The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel

by Michael Yudov

  So we’d been lucky, at the expense of a woman officer’s life. That was something that I added to the growing list I was attributing to ‘Enrico’ or whomever it was that controlled him.

  Terry had given us the number he used to get in touch with Enrico, and there it was. Heidi Meir’s French buddy who lived across the street from her in France. That home number to Enrico’s number. We finally had a direct link, if our suppositions about the French secretary were true. In one way or another they would be. We were going that way now, maybe we’d find out en route.

  I had run the number through the Swiss PTT, coming up with an address near the Bahnhof. I think that by now there would be nothing left at the address but the garbage bins, and maybe not even them. It depends on who did the cleanup. If Enrico was there to supervise it, I wouldn’t find anything. If he had delegated from another location, then there was the chance that some poor sap who got into this to feed his family might have made a mistake. It’s like a turnover in football. When you get the pass interception, run with it until the crowd cheers so loud it hurts, and then you know you scored. While you’ve got the ball, the only thing on your mind is running. Faster than the other guy.

  We got ourselves arranged properly plan wise. Evie was to follow me with Ted and Therese. Ronnie would ride with me to Paris. The first thing we had to do was to go over their hideout with a fine-tooth comb. In about five minutes. Even if they’d dumped the joint, they would have a signal system, showing entry to the apartment. Maybe they’d come back to play then. So, five minutes tops, and we would be out of there. I fired up the DC-3 and backed out of my parking slot. As I shifted into first gear I saw Evie in my rear-view mirror, ready to roll. She winked at me, and smiled. At least someone was happy.

  It only took fifteen minutes to get to Marsenstrasse, near the Bahnhof, where the apartment was located. I pulled in at the curb a way down the street from their building. The Audi pulled in behind me, leaving a few feet between bumpers. We were all on-line now, with the exception of Therese and Ted Dawson. Ronnie was to get in the driver’s seat and be ready to pull out at a moment’s notice. The mission dictated it, not me. Evie was to stand an armed watch. When she’d used the public facilities at the Tourist Kiosk she had managed to change into a more suitable outfit for work. Jeans, tee-shirt, denim jacket, and sneakers. She probably had a rocket launcher stuck up one of the sleeves of her jacket. Evie was just the ‘Comms’ section of the group, but for a communications expert, she sure liked her bullets big.

  She got out of the Audi and sat on the front bumper of the car. She was well hidden there except from above. That, I’d have to take care of.

  I walked down the street towards their building, searching inside for any gut feelings about the place. No bells went off, and I entered the lobby, pushing on the apartment buzzer just in case. There was no answer, so I slipped my lock pick into the key slot and let myself through.

  The inside lobby was empty, but decorated quite nicely, as is usual for the Swiss. There was a sofa and chair in the waiting area, and lots of smoky mirrors all around, making the small space seem much larger than it was.

  I took the stairs, not the elevator. It was only three floors up, and I don’t always appreciate the elevator experience. For one thing, it closes you up in a small target area, making it that much easier to get to you. Before I hit the stairwell I pushed the button for the third floor and jumped back out as the doors started to close. Now all I had to do was beat the elevator to the third floor.

  I went up the stairs at a full run taking them two and three at a time. I made no sound except for my breathing, which was deep but not loud. When I reached the third floor landing I froze for maybe five seconds, listening. There were no sounds from the stairs above me. The next stop was the roof, but it sounded clear on the stairs.

  I put my ear on the door to hear if anything was going to happen when the elevator opened on this floor. There was a ‘Ding!’ sound that signaled the arrival of the elevator. A few seconds later I could hear the doors start to open. Almost immediately there was an extended coughing sound. The bullets hitting the back of the elevator gave away the source of that sound. A machine pistol with a silencer. Well, well, well. It seemed that there was at least one bad guy still in the building. He would be disappointed at my not being in the elevator after all, and the first place he would look would be exactly where I was. In the stairwell. What the hell, you only get one chance, right? Then it’s gone.

