End Times

by P A Duncan

  But Maeve’s rapture at the prospect of dying angered Mai. Maeve had tired of being used by the IRA, but now Isaac Caleb was using her far worse.

  “Maeve, tell anyone you think you can trust that someone will be coming to get the children to safety.”

  “All right, love, but it’ll only be one or two.”

  “Maeve, be safe until I come back.”

  “You promise you will?”

  “I promise.”

  “If the worst happens, lass, it was good to see you one last—”

  Mai silenced her with a finger pressed against her lips. “Go back to sleep, Maeve. Remember, Brick Wall.”

  “We don’t need no education.”

  She hugged Mai before she lay back down, and Mai tucked the threadbare blanket around the woman’s thin body. Mai crept from the room without looking back.

  In the hallway, she double-checked the security of the suppressor on the Beretta and tip-toed down the stairs. At the bottom, she turned away from her exit, almost without thinking.

  Let’s see how far inside I can get, she thought.

  She knew Alexei would see she wasn’t headed out, and she forestalled his protest by tugging the earbud free.

  To her surprise, she encountered no one. Men slept in rooms on the lower floor much like the women upstairs.

  What if she made it all the way to the bunker? Would the children come quietly? Could she get Amanda Gleason?

  No, some of the children would raise the alarm, and she put the thought of an impromptu rescue out of mind. Instead, she concentrated on the details of what she saw: the guns as Maeve had described, bales of straw, jerry cans of gasoline and lamp oil.

  Bloody hell, Isaac Caleb was going to make certain the FBI killed them all.

  As she moved deeper inside, away from rooms with windows, the dark became almost absolute, and she didn’t want to chance stumbling over something. She retraced her steps, slowly.

  After creeping back through the cafeteria, she stood outside again in the night air, cooler and less close than the fetid interior of Calvary Locus. By her watch, dawn was less than an hour away, and the sky seemed much lighter. Well, hell, she’d have to double-time.

  Mai tucked the earbud back in her ear and transmitted a request for a situation report.

  “You and I are having a chat when you get back,” Alexei said.

  She rolled her eyes and didn’t reply.

  “FBI reports no one outside. They’re checking the windows now.”

  “I’m running out of dark,” she murmured.

  “And why is that?”

  She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of arguing over the radio. She waited, the minutes ticking away, her patience and focus ebbing.

  “You’re clear. Go,” Alexei said, mission voice back, no inflection, no emotion, no excess words.

  She double-clicked the mic again, and with the cover of night bleeding away, she sprinted from hiding place to place. Her imaginary target shifted to somewhere between her shoulder blades, but that urged her forward.

  She let her caution drop a little and concentrated on her speed. Even then, she shimmied under the fence and made it as close as a half-mile from the FBI compound before dawn forced her to lie flat amid the tall grass.

  “You’re not moving,” Alexei said.

  “Catching my breath. I’ll have to belly-crawl the rest of the way.”

  “Then, get moving.”

  All right, he was pissed. She hoped he wasn’t displaying that in front of Fitzgerald. Jesus, she hadn’t done this in a number of years, she thought as she crawled toward the FBI trailers, which now seemed miles away from this perspective.

  “Fecking undignified,” she murmured.

  The smell assaulted her first, and she stopped.

  Wonderful, she thought, one of the dogs must have come out here to die. She edged forward, slow but steady, not wanting to muddle into the mess, but the smell filled her nose and mouth. Her stomach churned with nausea. The more she moved, the more overwhelming the smell became. She stopped and parted the grass in front of her.

  It wasn’t a dog.

  The Balkans pushed into the forefront of her thoughts again, and she suppressed that by analyzing the scene. The dead man had been shot, in the back since the exit wounds were in the front. An entry wound was above his right ear.

  He lay on his left side, one arm crooked over his chest, almost as if he slept. Mai checked his position vis-à-vis Calvary Locus and the FBI compound, specifically the spot where she knew the snipers were. She raised up on her elbows. Someone—several someones—had trampled the grass around the body, and it was light enough now she could see where people had walked through the high grass. The trails led back to the sniper nest.

