Chapter 26: Rule 99-Trust is the biggest liability of them all.
It was a quiet and cold night. The clouds had cleared off and the new moon left the stars as the only supply of light in the skies, which was not nearly enough to threaten the actions of those who made the night their own. A stealthy figure darted quickly across a clearing to a grassy knoll where his partner lay in wait.
"Done. We'll hear everything that is said."
"It took you long enough."
"I had to wait for the dogs to walk be walked far enough down to avoid detection. It's not like you have room to talk, Jamie."
"I know, I know..." Jamie glanced through her scope again at the window in Antonio Santorini's mansion, the faint forms of people visible in the digital thermal/infrared sight she had mounted to her rifle. It was a bit strange for her to have an infrared in conjunction with a scope, but she had to admit that she was starting to like it for nighttime operations. Michael settled in next to her under the blanket she was using both as cover and to keep warm in the chilly air, plugging an earpiece into the receiver for her to use.
"Here."
She took it and could hear the crackling sounds of a fire and the playing of a piano.
"The messenger should be here in a few minutes."
"How do you know it's from them?"
"The first thing I did was tap the phones of Ricci and Santorini. Ex-Co called both yesterday morning to arrange for a joint meeting here at Santorini's, a meeting Ricci only agreed to when the caller explained how they had both been duped into their own private war. The courier is going to deliver the evidence of the agency involvement, and return to Amherst with twenty million dollars for his efforts. I expect the dynamic duo will then go to their Camorra comrades and get them to leak the agency info to the international press."
"That would not be good."
"No. That's why we're here." He looked through his spotting scope, one with a similar night-vision capability, and watched the room carefully. The windows and walls were not as efficient as they could be and that allowed them to just make out the 'shadows' of the people inside against the warmth of the fire in the room.
"Now... When Jean makes his move, you'll only have a few seconds to make your shots, so make them count."
"Don't worry. I won't miss." She felt entirely calm in spite of the thrill of action that swept through her. She had faith in her skills, in her weapons, and in her luck. These are the things that all snipers need to survive and be efficient.
"It's almost time..." Michael lit up his watch to check it and the light from the luminescent face fell on Jamie's wicked smile. "Are you okay?"
"Huh?"
"You were smiling."
"Was I?"
"Yes."
"I think you're imagining things again." She never looked away from the scope and her simple, unaffected tone of voice made him wonder if he had actually seen it at all. "Car coming. It's Ricci."
"How can you tell?"
"He seems angry. That and it's got a handful of thugs in the back. He's not taking any chances."
Michael swung his scope and could see she was right: The large sport-utility was crowded with Ricci, a driver, and six henchmen, guns at the ready for anything as they pulled up to the gate. There was a minute's worth of discussion with the guards, both of whom had their guns leveled while a third called into the house.
A phone range in their ears and Michael dialed down the volume a bit to listen.
"Yes? Well, I can't say that I blame him any. Tell them, politely, that I don't mind if they are armed while they are here, but they should at least be courteous enough to not point them at anyone. Let them in the gate and I'll have them met at the door by Vincent."
Michael keyed his microphone. "Jean, the party is on. Waiting for the final reservation to arrive."
"Okay. Standing by."
The truck drove to the front door and the men all climbed out, guns noticeably less tense as they went to the door while the driver stayed with the car, smoking a cigarette and fumbling nervously with the selector switch of his MP5. The butler let the men in and in a few moments Christobal Ricci was talking face to face with Antonio Santorini, their respective guards presumably staring each other down in the hall.
"Care for a drink, Christo?"
"No, I'd rather not." The words were almost spat at the host.
"Please, I am trying to be a courteous host here. I am willing to entertain you and our mutual messenger on the basis that we can at least act civil towards each other. If what he says is correct, then I have been the larger victim of our conflict. I do not blame you for your reaction; I would have done no less in your position. Again, IF our friend is correct."
" 'IF...?' I have no reason to believe him. My people have been slaughtered, my closest family killed, and I have only the words of my enemy that the source is reliable."
"Please... I know how you are feeling from losing your son. I lost my only daughter in a clash with Christiano several years ago, a clash that you took advantage of, as I recall. I understand your reticence, but you know very well that I would not be taken in by a ruse like this. There is truth in what the man on the phone said and it goes along very well with what my own sources have been finding since he called us. There certainly is a government agency that is operating covertly against us. Christiano is said to have been brought down by those very people."
"Christiano was sloppy."
"He was very well informed, however, and even saw his empire coming to an end."
"Well, whatever."
Michael felt Jamie tap on his arm and he looked down from his scope to see a sedan pull up to the gate momentarily before being waved through.
"Jean, stand-to. Be ready."
"We're ready."
The occupant was a youngish man, Michael could see in his binoculars, as the man passed through the light given off by the porch light. It was only a minute before he was greeted by Santorini and introduced to Ricci in the same room they had been discussing things in.
"Jamie, it's not the man we want, but I guess he'll do. Stand by, weapons free."
"Ready." She aimed at the window whose glass was a solid color of gray in her scope, with the occasional flash of blue that would flash by, indicating a nearby heat source.
"Jean, two minutes- mark."
"Roger."
"Gentlemen, my name is Enrique, I am representing Excalibur Entertainment Company. My employer has instructed me to give you all of the information at our disposal about the Social Welfare Agency, and specifically, the person responsible for the attacks on Senor Ricci's home and men."
"The Social Welfare Agency?"
"Yes. They are, in truth, a covert government anti-terrorist group. They are the ones who have been playing the both of you against one another in the hopes that one or the other would come out on top, but decidedly weaker. They did not care which, of course."
"You have proof, I assume?"
"Here..." Enrique opened his briefcase and removed several photos and typewritten notes that described the agency's actions against them both. He stood back as the men read through the information quickly and passed the photos back and forth.
"And you say you know the man's name? The one who sent his girl in to kill my men?"
"Yes. His name is-"
There was a burst of machine-gun fire outside, and the explosion of a grenade shook the windows in the quiet night air. The three men looked at one another before the courier went to the window to peer out at the noise. He was only there a fraction of a second before his skull exploded into the room, bathing the two mob bosses in blood. The window was thick and wire-reinforced, and there was a neat bullet hole in the glass, certainly the work of a sniper.
"GET DOWN," Santorini yelled at Ricci as he dove for the floor, crawling quickly towards the door.
"You son of a bitch! You've led them right to us both!" Ricci bolted for the door and nearly made it before a bullet ripped through the outside wall and caught him in the leg, dropping him with a loud thump right next to it.
"What?"
"I'll kill you for your foolishness!" He wrenched open the door and screamed for his men, all of whom had been prepared from the moment the shots had sounded outside. They opened up on Santorini's men at close range, mowing them down and painting the halls red with blood. Ricci's lieutenant stepped inside to help his boss up and motioned for another henchman to take out Santorini.
"NO! THIS IS NOT MY DOING!"
"Stand by..."
"And you say you know the man's name? The one who sent his girl in to kill my men?"
"Yes. His name is-"
Jean's car screeched to a halt by the front gate and Rico opened up with her belt-fed machine gun, mutilating the surprised guards and destroying the guard shack, pausing only long enough to lob a grenade at the gate.
Michael watched the explosion destroy the gate and thought that it was a shame that they did not have a truck full of cyborgs to send in to clean the place out. The diversion did its work, though, and he saw a halo start to move in the direction of the window. An orange blob appeared on the gray, the thermal view of a face.
"Fi-"
Jamie fired the moment she saw the blob in her scope, not even waiting for Michael to give the order. There was a flare of red and the blob fell against the wall below the window. The sudden entrance of the colder air put the heat sources inside the room into greater relief and she could see one heading for the door of the room, but the third was not visible, likely camouflaged in the heat from the fireplace. She fired a round through the wall and saw the person collapse to the floor, her snap-shot resulting only in a minor wound.
She was just about to fire another round into him when her ears started listening to the microphone in the room again.
"I'll kill you for your foolishness!"
The door in the room opened and another form came in, helping the wounded one to his feet. A fourth and fifth persons entered the room and she suddenly had no discernable targets amid the huge blob of color.
