Fire With Fire-eARC

by Charles E Gannon

  He slammed into, then bounced back from, the dashboard. The shattering of glass and squeals of twisted metal were loud in his ears. The car continued to move, but no longer forwards; it slung him sideways as it completed its 180-degree counter-clockwise spin with a crunch against the side of flatbed, its nose pointed uphill. The PVC pipes rattled hollowly, shifted slightly toward the roof of the car; angry, drifting spirits of agitated dust swirled around them.

  “You okay?” Caine dabbed a finger at his forehead; his knuckle came away shining dark red.

  Opal nodded, hand tucked down against her right side. “Jesus, you really are a bad driver.”

  “Sorry. Can I help—?”

  “No, I’m fine. And I wasn’t serious about your driving. Lighten up: this road is a death trap.”

  “Can you move?”

  “I said I was fine—but this door’s mashed in and pinched against the flatbed. I’ll have to get out the driver’s side.”

  Caine opened his door, assessed the damage as Opal clambered out: the car wasn’t going anywhere soon. Its sideways spin had, fortunately, brought it across the road and away from the precipitous ledge, but had also sent it straight into the protruding corner of the low-slung flatbed. The right front wheel had received the full brunt of the edge-on impact: the flatbed’s corner had crumpled the car’s front quarter panel and struts, sliced clean through the tire, and had half-bisected the wheel itself.

  “Well, at least we’ve got company coming.” Opal stepped around to the rear of the car. “Maybe they’ll give us a lift.” As the two off-road vehicles rose into view over a hump in the road six hundred meters downslope, she started waving her arms in a slow cycle: wide arms to crossed arms and back again.

  The reaction of the vehicles was peculiar; whereas most motorists confronted with an accident slow down, these sped up, the second vehicle moving out of line and taking up a flanking position in the other lane. Caine, who was moving toward the trunk, stopped: Something’s wrong—

  —and his world slammed into slow motion, the way it did when he felt, more than saw, a threat approaching. The vehicles were moving in concert; their actions were sure, swift, coordinated. And their passengers, although he could barely make out silhouettes, were all dark, broad-shouldered masses: not a rabble of variously-aged, -dressed, and -shaped tourists. Not tourists—

  “Get behind the flatbed—now.” He moved past Opal to the trunk.

  “What are you talki—?”

  “Just do it.” He popped the trunk, pulled up the liner.

  Opal frowned at him, mouth open to object, then heard the revving engines of the closing vehicles, looked over in their direction: her eyes widened. She turned and sprinted around the corner of the truck.

  Caine had found the small toolkit for changing flats, followed around after Opal—and found her crouched low, looking out under the long expanse of carrier bed by peering around the tires. She glanced up at him: he held out the toolkit, proffering the half-sized crowbar-wrench combination. She shook her head. “Would only slow me down.”

  Caine looked at the flatbed, the pipes, the shovel, the weathered straps, fraying where their fabric attached to the buckles. Yeah, that might work.

  Opal was still looking at him. “Now what?”

  The engines were coming markedly closer. Twenty-five seconds, maybe thirty—

  “Can you fight?”

  “Better than you can breathe.”

  Well, always time for a little bravado. He picked up the shovel, tested the heft. “I think I can take out the first car—at least long enough for us to close in and have a fighting chance.”

  “To do what?”

  “Take some down and get their guns.” He cocked the shovel back like a baseball bat, angled for an edge-on swing. “Tell me when they’re within one hundred meters.”

  “Uh—now!”

  He swung: the edge of the shovel bit into the fraying uphill strap, just below the buckle, sliced through about half of it. Shit—and he cocked the shovel back, swung again.

  The tattered fibers were already groaning—the PVC pipes pulling against them—when the shovel hit and sheared the rest of the strap. Pipes started cascading off the other, downhill side of the flatbed. Caine jammed the point of the shovel under the bottom-most pipe and levered upward, throwing his whole weight down upon the tool’s handle. The spatter of falling pipes became a hollow-sounding avalanche.

