The Archangel Project (20 page)

His name was Michael Crowley, and when the call came
through, he was at his computer in the back room of a rented shotgun in that part of New Orleans known as the Irish Channel. All he had to do was glance at the number on the phone and he knew they had trouble.

He listened for a moment, then put in a call to Lance Palmer. “The Charbonnet Street house has been compromised. A man and a woman. They sound white.”

“Fuck,” said Lance. “It's Alexander and the girl. How the hell did they find the house?”

Crowley could hear Palmer shouting to Hadley in the background, “Where's Fitzgerald?” Hadley's reply was muffled by the slamming of doors, the slap of running feet.

Lance said, “He's closer to the Ninth than we are, if he's in Marigny. We'll meet him at the house. Let's go.”

Crowley said, “You want me to head over there, too?”

“Negative. Keep monitoring the microphone feed. You can relay it to us when we get to the house. I don't care what it takes. I want those two dead.”

 

The moonlight shining through the empty windows was bright enough that they didn't need the flashlights until they reached the stairwell, where the walls were only gutted to about halfway up. Jax Alexander slipped his Beretta back into the waistband of his khakis and flicked on his flashlight, holding the fingers of one hand splayed over the glass so the light came out diffused and tinted oddly red by his flesh. Tobie, following him up the stairs, did the same.

Nothing in the house seemed familiar to her, not even when they reached the second floor and found the walls there still intact. There were three bedrooms and a bathroom. The first two bedrooms were empty. But in the third bedroom, the largest, they found a stained mattress thrown on the floor in the corner. There was a folding table, too, set up near the curtained window.

Jax walked over to finger the heavy drape. “It's a blackout curtain. Someone obviously wanted to make sure no one knew they were in here.”

Tobie let her gaze rove over the litter of items on the table: a pair of wire cutters and a couple of screwdrivers, a coil of wire, and a few snips of stripped wire. A canvas bag lay on the floor, next to the empty blister pack from a card of nine-volt batteries and the discarded packaging from a couple of cheap, throwaway cell phones.

“What's this?” she asked, hunkering down to look at a scattering of silver splatters on the floor.

“Someone's been soldering in here.”

Straightening, she was reaching for a book she'd spotted on the edge of the table when he said, “We need to back out of here fast.”

She swung around to look at him. “Why? What is it?”

“This place is a bomb factory. Did you touch anything?”

Tobie felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. “The book,” she said, realizing she was still holding it.

“Bring it.”

“I don't understand.” She shoved the book into her bag as they headed back toward the stairs. “How does this fit in with any—”

He pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her as the distant creak of a board cut through the stillness of the night.

Her gaze flew to meet his. There was someone downstairs.

Rather than click off his flashlight, he carefully set it down on its face, reducing the light to a small, softly glowing ring. She did the same. Then, slipping the Beretta from its waistband holster again, he thrust out his left hand, his fingers splayed wide in a silent message.
Stay here
.

She expected him to creep down the stairs. Instead, she watched, bemused, as he laid down on his stomach at the top of the stairs and began to inch down the steps head first, his elbows splayed wide so he could hold his Beretta at the ready.

There hadn't been another hint of movement from the first floor. She was beginning to wonder if they'd simply been spooked by the sound of the ruined house settling when she heard another creak, this time from the stairwell directly below.

Jax slithered head first down the steps. He could feel the
rough floorboards snagging his shirt, scraping his bare arms.

He had no way of knowing exactly who was downstairs. The last thing he wanted to do was get in a shootout with some Katrina-crazed homeowner, or maybe a cop. But then he saw the tall man at the base of the stairs, the shadow of his gun extended by the length of a suppressor, and Jax knew he wasn't dealing with either a cop or a homeowner.

The light filtering in through the uncurtained ground floor windows glinted on something shiny in the man's ear. Jax saw the gleam of a tiny blue LED and realized it was a Bluetooth earpiece. The guy was listening to a cell phone.

Then one of the steps groaned beneath Jax's weight.

The man jerked, his gun coming up to fire. But the sight of Jax upside down on the stairs must have confused him because he hesitated for a split second. Jax
squeezed off two rounds, one right after the other, his ears ringing with the percussion in the confined space. The unsuppressed explosions bracketed the other gun's silenced
pop
.

The man in the hall jerked once, twice, then dropped to his knees. Jax was about to fire again when the man pitched forward onto his face. It was only when Jax felt the sting in one of his legs that he realized the sonofabitch had hit him.

