The Finish Line r5-5

by Cliff Ryder

  "Negative."

  "How about you, Team Two?"

  "If they got by us, they were freakin' invisible," M-Four replied.

  "All teams, fall back to the van." David heard the two-tone scream of the approaching British police sirens. "We're leaving," M-One ordered.

  Still alert in case their opponents were crazy enough to double back, David and Tara skirted the trees as they headed to the van. Jumping aboard, M-One closed the doors and drove out the back way, turning left onto the road that bordered the north side of the park and driving away casually as the rest of the team members removed their armor and changed into civilian clothes.

  Driving until they well away from the park, M-One pulled into the parking lot of a car-washing facility and looked around. "M-Four, open that garage door."

  David ignored the dark stare as M-Four, a guy named Robert Muldowney, shoved past him on his way out. Instead, he worked his way up to the space between the two front seats. "Sir?"

  "Yes?" M-One's eyes never left the nearby road.

  "The other team, they hadn't finished their job when they left."

  That remark earned him a raised eyebrow. "Explain."

  "When I followed them…" Against orders, David thought but didn't say "…I overheard them talking about a woman, and how she had escaped the ambush. One of the men said something about if she got what they wanted. She was some kind of computer hacker…"

  The rattle of metal against metal interrupted him as M-Four pushed the garage door up, revealing a large interior with hoses and other cleaning equipment. M-One drove inside. "Soap it down and get every scrap of paint off," he ordered.

  David scrambled outside and grabbed a wand as M-Four turned the washing system on. As soon as the soapy water hit the van's dark gray paint, it began to flake and slough off in large sheets, dissolving into a sludgy mess that dribbled toward the drain. Underneath was a pristine white coat. Inside, M-One hit a button, and the license plate rotated to a completely new number.

  David smiled, humming the James Bond theme under his breath. Sometimes the old ways are still the best ways, he thought. He examined the fender damage caused by the SUV's graze, making sure that no paint traces from the other vehicle had been left over in the wash. Five minutes later, they had completely transformed the van. He also knew they wouldn't show up on any street cameras, since M-One had activated a scrambler that would knock out any recording devices in a one-block radius. Anyone using a digital camera at the time was out of luck.

  Their leader pulled the van back out, and David and M-Four cleaned up, making sure that all of the paint was washed down the drain, and leaving the tools exactly where they had found them. M-Four closed and locked the door.

  Tara beat David back to the side door. "M-One wants to see you up front."

  "Yeah, time to face the music. Sorry to make you lose your seat."

  "Don't worry about it." She held up a funny-looking piece of foam with what looked like a black piece of plastic inside. "I need to play with this at the console anyway. Recovered it from outside the house — figured the other team put it there for surveillance."

  "Nice going, rook — ah, M-Three." David flushed, all too aware that he hadn't been nearly as proficient in executing the mission as their newest teammate. He clapped her on the shoulder and headed up to the front of the van.

  "Now that we're undercover again…" M-One's gray eyes flashed at David, letting the other man know he was still accountable for the breach of orders earlier "tell me everything you heard — every single word."

  4

  The woman shivered in the chill evening air as she watched the bustling activity around Wyvil Road. The entire area had been secured by police tape, with the street blocked off at both ends by Metropolitan Police Service vehicles and uniformed, armed officers bustling everywhere. Beyond the cordon, media vans swarmed, with perfectly pressed and coiffed reporters jockeying for the best shots and interviews as they scrambled to get on the air. The woman made sure to avoid the roving cameras at all costs.

  For the moment, she was safe enough among the crowd of people peering and peeking, everyday, ordinary folk looking for a bit of excitement, their voices overlapping as they tried to find out what was going on:

  "Do you know what happened?"

  "Probably a drug deal gone wrong. Wankers most likely lit each other up…"

  "I saw some of the lodgers around…they seemed like nice enough people…"

  "Dear God, what is that smell? Someone been trudging around in the sewers?"