  I kicked the door open from a few stairs up, and came through in a high dive, taking me across the hall into the wall, where I bounced straight back as soon as I touched it, which put me back on the landing, with the door almost closing on my feet. The shooter didn’t have enough time to react, as he was in the process of verifying that I wasn’t in the elevator. By the time he’d turned around I was back in the stairwell. He hadn’t seen me long enough to identify me, even if he knew what I looked like. The difference now was that instead of coming through the door with some doubt, the shooter knew I was here. And that I was quick enough to enter and leave before he could draw a bead on me. Now he was forced to come through the door after me or why else bother staying behind if not as a deadly greeting from the man we hunted?

  There were only two apartments on the third floor, and it seemed likely that they used them both. The shooter had managed to turn his weapon on the hapless fire door to the stairs. None of them were making it through. Probably a 7.2 mm shell. The rate of fire was good, though. East European knock-off of the Czech model. Most likely. I was standing beside the cement wall of the stairwell, a good four feet away from the door area.

  Now he had to make a move. I had forced the showdown. He was wearing the full ‘suit’, so he’d obviously been told not to take chances. I carefully pulled the H&K out of my right holster and leveled it at the ground area just behind the door. My H&K had its silencer on as well. Downstairs, just before I’d hit the button for the third floor in the ‘now deceased’ elevator, I’d carefully selected a different magazine for the H&K. One I shouldn’t be using, not even with an RCMP/Interpol Police Badge. I like the odds out where I can see them clearly. On my side. Then I’d fitted the silencer. With the existing laser-targeting system, the only thing I wasn’t using was the Day/Night Scope. I wasn’t anticipating any long-range accuracy trials here.

  Slowly I backed up the stairs until I was at the landing where they turned again. A quick check showed that the roof door was locked from the inside, so I was alone. Lady Luck has her place in life, and I always say a prayer of thanks when I feel her near me. This was where I had gambled. Personally, I would have had a man at the door to the roof. If they had done that, the game might have ended here, who knows? Thank you Lady Luck.

  I sat down on the top step of the landing and waited. I counted to thirty before he made his move. Cautious is one thing, but this guy was scared. He had to be a rookie.

  He gave the door a kick as he ran by it, trying to get a look without a slug. He was looking where he expected me to be, so he couldn’t find me for a split-second. That’s an eternity sometimes. It was for him that day.

  As he passed he was only framed in the open part of the door for a fraction of that second. That was all I needed. The H&K coughed, and the result was nothing short of spectacular. The special explosive tip rounds that Evie had given me worked… let’s say—with much higher dynamics than I had anticipated. Surprising me was a difficult maneuver, but surprise me she had.

  The first one caught him in the face, just below his right cheekbone, and the second one caught the door as it closed. I had no idea what kind of explosive capability this round had until now. The first and second explosions blended into each other, making a double SNAP! sound, not too loud at all, considering the damage.

  Just before the door had closed I saw the shooter being lifted off his feet as his head was flung backwards by the force of the blast in his face, and then the door closed: for a moment of time so brief, it could have been
just one frame of a video data stream. Then it creakily swung inwards at the bottom, and outwards at the top. It was hanging by the one remaining mounting latch that was still attached to the frame. It also had a hole in it the size of a basketball, where the round had hit. I could clearly see that the target was down. Down and done.

  Suit or not, that shooter was out of the game. I was down the stairs and through the broken door in a flash. The shooter had been hit so hard by the exploding tip that there was a small trickle of blood leaking out from under the edges of his bullet-proof collar. Amazingly, the suit had held together, but the man inside it hadn’t.

  None of this had drawn anybody out to the shooter’s aid, or even just to see what was going on. I spoke out loud for the benefit of the team.

  “Everything is A-OK up here. I’m on the third floor, in the hallway. Reception party of one has been neutralized. Next stop, the inside of the only other apartment on this floor, not the one on the PTT registry.”

