Rope on Fire (John Crane Series Book 1)

by Mark Parragh

  A silence fell over the room. Skala stood there for a moment, the gun in his outstretched arm. He saw only smoke and darkness in the hall outside. He dropped the empty gun. Nothing seemed real anymore. As if in a dream, he turned, walked around the desk, and took the only weapon he could see—one of the heavy swords on the wall. With the sword in one hand and his laptop in the other, Skala walked through the bedroom door and then out the French doors to the back lawn.

  It was time to leave.

  Chapter 41

  Smoke swirled around Crane’s boots as he climbed over the wreckage of the oak doors and into Skala’s suite. The room was ruined. The explosion had thrown the doors into the room and knocked over furniture. Fragments of glass and spent shell casings lay scattered around the floor. Beside a desk lay an empty Scorpion EVO III submachine gun.

  Crane knew Skala had been in this room when he blew the doors. He’d emptied a clip from that Scorpion through the shattered doors at him. He hadn’t gotten far.

  Crane made his way around the desk and across to the closed door on the far side of the room. He kicked the door open and fired a burst through the doorway. The room beyond turned out to be the bedroom. His bullets ripped up Skala’s expensive bedclothes and sent a white cloud of down into the air. Otherwise, the room was empty. Skala had left through the open French doors to the right. Crane loaded a fresh magazine into the rifle and followed.

  The night air smelled of smoke, and the hillsides still glowed with firelight as the vineyards burned. Crane stood in the doorway and swept the backyard with the muzzle of the HK. The rear garden was an orderly arrangement of square beds outlined by low hedges, cut perfectly square themselves as if they were made of leafy green bricks. The hedges, perhaps two feet tall, enclosed beds thick with flowers and ground cover, many with trimmed conical evergreens at the center. Straight ahead of him was a circle of carefully trimmed shrubs surrounding an ornate fountain with carved birds and cherubs. Flagstone pathways wound among the plants.

  Nothing moved.

  Crane stepped out from the house, listening, trying to make out shapes in the shadowy darkness. He heard distant shouting, men fighting the fire, trying to save the vineyards. The moon shone through a pall of smoke. The fighting, the fire, everything seemed distant now, as if the chaos he’d created hadn’t touched this orderly garden, this little piece of the estate where peace still held.

  Crane walked slowly forward, looking for movement, listening for any sound. He had to go one way or the other around the fountain. He chose left for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to him at first. Then he realized what was bothering him there.

  The light wasn’t quite the same from that side. Behind a hedge on the far side of the fountain, something was giving off a pale glow—something with a powered screen. He circled around the fountain and headed that way, the HK leveled and ready, his eyes focused on whatever was putting out that light behind the flowerbed.

  He sensed the movement from his right as a disturbance in the air more than anything he saw or heard. He spun in time to see a shape hurtling at him from the shadows of the fountain. A figure. Something in its hands, swinging hard.

  On pure instinct, he raised the rifle to protect himself. He felt a jarring impact that sent a shock up his arms and ripped the rifle out of his grasp. Crane staggered back as the HK tumbled away into the night. His attacker pressed forward, silent, wild-eyed. It was Skala, Crane realized, armed with… a sword?

  Skala swung the sword again, wielding it like a baseball bat. Crane dove and rolled, and the heavy blade swept through the space he’d been in a moment before. Skala charged after him. The only sound was his grunt of exertion as he swung again and narrowly missed Crane’s head.

  Crane scrambled around the corner of the hedge and saw the source of the glow that had distracted him. It was a laptop sitting upright and open on the ground. It was displaying a login screen asking for a password. He heard Skala’s footsteps right behind him on the gravel at the edge of the path. Heard his hoarse breath, knew the heavy blade was swinging toward him.

  Crane grabbed the laptop and rolled onto his back, holding it up in front of him as a shield. The blade smashed into the hard plastic case and sliced through the hinges with a grating noise. The keyboard portion hit the ground, and Crane was left holding the suddenly dark screen. He hurled it into Skala’s face and then rolled to one side and used the distraction to spring to his feet.