  At that last bit, she moved a couple meters away, all too aware that she was the one most likely causing the odor the last person had complained about. Even as she stood there, watching the chaotic scene, a part of her mind repeated that she needed to move, needed to get the hell out of there, just casually turn around and walk away, another spectator who had grown bored with watching the police and was heading for home. But she stayed, waiting to see the proof with her own eyes.

  Waiting for the bodies to be removed from the scene.

  It had seemed like only moments ago — had it really been an hour? — when she had finished with Harry and sent him on his errand, hiding the few cigarettes left in the pack because, well, by the time he got back, she'd be gone from his life forever.

  As soon as she'd heard the front door close, Marlene had slipped out of the bed, grabbed her clothes and run to the bathroom, cleaning up and getting dressed in under three minutes. Pulling her long hair back in a ponytail, she had grabbed her laptop and case, trotted to the door and opened it to reveal her brother about to knock, an impish grin on his face as he sniffed the air.

  "You two getting cozy in here?"

  "Don't be gross. Are we done?"

  He held up a matching, soft-sided computer case and patted his front jeans pocket. "I finished the final run downstairs while you were — taking care of business. We're out of here." He nudged her as they walked to the stairs. "Next time we do a run like this, we need to find a group with a hot woman as the leader. Maybe a blonde."

  "I'll be sure to put that on my list. Now come on." She had been about to put her foot on the first step when she heard a noise from downstairs — a noise that shouldn't have been made in the first place.

  Who's up at this hour? she wondered. None of the cell members should have been moving around — the sedative she had added to their dinner of vegetarian curry would have ensured that. And Harry had been taken care of by her personally. So who's left?

  "What's the holdup?" Ray peered around her, trying to see into the gloom of the ground floor.

  "I heard something — like a footstep," she whispered.

  He frowned. "Probably just the crappy old house settling. Here…" he pressed the flash drive into her hand "…I'll go have a look. Hang back until I call you."

  She waited on the landing as he crept down the stairs. He had only taken a few steps when the noise sounded again, a bit louder this time. "Hey, who's down there? Gabe? Aron?"

  Marlene peered around him, trying to see in the dimness, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. She wanted to call Ray back up, tell him not to go down there, but before she could, a black-clad arm extended out from the archway leading to the back hall, with something even darker extending from its fist.

  The sneeze of the silenced pistol made her choke on her warning. The gun coughed again, making Ray gasp as each bullet impacted his body. He sagged, clutching the railing, then slid down the rest of the staircase to land in a messy heap on the floor. The arm pointed down at his face, and fired the pistol twice more.

  Marlene clapped her hands over her face to keep from screaming. She was frozen with terror, unable to comprehend what she had just seen. The arm moved forward, with a night-clad figure materializing in the dim hallway below her, his face covered in a strange mask with large, eerie goggles over his eyes. The shooter checked her brother's body, then looked up the stairway as he lifted one foot to begin the climb. The motion shocked the breath fr
om her body, but then the strange, masked head looked down the hall as it and Marlene heard the same noise — a key turning in the lock of the front door.

  Leading with the pistol, the intruder stalked down the hallway. Only when he was out of sight did Marlene move, creeping back to the door without making a sound and slipping into the bedroom. After the door was closed and locked, she remembered at last to suck in a breath. She heard a strange, muffled thump from downstairs, and realized what it probably was — Harry had just been shot.

  Oh, my god. Marlene went to the window overlooking the street and moved the heavy, dusty curtain back to peek out the window, hearing footsteps pound up the front steps.

  The only thought in her mind now was escape. She had no doubt that Ray was dead — his killer was too much of a pro to not make sure of it. She looked around, frantically searching for and discarding options. The windows had been painted shut long ago, and certain death waited outside the door. Her gaze settled on the laundry chute, flashing back to a playful wrestling match Harry had had with her a few days ago as he had threatened to stuff her down it. At the time, it had been in jest, but now it was her only way out. She opened the trapdoor and peered into the square black hole. No one used it anymore, but she was pretty sure it wasn't blocked by anything. At least she hoped it wasn't. The only thing worse than facing the killers out there would be having them find her, trapped and helpless, halfway down.

