The Janson Command (26 page)
The Sydney Bridge Climb was advertised on the plane and in the airport. Groups of tourists were escorted to the top of the bridge to enjoy the stunning view and have their pictures taken above the beautiful city. Two of them were slumped unconscious on the catwalk, laid out by Van Pelt. He had broken past them and was racing toward the top.
A girl saw Kincaid and screamed.
“There’s another one!”
Kincaid ran straight at them, pointed to the side she was going to pass, and ordered in a shout louder than the wind, “
Disperse!
”
The tourists shrank from the sight of a determined woman with blood streaming down her face. She blasted past them.
She saw Van Pelt fifty feet ahead, running like the wind.
The bastard was home free, running fast and easy, untroubled by his wound, and again taking advantage of being so much faster than she. A second climbing party suddenly materialized ahead of him, between him and the crest. The leader was shouting into a walkie-talkie. Without hesitating, Van Pelt jumped from the catwalk to the girders that traversed the bridge and ran, balancing himself hundreds of feet over the roadway and train tracks, racing across them to the opposite arch.
Kincaid followed. Her heart soared. She had better balance. She could run faster on the girders. In fact, the faster she ran the better her balance—as long as she didn’t miss a step and plunge a foot through a hole in the steel. He was picking his way more slowly, tiring, limping, stiffening up like a man afraid of falling. She was only twenty feet behind when the SR mercenary reached the far arch and scrambled onto its catwalk. His way was clear. There was nothing between him and the summit and when he crested it and started down he would go even faster. Kincaid reached the catwalk, scrambled over the rail, and ran after him.
A lone figure appeared at the top of the arch.
Kincaid blinked, gasping for breath, half-blinded by her own blood, thoroughly confused. The tourists’ voices had been weirdly hallucinatory. What she thought she saw now was even stranger. Hunched over a mobile phone, peering myopically through wire reading glasses at the yellow glow of a Google Map, the lone figure looked like a bridge climber who had somehow gotten lost, untethered from his group at the top of the bridge 450 feet above Sydney Harbour. He looked up from his phone at the sound of their pounding feet and removed his reading glasses as if to take a better look at the enormous Van Pelt charging the narrow catwalk straight at him. He slipped his glasses into his pocket, put his phone in another, and stood up straight.
“Janson!” The sight of his innocent specs and the span of his shoulders sent an invigorating blast of adrenaline through her arms and legs. No way she would let Paul Janson beat her to the catch. Kincaid summoned her last reserves for a final burst of speed to tackle Van Pelt’s ankles.
Van Pelt thrust his right shoulder forward like a battering ram. A loud yell stormed from his lips, a feral howl of destruction. He hurled his left hand in a pile driver blow with all his running weight behind it.
Paul Janson slid inside the arc of the mercenary’s fist, and Kincaid knew she had lost the race. But she had to admit that the traditional prizefighter punch that her partner chose from his close-combat arsenal was a thing of awesome beauty. With a synchronized explosion of footwork, hip pivot, and body momentum, the hand that had pocketed his mobile phone closed into a fist and flew with precisely directed energy. Quick as flame, smooth as oil, it traveled the shortest possible distance to strike the running man’s jaw with the audible crunch of a meat cleaver and lifted him over the guardrail and into thin air.
The SR mercenary fell with a scream of astonishment.
Plunging toward the water far below, wheeling through the beams of light that decorated the arch and illuminated the highways on the deck, buffeted by the wind and drifting like a kite, Hadrian Van Pelt took a full seven seconds to fall 450 feet.
Doubled over, Kincaid gasped, “I almost had him.”
* * *
PAUL JANSON LAUGHED,
giddy with relief to have her back safe. “What in hell did you think you would do with him when you caught him? He outweighed you by a hundred pounds.”
“His gun was empty— Sweet Jesus, look at that son of a bitch!”
As Van Pelt’s falling body dropped through the last band of light, they saw him twist around and turn a somersault in the air. With his arms held high and his feet pointed down, he knifed cleanly into the black water.
Janson grabbed his phone, switched off the Google Map, and touched Redial.
“… Me again. A man just jumped off the Harbour Bridge, dead center. He cut the water clean with his feet, so he could have survived.… Tall, blond hair, broad shoulders, right arm in a bandage. Confirmation would be appreciated.”
