Joe Kurtz Omnibus

by Dan Simmons

  The three detectives crossed the wide space in respectable SWAT search-and-clear form: Brubaker and Hansen holding their weapons cocked and ready, swinging the muzzles as they turned their heads; Tommy Myers, his shoulder touching Brubaker, walking backward with his weapon and goggles in constant motion, covering their backs.

  The loading platforms had been clear. The ramps had been clear. This waiting room and the rooms on either side—clear. That left the main rotunda and the tower.

  If Kurtz had not arrived four hours early—and Hansen would be amazed if the man showed that much discipline and foresight—then the plan was for the three detectives to take up a shooting position in a front room of the tower, preferably on one of the mezzanine levels surrounding the entry rotunda. If Kurtz approached across the parking lot on the north side, or from the driveway to the west, they could ambush him from the front windows. If he came in from the east or south, they would hear him approaching up the staircase now in front of them and have a free field of fire down into the rotunda.

  That was the plan.

  Right now, Hansen was busy using his goggles to sweep the small balcony on the south wall to the left of the main staircase. There was enough ambient light to show no one standing there, but the darkness between the rungs of the old railings was a jumble of green static. He checked the narrow staircase to the balcony—barricaded and Uttered. Still, it was probably worth clearing before going on to the rotunda, so—

  “Listen!” whispered Brubaker.

  A sound from the rotunda beyond the main staircase. A rattling. The scrape of shoes on marble or wood.

  Hansen held the AR-15 steady with his left hand and used his right hand to shake the collar of each man’s flak vest, enforcing silence and continued discipline. But he was thinking—Got you, Kurtz! Got you!

  Marco stayed flat against the floor of the small balcony, raising his head just high enough to peer through the thick marble slats of the railing. He couldn’t see who was down there—it was too fucking dark—but he could hear footsteps and once he heard urgent whispers. Whoever it was, they were moving through the blackness without flashlights. Maybe they were using those night-vision lenses or something, like the ones he’d seen in the movies.

  As the soft shuffling came closer and paused ten yards below his balcony, Marco pressed his face against the floor. No use exposing himself when he couldn’t see the fuckers anyway.

  Marco clearly heard a man hiss “Listen!” and then the shuffling became footsteps hurrying up the main staircase toward the rotunda and tower where Kurtz had gone. Marco was alone in the huge waiting room. He took a breath and got to his feet, straining to see in the blackness. Even after twenty minutes here, his eyes had not completely adapted to such darkness.

  He lifted the two-way radio, but paused before thumbing the transmit button. How many men had there been? Marco didn’t know. But just beeping Kurtz twice wouldn’t warn him that the opposition was moving around easily in the dark, using some high-tech shit or something. He could whisper into the radio, warn Kurtz.

  Fuck him. Marco had decided that his best bet after the scary cocksucker had wasted Leo was to stick with Ms. Farino, at least until the shit quit flying, but he didn’t owe anything to Kurtz. Still, if Kurtz got out of this alive, Marco didn’t want him pissed at him. But that didn’t warrant Marco risking even a whisper with hostiles in the building.

  Marco silently thumbed the transmit button twice, heard the clicks on his earphone and then turned off the radio, pulled the earphone free, and crammed it all into his pocket. Time to get the fuck out of here.

  When the long blade swept across Marco’s throat from behind, slicing his jugular and windpipe and almost severing his spinal cord, he didn’t even know what it was, it happened so fast and cut so deep. Then there was the sound sort of like a fountain, but Marco’s brain did not associate it with the geyser of his own blood flowing out onto the cold marble floor.

  Then his knees buckled and the big man fell, hitting his face on the stone railing but feeling nothing, seeing nothing. The midnight blackness of the train station filled his brain like black fog and that was that.

  Mickey Kee wiped his eight-inch blade on the dead man’s shirt, folded it back with his gloved hand, and glided back down the dark staircase as silently as he had ascended.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The dim green glow of the corridor above the main staircase brightened considerably as Hansen, Brubaker, and Myers stepped out under the rotunda ceiling. Ambient light from the windowed tower rooms above filled the junk-cluttered space with green-white static and ghostly, glowing shapes.