  Skala was turning toward him again, so Crane ran in the direction the rifle had flown. Skala regained his bearings and ran after him with the sword held high.

  There. An incongruous shape inside one of the flowerbeds, projecting up from the hedge on the far side from him. It was the HK 417. Crane adjusted his course and headed for it.

  Skala saw it too. “No!” he screamed, and hurled the sword at Crane’s back. It glanced harmlessly off Crane’s shoulder. Then Crane dove over the hedge and reached for the gun.

  “No!” Skala screamed again, and leaped over the hedge after him. Crane got his fingertips on the gun’s muzzle and pulled it toward him, but Skala landed on his back, clawing at him like a madman. Crane pulled the rifle closer as Skala pounded him with his fists. He brought the rifle closer, inch by inch, until he could get a firm grasp on it. Then he swung it back over his shoulder blindly, felt it hit Skala hard.

  He threw Skala off and rolled onto his back, the rifle in both hands now. As Crane sat up, Skala hurled himself at him again, grappling with him for control of the rifle. Skala was breathing heavily, keening with a strange, high voice. It was as if all reason had left him, and Skala was reduced to pure animal rage. He was an old man, but his strength and endurance were remarkable. He bore down on Crane with all his weight, trying to force him into the orange lilies to press the rifle down against his throat.

  Crane saw movement over Skala’s shoulder. One of Skala’s men coming to rescue his boss and finish Crane off. He needed to gain control of the gun, now.

  He put all his strength into one upward thrust and threw Skala off. But Skala kept his death grip on the rifle. The newcomer raised a pistol, and Crane saw the muzzle flash, heard the loud crack of the gun. Skala cried out as the bullet hit him in the side.

  Skala spun away from Crane, and the man with the pistol fired again. Then a third shot, and a fourth. Skala fell limp against the ground, and Crane wrenched the rifle from his hands. He raised it to point at the man who shot Skala and found himself staring down the muzzle of his pistol.

  They remained there, both frozen in place for a long moment while Branislav Skala lay dying amid the flowers at Crane’s side. Finally Skala groaned, let out a long, rattling breath, and was still.

  Crane kept his eyes locked on the man with the pistol. He recognized him, he realized, from Yermolayev’s phone.

  “You’re Anton Kucera,” Crane said at last. “You speak English?”

  “Little bit,” said Kucera. “You know me? I don’t know you. But I know you are not who he thought. Not the man from Team Kilo.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because it turns out I’m the man from Team Kilo.” Kucera let out a short laugh that seemed empty of all amusement. “It is funny,” he said. “He wanted to be like them. But he was a fool. When rich men want someone for their dirty work, they want a real thug. From the streets. Not a…dressed-up clown who wants to come in by the front door and be one of them. They sent someone to…”—he smiled for a moment—“to make me an offer. It didn’t take much. I hated that old bastard.”

  “So you’ll tell the local gangs that I killed him,” said Crane.

  Kucera nodded toward the flaming vineyards. “Not hard to believe.”

  Crane had to admit it made sense. Skala was out of the way. Kucera was rid of him and so were the people whose business he’d been interfering in, whoever they were. And Crane himself had provided the perfect screen to hide what they’d done.

  “So who are you?” Kucera asked.

  “Just some
one who works for somebody he picked a fight with.”

  Kucera nodded. “Plenty of those.”

  They remained there for another moment, staring into the muzzles of each other’s guns. Maybe Crane could get off a burst before Kucera pulled the trigger. Maybe he couldn’t. Either way, he didn’t stand to gain anything from finding out. He imagined the same calculations going on in Kucera’s mind.

  Finally Kucera nodded at him. “You have a good night,” he said. Still holding the gun on Crane, he took a single step backward. Then another. Then he simply melted away into the night.

