by Dana Haynes
Daria shouted “Weapon down!”
The tall woman dropped her handgun.
Daria said, “The bag, too! Give me what you stole and I let you walk out of here!”
The pale woman turned over one shoulder and grinned back. When she spoke, it was in English. “Why do you want it?”
Daria almost laughed but remembered the likely fate of Dr. Incantada and her staff, whom she’d left downstairs in the lobby. “I don’t. Want it, that is. I don’t even know what the fuck it is. I’ve just decided you shan’t have it. Set it down.”
She thought the blonde might have more surprises up her sleeve. To her left sat a large, industrial table saw. Its legs had been bolted to the floor. The surface held one upright, jagged-toothed saw and four or five loose, plate-shaped saws. There was a T-square on one end of the table, and the whole thing was rigged to a portable gas-powered generator. Not all of it was bullet-proof, but some of it was, and Daria angled that way, putting the contraption between herself and the tall blonde.
Sandpoint, Idaho
Bryan Snow tried to look as confused as his pilots. “You guys know what happened?”
They did not.
“Wow. Well, okay, run full diagnostics. Right now.” He adjusted his voice wand. “Todd. You folks all right in there?”
* * *
The seven people in the observation lounge looked utterly stunned. The newly identified General Cathcart and Colonel Crace could feel their careers slipping from their fingers.
Cyrus Acton tried to fake a semblance of control. “Ah. Well. We don’t … this wasn’t a contingency for which we were prepared. Obviously. We couldn’t have been. There’s no way—”
Cathcart had spent the better part of three and a half decades taking command of shit storms. The worse the situation, the more he felt at home. “The dark-haired woman. Gibron? That was the driver. Do you still have her voice print?”
Todd Brevidge was sweating profusely in his very fine suit. “Ye-yeah. Sure. I mean … yeah.” He picked up his walkie. “Snow? Get us Target Number Two.”
A moment later and Bryan Snow’s voice rang from the overhead speakers. “One of the Mercutios is picking up her audio signature. It’s coming from the building to the left of the hotel. Hang on.”
The Mercutio drones began refocusing on the frontless livery building and the images began appearing on the wallwide screens.
“Targets Two and Three,” Snow said over the PA. “The driver—Gibron?—and the blonde.”
Colonel Crace said, “Find the source!”
The screen images from the war zone in Florence shifted. One of the monitor screens—it was denoted MERCUTIO-4—zoomed in on the building under construction adjacent to the flaming hotel. The drone’s cameras zoomed in on the middle of the building—the center of the second of three floors.
The general snapped, “Can we get visual?”
The image on the screen shifted sharply to infrared. Two images stood out in sharp contrast behind the slate-colored scrim over the building façade. Both were human. One held a gun, one arm supporting the other, in a classic military stance.
The audio signature appeared across the bottom of the monitor screen.
They heard: “I don’t. Want it, that is. I don’t even know what the fuck it is. I’ve just decided you shan’t have it. Set it down.”
The voice spoke English but sounded foreign. Nobody in the underground rooms in Sandpoint could pinpoint the origin of the accent.
Todd Brevidge might have been in shock, but a lifetime in sales began to reassert itself. “I told you we couldn’t lose anyone.”
The second figure spoke, also in English. Everyone in the observation lounge recognized the California Valley girl cadence of the so-called Major Arcana. “They’re the control modules for Dr. Incantada’s creation. And I have a very reliable buyer in Belgrade who will pay top dollar for it. You don’t even know what it is. What say I buy my way out of this for, oh, a hundred grand in euros?”
General Cathcart had taken command of the situation. It was in his genes. “The driver, this Daria Gibron, is trying to steal the command unit: retag her as Target One and Major Arcana as Target Two. Did we get a visual on Gibron?”
Another of the monitors in the observation room popped to life and showed a recording from several minutes earlier. It showed Daria twisting out of Dr. Incantada’s Hyundai. Bryan Snow froze the frame and the facial recognition filters began taking minute measurements of the eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, hairdo, and jawline; as well as the color of her skin, hair, and lips.
