Russians Came Knocking

by Spangler, K. B.

  EIGHT

  We spent the rest of the night alternating between sleep and sex. The party ended around seven in the morning. Davie and I snuck out of her bedroom to see the damage. The condo was spotless and smelled of cleaning products, a little white note on the counter the only thing out of place.

  Davie read the note, then handed it to me. It took a second to decipher Rachel’s terrible handwriting. I made sure they cleaned up after themselves. –R

  We went back to bed.

  When we were finally ready to face the day, I went upstairs to change. On my way out, I took a few minutes to catch up on the details with the officer stationed outside of Davie’s condo. He was sipping coffee and checking Facebook on his phone, but his eyes didn’t miss anything. He had heard nothing from Metro: the three men hadn’t given up anything that would tie them to their employer, and Squirrelface was still at large.

  Davie insisted on going to work, so I insisted on walking her there. It was mid-spring and the weather was glorious. We took the long way through the park. There were flowers everywhere, and I persuaded Davie to wear one in her hair. The tradeoff being, of course, that I had to wear two in mine. I was absolutely fine with this agreement, and certain this was clear warning I was falling in love.

  I felt it only fair to share this with her, and she laughed.

  “You work fast,” she said, tucking a third flower behind my ear.

  “Life’s short.” I tried to kiss her but she danced away.

  We played tag through the park until I caught her near the duck pond. This time, I pinned her against a tree for a kiss. She laughed against my mouth before she kissed me back. Overhead, a squirrel watched us with black beady eyes.

  “Is he one of your friends?” Davie asked me when we came up for air.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am Lord of the Squirrels. May they come to me and serve my bidding.”

  “… ‘serve my bidding’… Is that Squirrelanese? Because it isn’t English.”

  She squealed and ran when I threatened to throw her in the pond.

  Davie was quick on her feet and she was able to keep a little distance between us as we darted through the park, which is why I was close enough to see the terror in her eyes as Squirrelface stepped out from behind a tree and grabbed her.

  “Stand back,” he told me. He had a rolled copy of the Post in one hand, the barrel of a gun barely sticking out from under the fold.

  “Ah. So that’s why they still make newspapers,” I said, winking at Davie. “I had wondered.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched ever so slightly. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes; when she opened them again, she had gotten her fear under control.

  “Don’t fight him,” I told her. “He’s not going to tolerate a second setback.”

  She nodded.

  I looked to Squirrelface. “Your boss doesn’t know about this,” I guessed. “Because kidnapping someone from a public park might be how you do it back in Moscow, but it is definitely not the best plan for downtown D.C.”

  Squirrelface glared at me. The right side of his face was covered in deep scratches and badly swollen, with Band-Aids spot-covering what I assumed to be the deeper bite marks. “This is how it is,” he said as he yanked Davie towards him. “Don’t look for her, and we will give her back to you when this is over.

  “If you do look for us,” Squirrelface said, grinning, “she will come back to you in pieces.”

  “Okay.” I took a step backwards. Squirrelface dropped Davie’s briefcase on the ground and forced her to shrug out of her blazer. He leered at me as he ran his free hand over each of her hips, checking her pockets.

  “No cell phone,” he said. “No laptop. Now you cannot track her.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “Now I can’t track her.”

  He pulled Davie down the path with him, keeping her body between us until the trees hid them from view.

  “Idiot,” I muttered under my breath.

  There’s a trick I can do—that all cyborgs can do—where I send out my consciousness on the electromagnetic spectrum. If you want to know how it works, our science team can explain it to you in detail. They’ll use terms like ‘Planck length’ and ‘terahertz radiation’, and by the end of an hour you’d have felt you might have understood them if they had bothered to draw you a chart. Me, I handwave the technical jargon away and describe it as an out-of-body experience. It’s not an accurate description, as part of my consciousness stays in my body as the other part splits itself off to explore, but it’s a term that everybody understands and I don’t have to muck around with visual aids.

  My physical self leaned against a tree as I used this ability to follow Davie and Squirrelface. He had a van parked barely five hundred feet away, hidden just behind some thick bushes. I waited as he belted Davie in and tied her hands to the Oh Shit! bar in the passenger’s seat, then drove off towards the center of town.

  I dropped my out-of-body self and started running.

  I followed them through the traffic system, and let him get eight blocks away from the park before I took control of the stoplights. I waited until Squirrelface was last in line at an intersection, then sent four cars skidding into each other by giving them all protected greens. I know, I know, it was terribly wrong of me. A horrible abuse of power. Some fenders were dented, some tempers ran short, but everyone was fine. Moving on.

  I ran parallel to the van, keeping one block between us until I was sure that Squirrelface was good and truly hemmed in by traffic. There was a great shot of him through an exterior bank security camera. He had rolled his window down to watch the street behind him, assuming that if I had something to do with the pileup, I’d be coming from the direction of the park.

  I jumped one street ahead of them and joined the crowds on the side of the street closest to the van. With my face partially hidden by Davie’s blazer slung over my shoulder, I was able to wander towards the front of the van unnoticed, just another businessman with a suit and a briefcase.

  Davie saw me coming in the side view mirror. She turned her face away as I smashed in the passenger’s window with the butt of my gun.

  “Hello, dear,” I said, training my gun on the crosshatched scratches between Squirrelface’s eyes. I dropped my utility knife in her lap with my other hand. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was a bear.”

  “You’re forgiven,” Davie said, balancing the Leatherman in her lap to prize the sawblade out.

