Hellbent--An Orphan X Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “Shit, brother, I was way out at the ranch prepping for Shot Show when you called. Just had time to wash pits and parts and haul ass out, but here I is.”

  He and Evan clasped hands in greeting, and then Tommy looked over at Joey, his biker mustache shifting as he assessed her.

  “This the one you told me about?”

  “It is.”

  Tommy gave an approving nod. “She looks lined out.”

  Joey said, “Thanks.”

  “For a sixteen-year-old broad, I mean.”

  Joey smiled flatly. “Thanks.”

  Tommy stroked his mustache, cocked his head at Evan. “Last we broke bread, I said if you needed me, give a holler. You hit a wall, and you figured what the fuck.”

  “I figured exactly that,” Evan said.

  “Well, I can’t scoot like I used to, but I can still loot and shoot. I know you well enough to know if you’re calling in air support, you’re up against it.”

  “Yes,” Evan said.

  “Well, with what you’re asking, I’m gonna need you to make more words come out your mouth hole.”

  “They’re trying to kill me. And they’re trying to kill her.”

  A long pause ensued as Tommy chewed on this. “You I understand,” he said finally, his mustache arranging itself into a smirk. “But still, I suppose it’d be unsat for me to sit back and let a good piece of gear like you hit a meat grinder. So. What services of mine are required?”

  Evan said, “Your research for DARPA…”

  Tommy’s eyes gleamed. “Before we get to puttin’ metal on meat, I’d best know what we’re looking at so I can see if it falls within my moral purview. So if you want me to put on the big boy pants and the Houdini hat, let’s go back to the shop, I’ll drink a hot cuppa shut-the-fuck-up, and you read me in on what’s read-in-able.”

  “Wait a minute,” Joey said. “DARPA?” She looked from Evan to Tommy. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “What’re we talking about?” Tommy smiled, showing off the gap in his front teeth. “We’re talking about some Harry Potter shit.”

  71

  Bring the Thunder

  A cup of yerba maté tea and a plate of fresh-sliced mango, both lovingly served, both untouched, sat before Evan on the low coffee table of the front room. Benito and Xavier Orellana occupied the lopsided couch opposite him.

  Benito said, “My son and I, we don’t know how to express our—”

  Evan said, “No need.”

  Xavier folded his hands. The forearm tattoo he had recently started, that elaborate M for Mara Salvatrucha, had taken a new direction. Rather than spelling out the gang’s name, it now said Madre. The last four letters looked brand-new, hours old. They were interwoven with vines and flowers.

  Xavier saw Evan looking and shifted self-consciously. “You said we can remake ourselves however we want. So I figured why not start here.”

  Benito’s eyes welled up, and Evan was worried the old man might start to cry. Evan didn’t have time for that.

  He looked over their shoulders and out the front window to the brim of the valley of the vast razed lot. Sounds of construction carried up the slope. At the edge of the lot, way down by the 10 Freeway, the fifth story of the emergent building thrust into view. It had been roughly framed out now, workers scrambling in the cross section of the visible top floors. Their union shifts would end in two hours, and then the lot would be deserted for the night.

  “How can we repay you for what you’ve done?” Benito asked.

  “There is one thing,” Evan said.

  “Whatever you ask,” Xavier said, “I’ll do.”

  Beside him his father tensed at the edge of the couch cushion.

  “Find someone who needs me,” Evan said. “Like you did. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Find someone who’s desperate, who’s got no way out, and give them my number: 1-855-2-NOWHERE.”

  Both men nodded.

  “You tell them about me. Tell them I’ll be there on the other end of the phone.”

  Benito said, “The Nowhere Man.”

  “That’s right.”

  As Evan rose, Xavier found his feet quickly. “Sir,” he said, the word sounding ridiculous and old-fashioned in his mouth, “why do you do this?”

  Evan looked at the floor. An image came to him, Joey standing in front of that house in the Phoenix heat, gun in hand, staring down a woman on a porch swing. And then handing the pistol back to him, unfired.