  Suddenly Joe Kurtz’s voice—completely identifiable as Kurtz’s voice—called from across the rotunda. “Hansen. Is that you? I can’t see you.”

  “There!” Brubaker said aloud.

  Directly across the rotunda floor, perhaps sixty-five feet away, against the west wall—a human form, standing, moving behind a bench, turning as if searching out the source of the shout Hansen could see the bright glow of a titanium briefcase in the man’s left hand.

  “Don’t fire!” Hansen called, but too late. Brubaker had opened up on full auto with his assault rifle. Myers swiveled and fired a second later.

  God’s will be done, thought Hansen. He thumbed the AR-15 to full auto and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flare blinded him through the night-vision goggles. Hansen closed his eyes to shake away the retinal afterimages and listened while the rotunda echoed from the rifle blasts and the last ricochets whined away.

  “We got him,” yelled Brubaker. The detective ran across the open rotunda floor toward the man slumped over the bench. Myers followed.

  Hansen went to one knee, waiting for the inevitable gunfire from one or more of the mezzanines above. Kurtz was too smart to be cut down like this. Wasn’t he? This had to be an ambush.

  No gunfire.

  Hansen used his goggles to check out the darkest shadows under the mezzanine overhang as he moved carefully around the rotunda, staying back against the wall, keeping his rifle trained on any bench or tumbled kiosk that might give a man cover for an ambush.

  Nothing.

  “He’s dead!” called Myers, the fat man’s voice echoing.

  “Yeah, but who the fuck is it?” said Brubaker. “I can’t see his face through these fucking things.”

  Hansen was fifteen feet from the two detectives and the corpse when Brubaker’s flashlight beam bloomed like a phosphorous bomb in his goggles.

  Hansen sought cover behind a fallen bench and waited for the gunfire from above.

  Nothing.

  He flipped up his own goggles and looked over to where Brubaker’s flashlight was swinging back and forth.

  The man in the dark jacket was dead—at least three shots to the chest and one in the throat. It wasn’t Kurtz. The man had been handcuffed to a wall pipe and still half hung from it, his upper torso draped across a bench. Hansen could see the face; the corpse’s eyes were wide and staring in terror. Tape covered the mouth and ran all the way around the head. James B. Hansen’s titanium briefcase had been taped to the man’s left hand with twist after twist of the same silver duct tape.

  Myers was tugging a billfold out of the corpse’s pocket. Hansen ducked low, expecting an explosion.

  “Donald Lee Rafferty,” read Myers. “Ten-sixteen Locus Lane, Lockport. He’s an organ donor.”

  Brubaker laughed.

  “Who the fuck is Donald Lee Rafferty?” whispered Myers. The two detectives were beginning to realize how exposed they were.

  Brubaker shut off the flashlight. Hansen could hear their goggles being swung down on the helmets’ visor hinges.

  In the green glow, Hansen duck-walked over to the trio, pulled the dead man’s left hand back over the bench, and pried the taped briefcase open. It was empty.

  What kind of stupid joke is this? Hansen remembered exactly who Donald Rafferty was, remembered the man’s adopted daughter lying in the hospital, re
membered the connection to Joe Kurtz and Kurtz’s dead partner from twelve years ago. But none of this added up. If Kurtz really wanted the blackmail money, why this idiocy? If Kurtz’s goal was to kill him, again why this complication? Even if Kurtz had his own night-vision goggles, there could have been no way he could distinguish one of the detectives from the other here in the rotunda. Kurtz should have fired when he had a clear field of fire.

  If he was still here.

  Hansen suddenly felt the deep cold of the place creep into him. It took him a few seconds to recognize the phenomenon—fear.

  Fear of the inexplicable. Fear of the absolutely unreasonable action. Fear that came from not understanding what in hell your opponent was up to or what he might do next.

