by Tom Clancy
“Tactical,” he murmured to himself, slowing his pace and watching the corner house, now only thirty yards away. Kelly took in a mouthful of wine and let it dribble down on his shirt again. Snake to Chicago, objective in sight. Moving in now.
The sentry, if that’s what he was, betrayed himself. The streetlights revealed puffs of cigarette smoke coming out the door, telling Kelly exactly where the first target was. He switched the wine bottle to his left hand and flexed his right one, turning his wrist around to make sure his muscles were loose and ready. Approaching the wide steps, he slumped against them, coughing. Then he walked up towards the door, which he knew to be ajar, and fell against it. Kelly tumbled to the floor, finding himself at the feet of the man whom he’d seen accompany Billy. Along the way, the wine bottle broke, and Kelly ignored the man, whimpering over the broken glass and spreading stain of cheap California red.
“That’s tough luck, partner,” a voice said. It was surprisingly gentle. “You best move along now.”
Kelly just continued his whimpering, down on all fours, weaving on them. He coughed a little more, turning his head to see the sentry’s legs and shoes, confirming his identification.
“Come on, pop.” Strong hands reached down. Both hands, lifting him. Kelly allowed his own arms to dangle, one going behind as the man started to turn him towards the door. He staggered, turning yet more, and now the sentry was supporting him almost fully. Weeks of training and preparation and careful reconnaissance came together in a single instant.
Kelly’s left hand slapped against his face. The right drove the Ka-Bar through the ribs, and so alert were his senses that his fingertips could feel the heart, trying to beat, but only destroying itself on the razor-sharp, double-edged blade of the fighting knife. Kelly twisted the blade, leaving it in as the body shuddered. The dark eyes were wide and shocked, and the knees already buckling. Kelly let him down slowly, quietly, still holding the knife, but he had to allow himself a bit of satisfaction this time. He’d worked too hard for this moment to turn his emotions off completely.
“Remember Pam?” he whispered to the dying body in his hands, and for the question he received his satisfaction. There was recognition through the pain before the eyes rolled back.
Snake.
Kelly waited, counting to sixty before he withdrew the knife, which he wiped off on the victim’s shirt. It was a good knife, and it didn’t deserve to be stained with that kind of blood.
Kelly rested himself for a moment, breathing deeply. He’d gotten the right target, the subordinate. The principal objective was upstairs. Everything was going according to plan. He allowed himself exactly one minute to calm down and collect himself.
The stairs were creaky. Kelly attenuated that by keeping close to the wall, minimizing the displacement of the wooden treads, moving very slowly, eyes locked upwards because there was nothing below to concern him now. He had already replaced the knife in its scabbard. His .45/.22 was in his right hand now, suppressor screwed on, held low in his right hand as the left traced the cracked plaster wall.
Halfway up he started hearing sounds other than that of the blood coursing through his arteries. A slap, a whimper, a whine. Distant, animal sounds, followed by a cruel chuckle, barely audible even as he reached the landing and turned left towards their source. Breathing next, heavy, rapid and low.
Oh. . . shit! But he couldn’t stop now.
“Please . . . A despairing whisper that caused Kelly’s knuckles to turn white around the pistol grip. He moved along the upstairs corridor slowly, again rubbing up against the wall. There was light coming from the master bedroom, only the illumination from streetlights through dirty windows, but with his eyes adjusted to darkness, he could see shadows on one wall.
“What’s the matter, Dor?” a male voice asked as Kelly reached the doorframe. Very slowly he moved his head around the vertical barrier of painted wood.
There was a mattress in the room, and on the mattress a woman, kneeling, head down while a hand roughly squeezed her breast, then shook it. Kelly watched her mouth open in silent pain, remembering the photo that the detective had shown him. You did that to Pam, too, didn’t you. . . you little fuck! Liquid dripped from the girl’s face, and the face staring down at her was smiling when Kelly took a step into the room.
His voice was light, relaxed, almost comical. “This looks like fun. Can I play, too?”
