The Gift of the Dragon

by Michael Murray

  “I feel like hell. Stupid, too.”

  “Ah, humility, is it, Laird? That is a start. Not enough to save you, but a good start.”

  “If you’re not humble in this world, humbleness will be brought upon you.”

  “Quoting Sangerman. After he went mad. Nice touch.” Callan pointed at the ship on the wall. “That was your first ship?”

  “Yes. The Michigan. You know that.”

  “Yeah. You were on her when the Buffalo rammed her. That makes you close to Sangerman’s age when he went mad.”

  “I’m not sure of his madness anymore.”

  “Crap, old man! You killed him! You and Brandon. Like you tried to kill me.”

  “I never wanted to kill you, Callan. I asked you to obey orders. You refused. That is betrayal of your oath to the families. Desertion. You sentenced yourself.”

  “How did that work out for you?”

  “It didn’t.” Northwin sighed. “You find me disappointed in myself.”

  The room smelled of spilled whiskey. Callan saw that Northwin had knocked a bottle over when he collapsed and the cap had been loose. The whiskey had spread over the desk, staining the aerial photos there.

  “It makes us mad, old man. Andracia. When we get to be your age.”

  “I have heard that said. So far, Sam Sangerman is the only proof.”

  “And Peter Moore.”

  “Did Moore go mad?” Northwin stopped struggling against the gray tape. “I know he’s dead, but not how. Do you know?”

  “Horseman, meet the Grim Reaper. I killed Moore. Talked to him first. He was nuts.”

  “McAlister sent you to do that?”

  “Of course. Franklin still has Apple Creek’s interests at heart. He is younger than you and Brandon.”

  “You have become quite the freelancer since you left the Guardians, Callan.”

  “How many people have you killed, Northwin? To keep Sangerman’s big secret safe?”

  Northwin slumped. “Millions would die if the truth were known.”

  “So you kill thousands to preserve millions.”

  “It’s a thing that had to be done.”

  “You really believe this crap, old man.”

  “Yes, I do, Callan. I’ve lived my life for it. I’ve killed for it. Now, it looks like I’ll die for it. Sangerman gave us a great gift, but if that gift escapes our control, there will not be enough food! There will be war worse than anything that has come before. The great cities will burn. The idiots have weapons that can destroy entire nations! They threaten each other with them like children on a playground! We can’t control them all yet. When they face starvation, as fresh water, steel, oil, even coal runs out, there will be war to make all the terrible wars of the last centuries look like peace. I have tried to hold that back, with a gun, with a knife, with a sword.” Northwin pulled against his bonds and slumped back. “With an oath.”

  “And you want to kill me because I don’t obey your rules. I’ve infected others, Northwin. They didn’t make the deal. You’d try to kill me and kill them too. You’d be trying to kill me now if I were stuck in that chair instead of you!”

  Northwin nodded, his smile grim. “I would not try, Callan. I’d have already done it instead of torturing you with pointless debate.”

  “Death’s all you have to offer me, then, old man?”

  “You left. No one can leave the Guardians, Callan.”

  “I did.”

  “And now you’ve come back. I can guess your plan. You’ll kill me and then appeal to McAlister to give you my position. He may. Then you’ll have the responsibility of keeping the oath. You ready for that?”

  Callan thought it very unlikely that McAlister would actually embrace him. He pulled the tablet from his pocket.

  “McAlister wants this more than he wants me. What’s on it?”

  “I have no idea, Callan.”

  “You sent your men after me in Klamath. I interrogated one! Your Argentine ninja. They were after this. I killed them. You sent Faith Parcy after me in Mississippi. You gave her your orders yourself! She also was sent to try to get this tablet from me. That’s why I came here. You should have left me alone, let me deal with McAlister for what is on this.”

  Northwin rolled his eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I sent no one after you. I didn’t even know you still worked for McAlister. I would have gone to D.C. and torn his eyes out if I had known he had hired you again! So you killed Moore. Did you also kill Brandon?”

  Callan felt his eyes opening wide. “Robert Brandon is dead?”

  “Yeah. On a hunting trip with Ian McAlister. McAlister said the old fool went after a bear with a spear! This time he poked something that proved more than his match.”

  Callan stared through half-closed eyes. “It’s hard to believe a bear killed Robert Brandon.”