  She realized Alexei called her name over and over, and she moved to crawl around the body. When she shifted to key her mic, she saw something snagged on a small, thorny bush.

  “I’m all right,” she transmitted. “Can you switch to the secure freq?”

  Alexei’s amusement at her having to belly-crawl a half-mile overcame his dissatisfaction with her improvisation during the incursion. The white dot representing her position began to move—slowly—on the computer monitor, and he smiled.

  The dot stopped. Again.

  Boizhe moi, now what, he thought.

  “You’re not moving again,” he transmitted, murmuring to keep Fitzgerald from noticing. Alexei waited for a response. “Mai, come in please.” Another pause. “Ignoring me won’t make me stop talking, Mai.”

  He checked her position on the monitor. She remained in range of sniper shots—either the FBI’s or those in Calvary Locus.

  “Mai, respond. Over.”

  His heart raced, but he kept his outward demeanor neutral, not wanting Fitzgerald to see any dissension between him and Mai. Sweat popped out at the small of his back and in his armpits.

  “Answer me, Mai.”

  Fitzgerald was now at his shoulder.

  “Is there a problem, Bukharin?” Fitzgerald asked.

  Only if someone has shot my wife, he thought and ignored the question.

  “Mai, answer me now.”

  “I’m all right. Can you switch to the secure freq?”

  They used Directorate technology, so unless the FBI knew The Directorate’s secure frequencies, they were safe from eavesdropping.

  “Switching now,” he said, speaking Russian.

  After a moment, he heard her say, also in Russian, “We weren’t briefed on a recent death, were we?”

  “Negative. What have you found?”

  “Male, shot in the back with high caliber rounds, coup de grace to the head, civilian clothing, facing the compound. Less than a week ago. Some trampling of grass around the body, a piece of Ghillie suit snagged on a bush.”

  “Get that and yourself back here.”

  “I’m still within range of both sides.”

  “Stand by. I’ll come up with a diversion.”

  Alexei turned to Fitzgerald and remembered to speak English. “Tell your snipers to stand down.”

  “Stand down?” Fitzgerald said, face flushing. “They weren’t—”

  “Don’t bullshit me. Tell them to stand down, or I’ll go up there and shoot them myself. Then, create a diversion so anyone awake in that compound doesn’t see my partner.”

  “You don’t give the orders here.”

  “If you want me to say, ‘Pretty please,’ consider it said. Do as I ask, or I’ll see to it you’re replaced as SAC.”

  Fitzgerald smirked. “That doesn’t scare me, Bukharin. You don’t have that pull.”

  Alexei stood and leaned so close his lips were next to Fitzgerald’s ear. “You can’t be SAC if you’re dead. I can make it look like a heart attack, a stroke, an infection from a bug bite. Do as I’ve asked.”

  Fitzgerald sucked in a breath, and fear replaced the defiance in his eyes. He backed away from Alexei and began issuing orders.

  Stand by, he’d said. Grea
t. She crawled to the bush, snagged the scrap of cloth, and tucked it away in a small, plastic bag she’d taken from yet another pocket in the tactical vest. She edged away from the rotting body, rolled onto her back, and lay still, sweating now from anticipation. The sky flowed from purple to pink. Hurry up, she thought.

  The persistent smell took her back to a dank basement from a burned-out house, her only company a corpse.

  A voice spoke in Serbian, “You love the Muslim filth so much, sleep with one.

  Her hands moved to rest on her abdomen, to comfort the baby moving inside her.

  When she touched her flat belly, she blinked in surprise.

  Alexei’s voice brought her all the way back to reality. “A negotiator is giving Caleb a wake-up call, and Fitzgerald is having one of the tanks driven toward the compound…”

  The acceleration of a Bradley Armored Vehicle drowned the rest of his words, but she got it. She lifted her head and glanced toward Calvary Locus. A tank was blocking her from view. When it moved closer to the compound, she heard Alexei again.

