Warrior (Freelancer Book 2) (27 page)

"Sage," Rick reached out and touched her hands softly. "I'm worried about you."

"What?"

"You've heard me at night?" he asked.

"The screaming? Sure, everyone on the block hears you."

Rick gave a snort of laughter. "Yeah, well, I guess that's true. I've got a question for you."

She just looked at him again.

"What do you think the nightmares are about?

The worst ones?" She shrugged. "I don't know. Soldiers trying to kill you?"

He shook his head slowly and tightened his grip on her hands, slowly pushing the gun away from Salazar.

"Not the worst ones. They're about the people I've killed. They're the monsters who come back and live in my head."

The gun slowly came down to point to the floor, and she looked in his face.

"If you kill this scumbag, you'll have to see him in your dreams every night for the rest of your life." Rick took the Ruger from her hands. "He deserves to die, but he doesn't deserve to be inside your head. Not for one minute. Not for one second."

Sage collapsed into his arms and sobbed. Rick held her with one arm and raised the Ruger with the other. "Señor Salazar, Sage doesn't deserve the pain, but I can stand to have another asshole hanging around at night, so I would strongly advise you to stop reaching for your gun."

Rick and Sage stood on the hot asphalt and watched the blue and white motor home coming toward them. Sage had pulled away from Rick after a long bout of tears, and Rick wasn't comfortable enough to put his arm around her again.

Rick had zip-tied Salvador into his chair—taking care to run the plastic ties over clothing to keep from leaving marks. He'd tried to explain to Sage that moving her mother's body would mean that the police would come looking for them; and, after a long moment's consideration, Sage carefully knelt on one of the very few patches of floor not covered in blood and stroked her mother's hair.

Rick thought he should join the little girl in some sort of ceremony, but it just wasn't something he could do. After a few moments of silence, he moved around the room trying to wipe down any surfaces that they could have touched.

Finally, Sage stood up and looked at Rick, her eyes clear of tears. "I'm ready to go now."

Without a word, Rick started down the inside stairs to the lower room, checked the two men there to make sure they were still breathing, and led the little girl through the hole her mother had punched in the wall.

The Travco stopped and Eps bounced out, followed a moment later by Scotty.

Eps was ebullient. "We did it! We showed those bastards!"

An instant later, Scotty tapped his shoulder and whispered in his ear.

"Dead?" Eps asked.

Rick nodded.

The engineers stood awkwardly and stared at Sage. Rick could see the struggle between sympathy, sorrow, and a massive inability to show emotion on their faces. Then Scotty stepped up to the little girl, bowed to her height, and extended his hand. "Sage, I'm really sorry about your mom."

Sage looked into his eyes and shook his hand. "Thank you, Scotty."

Scotty stood straight, relieved that he'd carried off his emotional performance properly. Eps shook the little girl's hand as well although he didn't have to bow down. Then he turned and gestured toward the motor home. "How about you hop on board? You can have the co-pilot's seat."

Sage solemnly climbed the steps and disappeared into the dark interior.

Rick asked, "OK, how much time do we have?"

"Steve is spoofing the local police channels, but it's going to be close," said Scotty.

"OK, do you guys have anything that can put a couple of bad guys to sleep without killing them?"

The smile returned to Eps' face. "A ‘Mickey Finn’? Of course. How long do you want them out, and how miserable do you want the headache afterward?"

"Why am I surprised that you have a whole pharmacy on hand?" Rick smiled and his face felt like frozen muscles were moving for the first time in a long time. "An hour should do, and you can make the headache as lousy as you like. Memory loss wouldn't hurt."

Eps' face fell and he shook his head. "Chloral hydrate will do the job, but memory loss would mean something like sodium pentothal; and that could result in an unfortunate case of death."

"Forget the memory loss."

Eps bounced into the motor home, and Rick turned to Scotty. "Cloyes got away."

The big engineer slowly shook his head without speaking.

"He said he knew where we lived, and he was going to go after Eve."

"That can't happen," Scotty said firmly. "She never took the training in escape hatches and mantraps. We'll have to call her."

Eps came out with a small vial of clear liquid and handed it to Rick. "A good slug of this should do the trick."

Rick nodded and turned back to the building. "Let me clean up here while you reach Eve."