Jax slithered the rest of the way down the stairs. Given the way he was hanging upside down, he figured it was easier than trying to get up. October Guinness came charging down the stairs behind him, a big Glock held in that professional grip she'd displayed on the cabin cruiser. She was so small and slim that he kept forgetting she was a vet who'd seen action in Iraq.

“Is he dead?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

Jax held a finger to his lips in warning. Slipping the Bluetooth from the dead man's ear, he listened to the frantic voice at the other end of the connection.

“Christ! What the hell happened? Fitzgerald? Fitzgerald, talk to me. Lance says he's a few minutes away. I heard shots but now the microphones aren't picking up anything. Fitzgerald?”

Moving quickly, Jax went through the dead man's pockets, removing wallet, gun, keys. He found the guy's cell phone, turned it off, and took that, too. That's when he noticed the tattoo high on one of the guy's arms: a scorpion superimposed over two crossed arrows.

“Isn't that—”

Surging to his feet, Jax clamped his hand over her mouth. “The house is wired,” he whispered, pushing
her toward the back door. “They can hear everything we say.”

He dashed back up the stairs to retrieve their flashlights, then pulled her out of the house. She waited until they were on the back porch, then said, “Who would bug an empty house?”

The sound of an engine pushed hard cut through the night. “Shit,” he said. “Here they come.”

Leaping off the back porch, they lunged across the overgrown, rubble-filled yard. From the street out front came a screech of brakes, the slamming of doors. A powerful searchlight lit up the darkness, wavering as running feet slapped around the side of the house.

“Shit,” said Jax again. Grabbing her arm, he ducked through the broken fence separating that yard from the next. She snagged her foot on a branch buried deep in weeds and would have gone down if he hadn't caught her. The spotlight bounced over them.

“Keep low,” Jax warned. They took off across the adjoining yard just as someone squeezed off a half-dozen suppressed shots that ripped through the pile of debris to their right and sprayed the air with splinters from the wooden fence.

“You all right?” he said, not missing a stride.

“God—I—hate—to—run,” she said, her voice jagged as she leaped over an old bathtub and then what looked like a broken chair.

They had to cut across three more yards to get to where they'd left the car. By the time they reached the old garage, he could feel his shoe filling up with blood, and the wound in his calf was throbbing like hell. He
threw Tobie Guinness the keys to his car. “Pull it out of the garage and open the passenger door for me.”

She caught the keys. He could hear her yanking open the car door, gunning the engine. He crouched down in the shadow cast by the garage wall, took the silenced pistol he'd lifted off Fitzgerald and trained it on the fence.

The searchlight's powerful beam wavered as the man holding it stooped to duck through the storm-shattered wooden fence at the edge of the yard. Taking aim, Jax fired off three rounds. He couldn't be sure if he hit the guy, but at least the sonofabitch dropped the light and flattened. Someone shouted and two more searchlights split the night. “Jesus Christ,” said Jax.

The Monte Carlo shot out of the garage and slammed to a halt beside him. Jax leaped for the open passenger door. “Floor it! Let's get out of here.”

She hit the gas, lurching out of the driveway and laying down a trail of rubber the length of the street. Twisting around to look back, Jax saw two men burst into the street behind them. “Get down!” he shouted as both men opened fire. The back window shattered, showering them with broken glass.

“How am I supposed to get down when I'm driving?” she asked, careening around the corner.

Jax shook the broken glass off his lap. “Damn. There goes my good driver discount.”

And then October Guinness did the most amazing thing. Her eyes were wide with fear, her grip on the steering wheel so tight her fingers showed white. But she looked over at him and laughed.

 

Lance was standing at the base of the staircase and looking down at Paul Fitzgerald's body when Hadley walked in the back door, a stream of dark red blood running down the side of his face. “You hurt?”

Hadley swiped the back of his hand across his cheek. “Nah. Scratched myself on the fucking fence. What's the damage?”

“Fitzgerald's dead.”

“Shit.” Hadley blew out his breath in a long sigh. “Has the operation been blown?”

Lance shook his head. “It's bad, but I don't think things have deteriorated to the point we need to abort. There's no one in the neighborhood to have heard the shots. The house is still intact. We take Fitzgerald's body and we get out of here.”

“But they've seen everything.”

“So? What have they learned? Right now, all this is meaningless to them.”

“It won't be meaningless after tomorrow night.”

“By then they'll be dead.”

