The Executioner's Game (9 page)

It was not a good thing to pull a weapon on an E-1 agent if you did not intend to use it. Luther had only a second to act. Alex would surely attack, and things would get really dangerous on this cracked sidewalk. Luther quickened his pace, pulling his own weapon.

A second after Alex saw the dealer's gun, he kicked it from the man's hand, lifting it into the night. Then Alex hit the man in the
throat with a blow that probably bent his windpipe. Another man grabbed Alex and pulled at him. The man ripped Alex's coat, and Luther saw something fall from it. At the same time, a third man took a swing at Alex. Alex pushed himself back against the man holding him and kicked the swinging man in the face with both feet. For a moment Luther was mesmerized by Alex's skill.

Alex threw the man holding him by bending over and dislodging him. The man flew into the air briefly and landed hard on his ass. Luther raised his gun. Alex turned just in time to see Luther.

The two man locked eyes, and for a moment nothing happened. One of the dealers bumped Alex and tried to hit him. Alex used the man's momentum to turn himself from Luther's firing line and put the dealer between them.

Alex took off down the dark street. It was an elegant move that looked planned and not improvised.

The dealer who'd bumped Alex raised a gun and pointed it at Luther, but before he could get off a shot, Luther grabbed the man's arm and bent it. One round fired, and the man released the weapon. Luther grabbed the gun and then hit the dealer on the back of the head with it, dropping him. Then he took off after Alex.

Alex rounded the corner and ran into the street against oncoming traffic. The lights, noise, and cars made him an elusive moving target. Luther pursued, knowing that Alex would run right into a car if it would deter his pursuer. Luckily there was not much traffic, and the few cars that were in the street easily avoided them.

Luther ran steadily, his gun at his side, and he tried not to think about all the memories he had of his friend. He had his duty, which now had to be carried out.

Luther raised his weapon and steadied it as best he could. He
was close enough to get a head shot. Shooting Alex in the back of the head seemed cowardly, but he did not have a choice.

Suddenly Alex glanced quickly over his shoulder. Then he turned back and threw both arms up and back in succession. The motion was unnatural and very fast.

The first knife flew by Luther's head, making a thin whizzing sound. Just as his mind registered what the projectile was, he saw the second one coming at him. Luther twisted to avoid it but the second knife slammed into his shoulder. Luther was thrown off his stride by the impact and his attempted maneuver. He toppled to the ground. When he hit the pavement, his gun discharged, making a popping noise.

Luther rolled a few times and then came to a halt. The knife that hit him had fallen out, and he was bleeding. He quickly got up, but it was too late. Alex was gone.

Luther looked around, and it was as if Alex had never been there. In the distance he heard men coming after him. He picked up the knife that had hit him and ran off. He moved to a side street and hid. He couldn't afford another confrontation right now. He was bleeding and would have to get help soon.

The two drug dealers stopped in the middle of the street, yelling, cursing, promising death.

Luther didn't wait around. There was nothing else to be done here. He was about to move off when he saw something that made him stop. One of the men was holding a small green card. Luther recognized it as an R-card, a sophisticated data and information card. That's what had fallen out of Alex's coat during the fight. The man with the card looked at it and said something to his friend.

Luther was injured, but he had to get that card from the dealers now. If they escaped, they might destroy it.

The dealers, tired of trash talk, put away their weapons and walked off.

Luther ran from his hiding place toward the men. It was the one on his left who had the green card. Luther ran to the man on his right and hit him hard in the kidneys, then spun and swept the legs of the man with the card out from under him. The man fell hard. Luther finished the first man with a blow to the head.

He pulled his gun and put it into the face of the second man. “The green card. Give it to me.”

The man handed Luther the card.

“The man you got this from, the white man, where did he get it?”

“I don't know, man!” said the dealer fearfully.

“How long did he have it?” asked Luther.

“I don't know! He dropped it when we was fightin'. First time I ever seen it.”

Luther felt the sting of his wound. He stepped over the fallen man and ran off.

 

When Luther got back to the safe house, Hampton dressed his wound, which was pretty nasty. He'd lost a lot of blood, and his pride was hurt as well. Luther had underestimated Alex, but they had surprised him by finding him so quickly, and he'd made a mistake. Luther had the card.

“So he hit you with a knife, running blind?” asked Hampton as he cleaned out the gash.

“Yes,” said Luther. “He took a quick look to make sure I was right behind him; then he tossed them over his shoulder.”

“Man, he's good.”

“Tell me about it,” said Luther.

“So he had an R-card,” said Hampton. “Let's hope the wolf never got a chance to access it. Maybe we can beat him to the information on it.”

Luther noticed that Hampton refused to use Alex's name and always referred to him as “the wolf” or “him,” anything but a human appellation. In Hampton's mind Alex was no longer a person. He was only the target of the mission.

“
If I were you, I'd kill my TWA
.”