  Turning toward Opal, he shouted “Go—”

  —but she was no longer there. Having evidently scooted under the flatbed as the first pipes came down, she was now sprinting downhill in the immediate, dust-roiling wake of the storm crest of tumbling, sometimes high-bouncing plastic tubes. Caine picked up the small crowbar, ran back around the corner of the flatbed, heading for the first car.

  The first vehicle tried braking but the pipes were under its wheels, whanging off the windshield as it lost control and skittered into the drainage ditch. Caine stretched his legs and body toward it—and, through the dust, saw a smallish figure sprinting straight toward the side of the listing vehicle. The front passenger-side door started to open. Without breaking stride, the smallish figure launched into a long, sideways leap. Just as a head and shoulders started to emerge from the car, the silhouette crashed into the door like a pile driver, feet first. The door slammed back; a sickening crunch was audible over the tumult of tumbling pipes. The door rebounded from crushing the passenger, became a springboard which launched the silhouette back in the direction from which she had come. And gone: into the dust.

  But, now almost at the car and looking for any weapon that the crushed man might have dropped, Caine saw the rear passenger door opening. Still running, he flung the crowbar overhand, went into a long leaping dive—

  —saw the spinning, shining tool hit the door’s window, glass shattering inward—

  —and then he landed just in front of the vehicle. He immediately snap-rolled under it.

  There were sounds of blows, blocks, and grunts over on the driver’s side: Opal going after the wheelman, probably. And now, the rear passenger door resumed opening, crashing back on its hinges, unleashing curses and a pair of feet in cheap leather shoes.

  Five feet to the left side of those shoes—lying on the ground just beyond the rim of the right wheel well—was what Caine had been hoping to find: the pistol formerly carried by the man Opal had crushed in the door. Caine grabbed the weapon, realizing that, if he were seen doing so, he was now probably living the last few seconds of his life.

  But the man in the cheap shoes was exiting the rear passenger door more cautiously, had evidently not yet moved to a point where he could see around his own door to the ground near the front of the vehicle.

  Caine wasn’t sure of the make of the weapon—maybe an older Sig Sauer—but it was clearly chambered for caseless ammunition: there was no ejection port.

  The man’s feet moved swiftly forward alongside the vehicle, drew abreast of the wheel well, crept more cautiously as they neared the front bumper. One more step and he’d discover that the dim figure that had thrown the crowbar at him was no longer hidden there. An explosion—muffled by distance—made him pause a moment.

  Caine checked the safety: off. The weapon was cocked. Steadying it with two hands, he aimed the pistol at a point just beyond the front right tire.

  The man’s cheap shoes tensed, flexed—and then he jumped around the front fender of the vehicle, evidently in a crouch. This move put his feet and ankles in the pistol’s gunsights: Caine squeezed the trigger and kept squeezing.

  Other than the expected roar of the gun, the first split second was utterly surreal: there was a misty blast of blood from the ankle only three feet in front of Caine, flying specks of flesh and bone—and no other sound or movement. Then, as the pistol barked and jumped again, a stunned animal howl harmonized with it, and the ankle and foot buckled. More of the man appeared, falling into the gunsights. Caine kept firing, one part of him stunned by what he was doing, the othe
r part coolly wondering how many rounds were in the weapon.

  The bullets made a nasty, meat-ripping sound: the man struggled to rise—another bullet hit him. He flinched—another bullet—then quaked—another bullet—and collapsed into stillness. One last bullet.

  A thump to the left; Caine rolled to face in that direction, and found a sunglassed man—the driver?—staring straight at him, right cheek flush against the cracked macadam. However, he was also lying with the back of his jacket facing Caine—meaning that his head was apparently on backwards. His neck bulged hideously, twisted: Opal’s handiwork.

  Link up with her, gather weapons, look for radios. Then, suppress—or take out—the next carload of them.

  Caine rolled toward the man with the rear-facing head, squirmed out over him and a clutch of tangled PVC pipes. No sign of Opal. Damn. Maybe she’s already moved on to engage—

  Caine heard motion behind him, turned, saw his death in the black hole of a gun muzzle that was coming around the front of the vehicle, almost trained on him. He began bringing his own weapon around toward the new gunman, who had evidently exited the back of the car from the same side as the one with the cheap shoes. And Caine knew: I won’t make it; he’s going to get me.

