The Janus Reprisal (33 page)

Nolan sat in front of the second of Bilal’s computers on the credenza, typing furiously. Her face was a mass of bruises and contusions, and it appeared that her nose was broken. Finger marks imprinted on her neck gave testament to the fact that she’d been strangled, and her bare right arm bled from long slashes of a knife.

Around her stood Harcourt, Dattar, and Manderi. Smith’s rage flared at the sight of Manderi. If he was the “officer on the scene,” it was clear that no others would be appearing. All the men peered at the computer screen. Three black bags sat on the desk behind Nolan. One was unzipped, revealing bars of gold. Dattar was leaning over Nolan’s shoulder with a bloody knife in his hand. He held the knife to her neck and a line of blood ran from the place of contact with her skin.

Smith turned away and started toward the stairs, climbing them slowly. When his head became level with the roof, he glanced around. He saw a slender man kneeling in front of the solar panels’ conversion box. A cooler sat open next to him. The man was using a scoop and a painter’s brush to apply a gel-like substance to sections of the panels, moving fast.

Smith heard the sound of his phone announcing a text message and froze. His location at the top of the roof must have enabled a signal. The man, though, didn’t hear it. Smith pulled the phone out of his pocket and did his best to read the text, hoping that it would be Klein telling him that the NYPD was on its way.

It was Marty. The text read,
Erasing her keystrokes as she types. Buying you more time.

Smith swiped the phone face, set it to vibrate, and replied,
Where the hell is my backup?

Smith angled the pistol over the roof’s edge and took aim, but paused. Once he fired, he would reveal his position, and he fully expected both Khalil and Manderi to come after him. The silence of a knife would be ideal, but he would have to crawl back down the stairs, into the weapons safe, find a knife, and retrace his steps. He would have done it, but he didn’t recall seeing any knives in the stash. His phone vibrated. Smith looked at the text.

Brand and Beckmann here silent approach there are no windows to shoot through if we storm the building will they kill the hostage?

Smith typed back,
Yes.

His phone vibrated and Brand wrote,
High angle view of building await your instructions.

Smith’s vision began to blur, his eyes were watering. He blinked, but it didn’t clear his vision this time. It was now or never. He put the keypad up to his eyes and squinted at the lit screen. He typed,
Shoot the guy on the roof.

Beckmann’s gunshot wasn’t as loud as Smith’s would have been, but it wasn’t as quiet as Smith had hoped, either. He heard a group of voices raised as the crew in the office reacted to the shot. Smith watched the man slump, then collapse backward. Smith vaulted up the rest of the stairs and ran to the coolers. The dead man lay sprawled over them and Smith rolled the body off. Inside he saw a tub of the gelatinous substance that the man had been working with, as well as several capped test tubes. Smith grabbed a test tube, shoved it in his pocket, and stepped back. He unclipped the flamethrower’s nozzle and opened the ignition valve. He felt around for a button to engage the spark plug, finding it on the gun’s side. A small flame appeared at the end of the thrower. He aimed it at the coolers and pressed the fuel-release trigger.

The resulting flame shot forward, engulfing the cooler in flames. Smith could see the fire, but not much else as his vision contracted even more. He worked his way around the panels, running the flame along every access wire. The smell of burnt rubber and wire filled the air along with a toxic brew of melting plastic from the cooler. He angled the column of flame onto the panels and the fire whooshed along the flat surface and fell off the edge. The edges of the ducts on the roof began to burn, and he felt the metal growing hot under his feet. He heard shoes pounding up the stairwell, and he turned in the direction of the noise, keeping the flame on. He shot it at the doorway.

The heavy canisters hampered his movement. His vision was contracting down to one small pinpoint before flaring wide again. When it contracted, the column of flame was just a small orange line.

The solar panels were burning at various wire access points, and the roof was heating up to a frightening degree. He kept dodging and pivoting, keeping his soles from burning while trying to make himself a tougher target to hit in case someone attempted to shoot through the roof. He ran to the stairs and angled the flame down them before turning and descending. The Uzi was in his other hand. He leaped down the stairs two at a time, missing the last few and staggering into the room. A body lay on the floor next to the picture frame. When he got close, he saw that it was Khalil. Blood pumped from a bullet hole in his chest.

