Where Death Meets the Devil

by L. J. Hayward

  Or, they could do it the easy way.

  “Good.” And Jack punched him.

  Stunned, Ethan crumpled against his door. Before he could defend himself, Jack hit him again. Gun pressed to the assassin’s ribs, Jack scrambled for the handcuffs he’d tucked into the back of his pants earlier, cursing the tight confines of the car. He got them secured around Ethan’s wrists before he recovered enough wits to retaliate. A furious search later, Jack found the data stick and slipped it into a secure place.

  Getting out proved to be another minor disaster, ending up with Ethan’s door popping open suddenly and spilling them both onto the debris-littered marble floor.

  “Come on, you crazy bastard.” Jack hauled Ethan to his feet, making sure to keep the pistol trained on him.

  Blood smearing his mouth and trickling from a shallow cut on his cheek, Ethan wobbled. “Half right, Jack,” he managed before his legs buckled.

  “Stop right there,” Gerard Maxwell commanded. “Put the man and weapon down and your hands up.” He sounded like he hadn’t forgiven Jack for smashing his face in.

  Jack stalled in mid grapple with Ethan. They were surrounded, black-armoured security personnel closing in, rifles at the ready. Letting Ethan slide the rest of the way to the floor, Jack straightened. He didn’t drop his gun, though, keeping it pointed at Ethan’s back.

  “This man is Ethan Blade,” he announced clearly.

  “We know who he is, Reardon.”

  “Good. Then I don’t have to explain how he’s a wanted criminal. I’ve brought him in to be put in custody.”

  Maxwell removed his helmet, revealing his split lips and broken nose. His cheeks were still puffed up but his eyes, in their pools of yellowing bruises, were clear and full of anger. “Only after helping him escape.”

  At his feet, Ethan groaned and tried to get up. Jack pushed down on his back with his boot, pinning him to the floor.

  “Get Director Tan,” Jack said calmly. “He’ll straighten everything out.”

  Stepping back, Maxwell murmured into his phone low enough Jack couldn’t make out the words. Under his foot, Ethan’s shoulders tensed as he tested the strength of the cuffs.

  “Quit it,” Jack snapped. He quietly added, “Turnabout is fair play, you crazy bastard.”

  Ethan went still.

  It was a tense wait. Five minutes, then ten, passed. Pinned by a circle of rifle barrels, Jack sweated buckets. It all depended on Tan now. If the man didn’t live up to his word, it would get ugly fast.

  Finally, the ETA director arrived. He entered from the back of the staircase, as Jack had when Ethan first showed up. Surveying the ruined foyer, the crashed car, and the prone assassin, Tan nodded. “Good work, Reardon. I have to admit, I’d wondered how you would manage it, and frankly, I was surprised with your methods. Still, the results speak for themselves.”

  “Sir?” Maxwell demanded.

  Tan smiled smugly. “Stand down, Maxwell. Reardon’s still one of us. He was just on special assignment.” From a pocket, he took a jet-injector and tossed it to Jack. “To ensure he doesn’t get free.”

  Jack caught it and crouched by Ethan. Belly down, breathing hard, the assassin lifted his head enough to peer at Jack. The wounded expression was a perfect image of betrayal and how it felt. Jack wondered if that was how he’d looked at the compound.

  “Like before, Blade.” He tapped the injector. “I guess we can both pretend, huh?”

  Ethan swallowed, winced, and coughed. “I guess we can, Jack.”

  Jack pressed the injector to Ethan’s neck and the assassin gasped, eyes rolling back in his head before he slumped boneless to the floor.

  “Right. Got a plan for how we kill Valadian?” Jack hated how easily he was throwing around that “we” now.

  Blade scanned their immediate surrounds as he checked his Eagles by feel. “We don’t, Jack. You’re in no shape.”

  “Because you shot me.” Jack, too, cast an eye over the cattle pen and sheds. The compound was quiet in the pre-dawn, their fight with the patrol not yet discovered. The calm wouldn’t last long, however.

  “It was simply the most expedient way of getting you out of the Big House. Come on, I have your escape vehicle.”