Inside, he dosed both men and Salazar. When they no longer responded to being poked with a pencil, he cut and pocketed all the zip-ties, reclaimed and reloaded their weapons, and emptied them by firing into the walls and ceiling, careful of potential ricochets. Then he placed the weapons in their hands.

He left the shotgun beside Kristee, wiped down, and replaced the Blackhawk in her rear holster. He spent one final moment looking down at her silently and then turned and left.

Outside, Eps was completing a full wipe-down of the pickup truck. "Look, hardly a scratch! I told you we'd return it in great shape."

Far off across the prairie, a police siren sounded.

Scotty started the motorhome, and minutes later they were past the blown gate and motoring sedately down the highway heading east. Sitting in the passenger seat, Rick looked back and could see Sage lying on one of the side benches, her face to the wall. Her shoulders were shaking.

He faced front and asked Scotty, "Did you reach Eve?"

The engineer shook his head. "Phone not working?"

A nod. "Fuck."

The radiotelephone on the center console rang. Rick picked it up and heard Steve say, "Turn around."

"Turn this thing around," Rick told Scotty who just nodded, slowed, and began a three-point turn in a gravel pull-off. Rick spoke into the phone. "I need to get back to DC. Fast."

"I know. It's all arranged."

"It is?"

"Yeah, Langley wanted Salazar headed back to Chile bad enough that they laid on a private jet. It's sitting at Sunday Creek Airport—although I think calling a single runway with no lights and no tower an airport is a stretch."

"Two problems. I don't look much like Salazar, and I don't really want to go to Chile. What's going on down there anyway?”

"The Agency has something planned for the current president—Allende—and Salazar appears to have…skills that they think could be extraordinarily useful. Where is he anyway?"

"Unconscious and holding the gun that killed Kristee."

"Shit. I'm sorry about Kristee. Sadly, it's highly unlikely that Salazar will go down for it. Tell Scotty to take the next left."

Rick said, "Steve says turn left. How does he do that?"

Scotty just smiled and pointed straight up as he put the big vehicle into a slow left turn.

"Good. Tell Scotty that it's about 15 miles to Sunday Creek Road, and there are signs he can follow from there."

Rick passed on the information and then repeated his questions to Steve. "OK, what about the fact that I'm not Salazar, and I don't want to go to Chile—at least, not right now."

"No problem, amigo. You're forgetting that I'm with 'No Such Agency' and we can boss around the CIA. Well, we can if we're careful. All the pilots know is that they are waiting for a tall guy with glasses and motorcycle boots who needs to get to DC ASAP. You'll have to land way the hell out at Dulles, but there are urgent telexes requiring you be met with a fast motorcycle on the tarmac."

"Don't forget a helmet."

"Do I have to think of everything? Don't answer—that's rhetorical—it will be waiting with the bike. Now, Cloyes will be on the 2:00 p.m. out of Billings, and it's going to be close. I'll do some delicate screwing with his flight plan, but too much of that can irritate the air traffic controllers, not to mention the passengers who find themselves plummeting to the ground."

"I suspect you're right on that," said Rick dryly.

"Yes, indeed. Now, I've been running diagnostics on the house phone, and it's been cut or blocked somewhere, probably before they came after Sage the first time. I don't think we ever used it after that. I'm in West Virginia and, even if I was the heroic, muscle-bound type, I can't get anywhere near there in time."

"No problem." Rick said, "Just get me there in time."

"We live to serve. One more thing. Scare up a pair of sunglasses to look like a real secret agent, and don't talk to anyone on the plane. Not anyone, understand?"

"Yeah. Why not?"

"Well, I can do a lot but I couldn't get rid of Salazar's accent. Anyway, they'll expect you to be an asshole. If you act like a normal human being, they'll know instantly that you're not with the CIA. OK, the turn for Sunday Creek is right ahead. Tell Scotty I'll call him after you get airborne."

Jones is hit.

The Staff Sergeant's been hit. Shit. I need to get to him.

Stay low. Stay fucking low.

There's a fucking cloud of 50 cal going right over my head.

OK, moving now. Hold the rifle and crawl. Just like basic.

I can't hear Jones.

I can't hear shit. There must be 20 goddamn machine guns behind those anthills.

Fuck. That was close. Jesus! That was our guys! Crawl!

Be a fucking joke if my own side kills me. Don't stop.

You've got to make it. He needs you.

Don't stop.

"Sir. Sir!"

