Nomad

by James Swallow

  Marc saw the pieces falling into place. With Nash thought dead along with the rest of Nomad, he was free to drop off the radar and become a direct agent for the Combine’s interests. “You wanted to wipe us out…” His lips thinned. “But it was a balls-up. You missed one.” Marc jerked a thumb in his own direction.

  Nash’s grin cooled. “I admit, that did not make me happy. Anyone else, I might have been impressed, but you? Got out by dumb fucking luck.” He leaned in. “Tell me something. Did you cry about her? When you were on the run, did you shed a tear for that bitch?”

  Marc started forward, the impulse to strike Nash coming from out of nowhere, but he barely got a step before the other mercenary struck him across the back of the neck. He staggered and gasped through the pain.

  “Let me tell you something,” Nash went on, as if nothing had happened. “Sam … You weren’t the first place she went for her fun. You were a long way down that list.”

  “Is that why you killed her?” Marc retorted. He knew that Sam Green had been with other men before him, but it had never occurred to him to look inside Nomad. Suddenly, all the veiled slights Nash had ever directed at him took on a new focus. “Did she have enough of your macho bullshit and cut you loose?”

  Something flared in Nash’s eyes, and Marc was certain he had struck a nerve. For a moment, he thought that the turncoat agent was going to take him on, but instead he pointed a finger at Marc’s face and the cold sneer returned. “Women, eh? Who knows how they think? I dunno what she ever saw in you. You’re a fucking wash-out. You’ve never had the stones to do the job. Being a clever boy don’t get you far, pal. You ain’t got the fucking instinct in you.” He looked away. “I got a call, told me you were probably heading to DC. You were either gonna show up here or get yourself caught in all the shit-storm that’s coming…” Nash glanced at his watch. “… in the next thirty minutes.”

  “What?” Marc caught on Nash’s words. “Who called you?”

  “The other one,” said the Afrikaner mercenary. “At MI6.”

  “Like I said, in deep. Wasn’t just me who was smart enough to see the writing on the wall,” Nash explained. “London’s been tracking you. And what Six knows, so do we.” He chuckled again. “If you’d been good at this, you might have been able to get the drop on me. But nah. You’re too fucking weak to pull a trigger.”

  Marc met Nash’s gaze. “You’d be surprised at what I’m capable of.”

  “Oh.” Nash gave a slow nod, and gestured at the air. “All this, then … That’s been the making of you, has it? Toughened you up?” He came closer. “Made a man of ya?” His fist came up in a fast right cross and Marc instinctively flinched back.

  The blow never landed, stopping short as Nash let his hand drop and laughed at his reaction. “Ellis,” he said, glancing at the other man. “Make use of this prick. Waste him and stick him with that dead copper. Make it look like he did it, give the yanks the run-around.”

  “What about you?”

  “Time to book,” Nash replied. “If asshole here found us, more trouble’s coming.”

  “The hotel is full of feds,” Marc snapped, seizing on the other man’s words.

  “Yeah, sure,” Nash sniffed, unimpressed. “Get him out of my sight. And for fuck’s sake, make sure he’s dead this time.”

  The South African mercenary grabbed a handful of Marc’s shoulder strap, and dragged him up by his backpack, cracking him a second time across the neck with his gun. “Walk on,” he grated, pushing him away toward the rooftop access.

  * * *

  The crowd was in a buoyant mood, and music was playing across the Mall, piped in through speaker stacks arranged before the stage. On video screens as big as the side of a house, a youth group from Seattle were playing a spirited take on some old jazz number, and people were clapping. The main event was close at hand, the introduction of the President of the United States and the speech that would kick off a week of education-related rallies and political events here in the nation’s capital.

  Lucy’s federal badge had got her into the rally, but she knew that security would have already run her details, that they would be scrambling people right now to surround her and bring her in.

  She saw the Michigan school bus out on the street. They were here.

  Pushing aside everything else crowding her mind, she made herself think like a terrorist, scanning the crowds and seeing only targets to be destroyed. Where would I go?

