by Lewis Perdue
Her cell phone trilled as she turned on the ignition, flicked the wipers on high, and put the SUV in gear. She grabbed the phone and saw it was General Braxton.
"Sir."
"We have a change of plans," Braxton said without preamble. "Stone's beyond redemption. It would be best if you eliminated him and the lawyer immediately."
"Sir!" A long pause crackled softly in the earpiece.
"Sergeant?"
Jael felt her heart catch. The General rarely used her rank.
"This is a mission of vital importance. Until now, your rules of engagement required you to operate via stealth, through other people, and in a manner that minimized the danger to yourself or the chances of being detected."
"Sir," she acknowledged, knowing what was coming.
"Those rules have changed. Use whatever means are necessary to make sure Brad Stone and Jasmine Thompson do not live to enjoy another sunset. Regardless of the risk, regardless of costs."
"Sir."
"Thank you. Go with God." The General ended the connection.
Jael hit the "end" button on her phone. It wasn't the first time the General had given her a suicide mission she had lived to talk about.
CHAPTER 46
By the time Jasmine and I reached my hotel, the night had filled up with rain, thunder, and lightning. An opaque downpour splashed like milk beyond the headlights. The radio announced that tornadoes had hit near Black Bayou.
"Try next to the stairwell." I pointed. Lightning continued its wicked barrage, followed closely by deep, rolling thunder that stirred memories of night combat. Then came hail the size of cottonseeds, drumming a high-pitched fusillade on the roof as Jasmine backed the Mercedes into a parking space and turned out the headlights.
"Okay, keep the engine on and your eyes open," I said. "I'll be quick." You're sure you don't need help?"
"Positive."
Jasmine's face glowed beautiful and strong in the instrument panel's soft light. "If
the police show up, pull out nice and slow like you were just leaving anyway." "But—"
"No sense both of us getting nailed."
With Lashonna's Ruger in one hand, I started to open the door, then froze as a
white Ford Excursion drove into the lot, then continued on to the back corner and parked near the white fiber-optic contractor vans. Moments later the lights flickered off. We waited. Jasmine held her own Ruger in her lap.
* * * * * From an inside pocket of her big handbag, Jael St. Clair retrieved a thin, papersealed packet the size of a large commemorative postage stamp the General's company kept sending her since the head wound in Afghanistan. She peeled off the protective plastic-lined paper wrapper, pulled out a patch resembling a Band-Aid, removed the strips covering the adhesive, and pressed it on the bare skin below her left collarbone.
Then she pressed the electric release for the SUV's rear door and climbed across the backseat into a cargo area half-filled with luggage. Her heart rate steadied and slowed as the warm surge of confidence radiated from the patch, focused her thoughts, and sharpened her senses. Jael located the duffel she had requested with the car. Fumbling in the dark, her practiced hands soon found the familiar shape of a night-vision monocular. Jael smiled when she pulled it out, held it close to her face, and in the dim illumination from the parking lot lights recognized the Night Quest PVS-14. One of the best thirdgeneration devices, weather resistant and highly versatile.
She turned on the Night Quest, held it up to her right eye, and adjusted the gain to accommodate the lights from the parking lot and those illuminating the walkways.
Despite the downpour the scene around her took on an eerie green clarity, allowing her to see the lawyer sitting in her car talking with Stone.
She put down the Night Quest, located two long, hard-sided gun cases. The first contained an M21 7.62mm NATO sniper's rifle with a Raptor 4x night-vision optical sight nestled in the custom-fitting gray foam.
The second case housed another M21. Jael had specified the M25 and hated to compromise. But having to shoot with someone else's zero bothered her most.
"Play the hand." she said to herself, then pulled a Sionics suppressor from its case and attached it to the muzzle. St. Clair took a moment to check on the red Mercedes with the Night Quest monocular and saw Stone still talking with the lawyer.