  Blade trotted away, leaving Jack to follow. Or not. Jack recalled those thoughts he’d had right back at the start of this whole mess. Why should he follow Blade? He was trained to deal with these situations. And surely he had every right to put a bullet or two into Valadian.

  The first step he took, however, proved Blade right. The blow of the rubber bullet to the chest might not have killed him, but he wasn’t in peak condition either.

  Then he saw the direction Blade was going.

  Seeing the possibilities, Jack followed.

  “I thought you said it was grounded,” Jack huffed as he caught up to the assassin.

  “I have a half-dozen racing cars, Jack,” Blade said smugly. “I’ve learned to maintain them myself. You’ll find I’m something of a deft hand with a spanner.”

  The Kamov Ka-52 loomed above them, a sleek, powerful shape cut out in matte black against the glowing gold sky of dawn.

  “I’ve fixed the damage I caused,” Blade explained. “It’ll get you up well enough, but the damage was compounded. It won’t get you all the way home, I’m afraid.”

  Jack ran his hand along the side of the chopper. “As long as it doesn’t blow up on lift-off.”

  “It won’t.”

  Turning at the hint of sadness in Blade’s tone, Jack was surprised by the assassin pushing against him, arms wrapping around his waist.

  “I meant what I said, Jack. I don’t regret the other night.”

  Still not sure if he did, Jack kept his hands to himself. Whatever Blade said now, Jack was highly aware of him also letting Valadian fuck him.

  At the lack of response, Blade sighed and let him go. “Wait until I’ve distracted the troops, then leave.”

  Jack nodded. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

  Blade eyed him suspiciously, then turned and walked away. Jack watched him go, unsure of the mix of emotions in his sore chest. He didn’t know how much of that soreness was from the bullet and how much from Blade’s betrayal.

  Alone, Jack looked up at the chopper. He’d logged a couple hundred hours between simulators and aircraft, but that had been ten years ago. Did playing sim-flight games count? They’d better.

  Jack popped the canopy, heaved himself up, wincing with every pull on his abused chest muscles and broken wrist, and all but fell in. Arranging himself in the pilot’s seat, Jack got reacquainted with the complex array of buttons, levers, and gauges. He’d never flown a Ka-52 before, but a chopper was a chopper was a chopper. Surely. At least the digital screen in front of him was in English, not Russian.

  Ignoring Blade’s advice to wait, he ran through the pre-flight, relieved at the hum of the batteries and, when he got that far, the whine of the engines. The coaxial rotors starting to turn overhead made him cheer. He might just manage to get this thing off the ground after all. Landing without crashing would be a problem for later.

  He’d finally gotten the HUD up when whatever Blade had planned began. Shouts, gunshots, truck engines roaring.

  Valadian had had about a hundred soldiers with him when he’d ambushed Jack. Blade was good, but was he that good?

  Jack needed up, now. The rotors were thumping beautifully, kicking up dust in a rolling wave around the chopper. If Ethan had misjudged his repairs, Jack would find out very soon. Slowly, the aircraft lifted up, ponderous and awkward at first, swinging too far left. Overcompensating, Jack nearly drove the rotors into the storage shed on the right.

  Across the compound, towards the entrance, there was an explosion and a fireball rolled into the sky.

  “Fuck,” Jack shouted. He had to get his shit together, or it was going to be too late to do any good.

  Finally, memories kicked in and Jack found his rhythm, lifting the chopper steadily. Once he was above th
e surrounding buildings, Jack pushed the stick forwards. The nose dipped and the Ka-52 shot away.

  Leaving the compound behind, Jack took the chopper through its paces. Thanks to the coaxial rotors, it was one of the more manoeuvrable craft around. Thanks, however, to Ethan’s previous sabotage, it was sluggish to respond, engines whining as Jack forced the chopper into a near-vertical climb. When the vibrations got a bit too scary, Jack tipped it over and dived for the ground. Aware now of his aircraft’s abilities, Jack banked wide, easing the chopper through the turn, and then charged back towards the compound.

  His first pass showed him a blazing truck, so reminiscent of that night at the torture shack he almost had an attack of nostalgia. The second, coming in slower, showed several bodies lying across the dirt, a pitched gunfight between soldiers taking cover behind an overturned truck, and Blade, making his way across the rooftop of a barracks.