  “Take it easy up there, buddy. If you want more cover…”

  “Not now. Stay in place.”

  I walked across the rectangular hallway and leaned against the wall next to the door to apartment 3-B. I carefully reached into the inside of my jacket, trailing my hand along the leather of my holster until I felt what I was looking for. I never once took my eyes off of either door. With the silencer for the Colt in my left hand I cradled the H&K in the crook of my arm while I pulled out the Colt and screwed the silencer into place. Now I had two silenced guns, one with good old-fashioned hollow points, and one with cute little ‘nuclear wannabe’ rounds in it.

  I use a custom-made device to throttle back on the ‘fire & brimstone’ factor. It’s a combination silencer/flash suppressor. It was made for me by one of the best gunsmiths in America, Lars Laughlin. He had worked for Smith & Wesson when he was younger, then retired and opened his own shop when he was about forty-five.

  Something of a gun-trade insider story followed on the heels of his retirement, since he was one of the top five sought-after gunsmiths in the U.S. of A. at the time, and it was rumoured that he had told the top brass in person that he ‘rumour-quote’: Had no intention of putting his name to the design documentation of any more ‘Saturday Night Specials’ rumour-unquote.

  Apparently, they weren’t letting him have his way, and what he wanted to do with his designs was considered fairly radical. Smith & Wesson don’t take well to ‘radical’ as evidenced by the exit of Lars. As far as he was concerned, his way was the best way. Voila. Immovable object is met by Irresistible Force. As usual money won, and he got the highway. You know, as in ‘My Way or the Highway. Which was exactly what he had wanted.

  He did quality grade A-1-A work, and had clients in every State in the Union. It cost a fortune to have him even look at your set-up, but it was worth it. His client list was one in his head, not on paper. When you wanted to have work done, you made an appointment and he would decide on a case-by-case basis. There were exceptions of course, as with everything in life. I happened to be one of those ‘exceptions’, but as they say, ‘That’s a whole other story, man’.

  I lined up the sight on the lock, and it disappeared in a flurry of wood splinters as the Colt threw a hollow-point right into the key slot. There was a small sound like someone just fired a blow-gun nearby. Bless old Lars.

  The slug delivered all of its kick right on the lock face, taking it halfway across the room. The tumbling of the lock as it hit the hardwood floor made more noise than the shot itself. There was a six-inch hole where the lock had been. Once the lock had gone, the residual inertia that had been transferred to the door itself swung it slowly open.

  As it opened, I saw that I had been right: the wall that should have been separating the two apartments was missing. The third floor was all one space. In the main room of the second apartment, there were bunkbeds all along the walls. Windows were draped heavily and the drapes sealed into place very simply with a roll or few of packing tape. What it resembled most was the barracks house of a strike force.

  What that meant was that I should be able to find all of the other rooms attached to a regional field office. Comms room, mess hall, common and officers’ latrine, and the one room that I was interested in, the C.O.’s Office. That would be where Enrico worked. If there was anything at all left behind there, it would be relevant to him. Know your enemy, that was the rule. I forget which one, but it was high on the list. If Enrico had ever worked here, there would be a private office, to denote power and rank. All the while these things were going through my head I was moving, room by room, searching for the one I wanted.

  Up until now, the enemy had known more about us than we about them. That was changing. More information was coming in all the time. They skipped out ahead of us here, but maybe the next time they’d be slower, or we’d be faster. This team would complete the mission, and in the process, some people would die, some would lose their careers, some might even go to jail. The rules of the game were changing, and the enemy wouldn’t like that.

  It was much easier for them when nobody knew who they were, where they came from, how they pulled off these ‘Magic Heists’, how they disappeared, where the money went, all of these things. But I’d come along and thrown a spanner into the works. Now we knew some of these things, and we were closing in on the rest. All we needed was the information, then the other branches of the Government would take over. Supposedly.