She grabbed a twenty-round magazine from the duffel and a box of ammunition, noting the rounds were standard M118 Special Ball 173-grain, full-metal-jacket, boattailed slugs. She preferred hollow-points for maximum damage over these shorter distances, but she knew the M118 well and had thirty-seven kills with it. She filled the magazine, slid it in, and chambered a round. The overhead light of the Mercedes went on. Jael picked up the Night Quest monocular and followed Brad Stone as he disappeared up the stairwell.
"Showtime," Jael said softly as she leaned back and pushed the SUV's rear window open. It swung up, and the storm came in. She retreated to the area right behind the rear seat, where she was sheltered from the windblown rain, and could still get a clear shot at the door of Brad Stone's room. She placed her large, folding luggage bag on top of the duffel, pressed everything down into a stable platform for the M21, and finally arranged herself behind it. Not ideal, but she had less than fifty yards for this shot. A piece of cake considering that with an M21 and this ammunition she had never missed a kill at less than eleven hundred yards.
* * * * *
"If anything strange happens, call my cell. It's on vibrate. Make sure yours is too." I kept my eyes on the SUV.
"Already did," Jasmine said.
I looked over toward the white SUV. "Watch that one. Something about it bothers
me." I put the Ruger back in its holster and clipped it as best I could to the drawstring waist of my scrubs pants.
"Why?"
"It's way across the lot; they'll get wet heading for their room." I paused. "On the other hand maybe the fiber-optic people all have to park there."
I got out then and dived through the solid sheets of rain, sprinting up the steps two by two through the driving sleet and rain. When I got to my room, light was leaking around the curtain edges from the lamp I had left on so my alarm warning would be visible.
"Shit." The light would make me a perfectly silhouetted target going in.
Jael tracked Stone with the Night Quest monocular as he exited the stairwell. Next, she set down the monocular, picked up the M21, turned on the Raptor, and rested the rifle on the makeshift stand and trained the crosshairs in the middle of Stone's door right where she figured he'd stand when he put his key card in the slot.
Right on cue the big man appeared in her scope and stopped by the door. But instead of standing in front of the door to put in the key as she
expected, he stood to one side and extended his left hand with the card.
Smart, she thought. Avoid being silhouetted by the room lights. Not smart enough for me, she thought as she moved the crosshairs to the right. Then she took a regular breath and exhaled normally, stopping at her usual respiratory pause. She made sure the crosshairs were where she wanted them, then squeezed the trigger ever so gently to take up the free play in the trigger.
Jael St. Clair held her breath, and the trigger steady, focusing on the crosshairs and spotting the pockmark in the wood siding right where Brad Stone's heart would have been had it not been for the lightning. Never rush a round, she thought as she slowly released her breath and her trigger finger. An indicator light blinked on the motel room door lock.
She trained the crosshairs on Stone again and visualized the slug entering the left side of his rib cage. She was glad then for the full metal jacket because it would penetrate even if it hit a rib. The bone fragments would make more shrapnel.
Jael St. Clair inhaled, breathed out, and held it. She began to squeeze the trigger.
Then the night exploded like a bomb.
CHAPTER 47
Lightning lit up the night brighter than day. Reflexively, I dro
pped into a low crouch, transfixed by a broad arcing river system of electric blue tendrils reaching down. Thunder crackled, then a light stanchion in the newspaper parking lot about fifty yards to the east exploded, sending off flares like white phosphorous.
The rest of the parking lot lights went dark. The air-conditioning in my room faltered, then resumed. I lunged forward then, hoping anyone who might be watching was momentarily blinded and startled by the crash. I put my card in the door lock and got only a red light. I prayed the computer in the front office that controlled the lock had not been fried by the lightning surge.
Damn.
CHAPTER 48
The low rumble of a large truck cut through the maelstrom as I tried the card again without success. Down below, a large white truck with the cable contractor's name on the side came barreling in, pulling a trailer with a giant coil of fiber-optic cable. It lurched to a stop near the rest of the white vehicles.
Jael rubbed at her eyes, stunned by the flash of lightning. She took a breath, and set the M21 down.