"NO! THIS IS NOT MY DOING!"
There was a full three seconds of automatic weapons fire, the noise painfully loud over the earpiece, so much so that she pulled it out with a sudden swipe of her hand. She saw Michael cringe at the onslaught, but he held out and then carefully listened after the earpiece went silent. His eyes stared off towards the house, showing no signs of anything but the concentration he was putting into hearing the activities of the room.
"SHIT!" Michael swung his scope down to check if Jean was still at the gate. "Jean, Ricci's going to make a break for it. Santorini is dead. I'm sending Jamie there now, so have Rico stand by and kill anyone that comes out of that house."
"I'm holding at the gate."
"Jamie, take your H&K and hoof it down there as fast as you can. No one but the household staff leaves there alive. Those papers in the study are your primary objective. Get to that room and retrieve them. If the cops find those, the agency will be plastered on the front page of every paper." He got to his feet and handed her the field bag she had carried the rifle in.
"Right!" She loaded a magazine and put two more into the pouches on her vest, then racked the action. She started to take a step but he stopped her with a firm grip on her arm.
"I repeat, Jamie: Not one combatant leaves there alive. The servants are the only no-shoots. Anyone that points any weapon at you is fair game. Anyone holding a weapon is a target." The look in his eyes told her how serious the situation was. She was going to have to kill nearly everyone in the house.
"I know."
"Don't worry, I'll be covering you from here."
"I'm not worried." She smiled softly at him and pulled her Nomex mask down over her face, a precaution against being identified as well as helping to conceal her in the darkness.
"Be careful. It's a long run."
"Half a kilometer? I run four times that before breakfast!" She darted down the hill into the darkness leaving Michael with a warm feeling at her bravery.
He settled back onto the shooting mat behind her rifle and watched her sprint across the terrain. She was fast, incredibly fast, and she only seemed to pick up more speed as she continued down the hill. She leapt a trickle of a creek, her powerful legs bounding her over the ditch as well as any horse, and she didn't even flounder on the landing, hitting the ground and rolling back to her feet, hardly losing her pace as she started weaving her way through the underbrush with her night-vision.
"Jean, Jamie's on the way."
"We have a few of Ricci's men in the hallway, shooting their way out past Santorini's guards."
"I gave Jamie the order to shoot anyone that is not a servant. Ricci has already called his friends in the police and told them to get the information on the agency and give it to the international press."
"I see. I'll send Rico in with Jamie. Any chance of someone escaping through the back?"
"No, I already thought of that. Santorini has a high wall surrounding the back of the estate. The only way out is through the front." He heard the shooting settle down and saw what must be Ricci's men peering out of the front door. "They're at the door. Be ready."
Michael trained the crosshairs on the hot blob by the door. The ammunition in the rifle was a heavy, light-armor piercing load they had worked up in a hurry, using a steel-core bullet that had tested well against bulletproof glass. It had lanced through the thick upstairs window and relatively lightly constructed wall with ease, but firing it into the thin material near the front door would probably cause it to give a relatively harmless through-and-through wound to the people behind it. Changing to the conventional loads would result in a drastic change in the sighting of the rifle, so much so that he was not sure he could aim it safely at that range.
"I can shoot, but I'm not sure about the stopping power with this load. If they get into the car, I can probably disable it and then kill them inside." The metal would cause the bullet to expand enough to make a nasty wound in anything beyond it, a fact that had been incorporated into their design.
"Shoot whatever you feel necessary." Jean was out of the car with gun in hand and crouching behind the gate's stone pillar with Rico on the opposite side.
"I'm almost there!" Jamie's voice was strained with her exertion, the speed and varying terrain taxing her endurance in spite of her training runs. "Crossing the road in ten... Follow me through."
Michael saw her jump the ditch and land in the road, and then start forward through the gate at a fast-but-cautious pace. Rico fell in alongside at a safe distance and Jean brought up the rear, making every effort to keep up while covering their flanks.
"Covering fire!" Michael fired a round into the first man who stepped out of the door. He staggered and stumbled back while holding his stomach, then fell over the man behind him, who was in much the same predicament. A third stepped up after a moment, peering out carefully, only to have a burst from Jamie's rifle rip into him.
Jamie saw the men stumble from Michael's shot and her own rifle came up and sighted on the doorway, the sights hardly moving as she hunched down slightly and moved swiftly forward with practiced footing. A man stepped out far enough to give her a shot and she fired, the two rounds striking him in the head, dropping him like a sack of lead bars. The remaining men retreated further into the house where they could have a better chance to defend against the intruders.
"They're pulling back!"
"Stay cautious, Jamie. They can ambush you easier if you're confined to the hallway."
"I know. Rico! Two-man entry, cover low."
"Yes!" Rico moved up with her CZ at the ready and put a hand on Jamie's shoulder to signal her ready.
"Covering fire!"
Michael loosed another round from the rifle, which ripped through the decorative glass above the door and whizzed down the hall. Jamie moved into the doorway, just catching sight of a figure ducking back behind the corner of a connecting hall, sheltering from the murderous rifle rounds. She moved to the left and Rico slipped in to the right, hugging the wall as she moved, her eyes watching the far end as Jamie paralleled her, her rifle aimed at the corner she had seen the movement in.
The fool actually stuck his head around to look and received a pair of 5.56 NATO rounds through his skull for the effort. She switched to covering the far end while Rico spun around the corner and shot a second man who had started to retreat towards another door.
"I'm heading upstairs."
"Stick with Rico, Jamie. Clear the bottom floor first."
"We don't have the time." She was impatient, Michael noted. It was probably from the adrenaline she built up from the running.
"You make the time. You have to clear the building of all targets."
"Yes, sir." She waved Rico forward and left Jean covering the hall as they checked the nearby rooms quickly. A pair of maids was cowering in the corner of a room and Jamie waved to show them that they were not the targets. She closed the door and moved swiftly back to the main hallway with Rico.
"Bang the intersection to the right." She handed Rico one of the stun grenades and took up a spot to cover her throw. "GO!"
Rico winged the grenade into the hall and it bounced around a corner out of sight, detonating almost immediately after. Jamie lunged and rolled into the t-junction, firing bursts at two men that were staggering from the effects of the grenade, and then continued rolling until she was safely behind a large, heavy, hardwood trophy cabinet. Pistol caliber rounds from a sub-machine gun peppered the cabinet and floor near her just as she was safely hidden, but Rico leaned around the corner and silenced the lone gunman there.
"Thanks."
"Sure thing!" Rico smiled cutely before returning to her scan of the hall, ever vigilant for hostiles.
Jean stepped up to them and keyed his mic. "Michael, Ricci isn't here. Can you see him anywhere?"
"No." Michael rubbed his eyes and tried to get a clear focus on the image in the scope. After a few minutes of staring, all of the blobs seemed to run together. "Hang on..." He stared at a spot in the upstairs room where Santorini was laying dead, catching a bit of movement near the fire.
"Upstairs, in the study. I've got movement, but I don't know who it is."
"I'm on it." Jamie switched her magazines and moved swiftly to the stairs, carefully checking the landing for targets.
"Jamie!"
"I'll be fine."
Michael sighed, knowing now why the handlers should really be by the girls' sides. "Jean, clear the rest of the downstairs. I'm on my way there."
"Alright."
He picked up his rifle and started running towards the mansion.
Jamie crested the stairs and glared in annoyance at the hall in front of her, the lack of any real cover grating on her already keyed up nerves. Multiple doorways made her movement risky, as attack could come from anywhere at any moment. She carefully opened the nearest door and shined her light around the room, flipping on the light switch once she found it. It was an empty bedroom with no signs of tampering, the bed still made perfectly, as if the maid had just been there.
She stepped into the hall and across it to the next door, her ears straining to hear any little noise that would give away someone's position. A pair of shots rang out downstairs and she figured Jean had found another one of the household guards. Ricci was upstairs somewhere, along with at least one loyal follower, and there were bound to be more of Santorini's people around somewhere.