  The words were surprisingly hard to say, but he fought them out: “Because everyone deserves a second chance.”

  Xavier extended his hand, that Madre tattoo bleeding and raw and beautiful. “I’ll do it. I’ll find someone else.”

  Evan shook his hand.

  The front door banged in, Tommy shouldering through, gripping a Hardigg case in each hand.

  Xavier and Benito looked at the stranger with alarm.

  “Also,” Tommy said, “we’re gonna need to borrow your roof.”

  * * *

  At the base of the sloped lot, Evan and Joey stood between a tower crane and a hydraulic torque wrench, staring up at the five-story development. Beyond the tall concrete wall to their side, afternoon rush-hour traffic hummed by.

  The workers had retired for the night. The six-acre blind spot provided an unlikely patch of privacy in the heart of Los Angeles. Upslope, the lot ended at a street, but the houses beyond, including Benito Orellana’s, were not visible.

  The construction platform’s lift, an orange cage half the size of a shipping container, had been lowered for the work day’s end. Joey stepped forward, rocked it with her foot. It didn’t give. Then she leaned back and appraised the steel bones of the building-to-be.

  “Which route?” Evan asked.

  Joey squinted. Then she raised an arm, pointing. “There to there to there. See that I-beam? Third floor? Then across. Up that rise. There, there, and then up.”

  Evan visualized the path. “How do you know?”

  “Geometry.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Now you’re done. Let’s get you somewhere safe.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No,” he said. “You’re out. Me and Tommy will handle it from here.”

  “You and Tommy are gonna have your hands full. You need me. Any way you cut it, it’s a three-man plan.”

  He knew she was right. Evan could handle five freelancers, skilled as they were. But not three Orphans on top of that.

  He leaned against the blocky 1980 Lincoln Town Car they’d driven down the slope. Beside it the lowered claw of a backhoe nodded downward, a crane sipping from a lake.

  Joey looked up to the top of the building, the breeze lifting her hair, a wisp catching in the corner of her mouth. “You laid it out yourself. Van Sciver won’t deploy drones on U.S. soil. The president ordered him not to use choppers anymore. We can control some of the variables.”

  “This is different,” Evan said.

  “I’m not leaving you to this alone. And you only got a few more hours before those GPS chips break down in your stomach. You’d better eat something and throw a signal while you still can.” She reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out a Snickers bar, and wiggled it back and forth.

  He didn’t smile, but that didn’t seem to faze her.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “So quit wasting time.”

  “Joey. It’s too dangerous.”

  “You’re right. Anywhere I go, he’ll find me. You know that. You know it in your gut. I will never be safe until he’s dead. And you know you need me to make this plan work.”

  Evan studied her stubborn face. Then he came off the car and pointed at her, trying to keep the exasperation from his voice. “After this you’re out.”

  “I’m out. Some other life.” Her smile held equal parts trepidation and excitement. “Ponytails and white picket fences.”

  “The minute this operation goes live—”

  “I’ll just sail out of h
ere,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” She paused. “But you? I don’t see you getting out of this.”

  He listened to the wind whistle through the I-beams overhead. Jack, paraphrasing the German field marshal and the Scottish poet, used to say, Even the best-laid plan can’t survive the first fired bullet. Evan had taken his measurements, charted his course, laid his plans. He had escape routes planned and off-the-books emergency medical support on standby. Despite all that he knew Joey was right, that this man-made valley could well prove to be his grave.

  “Maybe not.” He placed a wire-thin saber radio in her hand; the bone phone would pick up her voice and allow her to listen directly through her jaw.

  She said, “We could still get into that ugly-ass Town Car and just drive away.”

  A wistful smile tugged at his lips. He shook his head.

  The breeze blew across her face, and she swept her hair back. “He’s gonna come with everything he has. And he’s gonna kill you like he has everyone else. You think Jack would want this?”

  “It’s not just about Jack anymore. It’s about everyone else who Van Sciver’s got in his sights.” His throat was dry. “It’s about you, Joey.”