Jael covered the M21 and crawled into the front seat, quickly running down her options as her vision cleared. From her expansive saddlebag purse, she pulled out the HK4 in its leather clip holster, chambered a round, then clipped the HK4 to her belt. She reached back into the bag and pulled out a loop of high-C piano wire with two lengths of broom handle on each end and a small collar where the wire crossed to make its loop. It was her own invention. She tucked it into her back pocket.
Male voices from the truck filtered through the open tailgate window; one of them had spotted it and was coming over to be a Good Samaritan. Jael turned the ignition key to its accessory position, rolled down the front passenger-side window. Then, to avoid opening the door and activating the interior lights, she slid out the window and into the storm.
* * * * * I tried the room access card again and again with no luck. Then lightning and thunder came simultaneously, and this time when the flash faded, there was no light from my room and the air-conditioning had stopped altogether. Time pressed tight around me, so I abandoned stealth and battered the door open with my shoulder, setting off the laptop's alarms. I fumbled the locking cables off the computes, snatched the laptop's power supply out of the wall, jammed it in my duffel, and zipped it up. Then, with all the alarms shrieking, I shoved the laptop into its case and sprinted from the room. It had taken just seconds.
Jael crouched in the deep shadows by her SUV's rear wheel and saw the Good Samaritan running toward her, shoulders hunched against the rain.
"Hell if I know," the Good Samaritan called out to the driver. "Call him on his cell. He was supposed to tell us where he wanted the rig."
As the Good Samaritan pushed the tailgate window shut, Jael slipped through the cloak of darkness and rain. She slipped the piano-wire loop over his head and jerked it closed around his neck. The garrote's little ratcheting collar prevented the loop from opening.
Jael stepped back quickly to avoid the man's thrashing and flailing. Seconds later, the lack of blood to the man's brain carried him off into unconsciousness. His head made a ripe-cantaloupe sound as it thudded off the SUV's rear bumper.
In the next instant, she heard a car door slam and the revving of a car engine. Pulling the HK4 from the holster, Jael thumbed off the safety and raced toward the noise. The Mercedes pulled out of the parking space. Joel stopped, crouched into her two-handed shooting stance, and sighted in on the Mercedes as a shout sounded behind her.
"Hey! What's holding you up?"
Jael turned as the truck driver got out. She shot him twice in the head. When she turned around, the Mercedes had reached Highway 82 and turned left into a slow line of westbound traffic. Jael St. Clair sprinted toward Highway 82 with Braxton's orders to get Stone and the lawyer ringing in her ears.
CHAPTER 49
A raw, rasping pain burned her lungs and made Jael St. Clair regret her cigarette addiction. Her legs grew heavy, but she ran on through the pain, closing in on the Mercedes, tangled in a stop-and-go mess. Jael knew she'd have to make a point-blank shot. Her ragged breathing would spoil her aim for anything more.
The windshield wipers struggled against the downpour as Jasmine inched us forward in a long slow snake of cars, pickups, semis, flatbeds, SUVs, and minivans—all clogged by stoplights the storm had blinded.
"You know," I said, "the smartest thing for you to do is to drop me off somewhere and get as far away from the manhunt as possible." I looked over at Jasmine and tried unsuccessfully not to admire the remarkable features of her face, calm with beauty and determination. "I'm the one they're after. If you get out now, you can go back to some semblance of normalcy."
"That's the dumbest thing I have heard in the past ten years," she said. "Mom's dead; Lashonna may or may not be. This has everything to do with Talmadge, and you know as well as I do if I keep pushing his case, they'll come after me. Get a grip."
Jael's lungs burned raw like a cattle brand as she drew abreast of the red Mercedes, now two lanes over to her right. She saw the lawyer behind the wheel, head turned away. An easy shot, but she needed to get Stone, the most dangerous target, first. Traffic surged and stopped, surged and stopped. She needed to time her final move perfectly
"Then drop the Talmadge thing," I suggested.