  Meanwhile, I was still putting my head on the block here, and for who? Terry, the little snake-in-the-grass. He had been made a ‘de facto’ team member, and on the team, everybody counts. No exceptions, no fine print. Everybody.

  This game the spooks play is a dynamic thing: alive, adapting, mutating, metamorphosing, where the rules change constantly. We had passed the ‘point of no return’ the minute we’d deplaned in the night at Zurich airport. We were expected, and we were listed. The list was a death list. We had started out with Therese as a known list name. Then it became apparent that Ronnie was on the list as well. In the last two days and nights we had stirred up a hornet’s nest of bungled actions that had shocked these guys to their very core. For the first time since embarking on their full-fledged International Conspiracy, they were forced to take defensive actions. Which hadn’t worked yet. I was still on their tail. They were still in deep trouble. The water had become very deep while they were sleeping. Now they had awoken to find themselves in a sink or swim situation, and they were swimming for all they were worth.

  That meant that I, who was once just a name heard in passing, was now probably at the top of the list. It had been me that had started changing the rules on them. Aside from protecting the innocent, when I was On Mission, I had no rule book.

  We knew who one of the key players was. Heidi Meir, of Crassberg, and we knew of the existence of ‘Enrico’, but not much else. Sure, he was the one who killed J.D., I could feel that in my bones. He was a slippery character, and before this was over, I would look into his eyes one time, and one time would be all I would get. Fortunately, one time was all I wanted. We still didn’t have collaboration of the information that Terry had given us, but I knew that he wasn’t lying. Enrico reported to someone in Brazil, not to a woman banker. He was a hardened killer, with no conscience what-so-ever. He would take orders from someone who had a firm grip on him, no one else. That had to be the Brazil connection, and maybe it was in the government. It wouldn’t be the first time someone in a position of power had abused it for personal gain. There was no way in hell that Brazilian Government people were sanctioning these illegal actions. Not because they weren’t capable of it, any government would be, but because it wasn’t important enough to be involved in. There were no political points to score, the money involved was a lot for a company or a group of individuals, but a government wouldn’t even notice the numbers we were talking about, never mind mount an international conspiracy of crime to obtain it. Ted might be able to shed more light on that side of it, we’d see soon enough.<
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  For these guys to have been operating for more than half a year in a static bubble, one of two things must be true. They were operating under government auspices of their own, which would give them easier access to the kind of information they had and access to the country that government ruled. That would give them the ultimate escape route when required. Or, they were known to be operating out of Zurich, but the pay-off was so staggering that the knowledge of this never left Zurich. I thought about Mark again, and the so-called safehouse he sent me to. I still wasn’t positive about Mark. Time would tell.

  I had reached the last room in the dual-apartment complex, and I almost stumbled right into the trap like a freshman. Wanna see what’s around the corner there bud, sure, just stick your head out and look, right? Then you’re dead. Mirrors are for corners. A dental mirror will save your having to take fire directed at your head. That was common sense.

  I’d been using the ‘I’m faster than you’ approach as I went from room to room, searching for Enrico’s office. I’d jumped, and rolled, and listened my way through the whole place, and nothing. It was stripped to the floorboards.

  But I could feel it. Something. But what? Then I’d almost blown it, literally. As I’d come around the last corner, I’d put a touch of pressure on the sensor pad that activated the laser-targeting sights on the H&K.

  That had been unintentional, but sometimes that’s all it takes. Lady luck, or your Guardian Angel, either one of those will do in a pinch. My Guardian Angel was often with me. I believed, and my Angel was there. That’s how it worked for me. I was constantly overcome by the amount of work my Angel had done for me in the past when I thought about it all, which wasn’t very often. But She was with me now.

  I felt a chill go down my spine as I stood there, with one foot on the floor and one foot about to step down on the edge of the only carpet I’d seen so far. I froze.

  I’d been away too long, I was rusty, it could have happened to anyone. These are all the things you say to excuse failure, if you live. I don’t do failures. I do closures.