“I don't think Neosporan is meant for gunshot wounds,”
said October Guinness.

Jax paused in the act of cleaning the jagged flesh of his calf with peroxide and a wad of gauze, and glanced up to find her watching him with a frown. “You think I should go to the hospital, do you?”

“Yes.”

They'd pulled into the shadows of the parking lot of the Walgreens on the corner of St. Claude and Elysian Fields so he could load up on peroxide, Neosporan, and bandages. His khakis were beyond saving, but he could deal with his leg.

“And tell them—what? That I got shot by a guy I killed while I was breaking into a house in the Lower Ninth? Oh, and let me introduce Miss October Guinness, currently NOPD's most wanted.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you always such an obnoxious smartass?”

Jax huffed a laugh and started winding a length of bandage around his leg. “Medical personnel are required by law to report all gunshot wounds to the police. That's something we really don't want to have to deal with right now. The NOPD has a bad reputation. A very bad reputation. And we have no friends here.”

“What do you mean, we don't have any friends here? I thought you were with the CIA?”

“Yeah. And who was that back in the Ninth Ward?”

“You think they're CIA?”

“I don't know who they are. All I know is we seem to be dealing with an endless supply of bad guys here, with some seriously sophisticated equipment and resources out the ass. I don't know about you, but that worries me. That worries me a lot. The only reason we're still alive right now is that we've been damned lucky.”

“And because they've underestimated us.”

It was quietly said. He looked up, his gaze meeting hers. She was tired and she was scared, but she was holding it together remarkably well. He said, “You're right. They have underestimated us. But I don't think they're going to make that mistake again. And whatever it was we saw back in that house just upped the ante.”

Perspiration had dampened her T-shirt so it was molded against her breasts. He could see her chest rise and fall with each breath she drew. “Are you sure it was a bomb factory?”

“Sure? No. But that's what all the evidence pointed to. The solder, the wire fragments, the cell phone and battery packs…it's textbook stuff.”

“The book,” she said suddenly, rummaging around in her bag. She came up with a small paperback, the intricate mosaic of its cover design nearly devoid of color in the parking lot's thin lights. “Hell,” she whispered softly.

He frowned. “What is it?”

She held it out to him. “It's a Koran.”

He took it in one outstretched hand, turning it over thoughtfully. “Looks new.”

“Is that significant?”

“It could be, yes.”

He was aware of her intense brown gaze upon him. “You said you recognized the guy you shot on the boat. Did you know the guy in the Charbonnet house?”

“No. But he was Special Forces, too.”

“I know.” He saw her eyes widen, if as she were seeing—or remembering—something horrible. “I recognized the tattoo.”

She went to sit sideways in the Monte Carlo's passenger seat, the wallet he'd taken off the dead man in the Ninth Ward in her lap. While Jax tore off a strip of adhesive, she started thumbing through the guy's cards.

“So who was he?” Jax asked.

“Paul Fitzgerald. According to his driver's license, he's from Texas.” She paused. “It's a Dallas address.”

Jax tore off another strip. “Somehow, I don't think that's a coincidence.”

“Look at this funny card,” she said, holding it up. “It's the size of a regular credit card, but it's thicker. It's got his photograph on it and some numbers, but there's no magnetic strip, no company name. Nothing.”

Straightening, Jax reached out to take the card in his hand. “It's for a proximity reader.”

“A what?”

“A proximity reader. It's a kind of security system, usually for the doors of a high security office. This card is basically a key. You hold it up to a reader and it's like, ‘Open Sesame.' It's part of a very expensive, state of the art system.”

“So where's the office?”

Jax flipped the card over in his hand. “My guess? Dallas.” He glanced down at her. “I think it'd be worth our while to fly over there. See exactly what's at those coordinates of yours.”

“Are you kidding? I can't get on an airplane. NOPD's most wanted, remember?”

Jax tossed her the card and smiled. “Well now, that depends on the airplane.”

 

Tobie leaned against the car and watched Jax Alexander make another phone call.

“Hey, Bubba,” he said with all the exaggerated enthusiasm of the good old boy he wasn't. “Where you at?”

Tobie choked down a laugh and mouthed,
Bubba
?
His name is Bubba?

Jax ignored her. Bubba's reply must have pleased him, because he said, “Good. I need you to pick me up from the New Orleans Lakefront Airport.”

There was a pause. Jax said, “I don't need a taxi, Bubba. I need a plane.” He waited for Bubba's reply, then said, “I know what time it is. This is important.”