Against his will, Luther's training brought back Alex's voice. Hampton had taken a big step shooting the man in Baltimore. It was justified to some extent, but out of character nonetheless. Luther put this thought away. He would not let Alex's mind game cloud his judgment.

“You know, the R-card is outdated technology,” said Hampton. “I thought they were all recalled years ago. I'll have to use an adapter for it. Luckily, I'm always prepared.”

“Alex must've gotten the R-card from some hiding place. He's collecting information, old information, for some reason. We need to access that card.”

Hampton took out a little box that looked like a CD jewel case and plugged it in to his computer.

“Dammit,” said Hampton. “It's been erased.”

“Erased?” asked Luther. “Is there anything you can do?”

“I don't know,” said Hampton. “I'll need to access the mainframe on a hard line. I'll need a reconstruction program. R-cards have a rudimentary encryption, but if we don't repair it just right, we'll get nothing. It's gonna take a while.”

“Work all night,” said Luther. “I'll stay up and stand watch at the safe house.”

“Why?” asked Hampton.

“Because either Alex has a head start on us or he's watching right now, planning to get that card back. Since we don't know which…”

“We assume the worst,” said Hampton.

Luther took them back to a hard line at the safe house. He stood guard as Hampton went about the task of restoring the information on the R-card. Luther watched the screen as the program slowly popped up codes and data at a snail's pace. By daybreak Hampton had succeeded.

The laptop's screen gave latitude and longitude readings and bore the code “AI” in the upper right corner.

“‘AI,'” Hampton muttered. “That's England.”

“England?” asked Luther.

“AI stands for Angel Isle. It's an old agency term for Great Britain,” said Hampton.

“Why would a British R-card be used?” said Luther.

“I don't know,” said Hampton. “Best guess is whoever used it didn't want anyone in this country to know what he was doing. R-cards were always accounted for by E-1, as I recall.”

“So he had time to erase it, but why not just destroy it?” Luther wondered. “Surely Alex knows that we have the technology to repair the card and reassemble the data on it. And if that's the case, then why erase it in the first place?”

“This guy's gonna give me a headache,” said Hampton. “You ever think about the fact that we're trying to figure out the mind of a man who might be insane?”

“Yes. That means we're thinking like crazy men,” said Luther.

“Uh-huh. And is that a good thing?” asked Hampton.

“Right now it's all we've got,” said Luther.

“Okay, so let's say he wanted us to find the card. That means the wolf obviously wanted us to follow him again.”

“Yes, but he didn't expect us to find him at that drug house,” said Luther. “Maybe he was on his way somewhere to leave the card for us so that we'd find it.”

“But that still doesn't explain why he erased it,” said Hampton. “Unless—”

“He just wanted to slow us down,” said Luther. “Part of getting this chase thing to work means that Alex has to stay ahead of us, right?”

“Right,” said Hampton. “He'd know that a lengthy reconstruction on the card would slow us down. I mean, we wouldn't know where to go until we got the intel from the card.”

Hampton ran the latitude and longitude numbers through a mapping program.

Luther looked at the screen and smiled a little. Alex was not being cagey this time around. He was going to a specific place.

They'd lost valuable time repairing the R-card, and so they drove all day to reach New York. By afternoon they were parked across from an office building in Harlem. It was in a nice area of the city, a far cry from the others they'd been to, but Harlem was a hard neighborhood that had seen worse days.

“Let's hope we're getting there first,” said Luther.

“The E-1 mainframe said that the R-card was twenty years old,” said Hampton. “This building has been refurbished within the last three years. It was a government building that housed nonlethal federal agencies. It was also a drop point for the CIA. Now it's an office building.”

“A drop point like the VA in Baltimore,” said Luther.

“Which cover are you using?”

“FBI,” said Luther.

“Try not to get killed,” said Hampton.

“What happened to ‘Don't kill anybody'?” asked Luther.

“After what the wolf did, I think it's time for a change.”

Luther got out of the truck and moved toward the building. He walked inside and went straight to security. He showed his badge and waited while they called it in. His cover was verified, and Luther was led to the basement utility room.

“They're sure sending a lot of feds here today,” said the guard, a thin black man of fifty.

“What other men have been here?” asked Luther casually. He didn't want to alarm the guard.

“Some guy from OSHA. Said he was expecting more men.”

“When did he get here?”

“An hour ago,” said the guard. “He was wearing one of them safety masks.”

“When did he leave?” asked Luther.

“I didn't see him go,” said the guard.

Luther took off running.

“He was here!” said Luther to Hampton. “Call it in!”

“The drop point is in the east wall, at the base,” said Hampton. He was looking a schematic of the building on his computer.

Luther got to the basement door and stopped. He opened the door quietly and went inside, his gun out, locking the door behind him so the guard couldn't follow. The room was bright and filled with electrical equipment and supplies. At the far end was a massive heating unit.