  A third truck was hurtling towards the gates of the compound.

  Jack whizzed by it all, swinging out in a long, curving arc. He checked the Ka-52’s weapons and found them fully stocked.

  Coming back around, he dropped the chopper down until it skated so close to the ground it left a veritable sandstorm behind it. Hoping the poor thing held together, Jack arrowed for the front gates of the compound. He armed the side-mounted guns and, from a distance of several hundred metres, began firing.

  Two great plumes of dust blew up in lines ahead of him, driving straight for the truck presumably carrying Valadian away from his compound and the assassin intent on killing him.

  Jack held on until he saw the truck swerve sharply, come up on two wheels, teeter, then topple over. At the last moment, he wrenched the stick back and around.

  The chopper screamed through the tight turn, its belly scraping the top of the fence. Then it was clear and hurtling back over the compound. Jack let out a wild yell of surprise and victory.

  Another wide arc and he came back in, this time aiming for the troops holed up behind the second truck. He hovered over them, nose down, turning in a slow circle and laying down a carpet of bullets. Bodies scattered, and on his roof, Blade waved his thanks, then raced on.

  Jack concentrated on pinning down those soldiers who survived his first attack. As he drifted through the air over the compound, feeling the chopper start to shudder and shake more and more, he kept an eye on Blade.

  The assassin was back on the ground and calmly ploughing his way through the soldiers protecting Valadian. He moved with that singular purpose Jack had witnessed the first night, every motion precise and controlled, perfectly targeted and flawlessly executed. It was a terrible kind of beauty.

  Jack emptied his guns just as the last of the soldiers dropped their weapons and surrendered. Amidst them, Blade stopped his dance of death and said something. Whatever it was, the soldiers moved, and as Jack swung by on a slow pass, they dragged a protesting Valadian out of the truck.

  He made another low fly over. Valadian was on his knees before Blade, his once-loyal soldiers hightailing it out of there as quickly as they could. Blade stepped up to Valadian, saying something, to which The Man shook his head furiously. Then he surged to his feet, rushing Blade.

  Feeling the chopper jitter uncomfortably, Jack left. He couldn’t stay and watch what happened next. If he had any chance of getting home, he had to take it.

  He made it as far as the homestead, and that just barely. The groaning aircraft landed with an ungainly series of thumps and crashes. Even after he shut down the engines, the whole thing vibrated so much Jack didn’t waste time getting out of it.

  Taking shelter behind the stable, Jack waited. The chopper didn’t explode.

  Blurt!

  He even managed not to kill Sheila out of shock. In fact, he was so grateful to see the ugly beast he patted the long, smelly neck. Which apparently was all it took to gain a camel’s friendship for life.

  Maxwell didn’t let anyone else near Blade, taking the job of divesting him of weapons himself. Jack he left in the unkind hands of an entire team of security personnel, probably hand-picked from those Jack had torn his way through the last time he was here. They certainly seemed to have several bones to pick with him, judging by the way they went about locking his wrists together at the base of his back. It didn’t seem to matter that Tan had vouched for him. No. It probably did. If he hadn’t, Jack had no illusions he wouldn’t be lying next to Ethan right now.

  Jack just hoped Ethan understood why he’d done it.

  While Jack was hauled away under the mildly amused eye of Director Tan, Ethan’s limp body was hoisted onto a stretcher and, under the growling countenance of Gerard Maxwell, was carried off in the midst of a ridiculous amount of guards.

  Half expecting to be taken to a meeting room on the tenth again, Jack was aversely pleased to find himself being shoved and pushed through the now-fixed door to the sublevels. Down one flight of stairs only and all but kicked through a door to an interrogation room. Inside, he was tied to a chair and then left alone.

  As far as intimidation tactics went, it had nothing on the torture shack. Or perhaps it was more the fact that right then, Jack wasn’t exactly worried about himself. No matter what happened now, he’d live. Possibly in isolation in a high-security prison for the rest of his life if things didn’t go well, but he’d be alive. He could do some reading. Ethan, on the other hand . . . One wrong move on his part and the official report would say “fatal accident,” if a headshot could ever be called an accident.