  “Yeah, hard to believe unless the bear had help.”

  “Ayn McAlister is his wife—”

  “Right. And when you kill me, the McAlisters will be fully in control of Apple Creek. You are Franklin’s tool.”

  Callan slashed his fist at Northwin, rocking his gray head backward and almost toppling his chair.

  More blood flowed down Northwin’s chin. He spat on the desk, red mixing with the amber whiskey. “You can hit me all night. It won’t change what’s been done. You’ve accomplished much for Franklin. I’m sure he knows you are here.”

  “Stop chattering about McAlister! I asked you about this tablet.” Callan sat on the desk now, facing Northwin, whose chair backed up to the wood-paneled steel wall of the cabin. Callan noticed a metal box by the corner of the desk.

  “Have you been fishing, Laird?” Callan said softly.

  Northwin looked surprised. “Sometimes.”

  Callan reached down and lifted the box up on the desk. “Looks like a tackle box. Often, I’ll have a pair of pliers or vise grips in my tackle box for pulling hooks out. They are especially good for hardhead catfish. You know the kind, Laird?”

  Northwin grunted.

  “Nasty fish. Always swallowing the bait. Then, they’ve got those poison barbs. Amazing how something like that came to be. More proof there’s no God. Ah yes, here they are.” Callan held up a long tool with ridged teeth set in two stainless-steel jaws. “Nice vise grips. Now, the tablet has a key. That key was hanging around the lovely neck of Alice Sangerman last I saw it.”

  Northwin looked surprised again. “I sent Thorn to bring her in. He failed. I have no idea where she is now.”

  “For crap’s sake, old man. Your intelligence is miles behind the eight ball! If McAlister wants to be rid of you, it's no wonder!” Callan opened and closed the vise grips. They made a wicked clacking sound when the jaws came together.

  “My intelligence is no worse than yours, boy. This tablet and Alice—I have no idea about either. McAlister is playing you. Like a fish.”

  Callan waved the vise grips in Northwin’s face and then closed them on the man’s scarred nose. “Ah, Laird, how far you have fallen. You have forgotten your own lessons! Tell me, old man, where is your backup plan?”

  Jacob

  While Alice slept in the luxury suite, Jacob dressed in black sweatpants and shirt, and with Marsdale’s gun in his black fanny pack, he went down to the lobby and out the door toward the seawall where the Endurance and another mega-yacht were tied. He also carried a small, blue gym bag. In it were some of the clothes from the collection Alice had mistaken for his laundry. The sidewalk along the waterfront looked deserted now, and even the guards Jacob and Alice saw earlier patrolling the Endurance seemed to be gone.

  “Like you said, Price, everyone is gone except for our chief security officer,” Jacob muttered. He didn’t think it would be this easy. The ship must have alarms all over that would go off if he got on board. Or maybe not. Northwin was still on board, so maybe he had the motion detectors turned off. Northwin wouldn’t want an alarm going off and attracting attention to his party with Grant!

>   Jacob jogged up alongside the ship and tossed the gym bag up on the boarding deck where a ramp would stretch between the yacht and the dock if it were extended. He jogged on by, ears tuned for any new sound. Hearing nothing, he turned around. Still, nothing was happening on the ship. No alarms, then. I hope that means that Northwin is busy having fun with Grant!

  Mist-shrouded streetlights sparkled along the sidewalk but not along the seawall past the no-trespassing sign. Probably the mega-yacht owners did not like bright lights shining on them at night. On his second pass by the Endurance, Jacob looked around, and then, reaching up to the side of the vessel, he vaulted himself aboard. Almost immediately he tripped over a body. That wasn’t part of Price’s plan! He knelt down and gagged when he saw the stump of the neck. What the hell happened here? The dead man wore the black fatigues with the wolf’s-head symbol of Northwin’s Guardians on his shoulder. Jacob pulled out his gun, clicking the safety off.

  Two decks above, from a room next to the bridge of the Endurance, Jacob heard muffled voices. As he moved closer, he could hear shouting and sounds similar to those meat makes when struck by a tenderizing hammer. Moving in, he could start to make out the words.

  “Tell me what is on the tablet, old man! Where’s the key?” Someone groaned with a tone of denial, and then more pounding. Then more loudly, “Where is Sangerman?! How did she survive! Why won’t that bitch die?”

