by Nick Petrie
Like every Marine, Wetzel had trained on assault boats. He could manage a Zodiac in the surf just fine, but he was no North Sea pilot and this wild open water scared the shit out of him. “Fuck.” He pushed down his fear, shouldered his pack, and jumped down to the little inflatable.
He released the stern davit and got the little outboard started. Cassie jumped next with Thad right behind her, the two ex-CIA killers surefooted as hounds. Timing the wave perfectly, Fitzsimmons dropped in like a ghost.
As Fitz released the bow davit, Wetzel cranked the throttle and angled the Zodiac through the dirty surf toward the narrow sheltered beach across the road from the farm.
Thad gave a woo-hoo. “Time to kill some people and make some money, honey.”
62
The four figures stacked up at the glass sliding door, one behind the next. They wore black tactical gear and face masks against the cold.
Peter didn’t have time to find boots that fit. He dropped the socks and padded barefoot around the back of the long dining table, where a few crumb-specked plates remained scattered on the surface. He saw dessert forks and butter knives, not any kind of useful weapon. After days of fever, Peter didn’t feel very useful, either. His shaved head was cool, the bandage taped tight at the back.
At least he’d borrowed dark clothing from the laundry. In the unlit room, they helped him melt into the shadows. It was his only advantage.
The lead man crouched at the latch with a pick in his hand. The lock wouldn’t take long.
The sliding door was in the middle of the wall of windows, an exposed entry. He hoped that meant they were overconfident. The second figure stepped forward with cupped hands to peer through the glass, and Peter realized his advantage was greater than he’d thought. The dark interior, combined with the bright, snowlit night, had turned the glass into mirrors from the outside. Until they stepped into the darkness, Peter would be invisible.
What was their plan? Come in quiet, he figured. Wound or kill anyone who resisted. Turn the rest into hostages. Leverage the weak to gain access to whatever it was that Brunelli wanted. Whatever Óskar had carried in his head, maybe still carried. And kill Peter, of course.
He would have to work fast, take them one by one as they came through the door. In the hand of the third figure, he saw the glint of a knife. But he didn’t see any guns.
If they’d brought firearms from abroad, they’d have had to declare them at customs, leaving a record. They’d have counted on finding guns locally, but guns were hard to come by here. Knives would be easy to find, untraceable, and silent.
Peter had nothing. The orange-handled fishing knife was in his pack, along with the folding shovel and the ice axe, but he had no idea where his pack was. He looked over his shoulder at the open kitchen. It was clean and orderly, the counters empty, dishes and cutlery put away. No knife block with handles sticking out, not even a frying pan. He couldn’t afford the time to rifle the drawers, or the resulting rattle.
He considered shouting to wake the family, but quickly decided against it. The noise would remove his only advantage, and even the uncles would take a minute or more to gather themselves. Plus there were too many children who could, in their panic, walk into the fight. So he’d remain silent for the moment.
Bare feet sure on the warm tile, he crept along the line of bookshelves, approaching the sliding door from the shadows.
He didn’t consider his own weakened state. There was no calculation. It was not complicated. In fact, it was wonderfully simple. Peter stood between innocents and the darkness. He would hold that line, no matter what. He tasted pennies on his tongue. Adrenaline flooded his tired blood. He bared his teeth at the night. Here we go.
The lock clicked. The lead man stood upright, stowed his picks, took a blade from his belt, then reached for the door handle.
Peter slipped a hardback book from the shelf at his back.
If he wanted a knife, he was going to have to take it.
* * *
—
With the faintest of rumbles, the door slid open and a long-limbed shape stepped through. Peter recognized the swimmer’s body. The man in the Ohio State sweatshirt, come to do harm.
Peter held the book with a loose grip, spine out. It was an older copy of that Icelandic classic, Independent People, heavy and well bound, designed to last generations. The power of literature at his fingertips.