  The unwinking black pupil of the pistol’s barrel was staring straight through Caine’s retina into his brain—when the gunman’s head snapped over suddenly. A slight puff of red vapor next to his uphill temple seemed to push his entire head in the downslope direction—and a lateral jet of blood erupted from that side. The pistol twisted up and away with his fall, firing into the air, responding to a death reflex in the trigger finger.

  Who saved me? Was it—?

  “Opal?”

  Footsteps—too heavy—came around the front of the vehicle: Downing, at a crouch, gun in hand.

  “Wha—?”

  “Are you hurt?”

  Footsteps, softer, behind: “He’d better not be.”

  Caine turned, smiled to see Opal’s smile—and noted the wide, worried eyes that quickly recovered—and cut into Downing. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “As if I know?” Downing helped Caine to his feet. “What I do know is that we have to leave here—now.”

  Caine shook him off, gun in both hands again. “There was a second vehicle—”

  Downing jerked his head back downslope. “They went over the side—courtesy of your landslide of tubing, from what I saw.”

  Opal snorted. “Yeah? And what the hell are you doing here anyway?”

  “Oh, well, I beg your pardon, Captain: I thought my timing and arrival were both rather serendipitous.”

  “Yeah—maybe a little too serendipitous?”

  “Are they? Have you stopped to think that you both left the stadium without one of these?” He yanked off a collarcom. “And that was my fault, damn it, because I was supposed to give one to each of you, just in case you got into any trouble and needed to call.”

  “So you followed us.”

  “Yes, of course: is that a crime? So I ran into the roadblock to the main overlook. Closer scrutiny, and a quick call to our local contacts, revealed that it was a sham. From that point, it became obvious where you must have been sent, and what was going to happen when you got here. I’m just sorry I didn’t arrive sooner.”

  “Yeah, well—we did all right on our own.” Hands on hips as she moved toward the front of the first vehicle, Opal blew sweaty bangs out of her eyes and stalked past Downing.

  Caine smiled at her as she passed. “‘We’ weren’t so great, but she was outstanding.”

  Opal looked back over her shoulder—face smudged, hair awry, primal, compelling—and then stared down at the much-shot body in front of the car and the tangle of tubing all around them. “Oh, I don’t know: seems like you held up your end.”

  Downing looked from her to Caine and back again. “Well, you are both very welcome: how gracious of you to thank me for my help.”

  Caine kept his voice low, controlled. “Downing, we’re only here because of your agenda and actions, so don’t expect any gratitude. Far as I can tell, you were just protecting valuable merchandise. Now, if you say we’ve got to get out of here—”

  Downing, stiff-lipped, nodded. “We do. Captain, you police up their weapons and keep watch.” He tossed her his pistol; she caught it—the grip in her palm, finger just outside the guard—with lazy ease. Downing moved around to the rear of the stricken vehicle. “Caine, help me get their bodies back in the car; then go to mine, and bring back the cigarette lighter as soon as it’s hot.”

  Caine had never moved a dead body. It was not only as heavy as several sacks of potatoes, but equally unwieldy; grab the torso, and the legs and arms splay and flop around, dragging you off balance. Cinch in the limbs, and you lose leverage on the torso. And always, the loose, bouncing head, the eyes staring, accusing…

  As Caine finished shoving a second corpse into the vehicle, Richard—who evinced a surprising facility for the same job—dropped to the ground, scuttled under its rear bumper. Caine trotted back to Downing’s car, opened the door, noting the thick curlicue of black smoke that marked the final resting place of the assassins’ second vehicle. He pushed in the lighter, waited for it to pop out, arrived with it just as Downing was scrabbling back out.

  Opal sneered. “Field repairs, Mr. Downing?”

  “Preparing to destroy evidence, Captain Patrone. Had to uncap the engine oil pan.”

  “Why not just cut the fuel lines and light ’er up?”

  “Captain, these are fuel-cell vehicles. So the best accelerant we have is the oil that lubricates the transmission and turbine. Now please step back. Caine, the lighter.”