Rick automatically tried to get away. He was stuck. A seat belt.

"You were screaming. Figured I should wake you."

Standing in the aisle, the co-pilot was looking down at him, sympathy in his eyes. Rick remembered what Steve had said and just stared back. Silent.

"Don't worry. We hear it all the time on these flights." He motioned toward the cockpit of the small jet. "The captain just wanted to let you know we'll be wheels down at Dulles in ten minutes."

The co-pilot began to work his way back to the front, and then stopped. "Oh, and just so you know. You weren't talking. Just a lot of yelling."

Rick nodded slowly.

"Yeah, a lot of guys need to make sure they didn't say anything they might regret later. You didn't."

Rick looked out the tiny window at the circles of light thrown into the darkness of rural Virginia. He concentrated on regaining his control, slowing his breathing, getting his heartbeat back to normal. When he looked up again, the co-pilot was gone.

Stepping down from the plane, he looked back and nodded at the co-pilot. The man waved and pulled the stairs up, and the jet engines began to whine. In moments, they'd be gone.

Rick turned and saw a man walking toward him from the business jet office. Tall, with weathered eyes, and a full, David Crosby-style mustache. He had a helmet tucked under his arm.

"So, are you the important guy from Montana?" the man said as he walked up.

Rick nodded.

"Good." He held out the helmet. "This is for you. Steve said you were a big guy so I picked out a double XL. Hope it fits."

"So you know Steve?” Rick asked.

"Yeah, we're sort of in the same business." He dug in a jeans pocket and produced a ring with two keys, "The bike is around front. You can't miss it—all black and damn near faster than light."

Rick took the keys, and they began to walk back to the small terminal. "Do you work for the NSA?"

"Are you kidding? Those guys might as well be in the phone book. No, I work for an operation that's actually capable of keeping secrets. It's out in the woods over there." The mustachioed man gestured vaguely to the west, then pulled the door open and waved Rick through. "But Steve's done some…favors for me. Plus, he called in my marker from our last chess game."

He shook his head. "I still can't believe that he pulled off that damned Lasker-Bauer without losing both bishops."

"I hate it when that happens." Rick said dryly.

The other man glanced over, clearly detecting the gentle sarcasm. "Hey, chess, computers, spying, all the same. Now, there's just one thing to remember about the Vincent Black Shadow. It's one up, four down. If you can remember that, you'll be fine."

They came out the front of the terminal, and Rick noticed the interior lights go off behind them. A battered green VW bug was idling next to a mean-looking motorcycle with an L-shaped engine. "Oh, you might also want to keep in mind that this monster will hit 90 in second gear. I put a chin pad on the tank, so you could keep your head down."

Rick found a pair of light leather gloves inside the helmet, put them on, and then the helmet. By the time he had replaced and adjusted his glasses, the other man was getting into the passenger side of the VW. He yelled, "Thanks," but it was drowned out in the rattling spatter of the VW as it pulled onto the access road.

Rick kicked the spindly bike to life and heard the deep burbling rumble of the inline V-twin. It was already warmed up, so he worked the clutch and brake levers to locate the points where they activated. He'd had a borrowed bike lock up the rear wheel on him once just because the foot brake was set for a much shorter rider. The transmission's upside-down pattern wasn't a problem since it was similar to the late and unlamented Kawasaki Triple, but he still went through the gears with the clutch in until he had the rhythm.

Only then did he head out of the parking lot and onto the largely empty access lanes that led to the sail-shaped main terminal.

He was doing a series of speed and distance calculations and knew there wasn't much time to get back to the group house before Cloyes would land at National, rent a car, and drive through DC to the group house on Ingomar. He decided against the Dulles Access Road with its excess number of bored police officers and headed due north. Route 7 was a wide-open stretch of good asphalt, and he soon had the powerful street-racer up over 100 mph.

At Leesburg, he swung right on the tiny bypass road and onto bumpy rural Route 15. In a few miles, he had to slow to make sure he didn't miss the tiny sign for the Balls Bluff Civil War memorial. Just past the place where the first battle of the Civil War was fought, he made a right onto the road to White's Ferry.