  She started moving again, plotting out optimal points of attack, and immediately one location leaped out at her. Close to the main stage, beyond a set of tall flagpoles. Good sight lines, heavy civilian concentration. Massive potential for casualties.

  As she approached, a figure caught Lucy’s eye. A man in a conservative suit jacket, his face half-hidden behind thick-rimmed eyeglasses. His movement drew her because he had changed direction in the middle of his stride, pivoting away from a police dog handler. The man was carefully avoiding the gaze of the cop, and in the process he allowed her to get a good look at him instead.

  She knew him. A few hours earlier, aboard Solomon’s jet as it crossed the Atlantic, Lucy had spent the time when she couldn’t sleep poring over files that Delancort had dredged up from Rubicon’s archives. This man’s face had been among them, part of a list of known associates of the terrorist Omar Khadir.

  Jadeed Amarah. One of Al Sayf’s active soldiers, ex-military like his commander, a zealot and ruthless with it. Amarah had made a good attempt to fox any facial recognition software that might be sifting security camera feeds, the heavy glasses breaking up his profile just enough to confuse a machine, but not enough to keep a human eye from making the connection.

  She glanced around. If he was here, then so were the carriers. Lucy reached for her smartphone, then realized that it would be useless inside the no-signal cell jamming zone. Amarah drifted away, melting into the crowd, and she lost sight of him. Lucy cursed and pushed her way through another knot of teenagers, ignoring their complaints as she made a beeline for the flags.

  Behind her, she heard a dog barking, but the noise was lost as the jazz players launched into the raucous, up-tempo finale of their set. She kept pushing on, scanning the faces in the crowd. A jolt of despair clutched at her chest, and Lucy felt the first stirrings of actual panic.

  What if she was standing right here, still looking for him, when it happened? A string of violent detonations, bodies bursting open into fireballs. Hundreds caught in the inferno, many more scarred for life. Horrible images of carnage clouded her thoughts and it took a physical effort for her to shake them off. She chided herself. Don’t dwell, girl, she thought. That’s not how they trained you.

  Lucy pushed the momentary lapse to the back of her mind, and in that second she saw her target. He was no more than two hundred meters distant from her, moving toward the far end of the stage. There were three youths walking close by, following in his footsteps, and her breath caught in her throat as she realized who—and what—they had to be.

  That meant the others Al Sayf had brought to Washington were already here, already in place. Lucy moved toward Amarah, never taking her eyes off him.

  Then a strong hand closed around her wrist and she spun, trying and failing to disengage. A woman and a man were crowding in on her, both of them in the basic black suits that were the uniform of the United States Secret Service.

  “Ma’am, can you come with us, please?” The female agent holding her had a dark and unreadable complexion. Lucy glimpsed the tip of a stun prod in her other hand, concealed up the sleeve of her jacket.

  “Don’t make a scene,” said the second agent, his eyes lost behind a pair of black sunglasses.

  “Listen to me,” Lucy began, keeping her stance neutral to show she wasn’t a threat. “There’s a high value terrorist target on site, right there.” She turned to point to where Amarah had been standing, but her heart sank as she realized he had vanished once again. “He’s here,” she insisted. “If you just�
�”

  “I’ll put you down if you make me.” The woman was deadly serious. “We know who you are, Keyes. How this goes next is up to you.”

  Lucy’s lip curled. “You think I would just waltz in here and let you see me unless I wanted to? There’s a threat.”

  “And we’re looking at it,” said the other agent. “Lucille Keyes, you’re under arrest. Now walk … because we won’t ask again.”

  “Shit.” She hesitated. If push came to shove, Lucy believed she had a fifty-fifty chance of taking down these two. But if she did, it would be right here in broad daylight with hundreds of onlookers, and reinforcements would be on her in moments, not to mention what might happen if Amarah was spooked. The smart choice was to surrender, at least for the moment, and then try to get these people to listen to her. But time was against her. “Okay, I’m not resisting. But I need to talk to the agent in charge, and in the next ten minutes.”

  “Why?” demanded the other woman.

  “Because if you wait, we may not be around to have a conversation.”

