Days of Rage (16 page)

I
searched the girl’s body for weapons and found a small folding knife. Tossing it aside, I raised her into a sitting position, checking her pulse and breathing. She appeared okay, leaving me wondering about my next move. Like a dog that chases a car, I had no idea what to do with what I’d caught.

I could hear the people gathering on the street outside the alley, spilling out from the bazaar, all trying to connect why a motorcycle had raced through the place. Getting bits and pieces, they were beginning to draw a story. Some were wildly wrong, others dangerously close. I heard the peculiar sound of a European siren closing in on the action and knew I had to get away.

I called Decoy and Jennifer, getting nothing. It didn’t cause concern, though, since the standard operating procedure was to put all cell phones into original equipment mode when confronted with possible compromise. In other words, turn them into standard cell phones instead of the top secret communications devices they were. Jennifer and Decoy were now at ground zero for a murder, and for all I knew were sitting in the backseat of a Turkish police car.

I considered my options. One, I could let her go. Leave her here to wake up. We weren’t involved with the target, so it would be clean. But the bitch had something to do with the deaths of Taskforce members, so that option was out of the question. Regardless of the risk to my cover.

Two, I could take her with me. Drag her somewhere and get her inside a secure area. But that was just about impossible. What the hell could I do? Carry her along as my drunk date?

Three, I could kill her. I knew she’d killed Turbo and Radcliffe. Well, I knew she was on the team who’d done the mission. And she’d tried to kill Jennifer and me.

At the end of the day, this was probably the best option, because I still had the damn thumb drive mission to contend with, and that operation had no room for prisoners.

Simple.

She’d do the same if the roles were reversed.

I used one hand to hold her head still and placed the folded knuckles of my other hand against the back of her neck. Syncing where I would strike. I cocked my elbow, concentrating on the spot, not wanting to cause her unnecessary pain.

I saw her hand twitch. I felt her breath.

I couldn’t do it.

The blackness that Jennifer was so afraid of didn’t appear. The rage that had consumed me in the past, that had turned me into an executioner, remained at bay. What once ruled my life had decided to hide when I needed it most. Instead, something inside was telling me that killing her like this was an abomination.

I sagged against the wall, a little disgusted with myself. I let out a breath.

Shit. Looks like the drunk-date option.

She started to awaken, her eyes fluttering back and forth. It would be seconds before she snapped them open. I leaned in and rolled my knuckles into her arteries again, cutting off the blood flow to her brain. She slumped back.

I threw her over my shoulders and started moving down the alley, wondering if I had lost my killer instinct by getting entangled with Jennifer. Not regretting the decision, but wondering if I’d lost a bit of an edge, especially considering the woman on my shoulder would do it to me without question.

I thought about my past, when I was on active duty in the Taskforce. I might have killed her then, but it wasn’t a given. Well, not a given before my family was taken from me. After that had happened, the question would have been whether I would have done it slowly.

But you were crazy then.

After I’d lost my family, I’d killed to release the pain, not for the mission. I’d inflicted the agony inside me onto others, conveniently using the mantle of my job to justify it. I wondered if that’s what she did as well. I hoped not. That time had been horrific, and I was lucky to have made it out of the blackness in one piece. If the woman on my shoulder was a reflection of that, the world would have been better off if I’d left her in the alley with a broken neck.

I went through two intersections, sticking to festering alleys and avoiding other pedestrians, searching for a suitable place to hide. I found it down a twisting side street, a youth hostel with a flickering neon sign advertising individual rooms. A piece-of-shit place that I would never have entered if I had more than twenty dollars to spend, but a building that would now give me cover without anyone asking questions. Somewhere to sort out my next steps.

I walked in with the girl over my shoulder, causing a stir from two Australians sitting on a worn couch watching a community TV. Well, they looked like Australians. Thick beards and a quart of beer on the chipped table to their front.

I said, “Too much partying. This place have room for us?”

They gave me a knowing nod, then hollered for the manager, confirming my suspicions with their accents. He came down from a narrow stairwell, a wizened old Turkish guy. He smirked at me, then checked us in, which consisted of me handing him cash and him handing me a key. No paperwork of any kind. He smirked again and pointed up the stairwell.