The Vincent took flight on most of the whoop-de-doos on the road that led straight toward the Potomac, and Rick had it flattened almost parallel to the road on the right-angle turn at the riverbank, holding it by sliding his boot on the asphalt. Swinging around to the riverside ramp, he saw the pilot of the General Jubal Early beginning to undo the chain that held the tiny ferry against the current. He blipped the accelerator, brought up the front wheel, and bumped the rear over the widening water gap and into a skidding stop on the baby-blue ferry.

The operator, an older man in farm overalls and a gimme cap, finished unchaining the boat, spun the attached powerboat that pushed it across the river, and said, "That stunt will cost you double price."

Rick paid the $2.50 without complaint and then added another $20. He'd have wasted at least 20 minutes if he'd had to wait for the next trip. He stood with the bike between his legs and watched the river slide past on its way to the thundering rapids of Great Falls. At the other bank, the operator lowered the exit chain before he pivoted the powerboat around by the pin in its bow to slow the ferry; as soon as Rick heard the first scrape of iron on concrete, he was off the boat and up the ramp.

River Road was unlit dirt for the next 20 miles, but Rick had ridden it many times and kept the European-style speedometer needle close to the 100-kph mark even though he was airborne about half the time. When he turned onto the paved roads of rural Montgomery County, he opened up the black speedster, swooping through the curves with his off leg hanging out for balance, and a gloved hand brushing the road.

Outside of Darnestown, a police cruiser pulled out of a closed gas station with its lights going. Rick didn't even slow—there was simply no time to stop. He took the right turn onto the paved portion of River Road in a screaming power slide and brought the bike up through the gears to a frightening 180 kph. He didn't know how much over because he had no concentration to spare for the speedometer. The revolving lights receded quickly behind him and were lost to sight long before he saw the Purple Pickle at the crossroads town of Potomac.

He was certain that there would be more than one police car ahead of him—radio was the bane of a fast motorcycle—so he cut through the gas station to avoid the red light and headed back toward the river on Falls Road. Another scraping turn and he was dropping down past the Angler Inn and then a left onto the clear straights of MacArthur Boulevard.

The pipes echoed their tuned thunder off the long walls of the Naval Research Center, and then he was under the Beltway and forced back to third gear to negotiate the fast turns down to the Aqueduct Bridge. He didn't slow when he turned at the red light onto Wilson. Another stretch of River Road passed by in a blur, and then he was in DC and scrambling his way toward Tenleytown.

He parked the bike at the end of the block when he reached Ingomar, worried that the sound of the exhaust would be a dead giveaway. He pulled off the helmet and left it on the seat. The exhaust pipes were glowing red-hot where they emerged from the cylinders.

“Nice bike,” he thought as he ran down the darkened street using the parked cars to mask his approach.

There were no lights in the group house, but there was a black Buick Electra parked at an angle in the driveway, bumper stickers clearly identifying it as a rental. Rick moved forward quietly, reached the VW Bus, and retrieved the tire jack handle from the floor next to the driver's seat.

He stood in the driveway, watching each window of the house in turn, and trying to separate out any foreign noises from the usual night sounds of insects, the whoosh of tires on Reno Road, and distant sirens. When he couldn't identify anything as out-of-place, he walked slowly and quietly to the front and up the stairs to the front porch.

At the front door, he paused and listened again.

He checked the knob. It was locked. That set the hairs on the back of his neck on end. After Steven had explained how easily an intruder could break the glass panes in the door, no one had ever bothered to lock it again. The spare key was in its usual hiding place, the second flowerpot to the right. The idea was that putting it in the most obvious place might keep them from having to replace window glass as often. It was all very logical, but Rick did feel as though somehow logic had trumped caution. Eve had been even more insistent but was outvoted.

With steady pressure on the key, Rick undid the handle latch and pushed the door ajar. Slowly releasing the key to keep the latch from clicking, he listened again.

Nothing.

From the evidence of the rental car, Cloyes was inside. Almost certainly, he already had taken Eve. Rick simply shut off any consideration that he might have tortured or killed her—thinking of that would serve no purpose. From the silence, he assumed that Cloyes was either upstairs or standing in the living room watching the front door move in the dim light.

He had to go in.

But he didn't have to go in slowly. He yanked the door and plunged into the living room—diving down and to the right.

Pain blossomed. His head and chest exploded as the flame of a gun flared from the center of the room.

He saw Eve's face frozen in a scream in the afterimage of the gunshot. Then the incredible pain in his chest drove everything down to a flat, silent blackness and disappeared.