Billy turned, looking at the shadow that had just spoken, and saw an extended arm with a big automatic. The face turned back to a pile of clothing and a carry bag of some sort. The rest of him was naked, and his left hand held a tool of some sort, but not a knife or a gun. Those tools were elsewhere, ten feet away, and his eyes could not bring them closer.
“Don’t even think it, Billy,” Kelly said in a conversational tone.
“Who the fuck—”
“On your face, spread-eagle, or I’ll shoot that little dick of yours right off.” Kelly altered his aim. It was amazing how much importance men placed on that organ, how easily a threat to it intimidated. Not even a serious threat, what with its size. The brain was much larger and easier to hit. “Down! Now!”
Billy did what he was told. Kelly pushed the girl back on the mattress and reached in his belt for the electrical wire. In a few seconds the hands were securely wrapped and knotted. The left hand still held a pair of pliers, which Kelly took and used to tighten the wire yet more, drawing a gasp from Billy.
Pliers?
Jesus.
The girl was staring at his face, eyes wide, breath heavy, but her movements were slow and her head was tilted. She was drugged to some extent. And she had seen his face, was looking at it now, memorizing it.
Why do you have to be here? This is out of the pattern. You’re a complication. I ought to. . . ought to . . .
If you do that, John, then what the fuck are you?
Oh, shit!
Kelly’s hands started shaking then. This was real danger. If he let her live, then someone would know who he was—a description, enough to start a proper manhunt, and that would—might—prevent him from accomplishing his goal. But the greater danger was to his soul. If he killed her, that was lost forever. Of that he was certain. Kelly closed his eyes and shook his head. Everything was supposed to have gone so smoothly.
Shit happens, Johnnie-boy.
“Get dressed,” he told her, tossing some stuff in her direction. “Do it now, be quiet, and stay there.”
“Who are you?” Billy asked, giving Kelly an outlet for his rage. The distributor felt something cold and round at the back of his head.
“You even breathe loud, and your brains go on this floor, got it?” The head nodded by way of an answer.
Now what the hell do I do? Kelly demanded of himself. He looked over at the girl, struggling to put panties on. The light caught her breasts and Kelly’s stomach revolted at the marks he saw there. “Hurry up,” he told her.
Damn damn damn. Kelly checked the wire on Billy’s wrists and decided to do another loop at the elbows, hurting him badly, straining the shoulders, but ensuring that he wouldn’t be doing any resisting. To make things worse, he lifted Billy by the arms to a standing position, which evoked a scream.
“Hurt a little, does it?” Kelly asked. Then he applied a gag and turned him to the door. “Walk.” To the girl: “You, too.”
Kelly conducted them down the steps. There was some broken glass, and Billy’s feet danced around it, sustaining cuts. What surprised Kelly was the girl’s reaction to the body at the bottom.
“Rick!” she gasped, then stooped down to touch the body.
It had a name, Kelly thought, lifting the girl. “Out the back.”
He stopped them at the kitchen, leaving them alone for an instant and looking out the back door. He could see his car, and there was no activity in his view. There was danger in what came next, but danger had again become his companion. Kelly led them out. The girl was looking at Billy, and he at her, motioning with his eyes. Kelly wa
s dumbfounded to see that she was reacting to his silent entreaties. He took her arm and moved her aside.
“Don’t worry about him, miss.” He pointed her to the car, maneuvering Billy by the upper arm.
A distant voice told him that if she tried to help Billy, then he would have an excuse to—
No, goddamn it!
Kelly unlocked the car, forcing Billy in, then the girl into the front seat, before moving fast to the left-side door. Before starting the car he leaned over the seat and wired up Billy’s ankles and knees.
“Who are you?” the girl asked as the car started moving.
“A friend,” Kelly said calmly. “I am not going to hurt you. If I wanted to do that, I could have left you with Rick, okay?”
Her reply was slow and uneven, but for all that, still amazing to Kelly. “Why did you have to kill him? He was nice to me.”