A computer-painted illustration of Daria’s face magically appeared on the screen.
“Aaaand … we have her,” Snow said, over the ceiling-mounted speakers. “I’m running her image through international criminal databases.”
Todd Brevidge preened a bit, trying to regain a fraction of control. “Which, obviously, we’ve got.”
The military officials glanced witheringly at him.
“It’s, um, all part of the software package. We throw it in. Gratis.”
Everyone heard Daria Gibron say, “Not interested. Drop the bag.” Her voice was pitched low and carried the odd cadence of a myriad of accents blended together.
Colonel Crace pointed at one of the wall monitors. “Wait … who’s that?”
A third amorphous but human form appeared on the infrared image.
* * *
Owen Cain Thorson forced himself to rise. His head was ringing. He must have cracked his skull in the fall. He heard voices. His hand squeezed, and he was pleased to feel the comforting weight of his Glock.
He pushed himself to sit up.
There were two voices. Both female. Both spoke English.
He recognized Daria Gibron. The edges of his vision began to turn crimson.
To his left, Derrick Saito rose, too. He maneuvered himself up onto his knees. Neither had been noticed by the women.
Fifteen
Daria kept her focus on the tall blonde. “Why did you bomb the hotel?”
“Lots of reasons. One of which was: Because I could.”
Daria said nothing, just watched her.
“You’re Daria Gibron, aren’t you?”
“You know who I am?”
“I know you could use a payday, honey. You’ve got no stake in this, outside the basic mercenary one.”
Daria said, “Vince Guzman?”
The blonde had the audacity to look a little chagrined. “He’s probably dead. The Serbs interrogated him, and they lack subtlety. This one guy, Kostic? He uses really, really small explosives, called squibs. They do a hellish amount of damage but highly localized. Pulverize bones and meat but cauterize arteries. He is the fastest interrogator I ever met. Sweetie, you should meet this guy.”
Daria was thinking: Why is she telling me all this? She glanced about and caught a reflection in the upright metal blade of the table saw.
She twisted, down to one knee, hands extended, right hand braced, and fired without aiming.
A man’s head snapped back behind the log of insulation. Daria saw straight black hair, a wiry frame, and Asian features. She could tell she caught him.
That’s when she glimpsed the second man, moving laterally.
* * *
Guided by the telemetry of Mercutio-4, one of the three Hotspurs slid down into the alley, lined up, and spat a single bullet into the livery building.
The .22 caliber bullet sliced through the gray shroud over the missing facade. It would have sliced through Daria Gibron but a second earlier she chose to kneel and spin. Instead, the bullet smashed into the vertical blade of the table saw.
It was by no means a heavy bullet—the makeup of the Hotspur MAV meant it couldn’t contain anything dense. To make up for the light load, the hawk drones had been loaded with pyrophoric rounds. When the bullet hit the table saw it heated up to more than 2,000 degrees. A fireball like some kind of magician’s trick erupted in midair.
The discuslike s
aw blade shattered; replacement buzz saws clattered to the ground around Daria. The table bucked, two of its bolted-down legs ripping free of the floorboards.
* * *
Diego had climbed out of the pharmacy window. He wasn’t even aware of reaching for his cowboy hat on the sidewalk.
He looked up and watched a mechanical hawk spit a single round into the shrouded livery stable. Two more hawks circled.
Diego made the sign of the cross. “Holy Mary,” he whispered.
* * *
Daria covered her head as a fireball erupted and bits of table saw spun about the ill-lit room. Sniper outside, new gunman within. Daria was beginning to believe she hadn’t thought this through.
The shot from outside had been disturbingly close, which suggested the sniper had drawn a bead on her. Which, in turn, suggested an infrared scope.
There was no way to triangulate the floor plan in order to use the heavy table saw to hide herself from the blonde, the sniper outside, and whoever was behind the rolls of insulation.
