Black Skies

by Leo J. Maloney

  Bluejay, a short Hispanic man with a round nose, stepped in. “Why don’t you both back off?” he said.

  Walker scoffed. “Whatever. But we’d better get to killing soon, ’cause my trigger finger’s getting itchy.” He glowered at Akram, who shrunk to a corner.

  Chapter 33

  June 8

  Vienna

  Morgan flew down the smooth, well-kept highways to Vienna in his black Mercedes coupe, keeping the line of communication with Zeta open the whole way. Shepard, meanwhile, was looking into where Weinberg might be in the city, and where Randall might intercept him. Weinberg kept his schedule out of networked devices, but this wasn’t necessarily true for the people he was meeting with. Shepard ran a search that got him the information he was looking for.

  “He has a five o’clock with an Austrian steel baron,” he told Morgan through the communicator, which was set up on a remote connection through Morgan’s phone.

  “Can you send me satellite images for the location?” Morgan asked.

  “It’ll be on your tablet in seconds,” said Shepard. “That’s where their offices are, and that’s where they’re going to meet.”

  Morgan took the tablet computer from his bag, which was on the passenger seat, and held it in his right hand as he drove with his left. On the screen there appeared a 3-D model overlaid with satellite images of tall buildings on a broad street. He tossed the tablet aside to pay attention to the road, weaving through traffic.

  “What do you think?” asked Shepard.

  “She’ll be there,” said Morgan.

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s where I’d be.”

  Shepard worked on getting everything he could about the area as Morgan continued to speed the rest of the way to Vienna. From the target location, the modern office building called the City Tower, in Vienna’s business district, Morgan guessed that there was one of two ways she’d do this—sniper rifle or poisoning. Given that Weinberg knew her face, Morgan had gone with sniper as most likely course.

  From there, it was a matter of finding the best place to set up—the place that he would choose. And the choice here was obvious.

  “The parking garage,” said Morgan. “That’s where she’ll set up.” Morgan was within the city limits by now and starting to hit traffic. “I need you to find everything you can about that parking garage,” said Morgan. “Look for security cameras and anything that might tell us if her car is in there.” A light turned yellow, and the car in front of him stopped. “Shit!” He banged the steering wheel in frustration. “And get surveillance on the streets!”

  He gripped the steering wheel as traffic moved, slowly, so slowly.

  “Already did,” said Shepard. “Weinberg is due to arrive in ten minutes.”

  Morgan swore. “Okay,” he said. “Traffic laws just turned optional.” He passed the car in front of him in wrong-way traffic and ran a red light, narrowly avoiding a scrape. “How are we doing with eyes in the parking garage?” Morgan asked.

  “Coming, coming,” said Shepard. “It’s got them, now just a matter of gaining access . . .”

  “Make it snappy,” said Morgan, to the honk of a car that he cut off to shave a few milliseconds off his time.

  “Okay, got it,” said Shepard. “Feeds coming in—holy hell, that’s a lot of cameras. It’s going to be a while to sort through all of them.”

  “Can’t you just work some computer magic to—”

  “No, Cobra, I cannot write a program from scratch to search these video feeds for Randall or her car.”

  “Is Bishop there?”

  “Here,” came Bishop’s deep voice through the communicator. “Diesel and Spartan, too.”

  “I need all eyes on those cameras. Top floors first, Shepard. She’s likelier than not to be up high. She’s going to have a car with her to make a getaway, but it might not be the same.”

  “Then what are we looking for exactly?” asked Bishop.

  “I don’t know, just see if you find something!”

  Morgan was stuck behind a crowd of tourists crossing the road. They cleared, and he hit the gas. Within a minute he could see the City Tower, and shortly after the far less impressive parking facility.

  “In view of target,” he said.

  Traffic was heavier here, and the slow crawl with his destination in plain sight was worse than all the rest. So close, so close.

  Finally, he made the turn into the parking garage, with three cars ahead of him for the electronic ticket booth.

  “What’s up with that camera?” came a woman’s voice—Spartan.

  “What are you talking about?” said Morgan. The line of cars moved ahead.

  “It’s just dark,” said Shepard, “it’s nothing.”

  “Wait, dark like broken? Or working and dark?”

  “Looks like it’s working,” said Shepard.

  That had to be her. Disabling or blacking out the camera was the first thing he’d do if he were setting up. Morgan reached the ticket dispenser and pushed the button.

  “What level?” he asked.

  “Fifth.”

  “Where on the fifth level?”

  “Southwest—well, I’d say corner, but the building’s an oval,” said Shepard.

  “Good enough.”

  Morgan sped along the spiral ramp faster than even he was comfortable with. Twice the side of his car scraped against the guard walls—a bigger slip would break the concrete and send him sailing into the air to a sudden and dramatic stop. He kept a steady curve, tires squealing.

  “Weinberg’s car is pulling up,” said Shepard. “Get your ass up there!”

  The Mercedes turned screaming onto the fifth level of the parking garage. The direct route was closed off, and he was forced to go around the level to get to the location Shepard had given him. He was making a racket, but it didn’t matter. If she was there, he’d already announced his presence.

  “Cobra, he’s getting out of the damn car!”