  Hopping up onto the ledge, she inserted her legs into the chute and braced herself against the sides, clutching at the trapdoor to make sure it closed after her. Taking a deep breath, she let go, holding the padded laptop case above her head. The fall was claustrophobic and brief — total blackness for a moment, and then she landed in a pile of stiff, moldy sheets she and her brother had seen the last time they had been down in the basement.

  Rolling out, she stood and threw the cloth to one side, wiping away grime as she made sure that the laptop case was still secure, then slung it over her shoulder. "So it did work." She looked up at the square, then jerked back as she heard more firearms going off on the floor above her. Holes suddenly punched through the side of the chute, raining plaster and pieces of wood down on her. Time to get the hell out of here, she thought as she heard a deafening bang from upstairs.

  Running to the opposite corner of the basement, brushing webs out of her face — the spiders are just as bad over here as in the States — she pushed aside a grubby, damp tarpaulin, revealing an old, wet and stained manhole cover, left over from one of the innumerable sewer updates during the past century. Taking a small halogen headlamp from a pocket on the computer case, Marlene levered the cover off, nearly wrenching her arms out of their sockets, and disappeared into the small, dank tunnel below, making sure to pull the cover back over the hole before she left.

  She splashed through the muck as fast as she dared, the small light only illuminating a few yards ahead of her. The air was hot and moist, and she tried to breathe through her mouth as much as possible. Sounds of night creatures were all around her, with the squeaking and scurrying of rats through the muck, and the buzz of the strange insects that made their home in the filthy surroundings. Although she had watched her brother get gunned down without a sound, she nearly lost it when a large, multilegged insect dropped onto her head. Brushing it off with a stifled scream, she hurled it against the wall and kept moving.

  Marlene pushed aside all other thoughts, like whether or not the masked killers were coming after her, and concentrated on the twists and turns in the tunnel that would take her to her ultimate destination and out of this hellhole. Only once did she pause, at an intersection that led to another, cleaner tunnel leading off to the north-northwest that she and Ray had used often during the past few weeks. Brushing away tears, she turned down the smaller, grimier tunnel that led to the northeast.

  After several more minutes of trudging through the ankle-deep sludgy water, she saw her goal — a street drain in a seldom-used alley behind an abandoned Pakistani take-away restaurant. She and Ray had made sure the grate could be opened the previous week. Trying to hold back her sobs, she reached the iron grating and shoved it up and out of the way, set the computer case on the ground, then hauled herself up. She gulped in the stale, fried-food smell of the restaurant Dumpster nearby as if it was fresh country air. After replacing the grate, she washed her feet off as best as she could in a nearby puddle of water, but was still all too aware of the stench she had picked up on her journey.

  The first thing was to change her appearance. Scanning the street of the run-down neighborhood, she spotted what she needed at the corner — a youth hostel next to a twenty-four-hour shop providing supplies for weary travelers. A quick visit to the latter got her a change of clothes, and payment for a common room ensured the use of a bathroom with a toilet stall for some privacy. Marlene got out her Swiss Army knife, opened the scissors attachment and went to work.

  Ten minutes later, her long hair had been cut to a short, spiky bob, and she was dressed in clothes that belonged on the body of a woman a decade younger than her, but were suitable for today's London — striped black-and-white leggings under a denim miniskirt, an off-the-shoulder, tight-fitting T-shirt and a hoodie sweatshirt to go over the top of that. A ball cap completed her disguise, very useful for keeping her face out of sight of the ever-present cameras. The only thing they couldn't replace were her shoes, so she rinsed them out in the dirty sink and put them back on, doing her best to ignore the squelching noises they made with each step.