  He’d said it louder than he’d intended and with anger, though where the anger came from, he wasn’t sure.

  Her eyes moistened. She looked away sharply.

  For a time there was only the breeze.

  Then she said, “Josephine.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My name. You wanted to know my full name.” Her eyes darted to his face and then away again. “There it is.”

  Beyond the concrete rise, vehicles whipped by on the freeway, oblivious people leading ordinary lives, some charmed, some not. On this side of the wall, there was only Evan and a sixteen-year-old girl, trying their best to say good-bye.

  Joey lifted the forgotten Snickers bar from her side and tossed it to him. She took a deep breath.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s bring the thunder.”

  72

  Thin the Herd

  The freelancers came in first, and they came by foot. The five men wound their way toward the valley in a tightening spiral, a snake coiling.

  Former Secret Service agents, they brought the tools of the trade designed to protect the most important human on earth. Electronic noses for hazardous chemicals and biologicals, bomb-detection devices, thermal-imaging handhelds. Though it wasn’t yet dusk, they had infrared goggles around their necks, ready for nightfall. After safing the surrounding blocks, they meticulously combed through every square foot of the valley, communicating with radio earpieces, ensuring that anything within view of the construction site below was clear.

  Each man wore a Raytheon Boomerang Warrior on his shoulder, an electronic sniper-detection system. Developed for Iraq, it could pinpoint the position of any enemy shooter within sight lines up to three thousand feet away.

  Two of the freelancers rolled out, hiking back up the slope, giving a final check, and disappearing from view.

  Ten minutes passed.

  And then two Chevy Tahoes with tinted windows, steel-plate-reinforced doors, and laminated bullet-resistant glass coasted down the slope. They parked at the base of the construction building in front of the porta-potties.

  Van Sciver got out, swollen with body armor, and stood behind the shield of the door. Candy and Thornhill strayed a bit farther, the freelancers holding a loose perimeter around them, facing outward. The operators now held FN SCAR 17S spec-ops rifles, scopes riding the hard-chromed bores. Menacing guns, they looked like they had an appetite of their own.

  Van Sciver cast his gaze around. “Well,” he said. “We’re here.”

  Thornhill scanned the rim of the valley. “Think he’ll show?”

  Van Sciver’s damaged right eye watered in the faint breeze. He wristed a tear off the edge of his lid. “He called the meet.”

  “Then where is he?” one of the freelancers asked.

  “The GPS signal from the microchips is long gone,” Thornhill said. “It’s up to our own selves.”

  The faint noise of a car engine rose above the muted hum of freeway traffic behind the concrete wall. The freelancers oriented to the street above.

  The noise of the motor grew louder.

  The men raised their weapons.

  A white Lincoln Town Car plowed over the brim of the valley, plummeting down the slope at them. Already the men were firing, riddling the windshield and hood with bullets.

  The Town Car bumped over the irregular terrain, slowing but still pulled by gravity. The men shot out the tires, aerated the engine block.

  The car slowed, slowed, glancing off a backhoe and nodding to a stop twenty yards away.

  Two of the freelancers raced forward, lasering rounds through the shattered maw of the windshield.

  The first checked the car’s interior cautiously over the top of his weapon. “Clear. No bodies.”

  The other wanded down the vehicle. “No explosives either. It’s a test.”

  Twenty yards back, still protected by their respective armor-plated doors, Van Sciver and Candy had already spun around to assess less predictable angles of attack that the diversion had been designed to open up.

  Van Sciver’s gaze snagged on the side of the under-construction building, the platform lift waiting by the top floor. “He’s there,” he said.

  “We would’ve picked up thermal, sir,” the freelancer said.

  Van Sciver pointed at the mounted platform’s lift control. Thornhill jogged over to the base of the building, keeping his eyes above, and clicked to lower the lift.

  Nothing happened.

  The bottom control mechanism had been sabotaged.