He told Kincaid, “My friend with the Australian Crime Commission says sharks came back when Sydney cleaned up the pollution. Your boy just jumped into a harbor full of bulls and great whites.”
“Poor sharks.”
“There’s the harbor patrol.”
“Good. This time I want to see a body.”
Blue flashing lights were setting out from both North and South Sydney shores and racing toward the center of the mile-wide strait between Milsons Point and the Central Business District. Janson handed Kincaid a mini water bottle from his windbreaker. As she gulped gratefully, he spit on a handkerchief and wiped the blood from her face.
“Ditch that gun in case we run into the cops.”
Kincaid threw Mikie’s Tomcat into the harbor. “Where to?”
“Canberra. My friend on the commission traced Dr. Flannigan to a package tour. I have people watching his hotel.”
They walked down the arch, side by side, bumping shoulders like a couple heading home from a late-night date.
“Paul?”
Janson leaned close to hear her over the wind.“What is it?”
“Don’t you think that SR is going to way too much trouble for revenge? They had a whole program in place to nail me. Plus, what they did to our phones? No professional wastes that kind of energy on payback.”
“They could be doing it for the money. What if someone hired SR to hunt us?”
“Who?”
“Whoever hired SR to hunt the doctor.”
“Why?”
Janson had been weighing that question since Securité Referral had hacked their phones. “Clearly, we’ve threatened somebody.”
“We’ve been hired to capture Iboga. That threatens Iboga and SR.”
“Yes, but Iboga hasn’t the assets to hound us.”
“SR sure as hell has.”
“Yes, but what if SR is essentially what they appear to be—hired guns doing a job?”
“Like us.”
“In essence,” Janson agreed. “We’re paid by Ferdinand Poe to capture Iboga and we’re paid by ASC to rescue the doctor. SR is paid by somebody to protect Iboga and kill the doctor.”
“Are you thinking we threatened the same people the doctor did?”
“I’m thinking what I’ve been thinking all along. We can kill two birds with one stone when we grab the doctor. Even if he doesn’t know who is hunting him, Dr. Flannigan must have a good guess why. We can work it back to who.”
I
rented a bicycle,” the blonde told Terry Flannigan when he called her cell phone. She had a breathless little-girl voice and she sounded very excited. She had actually gasped like a teenager when she heard his voice. “Canberra’s the most wonderful city for riding a bike. I’ve been riding every day. But I had a feeling you would call today, so I put a picnic in my basket.”
“I’m not exactly in bike shape,” Flannigan admitted freely. He was a firm believer in warning young women not to expect a lot when he took his shirt off.
“There aren’t any hills. Just flat, wonderful paths. They go all around the lakes and miles and miles out into the countryside. There are private spots where you can lie in the grass all by yourself.”
“I used to ride bikes,” he said, hoping her picnic included a blanket. “Where do I rent?”
She told him where and gave him directions to pedal along the lake to a more private place they could meet, as if understanding and not minding that his thing with the senator might be longer term than a picnic.
Flannigan took a taxi from the senator’s charming flat in a row of town houses—she was chairing a committee hearing until late afternoon—and walked down a short slope into the park to the rental place where they gave him a bike, a helmet, and a map.
It turned out to be true that one did not forget how to ride a bike. After a wobbly hundred yards, he was pedaling along just fine. The spot she said she’d meet him was only a half mile away, and by then he was actually enjoying himself. The pleasure of the warm sun, the crisp breeze, the truly attractive park with its sparkling lakes, lawn, and trees and the delicious sight of numerous good-looking women pedaling bicycles in short skirts and tight jeans ceased abruptly when he turned onto a path that ran closer to the water.
Out of nowhere, swooping down like wolves, Annie Oakley and The Wall blocked his way. They put firm hands on him before he could run. The Wall didn’t seem quite so big out of his jungle fatigues but was big enough to make mincemeat of him. Little Annie looked like she’d been in a bar fight, with sunglasses over a black eye, a Band-Aid parting her hair, and raw scrapes on her wrists.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “We’re on your side.”
“I’m not afraid,” he lied. He was so scared his face felt cold, as if the blood had drained from it.
