Where Death Meets the Devil

by L. J. Hayward

  The sudden relief whipped through him like a blow to the head, leaving him dazed. Continued gunfire encouraged him to keep going.

  With the tie loosened around his wrist, Jack wriggled his swollen arm free of the plastic restraint. His situation had improved, if fractionally. He was still mostly tied to the chair, still surrounded by the enemy, still confused as to what Blade was doing, but he had an arm free. Albeit a broken arm, but he’d worked with less.

  Jack began rocking, leaning forward, pushing back. Twisting his left arm, he managed to get some purchase on the ground, and used it to help lever himself upwards. When he had some momentum going, he shoved up and threw his weight sideways. The chair rolled over and he was on his back, legs higher than his head. Another little shove and he toppled onto his right side, arm out to avoid smashing it into the ground. Still, the impact on his shoulder jarred his wrist, and he couldn’t hold back a cry of pain. Breathing through it, he reached out and, scrabbling at the cement, hauled himself towards the wall with the torture tools.

  Time vanished somewhere beyond the pain, his whole being focused on his goal. Peripherally he was aware of the gunfight continuing outside, though the number of exchanges was reducing, now interspersed with panicky yells.

  At the wall, he used the holes in the backboard to help pull himself upright, shuffling the chair back under him. Its rough journey across the floor had hastened its rusty deterioration, and it wobbled under his weight now.

  The straight razor was at the very outer edge of his reach. Stretching his fingers towards it strained his broken bone and inflamed flesh, but when the slender tool slid off its hook and fell, it was all worth it when it landed in his lap. From there, it was relatively painless to pick it up, flip it open, and saw through the plastic ties.

  “Good,” Blade said behind him. “At least you’re not totally useless.”

  Standing and spinning in the same move, Jack hooked a foot through the leg of the chair and kicked it in Blade’s direction. The assassin sidestepped it casually.

  Muscles burning from too long in one position, Jack held back even though he wanted to charge and hit and kick. He’d been knocked down one too many times tonight. Confusion and frustration made a sparking cocktail of his blood, but being injured and clueless made it the wrong time to go against someone of Blade’s reputation.

  Instead, Jack matched Blade’s calm pacing around the walls of the torture shack. Blade watched him, expression part curious, part amused. He kept his Eagles down by his sides, with all the appearance of being nonthreatening. Jack carefully didn’t laugh at the ridiculousness of the thought. Rather, he rolled his shoulders, flexed his arms, and tensed and relaxed his legs. The ache subsided and he warmed up in the cold night air. Blade stopped by the poster, waiting. There was dust on his coat and his hair was frazzled, but otherwise, he looked as if he’d just walked out of a meeting with his accountant, not out of a gunfight.

  “What’s the deal, Blade?” Jack asked.

  “The deal, Jack, was to kill Samuel Valadian,” Blade said blandly.

  Jack should have pretended confusion at the name, but protecting a cover already shot to shit was pointless. “You know who I am?”

  “Yes. Jack Reardon, former lieutenant of the Australian Special Air Service Regiment. Discharged six years ago for medical reasons I couldn’t discover.” Securing his right-hand gun in the underarm holster, Blade kept his gaze on Jack. “May I change mags? I’m almost out and there are still a few soldiers out there. It would be best to do this now, rather than in the middle of an exchange.”

  Jack was fixated on Blade’s eyes. They were pale, unnaturally so, with pupils big and dark in the light of the fluorescent tubes overhead. Between that and the revelation Blade actually knew who he was but hadn’t told Mr. Valadian, Jack realised just how painfully ignorant he was of, well, everything at the moment.

  “Sure,” he said, struggling for the one thing that seemed even remotely likely—Blade was planning on keeping him alive. Why? Jack had absolutely no idea.

  Lips curled up in an unreadable smile, the assassin reached into an inner pocket on his overcoat and pulled out a mag for the handgun. “Catch.” He tossed the mag at Jack, no harder than what was needed to get the mag to him.

  Jack let it hit him in the chest. It landed on the ground at his feet.

  “These are my favourite guns,” Blade continued, hefting the Desert Eagle he still held. It had the laser sight. “I’d rather you didn’t let this one hit the ground.” He made as if to throw it.

