The Payback Assignment foams-1

by Austin S. Camacho

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  “Griffith,” the man wheezed. “You killed Griffith.”

  “Wrong,” Morgan said, “but it hardly matters now.”

  “True.” The new voice came from the other end of the aisle. The man there barely fit between the bookshelves. He must have decided the chaos in the rest of the library was sufficient to disguise another shot. He held a silenced automatic, its muzzle aimed at Morgan’s head.

  The man Morgan held passed out, his head dropping backward. He was no shield against nine-millimeter shells. There was no room to dodge left or right, no time to get to the other end of the aisle, or draw a weapon. The man only advanced three steps, still much too far away to dive for.

  Morgan could see in his enemy’s eyes that he had followed Morgan’s thought process. “You’re all out of options, asshole.” He raised his gun to arm’s length.

  Felicity’s knees landed on either side of the killer’s neck, her weight slamming him to the floor. She quickly rolled as far to the side as space allowed. A bullet tore into a shelved book’s spine just before Morgan’s foot landed on the shooter’s hand. He kicked forward hard, surely costing the man several teeth and sending him into unconsciousness.

  “I owe you again, Red,” Morgan said, helping her to her feet.

  “Later. There’s another one out there and he’s probably getting away.”

  Felicity pointed out the sniper’s original position, and the window he opened. While both security guards and patrons rushed outside to try to follow him, Morgan led her up to the mezzanine.

  “I want a better look at that rifle,” he said.

  Above the now deserted reading room, he squatted on his haunches to examine the weapon closely. “Very nice. This is a custom job, Red, built on an old Krag action. A very personal piece. Sure must have hurt to leave this beauty behind.”

  “Maybe he didn’t.” Felicity was looking out the window, watching the crowd down in the park. Morgan joined her at the window. Judging from the confusion below, the sniper had not been found.

  “How could he make that drop?” Morgan asked.

  “I know how I’d have done it,” Felicity said in a soft tone. “It’s easy with a rope and pulley system, but I don’t see any signs of the clamps that would have held the system in place.”

  “He could have rappelled” Morgan said. “If you’re good, it can get you down real fast.”

  “True enough, but it doesn’t seem likely he could have slipped down from this window without being seen, especially if he took the time to retrieve his rope.” Morgan looked into her eyes and thought for a moment that he could see her mind working the situation. When she took his arm he let her ease him back away from the window. She turned toward him and leaned toward his ear.

  “You know, if I was stealing something in this kind of situation, I wouldn’t be down there,” she mumbled for his hearing alone. “I’d be up here somewhere.” With a wink, she headed downstairs.

  Morgan waited a moment before starting down the stairs, to avoid looking like he had a plan. When he reached them he walked down six steps, turned quietly, and lay down on the stairs. He could just see over the top step.

  He had only a two minute wait before the sniper appeared from his hiding place and looked over the rail to make sure he could leave unseen. He looked at his rifle like it was an old friend, and stared to reach for it.

  “Don’t try it.” Morgan stood with his gun drawn. The sniper hesitated, then turned and ran for the stairs at the opposite end of the mezzanine. Morgan slid his pistol back into its holster and ran after him. He had hoped to bluff the sniper, but a shot now would surely bring the police and he did not want that kind of involvement.

  The sniper had a lead, and desperation helped him widen it. Morgan moved as quickly as he could but he was still on the stairs when the sniper reached the bottom and sprinted across the right side of the reading room toward the door. Morgan followed, but he knew he had no chance of catching the sniper before he went out the door and disappeared.

  Felicity surprised him when she emerged from under the left end of one of the last tables and shoved with all her strength. The table slid out, blocking the path. The sniper, running full tilt, smashed his thighs into the table and flew over it, landing hard on the other side. Morgan leaped over the table and was on him in a second, pressing a knee into his chest. It was unnecessary. He felt a damp spot at the back of the sniper’s head, and his hand came away red. The fall had put his head into the floor hard enough to knock him unconscious.