The Wall noticed and said soothingly, “We are not the ones trying to kill you. We will protect you.”
That would be wonderful news, if he was fool enough to believe them. “How did you find me?”
“Your fellow tourists noticed the senator take a shine to you.”
“What do you want?”
“We want to deliver you safe and sound to ASC headquarters in Houston. As soon as your employer sees that you are alive and well, you’ll be free to go. No one will hurt you.”
“Either you’re lying to me,” Flannigan said, “or someone is lying to you.”
“What do you mean?” asked the woman.
“I don’t work for ASC.”
The two of them exchanged looks.
“I haven’t worked for them in five years.”
The woman said, “That is not true. You were aboard
Amber Dawn
when the FFM rebels attacked.”
“Well, that answers that,” said Flannigan, feeling a tentative glimmer of hope.
“What do you mean?”
“Now I know that you two aren’t lying.”
The man stepped closer. “Can you explain— By the way, Doctor, we’ve been through a bunch together, but we’ve never exchanged names. We know you’re Terry. I’m Paul. This is Jesse.”
Paul thrust out his hand. Flannigan took it and saw a degree of warmth in Janson’s watchful eyes.
“You
were
on the boat, weren’t you?”
“I was on the boat. But ASC didn’t
know
I was on the boat.”
“What?”
The looks they exchanged this time were like clashing laser beams.
“No one knew I was on the boat.”
“What are you saying?” Jesse snapped. “You stowed away?”
“I hitched a ride. I had a little trouble in Port Harcourt. I had to get out of town.
Amber Dawn
’s captain was a friend of mine. She smuggled me aboard and hid me in her cabin. No one knew I was on the boat.”
“No one?”
“She’d have been fired. It was strictly against company policy.”
“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?”
“They killed everybody on the boat. How could I trust you? How could I trust anybody?”
A bicycle bell chimed merrily. Flannigan looked up the path from the lake. There was his little friend, even prettier than he remembered and frighteningly young. Wondering how dirty an old man Jesse and Paul thought he was, he said, “Can you excuse me a second? I’ll be right back. A lady I have to say hello to.”
They shot sharp glances at the blonde, took in the picnic basket attached to her handlebars and her shy smile. “Wait,” said Paul, moving between him and the girl.
Jesse walked over to her and smiled. “Hello. We are responsible for that gentleman’s safety. Would you mind if I frisked you for weapons?”
“Weapons? Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. We’re just making sure that he stays that way. This will just take a moment, with your permission.”
Kincaid checked her clothing, with gentle apologies, and the picnic in her basket. The forks and knives were plastic disposables. Kincaid nodded to Janson. Janson told Flannigan, “You’re going to have to ask her for a rain check, Terry.”
* * *
“YOU’RE A WOMAN,”
Janson said to Kincaid while they watched the doctor explaining the situation just out of earshot.
“Yes, I am, Paul.”
“Can you explain how a guy who looks like that has women falling all over him? The purser’s wife, the flight attendant, the senator, not to mention the poor tugboat captain. And now this little knockout. Okay, she’s a hick kid, but a woman like the senator should know better, don’t you think? I mean do you find him attractive?”
“Depends upon what you mean by ‘attractive.’ ”
“Attractive enough to run off with the guy.”
“Watch how he talks to her. It’s like his eyes, his ears, every pore is with her—appreciating her. When a guy like him wants to be with a woman he’s totally there.”
“So women want concentration?”
“It’s in short supply—but there’s something else likable about Terry. Way underneath, he’s solid. And kind of sad—
What?
”
Paul Janson exploded into motion.
K
incaid whirled after him. Janson had moved so swiftly that he was on top of the couple in an instant, chopping with his open hand, breaking the girl’s wrist before she could stab Flannigan again with the stiletto she had pulled from the bike’s hollow handlebar.
Kincaid smashed her cheekbone below her helmet with her elbow as she raced past Janson, frantically searching for the assassin’s backup. It would be a sniper. In a tree in the gardens seven hundred meters across the lake. Or by the museum on a spit of land jutting parallel to the one they were on. Paul knew that and was dragging Terry to the ground, hauling him behind the thin cover of a bush, and shouting at nearby walkers and bikers, “Get down on the ground. Get down!”