  Quit trying to turn him into Moriarty, thought Hansen. He’s just an ex-con screw-up. He probably doesn’t know why he’s doing what he’s doing. Maybe it just amused him to have us kill Rafferty for him. He’ll probably call me tomorrow with another time and place for the handover of the money and photographs.

  Well, thought Hansen, fornicate that. No more games. Let Frears and Kurtz have the photographs. Let them do their worst. Time to leave. Time to leave the train station. Time to leave Buffalo. Time to leave all of this behind.

  Myers and Brubaker were crouched behind the bench with him.

  “Time to leave,” Hansen whispered to them.

  “We get to keep the money?” Myers whispered back, his breath hot and fetid on Hansen’s face. “Even though it wasn’t Kurtz?”

  “Yes, yes,” whispered Hansen. “Brubaker. Five yards to your left is the stairway to the front door. Wide stairs. Just twelve of them. The doors and windows down there are boarded over. Clear the staircase while we give you cover. Kick the boards off the door or window. Shoot an opening if you have to. We’re getting out of here.”

  Brubaker hesitated a second but then nodded and scuffed to his right and down the staircase.

  Hansen and Myers stayed behind the bench, muzzles swinging to cover the mezzanine levels across the rotunda, then the opposite main-staircase doorway. Nothing moved. No shots from the front staircase. Hansen heard Brubaker kicking the hell out of the boarded door and then the shout “Clear!”

  Hansen had Myers cover him while he shuffled to the staircase and then covered the fat man while he wheezed and panted past him and down the stairs.

  Outside, the night-vision goggles were almost too bright. It was still snowing hard, but the drifted expanse of the parking lot glowed like a green desert in bright sunlight. The three detectives abandoned all pretext of proper SWAT procedure and just loped away from the station, running flat-out across the parking lot. Each man ran hunched, obviously half-expecting a bullet between the shoulder blades. But as they reached a hundred feet from the tower, then two hundred, then a hundred yards and better, they began to relax slightly under their heavy flak vests. It would take a master marksman with a high-velocity rifle, night-scope, and much luck to get off a good shot at this distance, in this snow.

  No shot came.

  Panting and wheezing loudly now, they passed the low boulders blocking access to the lot and came down the slippery driveway. The goggles gave them a view of everything for sixty yards in each direction. Nothing moved. No other cars were visible. The only tire tracks in the driveway, mostly drifted over now, were those of the Cadillac Escalade, which had accumulated two inches of new snow in the forty-five minutes or so they had been in the station.

  “Wait,” panted Hansen. He used the remote to beep the Cadillac unlocked and they checked the lighted interior before approaching. Empty.

  “Myers,” said Hansen between gasps. “Keep your goggles and vest on and keep watch while Brubaker and I get out of this gear.”

  Myers grumbled but did as he was told as the other two detectives tossed their heavy vests, rifles, and helmets into the back of the SUV.

  “All right,” said Hansen, pulling the .38 from his coat pocket and standing guard while Myers divested himself of his tactical gear. There was enough light out here to allow Hansen to see the fat man’s grin when he was free of the heavy equipment. Despite the cold and snow, Myers wiped sweat from his face.

  “That was fucking weird,” said the heavyset detective.

  “How many times have I asked you not to use profanity?” Hansen said, and shot Myers in the forehead.

  Brubaker began groping in his jacket for his gun, but Hansen had plenty of time to fire twice—hitting the man first in the throat and then in the bridge of the nose.

  He dragged the bodies out of the way so he could back the Escalade down to the street and then went through their jackets, pulling out the two envelopes of cash.

  Breathing more easily now, Hansen looked back at the distant tower and train station. Nothing moved across the wide expanse of snow. If Mickey Kee had ever shown up, he was on his own in there now. Settling into the big SUV, Hansen felt a twinge of regret—he’d probably never know what game Joe Kurtz and John Wellington Frears had been playing. But he no longer cared. It was time to leave it all behind.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  Suddenly Kurtz knew that he was not alone on the mezzanine.