Getting to the threadbare room, I tied her to the sink, then did a thorough search of her person, finding nothing but a passport from Australia.

Sure. Another Australian backpacker.

I splashed water in her face, snapping her awake. She jerked about for a moment, then looked at me.

Setting the tone, I said, “I don’t want to kill you, but I will.”

She said nothing. Looking at me as if I were the devil.

I said, “I know you’re not Australian. But don’t worry, I’m not going to raise a stink about it. What I want to know is why you’ve killed my friends.”

I let that sink in, then grabbed the hair above her forehead, jerking her upright.

“So you know, that’s the reason I’m going to make your life fucking miserable. But I have to sell this some way, so what’s up with Boko Haram? Why do you kill everyone around him? Why do you protect him?”

Her eyes flicked left and right, clearly trying to determine how she could escape her fate. I yanked her head again, going so far as to hammer it against the pipe under the sink.

“Don’t even think it. I’ll fucking kill you right here. Trust me, that little shit downstairs won’t call the police.”

She looked into my eyes, and I saw Jennifer. I
saw
my weakness. I saw what was keeping the blackness under the scar tissue. And hating it. The assassin in front of me was responsible for the murder of my friends, and I couldn’t generate the emotion to do what was necessary because she was female.

I released her hair in disgust and stood up, moving to the worn-out twin bed against the wall.

O
n her knees, Jennifer watched her killer advance through the shadows of the museum lighting. Convinced of his superiority, he walked right up to her and placed his left hand on the back of her head, grasping her fingers and intertwining them in her hair. He cinched down her head, forcing her to look at the ground. Reducing her ability to fight.

He shoved his weapon into a belt and shouted down in Russian to the man below. He heard a response, then said, “You will stand up slowly. If you move in any hostile manner, I will throw you over the rail. Do you understand?”

She nodded, the thought that she’d made a mistake seeping into her. Searching for the split second that would give her an edge, she said, “I’ll do whatever you want. I’m not the person in charge. I’m not supposed to be here.”

The man shouted in Russian again, then pulled her hair, forcing her to rise. When she was upright she rolled to the balls of her feet, getting ready. She whined, asking him to release her head, and he snorted, jerking her by the roots and turning her to face him. Giving her a target.

She speared out a knee, driving it forward with all of her weight and catching him directly in the stomach, penetrating deep. He grunted, released her hair, and staggered back, holding his midsection. She whirled and dove over the edge, going into free fall like a jungle animal, absolutely confident she’d find something to halt her descent. She dropped five feet before her hand snagged a single piece of scaffolding.

The weight of her body snapped through her shoulder, threatening to break her grip. She swung around the metal and clamped her other hand onto a steel support rod. She started to work her way down.

The man on the balcony screamed to his partner, and, as she expected, the other killer below appeared. He shouted up at her, pointing a pistol.

When she stopped climbing, he said, “Do not do anything stupid. You cannot escape, and there is nobody coming to help. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to know what you know. That’s all.”

She hung where she was, waiting, knowing how this game of monkey in the middle would go. Counting on it. She said, “I don’t know anything. I’m not moving. I’ll stay up here until they open tomorrow.”

He said, “I’ll kill you. Right here. They’ll find your body tomorrow, wondering what has happened. All I want to know is how the Americans knew about the meeting with the Syrian. Why did you kill him?”

Truthfully, she said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I know nothing about a Syrian, and that killing was as big a surprise to me as it was to you.”

He aimed the pistol and said, “So be it.”

Jennifer closed her eyes, praying that his wish to garner information would trump his anger.

No shot came.

Instead, she heard him shout in Russian, his frustration transcending through the language barrier. She opened her eyes and saw the man above clamber onto the scaffolding. Entering the arena. Climbing onto the spider’s web.

She acted scared, gingerly moving away from him, allowing him to close the distance. She looked down at the other man sixty feet below and said, “Keep him away! I won’t help if he tries to hurt me.”

