by John Ling
Finally – finally – she slipped into the master bedroom itself.
It was tidy and airy, sumptuously decorated in a baroque style.
Her eyes fell on the four-poster bed.
There was paper strewn all over it – pamphlets, booklets.
Frowning, Kendra approached and picked one up, and she blinked, her insides cramping up.
Goddamn...
Her written Farsi was basic, but she knew extremist literature when she saw it.
Jaw clenched, Kendra flicked through the others, and it was all the same. Extolling the virtues of the Supreme Leader. Encouraging global resistance. Calling for the destruction of the West.
22
Trembling, Kendra swept the house a second time.
She was no longer cautious, just moving at a clipped pace, slicing the corners with a vengeance, gripping her gun so tight that her knuckles were white.
And... she found nothing.
Ryan was gone.
Fuck.
She had the faintest sense that she had missed him. Just barely. And she felt like she was drowning in a maelstrom of confusion, caught up in the bubbling froth of a tidal rip that she couldn’t control.
It’s amazing how someone can shatter your heart, and you can still love them with all the little pieces that you have left.
Kendra stumbled back into the living room, and she found what she was looking for – a console on the wall.
She jabbed a finger at the touchpad, and it chimed, and with a collective hum, all the blinds and curtains in the house rolled back.
Sunshine surged through the windows, chasing away all the shadows.
Kendra tore off her night-vision goggles, and with spots dancing before her eyes, she sank to the floor, her chest heaving. She had never felt more drained, more lost.
This can’t be happening. This can’t be fucking happening.
She stared at the bodies lying in the corner and shook her head. She had always assumed that Ryan was one of the good guys. Moderate. Liberal. Westernised.
But was she just blindsided by what they had shared?
Was she swayed by psychic wounds?
Damn it.
And that’s when she felt her phone buzzing in her pocket.
Throat tight, she fumbled for it.
She saw that it was a text from an unknown number.
The message contained just a single digit.
Five.
23
Kendra knew exactly what the message meant.
It was a prearranged signal for a meet.
Jim Braddock had first suggested the idea when she returned home from Baghdad. And she had argued with him. She wanted to heal, to forget what she had done, but the grizzled old spook had insisted.
Little girl, you never know when hell’s going to break loose. Or freeze over. So always, always make sure you’ve got a backchannel contingency prepped and ready to go. Maybe you’re never going to use it. Maybe it’s just an extra spoonful of paranoia. But, listen, it’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
And with that, Jim made her memorise seven locations tied to seven numbers, so if they ever needed to meet under extraordinary circumstances, all they had to do was communicate a number.
Kendra sucked in a breath through her teeth and exhaled sharply.
She never thought that she’d have to use the contingency. But right now, Jim was her only lifeline; her glimmer of hope. And she needed to get a grip, pull herself together and travel to number five – the library at Saint Lukes Road.
Focus on the objective. Focus.
Kendra rose, feeling light-headed, her knees wobbly. Straightening, she put away her night-vision goggles and glanced at the bodies once more.
It would be all too easy to just leave them lying there like that, but it didn’t feel right.
So Kendra backtracked to the dining room. She grabbed the linen covering the grand banquet table and yanked hard, sending cutlery and doilies and candlesticks tumbling.
She bundled up the cloth and returned to the living room. She spread it over the bodies, blanketing them.
Kendra bowed her head. She felt like she should say something dignified, but all she could manage was a hoarse whisper. ‘I’m sorry.’
She departed the mansion by retracing her steps through the garage, through the compound, through the back gate. She disengaged the suppressor from her gun and stowed away her ballistic vest.
She re-entered the park and hit the walking track, trying her damnedest to keep her gait casual, normal.
It was still a beautiful day.
The trees were rustling.
Birds were singing.
Kendra stabbed her nails into her palms, internalising her pain.
She tried to reason with herself.
The Hosseinis couldn’t have done all of this on their own. Someone has to be supporting them. Instigating them.
The most immediate suspect was VAJA. It was Iran’s premier intelligence agency, responsible for conducting black-bag operations and wetwork all around the world.
And yet... Kendra couldn’t understand how the Hosseinis could have been recruited.
Leila and Saeed are secular. That’s why they were forced to leave Iran after the Islamic Revolution. And that’s why they came to New Zealand. To build a new life. A better life. And they’ve spent years trying to get past the trauma of dislocation and exile. And Ryan? Well, he was born and raised in New Zealand. So why the hell would they get mixed up with VAJA?
Kendra winced.
It didn’t make any sense.
None of it did.
And that’s when she looked left. She swept her gaze across the pond, and in that instant, she felt her stomach turn, because she realised that she was being followed.
24
The guy was on the walking track on the other side of the pond, moving parallel to her, but he wasn’t a jogger.
His posture was all wrong. It was too stiff, too attentive. A virtual giveaway.