  “Leave him.” Felicity pulled on Morgan’s sleeve.

  “They’ll find him, and his fingerprints will tie him nicely to the rifle. We need to get to a secondary exit. I don’t want any complications with the police.”

  “We’re on the same sheet of music there, but you need to go back and get those diagrams, or this was all for nothing.”

  “Right,” she said, recovering her package. “This has got to stop, Morgan. I can’t live like this, with people gunning for me every minute. It’s time to take some kind of action for sure.”

  27

  Steaming mugs of coffee, flavored with amaretto, flanked a set of blueprints on the oak cube in Felicity’s living room when she and Morgan sat down to make their evening plans. One of Bach’s organ works filled the room. Morgan stretched forward from the right side easy chair to pick up his coffee, savoring the almond smell of the liquor in it while he listened to Felicity.

  “Here’s where the brooch, and its present owner live.” Felicity, kneeling on the sofa, leaned forward to point at the diagram. “This particular building’s inhabited by a variety of limiteds, private companies with obscure names. A lot of them are holding companies and shell operations or dummy corporations assembled for tax purposes. A couple of them are mail order fronts. The top five stories belong to Seagrave Incorporated, a closely held corporation whose patriarch is one Adrian T. Seagrave. He and his wife Marlene were the stars of that newspaper photograph I showed you. Officially his business is import and export. He is also heavily invested in the commodities market, and street talk has it that he has taken some extreme measures to influence the market.”

  “Extreme measures,” Morgan said, sipping his coffee. “Like maybe having foreign officials assassinated. Nice guy. So I take it you intend to go in and get your jewelry. What’s security like?”

  “Well, the building’s top floor is a warehouse,” Felicity said. “Why he’d store whatever he’s importing and exporting on the top floor is kind of a good question, but there it is and it looks to be pretty well guarded. Right beneath that is Seagrave’s luxury flat.”

  “How do you move stuff in and out of a that top floor warehouse?” Morgan asked. “I’ll bet you money that top floor’s empty. It’s just an excuse to maintain security up there. Our boy’s too nervous to enjoy the penthouse suite.”

  “Perhaps, and he likes to be insulated too,” Felicity said. “The next three stories down hold his administrative offices, and that lowest level is also pretty heavily guarded.”

  Morgan nodded slowly. “Are we talking electric eyes and stuff?”

  “Not a lot of electronics, but that’s understandable. In these older buildings, rewiring is expensive. Instead, he’s got a pretty hefty staff of human guards. I’ve marked on the blueprint where they are. Or at least, where my information says they patrol.”

  Morgan rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “He’s not worried about getting robbed. That’s a setup for personal protection. Either the man’s made some nasty enemies before, or he’s a raving paranoid. You got all this background stuff out of just three phone calls?”

  “Most of it,” Felicity said, picking up a piece of biscotti and handing another to Morgan. “The rest is public knowledge, all down in the hall of records. Now look. According to the building plans filed with the city, the main elevator only stops at the lower forty-one floors, those below Seagrave’s block of offices. S
ee, a second elevator serves the top five floors, and you need a computerized pass card to make it work. The stairs are blocked off at the forty-first floor with a door that takes the same kind of card. Pretty good security, as far as it goes.”

  “Sounds pretty solid to me,” Morgan said, dunking his biscotti. “But you don’t sound like you think so. So where’s the flaw?”

  “The flaw, my boy, is that little housing right there on the roof. Fire stairs, lad. The stairs were blocked off at the forty-first level, in violation of all fire safety codes I might add, but they look to be clear above that. I don’t see any problem with just going in from the roof, going down the stairs and right into any of Seagrave’s levels.”

  Morgan smiled broadly, like a ball player anticipating a good game. “If this drawing is right, the building on the right’s only separated by a narrow alley, about five feet from his. And it’s the same number of stories, although this makes it look a few feet taller.”