  “Why give me a gun?”

  “You feel up to hand-to-hand combat? I’m impressed. Personally, I’d rather we didn’t close with the remaining forces outside, but you were SAS. Your tactics probably differ from mine.”

  “Yeah,” Jack muttered. “I’m not a murderer.” It was hard to put honest conviction behind those words.

  “Do you think to shock or shame me with that?” Blade advanced, holding the gun out to him, butt first. “I am what I am. And right now, I’m a lone man against superior numbers. It would be silly to dismiss a potential ally. At the very least, Jack, take it so you may protect yourself if I fall.”

  Jack adjusted his grip on the razor, keenly aware of how sad a weapon it was contrasted to the man before him. Within the military, the SAS were the elite forces. Jack hadn’t been the most gifted in all fields, but he could hold his own against his fellows, which meant he could wipe the floor with just about anyone else. However, what he knew of Ethan Blade was enough to give him pause.

  Shifting the razor to his injured hand, Jack accepted the gun. It settled into his hold with a satisfactory weight.

  The moment the weapon was transferred, Blade backed off. He made a slow show of producing another mag and the other gun. After tucking his Eagle under his right arm, Jack crouched and picked up the mag at his feet. He worked his fingers over it to make sure it was actually full. It was. Standing, he locked his gaze on the odd, unsettling eyes of the man across from him. Together, they released the spent mags and slammed the new ones home.

  Jack had the loaded gun pointed at Blade instantly, turning side on to present a narrower target. “Drop it, Blade.” The red dot landed on Blade’s chest.

  Smiling, Blade held his own gun in two fingers, the other three splayed out. “Yes, Jack.” He crouched and laid it on the ground carefully. “May I remove my coat?”

  “God,” Jack hissed, out of his depth with this strange creature. “How many more weapons do you have in there?”

  “A few,” the assassin said, amused. He shrugged out of the coat and spread it over the ground. “Would you cover the door while I assemble the rifle?”

  “The rifle?” He was starting to wonder why he was even trying to get the upper hand. Blade was refusing to play the part. Lowering the Eagle, he nodded. “Sure. Got nothing better to do.”

  Blade smirked at the sarcasm and began tearing open the seams of the overcoat’s inner lining.

  Shaking his head, Jack turned his back on the assassin and crouched by the door. He expected his better judgement to put up an argument, but the usually finely honed sense stayed quiet, as if having a known killer at his back wasn’t at all alarming. Frankly, at this point, a bullet in the back of his head would just be an end to the confusion. A hollow-point at this range would take out the implant, making the last fifteen months a pointless waste of time. Still, if Blade was serious about killing Valadian, then the problem was eighty percent solved.

  Flickering orange light rimmed the door to the shack, the crackle of flames clear now he had the chance to listen for it. There wasn’t much else to hear, apart from the tin roof shifting as it heated up. The air in the shack started to warm, smoke curling through the gaps in the walls. Whatever was alight was close by.

  “They’ll be closing in on us,” Blade said as he worked behind Jack with a quick staccato of weaponry pieces snapping together. “I believe there are three snipers on the ridge to the east. At least five more mobile troo
ps on the flat. How’s your long-range aim?”

  “Better than average.”

  “Brilliant. You can take the rifle then.”

  Turning enough to look at Blade, Jack shook his head. “You’re a crazy bastard, aren’t you.”

  “You’re half right.” The assassin stood and displayed the assembled weapon.

  It was a sleek, lightweight sniper rifle known as an Assassin X. Made by unknown sources for people just like Blade, they were designed for easy concealment, quick assembly, and undetectability to most scanning devices. All those elements combined into a weapon that wasn’t robust, had limited range, and only supported small-calibre rounds. The word that came to mind when Jack saw one was “flimsy.” However, in the hand of Blade, it looked worthy of its name.

  From inside his suit jacket, Blade produced a scope and clicked it into place on top of the rifle. “Night-vision scope. The mag holds seven .22 LR rounds, one in the breach.” Which he loaded with a soft clack. “Headshots would serve us best, Jack.”