  Morgan brought the car to a screeching halt and stepped out, leaving the door open behind him, his Walther in his right hand. He ran down the aisle, looking from car to car until he spotted the top of her head through the windshield of a VW sedan. He could just tell that she was facing inward, waiting for him to pass, probably to shoot him and then get to Weinberg.

  Morgan took a hard right and jumped up onto the VW, rolling on the roof of the car and sliding down behind Lily. Before she figured out what the hell had just happened, he had his Walther against her head.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” he said.

  She tensed up in surprise at hearing his voice. She was holding a sniper rifle, which he recognized as an AS50 BMG—not his first choice, but respectable for its portability. “The car salesman,” she said without looking at him.

  “Not quite.”

  “So I see,” she said. “You are full of surprises, Mr. Morgan. Although I suppose that’s not your real name, either.”

  “Drop the rifle and hands up, Agent Randall.”

  She didn’t move. “Oh, we’ve gone all formal now, I see. I think I liked you better as a car salesman.”

  “No you didn’t,” he said.

  “Cocky aren’t we?”

  “Drop it, Lily. I don’t want to kill you.”

  “But for some reason you so very much want to save the life of Gunther Weinberg. Tell me, how much did he pay you to make you turn? How much are you worth, Morgan?”

  “I do have my reasons,” he said. “But none of them have to do with wanting to protect him. I can explain, just toss the rifle. You won’t be able to make the shot now. Not with me here.”

  “Are you sure?” He caught her eye in the rearview mirror of the VW, and there was a glint of challenge and mischief. She swung the rifle backward by its barrel, apparently betting that Morgan wouldn’t shoot her. She was right. The rifle’s stock missed his head by half an inch and got him in the shoulder. The blow didn’t do much except throw him off balance,
but that’s all she needed. With a kick, she knocked the Walther from his hand, grabbing it from the air in her left and, in a move he had to respect, grabbed the two bandaged fingers in his left hand. He cried out in pain.

  Taking the opening, she picked up the rifle again. Morgan braced for the deadly shot, but instead she made straight for the guardrail at the edge of the garage, right behind him. She hastily set up the rifle and looked through the scope.

  “You’re kidding,” said Morgan.

  She pointed his Walther at him with her left. “I’m very much not.”

  “You couldn’t possibly hit him like this.”

  “I was top of my class in sniper training,” said Randall. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do with one of these.”

  “Okay,” said Morgan. “Suppose you can. It doesn’t mean you should.”

  “And why is that, Mr. Morgan?”

  “Because I’m asking you to.”

  She scoffed. “You’ve got to do better than that, love.”

  “Okay, then. I will. Don’t shoot Weinberg because he’s our only lead in the abduction of the American Secretary of State.”

  Her grip on the handle of the rifle loosened. “You have got to be kidding me. Weinberg?”

  “We’ve got it on good authority,” said Morgan. “Might have been able to confirm it if I only had the contents of that thumb drive you stole off of me.”

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “I’ve got it here in my pocket. You can have it, soon as I kill him.”

  “If you kill him, there’s no going back,” said Morgan. “You’ll never work in intelligence again. And if anyone catches you, it’s life in prison.”

  “Somehow, I think I’ll survive.”

  “Think about this, Lily.”

  “I’m already burned,” she said. “I’ve got nothing to go back to. This is all I’ve got left. So why don’t you leave me to it?”

  “It’s not all lost,” said Morgan. “We can help.”

  “How would you possibly be able to help? And who the bloody hell is ‘we’?”

  “We are . . . a nongovernmental organization with friends in high places. Let’s just leave it at that. We can smooth things over with MI-5. Hell, with your skills, I’m confident we can even give you a job if you’d like.”

  “What I’d like is to kill that bastard Weinberg.”

  “We can arrange for that,” said Morgan. “I’ll personally do it if you’d like. God knows the world would be better off with him dead. But not today. Right now, I need you to put away the rifle. We need him alive.”

  “He’s right there,” she said. Morgan saw. He had Fleischer next to him, and his car was coming around. “All I have to do is pull the trigger . . .”

  “Don’t,” said Morgan. “Whatever reason you have to kill him, it can wait. Just until this crisis is over. Then I promise you—”

  “All right,” said Randall, exhaling and backing away from the rifle. Morgan watched as Weinberg entered his car. “I’ll hear what you have to say. And if it helps to stop whatever Weinberg is up to, then good. But afterward, I get him, and you help me do it. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal,” said Morgan.

  “Christ, I need a beer,” she said, taking apart her sniper rifle. “You’re buying.”

  Chapter 34

  June 8

  Vienna

  “So what did he do to you?”

  Morgan asked the question over a circular table at a dim Vienna bar. The waitress had just set a tall half-liter glass of a cloudy light yellow beer on the table in front of Morgan, who pushed it across to Lily Randall, and pulled the mineral water to his own side of the table.

  “Do?” she asked, tilting the glass for a long draught of beer. She was in the same black turtleneck she had been wearing for the assassination—a turtleneck that said both “cat burglar” and “German sophisticate” at the same time. Her hair had been in a tight bun, which she now undid, letting her locks flow loosely down to her shoulders.