"Stay calm and focus." The words sounded hollow. It was not as if she was afraid, as such, but she was certainly more hesitant. She strained to hear, focusing in on everything around her. It would have been better if she could close her eyes to help concentrate, but that was something she dared not do. Her boots were silent on the rug that ran the length of the hall and her only sounds were the gentle, muted click of the taped swivels on her rifle sling, and her careful, controlled breaths as she padded to the next set of rooms.
She chose the door on the right and pulled out her earpiece, listening to the sounds on the other side of the oak door. There was the sound of a stifled moan from inside, the type only given off by a wounded individual, and she knew she had her room.
There was no point to try the doorknob, as it was likely locked and the sound would only alert the people inside. Jamie took a few steps back then rushed forward, planting her foot just above the doorknob as hard as she could in the same kick that had dropped every door she had ever crashed in.
The door did not budge. It didn't even splinter. The only effect of her kick was a solid thump that rattled a picture loose from the wall nearby and a sharp pain in her ankle, a pain that was very pronounced as she stumbled back from the door and regained her balance.
"What?"
She was stunned at the results of her effort, a delay that was nearly fatal as a hail of weapons fire came through the oak door, sending lead and splinters of wood into the hall. Jamie lunged to her left to get out of the way but caught a bullet through her right arm, wincing in pain as she rolled away from the door and onto her feet, and staggering as her broken ankle refused to take much of her weight.
As much as she wanted to kill whoever had shot her, she was focused on getting to some form of cover before they exited the room to finish her off. She ducked around the corner in the hall and knelt down, dropping her gun and quickly unlacing her boot. She tore a chunk of trim from the wall and jammed it inside the side of her boot, opposite of the knife scabbard she kept on the other side. She yanked the laces as tight as they could go and tied it off, then glanced into the hall where one of Ricci's men was advancing down the hall carefully.
She wrapped several rounds of duct tape from her vest pocket tightly around the top of the trim, her ankle, and the hilt of her knife, completing a makeshift brace. She tossed the tape to the side and grabbed her rifle, her right arm's pain lessened as she became accustomed to it and no longer hindering it's function. She swung around the corner and dumped ten rounds into the man on full-auto before running down the hall towards the room, intending to take the offensive even if it killed her.
The guard was alert and anticipated her attack, catching Jamie as she brought the muzzle of her H&K around the corner of the door, dragging her off balance and into the room with his incredible strength. She fired the rifle as he pulled it, hoping desperately to stitch him with the rounds, but he was experienced in disarming an opponent and levered it away, bending her injured arm as she tried to hold on and landing a solid punch to her face with a massive fist.
Jamie actually saw stars as her nose was broken by the impact, the strength momentarily leaving her body and crashing her to the floor just inside the door. There was a moment's pause as she realized that she had just been struck, but her mind regained control and she leapt to her feet, staggering again from the pain of her ankle. Her focus was quickly changed from that as she got her first good look at the hulking brute that had hit her.
The man was enormous! He had to be at least six foot five and three hundred pounds. It was a man-shaped bundle of muscle and fat the likes of which she had never seen, his hammy hands the size of salad plates, his legs like tree-trunks, and a gut that seemed like a massive pile of snow alongside the road.
"Oh, shit..." She whispered it to herself mainly, but the comment seemed to bring a perverse pleasure to the man who smiled as he thumped one fist into the other hand, anticipating enjoyment of a beating.
"You're in a lot of trouble now, missy."
"Oh, shit..." She took a step back in fear and started trying to figure out a way to run away, quickly glancing back at the edge of the door and noticing in a detached way that the entire oak frame and door were reinforced with laminated steel. When she looked forward again, the man was upon her, slamming her chest with a crushing punch that knocked her backwards, but she grabbed the doorframe and held herself upright, coughing from the hit and glaring at him as her brain started to ignore the pain receptors in her body in anticipation of things to come. This was going to be a tough fight.
"How can... a fat man... move so fast..."
The man smiled and laughed as he held back for a moment, letting his new toy get her breath.
"Haven't you ever seen a kung-fu movie, little girl?"
"Plenty..." She smiled and wiped the blood from her nose with her thumb in the Bruce Lee signature move, a gesture the hulk seemed to appreciate. "Kung-fu movie rule number two: The fat man is faster than he looks."
"And more dangerous." He shifted back and forth on his feet nervously a bit, a motion Jamie found of little comfort as it only served to demonstrate that the man was certainly lighter on his feet than one would expect.
"That's not in the rules! Usually the fat man is the comic relief."
"But that is the movies, and this is reality... And your reality is going to be a lot more deadly than any movie. Sorry." He stepped towards her and she flinched instinctively at the overwhelming presence he was bearing down on her with. His tone of voice told her that he was deadly serious and entirely comfortable with the fact that he was going to beat her to a pulp. The man was a complete nut-job. Jamie could not run away, and it would be difficult at best to match him in strength, at least with her injuries. She had started to wonder if she was even a match for him at her full ability.
There was really nothing to do but welcome his attack and make it a fight to the death. She took up a defensive stance and readied herself, then motioned him on. "Okay, Fatso. Bring it anyway you like."
"This will be fun!"
He charged her at his full speed, shoulder down, and his full weight behind it. Jamie stepped to the side and deflected his charge with her right arm, dropping to her left knee and kicking her broken ankle between his legs, tripping the beast and sending him crashing into the wall opposite of the doorway he had just narrowly squeezed through. His head broke through the plaster and the paintings on the wall crashed to the floor as the entire house shook from the hit.
Jamie spun and got to her feet, backing away to safety as he pulled his head from the wall and shook it to clear it, and then got to his feet again. It was no longer a man in her mind, but a snarling, rampaging beast that would destroy her and everything else in its path.
"That was good, missy, but you're stumbling quite a bit, and I doubt you can outmatch me in pure strength. It's too bad we didn't meet in the street, 'cause you're the kind of woman I like to pound into submission."
"If we'd met in the street, I'd have already shot you for looking at me funny." She could see that this was not going well, but she had to play for time for the others to come and help. There was a bit of blood running down his head from a gash in it, the bits of plaster still in the wound.
"Well then. I guess it's lucky for me that you came here, eh?"
He lunged and she moved to deflect again but he was ready for it and caught her arm, swinging her around and slamming her against the wall with enough force to send cracks through the plaster in every direction. He reared back and planted a foot in her chest as she had started to come off of the wall, knocking her back into it and dazing her as her head made it's own indentation.
Jamie felt something crack in her chest and her vision clouded with black splotches when her head hit, her strength leaving her again and not even bother to leave a note as to when it had planned on returning. She was helpless as she sagged to the floor, stunned and too weak to even try to block the punch that came next, a hit that connected with enough force to send her flying several feet along the wall and sprawling her on the floor, her consciousness the only thing she could still count as working.
"Ugh," was about as much as she could manage to work up from her throat as she gathered a bit of strength from somewhere in her soul and tried pathetically to crawl away.
"What? No more chitchat? No pithy remarks? I thought you were having as much fun as I was."
He grabbed her by the neck and pressed her against the wall, lifting her head several inches above his own and choking the life from her. His eyes were positively evil as they gazed at her face, the cruel smile on his lips bringing back a similar feeling of disgust in Jamie that she remembered from that terrible, endless night in Paris.
"You're going to pay for wasting my time, little girl. I wanted a challenge in this fight, but you have been sorely lacking. I'm going to watch you suffocate right before my eyes, so that the last thing you see is my face."
Maybe it was the look in his eyes or feeling of choking to death, but something transformed her fear into the strongest desire to live that she had ever felt. Her arms felt lighter as the strength returned to them and she brought her hands up to his face and pressed her thumbs into his eyes hard, feeling them burst under the pressure before he could react.
The hulk stumbled back slightly and she used that space to plant her left foot against the wall and shove against him, forcing him off balance and then crashing to the floor like a felled tree, the impact shaking the floor. Jamie rode him down and rolled free when he hit, tumbling to the base of the wall on the other side of the hall. The hulk was clutching his bleeding eye-sockets and rolling on the floor, trying to get up despite the fact that he could no longer see anything.
The woman in Jamie refused to have pity on him as she lay there struggling for her breath, realizing that this man must have taken women in the most brutal of fashion, pounding them into submission as he had stated, and then using them until he no longer wanted them.