  * * *

  Each footstep was marking off the distance to that last bullet. Marc could sense it waiting for him, a burning shot that would end him on this windswept rooftop, thousands of miles from home.

  The injustice of it raged inside him. After coming so far, after putting a face to the pain and the anger that had driven him, Marc could not allow it to end like this. He vowed there would be no more casualties today from Al Sayf’s vindictive war and the Combine’s ruthless power games. I won’t let it happen.

  He walked ahead of Ellis, slouched and feigning defeat with every pace. Given all he had been through, it wasn’t hard to fake it.

  In front of Marc, laid across the roof, was another cable threading toward a temporary cell-band tower erected by a tech crew from TV5 Monde. Take the chance, he told himself. Got nothing else to lose.

  At the last second, Marc kicked at the cable with his heel and the impact made it twitch across the ground, sidewinding like a disturbed snake. He risked that Ellis’s eye would be drawn to the motion, a reflex action that would give Marc a fraction of a second to throw himself into the shadow of a ventilator cover.

  He dove forward, but Ellis was quicker than he expected and the mercenary’s gun coughed twice. Two rounds from the Sig Sauer hit him between the shoulders, twin punches that knocked him down.

  Neither shot penetrated through the daypack hanging on his back, the thick nylon and the case of his battle-worn laptop absorbing the brunt of the force. He hit the ground and rolled, hearing Ellis curse him and come running.

  The mercenary decided not to play the game and follow him around the low vent. Instead, Ellis put one foot on the lip of the obstruction and came straight up over it with a grunt of effort, panning with the silenced gun, aiming where he thought Marc would have landed.

  His target wasn’t there, only the damaged backpack. Then a black blur flicked up from the roof and Ellis was struck in the chest by a length of the communications cable.

  Marc emerged from behind the antenna, both hands gripping the line. He pulled hard on it, making it crack like a whip. There was enough play in the cable to use it as a makeshift weapon, knocking the mercenary from his ill-chosen perch.

  Ellis went down hard and lost his gun as he hit the gravel on the roofing. The Sig Sauer bounced against the lintel and landed close to the edge.

  Marc lunged at the gun as Ellis scrambled to come at him, the bigger man’s muscular hands snatching at air as he failed to grab the hem of his jacket.

  Marc’s fingers scraped the roof and pawed at the pistol. He had it in his hand as Ellis’s vice-like grip closed around his ankle. The mercenary pulled hard, dragging Marc toward him, raising his fist to strike him in the gut.

  Marc pulled the trigger again and again, blind-firing and letting the recoil of the weapon bring it up and across. Hot brass cartridges clattered back at him, bouncing off his face and his chest.

  All but one shot missed. The round caught Ellis in the mouth and emerged through the back of his head, blowing out a wet streamer of blood, meat and tooth fragments. The mercenary managed a strangled, gurgling moan and stumbled. His ankle caught the inner edge of the lintel and Ellis toppled over.

  Marc bolted to his feet, but he was too late to arrest the other man’s dive. He got to the edge just as the mercenary’s body landed on a taxi parked below, cratering the hood and smashing the windshield. The terrified driver spilled out on to the sidewalk and someone screamed. Marc shrank back as all eyes on the street turned to stare upward.

  He scrambled away. There had to be other observers on rooftops nearby, real cops, he guessed, and while they might have missed the chug of silenced gunfire among the noise of traffic and tourists, they wouldn’t ignore screams for long.

  His Glock was still lying near the access door where he had dropped it, and Marc snatched at the gun. Gathering it up with his backpack, he sagged and blew out a breath. Inside the bag, his laptop was marred with two massive impact dents and it gave a sickly rattle when he shook it. He sighed and zipped the pack closed.

  The next thirty minutes. Marc stole a look at his watch, checked the remaining ammunition in the silenced Sig’s magazine and doubled back the way he had come.

  * * *

  Nash had the smartphone to his ear, scowling at the voice on the other end of the line. “Listen,” he snapped. “Don’t get your fucking knickers in a twist, I’m dealing with your mistakes. You just do your part and—” He broke off as he heard a crash of breaking glass and the distant noise of a woman’s scream. “I’ll call you back,” Nash added, and ended the conversation. Reaching inside his jacket for his pistol, his gun cleared its holster just as the first shot chopped at the ground near his feet.