He said, “That’s okay. You’ll talk soon enough. You continue climbing down, or you’ll end up smashed on the floor. Either way, you’re coming here.”

She maneuvered over the top of him, putting her body directly above, waiting, acting as if she were paralyzed in fear. She screamed hysterically when the man from the balcony got within five feet.

“Don’t come closer! Don’t do it.”

The man below said, “Or what? You’ll jump? Climb down now. We won’t hurt you. We just want to know.”

She said, “I . . . I can’t.” She began to hitch her breathing, saying, “I’m going to slip. I can’t . . . I had nothing to do with this. . . . I’ll tell you anything . . . just get me down.”

The man below shouted in Russian again, and she waited. The killer on the scaffold reached her. She clung to the steel like it was life itself. He was surprisingly gentle, telling her she had nothing to fear. Telling her he would keep her alive.

He gave her instructions on what to do. How to get back up to the balcony ten feet away. When she looked below, he told her to never do that again, thinking he was helping her fear of heights. Not knowing she was judging the impact of his body, like a forward observer determining the strike of a mortar.

He reached out and touched her sleeve, smiling, letting her know he was no threat. She grimaced back, tears streaming down her face. She wrapped one arm into his and said, “Please don’t let me fall.”

He smiled, saying, “That won’t happen. We won’t hurt you. Follow me back.” She nodded, then laced her legs around the steel beams, locking her ankles together. He saw what she did and had a spark of confusion on his face, not realizing she still held his arm. He started to encourage her again, and she let go of the scaffold with her other arm, slapping her hand into the clothing on his shoulder and ripping backward with all of her might.

Jennifer saw his eyes grow wide and felt his body begin to peel from the scaffolding. He tried to lock his feet into the steel like she had. They grunted in the exertion, her straining to remove him and him fighting to prevent it.

She started to win, his body inexorably losing its last tenuous hold on the metal latticework. He tried to hit her, but the motion caused him to lose precious inches with his legs. She heard the man below shout, but knew he couldn’t shoot without hitting his friend.

Her target’s feet slipped free and he slid out, held sixty feet above the ground by Jennifer’s strength alone. He said, “Don’t do this, don’t do this, we weren’t going to hurt you, don’t do this.”

Hanging upside down, holding his hands like a trapeze artist, she looked him in the eye and said, “Tell that to Decoy.”

And let him go.

Before the body had even impacted, she raised herself up and caught the scaffolding in her hands, moving at lightning speed. Scampering like a monkey, she looked down and saw she’d missed with her dive-bomb, but not by much. The man below was lying on the ground, rolling about. He’d been struck, but it hadn’t taken him out. Next to him was the body, lying on a splatter of liquid like a water balloon of red paint had exploded.

She scrambled across the latticework and reached the center of the cathedral on the far side, away from the killers. She dropped down and raced across the stone to the courtyard outside, looking behind to see what followed.

Her pursuer was still sitting on the ground holding the head of the man she had tossed, covered in his bodily fluids. He pointed his pistol and squeezed the trigger over and over, the rounds punching the air, but none of them found their mark, the one-handed grip not providing nearly enough control for him to hit her at this distance.

She ducked and sprinted out, the bullets snapping around her like bees. The weapon locked open on an empty magazine, and he screamed, “You are fucking dead! I will skin you alive!”

She hit the courtyard and kept running.

I
stared out the window of my little hostel room, disgusted with my protectionism because the detainee was female. Upset that Jennifer had apparently corked my ability to kill without remorse. Taking another life was not an easy task, in combat or otherwise. The action required a healthy bit of emotion and a purity of deed, something Jennifer had somehow drained from me—at least as far as killing defenseless female assassins went.

I said, “You’re lucky you’re not a man.”

Testing the rope tying her to the pipe, the detainee said her first words. “You’re American.”

I turned from the window, looking at her.

She sounded like an Australian, but the accent had a little tilt at the end. Something I couldn’t put my finger on, but it was a tic I’d heard somewhere before. And it wasn’t from any time I’d spent in Moscow.

Get her talking.

