by Barry Eisler
That was a relief. Too many cooks and all that.
“We’re here already,” Dox said. “My partner’s out having a look-see as we speak. But are you sure you’re not going to take any shit for this not turning out per your boss’s request?”
“Who can say what went wrong? Manus didn’t do the job. He never showed up where they told me to instruct you to wait, or at least you didn’t see him. Etc.”
“Fair enough. Just wish you could have told me more about this guy. But okay, with the rain and the early hour, the park’s pretty empty right now. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot him.”
“Keep me posted.”
There was a nervous edge to Kanezaki’s voice. Dox smiled. Nothing new there. “Don’t I always?” he said, and clicked off.
It was weird being back in Labee’s city. Even under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have appreciated it. She liked her space and didn’t like surprises. Other than the time he’d come here to help her with those Child’s Play conspirators, all their get-togethers had been on neutral ground. He badly wanted her to visit him in Bali, but she’d been noncommittal when he’d asked and he was afraid to push it.
He saw Larison approaching along one of the wet concrete walkways, wearing a rain parka that nicely concealed the Glock 17 he was carrying in a small-of-the-back holster, but that did considerably less to hide his weight lifter’s bulk. Deployed above him was an umbrella Kanezaki had provided—functional, but with a forty-inch lead-lined hickory stem.
Beyond its potential utility as a long and nasty nightstick, Dox had hoped the umbrella might help make Larison look like an innocent tourist determined to visit the iconic park no matter the weather. But he could see now the ruse was weak. It wasn’t exactly that mothers would pull their babies to their breasts and slam the shutters closed at his approach, but Larison was definitely one of those operators with an unmistakable air of fuck with me and die. If Dox ever had to tangle with him—and back in the day he almost had—he’d do all he could to ensure it was from a quarter mile out and an elevated position.
But what couldn’t be concealed could sometimes be used to distract. In fact, once upon a time, the KGB had deliberately shadowed CIA officers in Moscow with obvious surveillance. The officers would focus on what they could see, get clear of it, and then overlook the real surveillance that clung to them all the way to a dead drop or something else operational. So let Manus focus on Larison’s rattlesnake vibe. That would soak up all his attention, while Dox ghosted in from his flank.
He wished again that Kanezaki could have provided a little more intel on what Manus looked like. On the other hand, Dox had yet to meet the operator he couldn’t make. John might be an exception, true, but he was smaller than Dox and Larison, which was an advantage in these things. And unless this Manus had John’s level of grappling expertise, he must have been a sizeable specimen himself. Even if the story about how he had crushed Anders to death was bullshit, the man must have been large for a rumor like that to take hold.
Other than the patter of rain on wet concrete and the rush of the waterfalls below him, the park was quiet. He couldn’t even hear the traffic from I-5, over which the park was built.
He watched as Larison got closer. Nothing in the man’s demeanor had changed from twenty minutes before, when he’d set off to have a look around. Or nothing Dox could have easily articulated, anyway. But there was something—some extra level of alertness. A narrowing of focus. A purposefulness. Like a jungle cat’s stillness in the instant it catches the scent of prey.
Larison reached Dox’s position and paused to scan the area. In his low rasp of a voice he said, “He’s here.”
chapter
nine
LARISON
In response, Dox offered only a simple nod. Larison was glad. Rain, for all his impressiveness as a leader and a tactician, had a tendency to micromanage. Not that Larison, who had his own trust issues, could fairly object to the habit. But Dox was different. Once you’d earned the big sniper’s confidence, there was no second-guessing.
“What’s your take?” Dox said.
“A reloader, no doubt.”
Reloader was a term he’d picked up from Dox. It meant someone so formidable you’d empty the whole magazine into him, eject, reload, and empty the second magazine, too, just to be sure.
“Oh, hell,” Dox said. “Not another sumo? My insides are still healing from the time one of those boys rammed me damn near into low-Earth orbit. I’m telling you, these less-than-lethal parameters are the worst.”
Larison chuckled, still scanning the area. Dox had told him the sumo story many times. “Not sumo-sized. But big. And . . . solid. Rooted. You’ll see. He’s circling the park now. I’m guessing when he’s done with the perimeter check, he’ll head here for the view from the high ground. What about Diaz?”
“According to Kanezaki, she’s on her way. We were right about our Mr. Manus wanting to do it here. Too good a spot to pass up.”
“Listen,” Larison said, closing the umbrella. “I’m not about to get rammed, into low-Earth-orbit or anywhere else. If he doesn’t like the look of us, or the sound of whatever you’re planning to say to him, I’m using the Glock, not a damn umbrella.”
Dox frowned. “If we have to drop him, we’ll drop him. But my deal with Kanezaki was less-than-lethal methods in exchange for he won’t go pestering Livia. I mean to hold up my end, if at all possible.”
Not for the first time, Larison was impressed by the man’s loyalty. And, if he was being honest with himself, moved by it. In part because of the wonder of knowing it now extended to him. Before he could overthink it and change his mind, he said, “She’s lucky to have you.”
Dox smiled. “Maybe.” And then, as though reading Larison’s thoughts, added, “But then so are you.”
Larison didn’t disagree, but he wasn’t going to give Dox the satisfaction of saying so. “Well?” he said, extending his left hand toward Dox’s right. “You ready to get into character?”
Dox took hold of his hand and smiled. “My whole life.”
They walked off, hand in hand. It had actually been Dox’s idea. There were a lot of patterns an operator might run to spot opposition—sniper hides, elevated positions generally, flanking maneuvers . . . the list was long and varied. But whatever this guy Manus might be alert to, two men walking openly hand-in-hand probably wasn’t part of it.
And this was another thing Larison was still struggling with. Decades in the closet. His sexuality a lifelong torment he had worked so hard to conceal—from the military, even from his estranged wife. But Dox, and Rain . . . they knew. And just didn’t care. It mattered to them about as much as whether he was left-handed or right. If it meant so little to them, why was he still so . . . private about it? Nobody could hurt him with it anymore. And nobody who mattered wanted to. So why couldn’t he let it go? Something that was once a vulnerability no longer was. Why was that anything but a wonder, a relief?
They strolled along, seeing no one but an occasional jogger or vagabond. Dox kept up a medley of cover-for-action small talk—blather about Brutalist architecture and urban renewal and whatever else he’d learned about the park while researching it online. Larison had never known a sniper who liked to talk even half as much as Dox did. Most of them were as quiet as Larison himself. It had taken a while to get used to. The weird thing was, he’d actually come to enjoy it.
Now and then Dox would pause to extend a cellphone in front of them from a selfie stick as though snapping a picture. Another of Kanezaki’s toys—the phone was a dummy, while the stick was a twenty-six-inch extensible steel baton. Then they would link hands again and continue walking. Dox was carrying his own small-of-the-back pistol—the Wilson Combat Tactical Supergrade he favored—but there had been no need to discuss whose right hand would be free. From behind a scope in low light at a half mile out, there was no one better than Dox. But for pistol work, everyone recognized Larison was in his own league.
Though as Dox had sai
d, hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
They walked. Dox talked and Larison periodically grunted responses, heart pounding steadily the way it always did in the moments before action, eyes sweeping the terrain.
They went around a corner. And there, fifty feet away, was Manus, coming straight toward them.
chapter
ten
DOX
The instant Dox saw Manus, he knew. Larison had been right: a reloader for sure.
Even under the rain parka the man was wearing, Dox could see he was thick-boned and heavily muscled. And while Larison had the build of someone who pumped a lot of iron and took supplements on top of it, and while Dox himself had once played tackle on his high school football team, Manus . . . It was like one of his parents had been an oak tree and the other a bank vault. For a second, Dox pictured the sumos and wondered what would have happened if they’d charged this guy. Whatever the outcome, it would have been the proverbial irresistible force and immovable object.
But none of those thoughts made it to the surface. If there was one thing he’d learned from John, and he’d learned more than a few, it was not just to act as if, but to feel it. And his feeling was, he was just a tourist taking a walk in the park, not a care in the world, enjoying the outdoors despite the steady drizzle. And if his heart was beginning to beat hard, well, that was only because he was excited to be here side by side with Larison, his special friend.
Forty feet. Manus didn’t seem to be watching them particularly closely. But Dox could feel his attention. Could feel the way Larison’s danger vibe was pinging his radar.
They kept moving. Dox disgorged all the facts he had learned about the park. Larison responded with uh-huhs and reallys and you don’t says.
At thirty feet out, there was a ripple in Manus’s energy. It was nearly invisible, and maybe it even was invisible, but Dox knew what it meant. It was like a Doppler shift, the change in frequency you could sense when a man went from asking himself a question, to being an instant away from answering it.
And not answering in a good way.
The original plan had been for Dox and Larison to get close—but not too close—and then to politely introduce themselves. Hello there, Mr. Manus, you don’t know us, but we’re here to tell you the thing with Alondra Diaz is a setup and the people who hired you want you dead. What can we tell you, you just can’t trust management these days, it’s unfortunate but that’s the state of our modern world. Would you care to join us for a cup of delicious Seattle coffee so we can put our heads together and maybe find a way to watch each other’s backs?
But he could tell now that ship had sailed. He should have known the effect Larison’s presence would have on a potentially delicate situation. Should have realized that in telling himself Larison could provide a useful distraction, he’d been rationalizing. He hadn’t wanted to bother John. But for all his lethality, there was a stillness to John that had a way of reassuring people. And as he watched Manus looming closer and closer, he would have happily paid good money for a way to keep the man calm, and mentally kicked himself for not having one.
Well, he could do the after-action report later. Hopefully.
Fifteen feet. Manus was no longer pretending not to notice them. He was watching intently, his eyes leaving their faces, where he could read whatever was available in their expressions, and settling on their torsos, which would give him a peripheral-vision view of hands and therefore an early warning of a reach for weapons. Probably the only thing that had kept him from taking action already was the incongruity of Dox and Larison holding hands, and maybe of Dox’s banter.
But that would last only for another second, if that.
Manus’s hands were empty, which was good. And while he was wearing a backpack, that wouldn’t offer ready access to a weapon. But Dox could see the clip of a folding knife in the man’s front pocket. And who knew what he might have behind his back, or under his rain parka.
Ten feet. Dox could feel Larison beginning to tense up, seeing where this was going, determined to stay ahead of the action-reaction curve. Shit.
“Pardon me,” Dox called out, improvising. “I wonder if you could advise on the location of the world-famous Seattle Space Needle?”
Ordinarily, giving a person’s brain one additional thing to process could buy you a precious extra second. But it was like Manus didn’t even hear him. The man’s eyes never left their torsos. And even as the words were leaving Dox’s mouth, Manus’s left hand was coming forward, his body blading off, his right hand dropping to the clip of that folding knife in his front pocket—
Everything slowed down. The sound of the rain faded out. Dox felt Larison letting go of his hand and breaking right, saw the umbrella dropping to the ground. He didn’t have to look to know Larison was clearing leather. The miracle was that he hadn’t done so already.
Manus had taken hold of the folder. It was coming out of his pocket now. And coming. And coming. God almighty, what the hell kind of knife was this?
In his peripheral vision, Dox could see Larison bringing around the Glock.
Without thinking, Dox dropped the selfie stick—judging from the size of this guy, getting hit with it would probably have done no more than make him mad—and rushed in. “Don’t shoot him!” he yelled.
Manus had cleared the knife but hadn’t yet opened it. Still, the damn handle itself looked almost a foot long.
A crazy thought raced through his brain: Please God not another sword fight—
And then he slammed into Manus, coming in low under the free arm, hitting him in the gut with his right shoulder like a linebacker trying to blast through to the quarterback. The force of the impact knocked Manus back—not by much, but enough to buy Dox just enough space to wrap his hands around Manus’s hand and wrist and pin the knife to the man’s hip. They struggled for a second, and Dox realized with a tinge of panic that even with a two-on-one grip and bearing down hard, he was having trouble controlling the knife hand. Worse, if he had two hands occupied, it meant that Manus—
He sensed the elbow blurring in a second before it landed and managed to get a shoulder partly in the way. Still, the shot glanced off his head and he saw stars.
“We’re here to help you, goddamnit!” he shouted. “Listen to me!”
But Manus didn’t listen. He brought in his free hand, grabbed Dox’s right wrist, and began to pry it back. Good lord, the man’s grip was like the damn jaws of life. Dox couldn’t see Larison and was afraid he was angling off for a shot. “Don’t shoot him!” he yelled again. “Get in here and help me!”
Dox struggled desperately to hang on. Manus’s hand was slippery from the rain, and if he broke Dox’s grip, an instant later that knife or sword or whatever the hell it was would be in play.
“Listen to me!” Dox shouted again. “We’re not trying to hurt you!”
His arms started to shake with the effort of trying to control Manus’s knife hand. And just as he was sure he was going to lose it—
Larison crashed into Manus from the opposite side. He took hold of Manus’s free hand and dragged it back. Now each of them had a two-on-one grip. They circled clockwise for a moment, like dancers locked in a weird waltz, everyone taking little mincing steps so as not to slip on the wet pavement. Somehow they managed to shove Manus back against one of the concrete walls. They tried to pull his arms wide, but the man was so strong the most they could manage was a stalemate, everyone hanging on to whatever they had.
Well shit this is certainly going well—
And then Manus seemed to tap into some hidden reserve of strength. Gritting his teeth but not making a sound, he started to retract his left arm. Larison braced and pulled the other way, grimacing with the effort, eyes bulging in disbelief, but inch by inch Manus hauled him closer until he’d gotten him in front of Dox. And then he began to drag the knife hand back, using Larison’s body as a kind of brace.
“Goddamnit, can’t you tell we’re not trying to hurt you?” Dox shout
ed. “What are you, deaf?”
From just behind him, he heard Larison say, “Oh, hell.”
Dox thought, What?
And then Larison was gone, disengaged. Instantly Manus seized Dox by the throat with his freed left hand. He started to squeeze. Dox turtled in his chin to save his trachea from being crushed but still he couldn’t breathe—
“Dumbass . . . we’re . . . trying . . . to . . . help . . . you,” he rasped.
But Manus ignored him. Dox could feel his grip on the knife hand slipping—
And suddenly Manus stopped, as still as if he’d been turned to stone. Dox jerked his head back, coughed violently, and sucked in a huge, heaving thank-you-sweet-lord breath. He glanced right. There was Larison, five feet back, angled out, the Glock up in a two-handed grip and pointed directly at Manus’s face. The danger vibe was gone, replaced by pure ice. The angel of death himself, and Dox had never been gladder for his company.
“Can you read lips?” Larison said.
Manus looked at Larison. There was a long, frozen moment. Then he gave a single nod.
“Drop the knife,” Larison said. “You can have it back after we’ve talked. If we wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”
Manus eyed Larison. He wasn’t struggling with Dox anymore, but he wasn’t complying, either.
Dox stole a quick glance in Larison’s direction. “Tell him I said please.”
“What?” Larison said.
“Tell him.”
“No.”
“Damn it, tell him. I’m not letting go of his wrist until he drops the knife. And my hands are getting tired.”
There was a pause. Larison said, “My partner says he doesn’t want me to kill you.”
“That’s not what I said!”
Another pause. “He says please.”
But they were still stalemated.
“Tell him I’m not letting go of his wrist until he drops the knife. And of the two ways he might drop it, I’d prefer he chooses the one where he can pick it up again when we’re done talking.”