  “Right,” Jack said with a sinking sensation. There was so much about the whole situation that was wrong, but he found himself agreeing all the same. It’d be a bloody miracle to hit anything with an unfamiliar rifle, let alone three headshots.

  Blade joined him by the door, listening. “The trucks are still burning. Good.” He paced away, head tilted as he looked at the roof in the corner over the beach poster. “Up, I think. Jack, your assistance.”

  Jack hesitated. He was an asset of the Australasian Meta-State, paid to protect its citizens from dangerous elements. Elements like Samuel Valadian and Ethan Blade. Right now, however, his best chance of stopping the former was to work with the latter.

  With Blade on his shoulders, Jack stood steady while the assassin pushed the corner of the tin upwards. Done, Blade slid down and dropped to one knee. Making a stirrup of his hands, he said, “You first, Jack.”

  There was no point in arguing. With his injuries Jack wasn’t getting up there without help. Judging the height of the wall, Jack stepped back a couple of paces. “Ready?”

  Blade nodded.

  Jack sprang forward, hit Blade’s hands with one foot, and leaped. With a boost from the assassin, he grabbed the top of the wall easily. His broken wrist protested instantly and strenuously, but he threw his right arm over the edge of the cinder blocks, digging in with his left hand. Shoulders heaving, he hoisted himself up and out.

  Slithering onto the corrugated tin, Jack kept low. The ground troops probably wouldn’t spot him, but Blade had mentioned snipers on a ridge. The assassin was up and out seconds later. He’d left his overcoat behind and closed his dark suit jacket from neck to waist, eliminating the glow of his white button-down.

  “This way,” the assassin whispered and eeled along the edge of the roof.

  As promised, the night was lit up by two merrily burning transport trucks, angled to block access to the shack. They were flatbed trucks with canvas coverings for troop transport. The fires were dying down, however, having consumed the meagre amount of fuel available in the material, the wooden benches, and the interiors of the cabins. Scattered around the two bonfires were the bodies of men from Mr. Valadian’s army. Each transport could comfortably carry fifteen men, and it appeared they had been packed to capacity. About twenty lay unmoving, and then there were three possible snipers and a handful of troops still lurking beyond the fires.

  Thirty or so soldiers, plus Jimmy and Robbo, all for Jack. He didn’t know whether to be honoured or horrified.

  Joining Blade at the front corner of the shack, bodies pressed tight side by side, Jack pushed away his misgivings and concentrated on the task at hand. This was no different from some of the jobs he’d run with the Unit. Trying to convince himself of that, Jack put the Assassin X to his right shoulder. After a second, he switched to the left. His right wrist wouldn’t handle the recoil in its current condition. Jack settled the rifle, wriggled into a better position, and scoped the lay of the land.

  The green-hued scene through the night-vision lens opened up for him. The land was arid; dry, cracked, dusty ground; low-growing spinifex; rocky protrusions increasing in size and number as the land swelled towards the ridge, the rock bed breaking free of the dirt in a jagged wall. The sky above was clear, no clouds, just stars—a perfect desert night. Jack scanned the top of the ridge. It was irregular with a sharp-edged cliff face, rounded mounds of dirt, straggly vegetation and, somewhere amongst it all, three bodies lying much as he was.

  “Ready?” Blade whispered.

  “No, but let’s just get it over with.”

  With a soft chuckle, Blade said, “As you wish, Jack.”

  Then he stood up, a perfect target framed against the starry night, and got it started.

  “Shirt too,” Gerard Maxwell, the head of security, commanded.

  “Just don’t cop a feel, sailor.” Jack unbuttoned his blue dress shirt. His suit jacket already lay on the table in the small prep room off the foyer.

  Maxwell grunted. “You aren’t pretty enough, soldier.”

  Like Jack, Maxwell was ex-military. When they’d first met, there had been a spark of solidarity. Then Jack had discovered Maxwell had been a chief petty officer with the navy. Traditionally, army and navy weren’t the best of mates, but Jack had been ready for a fresh start when he joined the Office. Maxwell, too, by the way he’d bluntly propositioned Jack a month into their working relationship. Despite Maxwell being neither physically nor intellectually attractive to him, Jack had considered it for about half a second because it would be sex and sometimes, casual sex could be great sex. The need to not screw up the new job, however, had made Jack turn him down.