  Nash dove behind a skylight. He hadn’t heard the report of a firearm, which meant a silenced weapon. Which means that dozy prick Ellis is dead and Dane has his gun. He spat in annoyance and rose up, aiming by instinct in the direction the shot had come from.

  He saw his former team mate running between two air conditioning units and fired at him, rounds sparking off the metal housings. Dane fired back blindly, trying to force Nash to keep his head down, but the ex-soldier had walked through far more intense fields of fire and never flinched. Instead, he jumped to his feet and broke into a sprint.

  * * *

  Marc felt the Sig Sauer go dead in his hand as he slid down behind the air con unit. The pistol’s breech was jammed; Marc was firing so fast that an empty brass cartridge had jammed in the ejector port. He cursed and worked the slide, flicking the casing away. The silenced Sig was almost empty, and even though Marc still had the other gun in his backpack, both weapons used different bullets and couldn’t share the suppressor. If he went to the 9mm semi-automatic, firing a shot in the open would be like sending up a distress flare. Police snipers and aerial units would be on him in moments.

  But then the question became moot as Iain Nash hove into view at full tilt. Marc brought up the Sig, but his hesitation had cost him vital seconds and Nash was right there, swinging a vicious haymaker that knocked him into the air con unit with an echoing clang. Marc tasted copper in his mouth and his skull rang with the impact.

  “I don’t believe you,” Nash was saying, almost incredulous. “You’ve got to have something wrong in your head. When are you gonna learn to run away?”

  He followed the snarling words with another one-two punch that Marc attempted to block. He lost the silenced pistol, and staggered back as Nash continued to advance.

  The other man holstered his weapon. “You should’ve run in France. You had the luck in London. Instead, you come back for more. But you get no more chances, shithead.” He cracked his knuckles and shook out his hands. “I reckon I’ll enjoy this…”

  Marc pushed off and landed two lightning blows on the right side of Nash’s face, pounding as hard as he could to strike at the bigger man’s jaw. Nash’s head rocked under each blow as it landed, but he seemed
to feel nothing.

  The ex-soldier’s eyes widened and he lunged forward, grabbing the daypack straps across Marc’s chest. With a growl of effort, he wrenched Marc off his feet and slammed him hard against the air conditioner again. Without letting go, Nash reversed his move and flung Marc back the other way, dashing him to the rooftop.

  Marc hit hard and tumbled, seeing stars. He tried to scramble back, tried to get his footing, but Nash came in like a striker making a free kick and planted a heavy tactical boot in his ribs. Fire blazed across Marc’s chest as the blow landed and all the air in his lungs was expelled in a coughing gasp.

  “Get up.” Nash’s voice seemed distant and woolly. “Don’t puss out on me.” The bigger man dragged him up from the ground and dropped another punch to knock him down again.

  Marc weathered the blow and lashed out, landing a hit in the side of Nash’s knee, earning a grunt of pain. In return, Nash hauled him up and shoved Marc into the door of a machine room in the middle of the hotel rooftop.

  The door buckled under the weight of him and Marc stumbled inside, blinking at the dimness within. He tried to put distance between him and Nash, but the other man was still coming.

  Iain Nash had trained with the Special Air Service, he had been a full-time tactical field officer for MI6. He was in a different league as Marc Dane, who was all whipcord and adrenaline. Nash was the bulldog to Marc’s grayhound, conditioned for stamina and dishing out violence as well as absorbing it. You can’t beat him head on, Marc told himself.

  The machine room was a windowless concrete space above the four elevators that served the Willard Hotel’s residential floors. Positioned over each shaft was a powerful electric motor with a spinning wheel that guided steel cables down through a slot in the floor to the mechanism on the top of each lift car. Banks of switching gear and a maintenance bench were the room’s only other furnishings, harsh light spilling across the chamber from a single fluorescent tube overhead.