  “Now you’re getting it,” Felicity said. “That one’s also got stairs to the roof. No guards posted there, I’m betting. See what that leaves us?”

  “Yeah, a very simple operation,” Morgan said. “You walk up next door, jump over, take the roof door to the stairs to get in, get your objective, and get out the same way.” He munched his biscotti, also almond flavored.

  “Yes,” Felicity said, leaning back and sipping her coffee. “And if you can be quiet about it, I’ll even let you come along.”

  That led them, by nine o’clock that evening, to the building next door to Seagrave’s. A uniformed security guard sat at an imposing desk just inside the main door. After Felicity parked, Morgan got out of the car and closed the door as quietly as he could. He was a little nervous about entering.

  “I don’t know, Red. If I saw people dressed like us coming, I wouldn’t let us in.”

  He wore all black: jeans, boots, and a windbreaker over a pullover. Thin black leather gloves completed the outfit. Felicity wore identical clothes, except for the modified carpenter’s tool belt around her waist. It was smaller than most, and, naturally, dyed black. Her hair was banded back with a wide, dark green ribbon. So it swayed back and forth across the back of her pullover. Unlike Morgan, she wore no windbreaker.

  “You know, I’m not just wearing this thing to cover my weapons,” Morgan said, staring up at a threatening sky while she opened the trunk of her car. He was watching a bank of clouds sliding in like a huge dark amoeba trying to envelop and eat the moon. “It’s going to get cool out here, and we might get a drop or two of rain.”

  “I might get a little chilly,” Felicity said, lifting a large canister out of the trunk, “but I find garments like that binding in my line of work.”

  Felicity pulled a metal spray canister, much like he would have called an Indian tank, out of the trunk and handed it to Morgan. After he helped her get the tank strapped on he pulled another onto his own back.

  Felicity led the way into the building and walked directly to the reception desk. Following his instructions, Morgan went straight to the elevators.

  Felicity leaned over the reception desk, offering the guard a plastic identification card. “Exterminators. Got a call…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the guard interrupted her, not even glancing at the I.D. “Sign in here, then go on up. Check in when you leave.”

  Seconds later Morgan and Felicity were riding upward. At the top floor they left the elevator and climbed stairs to the roof. Morgan had run the roofs of the projects when he was a kid, so he was at home with the air conditioner housings and the tarpaper beneath his feet. The street noises seemed a world away, like a radio broadcast from some distant planet whose language was indecipherable yet familiar. Leaving their empty insect poison canisters behind, they walked to the edge of the roof. The gap looked wider than it was, and the black chasm seemed endlessly deep. After giving each other a smile, they stepped back ten paces in unison. Morgan watched Felicity’s breathing and when her head snapped forward they both raced forward and jumped together across the five feet and down a few more to the adjoining roof. After a few seconds of seeming weightlessness, they landed side-by-side, tucked and rolled, and came up to their feet easily.

  “Perfect PLF, Red,” Morgan said as they started toward the roof door.

  “PLF?”

  “Parachute landing fall,” he answered. “What you just did is exactly what they teach in jump school.”

  His smile faded because he saw hers disappear. She was staring at the roof entrance. It was not a regular door, but twin sliding panels without a handle or knob.

  “The blueprints don’t show this,” she said slowly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The blueprints didn’t show this.” Her hands became fists, vibrating at her sides. “It’s a bleeding elevator door. They must have demolished the stairs. The private elevator isn’t next to the stairwell. They put it in place of the stairwell. It’s the only roof access, and the doors are computer locked, just like inside. Bloody hell!”

  Radiating frustration, Felicity stalked over to the street side edge of the roof. Morgan leaned against an air conditioning fan, staring around the roof of that old office building in midtown Manhattan. When it was built, he knew, they had called it a skyscraper. Now, newer, far more gargantuan towers dwarfed it. It still looked plenty tall to him.

