ever told you about Alicia?”
“Layne and I don’t talk much about personal matters.”
“No, not personal. She was our demo expert before Layne retired. Excellent at her job.”
Serena cleared her throat. “I suppose she isn’t around anymore?”
“Unfortunately not. She caught a bullet on an operation in London. Was a dirty piece of work, actually. We finished the op, of course, but Layne never forgave himself for her death. He never forgave himself, or me, for how the rest of that operation turned out. I ordered him to go against what he thought was right, because I thought it would be best in the long run. See, it doesn’t matter how long you’re in this game. You always hate the ones you lose.”
Serena chewed the inside of her cheek as she considered this tidbit of wisdom.
“We didn’t call him Boy Scout just because he’s squeaky clean,” Daphne said. “He also has an overdeveloped sense of justice.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“What you think Layne is? He’s not that.”
Serena looked Daphne in the eye. She knew exactly what game her boss was playing. Maybe Daphne had fifteen years on her, but that didn’t make her infallible.
“You remind him of someone he used to know,” Daphne said. “Someone he lost a long time ago. You look like her.”
“I look like this Alicia person?”
Daphne shook her head. “No. Someone else. Someone he doesn’t talk about. Not ever.”
A few different options of how to respond popped into her head, but ultimately, she couldn’t decide on one. These petty jealousies were outside the mission parameters, so Serena opted to ignore them.
“I had a girlfriend in college,” Daphne said, “and she said that any time you get two or more women together, the conversation always turns to poop. I thought she meant it literally, but now I’m not so sure.”
Serena watched a bird swoop down toward the water, dive bomb the surface for a split second, then soar back into the air.
“Stay on Z,” Daphne said as she took a step back. She slid on her sunglasses, despite the overcast day. “He’s our best lead. You'll find him.” Then, she blended into the crowd and disappeared. Within two seconds, Serena couldn’t spot Daphne among the dozens milling about on the sidewalks and street behind.
Stay on Z.
Serena had to ask herself if she would stick within the strict boundaries of her orders, and she couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer.
35
Layne tensed his muscles and tried to launch out from behind the boulder, but Harry grabbed him and jerked him back into hiding.
“Are you crazy?” Harry said. “There are more than a dozen of them wandering around over there. Maybe two dozen. Assault rifles, explosives, walkie-talkies to coordinate with each other. This isn’t a riot, this is a calculated mass-assassination. You can’t go out there.”
Layne looked out upon the chaos. A few of the bungalows were burning. As many as twenty bodies—maybe more—were prone, red darkening the pure white snow around them. The few remaining living retreat guests were screaming, racing across the snow, trying to flee. Running around with nowhere to go. The darkening afternoon and the sturdy blockade of armed hostiles made every route out of the campus impassable for the unarmed guests.
“We can’t do nothing,” Layne said. “We can’t. They’re dying.”
“We’re outnumbered and out-gunned. This is what the beacon was for. To guide them in, in case the weather was bad.”
“It worked. What do you suggest we do if we’re not here to fight?”
Harry breathed, his chest heaving. “We need a tactical retreat. I mean, this in-the-field stuff is your area, not mine. But if I were running this op, I would advise retreat. We can’t save them.”
Layne growled, indecision throttling him.
“And we have to hurry,” Harry said. “Don’t you think we should back out of this before they see us?”
“It’s not right,” Layne said, gritting his teeth. He’d known something bad was coming. That something like this would happen, but he still hadn’t been prepared for it. And now, everyone was dying because of his inability to see this outcome.
“You go,” Layne said. “I’m going to sneak in there and attack.”
“Layne, no. Don’t be crazy. They'll cut you down in seconds. Maybe you’ll take out a few, but you won’t be able to make a dent in their overall numbers. All those people will still be dead, and so will we.”
Adrenaline spiking, Layne couldn’t think straight. He should have been ready for this contingency. Should have known better.
“If we’re dead,” Harry said, “we can’t find the kids. The shipment. The kids are what matters, remember?”
What the hell was he supposed to do?
In another second, the decision was made for them. A white-clad soldier appeared to their flank. A bullet whizzed over Layne’s shoulder, whipping his body around to find the source of the blast.
Layne snatched Harry by the arm and pushed him down, then popped up over him, using his back to steady his aim. Harry jabbed fingers into his ears and shut his eyes.
Layne pressed the trigger. The single shot rocketed across the distance and blew a hole in the attacker’s left eye. Blood ejected from the hole as the man staggered and then sank into the snow.
Layne swiveled his head around. He noted three or four others who had paused from slaughtering the dwindling number of retreat guests to see the commotion. Also, another snowcat arrived to join the existing two, this one also stocked full of soldiers in white outfits. They exited the oversized vehicle like clowns ejecting from a circus car.
Harry had been right. Running headfirst into this scene would spell instant death. Layne figured he could take up to ten of them, but no way would he and Harry make it out alive. And, if they died, who would stop the shipment tomorrow?
“Get up,” Layne said. “You’re right. We have to go, now, back the way we came.”
He jerked Harry to his feet and pushed him toward the tennis court, headed for the woods past campus. Harry’s snowshoes whipped white powder into the air. No time to take them off, so Layne had no choice but to drag Harry along with him.
Layne looked back to see how many were on their tail. One of the bungalow doors flew open, and a woman sprinted out, her hair whipping around. Janine. She was crying, screaming, trying to race across the footpath toward the edge of campus.
Layne watched in horror as an assassin barreled out of the bungalow after her. He lifted a pistol and fired one shot. She twisted and sank to the ground, arms and legs splayed out.
After al
l she’d been through over the last few days, Janine would die face-down in the snow.
Something in their path caught Layne’s eye. The assassin he’d killed had died with one hand sticking up in the air, no gloves, and there was something strange about his hand. As he passed, Layne focused and noted a tattoo on the edge of the man’s palm. A small black thing, like a collection of circles forming a web. The image flashed through his mind and looked familiar, but he didn’t make a connection to anything he recognized. No time to worry about it now.
Bullets sliced the air around them, and Layne spun to return fire, trying to navigate the snowy terrain without tripping. If they stumbled and went down, these gunmen would take them out in a second.
Layne tagged two of the pursuers immediately, and the remaining two opted not to run, to instead take knees in the snow and pause to aim down their rifle scopes. Layne knew better than to target them when prone. It would be a waste of ammo.
With the tennis courts providing cover, the hostiles would have a harder time hitting them, as well, but it still wasn’t impossible. In two seconds, maybe three, they would adjust for the distance and unleash a volley of bullets.
“Faster!” Layne shouted.
Bursts of weapons fire peppered the air as he and Harry scrambled left and right. Harry gasped, red-faced, gargling each breath like a mouthful of Listerine. Layne worried his colleague might collapse of a heart attack before they reached the lip of the hill, twenty feet ahead.
Fifteen feet.
Ten feet. Layne pulling Harry, willing him to keep on his feet.
They survived long enough to reach the descent, and soon enough, the bullets behind them ceased.
“Are we clear?” Harry said, barely able to get the words out.
“Not clear enough,” Layne said, still ferrying him with the ferocity of a bear dragging a kill to its cave. “You can bet they’ll be in pursuit.”
And with the sun sinking behind them, they didn’t stop retreating until Layne thought both he and Harry would succumb to total exhaustion.