“I'm in,” said Luther.

He took a small step forward. The room was basically a big square. The walls were slate gray, and the place smelled faintly of mold and chemicals.

Luther moved slowly. If Alex was here, he still had the element of surprise.

“Director patching in,” said Hampton quietly.

“Is it Deavers?” asked Kilmer on the line.

“Haven't seen him yet,” said Luther. “A lot of hiding places in this basement.”

Luther went in farther. He made sure to move in circles so that no one one could maneuver behind him.

“Don't let him get away this time,” said Kilmer.

Luther's eyes narrowed at this, but he kept moving. He went toward the eastern wall, checked the baseboard, and was disappointed to see that part of it had been pried open. There was nothing behind it.

“Shit,” said Luther, “Alex has been here. Repeat, he's been here and—”

Luther saw a door. He moved to it, his gun held out in front. He went to the back of the heating unit, where shadows crept into the bright room. When he got there, he saw a door leading up to the street. It was open.

“He's gone,” said Luther.

“Get after him,” said Kilmer. “He can't have gone far.”

“Shall I coordinate the locals?” asked Hampton.

“That might be a good—” Kilmer began.

“Wait.” Luther cut him off. “There's something wrong here.”

He'd noticed that the heating unit had been tampered with. A metal pipe was connected to the front gauges. These in turn were covered in thick layers of duct tape. The pipe ran from the gauges to the back of the heating unit.

Luther described the setup to Hampton and Kilmer.

“Can you find the model number?” asked Hampton.

Luther located it at the front of the unit on one of its many panels. He gave it to Hampton, then immediately heard Hampton tapping away at his laptop. There was a brief silence, and then Luther heard him sigh.

“We got a problem,” said Hampton.

“Forget it,” said Kilmer. “You two go after Deavers right now.”

“Sir, I think he's rigged a toxic bomb,” said Hampton. “That unit is a Model TLX from Newton Heating. It's computerized. The wolf may have rigged the exhaust to heat up the monitoring gauges. When that happens, the unit will automatically go into cooldown mode by mixing an inhibited glycol-based coolant. This is okay if the unit is actually overheating.”

“And if not?” asked Luther, suddenly alarmed.

“It will emit a toxic gas that can cause brain damage or kill. Here's the best part: The gas is almost totally odorless.”

“I'm on it,” said Luther, and he began to peel away the duct tape slowly.

“No,” said Kilmer. “Get out of there. Deavers is making time on you.”

“There are innocent people in this building, sir,” said Luther.

“The locals can handle it,” said Kilmer.

“We don't know if there's enough time,” Luther insisted.

“Acquiring Deavers is your priority. Out of the building—now!”

“Negative, sir,” said Luther. “We have a dangerous situation, and it is not E-1 procedure to—”

“Don't quote the rules to me,” said Kilmer. “I wrote them! Agent Hampton…”

Luther got to the bottom of the tape. He saw the gauges intact. There was nothing connecting the gauges and the pipe. It was a decoy. But on the thick-gauge glass was something he hadn't expected.

A message. It was on a small piece of paper taped to the glass.

“The unit is uncompromised,” said Luther.

“Go. Now.” Kilmer hung up the line.

Luther took the message and left the building. He walked quietly through the lobby, rendezvoused outside with Hampton, and they drove off.

They did a standard sweep of the area and listened as the locals were given a general description of Alex Deavers. Luther told Hampton the text of Alex's message. They knew they'd be moving on, but at Kilmer's insistence they searched the rest of the night. Again Alex proved elusive.

“Kilmer wanted me to let the unit disperse the gas,” said Luther later on as they sat in the airport terminal.

They'd had to move both hell and high water to get their weapons through. They were taking a charter plane out, and Luther felt a sense of dread about where they were going.

“And he was serious,” said Hampton. “All he wants is the wolf.”

The director was willing to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of people to catch Alex, Luther thought. That was not the way of E-1, even for a wolf. Alex wanted Luther to know that Kilmer for some reason was willing to let innocents die in order to get him, subvert the rules to get to him. Luther realized that taking any message from a wolf was dangerous, especially after the mayhem Alex had visited upon other agents in the field. But Luther's instinct was calling to him now and he could not deny it.

Something was not right.

“…
That information, too
.”

What did Alex know that would make Kilmer endanger innocent people? Luther decided that he would not share his suspicions with anyone, not even Hampton, at this point.

“…
I'd kill my TWA
.”

When Kilmer had gotten angry, he'd called upon Hampton and then stopped when Luther announced that the device was
harmless. What had Kilmer been planning to ask Hampton to do? he wondered.

Luther and Hampton walked from the terminal to the charter plane on the tarmac. Luther tried to ease the trouble he felt swirling in his head. He pushed these thoughts aside and was left with only Alex's daunting message:

“
Go home
.”

To Luther's hometown, Detroit.