Smith looked into the office and saw Harcourt, a gun in his hand, zipping up the bullion bags. Nolan still worked at the computer and tears ran down her face. Dattar, his face red with his fury, kept her there, screaming into her ear. What he said was unintelligible, but Smith had little doubt that it had to do with the erasing letters.

Smith shrugged the Uzi strap off his shoulder and aimed at the glass and at an angle that would hit Harcourt. He pressed the trigger. The resulting shots shattered the glass and a hit sent Harcourt spinning against the wall. He dropped out of Smith’s line of vision as bits of glass rained into the room. Dattar straightened and Nolan slammed the chair backward, catching him in the stomach and pinning him against the desk. Smith aimed and fired several bullets into Dattar. Nolan screamed over and over and covered her ears with her hands. Smith knocked out the remaining glass in the frame, grabbed the side wall and jumped up to sit in the opening, twisting to swing his leg over and dropping into the room. Harcourt was gone, but a smear of blood streaked the floor from where he had dropped, indicating that he had managed to crawl out of the room. Manderi was missing. The bags of gold remained on the desk.

“Get behind me,” Smith said. Nolan staggered up and limped as she walked toward him. She still cried. Smith could see her trying to regain control of her sobs. “Where’s Manderi?”

“He went with Khalil to check out the gunshot.”

So he killed Khalil and was still in the building, Smith thought. He wouldn’t leave without eliminating all the witnesses. Nor would Harcourt.

“Did Bilal tell you if there were escape routes in this building?”

“Only the doors. The windows are glass blocks. He had a secret escape, but he never told me its location.”

“We can’t leave through the hall. Manderi could cover that too easily, and we’ll have no room to maneuver. We’re going to crawl through that opening and go up to the roof on an access stairway. The building is only one story, so you’ll have to either find a fire escape or jump down.” He moved to the opening, angling his legs over. Nolan followed. He kept the flamethrower aimed at the door, providing her cover. He jutted his chin in the direction of the stairs.

“Take my phone. When you get to the top of the stairs, access my last text message and reply to say that you’re going to the roof and not to shoot. When you do, run like hell. Find a safe place to hole up for a while. Get a message to me when you can.”

“Aren’t you coming with me? I’m not leaving if you don’t,” Nolan said.

“I’ll come after you.” He delivered the half truth with as much sincerity as he could, but he could tell that she wasn’t buying it. He leaned closer to her. “
Go
.” He watched her climb the stairs, but before she made it to the top, his vision contracted. He didn’t see her disappear.

He headed back toward the open door, inching along until he could see down the hall. If Manderi and Harcourt were there, he couldn’t see them, but he had an excellent idea about what they might do. He took a deep breath and darted to the door, hiding behind the open panel. His vision was down to a pinpoint and from the tight feeling in the center of his eye he could tell it wouldn’t expand again. He paused, listening. After a few seconds he heard an expected sound. A small cough. Harcourt, he presumed. It was a rare man who could maintain complete silence after getting shot.

He heard the stealthy footsteps coming down the hall. A form flitted past the open door. Smith saw Manderi’s shoulder appear in the corner of the broken two-way-window frame.

“Hurry,” Harcourt said. Smith couldn’t see the other man, but he recognized his voice. They’d done exactly what Smith thought they would. They’d gone back for the gold.

Smith rose, moved to stand in the doorway, pointed the flamethrower in the direction of the open safe, and pulled on the fuel trigger. The flames easily covered the twelve feet to the container and engulfed the inside of it. The ordnance exploded.

The resulting fireball knocked Smith off his feet and slammed him across the hall and against the opposite wall. He shrugged out of the backpack in a panic, fearful that the fuel on his back would be the next to explode. He rose and ran down the hall in the direction of the front door. A second explosion rocked the building and pushed him to his knees. He thought he heard a man’s screams, but the roar of the fire blotted out most sounds.

He moved forward, keeping one hand on the wall as a guide because he had no vision. Smoke choked him. He heard gunshots, and a bullet hit the wall next to his head, but he didn’t flinch or stop his flight.

The third explosion took out the rest of the hall, and he felt the suction pull on him as the blast created a vacuum. He reached the front door and tumbled out of it. The cold night air hit his face and he sucked in a breath of fresh air. Something sharp pierced the side of his shoe and sunk into his foot, but he barely noticed the pain. He ran forward, tripped over a curb, and slammed his knee into what he supposed was a parked car.