  It had been a long, cold wait for Hansen and his pals, first waiting at the broken window of the front mezzanine office. The parking lot had been dark, but Kurtz was sure he could see any moving figure against the snow, even though his view from the third-floor window was partially obscured by the large steel-and-plaster ornamental awning directly beneath his perch.

  When Marco had broken squelch twice on the radio, Kurtz had slipped the earpiece into his pocket and moved as quietly as he could—the floor was littered with broken plaster and glass—to the rotunda mezzanine outside the office. From there he didn’t have long to wait until Hansen and the other two detectives showed up and blasted Rafferty to bits.

  Kurtz never had a clear shot with his pistol. The rotunda got more light than most of the rest of the train station’s interior, but it was still too dark for Kurtz to see anything clearly, even with his eyes adapted to the dark. One of the men had turned a flashlight on briefly when they were inspecting their kill, but Kurtz had only a brief glimpse of SWAT-garbed men more than eighty feet across the circle of the rotunda. Too far for a shot from the .40-caliber SW99 semiauto in his hand or the .45 Compact Witness in his coat pocket Besides, even that brief glimpse of the men—he couldn’t tell them apart in their black helmets and SWAT vests—showed that their body armor would stop a pistol shot.

  Then the three had gone down the front stairway and battered their way out the front door and Kurtz had scuttled back to his place by the shattered window.

  The entrance canopy below blocked his view until the three running men were again out of range, then lost to the darkness and falling snow of the parking lot.

  Kurtz didn’t even try following their retreat He sat with his back against the wall and slowed his breathing.

  There was the slightest hint of noise from either the mezzanine outside the office or the rotunda below. The whispering-gallery effect worked both ways.

  Marco? He didn’t think the unarmed bodyguard would be stupid enough to come toward the sound of automatic weapons fire. Could Rafferty still be alive and stirring? No. Kurtz had seen the wounds in the few seconds of the flashlight’s inspection.

  Getting silently to his feet Kurtz raised the pistol and crossed the littered floor as quietly as he could. Glass still crunched underfoot.

  Pausing at the doorway, he stepped out onto the mezzanine, pistol ready.

  A shadow against the wall to his right moved with impossible speed. The .40 S&W went flying out across the railing and Kurtz felt his right wrist and hand go numb from the kick.

  He leaped back, pawing with his left hand for the .45 in his peacoat pocket but the shadow leaped and a two-footed Jack caught him in the chest, breaking ribs and throwing Kurtz backward into the office.

  Rolling, Kurtz got to his feet and lifted both arms i
n defense even as the shadow hurtled at him and three more fast kicks numbed his right forearm, smashed another rib, and kicked Kurtz’s feet out from under him. He landed hard and felt broken glass rip at his back even as the wind rushed out of him.

  Hansen? No. Who?

  Kurtz staggered to his knees and grabbed for the extra gun again but his peacoat had been torn open and twisted around by the fall and he couldn’t find the pocket. Maybe the gun had been knocked free but Kurtz couldn’t see it in the dim light through the broken window.

  His assailant came up behind him silently, grabbed Kurtz by the hair and pulled him to his feet.

  Instinctively, Kurtz threw his left hand up tight to his chin—the right hand was useless—and felt a long blade cutting his forearm to the bone rather than severing his neck. Kurtz gasped and kicked backward as hard as he could.

  The man danced away.

  Kurtz was reeling, barely able to stand, feeling the shattered rib where it had cut into his right lung. He was bleeding badly, right hand dangling useless, legs shaky. He had only a few seconds he could stay standing, maybe thirty seconds before he lost consciousness.

  His attacker moved to his left, a shadow in shadows.

  Kurtz backed toward the window. A tall shard of sharp glass stuck upward from the windowsill. If he could maneuver the man toward the…

  The man-shaped darkness leaped from the shadows. Kurtz abandoned the window-glass strategy, tugged his coat around with his bloody left hand, and reached for his pocket just as there came a blinding flash of light.

  The figure, who had kicked him in the chest again, was not distracted by the light. The man body-blocked Kurtz with a sharp shoulder, lifted him, and threw him backward through the window even as Kurtz’s left hand became entangled in his own coat pocket.