Daria heard a ziiip behind her, and another .22 slug smacked into one of four vertical support pillars holding up the ceiling, the third floor, and the roof above. A large bubble of dust and cement debris bloomed on the far side of the pillar.
The concrete of the pillar caught fire.
At what temperature does concrete burn? Daria wondered. Answer: pretty fucking hot.
She heard the blonde laugh but, ducked down as she was, no longer could see her. “Hilarity ensues!”
Daria was so pleased that the benighted bitch was enjoying herself. “Friends of yours?” she shouted.
“Outside, yeah. Inside? The guys you’re shooting at? Them, I don’t know.”
Daria tried to keep her eye out for the man she’d glimpsed behind the bales of insulation, but light coming through the billowy shroud over the façade shifted the shadows, and waves of sweet-smelling sawdust slithered across the floor. Plus, there was the blazing pillar, like something from the Book of Revelations.
Pyrophoric rounds are scary but, in this case, played to Daria’s strengths: if the shooter was peering through the shroud using infrared, then the pillar just became a lot hotter than Daria’s body. She now was essentially invisible.
Hunkered down, she shouted over the roar of flames. “You brought rocket launchers and a sniper. Not fair!”
The blonde laughed again. “Sniper? Oh, babycakes! You’ve seen the movie The Birds!”
Daria watched the felled logs of pink insulation. One man was down; she could still see his raised knee from when he’d fallen over backward. Where was the second man? “Sorry!” she shouted to the blond woman. “Never saw it. Please leave the bag on the floor and scoot.”
The exterior gun had gone silent.
The blonde shouted back. “I’m … wait. You never saw The Birds?”
Daria fired off a round in the general direction of the rolls of insulation. In the most unladylike manner, she ducked her head clear to the floor, still on one sandaled foot and one knee, with her ass facing the ceiling. Undignified, yes, but it gave her a quick glimpse under the table saw. The blonde was hunkered into a corner that likely led to an office or a bathroom. Beyond her and to her left, Daria thought she caught a glimpse of the foe’s exit strategy: one of those long refuse tubes used for chucking rubbish out of a construction site to a bin below.
“Seriously?” The blonde’s voice echoed in the shifting shadows. “Alfred Hitchcock? Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor? The monkey bars?”
Another bullet zipped through the building’s scrim and whistled through the second floor, hitting nothing.
Behind Daria, a deep American voice said, “Guns.”
The man behind the insulation rolls was no longer behind the insulation rolls. He’d moved in such a way as to put the flaming pillar between them. That’s why Daria’s peripheral vision had failed her. She heard a clack and identified it as an American-made Glock.
“Guns. Now.”
She set down the Makarov.
“Machine gun, too.”
She unslung the weapon, laid it down.
“Stand. Kick the guns my way.”
Daria stood, but stepped away from the guns rather than kick them. That put her closer to the table saw bolted to the floor.
The man stepped more clearly into view. Six-two, she guessed, and blond. He was built like a serious athlete, wearing all black. Handsome; no question. He handled the Glock as if it were a natural extension of his arm.
He looked simultaneously grim and self-satisfied.
Daria saw the laughing woman step out of her cover but not far enough out to recover her own Makarov. “Hey, big fella,” she called out. “I’d say I have dibs on Miss Gibron here, but if you want to play through…?”
“Shut up.”
“Look, sweety pie. I don’t know who you are or what your interest is in all this. But that’s not a sniper out there. It’s a state-of-the-art suite of micro-drones. Miss Gibron here has been tagged-and-bagged. They have her audio sig and her facial print. You let her go, there is nowhere in Florence—nowhere in Europe—she could run that the drones couldn’t chase her. In the meantime, you and me could make a deal. We—”
The tall man turned but only slightly and fired once. The blond woman’s Makarov skittered across the wood chips and sawdust and disappeared into a darkened corner.
The blonde paused, then said, “Or not.”
Daria’s hands were away from her torso. She waggled her fingers. She said, “Hallo,” to the American man.
He turned his gun back on her.