"Fucker."
Her hand went to her thigh-holster and popped the thumb-break open, drawing her Beretta and pointing it at the man, and in spite of her physical condition and shattered nerves, the sights were steady on her target, as if the hand of God were aiming it where He wanted the bullets to go. The three rounds she fired flew true and the hulk collapsed to the floor, ending the discussion once and for all, and she lay there slowly catching her breath and letting the physiological side effects fade away, suddenly feeling amazingly calm after such a dangerous moment in her life. The man was dead and she was alive. For some reason she felt almost philosophical.
"That's what we have to do... We have to kill them all."
The words were spoken without thought... without pity. It was her promise to herself and the woman she used to be, and it resonated inside her in a way that even Michael's words of praise could not.
A part of her realized that she had started to enjoy the killing, at least the killing of the kind of scum that liked to abuse women. It was no longer an alien feeling to her, and certainly not as detestable as it used to be, and maybe it was the way it had to be in the world. Bad people kill good people, and not-so-bad people kill the bad people. It was simply the way the world worked, and it was better to be the not-so-bad people, because being a good person just got you raped and killed, and you got to kill lots of bad people, so the job-satisfaction level was pretty high.
"That's a pretty messed up way of thinking, Jamie, but it'll do for now." She laughed loudly and then started crawling down the hall towards the study but had only made it a few feet before an ignored fact popped back into the front of her brain, a small tidbit of information that she had forgot in the heat of battle. She turned and looked behind her at the doorway that had so utterly defeated her with its steel reinforcements.
The image of the interior flashed into her head and she realized that it had been a small safe-room or security closet, with screens and wires everywhere. There had also been someone in there, someone other than the big guy.
"Ricci."
"Good guess." He was standing in the doorway, aiming a large-bore revolver, maybe a Smith&Wesson 500Magnum, she guessed base on the compensator on the front. He was only ten feet away and she knew her internal armor was nowhere near enough to stop that large a bullet with that kind of velocity. His hand was shaking a bit as he leaned against the doorway for support off of his bad leg.
"You're from that agency, aren't you? A little girl trained as an assassin."
Jamie was in no real position to answer either way. Her broken ankle was throbbing and her chest felt like a large tree had fallen on it a few times, her breathing sounding labored and wheezing.
"You came here to kill me, but you only got my leg. I'm still alive and I'm getting out of here that way. You... You are going to die here."
"I've heard that before... It hasn't happened yet." She glared at him, turning her fury at her immobility towards him.
"Now it is..." He thumbed the hammer back but had to tip the gun up in his grip to do it, loosening it for a moment...
"It's pretty quiet up there... What the hell is going on?" Michael aimed his rifle up the stairs as Jean finished giving Rico her orders to secure the bottom of the stairs until they returned.
"It's been several minutes since that burst of rifle fire. Maybe she's clearing the rooms."
"I'm going up. Keep things in hand down here." He started up the steps two at a time.
"This went a little beyond our plan, Christiansen." Michael thought he could hear annoyance in Jean's voice.
"I know, I know. The police are on their way, so we need to hurry here."
The hall was quiet as he stepped into it, and the only occupants were a few of Santorini's men who had been mowed down by Ricci's goons when things went to hell on them. They were outside an open door, a door that Michael knew was the study and approached slowly, carefully clearing it until he was sure that the only things in the room were Santorini's and Enrique's bloodied corpses by the fire and window. The papers he was worried about were nowhere to be found, and that left Ricci as having them, and he had to find them fast.
Michael moved quickly into the hall and jogged to the intersection with the other hall, the one that met up with the other set of stairs from the ground floor. There was a roll of duct tape on the floor; folded almost flat as he himself usually did to stick in his vest. He picked it up and tucked it into an empty pouch and turned his attention back to the corner, leaning out carefully and peered down the length, catching sight of Jamie lying next to one very large dead man. She was looking at someone standing just inside the nearby doorway, but then he saw the gun barrel aiming at her from it. He had to move now while he still had a partner.
He hardly thought about his actions as he brought the rifle up and started taking quick, silent steps towards Jamie, his back hunched over to center his mass behind the rifle and make a smaller target. The red-dot sight was steady on the hand that held the gun that was aimed at her and Michael's movement was fluid, almost floating, all of his assault training coming to fruition in this one moment, the moment that really mattered.
"I've heard that before... It hasn't happened yet."
"Now it is..."
The gun lifted for a moment and Michael seized his chance, firing a single shot from the H&K G36 into the gun-hand. The gun fell from the crippled grip and the owner screamed in pain, a scream that was quickly silenced when Michael stepped into the middle of the hall and planted a shot through Christobal Ricci's head, dropping him where he had stood.
"You're late." Jamie tried to pick herself up from the floor but was only able to rise to a seated position against the smashed wall by pulling on the doorframe. She could feel the effects of the head injury fading slowly and figured she could move if she rested a few more minutes.
"Sorry, it's a long run." He knelt next to her and checked the hole in her arm and the bloody spot on the back of her head. "Are you okay?"
She sighed, laughing softly at the absurdity of the question and wondering just what it would take for him to consider her to be in obviously bad shape. She smiled at him to show that she was not seriously injured. "I'll be okay, I think, though I'm going back to the hospital.
"Yeah..." Michael found a roll of gauze in his vest and quickly wrapped a pair of patches tightly against her gunshot wound before checking her eyes for a concussion. "Bianchi said he's going to start charging us rent this time."
"You know I don't get paid a salary." The flashlight hurt her eyes when Michael flashed them and then she had to blink away the blue spots from the intense light.
"Well, you're going to have to work for your room and board if you keep this up." He checked her leg that she had taped up and decided to leave it for the time being, as it was probably the best they had until medics arrived.
"Christiansen, report." Jean's voice crackled over the radio in his ear.
"I'm okay, but Jamie is injured. She's got a broken leg and some holes in her."
"Status of the documents?"
Michael had forgotten that. "I'm still working on that, so give me a minute. Ricci is dead, as well as his man that he had inside Santorini's operation."
He stepped over Ricci's corpse and searched it quickly, finding the papers inside his coat. "I have the papers, Jean, but we're going to need to scrub the house for intelligence."
"I've considered that. Ferro and her team are on their way in the helicopter, and should be here in a half-hour. We only need to tell the police that this is a Public Security operation and that they have no authority to enter the grounds."
"Okay. Let me get Jamie moving again and we'll meet you in the front." When he looked over at her, she was flexing her injured arm to test the hindrance the bullet had caused on its way through. "Can you walk?"
"Maybe. The pain has dulled and my leg isn't throbbing anymore."
"Lets give it a try."
Michael went to her and helped her onto her good leg, and then supported her as she took careful steps onto her bad one. She seemed to be able to put some weight on it, but the resurgence of pain from the injury was obvious on her face.
"Okay, lets just go down the steps carefully and I'll support you, okay?"
"Alright."
The chopper was landing a bit early by the time they made it to the front door, the rotor kicking up dust and small stones as it touched down in the widest part of the drive, barely clearing the cars and light posts lining it. Ferro climbed out and was quickly followed by Alfonso, Georgio, and finally Priscilla, who was looking tired at having been roused from bed at so late an hour for the trip.
Ferro met Jean by one of the cars to discuss the situation as the others unloaded their gear from the copter, then started towards the house, tossing Michael the evil eye as she approached.
"You never do anything small, do you, Christiansen?" She glanced over Jamie who was still supporting herself with an arm around Michael's shoulders.
"You know me... I start things off small and then it just kind of gets out of hand.
"No kidding. Well, take the helicopter back to base and get Jamie patched up."
"Our gear is on that hill over there."
"I'll send Georgio to get it. Just go home and stay put for a day or so until I clear up this paperwork." She walked into the mansion without even bothering to hear his response, her mind ticking away at the cover story for two very dead mafia dons and numerous underlings getting blown away at a meeting that started out under a truce.
As Michael waited for the medics to settle Jamie into a stretcher, he watched the nearly headless corpse of Enrique get rolled past to a waiting truck and shoved unceremoniously in for it's trip to the crime lab. Michael would be waiting impatiently for any and all information that both the body and his car would provide and with any luck, there would be some hint as to where Amherst and the rest of his people were.