  All five freelancers raised their SCARs in concert, covering the building’s fifth floor.

  Van Sciver said, “Get me sat imagery.”

  Keeping his rifle pointed up, one of the freelancers shuffled over and passed a handheld to Van Sciver, who remained wedged behind the armored door of the Tahoe. Van Sciver zoomed in on the bird’s-eye footage of the building, waiting for the clarity to resolve.

  Stiff, canvaslike fabric was heaped a few feet from the open edge of the fifth floor.

  “He’s hiding beneath a Faraday-cage cloak,” Van Sciver said. “The metallized fabric blocked your thermal imaging. It’s not distinct enough to red-flag on the satellite footage unless you know to look for it.”

  “He’s holding high ground,” Candy observed. “And we’ve got no good vantage point.”

  Van Sciver stared at the concrete wall framing the 10 Freeway. Posting up on the fifth floor was a smart move on X’s part. The open top level was in full view of the freeway and the buildings across from it. They couldn’t come at him with force or numbers without inviting four hundred eyewitnesses every second to the party.

  “What’s he waiting for?” one of the freelancers asked through clenched teeth.

  “For me to step clear of the armored vehicle and give him an angle,” Van Sciver said. “But I’m not gonna do that.”

  With a gloved hand, the freelancer swiped sweat from his brow. “So what are we gonna do? We can’t get up there.”

  Van Sciver’s lopsided stare locked on Thornhill. An understanding passed between them. Thornhill’s smile lit up his face.

  Van Sciver said, “Fetch.”

  Thornhill snugged his radio earpiece firmly into place. Then he sprinted forward, leaping from a wheelbarrow onto the roof of a porta-potty. Then he hurtled through the air, clamping onto the exposed ledge of the second floor. The freelancers watched in awe as he scurried up the face of the building, frog-leaping from an exposed window frame to a four-by-four to a concrete ledge. He used a stubbed-out piece of rebar on the third floor as a gymnast high bar, rotating to fly onto a vertical I-beam holding up the fourth story.

  Mere feet from the edge of the fifth floor, he paused on his new perch, shoulder muscles bunched, legs bent, braced for a lunge. He turned to take in the others below, givin
g them a moment to drink in the glory of what he’d just done.

  Then he refocused. His body pulsed as he slide-jumped up the I-beam’s length. He gripped the cap plate with both hands and readied for the final leap that would bring him across the lip to the top of the building.

  But the cap plate moved with him.

  It jerked free of the I-beam and hammered back against his chest, striking the muscle with a thud.

  One of the high-strength carriage bolts designed to secure the cap plate to the I-beam’s flange sailed past his cheek.

  The other three bolts rattled in their boreholes, unsecured.

  He clasped the cap plate to his chest, a weightless instant.

  His eyes were level with the poured slab of the fifth floor, and he saw the puddle of the Faraday cloak there almost within reach.

  The cloak’s edge was lipped up, a face peering out from the makeshift burrow.

  Not X’s.

  But the girl’s.

  She raised a hand, wiggled the fingers in a little wave.

  “It’s the girl,” Thornhill said. His voice, hushed with disbelief, carried through his radio earpiece.

  He floated there an instant, clutching the cap plate.

  And then he fell with it.

  Five stories whipped by, a whirligig view of construction gear, Matchbox cars drifting through fourteen lanes of traffic beyond the concrete wall, his compatriots staring up with horrified expressions.

  He went through the roof of the porta-potty. As he vanished, one sturdy fiberglass wall sheared off his left leg at the hip, painting the dirt with arterial spray.

  A moment of stunned silence.

  Van Sciver tried to swallow, but his throat clutched up. One of his finest tools, a weaponized extension of himself as the director of the Orphan Program, had just been splattered all over an outdoor shitter.

  Candy moved first, diving into the Tahoe. Van Sciver’s muscle memory snapped him back into focus. Raising his FNX-45, he set his elbows in the fork of the armored door and aimed upslope. He said, “It’s another decoy.”