I leaned back against the wall and said, “Yeah. I’m American. Only I’m
really
from the United States. More so than you’re from the land down under.”

She ignored that and said, “Are you CIA?”

“Shit no. Did you see me pay someone with a suitcase of cash to jerk you off that bike?”

For some reason that brought a smile. But not enough talking. I asked, “What’s your address in Australia?”

She rattled one off in a monotone, clearly having memorized it. But I knew I could crack that soon enough. I got a pen and paper, asking her for her hometown newspaper, nearest grocery store, price of gas, favorite radio station, and other mundane things that anyone would know if they really lived there.

She seemed smug, believing I couldn’t prove any of her answers were wrong, knowing she was just being tested on how quickly she could think on her feet. On how much she could
seem
authentic. Right up until I said, “When we checked in there were two Australians sitting in the lobby. I’m going to take these questions and answers to them. When they don’t pan out, I’m going to start inflicting pain.”

Her smugness vanished. When I moved to the door she shouted, “Why do you give a damn about a Syrian?”

I stopped and said, “What Syrian?”

“You said I’d killed your friend. The Syrian. When did they become friends of the United States? When did you start to favor them over your real friends?”

Her words solved the puzzle, causing all the pieces to fall into place. I looked at her with new curiosity, kicking myself for missing the clues. She was dark haired with black eyes. She wasn’t classically pretty, but attractive enough in a tomboy sort of way. In an
I served in the Israeli Army and never learned to be a girl
way.

Small waist and small breasts, she didn’t look like the typical Jew I’d seen in Israel, but that’s what she was. I was sure of it. The accent tic was from growing up speaking Hebrew. She’d managed to get rid of most of it, but a small amount had trickled out under stress.

The Uzi machine pistol and Australian passport were the kickers. No way would the Russians use an Uzi, a weapon invented and built in Israel. They had their own machine pistols, like the piece-of-shit AEK-919K that the Russkis thought was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Besides the gun, Mossad had conducted some high-profile targeted killings over the last few years, and they were known for using Australian passports for their operatives. It had become something of a signature.

I squatted in front of her until our eyes were six inches apart.

Looking for a reaction, I said, “I could give a shit about any Syrian. Why does Israel protect Boko Haram?”

She was good, I’ll give her that, but there was still a tell. A small bit of shock that flitted across her face. She said nothing.

I said, “Look, I think we’re working on different lines here. The man you killed was meeting the man I was following. Do you understand? We both were picking a terrorist thread, but from different directions.”

When she remained silent, I slapped the ground and said, “Jesus Christ! I’m the one who could maintain an air of being a tourist. You pumped thirty rounds into a man from the back of a motorcycle in front of fifty people. Saying you’re an Australian sightseer is stupid at this stage. We can help each other. There’s someone protecting my target, and that someone killed my teammates. All I know is he’s Russian.”

I saw a flash of recognition. I’d hit a nerve somehow. She said, “I am not your enemy. I can prove it. Give me your phone. I can contact my boss.”

I rolled my eyes. “What, some call center in Austria? I’m not stupid. You get my number, and your location is tracked.”

“Go buy a cell phone. Let me use it, then take it out and throw it away.”

I tried to poke a hole in her plan, but it was actually pretty solid. I could turn it on five seconds before, then off five seconds after. In one call, the most they’d get was which tower had registered the phone. And that would still leave about forty bazillion buildings she could be in.

I grinned and said, “That’s not bad for an Australian tourist.”

Before she could reply, my phone buzzed. I answered, hearing Jennifer. I smiled at her voice and said, “I was beginning to think you were in a Turkish prison like in
Midnight Express
.”

She said, “Decoy’s dead.”

The smile faded from my face. Stupidly, I said, “What?”

She relayed what had happened after their initial call at the café. Relayed the savagery of the attack. Relayed what had become of Decoy, and her inability to stop it. Her voice broke, the pain as real as if it had come from a physical blow. Memories of Decoy floated in my mind’s eye, and Jennifer’s words accomplished what I couldn’t on my own. She ripped the scab free.

And the blackness began to flow.