  Felicity was bent over the edge of the roof, looking down. Against the black tar background she was lost to sight except for her hair, moving in the evening breeze.

  The silence was as thick as quicksand and Morgan knew that if he struggled against it he would merely sink deeper. Felicity was focused on the present problem to the exclusion of all else. Morgan imagined he could almost hear the wheels whirring and clicking inside her head. He had no fear that she might back away from the problem. Her determination appeared to be unshakable, and that was a trait he was coming to truly admire about her.

  After a short time, Felicity said, “I’m going down. I’ll let you in.”

  A moment passed before he realized exactly what she was saying. He leaped forward, but by the time he grabbed her arm, Felicity had one leg over the short parapet at the edge of the roof. Unhindered by his grip, she swung her other leg over. She seemed so fragile, suspended by her slender limbs into black space.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” Morgan asked.

  “It’s called a deadfall,” Felicity replied calmly. “I’ll drop down three stories, go in a window and come up the elevator.”

  Morgan’s mouth hung open for a second before he spoke again. “What are you talking about? Drop down. You’ve got no rappelling equipment, no grapnel hook, nothing.”

  “Look, this is something I can do.” Felicity’s reply was steel and ice. “No sweat. Now just back off and let me do my job.”

  He took two slow steps back, holding eye contact as long as he could. When her head was below his level of vision, his eyes never left her hands. He was watching an unfamiliar, fascinating mystique. He thought he already knew this woman, this stranger, pretty well. But now he was seeing her from a new angle. This was the lady in her own world, a narrow subculture most people only saw portrayed in the movies. He was involved, yet totally excluded.

  And he wondered if she had felt this way when he burst into her apartment not long ago to gun down two men waiting in ambush.

  Hanging over the edge, Felicity had withdrawn herself from the world, leaving a vacuum around her. Slowly she allowed the darkness to surround her. The gentle breeze caressed her lithe form. As she relaxed, she hung at arms length, suspended from the edge of the roof by only her eight fingertips. Bit by bit, she surrendered to gravity’s loving tug. The warmth of her breath reflected back from the sandstone into her face. Perspiration broke from her shirt, chilling her arms. Remote traffic noises brushed her ears, carried on the cooling evening breeze.

  When fear tried to intrude on her mind, she squeezed it into a tiny ball and forced it down into the pit of her stom
ach. In the following seconds she relaxed completely, starting with her toes and working her way upward. Last to relax were her fingers.

  She slipped through the atmosphere as a dolphin through the surf. Her lungs froze during her decent, neither filling nor pushing air out. A window flew by. A second. A third and her hands snapped out, grasping the windowsill. The greedy hand of gravity gave her one bone-jarring yank, stretching her spine.

  Then it was over. She hung for a moment, gasping for breath. She neither looked up nor down. Her view was stone, four inches away from her face. One tear crawled out of her left eye. She could smell her own sweat, hear her heartbeat, taste the acid fear fighting to crawl up out of her stomach.

  Now for the hard part, she thought.

  She gripped the wall with her fingers and toes and hung, nearly four hundred feet above the sidewalk, with her body thrust out from the wall like an arrogant spider on the face of a mountain. Her right hand released the windowsill and slid down to her belt. Without looking she selected a small jimmy.

  Whoever had set up security on this place had never expected anyone to reach these windows. They were the old style with basic turn locks and no alarms. She simply popped the lock with the jimmy, raised the window and hauled herself inside.

  She landed like a snowflake on an ice floe, becoming one with the darkness. As her eyes adjusted she saw she had invaded a conference room of some sort. Deserted. She moved to the door and listened. Silence.

  The hallway was just as empty, but not dark. Willing herself to stand tall, she walked over to the elevator and pressed the button. Apparently the coded card was only needed to enter at the top and bottom of the shaft. On the levels in between, the private elevator operated just like any other. The door slid open within two second and she stepped in.