  “…and when I say go, get up and run, straight ahead. Copy?”

  “The snipers?”

  “Standing down. Copy?”

  “Copy.”

  She rolled back to her stomach, muscles coiled, her breathing slower than the adrenaline in her bloodstream liked. It seemed like hours instead of seconds before Alexei said, “Go, go, go!”

  Mai gathered her legs beneath her and launched herself into a run. Her cramped leg muscles protested. Come on, she told herself, you run seven miles a day.

  The FBI’s collection of trailers and RVs shone pink in the dawn, and she focused on them, picking up her pace but feeling that itch between her shoulder blades. Yeah, Fisher, she thought, like you can outrun a fecking bullet.

  A hundred yards to go, and her breath stabbed in her side every step. That’s what six months of no missions will get you, she thought. A familiar figure rounded the communications trailer and ran toward her. How romantic. She almost laughed.

  He wasn’t the runner he used to be, and she met up with him closer to the FBI trailers. He took her in an embrace she knew he wasn’t self-conscious about. In any other circumstance, she would have pulled away from it, but she was bloody glad to see him.

  They walked toward the trailers, Alexei at her back, between her and Calvary Locus. A smiling FBI agent walked up and handed her a bottle of water.

  “Good work,” he said.

  Mai thanked him, broke the seal on the bottle, and drank half of it. Once behind the cover of the trailers, Fitzgerald walked up, a glare pinned on Alexei. What happened there, she wondered.

  Fitzgerald strode straight up to her, and she had to stop short to keep from colliding with him.

  “Report,” he said.

  “Let me shower and get some food, Agent Fitzgerald, and I’ll debrief—”

  Finger in her face, Fitzgerald said, “Not an option, lady. This was your crazy idea, and I tolerated it. Now, you give me a report.”

  Alexei shifted to move between her and Fitzgerald, but Mai held an arm out to stop him. The other FBI agents backed away.

  “Hollis, I want a shower, some coffee, and some food,” Mai said. “Will twenty minutes make a difference?”

  “She’ll be ready to brief you in a half-hour,” Alexei said.

  Bloody hell, she thought, I want to handle this.

  Fitzgerald glowered at them both, turned on his heel, and marched away.

  17

  PrimItives

  Don’t do that again,” Mai said, as she and Alexei headed for the communal shower trailers. There were a few women FBI agents on site, and there were two trailers.

  “Do what?” Alexei asked.

  “I’ll handle Fitzgerald. I don’t need you to step in and rescue me.” Before he could retort, she said, “Would you go get my bag from the Suburban?”

  Though he headed away without a word, Mai suspected there’d be plenty of them later.

  Thankful she was alone in the trailer, she removed her vest first then her gun belt. She drank the rest of the water and lifted a foot to the bench to unlace her boot.

  The door to the trailer opened, and instead of putting the bag inside, Alexei entered.

  “Misread the sign, did you?” Mai asked.

  “No.”

  “I can do this by myself.”

  “You went off-plan.”

  “I altered the parameters of the mission based on new intelligence.”

  He cocked an eyebrow to show he wasn’t satisfied with her response. “That’s a good but pat answer.”

  “You were listening. How could I pass up trying to get deeper inside? I have a more complete picture up here,” Mai said, tapping a temple, “which can only help us with our plan.”

  “That’s better but still unsatisfactory.”

  She started on the other boot. “Alexei, this double standard is pissing me off.”

  “What double standard?”

  “You know if you’d gone in and taken a side trip, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. God, tell me Fitzgerald didn’t see you all moony over me.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Well, then, unless you’re here for shower sex…”

  His eyes assessed the size of one of the cubicles. “Not interested in an audience. Now, talk about moony. FBI agents are following you around as if you’re a Pied Piper.”

  “Ah, so this is an alpha male thing?”

  “Mai, my dissatisfaction isn’t with your performance as an operative. You know that.”

  “I know. It’s the personal and professional colliding again.”