  After leaving the hostel, her initial thought was to get to the Tube and figure out a way out of the city at least, and the country if possible. But her steps had led her back to the house on Wyvil Road, and now she smothered a gasp as two white-sheeted forms were carried out on stretchers to waiting ambulances. They were followed by two more, then two more.

  Marlene knew that no one she cared about had survived the ambush. Bye, Ray. Bye, Harry. She patted the pocket of her skirt, which held the flash drive that her brother had given her, and walked away from the commotion down the fog-shrouded street.

  5

  In the backseat of a limousine, Kate resisted the urge to add drops to her parched eyes, blinking to remoisten them. Although the trip from Dublin to London had only taken a little over an hour, the warm, dry air at the airport and on the plane, not to mention the accelerated pace at which she had left her hotel and raced to make the flight, had left her more tired than she cared to admit.

  Next to her, Samantha looked flawless, as usual. Kate resisted the urge to sneak disdainful looks at her out of the corner of her eye — the unflappable Brit wouldn't even notice, and it would only make her feel more unkempt. Damn jet lag, she thought. I should have known catching the red-eye over the pond wouldn't help me all that much.

  Even worse, the man sitting across from her also looked disturbingly bright-eyed and alert at this late hour. Still clad in the tuxedo he had worn to the party, Jacob Marrs was her Room 59-assigned bodyguard. He kept an eye on her pretty much anytime she left the house. At first, Kate had protested the very idea, stating that since the agency she worked for was so ultrasecret, who would even know that she worked for them or what she did? The board members of the IIA had insisted, however, and now she could hardly imagine a time when Jake's solid, imposing presence hadn't been nearby. Even now, with the gorgeous Samantha hardly an arm's length away, he gave her no more attention than he would any other person who wasn't a threat on his radar. He had checked their driver's identity six ways from Sunday, scanned the limousine for bugs, bombs and anything else out of the ordinary, and only when he had been satisfied had he let the two women get in and made the signal for them to be on their way. Once on the relatively quiet city streets, his alertness hadn't wavered for an instant, as he constantly surveyed the areas they passed through, watching for the slightest anomaly or anything that seemed out of place.

  Without looking up from her PDA, Kate decided to test him. "How did marking Mr. Weatherby's car g
o?"

  "The car was marked within ten minutes of your giving me the signal, and an operative is watching his every move as we speak. If there is no overt activity on his part that is out of the ordinary in the next twenty-four hours, standard operating procedure will reduce surveillance to intermittent unless otherwise ordered." His eyes flicked to hers for a second before resuming his sweep. "I would have searched his car more thoroughly, but I had to make sure to keep you in sight before you left the party."

  Samantha nodded in approval. "You weren't kidding when you said he was good."

  "Better than good." Kate met his gaze and flashed a brief smile.

  Jake didn't stop his study of their surroundings as he spoke. "Don't get the chance to do a lot of fieldwork, other than making sure Kate can do her job without interference, so it's a nice change of pace to stretch my legs and get my hands dirty, so to speak. Besides, while I can't speak for her, six months of accompanying either Kate or Mindy on shopping trips or runs to the grocery store can make a person long for something a bit more — exciting — to break the routine."

  "Spoken like a true man of action." Samantha leaned forward. "I've perused your dossier, Mr. Marrs — it's quite impressive. If there's time while you're here — and with Kate's permission, of course — I wouldn't mind utilizing your extensive training with some of my field agents. I'd imagine you would have a lot to teach them, particularly in the area of executive protection."

  Jake rubbed his chin. "Well, the Room 59 training is pretty extensive, but I might be able give them a few specialized pointers. Let me know if you had any specific areas in mind, and once we're settled into the op base — and if I'm not needed elsewhere — I'll see what I can do."

  The chirp of a satellite phone interrupted the conversation, and Samantha reached for hers and flipped it open. "Excuse me. Hello?"