“Smith?” Smith heard Brand’s voice and felt a hand on his elbow guiding him. “You’re at an open car door. Watch your head.” Brand put his hand on top of Smith’s skull to help him clear the door panel. He crawled into the vehicle and sat back. The car door slammed, and Brand knocked on the car’s side. Someone put the car in motion.

“Air conditioning. My skin is on fire,” Smith said. His voice came out as a croak. “I can’t see.”

“The mustard gas?” It was Beckmann’s voice. “Hold on, I’m heading to a hospital.”

“You steal this car?” Smith said.

Smith heard Beckmann’s low laugh. “It’s the FBI’s. Even I’m not crazy enough to hot-wire a department vehicle.”

“Forget the hospital. Get me to an Army doctor with experience in mustard gas injuries and when he’s done get me home.”

S
MITH SAT IN FRONT OF
his computer screen in the quiet of his kitchen early on a Sunday morning. The sores on his arms had healed within three weeks thanks to his rapid cleansing of the mustard gas, but his eyes were still mending. Bright light bothered him, and he wore sunglasses continuously when outside. He’d received word that Howell was recuperating as well, but at a much slower pace due to a higher level of exposure. Wendel told him that Jordan also was healing well, but wouldn’t return to active duty for at least another three months, and Russell checked in periodically. The decontamination of both the bacteria and the gas had gone well thanks to Ohnara, who had stepped up to assist with cleanup once it became clear that Smith could not.

He logged onto his e-mail and left the laptop whirring while he made a fresh pot of coffee. He heard the sound of his Internet phone ringing and headed back to the computer. It was Russell calling. He turned on the web camera.

“Good morning,” she said. She had been recuperating at an undisclosed location. In the past three weeks she’d gained back some of the weight she’d lost, and her skin was less pale. Smith held up his empty coffee cup.

“Good morning to you. How are you feeling?”

“Very good, and you?”

“Better. My eye doctor seems to think I’ll heal just fine. It’ll be nice to be able to walk around in the sun without getting a migraine. How’s Howell?”

“He checked himself out of the hospital and returned to his house in the mountains. Said he couldn’t take all the interruptions. I guess they woke him up late at night once too often.”

“Beckmann?”

“Back in Europe. And Brand says hello and to tell you that the man on the roof that Beckmann shot was another of Dattar’s crew. A man named Rajiid. And they were finally able to identify the bodies in the building as Bilal, Manderi, Dattar, and Harcourt.”

“Why’d he do it?”

“Harcourt?”

“Yes.”

Russell sighed. “Cromwell’s keeping a lot close to the vest since the news broke of the CIA and NYPD liaison. Seems as though the agency’s lawyers are screaming bloody murder. They claim the sharing program with the NYPD was never approved by them, and they’re afraid that it appears as though the CIA was engaging in domestic spying. The most I could get out of Cromwell is that Dattar had promised Harcourt and Manderi hundreds of millions of dollars and large tracts of land back in his country. Both men were deeply in debt. Apparently there’s also some evidence that Harcourt was intending to pull a double cross and turn Dattar over to the agency before the bacteria was placed. He’d then look like a hero.”

“Like the fireman who starts the fire so he can put it out?”

Russell sighed. “I guess so. And we’ve received intelligence that a group of countries may have been bankrolling Dattar. They call themselves the Janus Consortium. All of the countries deny it vehemently, of course.”

“Of course,” Smith said.

“And the large tracts of land that Dattar was promising actually belonged to the Reddings. Their utility holdings have been returned to them. Have you heard from Nolan?”

“Nothing.”

Russell shook her head. “For a civilian she does a pretty good job of dropping out of sight, doesn’t she?”

“That she does.”

“Well, enjoy your Sunday.”

“You, too.” Russell smiled at him and logged off. Smith went to the coffeepot to refill his cup. The pinging sound of an incoming message brought him back to the table.

The screen contained a picture of a stylized “KD” logo. Beneath it were the words:

“This is an automated message. Please do not reply. You have been sent 23,500 kilodollars mined from various points on the web for your use should you ever need them. Please click the link below to download them to your hard drive.” There was a hyperlink below the notice. Farther down was one word: