by Lee Child
She had figured out the reach issue. She was holding her knife in her fingertips way at the end of the handle. She lunged in. Her hair was flying. Her shoulders were hunched forward. She was looking for every half-inch of advantage she could get. She stopped on a stiff front leg and bent low and leaned in and slashed wildly at my stomach.
And hit it.
A bad cut. A wild swing, a strong arm, a razor-sharp blade. Very bad. It was a long diagonal slice below my navel and above the waistband of my boxers. No pain. Not yet. Just a brief strange signal from my skin, telling me it was no longer all connected together.
I paused a beat. Disbelief. Then I did what I always do when someone hurts me. I stepped in, not away. Her momentum had carried her knife beyond my hip. My blade was low. I slashed backhand at her thigh and cut her deep and then pushed off my back foot and hit her in the face with my fist. Bull’s-eye. A major, stunning blow. She spun away and I barged on towards Svetlana. Her face was a mask of blood. She swung her blade right. Then left. She opened up. I stepped in and slashed down on the inside of her right forearm. I cut her to the bone. Veins, tendons, ligaments. She howled. Not from pain. That would come later. Or not. She howled from fear, because she was done. Her arm was useless. I spun her around with a blow to the shoulder and stabbed her in the kidney. All four inches, with a savage sideways jerk. Safe to do. No ribs in that region. No chance of hitting bone and jamming the blade. Lots of blood flows through the kidneys. All kinds of arteries. Ask any dialysis patient. All of a person’s blood passes through the kidneys many times a day. Pints of it. Gallons of it. Now in Svetlana’s case it was going in and it wasn’t coming back out.
She went down to her knees. Lila was trying to clear her head. Her nose was broken. Her flawless face was ruined. She charged me. I feinted left and moved right. We danced around Svetlana’s kneeling form. A whole circle. I got back to where I had started and ducked away to the kitchenette. Stepped between the counters. Grabbed one of the hard chairs that Svetlana had piled there. I threw it left-handed at Lila. She ducked away and hunched and it smashed against her back.
I came out of the kitchen and stepped behind Svetlana and put a hand in her hair and hauled her head back. Leaned around and cut her throat. Ear to ear. Hard work, even with the Benchmade’s great blade. I had to pull and tug and saw. Muscle, fat, hard flesh, ligaments. The steel scraped across bone. Weird tubercular sounds came up at me out of her severed windpipe. Wheezing and gasping. There were fountains of blood as her arteries went. It pulsed and sprayed way out in front of her. It hit the far wall. It soaked my hand and made it slippery. I let go of her hair and she pitched forward. Her face hit the boards with a thump.
I stepped away, panting.
Lila faced me, panting.
The room felt burning hot and it smelled of coppery blood.
I said, ‘One down.’
She said, ‘One still up.’
I nodded. ‘Looks like the pupil was better than the teacher.’
She said, ‘Who says I was the pupil?’
Her thigh was bleeding badly. There was a neat slice in the black nylon of her pants and blood was running down her leg. Her shoe was already soaked. My boxers were soaked. They had turned from white to red. I looked down and saw blood welling out of me. A lot of it. It was bad. But my old scar had saved me. My shrapnel wound, from Beirut, long ago. The ridged white skin from the clumsy MASH stitches was tough and gnarled and it had slowed Lila’s blade and deflected it. Without it the tail of the cut would have been much longer and deeper. For years I had resented the hasty work by the emergency surgeons. Now I was grateful for it.
Lila’s busted nose started to bleed. The blood ran down to her mouth and she coughed and spat. Looked down at the floor. Saw Svetlana’s knife. It was mired in a spreading pool of blood. The blood was already thickening. It was soaking into the old boards. It was running into the cracks between them. Lila’s left arm moved. Then it stopped. To bend down and pick up Svetlana’s knife would make her vulnerable. Likewise for me. I was five feet from the P220. She was five feet from the magazine.
The pain started. My head spun and buzzed. My blood pressure was falling.
Lila said, ‘If you ask nicely I’ll let you walk away.’
‘I’m not asking.’
‘You can’t win.’
‘Dream on.’
‘I’m prepared to fight to the death.’
‘You don’t have a choice in the matter. That decision has already been taken.’
‘You could kill a woman?’
‘I just did.’
‘One like me?’
‘Especially one like you.’
She spat again and breathed hard through her mouth. She coughed. She looked down at her leg. She nodded and said, ‘OK.’ She looked up at me with her amazing eyes.
I stood still.
She said, ‘If you mean it, this is where you do it.’
I nodded. I meant it. So I did it. I was weak, but it was easy. Her leg was slowing her down. She was having trouble with her breathing. Her sinuses were smashed. Blood was pooling in the back of her throat. She was dazed and dizzy, from when I had hit her. I took the second chair from the kitchen and charged her with it. Now my reach was unbeatable. 1 backed her into the corner with it and hit her with it twice until she dropped her knife and fell. I sat down beside her and strangled her. Slowly, because I was fading fast. But I didn’t want to use the blade. I don’t like knives.
* * *
Afterwards I crawled back to the kitchen and rinsed the Benchmade under the tap. Then I used its dagger point to cut butterfly shapes out of the black duct tape. I pinched my wound together with my fingers and used the butterflies to hold it together. A dollar and a half. Any hardware store. Essential equipment. I struggled back into my clothes. I reloaded my pockets. I put my shoes back on.
Then I sat down on the floor. Just for a minute. But it turned out longer. A medical man would say I passed out. I prefer to think I just went to sleep.
EIGHTY-FOUR
I woke up in a hospital bed. I was wearing a paper gown. The clock in my head told me it was four in the afternoon. Ten hours. The taste in my mouth told me most of them had been chemically assisted. I had a clip on my finger. It had a wire. The wire must have been connected to a nurses’ station. The clip must have detected some kind of an altered heartbeat pattern, because about a minute after I woke up a whole bunch of people came in. A doctor, a nurse, then Jacob Mark, then Theresa Lee, then Springfield, then Sansom. The doctor was a woman and the nurse was a man.
The doctor fussed around for a minute, checking charts and staring at monitors. Then she picked up my wrist and checked my pulse, which seemed a little superfluous with all the high technology at her disposal. Then in answer to questions I hadn’t asked, she told me I was in Bellevue Hospital and that my condition was very satisfactory. Her ER people had cleaned the wound and sutured it and filled me full of antibiotics and tetanus injections and given me three units of blood. She told me to avoid heavy lifting for a month. Then she left. The nurse went with her.
I looked at Theresa Lee and asked, ‘What happened to me?’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘Of course I remember. But what’s the official version?’
‘You were found on the street in the east Village. Unexplained knife wound. Happens all the time. They ran a tox screen and found traces of barbiturate. They put you down as a dope deal gone bad.’
‘Did they tell the cops?’
‘I am the cops.’
‘How did I get to the east Village?’
‘You didn’t. We brought you straight here.’
‘We?’
‘Me and Mr Springfield.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘We triangulated the cell phone. Which led us to the general area. The exact address was Mr Springfield’s idea.’
Springfield said, ‘A certain mujahideen leader told us all about doubling back to abandoned hideouts twenty-five years ag
o.’
I asked, ‘Is there going to be any comeback?’
John Sansom said, ‘No.’
Simple as that.
I said, ‘Are you sure? There are nine corpses in that house.’
‘The DoD guys are there right now. They’ll issue a loud no comment. With a knowing smirk. Designed to make everyone give them the credit.’
‘Suppose the wind changes direction? That happens from time to time. As you know.’
‘As a crime scene, it’s a mess.’
‘I left blood there.’
‘There’s a lot of blood there. It’s an old building. If anyone runs tests they’ll come up with rat DNA, mostly.’
‘There’s blood on my clothes.
Theresa Lee said, ‘The hospital burned your clothes.’
‘Why?’
‘Biohazard.’
‘They were brand new.’
‘They were soaked with blood. No one takes a risk with blood any more.’
‘Right-hand fingerprints,’ I said. ‘Inside the window handles and on the trapdoor.’
‘Old building,’ Sansom said. ‘It will be torn down and redeveloped before the wind changes.’
‘Shell cases,’ I said.
Springfield said, ‘Standard DoD issue. I’m sure they’re delighted. They’ll probably leak one to the media.’
‘Are they still looking for me?’
‘They can’t. It would confuse the narrative.’
‘Turf wars,’ I said.
‘Which they just won, apparently.’
I nodded.
Sansom asked, ‘Where is the memory stick?’
I looked at Jacob Mark. ‘You OK?’
He said, ‘Not really.’
I said, ‘You’re going to have to hear some stuff.’
He said, ‘OK.’
* * *
I hauled myself into a sitting position. Didn’t hurt at all. I guessed I was full of painkiller. I pulled my knees up and tented the sheet and moved the hem of my paper gown and took a peek at the cut. Couldn’t see it. I was wrapped with bandages from my hips to my rib cage.
Sansom said, ‘You told us you could get us within fifteen feet.’
I shook my head. ‘Not any more. Time has moved on. We’re going to have to do it by dead reckoning.’
‘Great. You were bullshitting all along. You don’t know where it is.’
‘We know the general shape of it,’ I said. ‘They planned for the best part of three months and then executed during the final week. They coerced Susan by using Peter as leverage. She drove up from Annandale, got stuck in a four-hour traffic jam, say from nine in the evening until one in the morning, and then she arrived in Manhattan just before two in the morning. I assume we know exactly when she came out of the Holland Tunnel. So what we have to do is work backwards and figure out exactly where her car was jammed up at midnight.’
‘How does that help us?’
‘Because at midnight she threw the memory stick out her car window.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’
‘Because when she arrived she didn’t have a cell phone with her.’
Sansom glanced at Lee. Lee nodded. Said, ‘Keys and a wallet. That was all. Not in her car, either. The FBI inventoried the contents.’
Sansom said, ‘Not everyone uses a cell phone.’
‘True,’ I said. ‘And I’m that guy. The only guy in the world without a cell phone. Certainly a person like Susan would have had one.’
Jacob Mark said, ‘She had one.’
Sansom said, ‘So?’
‘The Hoths set a deadline. Almost certainly midnight. Susan didn’t show, the Hoths went to work. They made a threat, and they carried it out. And they proved it. They phoned through a cell phone picture. Maybe a live video clip. Peter on the slab, that long first cut. Susan’s life changed, effectively, on the stroke of midnight. She was helpless in a traffic jam. The phone in her hand was suddenly appalling and repugnant. She threw it out the window. Followed it with the memory stick, which was the symbol of all her troubles. They’re both still there, in the trash on the side of I-95. No other explanation.’
Nobody spoke.
I said, ‘The median, probably. Subconsciously Susan would have put herself in the overtaking lane, because she was in a hurry. We could have triangulated the cell phone, but I think it’s too late now. The battery will be dead.’
Silence in the room. A whole minute. Just the hum and beep of medical equipment.
Sansom said, ‘That’s insane. The Hoths must have known they were losing control of the stick as soon as they phoned the picture through. They were giving up their leverage. Susan could have driven straight to the police.’
‘Two answers,’ I said. ‘The Hoths were insane, in a way. They were fundamentalists. They could act the part in public, but underneath it was all black and white for them. No nuance. A threat was a threat. Midnight was midnight. But anyway, their risk was minimal. They had a guy tailing Susan all the way. He could have stopped her going off message.’
‘Who?’
‘The twentieth guy. I don’t think going to Washington was a mistake. It wasn’t a missed connection in Istanbul. It was a last-minute change of plan. They suddenly realized that for a thing like this they needed someone on the ground in D.C. Or across the river, more likely, in one of the Pentagon dormitories. So the twentieth guy went straight there. Then he followed Susan all the way up. Five or ten cars back, like you do. Which was fine, until the traffic jammed up. Five or ten cars back in a traffic jam is as bad as a mile. All boxed in, maybe a big SUV in front of you, blocking the view. He didn’t see what happened. But he stayed with her. He was on the train, wearing an NBA shirt. I thought he looked familiar, when I saw him again. But I couldn’t confirm it, because I shot him in the face a split second later. He got all messed up.’
More silence. Then Sansom asked, ‘So where was Susan at midnight?’
I said, ‘You figure it out. Time, distance, average speed. Get a map and a ruler and paper and pencil.’
Jacob Mark was from Jersey. He started talking about Troopers he knew. About how the Troopers could help. They patrolled I-95 night and day. They knew it like the backs of their hands. They had traffic cameras. Their recorded pictures could calibrate the paper calculations. The highway department would cooperate. Everyone got into a big conversation. They paid me no more attention. I lay back on my pillow and they all started edging out of the room. Last out was Springfield. He paused in the doorway and looked back and asked, ‘How do you feel about Lila Hoth?’
I said, ‘I feel fine.’
‘Really? I wouldn’t. You nearly got taken down by two girls. It was sloppy work. Things like that, you do them properly or not at all.’
‘I didn’t have much ammunition.
‘You had thirty rounds. You should have used single shots. Those triple taps were all about anger. You let emotion get in the way. I warned you about that.’
He looked at me for a long second with nothing in his face. Then he stepped out to the corridor and I never saw him again.
* * *
Theresa Lee came back two hours later. She had a shopping bag with her. She told me the hospital wanted its bed, so the NYPD was putting me in a hotel. She had bought clothes for me. She showed me. Shoes, socks, jeans, boxers, and a shirt, all sized the same as the items the ER staff had burned. The shoes and the socks and the jeans and the boxers were fine. The shirt was weird. It was made of soft, worn white cotton. It was almost furry, down at a microscopic level. It was long-sleeved and tight. It had three buttons at the neck. It was like an old-fashioned undershirt. I was going to look like my grandfather. Or like a gold miner in California, way back in 1849.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
She told me the others were working on the math problem. She told me they were arguing about the route Susan would have used from the Turnpike to the Holland Tunnel. Locals used shortcuts through surface streets that looked wrong according t
o the road signs.
I said, ‘Susan wasn’t a local.’
She agreed. She felt that Susan would have used the obvious signposted route.
Then she said, ‘They won’t find the picture, you know.’
I said, ‘You think?’
‘Oh, they’ll find the stick, for sure. But they’ll say it was unreadable, or run over and damaged or broken, or there was nothing sinister on it after all.’
I didn’t answer.
‘Count on it,’ she said. ‘I know politicians, and I know the government.’
Then she asked, ‘How do you feel about Lila Hoth?’
I said, ‘All in all I’m regretting the approach on the train. With Susan. I wish I had given her a couple more stops.’
‘I was wrong. She couldn’t possibly have gotten over it.’
‘The opposite,’ I said. ‘Was there a sock in her car?’
Lee thought back to the FBI inventory. Nodded.
‘Clean?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘So think about Susan setting out. She’s living a nightmare. But she’s not sure exactly how bad it is. She can’t bring herself to believe it’s as bad as she suspects. Maybe it’s all a sick joke or an empty threat. Or a bluff. But she’s not sure. She’s dressed in what she wore for work. Black pants, white blouse. She’s heading for an unknown situation in the big bad city. She’s a woman on her own, she lives in Virginia, she’s been around the military for years. So she takes her gun. It’s probably still wrapped in a sock, like she stores it in her drawer. She puts it in her bag. She leaves. She gets stuck in the jam. She calls ahead. Maybe the Hoths call her. They won’t listen. They’re fanatics and they’re foreign. They don’t understand. They think a traffic jam is a dog-ate-my-homework kind of thing.’
‘Then she gets the midnight message.’
‘And she changes. The point is, she has time to change. She’s stuck in traffic. She can’t take off. She can’t go to the cops. She can’t drive into a telephone pole at ninety miles an hour. She’s trapped. She has to sit there and think. No alternative. And she arrives at a decision. She’s going to avenge her son. She makes a plan. She takes the gun out of the sock. Stares at it. She sees an old black jacket dumped on the back seat. Maybe it was there since the winter. She wants dark clothing. She puts it on. Eventually the traffic moves. She drives on to New York.’