  Jacob carefully tried the steel handle of the door and found it unlocked. The voice shouted again about a key and a tablet. Having heard enough, Jacob eased the door open. It made a faint scraping sound, so he gave up on stealth and pushed it open hard. He saw legs tied to a chair and, standing over them, a muscular, dark-haired man who turned and rushed him, moving faster than anyone Jacob had ever seen, knocking aside his .45, and striking him in his sternum.

  Jacob recognized the assailant as Callan Grant. Out of the corner of his eye, Jacob saw the face of the bloody man tied to the chair. Laird Northwin!

  Price said Northwin was interrogating Grant! Gasping, he struggled to bring his gun back on target. Grant struck him again in the sternum with his elbow.

  Too close in for a shot, Jacob brought the butt of his .45 down on top of Grant’s head. Grant caught his wrist, twisting the gun out of Jacob’s hand.

  Northwin roared and struggled with his bonds, veins popping out on his forehead, his face dripping with blood.

  Jacob tried to claw at Grant’s eyes with the hand that had been holding the gun. Grant moved faster, twisting one of Jacob’s fingers back and breaking it with a pop Jacob felt all the way up his arm. Jacob swept Grant’s leg out from under him and shoved him over backward. Jacob followed him down, his fists raining down on Grant’s face. Grant stopped moving. Northwin knocked over his chair, trying to roll it on the floor to break loose. Gasping for breath, Jacob got back up and aimed a vicious kick at Grant’s side. Jacob didn’t see Grant twitch, but somehow Grant caught his foot. Ripping tendons burned through Jacob’s ankle as Grant wrenched it sideways.

  Jacob rolled as he fell and landed on his hands and knees, the broken finger sending a pillar of pain up his right arm. He scrambled toward the back wall of the room, where the .45 lay. From the table, Grant grabbed a pair of vise-grip pliers and hurled them at Jacob, knocking his head forward and causing his teeth to come together on his tongue.

  Blood pouring from his lips, Jacob grabbed the pistol and spun smoothly around, firing. Grant leaped forward in a somersault, and the shot went high, hitting the room’s paneled wall and then ricocheting off the steel beneath the thin paneling with a shrieking whine. Slowed by his broken trigger finger, Jacob tried to fire again, but before he could get a shot off, Grant was on him.

  Jacob brought the gun down on Grant’s head again and felt it crunch solidly into his skull, but then it slipped from Jacob’s grasp and rattled across the floor. Not wanting to give up a second’s advantage, Jacob rolled Grant on his back and, biting his cheek to blunt the pain of his broken finger, grabbed Grant’s throat with both hands.

  Grant’s face went white, and his eyes snapped open as his brief daze passed. Suddenly, Jacob felt his ankle catch fire again as Grant’s free hand twisted it. Recoiling involuntarily, Jacob let up enough for Grant to throw him off and, gasping and a little unsteady, regain his feet. Jacob got up also, putting most of his weight on his right foot.

  Grant had the wall behind him, and he put a foot up and kicked off it, slamming his shoulder into Jacob’s side. This blow knocked Jacob off balance and into the other wall of the small room.

  Grant’s palm heel punched him in the chin, rocking his head back against the wall. Jacob managed to strike back hard with his left, slamming into Grant’s eye.

  This gave Jacob enough time to grab the .45 and bring it up and point it directly between Grant’s eyes. Instinctively, Jacob shouted, “Freeze!”

  Both Grant’s hands came up before Jacob could shoot, grabbing the gun between them and pulling it forward and to the side. Jacob fired, but the bullet went wide.

  Realizing his rookie mistake, Jacob had no time for another action as Grant swept his foot and whirled his gun hand to his right. Grant then twisted the gun out of Jacob’s hand, reversed it, and then brought it around in a rapid backhand arc.

  The gun barrel connected hard with the side of Jacob’s head, and the bad scene went black.

  Callan

  “So you don’t know what is on this tablet or how to open it. And you don’t know where Alice Sangerman is.”

  “Right.”