  Caine turned it over to Downing, who leaned forward, tossed it into the thickest part of the oil slick that was spreading from underneath the vehicle in a downhill swath.

  As the fire caught and raced back up under the car, Opal frowned. “Shouldn’t we report this to—?”

  Caine, backing away, shook his head. “No, we can’t. Not without compromising, maybe scuttling, the Parthenon Dialogs. That’s why we’re setting the fire, removing the weapons.”

  Downing was at his car, holding the door for Opal. “That’s right: we have to make this look—at least for the first twenty-four hours of investigation—as though it might be a comparatively normal road accident. If the delegates learn that there was an attempt on the life of an expert witness the day before he testifies, it might scare them all off. These were supposed to be secret proceedings, after all.”

  “Then what about the evidence in the second car?” She paused, hand on the door frame, looking down at the flaming wreckage.

  “Hopefully, that fire is intense enough to incinerate the bodies and weapons.”

  “So why is that one burning so well?”

  Downing shrugged, closed her door. “Probably because they were carrying a few liters of petrol to burn your bodies and car once they had finished their job.”

  Caine held in a shudder, felt as though he might vomit. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  ODYSSEUS

  At the villa—a burnt-ochre mission-style home with a tiled roof and innumerable perimeter cameras—Downing held the door for Opal while two guards stood at either flank of the broad entry. Caine, awaiting the conclusion of the chivalric ritual, saw himself in the glass doors, his image cut into irregular pieces by the black wrought-iron framing. The tinted glass muted the colors of whatever it reflected, so the bloodstains on his shirt and pants and forehead were rendered as brown-mauve patches and spatterings. The three seconds he waited, staring at the stains and himself, seemed unusually long, as though minutes, even hours, were passing—

  “Christ, Caine—come in. Come on in.”

  Nolan’s voice, then his face, were coming out of the now-vacated doorway at him. Caine nodded, entered as bid.

  The interior, he noticed calmly, was quite beautiful: beyond the high-ceilinged entry hall
, dark wood raftering lent a stately antiquity to the wide, bright interior. He was also aware that Nolan was studying him with a frown, the jocularity of his first exhortation quite gone.

  But that convivial demeanor returned—with astonishing, almost disgusting rapidity—as the retired admiral turned quickly to Opal. He scooped a glass from a waiting tray, and stuck a drink in her hand. Caine noted, with a queasy irony, that it was a Bloody Mary.

  Caine heard Nolan’s voice grow loud behind him, as though the rising volume were trying to fill up an empty space, or trying to push everything else out: “Captain, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I just wish it was under happier circumstances. But you are intact and in a safe place, so let’s drink to that. You know, this whole thing was my fault, really. I shouldn’t have cleared Caine—and you—for unescorted travel. I am becoming an optimistic old man, I guess. Now you just enjoy your drink; I’ve got to hijack Caine for a few minutes. Some unfinished business. Excuse us?”

  Her mouth puckering, full of drink, she nodded them out, waving them on with her free hand.

  Nolan crinkled his avuncular eyes at her, waved for Caine to follow him.

  Which Caine did at a measured pace: if I was a betting man, I’d lay odds we’ll wind up in a windowless conference room.

  Nolan led Caine into the room he’d envisioned. Downing closed the door behind them. Caine remained on his feet.

  Nolan looked at him. “Caine, will you have a seat?”

  “No, not until I get some answers.”

  Nolan stared. “Very well: what do you want to know?”

  “What the hell happened out there? I thought you said—”

  Nolan held up a hand. “Caine, as I was telling Captain Patrone, that was my fault, all of it. I got lazy, overconfident, and jeopardized not only you, but also a crucial opportunity for international cooperation. There is no excuse for my laxity; I can only ask your forgiveness and forbearance.”

  Nolan, and the apology, seemed sincere—but still, it seemed to come too easy, was too facile. Of course, he’s probably been in this position a dozen times, so he’s had ample opportunities to rehearse this little scene of genuine self-abnegation. “I’ll assume that’s true—for now. But who the hell is trying to kill me? Do you have any better idea now than when you retrieved my lifepod in Junction?”