He held the phone away from his ear so that even
Tobie could hear the unseen Bubba bellow, “What? You guys don't have planes?”

Jax brought the phone back to his ear and said, “We got out of the Air America business a while ago. That's why we hire guys like you these days.”

Tobie couldn't quite make out Bubba's response, but its drift was obvious when Jax said, “You'll get paid for this one, Bubba.”

Bubba's response was so loud, even Tobie could hear. “
That's what you said last time, Jax
.”

Jax looked affronted. “You got paid, didn't you? Come on, Bubba; how much?”

The figure Bubba named rocked Jax back on his heels. “Are you crazy? I don't want to buy the airplane. I just want to use it.” There was a pause, then Jax said, “I don't need a pilot. I can fly.”

Bubba's response was long and heated. When he finally ran out of steam, Jax said calmly, “That wasn't my fault, Bubba.”

Bubba seemed to think it was. He ranted for another minute, until Jax said, “Okay, okay. You and the plane. Just meet me at Lakeside Airport.”

Tobie watched, amused, as Jax snapped his phone closed. “Who is this guy?” she asked.

“A friend of mine with an airplane.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“You really don't want to know.” He tossed her the keys. “Here. You drive. I need to make another phone call.”

Tobie got into the car as Jax slid into the passenger seat. “I remember hearing once that espionage is
largely a matter of theft or assassination,” she said. “Personally, I'd say it's degenerated into a series of phone calls. Don't you worry about someone picking up your calls?”

“They're secure.”

She turned the key in the ignition. “Where are we going?”

“The Hilton. I need to get my stuff.” He punched a number on his speed dial. “Hey, Matt.” There was a pause, then he said, “Why does everyone keep asking me if I know what time it is? Listen, there's a house in the Ninth Ward, 1214 Charbonnet Street. I think it's a bomb factory. You might want to arrange for someone to call in an anonymous tip to the FBI. There's a dead body there, too…Yes, I shot him. What did you want me to do? Let him shoot me? His name is Paul Fitzgerald.” He reached for the dead man's license and read off the address. “He's another Special Forces guy. See what you can find on him, would you?”

Tobie gave him a sharp look when he got off the phone. “You're calling the FBI? The guys who came to my house told me they were FBI.”

Jax shook his head. “They're not FBI.”

“You're so sure?”

“The FBI gets some ex–Special Forces people, but not many these days. They can make too much money working for outfits like Blackwater. Our government trains them, then they go work for private security companies who rent them back to the taxpayers for ten times what they'd cost if they'd stayed in the military.”

“You think that's what we're dealing with here? Mer
cenaries? The CIA still gets ex–Special Forces guys, doesn't it?”

He swung his head to look at her and made an exasperated sound in the back of his throat. “I told you, this isn't a CIA operation. The Director himself sent me down here.”

“So how did you know the guy in the boat?”

“Stuart Ross? I recognized him from when I was on an assignment down in South America.”

“Why didn't he recognize you?”

“Because I looked different.”

She huffed a soft laugh. “What do you mean you looked different?”

He said, “Just drive, okay?”

 

Jax stood with his arms crossed at his chest, his eyes narrowed as he stared off across the empty runway. The breeze lifting off the lake felt cool against his face and brought him the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine blooming someplace unseen in the night. He looked at his watch, then glanced over at October Guinness, curled up asleep on the backseat of the car.

So far she was holding up, but he knew she didn't have a good track record. He'd thought about asking Matt to send someone down to bring her in, then changed his mind. He didn't like the way Special Forces people kept turning up on the wrong side of this operation. Until he was sure who they were dealing with, he wasn't letting her out of his sight.

He still hadn't been able to accept the idea that she could “see” office buildings and secret project files simply by accessing the shadowy parts of her brain
through some spooky process. The very thought of it went against the grain of a lifetime of hard, practical thinking. But it was difficult to argue with what they'd run into in the Ninth Ward…or with the dead bodies that seemed to keep piling up around her.

The drone of an airplane brought his head around. A sleek Gulfstream jet dropped down out of the clouds building over the lake and cruised in to a landing. Jax opened the car door and reached in to touch her shoulder.

She awoke with a start, her eyes wide with fear. At the sight of him, she let out a soft sigh that made her seem unexpectedly vulnerable and touched him in a way he chose not to explore.

He gave her a lopsided grin. “Your ride is here.”