  “Then I have no more time for this unprofitable chat.” Callan’s knife flashed, and blood flowed from Laird Northwin’s throat. Choking, he tried one last time to break free from his chair, but the duct tape held. Blood poured down his grizzled chest, and Laird Northwin's last breath bubbled out of his neck. Callan did not stop with the knife. He pulled out his silenced pistol and emptied it into Northwin’s head, leaving nothing left but a bloody mass that looked like a ball of raw hamburger mixed with relish.

  “Freak!” Jacob Castellan yelled, edging his chair away from the spreading pool of gore.

  “Who, me? You will be the one who killed him, Jacob Castellan, ex-FBI agent, current drunk.”

  “I’m undercover now, Grant. My people will be here soon, and you’ll be behind bars where you belong.”

  “Your people, right. Northwin seems to have a lot of photos of you, Castellan. 'Seemed,' I guess I should say.” Callan tossed a folder on the table. “And all these articles about how you killed your sister looking for drugs.”

  “That’s all part of my cover.”

  Callan took a deep breath, remembering one of his favorite Clausewitz sayings: Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. “Northwin is not my only source.” He sat down on the desk, facing Castellan and Northwin’s still-dripping body. “You have to decide now,” Callan made a show of looking at the open folder and tracing Castellan’s name with his finger, “Jacob. Do you want to end up like my old friend here?” Callan picked up the picture of Alice and Jacob on a boat, showing him the back. He read the note on the back, “Old wooden bridge, September 11. A few days ago, you were with Alice Sangerman. Where is she now?” Callan watched Jacob’s eyes intently as he said it. They were caged. Castellan knew where she was.

  “She’s safe from you, bastard.”

  Callan nodded. Get him talking. “I am a bastard, you know. My father was a Russian artilleryman. My name used to be Grabin. Dear old Dad passed through Mother’s village and left me behind. So how was she?”

  “What?”

  “I read here that Northwin’s boys found you and Alice all shacked up at your sister’s house. A handsome young man like you. Surely an old cougar such as Alice wouldn’t let you escape without a taste.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re insane.”

  Callan noted how Castellan’s eyes flickered during that exchange. So something did happen between them.

  “I’m insane?
No, that won’t happen for many years yet. You, on the other hand, are a firm believer in many half-truths and several outright lies. Does that make you mad? Or merely stupid?”

  Still watching Castellan’s eyes closely, he could tell the man had no idea what Callan’s words meant. She didn’t tell him about Andracia.

  Callan’s head throbbed where Castellan had pistol-whipped him. He decided to turn up the heat. He slammed the picture down on the table and shouted, “Stop lying to me! Where is she?” Callan punctuated his outburst by catching some of Castellan’s brown hair in his vise grips, and pulling a chunk out. That got him a somewhat satisfying yell of shock and pain.

  They heard a sound outside in response. “Jacob!” someone shouted faintly. A woman. Castellan looked elated… then stricken.

  “Ha! She came for you. Will you come when she calls you? That is the question.”

  Jacob looked confused.

  Callan slammed the heavy pliers against Jacob’s skull, stunning him. Then he slapped duct tape over Jacob’s mouth, wrapping it around his head to keep it in place.

  Callan smiled. “No, I guess you won’t come. But don’t worry, I will!”

  Alice

  Alice woke up with a serious headache and asked herself what had happened. She remembered the sweet citrus taste of the Red Bull that Jacob brought her. And then nothing. I fell asleep? After drinking a Red Bull? What is wrong with me?

  “Jacob,” she called. Where did he go? She crawled out of bed and looked at herself in the mirror. I look like a crazy woman! Her hair stood up almost straight out, like a clown's. She didn’t want Jacob to see her like this, but she looked out of the bedroom anyway. The lights were off in the main room of the suite. “Jacob! You son of a bitch!”

  If he had gone down to the Endurance alone, she would kill him. If he isn’t already dead.

  With her head foggy from sleep, Alice rushed from the room and then just before the door closed, she stuck her foot back to stop it. She looked insane. She needed to fix her hair. And she didn’t have a gun. Thorn’s gun should still be in her bag. She went to get it and then cursed when she found it. No bullets! Jacob must have taken the clip. Northwin would probably be armed. She would need some sort of weapon. And a place to put it, not these little Daisy Duke shorts she wore. She remembered there were army surplus combat pants in Jacob’s bag of dirty laundry. She grabbed the smallest pair. At least the bag contained something useful!