But Kendra didn’t want to let him know that she had made him. So she kept her face impassive. She just turned away and continued walking at the same pace, as if she had been doing nothing more than admiring the ducks on the water.
Kendra coaxed herself to breathe.
Breathe.
She didn’t want to react impulsively.
With the pond separating them, it was clear that the operator wasn’t an immediate threat. There was a safety buffer of at least fifty metres. And if he did make a hard and fast move, she was confident that she would see it coming.
That was a small comfort.
Right now, though, Kendra was more concerned about the track directly behind her. It was her blind spot, and she couldn’t check it without coming across as being too obvious.
So what do I do?
Skin bristling, fingers flexing, Kendra spotted a bend coming up ahead. And a bicyclist – a civilian – was approaching from the opposite direction. And, yeah, she sensed an opportunity here.
Improvise. Adapt.
Kendra choreographed the moment in her mind.
She knew that she had to execute it perfectly.
As she reached the curve, she smoothly sidestepped to dodge the bicyclist, and the change in angle allowed her to use the edge of her eye to check on her six.
She clocked in another operator.
He was directly behind, maybe less than twenty paces away.
As soon as the bend straightened, he fell out of sight again, and Kendra felt an icy spot forming between her shoulder blades. There was no margin of safety here. He could easily strike at her, and she wouldn’t see it coming.
But she swallowed back her anxiety.
She resisted the urge to quicken her steps.
No, they’re not going to attack me. Not out in the open. Not with civilians around. If they’re going to do it, they’ll do it someplace quieter with more foliage.
Kendra rounded another bend in the wal
king track. This one was sharper, rising to an incline, allowing her more time to scan the shrubbery and treeline to her right, and she didn’t see anything that set off her radar.
So... she was only dealing with a tag team of two.
Manageable.
But did these guys belong to the same crew that tailed Ryan at the city centre? Did they have the same intentions?
It was tempting to draw a direct connection, but Kendra didn’t think so.
Unlike the other team, this one seemed uncomfortable with the rolling terrain. Their tradecraft was self-conscious, and they were boxing her up way too tight, as if they were more afraid of losing her than concealing themselves.
Kendra took that to mean that they were unfamiliar with Kiwi suburbia, and their training was proving to be a poor fit for local conditions.
They’re VAJA operators. Fresh off the plane. Recently deployed.
Kendra wondered what their game plan was. Were they acting as some sort of rearguard for Ryan? Covering for him? Or were they tasked with doing something more?
Kendra thought back to when she opened up the blinds and curtains at the mansion. It seemed harmless at the time. She had only wanted a respite from the darkness, but in hindsight, she may have only revealed herself to watching eyes.
Stupid. Stupid.
Kendra shook her head ever so slightly.
But there was no time to languish in regret now.
What mattered more was that she had no intention of leading these operators to her meeting with Jim Braddock.
That left her with only two options.
She could either ditch them or neutralise them.
25
Kendra decided to neutralise them.
She used her peripheral vision to scan the treeline on her right once more. There was a slope there that led up to a ridge, and so far as she could see, it was clear of civilians.
Perfect.
Kendra inhaled.
One, two, three.
She exhaled.
One, two, three.
She immediately diverted. She stepped off the walking track and on to the narrow path that led up the hill. She felt her leg muscles burn as she climbed, picking up the pace.
Kendra’s goal was to split the two operators up.
The one on her tail would no doubt respond by coming after her first. Predictable enough. And the second one would play catch-up. He’d have to circumnavigate the pond in order to reach her.
If Kendra timed this right, the delay would work in her favour.
She would use the first operator as bait to reel in the second.
Yes, she figured that she had a psychological advantage here. VAJA was made up of misogynistic men. They stubbornly believed that a woman’s place was in the home because she was capable of little else.
Kendra welcomed that bullshit philosophy.
She relished it because it offered an opening she could exploit.
In her heart of hearts, she knew that she was giving into emotion here, and the smart thing to do would be to disengage from any confrontation. Evade her pursuers and lose them amidst the terrain.
But right here, right now, she was sick of playing it safe, and this was her chance to seize the initiative. She wanted to exact revenge on behalf of the people who’d been murdered in the mansion. And, by God, she was going to make it happen.
When Kendra crested the top of the slope, she stepped off the path. She plunged into the cluster of trees. She chose the widest oak and took cover behind its trunk. Crouching, she unslung her backpack and set it on the grass.
It was a quiet alcove.
Bees were humming from flower to flower.
Shrubs were swaying in the wind.
Kendra waited. Her heart throbbed in her ears, and her body tensed, like a spring wound up to its tightest, ready to explode.
She heard the operator coming up the path.
His footfalls were heavy.
His breaths were laboured.
She peered around the tree. She saw that he had paused. Frustration was etched on his face, and with his hands on his hips, he pivoted this way and that way, and he eventually stepped off the path, trying to see where she had disappeared to.