  Crane waited perhaps thirty seconds. The garden was still, empty. He stood up, stepped over the hedge, and walked back the way he’d come. On the ground near the main pathway, he found the smashed wreckage of Skala’s laptop. Or half of it, anyway. He picked it up and tucked it under his free arm.

  Then he walked back toward the gate that led to the garage.

  Chapter 42

  Three days later, a helicopter took Crane back to Josh’s yacht, the Normandy. It was anchored near the Cordillera now, off the northeastern tip of Puerto Rico. As the helicopter circled the Normandy and came in for a landing on the top deck helipad, Crane saw a boat a few hundred yards away with dive flags up. He could just make out figures in the water near the reefs.

  Josh was waiting as Crane stepped onto the deck. As the helicopter lifted off and headed back toward Fajardo, he explained that Melissa Simon was taking advantage of the snorkeling. She could hardly have failed to notice the helicopter, though. Josh expected her back soon.

  In the meantime, they went over what had happened and decided what to tell her.

  “There’s not much to protect her from,” said Crane. “She saw me kill a man.”

  “Okay, we’ll tell her everything,” said Josh. “If you’re comfortable with that.”

  Crane just nodded. He’d killed far more than the one man Melissa had seen. And he’d gotten an innocent girl murdered. At least Klement Novak had survived. He was in a hospital in Prague, where Josh had seen to it that he was getting the best possible care.

  Off to the port side, Crane saw the Normandy’s excursion boat returning. The doors in the side of the yacht slid open, and the boat coasted inside. Josh led Crane back to the rear deck where they’d eaten lunch and discussed Josh’s problem.

  “By the way,” Josh said while they waited, “we cracked the encryption on that hard drive you sent back. Let’s talk about that later.”

  Meaning not in front of Melissa, Crane noted. He nodded as the glass doors slid open and Melissa stepped out, her hair soaking wet, wearing a white bikini top and a pair of gray dive shorts. Crane had to admit the woman knew how to make an entrance.

  Over a round of drinks, Crane and Josh told her what had happened in Brno. The broad strokes, at least. Melissa listened with increasing surprise.

  “I don’t understand,” she said at last. “I’ve never even heard of this guy. Why would some Czech gangster want to shut down my project?”

  “Apparently because of the actinomycetes,” said Josh.

  “What?”

  “Your team weren’t the first people to go digging in the mud in that rainforest,” Josh explained. “There was a German biotech firm that sent people into the general area a few years ago, looking for undiscovered microorganism species. They found some. Apparently they’ve been working on pharmaceutical applications ever since.”

  “But nobody published! What good—” Crane saw realization cross her features. “Of course. They were keeping it secret until they had something to patent.”

  “And then you came along and started putting all that data out on the Internet,” said Josh. “Dumping it into the public domain.”

  Anger flashed in her eyes. “So they hired some gangster to shut me down? We can crush them in court!”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Crane. “They’ll say they had no knowledge of what Skala was doing. I think it’s even true. I think he took it on himself to shut you down because he thought it would help him curry favor with them.”

  “Son of a bitch,” she muttered behind the rim of her glass. Then, louder, “So this Skala, his corrupt cops and his drug runners, who pays for what they did?”

  “I think they’ve paid,” Crane said quietly.

  Melissa’s anger folded up and collapsed. All of them were dead now except Acevedo, who he imagined would be spending a very long time in prison.

  “You’re right,” Melissa said softly. “Of course you’re right.”

  “Look at the bright side,” said Josh. “It’s over now. You can bring your team back in and get back to work. There’ll be funding for new equipment, computers, gene sequencers.”

  “Are we talking about a blank check here?” she said with a sudden grin just at the corners of her mouth. “I can come up with a hell of a shopping list.”

  Josh laughed. “Within reason.”

  She turned to Crane with a smile. “Come out and see me when we get everything up and running. I’ll show you around again.”

  He thought she meant it this time. He nodded and smiled back. “I’ll do that.”

  ###

  Josh and Crane stood at the stern and watched the boat taking Melissa back ashore.

  “About the hard drive,” said Josh.