What the hell? Kelly thought, looking over at her. Her face was scraped, her hair a mess. He turned his eyes back to the street. A police cruiser went past on a reciprocal heading, and despite a brief moment of panic on Kelly’s part, it just kept going, disappearing as he turned north.
Think fast, boy.
Kelly could have done many things, but only one alternative was realistic. Realistic? he asked himself. Oh, sure.
One does not expect to hear doorbells at a quarter to three in the morning. Sandy first thought she had dreamed it. but her eyes had opened, and in the way of the mind, the sound played back to her as though she had actually awakened a second earlier. Even so. she must have dreamed it, the nurse told herself, shaking her head. She’d just started to close her eyes again when it repeated. Sandy rose, slipped on a robe, and went downstairs, too disoriented to be frightened. There was a shape on the porch. She turned on the lights as she opened the door.
“Turn that fucking light off!” A rasping voice that was nonetheless familiar. The command it carried caused her to flip the switch without so much as a thought.
“What are you doing here?” There was a girl at his side, looking thoroughly horrible.
“Call in sick. You’re not going to work today. You’re going to take care of her. Her name is Doris,” Kelly said, speaking in the low commanding tone of a surgeon in the middle of a complex procedure.
“Wait a minute!” Sandy stood erect and her mind started racing. Kelly was wearing a woman’s wig—well, too dirty for that. He was unshaven, had on awful clothes. but his eyes were burning with something. Rage was part of it. a fury at something, and the man’s strong hands were shaking at his side.
“Remember about Pam?” he asked urgently.
“Well, yes, but- ”
“This girl’s in the same spot. I can’t help her. Not now. I have to do something else.”
“What are you doing, John?” Sandy asked, a different sort of urgency in her voice. And then, somehow, it was very clear. The TV news reports she’d been watching over dinner on the black-and-white set in the kitchen, the look she’d seen in his eyes in the hospital; the look she saw now, so close to the other, but different, the desperate compassion and the trust it demanded of her.
“Somebody’s been beating the shit out of her, Sandy. She needs help.”
“John,” she whispered. “John . . . you’re putting your life in my hands . . . ”
Kelly actually laughed, after a fashion, a bleak snort that went beyond irony. “Yeah, well, you did okay the first time, didn’t you?” He pushed Doris in the door and walked away, off to a car, without looking back.
“I’m going to be sick,” the girl, Doris, said. Sandy hustled her to the first-floor bathroom and got her to the toilet in time. The young woman knelt there for a minute or two, emptying her belly into the white porcelain bowl. After another minute or so, she looked up. In the glare of incandescent lights off the white-tile walls, Sandra O’Toole saw the face of hell.
20
Depressurization
It was after four when Kelly pulled into the marina. He backed the Scout to the transom of his boat and got out to open the cargo hatch after checking the darkness for spectators, of which, thankfully, there were none.
“Hop,” he told Billy, and that he did. Kelly pushed him aboard, then directed him into the main salon. Once there, Kelly got some shackles, regular marine hardware, and fastened Billy’s wrists to a deck fitting. Ten minutes more and he had cast off, heading out to the Bay, and finally Kelly allowed himself to relax. With the boat on autopilot, he loosed the wires on Billy’s arms and legs.
Kelly was tired. Moving Billy from the back of the VW into the Scout had been harder than he’d expected, and at that he’d been lucky to miss the newspaper distributor, dumping his bundles on street corners for the paper boy to unwrap and deliver before six. He settled back into the control chair, drinking some coffee and stretching by way of reward to his body for its efforts.
Kelly had the lights turned way down so that he could navigate without being blinded by the internal glow of the salon. Off to port were a half-dozen cargo ships tied up at Dundalk Marine Terminal, but very little in his sight was moving. There was always something relaxing about the water at a time like this, the winds were calm, and the surface a gently undulating mirror that danced with lights on the shore. Red and green lights from buoys blinked on and off while telling ships to stay out of dangerous shallows. Springer passed by Fort Carroll, a low octagon of gray stone, built by First Lieutenant Robert E. Lee, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; it had held twelve-inch rifles as recently as sixty years before. The orange fires of the Bethlehem Steel Sparrow’s Point Works glowed to the north. Tugboats were starting to move out of their basins to help various ships out of their berths, or to help bring new ones alongside, and their diesels growled across the flat surface in a distant, friendly way. Somehow that noise only emphasized the pre-dawn peace. The quiet was overwhelmingly comforting, just as things should be in preparation for the start of a new day.