Kendra clenched her jaw.
She dug her heels into the dirt, and she lunged forward.
The operator turned, his mouth agape, his arms starting to come up in a defensive posture.
Too late.
With her left arm, Kendra swept his defences aside, and with her right arm, she powered through. She caught him in the throat with the webbed skin between her thumb and forefinger. The blow was sharp and precise, and she felt the cartilage in his larynx shatter.
The man jerked forward as if he had just collided against a clothes line, gagging, wheezing, going bug-eyed.
Kendra grabbed him by the lapels of his shirt, cocked her hips to one side and threw him.
He fell into a bush, his arms and legs twitching and contorting inward, his stricken face already turning grey from a lack of oxygen. His mouth was opening and closing like a fish out of water.
Kendra averted her eyes and returned to her hiding place. She picked up her backpack and slung it across her shoulders. Drawing her pistol, she attached the suppressor.
Holding her gun at the low-ready, she waited.
The second operator soon appeared on the path, and the gurgling of his dying comrade lured him in. Stunned, he called out in Farsi and started reaching under his shirt for a weapon.
Kendra wasn’t about to let him get that far.
She raised her gun and acquired a sight picture, double-tapping.
The man’s head snapped back, and blood dotted the air, and his body went limp. He pitched forward into the bush, straddling his comrade, who convulsed one last time before falling quiet.
Blinking hard, Kendra put her weapon away. She decided against frisking the men. She had caused enough of a ruckus already, and a civilian would stumble upon the scene soon enough.
So she just turned away.
She started brisk-walking in the opposite direction.
26
With her breaths levelling out, she was struck by what she had done. She had improvised an ambush, executed it and snuffed out two lives right in the middle of suburbia.
Shit.
All those hours of therapy – all that psychological reconditioning – had done absolutely nothing to curb her instincts. Because when push came to shove, she had reverted back to her old persona.
The huntress.
Cold. Calculative. Remorseless.
Is that what I am? Is that all that I am?
Kendra performed a surveillance-detection run through the park, twisting, turning, just to be sure that she was no longer being shadowed.
But was she running away from the enemy?
Or was she running away from herself?
Ever since she got back from Baghdad, she’d been caught up in a mental haze, just drifting through life, the days blurring into each other. At one point, she even became a cutter – slicing into her skin with a razor in a desperate attempt to seek relief.
But now... now she felt alive. Yeah, more alive than she’d ever been. Endowed with the singularity of purpose – tracking Ryan down.
Kendra couldn’t explain it, but she was consumed by a reckless hunger. A need to reconcile the past and the present. Make things right. And, yes, she would kill anyone who stood in her way.
But at what cost?
Kendra felt the memories of Baghdad blossoming just then, like the stitches of a wound tearing open.
A car bomb detonating like thunder.
Kendra losing her nerve and firing blindly in a dust storm.
A child lying broken and bloodied.
A mother wailing, her eyes accusing Kendra.
The flashback left her mouth shrivelled and dry as dust, and she was suddenly afraid of who she was; of what she was capable of.
But – no – she didn’t want to think about th
at right now. She couldn’t afford the mindfuck. She had to focus on what was in front of her. Focus on the objective. She had to get to Jim Braddock.
So Kendra exited the park, and eyes darting, emotions raw, she hailed down a passing taxi. ‘Can you take me to Mount Albert?’
The taxi driver gave her the once over and nodded. ‘Sure thing.’
Kendra got into the back seat.
As they pulled away from Remuera, she checked the traffic behind them. And – hell – that’s when she realised that she was being followed again.
27
The maroon-coloured Hyundai was two vehicle-lengths back.
Kendra squinted, trying to make out the occupants, but the sun bouncing off the car’s windscreen made it too difficult to get a visual.
Frustrated, she tousled her hair.
Was she not aggressive enough with her counter-surveillance in the park?
Goddamn...
Kendra knew she had to deal with this.
She had to fix it.
She turned back to the taxi driver. She sucked in a breath, fidgeted in her seat and broke into a giggle. ‘You know what? I’ve changed my mind. Forget Mount Albert. Take me to Newmarket.’
The taxi driver peered at her through the rear-view mirror. ‘You sure?’
‘Yep.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘It’s the summer sale today.’
He sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘Righto. Newmarket it is.’
‘Cheers.’
The taxi driver twisted his steering wheel. He took a turn-off at the next intersection.
Kendra watched the car on her tail peel away from traffic in order to keep up. With the change in angle, the sun’s glare was no longer a problem. She could just about make out the silhouettes of three operators – the driver plus two passengers.
Kendra exhaled.
Bingo. I’ve got you exactly where I want you.
28
Newmarket was the swankiest part of the city. It was filled with upper-crust boutiques, designer cafés and wide boulevards. This was where the fashionable came to dine and shop.