"Michael?" Jamie's soft voice broke in on his thoughts as usual.
"Yeah?"
"Are you mad?"
When he looked at her he found a worried look on her face, a fear that somehow the night's turn of events had pushed them off of the path they needed to be on.
"No, Jamie. I'm not feeling anything right now."
He was numb inside, and even the picture through his sights of Ricci's brains being splattered against the wall elicited no real feeling either good or bad. Maybe it was the fatigue. Maybe he was already at that point that Tanya had spoken of, when humanity can no longer find home in such a black heart and mind. It was something to think about.
"I'm not feeling a damn thing."
Chapter 27
"The phone calls were made from a payphone in Milan and there is no real way to trace them further than that, I'm afraid." Marco set a file on Michael's desk, a file containing everything he had been able to track down. "The voice analysis from both the phone taps and your mansion bugs shows the caller was this Enrique guy, real name Juan Castillo, at least according to his dental records. He was a paratrooper in the Spanish army, released last year from a five-year sentence for gross negligence involving a firearm. He was cleaning his rifle and it discharged, giving a fellow soldier a prosthetic leg and medical discharge. His file from before that shows discipline issues consistent with borderline sociopathic tendencies."
"And he ended up as a runner for Amherst. Any idea where this guy was living?" Several long slurps of coffee were helping Michael to wake up and focus on the information. He would not admit it to anyone but the little sleep he was getting was broken up by nightmares and bouts of depression-induced insomnia, and the past couple of days since the actions against Santorini and Ricci were only a long, unending blur for him.
"Last known whereabouts was Beauvais, France."
"Just a hop, skip, and jump up the A16 from Paris..." It was figuring into Michael's pattern of Excalibur Entertainment Company. They set up a 'legitimate' criminal enterprise in cities where the criminals have a cordial relationship with the authorities, using that to fund their hobby of rape and murder. Paris, Milan, and Amsterdam for certain... and there were signs that the network went so far as Warsaw, Budapest, and Valencia. They rotated between these places for their films, likely having a complete set of gear in every location.
"Have you been there before?" Marco had noticed Michael's eyes light up at the mention of the city in France.
"A couple of times, but it's nothing special. Anything else?"
"Not really. The guy has been remarkably low-key in everything. The car rental agency only described him as an average guy, and it's the same story with the airport people who actually noticed him, as few as there are. I could have been describing you for all it mattered."
"I see. Well, Marco, I am certainly appreciative of your effort. You've given me a little I can work on, and that's better than having nothing at all."
Marco nodded in his usual way of showing his appreciation. No one had seen him smile since Angelica's death and Michael could certainly appreciate the feeling of not wanting to.
"By the way, I have to run into town this afternoon, did you want to go? Jamie and I have to get some things for my apartment and I have to give the new maid a key."
"Maid?"
"Yeah, just once a week, you know. I haven't really been in the mood to clean lately and the liquor bottles are starting to pile up." He tried to laugh off the comment as the joke that it was, but it just fell flat. Surprisingly, he had not felt like turning to alcohol to sooth his pain this time, instead devoting his free time to tracking down the bastards that killed Tanya.
"I think I'll pass, but thanks for the invite all the same."
"No problem."
"Are you sure you're feeling okay, Jamie?"
"I'm fine, really. Doctor Ziliani said that my arm just needed some minor muscle repair work and some work on my ribs to patch the cracks from where that guy hit me. I really got lucky on my nose and they didn't have to chop it off and replace it." She was in high spirits in spite of the replacement leg she had to endure.
"He told me that you have been kicking in too many doors."
"It was that laminated-steel reinforcement! How was I supposed to know it was there?"
"Well, I got a look at the pictures of it. There was a sizable dent where your kick bent it. I looked up the specs from the manufacturer and you're lucky you only cracked your ankle since that particular piece was designed to withstand repeated impacts from the heaviest SWAT battering-rams out there."
"Hm."
They were walking down the sidewalk towards his apartment with their arms loaded with boxes of things, a new coffee maker among them and nestled safely in Jamie's arms. The crowds were thick at the lunch hour and his apartment's proximity to several good restaurants only added to it, so they had to weave their way through carefully. Michael thought he could see a bit of a limp in Jamie's right leg, though she had been exercising it in her usual way to get used to it. The idea of her being a cyborg still gave him pause at times, though he always ended up shrugging it off as something he really could not do anything about.
"So, what do you want for your birthday, Michael?"
"Eh?"
"Your birthday is next week, right? What would you like me to get you?" She started walking backwards in front of him, still weaving left and right to dodge people. He wondered how she could be doing it so well at it but quickly figured out that she was catching sight of them in the mirrored edges of her sunglasses.
"How did you find out when my birthday was?" He quickly closed the gap between them and spun her to face forwards, wrapping his arm around her protectively.
"I peeked at your driver's license. That picture really isn't doing you any justice, you know."
"Well, not all of us can be beautiful like you, Jamie. People like me are happy to be average, and it helps with the anonymity."
"I think you're handsome, even if you're getting on up there in the years." Her smile could thaw the glacier that his heart had become, and while he did not really feel ready to move on entirely just yet, the knowledge that he had someone he could talk to was a help to his heart.
"You just keep digging, little girl, and see where the age comments get you." He freed up a hand and pulled her knitted hat off, stretching his arm up out of her reach as she playfully feigned an inability to reach it.
"C'mon, give it back already, my ears are cold."
"Not until you learn to respect your elders and apologize."
"Okay, I'm sorry." She pulled her hat on quickly when he released it to her and then stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm sorry you're getting old and gray and crotchety."
"Hey! I am not crotchety."
"Yes you are."
"Damn kids."
"See?"
The maid from the service was waiting in front of the apartment, just as they had promised, and Michael realized that he was almost five minutes late. He gave the woman an apologetic look as he introduced himself.
"Sorry we're late. I'm Michael Christiansen, and this is my sister Jamie." The maid did not look enthused at all and Michael had the feeling that the woman was never really happy.
"Patricia Dent, 'Maids for Service'. It's a pleasure, Mister Christiansen." Her Italian had a British accent, something that Michael was surprised that his mind had picked out so easily and made him realize that he was actually integrating into Italian culture.
"Dent? What part of England are you from?" He asked this in his normal American English and received a slightly confused look from her
"From London itself, sir. You are American? Your Italian was flawless."
"Thank you, I've been working on it for some time now." He shifted the packages in his hands and motioned her to the doorway of the building. "Please, lets go in and get out of the cold. I'm not a big fan of it, despite growing up in Pennsylvania where the lake-effect dumped yards of the stuff...err meters...every time it fell."
"Let me help you with some of those, sir." In spite of her thin figure, she was incredibly strong, taking almost all of Michael's bags in one go without any real difficulty.
"Thank you." He and Jamie followed her in and watched her take the stairs with hardly any notice of the weight she was carrying. She was one of those women who had been doing the hard work so long that none of it really seemed all that hard anymore.
They had made it to the second floor before Michael realized that his surveillance gear was still in the car, a place where he simply could not leave the expensive equipment in a city. He pulled the spare key from his pocket.
"Mrs. Dent, I have to get some things from the car real quick. Go ahead on up and let yourself in. It's apartment Three-A, the one facing the street."
"Yes, Mr. Christiansen." She took the key and continued her journey while Michael and Jamie hurried back down the stairs and out to his Jaguar that was parked on the street.
He had no sooner put the key in the trunk-lock than an explosion sounded above them, a massive fireball erupting from his apartment's living-room windows and raining glass down upon the screaming crowds. Jamie grabbed him and threw him to the ground; covering his body with her own against any threat the shards might pose.
For a moment he relived the moments of the Ministry bombing. The screams of terror were the same in both, and lives were being extinguished in a few scant seconds as the flames consumed everything they touched. Jamie's breath on his neck was the only thing that made the present different enough to bring him back from the flashback.
"Are you okay, Michael?"
"I'm fine. You?"
"I'm okay, I think."