  Maxwell hefted a set of body armour off its frame in the corner. “I’ll warn you, this shit’s heavier than it looks. Thin so as to be concealed better, but dense. Latest hard armour evolution.”

  Shucking his shirt, Jack eyed the armour sceptically. “I’m pretty sure I’m not going to need it.”

  “McIntosh says you wear it, you wear it.” Maxwell ran his gaze over Jack’s torso, presumably to check for the fit of the armour. When he got to the small cluster of entry wounds where Jack’s right kidney would have been if it had survived the bullets, he gave a short, impressed whistle. “That is some awesome precision. Who’s responsible?”

  “Taliban. Had a bee in his bonnet about something. Maybe he didn’t like us raiding his weapons cache.”

  Maxwell gave an evil chuckle and nodded appreciatively. “Nope. They didn’t like that much at all.”

  Jack lifted his arms to let Maxwell slide the armour on and wrap it around his chest and back.

  “This one?” the HoS asked, coming around to Jack’s left side.

  “Thug by the name of Jimmy O’Dowd. Dirty knife. Looks small, nearly killed me though.”

  “Always the way.” Maxwell buckled up the armour under Jack’s left arm. “It’s the small ones you gotta watch. Have a habit of creeping up on you, right?”

  “Right.” Holy Jesus. Maxwell wasn’t wrong. For something almost as thin as his cotton shirt, the armour pulled down on his shoulders like a whole suit of cement. “You wear this stuff every day?”

  Maxwell was built like a fireplug: sturdy, thick thighs, square shoulders absolutely bulging with muscles. Jack could understand it if this was what he carried every day.

  “Nah. This here is the tuxedo of armour, special occasions only.” Slapping Jack’s back, hard, he added, “Don’t be a bitch. You can handle it.”

  Jack staggered, wheeling his arms to keep his balance.

  While Maxwell watched critically, Jack dressed again. He slung on an underarm holster and picked up his department-issued handgun. McIntosh had signed off on his firearm re-qual, trusting Jack hadn’t let his skills atrophy during the eleven months he hadn’t been allowed to carry. She’d handed over his Heckler and Koch USP and a mag with one bullet in it, her intention clear. Betray us and you only get one shot. Use it wisely. Wryly, Jack slapped the
mag in and chambered his single round, then slid it into the holster. Over that went his jacket.

  “Tie?” Maxwell asked, holding up the dark-blue cheapie.

  “No. I’ve heard what he can do with one.” He picked up his official ISO badge. “I will take this, though.”

  “Reckon he can’t kill you with it?”

  “Pretty sure he could, but I think this is sort of a formal occasion.” Rapping his knuckles on his armoured chest, Jack smiled. “Got the tux and all.”

  Maxwell opened the door and ushered him out. “Good luck, Reardon. We’ll be watching.”

  Jack nodded and started down the short corridor towards the foyer. Maxwell peeled off and entered a smaller version of the situation room. At the door to the foyer, Jack stopped and took several deep breaths. He still couldn’t decide how he felt about this. Apprehensive, certainly. What would Blade say or do? One wrong word and Jack could kiss what was left of his career goodbye. Angry, possibly. How dare Ethan put him in this situation. After everything Jack had done for him, this was how he was repaid? Confused, ah, yes. When was he never confused around the crazy bastard? Upset? Scared? Annoyed? Yes, yes, yes. But beyond all the obvious emotions, one twisted from yes to no and back again with rollercoaster intensity.

  Excitement.

  Several more deep breaths. Remember what Dr. Granger said. Emotions don’t have to rule you. Don’t act on them rashly. Think them through. Be rational.

  Ethan Blade was a wanted criminal. He belonged in prison. A high-security prison for the mentally unstable. He was nothing more than that. It didn’t matter what he’d said in the desert. He couldn’t be trusted. That was the rational path. And yet . . .

  Operative admits to feelings of sympathy for the subject.

  The one line in his initial psych evaluation upon coming back that put the brakes on his return to the field. Eleven months of inaction because of an irrational impulse to mention how he’d come to like Mr. Valadian.