  “I take it you found something interesting.”

  “Skala’s personal notes. He was trying to map what the ultra-rich are up to behind the scenes.”

  “People like you.”

  “Not exactly,” Josh said with a laugh. “Let’s say people in my tax bracket. Members of the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations. Corporate elites. He was trying to understand what they do behind the scenes. It’s full of code names and connections and rivalries and secret alliances.”

  “Kucera said he wanted in,” said Crane.

  “Makes sense,” Josh said. “I went hiking once, place called Klaksvik in the Faroe Islands. There was this steep hill. I mean really steep. I looked up and saw what I thought was the top, and up I went. But when I got there, I realized it was a false summit. There was more hill that you couldn’t see from the bottom. So I kept on going up, and there’s more hill beyond that. And then again. Every time I thought I’d made it to the top, there turned out to be more hill to climb. Skala made it to the top of his world, and then he found out there was more. He wasn’t at the top at all.”

  “I don’t think he’s someone we wanted at the top of the ladder,” said Crane.

  “That’s just it,” Josh said, turning from the rail to face Crane. “Neither are the people he talks about in those notes. He thought governments ran the world, but he found out they don’t. The people on that hard drive run it, and that’s not good for anybody. They play their little reindeer games because there’s nobody to make them play fair, and people get caught in the middle. Lives are ruined. People live in poverty and fear. It’s not how the world is supposed to work, John.”

  Crane had the feeling this wasn’t a new idea to Josh. It was a presentation. Something rehearsed. He realized Josh wanted something from him and was afraid he wasn’t going to get it.

  “What are you getting at?” he asked.

  “Cards on the table,” Josh said. “There are plenty of people I could have hired to look into Melissa’s problem. But I had my reasons for choosing you. I wanted to see what you could do. But I also wanted you to see the world Skala saw.”

  “Are you saying you already knew why someone attacked the project?”

  “No, no. I wouldn’t have kept that from you. Believe me. But I knew it had to be something like what you found. Who goes to all that trouble to take out some post-grads collecting mud samples?”

  “So this secret world of Skala’s…”

  “It’s real,” said Josh. “When you get to where I am, you can see it. You get a seat at the table, and you can join in the game if you want. But I’m not like them. Most people in that world are born into it, or they claw their way i
n by any means necessary. I just tripped and fell into it, I guess. I was just an ordinary guy.”

  Crane smiled and raised an eyebrow. He was pretty sure there was nothing ordinary about Josh Sulenski.

  “Okay, point taken,” said Josh. “Let me rephrase. I’m a guy who wasn’t born with a silver spoon and my own hedge fund. I was just a math nerd who liked solving puzzles. And then one day I solved the stock market, and everything changed. I’m a normal person who lucked out and got handed a seat at the table. And it bothers me what they do to normal people there.”

  Josh fell silent for a moment, looking out over the boat’s fantail at a flight of gulls heading in toward the shallows to fish.

  “What’s that got to do with me?” Crane gently prodded.

  “I had to do something,” said Josh. “Suddenly I had all this money and power. I couldn’t just spend it all on airplanes and Italian supercars and private islands. I had to find a way to use it that would let me look at myself in the mirror. Bill Gates is wiping out malaria. Elon Musk has his own space program. His own space program! Can you believe that? What could I do?”

  Crane sighed. “Your own secret agent. I don’t want to be your toy spy, Josh.”

  “You were the Hurricane Group’s spy.”

  “Because I wanted to serve my country,” said Crane.

  “No, you wanted to do good in the world. You joined the Hurricane Group because you thought it would let you do that.”

  Crane thought for a moment. “Yeah, okay. I wanted to make the world a better place.”

  “And how did that work out? Governments aren’t the ones in power anymore. This is a new gilded age. We’re back to just giving all the money and power to whoever’s clever, or ruthless, or just lucky enough to grab it. Then we let them decide what to do with it, and hope they decide to do something good. And sure, some of those people are working hard to do the right thing. But a lot of them are monsters.”