“Who the fuck are you?” Billy asked, relieved of his gag and unable to bear the silence. His arms were still behind him, but his legs were free. and he sat up on the deck of the salon.
Kelly sipped his coffee, allowing his tired arms to relax and ignoring the noise behind him.
“I said. who the fuck are you!” Billy called more loudly.
It was going to be a warm one. The sky was clear. There were plenty of stars visible, with not even a hint of gathering clouds. No “Red Sky at Morning” to cause Kelly concern, but the outside temperature had dipped only to seventy-seven, and that boded ill for the coming day. with the hot August sun to beat down on things.
“Look, asshole, I want to know who the fuck you are!”
Kelly shifted a little in the wide control chair, taking another sip of his coffee. His compass course was one-two-one, keeping to the southern edge of the shipping channel, as was his custom. A brightly lit tug was coming in, probably from Norfolk, towing a pair of barges, but it was too dark to see what sort of cargo they bore. Kelly checked the lights and saw that they were properly displayed. That would please the Coast Guard, which wasn’t always happy with the way the local tugs operated. Kelly wondered what sort of life it was, moving barges up and down the Bay. Had to be awfully dull doing the same thing, day in and day out, back and forth, north and south, at a steady six knots, seeing the same things all the time. It paid well, of course. A master and a mate, and an engineer, and a cook—they had to have a cook. Maybe a deckhand or two. Kelly wasn’t sure about that. All taking down union wages, which were pretty decent.
“Hey, okay. I don’t know what the problem is, but we can talk about it, okay?”
The maneuvering in close was probably pretty tricky, though. Especially in any kind of wind, the barges had to be unhandy things to bring alongside. But not today. Today it wouldn’t be windy. Just hotter than hell. Kelly started his turn south as he passed Bodkin Point, and he could see the red lights blinking on the towers of the Bay Bridge at Annapolis. The first glow of dawn was decorating the eastern horizon.
It was kind of sad, really. The last two hours before sunrise were the best time of the day, but something that few ever bothered to appreciate. Just one more case of people who never knew what was going on around them. Kelly thought he saw something, but the glass windshield interfered with visibility, and so he left the control station and went topside. There he lifted his marine 7 x 50s, and then the microphone of his radio.
“Motor Yacht Springer calling Coast Guard forty-one-boat, over.”
“This is Coast Guard, Springer. Portagee here. What are you doing up so early, Kelly? Over.”
“Carrying out my commerce on the sea, Oreza. What’s your excuse? Over.”
“Looking out for feather merchants like you to rescue, getting some training done, what do you think? Over.”
“Glad to hear that, Coast Guard. You push those lever-things towards the front of the boat—that’s the pointy part, usually—and she goes faster. And the pointy part goes the same way you turn the wheel—you know, left to go left, right to go right. Over.”
Kelly could hear the laughter over the FM circuit. “Roger, copy that, Springer, I will pass that along to my crew. Thank you, sir, for the advice. Over.”
The crew on the forty-one-foot boat was howling after a long eight hours of patrol, and doing very little. Oreza was letting a young seaman handle the wheel, leaning on the wheelhouse bulkhead and sipping his own coffee as he played with the radio mike.
“You know, Springer, I don’t take that sort of guff off many guys. Over.”
“A good sailor respects his betters, Coast Guard. Hey, is it true your boats have wheels on the bottom? Over.”
“Ooooooo,” observed a new apprentice.
“Ah, that’s a negative, Springer. We take the training wheels off after the Navy pukes leave the shipyard. We don’t like it when you ladies get seasick just from looking at them. Over!”