"Okay, that's the dumbest thing I've heard in twenty years." She laughed, then laid a gaze on me that made me realize I'd rather walk a rotten log over hell than disappoint her.
Now! Jael told herself. She waited for the vehicle closest to her to come to a stop. She lunged in front of the car; the driver leaned an angry hand on the horn.
Fuck you pal, she thought, focusing on the Mercedes now just one vehicle away. She thumbed off the HK4's safety.
Jasmine concentrated on the side-view mirror on my side of the Mercedes, watching the stream of vehicles heading west along the shoulder. Her lips mouthed something I couldn't hear over the rain thrumming on the roof and the horns of cars on the other side. Suddenly she hit the accelerator and launched us into a space just inches longer than the big old Mercedes.
An incandescent rage rocked Jael as the Mercedes rocketed into the darkness. The impulse to kill shook her. Kill. Anybody. Everybody. A living, molten surge rose in her belly, demanding release. Now.
An impatient horn sounded behind her. She whirled toward the sound and raised the HK-4. The rain broke the night into a streaky impressionistic canvas and stained it with the white, yellow, and red kinetic hues of headlights, running lights, and turn signals. But through it she could make out the vague outlines of the driver's face as his mask of anger and frustration switched to mortal fear. He froze. Jael held her pistol steady, her finger taking slack out of the trigger.
The anger was all wrong, she thought, as she struggled for control. This man was not the mission. But the urge swelled in her belly. Oh, God! She needed the release. Wrong. All wrong.
Then, she lowered the HK-4, raised her left hand like a mock pistol, and aimed it at the man's amazed face.
"Bang," she said softly, then sprinted back to the hotel lot, where she jumped into the cable company truck and pulled it forward to unblock her SUV.
Before Jael drove away, she retrieved a Ziploc from her duffel and scattered its contents on the dead driver's body, making sure they stuck in bloody places where they would not be missed.
CHAPTER 50
The rain began to ease as Jasmine accelerated toward Park Road and turned right. "That was sweet of you, offering me an out and everything. But this was my fight long before it was yours. Besides, it's too late to turn back. We're in this together."
Jasmine's words connected with my heart and took all my words away. She turned right and pressed on through a shabby section of town.
"Where do we go?" I said finally. "They'll look at every hotel and motel. They'll stake out your house and your office if they haven't already done it."
"I have an idea."
I waited expectantly as she threaded the Mercedes
along the cluttered street with an easy familiarity. We reached Main Street, then right, back across the railroad tracks, and past Stone Street.
"So." I looked at her. "You have an idea?"
"Sorry. Years ago, probably twenty or more, Mama bought a two-thousand-acre plantation southwest of Itta Bena out of an IRS lien auction, then donated it to Mississippi Valley State University."
She steered us along frontage roads, industrial driveways, and slushy one-lane gravel paths as only a local can do, bypassing the traffic jam. We were somewhere north of Rising Sun when we hit pavement again.
"Her brother, my uncle Quincy, teaches African-American history at Valley State there, and the donation helped his standing there immensely." Jasmine paused. "Mama was always doing things like that. And not just for family."
Jasmine turned right, crossed a new bridge over the Yazoo River, and headed west on Quito Road. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started; stars dotted the sky. In the distance, lightning still illuminated the towering spires of more storm cells.
"Anyway, one small part of the deed gave Uncle Quincy the title to a small plot of land containing a collection of old shacks dating from the 1870s. You know, a two-room shotgun with a tin roof, bare wooden floors, and not much else other than a hole in the ground out back to crap in?"
A guilty memory found me as a child riding in the bed of a pickup driven by Al Thompson along the dusty roads through Mossy Plantation. The child almost saw the weathered, unpainted gray-wood shacks always complete with a sagging porch and lots of small naked or nearly naked black children playing outside. To privileged white children, they had been an almost-seen-but-not-quite-noticed element of the landscape, something no more significant than moss in the cypress trees or the green duckweed carpeting stagnant water.