The moment of shock had passed by in a blink and they both stood to look at the flames pouring out of the windows, licking furiously at the fourth-floor in an effort to burn it as well. The sirens were already screaming in the distance and people were starting to pick themselves up. A policeman started helping people exit the building as the smoke started filling the halls.
Michael actually fell into the thought that it had been an accident, but his instincts quickly corrected him and said otherwise. Someone had just tried to kill him, and were it not for the unwary blundering of a maid, they might have succeeded.
"Wrong place at the right time." His eyes scanned the street on both sides for a suspicious person or car but everything looked normal, if such chaos could be considered normal. A few plain vehicles moved out of the way of a police car coming on scene but none looked out of the ordinary. He looked at Jamie and found her eyes glues to the rooftops, looking for a possible watcher. In a job like this, you confirm the target is dead so you know whether there needs to be a follow-up mission.
"See anything?"
"No, sir. No snipers as near as I can tell. It doesn't discount the possibility of a close-in attack, however."
He hadn't thought of that, but it certainly made sense. Should your target miraculously escape the blast, you blow them away with a sniper. There were so many buildings, however, that it would not be difficult to conceal one's self in an apartment and crack the window just enough.
"Lets move inside somewhere."
"Where?"
"Anywhere, I don't care." The sharp, angry tone he spoke with made Jamie look away as if she had been scolded, but her eyes quickly went back to scanning the crowd as Michael led her by the hand to a nearby shop whose owner he had become familiar with. There they drank coffee and waited almost twenty minutes before his phone rang.
"Christiansen."
"Michael, thank God you're alive. Is Jamie with you?" Priscilla was sounding more than a bit concerned, though the relief in her voice told him she would be okay.
"Yeah, we're both fine. We're camped out at the coffee shop across the street, watching them put the blaze out."
"What happened?"
"Someone planted a fire bomb in my apartment this morning. Unfortunately, my maid set it off when she went inside ahead of us. We were away from the car for some time as well, so there is no way I'm going near it without it being checked first."
"Okay. We have two teams on their way, so stay put until they get there. You can ride back here with Olga."
"Alright, Priscilla. Thanks."
Jamie was staring at him as he closed the phone and slipped it back into his pocket. He wasn't sure exactly what she was thinking, but it was starting to be a bit creepy.
"What?"
"I know what you're thinking, Michael."
"What's that?" His coffee had suddenly gone cold with the emotionless way she had said it.
"They're not going to stop, at least not until we kill them. The agency compound is safe, but we have to leave the grounds sometime because only we can find them. Then it becomes a game to see who brings their sights on-target first." She finally looked away as she lifted her mug with both hands, the way she held things when she was really shaken up.
Her eyes told the tale of just how angry she was at this attempt on their lives and he had to figure that it was the cowardly way they went about it. Jamie was someone who, at least in this incarnation, felt that a justified kill was one you committed with your own hands. Blowing someone up from a distance was, to her, the tactics of a weakling.
He sipped his cold coffee before responding. "You're getting pretty good at that. Not many have ever been able to read me like that. The real test is in what we are going to do next."
Jamie thought about the next step, endeavoring to think like Michael had been trying to teach her; to get inside the decision-making process of their enemy and then lead them to where they needed to be to perish.
"They are hunting us, and they probably know that they missed this time. They will expect us to go to the agency, which would provide a perfect opportunity to get us, but they don't have the assets in place..."
"Keep going." He could see that she was getting it now.
"We can't stay at the agency, not because it's not safe, but because it hinders us. So...the question becomes whether they believe we will hide behind our allies or venture on our own."
"What is the smart thing?"
"Hide and let them come to us. We can be drawn out at their discretion; it's only a matter of time. So if we hole up they will have to make a move that we will respond to. What that might be is of little relevance. Our response will be routed into a place of their choosing where they will slaughter us."
"So what do we do?"
"We show them what we want them to see. In the meantime, we are going someplace they won't expect. When the time comes, we blind-side them."
"You really are the smartest girl at the agency." He was able to smile at her, his pride overshadowing the morning's events.
"I'm not a girl, I'm a woman, thank you very much." She finished her coffee and settled back, her hand only an inch from her gun though her body language looked relaxed to any observer that might notice.
"Smartest woman, sorry." He spotted Jean and Jose with their girls among the crowd that had gathered around the fire truck as it continued to cool the charred remains of his apartment and motioned to Jamie that they should go, paying a generous tip on the table as they left.
A flash of their public security credentials earned them an escorted walk up to Michael's apartment to look around, the two younger girls standing guard just inside the ground floor doorway as the three men and Jamie continued on up the steps.
The hall was covered in soot from the smoke, and his apartment door was embedded in the opposing wall of the hallway, but to Michael it looked as if the building had suffered little real damage. There were crime-scene people examining the remains of Mrs. Dent, who was lying just inside the hallway from his living room.
His trained eyes could see that the explosion had originated in the cabinet that had stood in the hall, likely triggered on a delayed-action fuse when the apartment door had opened, and set to catch him either right in front of the cabinet, or very near it. It was clever, but not really all that original.
"I've done that one before... The problem is timing it right. It's a hell of a lot easier to just rig the stove or television."
The others stared at him, wondering where the comment had come from since no one had said a word to him. When he noticed the way that they looked at him he just shrugged. "Sorry, I guess I was thinking aloud to myself."
"Any ideas what they used?" Jean was examining the bedroom, which had taken only limited fire damage and where most of the things inside were blackened from soot, but not incinerated.
"I can't even begin to guess. It doesn't look like Semtex, if that's what you're asking. Maybe they used a bit as an igniter, but it probably wasn't the bulk of it. Half of the room would be missing if it were."
"Well, the police have an adequate lab for this kind of work. We should go."
"Hang on, Jean. I want to get a couple of things first." Michael went into the bedroom, brushing aside an officer that was overseeing the site security.
"This is a crime scene, sir."
"It's my home, and I probably won't be returning to it. I have only a couple of valuables, and I'm going to take them with me."
The officer grabbed Michael's arm, dragging him back towards the door, but he quickly found himself planted against the wall face-first. Jamie had moved faster than Jean could call her off, going from an impartial observer to vicious guard-dog in the blink of an eye, her motions swift and quickly overwhelming the unwary officer with her strength. She had a scowl on her face as she jerked the officer's arm behind his back and shoved him roughly against the wall, her anger on full display and not caring that it was.
"Jamie!" Jean tried to call her off, but her eyes were locked on Michael to wait for his orders. She could feel every muscle in her body aching for the opportunity to release the power within her, her nerves tensed to go to war with anyone or anything that she deemed a threat.
Michael could see it in her eyes...That dark, powerful Jamie that could do many things, except restrain herself once loosed. It had to be the stress on her from her shaken nerves from the blast and the constant watch she had been keeping for threats to him. She was ready to tear the man apart if he told her so, and she would without question, even if she might regret it later.
"Stand down, Jamie. He's just doing his job."
"Yes, sir." She carelessly tossed the man aside and stepped into the doorway to protect Michael against anyone who would enter, choosing to ignore the looks Jean and Jose directed at her. The officer got to his feet and accepted the tissue Jean handed him for his bloodied nose.
"It'll only be a minute, officer."
Michael flipped over his bed, ignoring the crash of it against the dresser, and pulled the blank DVD case from under it. This he tossed inside a duffle bag along with his spare belt-pack of burglar's tools and electronic bugs, his spare pistol and ammunition, and a zip-locked bag of papers. The computer was freed in a couple of deft pulls of the wires and he handed it to Jamie before taking the last item, a framed photo of Tanya and himself from years before; a picture he'd been keeping safe for almost five years. He glanced quickly around the room for anything else he thought he might regret leaving behind, but there really was not anything. The clothes were worthless from the smoke damage and everything else was expendable or something he really hadn't become attached to.
He reentered the living room and set the vase from the coffee table back upright, gently putting the scorched rose inside it, taking a moment to close his eyes and reflect on how much he missed her, especially at a moment when her help would be more of comfort than utility. When his eyes opened he was aware of everyone watching him, his actions seeming strange, perhaps, but hardly something to speak up about. He brushed off the looks and stood again, motioning for Jamie to follow.