  They left him alone for an hour. Jack spent the time imagining what they were doing to Ethan. Stripping him, washing him, full-body search, another set of scrubs, and then back into a cell. The tranq usually lasted several hours. If the directors didn’t start moving this along, then things would get tricky.

  Thankfully, McIntosh, Tan, and Harraway came in just past the hour mark. McIntosh faced Jack directly, eyes Arctic and gun prominently displayed on her hip. Of the three of them, she was the only one openly carrying. She seemed prepared to deal with Jack however she deemed necessary. Tan stood off to the side, watching Jack with a bland expression, giving nothing away. His hands were on his hips, jacket pushed back to show he wasn’t packing. Harraway held back, leaning against the wall, apparently disinterested in the proceedings. Arms crossed, he could have a hand on a concealed weapon.

  “Jack,” McIntosh said coldly.

  He nodded to her. “Ma’am. Sir,” he said to Harraway. Then he addressed Tan: “Sir, the job’s complete.”

  Harraway jerked and looked to Tan. “Job? What job?”

  Tan didn’t answer immediately, taking a moment to study Jack. The longer the ETA director kept quiet, the more sweat gathered between Jack’s shoulder blades. They’d taken his armour, leaving him in a long-sleeved black T-shirt that stuck to his clammy skin. Tied to the chair with cuffs more secure than the plastic ties Jimmy and Robbo had used in the torture shack, Jack was totally vulnerable. He couldn’t fight, could barely dodge. And he was putting his life—and Ethan’s—in, of all people, Tan’s hands.

  “The job,” Tan finally said, removing a small key from his front pocket, “that I tasked Mr. Reardon with a week ago. I’m glad to hear you were successful.”

  Jack very carefully didn’t yell in relief. Tan came forwards and, while the other pair watched him with cold-burning rage and worried confusion, unlocked Jack’s restraints.

  “What the hell is going on, Alex?” Harraway demanded, and it was the most life Jack had heard from the man.

  While Jack shook free of the cuffs and stood to stretch the kinks out of his muscles, Tan graced his peers with a smile Jack imagined a limping gazelle might find on a lion’s face.

  “It’s all rather straightforward,” Tan assured them. “Perhaps Mr. Reardon could explain.” His expression was clear—I’ve stuck my neck out for you. Live up to it.

  “It’s simple,” Jack said. “Director Tan had some concerns that Omega Subject didn’t surrender himself just to exchange information
for political asylum.”

  McIntosh’s icy regard shifted from Jack to Tan. “Truly?”

  Tan was, thankfully, playing along with admirable aplomb. He nodded with an air of smugness. If he had any doubts about Jack’s motives, he was hiding them well. For a man who claimed to have liberal ideas about how his assets worked, he had to have perfected a poker face. Jack decided to never play cards with the man.

  “However,” Jack continued, “it was clear that if Blade was here with ulterior motives, he wasn’t going to reveal them in an interview, or even under stricter interrogation. Like me, he’s been trained to resist it. If we were going to find out why he was really here, we had to go . . . outside of the box.”

  Harraway’s earlier shock had morphed into a lazy smirk. “And that required breaking him out of his cell, marauding through the building, and then smashing a car through the front wall?”

  “Call it a trust exercise,” Jack said just as dryly.

  “And?” McIntosh asked warily, looking between Tan and Jack as if she suspected one of them might spring another surprise attack. “Did it work?”

  Jack looked from Tan to Harraway and, finally, to McIntosh.

  She met Jack’s gaze fearlessly.

  “Come on, son.” Harraway shifted against the wall. “Get on with it. Did it work?”

  Jack braced himself. “Yes. I know why he came here.”

  “Well?” Tan demanded. “Why?”

  Trying to watch all of them at once, Jack said, “Blade believes there is a traitor within the Meta-State. Inside the Office. This Office. He planted several invasive programs into the systems, which have been feeding him information for the past week.”

  Tan scowled. “We discovered them and eradicated them three days ago.”

  “How many?”

  “Three.”

  “There were four. The one you probably haven’t found is a Matryoshka program.”

  “Fuck,” Tan snapped and immediately pulled out his phone.

  Harraway looked from Tan to Jack, frowning hard enough his old, bushy eyebrows looked like a single entity. “Matryoshkas are very targeted. What was this one after?”