When Ohio State was fully inside, Peter stepped from the shadows with the book in his hand and punched the spine into the other man’s larynx. The cover was thick, the stacked pages were solid, and the strike was hard and true. The crunch of ruined cartilage was barely louder than the sound of the wind pouring cold through the open door.
Ohio State kept coming, but his mouth hung open as realization dawned. Peter kicked him in the side of the knee, he folded to the floor with a thud, and the knife flew away. Preoccupied with his asphyxiation, Ohio State was no longer a threat. He’d be useless in a minute, unconscious in three to five, brain-dead in ten.
The second figure was small but fast with the knife leading the way. Peter recognized the black blade and Spatula Woman’s quickness with it. If she took note of her fallen comrade, Peter didn’t see it. He was too busy trying to read her eyes and keep his blood inside his body.
After a series of lightning feints and probing slashes, she came for the axillary artery just below his collarbone. It would empty him like a faucet. But Peter was wired tight now, and his arms were longer than hers. This was no time to be a gentleman. She’d made her choice when she came at him with a sharp object. He caught the tip of her knife in the cover of the book, and when she withdrew the blade, his arm was already cocked for the hard jab. He punched a corner of the book into her eye, breaking at least one bone in her face.
She rocked back, half-blinded, knife wandering, but only for a moment. As she found her balance and raised the knife again, Peter brought the heavy book around backhand, slammed the spine into her temple, and knocked her to the floor. Her eyes fluttered, then she vomited and her whole body shuddered spastically, a seizure. She was done.
You can’t do that with a paperback, Peter thought.
The next attacker was already stepping through the doorway with a wide sheath knife in his hand. He moved like a discount robot, but by now he’d seen two people go down. His nailhead eyes were bright behind his mask, and he was clearly the most dangerous of the crew. Peter knew this was the silent lurker from the hotel bar.
Peter had lost any advantage of surprise or size. He had a Nobel Laureate’s novel against the kind of blade you’d use to gut a moose. Its gleaming tip carved smooth, graceful ellipses in the moonlit air. The man stood in an easy crouch and watched Peter’s eyes, waiting to see his fear and desperation. For some, Peter knew, the delight in killing came from drinking your opponent’s despair.
But Peter wasn’t giving the lurker that pleasure. As the man stepped forward, Peter stepped back. He still held Independent People in his left hand. With his right, he reached out to the bookshelves, blindly found another hardback, and flung it sidearm, pages fluttering. It bounced off the other man’s chest. A second book, better aimed, hit his knife arm with no apparent effect. Then two more, thrown simultaneously, opened midair like startled pigeons flying into the lurker’s face.
For a brief moment, the man’s view was blocked. He raised his left hand to brush the books aside. By then Peter was almost on him. He gave a short cry and the man, still mostly blind, instinctively raised the big knife. Peter now held his new favorite novel out and open with each hand gripping a cover and half of the pages, and met the tip of the knife with the inside of the spine. The sharp point punched through the folded paper and glue and cover. Peter slammed the book shut and twisted with both hands, tore the paper-trapped knife from the lurker’s hand, and spun the whole thing across the room where it thumped and clattered across the tile.
<
br /> The dog barked, a muffled sound, as Peter stepped inside the other man’s guard. He hit Peter a glancing left in the kidney, but Peter slammed the web of his hand up and under the other man’s jaw and popped him back into the wall of windows. Then Peter dipped his other arm down to scoop up Spatula Woman’s black blade, and when the lurker lunged forward again, Peter buried the knife in the other man’s throat, severing his carotid with a sideways twist.
The lurker was still falling in a red curtain when Peter turned toward the door. A fourth figure stood just outside, eyes wide. He held a knife, but it was down at his side.
Then he turned and ran into the snow.
Shoeless, coatless, blood burning like gasoline, Peter ran after him.
63
Tired and hungry and still dehydrated, Peter ran with everything he had, following the dark figure up the long driveway toward the road.