"Lets get out of here, Jamie. We have work to do."
"Yes sir."
Lorenzo was waiting in his office for Michael when Jean escorted him in and closed the door, leaving Michael and his chief alone, a change in routine that Michael found chilling at the least. The older man, a man who had seen and done many things and had a lot of blood on his hands indirectly from his decisions, was studying him, and somewhere in the past year Michael had learned to be intimidated by him.
"I'm glad to see you are okay, Christiansen. When the report came down on the blast and it's location, we all thought you might have been killed."
If Michael had not already known who was responsible for it, he would have thought that Lorenzo had signed the order out on him personally, so cold was the statement. He was starting to see dangers everywhere, especially in the places where a threat actually could exist, and it was a reminder that the fine line between caution and paranoia was but a hair's breadth.
"Half of everything is luck, sir. The rest is Fate, and Fate is on my side right now because she hates the same people we do."
"An interesting viewpoint to say the least." He clasped his hands together and leaned his chin on them, seeming to relax a little. "We do have an issue, though, in that you are being hunted again and they are acting as terrorists in our country. That being the case, I am diverting a pair of teams from the Giacomo search to find these people and bring them to justice."
"Justice..." Michael spat the word. It meant nothing now. "Justice is a cushy concept that requires courts, juries, and restraint to execute properly. These people are out to kill others, be they little girls, teenagers, or myself. The hand of Justice is not something they consider a threat. The only way to deal with them is to crush them as the waste they are, and that requires tossing out any concept of justice we might have."
"That's a pretty harsh comment, coming from you."
"I'm a realist. They want me dead and won't stop until I am, and I'm not going to give them the pleasure. If they want me, they'll have to work for it." He had already started to devise a plan and he needed only to be left alone with Jamie at his side to do it.
"Well, you are going to stay in the compound where they cannot get to you easily. When they come for you, we'll be ready."
"Respectfully, that just won't work. They are smart enough to know that they can't assault the force we have available. I have to go out at some point, and they will strike when they want."
"You have an alternate suggestion?"
"I take Jamie and just disappear. I can do it and it will take them time to figure it out. By then, I'll be so far underground they won't find me until I move on them."
Lorenzo gave the idea a couple of seconds of thought before shooting it down. "That is unacceptable. Your cyborg is a multi-million dollar piece of Italian government property. Outside of our influence she is susceptible to any number of problems: her reliance on the medicine, a possible separation from you, and even injury. If she is injured, she will end up in a foreign hospital and then our secrets are out for all to see."
"Sir, you said you are only willing to devote two teams to finding them, but I know two teams is simply not enough. They are battle-hardened, sociopathic killers, and nothing short of a similarly out-of-control mindset is going to stop them. Our agency has a structure that it follows and they know it well enough to sell it to two groups that could make effective use of it."
"And you think that by operating away from our influence, you can keep them off balance?" Lorenzo was a patient man, a man of foresight who could plan his way out of many things, and as such he could see what Michael's plan would have to be. Michael was asking to have himself and his killer cyborg turned loose in the world to run amok, to do as they wished and to kill whom they pleased. So far their actions were easily covered up by his control over the press, but that was the only reason he allowed them to go this far.
"Permission denied, Mister Christiansen. What you are asking represents a high probability of our exposure to the world. There is simply no way to keep such a hunt under wraps outside of our borders. You will remain on the grounds until they are found or confirmed to have moved on."
"Sir, I-"
"I've given my decision. You're dismissed, Christiansen." Lorenzo's face hinted that it was indeed the end of the discussion, regardless of whether Michael felt like continuing on. It was the same face that told him he would be rotting in a cell or buried if he pursued the matter further.
"Yes, sir. I'll give the teams what help I can from here."
"Good day."
"This is boring. I want to do something fun."
Michael couldn't say that he was surprised at Jamie's restlessness. He was feeling like a caged animal himself, something he certainly could not take a liking to. He set down his newspaper and watched her eat her breakfast for a few moments before asking the obvious.
"Like what?"
"I don't know..." The week and a half that they had been restricted to the compound was visible in the way she poked her oatmeal with the spoon and let some dribble off of it when she finally did lift it. "I'm just sick of being in this place. It's like being in the hospital, only without the hope of eventually getting out."
"All good things come to those who wait, Jamie."
"We've been waiting but nothing has happened." She looked out on the courtyard as if it were the symbol of the freedom she longed for, but the look faded as she thought about the fact that she could go there, and no, it was not freedom at all.
"It will, trust me."
As if to punctuate his statement, the personal address came alive with a call for medical responders to report to the helipad, a call that was drowned out by the roar of the agency helicopter as it made its circuit to read the wind before landing. Curiosity and Michael's prediction got the best of them and they rushed out to the front yard to see what was going on.
The helo was touching down in front of the hospital where the medics were assembled, but from their position they could not see who it was that was put on the gurney, a gurney that was rushed into the building as fast as the teams could move it. A second team rolled out at a significantly slower pace, stopping by the helicopter and collecting a figure that made every effort to shrug off assistance, hopping the two steps and hoisting his self onto the gurney.
"Can you see who it is, Jamie?"
"No, just their jacket. It looks like a heavy leather one, real bulky." She squinted to see across the distance, wishing she had her riflescope.
"Black?"
"Yeah."
There was only one person at the agency that wore such a jacket. Maybe Jamie did not know who it was because she had not paid enough attention, but Michael certainly did. He put his hand on her arm, a sign of brotherly affection and caring that made her look at him, wondering what he was doing.
"It's Mario, Jamie."
If Mario was the one that was relatively uninjured, then the other person the medics took inside had to be Maria, the friend that had been there for her every time she herself had been injured.
Michael's firm grip on her arm was the only thing that stopped her as she attempted to run for the hospital, a restraint that earned him an angry glare as she tried to figure him out.
"Let me go, Michael. I want to be there for her."
"I know, but there really isn't anything you can do at this moment besides watch on helplessly."
"I don't care!" She jerked her arm away from his grasp and took a few steps backwards to get some distance between them, a distance that seemed to reflect their respective positions on the matter. "It's the principle of it, Michael. You of all people should understand that being there for someone is more important than being able to help them. You were there for me in that warehouse at the moment when I wanted to give up, and it's only because of you, someone who told me I could go on, that I kept breathing. If there is anything I have learned since then, it's that you have to have a reason to keep living; to keep trying in the face of adversity... in the face of death."
The sun peeked out from behind a cloud and illuminated her in it's light, a single beacon of color and light in a cold, gray world, and it was the moment when Michael's fear of Jamie's past ceased to be a concern. Janet Wells was alive within her, her memories and spirit mingling with the part of her that he had helped to create. She remembered it all and had not faltered in her step alongside him, and now she was once again reaching out to someone, the same as she had in her previous life.
"You can't stop me Michael. You might control me in my everyday actions, but you can't stop me from pursuing my own nature. I have to be there for Maria, and that's all there is to it."
She turned and ran for the hospital at her top speed. He watched her go with a mixed feeling of pride and pain at her developing self-reliance, and a confliction inside him on whether self-determination really was a proper course that he had charted for her. It wasn't that he cared a whit whether the agency supported the idea or not, but his own reluctance to slip her reins and let her decide for herself. He had previously thought it the best thing for her, given her independent nature, but now he had his doubts, mainly because he didn't want to see her hurt by her mistakes.
"You're spacing out, Michael."
He spun around at the voice that had startled him, finding Ferro with her morning coffee in hand and looking past him at the still running Jamie.
"Yeah... I was just feeling like my little girl is all grown up."
She apparently did not feel the observation worthy of comment; just a simple look of concern for him. It was a sign that she had accepted his personality finally. He was going to do things the way he wanted despite what others told him, and that was that.
"Well, Lorenzo wants you to go talk to Mario as soon as the doctors get him settled. This problem with your enemies is getting out of hand and he wants it cleaned up quickly."
"Is he willing to turn me loose with Jamie?"
"I don't know I'm just a messenger. Get Mario's information and report to the Chief this afternoon." She walked away without another look, stepping back into the warmth of the building.
There really wasn't anything he could say in response.