  “This is about revenge, isn’t it?” said Morgan. “This whole thing with Weinberg.”

  Her bright green eyes seemed smarter somehow. There was more than just the quick wit she demonstrated in Monte Carlo—her intelligence had depth. “What makes you so sure?”

  “Nothing else would drive someone to do what you did,” said Morgan. “Leave your life and job behind. Risk losing everything, getting nothing better in return. What, you weren’t doing enough good at MI-5, you had to go after some random German billionaire, bad as he might be? Please. There’s only one thing that makes a person act that way. So it’s revenge. Got to be.”

  “You sound like you know something about the subject.” Her eyes were defiant as always. She didn’t have the same manner as she had put on in Monte Carlo—the sex wasn’t turned on nearly as high, and he didn’t get the feeling that every word out of her mouth was meant to manipulate him now. But she was still hiding behind irony, deflecting honesty. Given that he had been pointing a gun at her not half an hour earlier, it was hardly any surprise.

  “I might,” he said. “But I asked you a question. Answer me. Was this about revenge?”

  The bar was filling up with people getting off work. The bar skewed younger than Morgan, but Lily, apart from not looking a bit German, fit in just fine.

  “I just want him dead,” she said, not looking him in the eye.

  “And I’m sure you have good reason. Hell, I’ve known him a few days and I already want him dead.”

  She emitted a hollow laugh and drank. “Maybe that has something to do with those.” She pointed to Morgan’s bandaged fingers. The reminder made them throb with pain. “Or that shiner on your face.”

  “No, that last one was you,” he laughed.

  “Oops,” she said, not sounding particularly sorry.

  Morgan ran his fingers gently over the bruise. “Look, Lily, whatever your reasons, we can’t let you kill him. At least not yet. We need to know what he knows and what he’s doing. But you can help us stop him. I could use someone with your skill to watch my back.”

  “I haven’t forgotten that you kept me from killing him today,” she said. Then, relenting, she added, “It’s not like I’m doing anything right now, anyway. I suppose I’ll take any way that I can stick it to Weinberg. Okay, I’ll come with you.”

  “It’s not the same, I know,” said Morgan. “But it’s something. And once this all blows over, well . . . I can tell you I wouldn’t miss the bastard if someone happens to off him. I might even come along for the ride. Provided you don’t hold me at gunpoint this time.” He shot her a teasing grin.

  “No promises,” she said, smiling, warmth seeping in to her expression. “I might still have to shoot you before this is over.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first to try,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll take that thumb drive off of you.”

  Maintaining eye contact with him, Randall reached into her shirt, slipped her fingers under her bra, pulled out the small plastic device, and handed it across the table to Morgan. He picked it up, and the plastic was warm to the touch. He attached the thumb drive to a device he had in his pocket and turned it on. Then he turned on the transmitter on his comm.

  “I’ve got the drive,” he said. “I’m transmitting the data now.”

  “You’re the man,” said Shepard. Randall finished off the rest of her beer.

  “You might feel better if you pace yourself,” said Morgan.

  “I think more beer is what’s going to make me feel better right now,” she said, raising her hand to call over the waitress. “So now that you’ve got what you want, are you going to give me the brush-off ?” she asked.

  “I happen to be a man of my word,” he said. “I meant what I said when I invited you to come along. I could really use you.”

  “I’m sure you could,” she said with a sly grin.

  “Married. Remember?”

  “Oh, you’re no fun.” The waitress came by, and Randall ordered a sec
ond beer.

  “So what’s in this thing, anyway?” Morgan asked, holding the thumb drive between his index and middle fingers.

  “No idea,” said Randall.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I was interested in exactly one thing: his schedule. Hoped to catch him off guard. There was a little too much in there for me to bother looking at everything. Plus, a lot of the files are individually encrypted. I didn’t have the time to go over each one, what with planning an assassination and all.”

  “Right,” said Morgan. “The assassination. You still haven’t told me what that’s all about.”

  “Haven’t I?” she said, feigning absentmindedness.

  “Oh, please,” said Morgan. “I know it’s revenge. What I don’t know is, revenge for what?”

  “You really don’t know when to quit.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Her beer came, and she downed half of it in one go and put the glass down. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you.” She took a deep breath. “Gunther Weinberg killed my parents.”

  “Oh,” said Morgan. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Look, it’s fine,” said Randall. “I mean, it’s not fine. I hate it. But the fact that they’re dead—what else is there but to reconcile myself to it and move on?”

  “Doesn’t sound like the words of someone who left everything behind to get revenge,” said Morgan.

  “Grief is one thing, revenge is another,” said Randall. “Living in the past won’t bring my parents back. I know. I don’t think it’ll bring any kind of satisfaction or . . . or closure or whatever. And hating him for ruining my childhood won’t do me any kind of good. I know all that. So don’t tell me any of this, all, right? Don’t tell me it’s not worth it, that it’ll be hollow once it’s done. I know the whole speech. I’ve given the speech.”

  “I wasn’t going to say any of that.”

  “This isn’t about me, you understand?” she continued. “It’s about them. What good am I if I don’t get justice for my parents?”