He’d always known the limits of his reserves before, but after this fever, he was unsure of how to pace himself, how much he had left. Regardless, he ran, burning his own flesh as fuel, bare feet already cold in the crusted snow.
The man ahead was too large to be the Irishman. He had to be Wetzel, who’d always taken up the rear anyway. Wetzel, who’d seen Peter as disposable. Wetzel, who’d pulled Peter into this whole goddamn thing.
The subarctic air ached in his chest, but his lungs were open and sucking oxygen. For the first time in a long time, Peter could actually catch his breath. He was warming from the sprint, everything but his feet and hands, but knew that wouldn’t last. He had to catch Wetzel before his body seized up, or Wetzel would circle around and attack from behind. That would be exactly his style. And Wetzel still had a knife.
Peter sprinted in the space between the tire tracks, naked toes digging into the granules with each step. Wetzel ran ahead, dressed for the weather in boots and gloves, a coat and thermal pants. He ran for his life. But Peter ran for something else. He ran for the lives of others, and that made all the difference. He drew closer, and closer still.
The driveway came to the road but Wetzel continued straight across it, clearly visible as he leaped the plow berm and ran overland toward the sea. Peter’s frozen feet tore on the rocks beneath the snow, but they were too cold to feel pain. He left red tracks behind him. Ahead, the land ended in darkness. The wind threw salt spray into Peter’s face, and the waves thumped like falling boulders.
He finally caught Wetzel on the edge of a gray, rocky beach, where an orange Zodiac had been pulled into the shelter of a cluster of boulders. He got a hand on Wetzel’s neck and rode him down to the gravel. Wetzel rolled and raised the knife but Peter slammed the hand to the rocky ground and the knife flew away. Peter tore off the mask to see Wetzel’s face.
Wetzel shouted, but Peter couldn’t hear his words over the wind and the waves. They didn’t matter anyway. Wetzel twisted and thrashed and made it to his knees, arms out toward the Zodiac, but Peter threw him into the icy surf, where he knelt on the man’s biceps and clamped a hand on Wetzel’s face, holding him under.
Wetzel bucked and flailed and tore at Peter’s hands. As he ran out of air, he weakened. Then his lungs convulsed and filled with water.
The surf boomed and surged as Peter watched the life drain from Wetzel’s eyes. It only took a few minutes, but it felt like forever.
Finally, he rose to his feet and let the waves take the body. Shaking uncontrollably, he looked out across the darkness where a dim light rose and fell, getting smaller in the distance as the waiting boat slipped out to sea.
His legs ached in the icy water. He filled his lungs with the glorious wind. He was alive and glad of it. He had no regrets at killing Brunelli’s people, Wetzel least of all. Killing the man with his bare hands freed something vast and glorious inside him, a clean and righteous rage.
He loved it, and it scared the hell out of him.
What had he become?
The incoming waves broke white against his chest, their cold so deep his heart wanted to stop. The waves sucked at his legs, urging him farther out to sea.
“Hey!”
Peter looked over his shoulder. One-armed Bjarni splashed into the surf, eyes wide, mouth open to speak but no words coming out.
Finally he said, “Are you all right?”
Peter didn’t have an answer for that. The next wave rolled from the black ocean, the crest turning white and wind-torn as it broke. Its weight crashed against him and rocked him back, then pulled him forward toward the dark.
He felt Bjarni’s hand on his arm. The square-shouldered Icelander cleared his throat.
“You killed those people,” he said. “But you saved all of us.”
Peter still didn’t speak. What would he say?
Bjarni shifted his grip and gave a polite tug. “Come,” he said. “Please. You need to get inside. Unless you want to freeze to death out here.”
Peter had been prepared to die over there, for the men he’d served with. More than prepared, he’d been willing, if that’s what it took. But was that the same as wanting it?
No. It wasn’t.
In that moment, he saw himself clearly, perhaps for the first time. War had made him. He was a trained hunter and killer of men, and damn good at it. He was still useful. There was work to be done.
He might as well get on with it.