Jamie was arguing with a nurse when he caught up with her in the hall, pleading to be allowed to see Maria with tears in her eyes, tears that were ignored by the impassive nurse. The girl was not forcing her way through and Michael wondered why until he heard her beg to be told what room her friend was in.
"Please, can't you at least tell me what room she will be in?"
"I'm sorry, no. She's still in surgery and we don't know what her condition will be when she is brought back out. Cyborgs are not allowed into the ICU under any circumstances, so no matter what the situation, you will have to wait until she is released to a regular room. Now please, Jamie... Please, just go sit down and be quiet until we can tell you something."
The nurse was not taking her eyes off of Jamie and Michael could see that her arms were tensed to defend herself from the girl should she suddenly turn violent. It was this diversion that allowed him to go unnoticed until he was only ten feet away from Jamie, a spot he deemed the proper distance from which to startle her.
"Please! She's my best friend and I-"
"Jamie!"
Her head snapped around at the sound of his voice, the tone sharp and disapproving, which always got her immediate attention and made her look him in the eyes. A tear flew from her eye in the motion and fell to the floor, just visible to him from the angle of the fluorescent lights and the waxed sheen. He let her wait several moments for his orders, watching her calm a little as her body adjusted to the more relaxed state the conditioning seemed to set her into when paying close attention to him.
"You're not allowed to see her right now, and that is the doctors' instructions, not the nurse's. Leave the poor woman alone, sit down, and wait there until you calm down." He pointed her to a plain chair near the nurses station, the emphasis on the sitting part making it clear to Jamie what he was ordering her to do.
For a moment her eyes became angry at him, the glare speaking volumes about what she thought he should go do with the chair, but it was gone in a flash and she gave in, stepping slowly to the chair and sitting down, running her hands through her hair in her frustration.
"Thank you, Mister Christiansen."
"It's no problem. You know how head-strong she is at times..."
"Indeed." She crossed to the small waiting room and poured two cups of coffee, offering them up to Michael and Jamie in the interests of solidarity. They all wanted what was best for the patients, but there had to be some order maintained at all times, for everyone's sake. "It's always tough the first few hours after someone is brought in, but the only thing family and friends can do is wait it out."
"I hate waiting..."
Michael ignored Jamie's comment and decided to turn to Mario's condition instead.
"How about Mario? How bad was he hit?"
"He'll be fine. He took a rifle shot through the leg but it's not fatal. Maria evidently took the worst of it all in protecting him. His wound is a clean pass-through, and one of the doctors is handling it alone while the others take care of Maria."
"Can I talk to him?"
"Not for a little while. You'll have to wait until the doctor is finished treating him, and then probably a little while for the sedation to wear off. Call it a couple of hours."
He looked at Jamie who had been listening carefully and made a face at the idea of waiting, her impatience getting the better of her quite a bit today. He made his decision and took a seat next to her, placing his arm around her shoulders and pulling her close in a brotherly supportive way.
"We'll wait, Miss, thanks. Let me know if there is any change that I can see him earlier."
The nurse nodded and continued her rounds, leaving the pair alone together in the quiet ambiance of the hall.
"Hurry up and wait, huh?" Jamie was already struggling to maintain her sanity through the inaction.
"Yeah. Hurry up and wait."
When they were finally allowed to see Mario, Michael found a familiar look on his face, a look that he had found in the mirror numerous times since joining the agency. Mario was in pain; the emotional pain that comes from knowing your little girl's life was in someone else's hands and that you were absolutely powerless to do anything for her. Jamie's injuries had been bad, but she had never really been at death's door. Maria, from what he had been able to learn, was lucky to still be breathing after she was struck down.
"Michael... Thanks for coming." He sat up in the bed and shifted his blankets, grunting as he gently lifted his bandaged leg and moved it to get more comfortable for their conversation.
"It's nothing. You and Maria were there for us when we needed you. You and Hilshire are the only friends I have here, so we have to stick together."
"Yeah."
"Lorenzo wants a report on what happened." Michael pulled over a chair and straddled it, settling in to listen carefully."
"What happened? Hmph... I got sloppy, that's what happened. I got sloppy and Maria saved me, and nearly got killed in the process."
Michael could see the self-loathing on Mario's face as he blamed himself for all of it. Even if it were his fault, the one thing Michael had learned was that it took bad people to make bad things happen, and that sometimes those people got lucky too.
"Tell me what happened."
Mario's eyes shifted to Jamie and Michael read the look in them, that she should not hear what was about to be said.
"Jamie, go down the hall to the waiting room and remain there until I say otherwise."
"But-"
"Jamie!" He snapped at her, finally taking as much attitude from her as he could stand in one day. "I gave you an order, and I expect you to follow it. Now go."
"Fine!" She stormed out and he heard her boots walk down the hall to the waiting room. She should not be able to hear him from there with the ambient noise, but he closed the room's thick door to be on the safe side. "Okay, Mario, I'm listening."
"I received a lead from one of my informants last week, so I was following up on it. These guys make films, right? So naturally I started looking for underground sources of film stock and equipment. One of my people put me onto a small shop in Pisa, run by a guy with good connections. A little cash got me the time yesterday when Excalibur's people were picking up a shipment, so I set up shop across the street and waited. They came and left, and we followed their van to Lucca where they went into a set of warehouses. Another car showed up and two men pulled a woman and two children out at gun-point, forcing them inside."
"Their next victims?"
"That was my thought. There wasn't any time for to call in the agency, and the local cops were bought off to stay out of the area, according to my informant, so we went in."
"What happened?"
"It was a trap. The whole damn thing had been a set-up from the start. They were waiting when we entered the main room. One of them must have been jumpy, because he fired before we came through the door and Maria pushed me back to save me. One round caught me in the leg but the rest hit her, slowing her down. As she started to get up, they shot her... they shot her with one of those big revolvers."
The pain of what he had to watch was obvious on his face.
"The first shot put her down, smashing her hip. The next two were to make her suffer. My gun had slipped away when I was hit, or I would have tried to kill them all as they stood there and laughed at her as she struggled to move. It was like they were watching some dying fish flop around."
His face darkened with shame and hatred as he continued on.
"They tied me up to a post where I could watch, then they made their movie with those poor people. Jesu Christo, Michael, I never thought anyone could do that kind of thing to kids. Maria couldn't move at all, and at one point they dragged her over and started carving her skin up with a knife. Not to kill... just to hear her scream as the point ripped across her."
He was sweating as the images flooded back to him, images Michael was glad he hadn't seen first-hand. After a minute of silence, Mario sipped some water and managed to continue on.
"They raped and slaughtered the kids' mother in front of them to elicit more fear from them, tormenting them all the way up until they cut them up and left them to die. Jesus, Michael, I had to watch them die!"
"Damn it." More victims, both living and dead now, and the scum were practically doing it in the open, taunting him. "Why didn't they kill you and finish off Maria?"
"I think they thought she was going to die from her wounds. As for me... They left me alive to tell you that you and Jamie will get it worse when they get to you. At least, that's what they said. They think that we can't stop them."
"Well, so far we haven't been able to." He started to pace slowly by the window, working the thoughts around in his head in an attempt to come up with something that would get Lorenzo to turn them loose. He looked up to find tears in Mario's eyes, tears from the helpless feeling he'd had as he watched those kids die. "It's not your fault, Mario. They caught you by surprise and effectively stopped you from the first moment. There's no shame in being the victim."
"Tell that to those kids. And Maria." Neither spoke for several minutes as they let the story sink in, but Mario managed to continue on with his story eventually. "It took Maria two hours to crawl over and get my knife into my hands, then she collapsed. I phoned in for help and here we are."
"Okay... I'll talk to Lorenzo, and after this, he has to let me and Jamie hunt them down."
"Yeah."
"Try to rest up, and be ready to help Maria when she wakes up."
"I already am. It's just the waiting part that is so horrible."
"I know."
Michael opened the door to leave, but Mario called him back, offering a warm handshake for good luck. "Be careful, Michael. These guys are ruthless."
Michael smiled, feeling more confidence now that he had yet another reason to tear the people apart when he finally found them.
"So am I. So am I."