“Daria Gibron.” His voice was oddly pitched, as if being held under pristine control. He sounded like a man who badly wanted to shout or to cry or to howl in hysteria. “You killed Saito.”
Daria nodded toward the one lone knee, bent and raised, unmoving, behind the rolls of insulation. “Saito being…?”
“You’ve added to your body count of fine Americans. Good for you. But now you die.”
Daria shrugged. “It’s been one of those days.”
The man had her at gunpoint but her mind raced toward the taunting woman behind her.
Tall, blond. Good with accents, good in a fight. Mercenary. The faintest tickle of a memory tried to assert itself.
The blond woman said, “Pardon me. May I add something?”
The man said, “What?”
“Suzanne Pleshette? The birds in Tippi Hedren’s hair? Come on! Seriously?”
Daria and the American stranger ignored her. He attempted to smile. “It’s … been a while. You probably thought I’d forget about you. About everything. But I didn’t.” He stood stock-still, gun aimed at her head. Not her chest, the center of her body mass. Calm and experienced gun hands go for the body-mass shot. Emotional people go for the head shot.
Daria kept thinking about the woman but blinked languidly at the American man. “Do I know you?”
Her words could have been made of pepper spray. The big man staggered back. The lower half of his face, illuminated by the gigantic birthday candle of a pillar, seemed to dissolve as a hash of emotions fought for dominance.
“Do … do you know…?”
The Hotel Criterion groaned and buckled and shuddered, sending a ripple of energy through the next-door livery building. Dust sifted from the overhead rafters.
The newcomer lost his footing. Daria shot out of her stance, hauling ass to her right. Toward the flaming pillar and closer to the gunman.
The man quickly regained his balance, but tracking Daria meant turning his dominant eye toward the flame. He got a shot off. He expected her to keep running in that direction—back toward the hotel. But Daria stopped after two steps, bent low, scooped up one of the circular saw blades from out of the wood chips, and hurled it Frisbee-style.
Her sandals skidded a bit in the sawdust. She skittered backward, reaching clumsily for the Makarov she’d dropped. She heard the laughing blonde scramble for her weapon, too.
Daria hit
the floor with her shoulder and hip.
A bullet panged off the now much abused table saw. The blonde had won the arms race.
The woman’s second shot slapped into the warped floor and threw up wood chips and dust. Daria grabbed the Makarov, fired toward the woman once, then rolled onto her back, brought her arms down, and shot between her raised knees, back toward the man. She raised both arms over her head and rolled yet again, chest down now, and got off two more quick shots to where the woman should be.
Shielded by the remains of the table saw, she took a little gamble. “Is this … Viorica?”
A beat, then she heard a musical laugh. “Ooooh, honey! I was hoping you’d heard of me.”
Daria shouted, “We run in the same circles.”
Another laugh. “Just us girls!” And two more shots panged off the table saw.
Daria waited. The fire crackled. No more shots.
Daria dared to look up again. She peered around the darkened floor, weirdly lit by flaming pillars like some sort of Viking great hall.
The laughing blonde was gone. So was the doctor’s bag with the stolen technology.
Daria rose to her feet and turned her attention to the burning pillar. The tall American man was down but not out. He was on all fours, trying to gather his wits.
She glanced behind the insulation. The Asian American was missing part of his face.
Daria turned back to the blond man and noted the Glock by his side. A much better weapon. She tossed her stolen Makarov away and went to her haunches, retrieving the man’s American-made .45 auto.
His left arm caved, and he toppled onto his shoulder. Daria studied his face. She had cut him badly with the thrown buzz-saw blade. Blood flowed from a wound that ran across his left cheek from the edge of his mouth to his ear. The left ear itself was bisected and bleeding badly.
One eye was clotted with blood. The other looked both dazed and crazed.
Daria patted him down and found a wallet. She found a temporary Italian driver’s license and a passport. Owen Cain Thorson.
He gasped. “You…”
Daria stared into his good eye. She studied his face. “You look familiar. I’m sure we’ve met. Where do I know you from?”