Bjarni shed his red coat and Peter wrapped it around his shoulders. They waded from the water and walked toward the road, where the shit-brown Skoda waited with the doors wide open and the heater going full blast.
64
At the farmhouse, Peter stripped and stood under the hot shower until he stopped shivering. Karina dressed his torn feet and the vodka-bottle wound with fresh gauze and tape. In the mirror, a hungry stranger with a bruised face and a bandage on his shaved head stared back at him. He looked like a mental patient, he thought. Which maybe wasn’t so far off.
Despite the small bathroom, the static didn’t complain. It just hummed in the background the way it had when he woke just a few hours ago, like a high-performance engine on idle, waiting for someone to step on the gas.
He found Yrsa in the great room with a mop and a bucket, scrubbing blood from the floor. He heard a murmur of conversation through the walls, the children wide awake but kept in their rooms away from this scene of carnage. Through the wall of windows, he saw Ingo and Axel lining up bodies on a dirty sheet of plastic. Maybe the same plastic they’d wrapped him in not long ago.
“I’m sorry about this,” Peter said.
Yrsa wore high rubber boots and a striped flannel nightgown, her hair up in short pigtails. She looked at him with those caliper eyes, then held out the mop handle. “Scrub,” she said.
Peter rinsed the mop and wrung it. The water ran pink. “This isn’t over. He’ll just send more men.”
“Who?” She put her hands on her hips. “Who threatens my family? Who murdered my grandson and his wife?” She didn’t mention Óskar.
“His name is Jerry Brunelli. He’s Sarah’s stepfather.”
Her eyes blazed. “And why did he do this?”
“I’m not sure, exactly,” Peter said. “Sarah was an IT security specialist. Brunelli is a power broker in Washington, D.C., with connections to some very bad people. My guess is Sarah found something that threatened him, and he killed her for it. Something that Brunelli hasn’t found yet. Because if he’d found it, he wouldn’t have sent those people here.”
“That is all you know?”
“It’s not much,” Peter admitted. He wasn’t going to bring up Óskar, not yet. “Listen, I left my pack out in the snow. Do you have my boots somewhere?”
Her mouth tightened. “That floor is not clean.” But she waved her hand toward a closet.
He guessed this meant they would let him live.
It took him a while to find his pack, buried deep under fresh snow. When
he returned, the bodies were gone and the floor was clean. Ingo, Axel, Bjarni, and Thorvaldur all sat at one end of the long dining table, drinking coffee.
The other end of the table was packed with children. He counted fifteen of them, aged two to maybe twelve, talking through milk mustaches while eating pancakes with powdered sugar and jam. Like the morning after a sleepover, he thought. Maybe that’s what this was, all the kids at Grandma Yrsa’s house for the holiday.
Several of the children looked about the right size, including a quiet boy at the far corner of the table, half-hidden behind wavy blond hair that fell across his face. Peter crouched down at the kids’ end of the table.
“Who wants to play a game?” he asked. The kids didn’t know quite what to make of the stranger with the shaved head, but they did quiet down a little. They’d started learning English in kindergarten.
“The game is called, What number comes next?” He didn’t look at the boy with the hair over his face. “I’ll say some numbers. When I stop, you keep going. Got it? Here we go.” Slowly and clearly, he said, “Three point one four one five nine.”
Every child stared at him like he was crazy, then looked at each other to see if anyone else understood the game. Except for the quiet blond boy, whose lips moved silently with the next numbers in the sequence. He knew four thousand of them.
Yrsa strode from the kitchen, glaring daggers at Peter. “What is the point of this?”
“You know the point,” Peter said quietly. “Someone came looking for something hidden. What’s the best place to hide something you don’t want anyone to find?”
Yrsa’s face changed as she figured it out. She clapped her hands. “Children, time to go outside. Who wants to have a snowball war?” She pointed a bony finger at Ingo and Axel, who obediently abandoned their coffee to shepherd the children into their coats and boots.