  “That’s getting harder to separate, especially since—”

  She turned on him. “Do not bring that up. It rode my back all night. Let me shower, alone, and give that pompous bastard his bloody report so we can plan.”

  He dropped her bag on the floor and left the trailer.

  Like scandal in a small town, word spread about how the effete, English woman had gotten in and out of the Eternal Light complex with no one the wiser. There were a few bruised egos, but most of the agents looked at her with new-found respect as she left the shower trailer, clean and redressed in casual clothing.

  She acknowledged the mock salutes with a smile and ignored the ogling.

  Thank goodness they couldn’t tell her back was killing her, her stomach growled for food, and she’d bloody kill for a cup of coffee.

  Alexei fell in beside her and didn’t offer to take her duffel, which was good because she wasn’t feeling solicitous yet. She did let him hold the door to the command center open but only because her arms ached from the unaccustomed belly-crawl.

  She confronted a scowling Fitzgerald. No shock. That seemed to be his permanent expression. The group of smiling FBI agents standing shoulder to shoulder was a surprise. They stepped aside to show her the meal they’d brought for her: scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage, rolls and white gravy, orange juice, and some blessed coffee. Americans brought cooks with them to standoffs, she thought. Amazing. It wasn’t her usual breakfast fare, but she understood the gesture.

  An agent held out a chair at the small table they’d arranged the food on, and after thanking them, she sat and dug in. She ate enough to sate her hunger and to show the FBI agents she appreciated what they’d done. They stood by, asking no questions, like footmen waiting to be commanded, and she bantered with them, flirting because she knew it would annoy Alexei and put Fitzgerald in a worse mood.

  Hollis Fitzgerald certainly hadn’t given the order to provide the bitch breakfast, and what his agents had done made him white-hot angry. He made a mental note of their names. Something negative on each would go into the after-action report. He removed himself to his inner office, but left the door open to watch the disgraceful show in the next room.

  His agents fucking fawned over the woman, flirting while her husband stood there and watched.

  Their presence here was a big cosmic joke
directed at him. Steedley trying to get back at him for doing the job the way it needed to be done. Two could play that game, and Fitzgerald wasn’t the one with something to lose.

  The woman laughed at something one of his agents said. She laughed.

  His mother had started laughing again not long after his father’s murder and always when the asshole who became his stepfather came around. He appreciated this bitch’s laughter about as much as he had his mother’s. Neither of them were women who knew how to respect men. Fisher laughed because she could give a fuck about the killers of federal agents. She cared more about the cop-killers. That so-called briefing she’d given showed she was on Isaac Caleb’s side. That made her Fitzgerald’s enemy.

  He didn’t care how experienced she was. She had no business delving into the work of men. The ATF raid would probably have succeeded if they hadn’t brought in so many female agents. Women weren’t suited for this work, and the sooner they learned that, the better.

  Look at Fisher. After her incursion into Calvary Locus, she needed a shower and food. A man would have stood there, stinking and hungry, and given his report; niceties be damned.

  But something had happened. She’d found something, and it had rattled her. He’d read that from the Russian’s tone, in his switch of languages. Miss Invincible had a weakness, and he’d find it. And use it.

  God damn it, she was still flirting, and the Russian smiled at it. If Fitzgerald’s wife had vamped the way this bitch was, he’d be in a divorce lawyer’s office before she could bat her eyes. The Russian needed to get his woman under control in more ways than one.

  His phone rang, and he answered, eyes still on the other room. “Fitzgerald.”

  “The FBI and ATF directors will be available for a conference call in ten minutes. Confirmed by both their offices,” said an agent.

  “Let me go break up the love fest, and we’ll be ready.” Fitzgerald hung up and rose from his desk. He stood in the doorway and elevated his voice. “I need the U.N. people in here ASAP. We will not keep the FBI and ATF directors waiting. Am I clear?”

  Mai looked at Fitzgerald in the doorway. God, did the man frown all the time? She glanced at Alexei, who nodded.