  It took her a moment to cut herself free. She opened the door and ducked away from my gun, keeping out of my line of fire. “Police?” she asked.

  “On their way,” I told her. I had called them while I was running.

  She nodded and crouched down, keeping low.

  “Hey,” I said to Squirrelface. “What on earth drove you to do something this God-awful dumb?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, his face exploded in a bright red spray.

  I dove to the ground. Davie was already squirming for cover under the van. She grabbed me by my waistband and pulled me in after her.

  “What’s happening? Who’s shooting?” she demanded.

  “Give me a second,” I said as I ran my mind through the local security systems, looking for someone with a gun. When I couldn’t find the shooter, I went out-of-body for a bird’s-eye view. (I should mention that while going out-of-body is fun in and of itself, the best thing about it is that you can freakin’ fly! You know, because of the not having a body and all.) I soared up to the rooftops. The shooter was hiding behind a roof cornice. He was a young guy, almost a kid, really. He was wearing jeans, a tight-fitting shirt, and a fake goatee, and he was packing his old M40 sniper rifle into a guitar case.

  I came back to my body. “It’s clear,” I said, wiggling out from under the van. “He’s done his job. We’re safe.”

  Davie blinked at me, then looked to where Squirrelface’s insides were beginning to drip down onto the pavement. “I think I’ll stay here,” she said, but inched away from
the spreading red pool.

  “You weren’t the shooter’s target. He was after the Russian. Somebody’s boss got terminally pissed about how his employees couldn’t follow directions.”

  “I’m staying until the police arrive,” Davie said. She couldn’t look away from the blood.

  “Okay,” I cut the power to the van’s engine, and passed her briefcase and blazer to her. “I’ll be right back.”

  I sprinted across the street and cut through the screaming panic of the bystanders. The building the shooter had used was a traditional five-story apartment with a single exit. At exactly sixty seconds after he had clicked the last latch on his guitar case, the door opened and the shooter stepped out, whistling.

  I was standing just off to the side of the door. I yawned, pretended to stretch, and clotheslined the kid across his throat.

  The problem with military training is that it kicks in even when you don’t want it to. His lizard brain was already fighting back before his higher thought processes could remind him he was playing the part of a harmless hipster. He grabbed my arm and was all set to break my elbow when I flipped him backwards and hit him with two solid punches to the face.

  There is no good time to see a combat knife come at your throat, but if it has to happen, try to be famous. Or, infamous, actually. The blade was almost touching my jugular when the kid remembered who and what I was, and that possibly the worst thing he would ever do in his entire life was to kill me. His jaw dropped, his legs folded, and he tried to release the knife midswing.

  I redirected the knife’s path with an Eskrima defense and grinned at him.

  “Fuck,” the kid sighed. The knife clattered to the ground and the kid turned to face the wall, spread-eagle. “I didn’t want to be here,” he told me over his shoulder.

  “Yet here you are,” I replied as I handcuffed him. “And that’s the part that’s going to hold up in court.”

  “I surrender,” he insisted. “Don’t go after my family.”

  “That depends,” I said as I spun him around and made him lie prone on the sidewalk. “Are you going to cooperate?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve got nothing for you,” he said. “I get my instructions through a drop box down at Union Station.”

  “Really? That still works?” I asked. “You see it all the time in the movies, but I thought they got rid of those boxes after September 11th.”

  The kid shrugged, a heck of a trick for a man with his upper body stuck to the ground. “There’s a few left. I’ve got a couple of backups around the city in case that one gets pulled.”

  “Hey, um… Agent Glassman?” one of the bystanders, a middle-aged woman with her hair in a bob, was standing next to the guitar case. It had popped open when it had hit the ground and the business end of the rifle was poking out. “Sir? Should I close this?”

  “No, please leave it for the police,” I told her. The sound of sirens was growing closer. “Could you make sure no one touches it?”

  She nodded eagerly, and began to push back against the crowd. Several people joined her to help, and they kept the area clear.

  The sniper and I were exchanging tips on gun maintenance when the police finally arrived. I recognized three of them from the party the night before. We went over the banal details needed before a crime scene could be processed. It took a while. I sent a few of the bystanders to make a coffee run.

  When I finally got a chance to look for Davie, I found her standing fifteen feet away, staring at me, her mouth hanging open.

  NINE

  “He seemed like a decent guy. On a personal level, obviously. His professional choices definitely leave something to be desired.”

  “He just shot…” Davie started to reply, paused, then started again. “He had just killed someone. Someone sitting beside me.”

  She took a deep breath and finished with: “And you bought him a cinnamon bun.”

  “He said he hadn’t gotten a chance to eat breakfast.”

  “Because he had to get to work on time. To. Murder. Someone.”

  “We’ve all had busy mornings.”

  Davie got up and took three steps before she turned back. “It’s going to be like this with you all of the time, isn’t it?”

  “Probably.” I shrugged. “So far, this has been a fairly standard week.”

  Davie shook her head and walked off towards where Teresa Hemmingway was talking with Metro’s press secretary and a few hand-picked reporters. This type of event could backfire on everyone involved, so Davie’s first call had been to Friction Commodities. Hemmingway had met us at First Metro and had gone straight into damage control mode. I was itching as I watched Hemmingway work: I’m the one who does all public relations for OACET, but since I had been involved in the sniper incident, Patrick Mulcahy was handling the media inquiry for me.

  I might have been sulking. Just a little bit.

  Rachel dropped down on the couch beside me and threw her legs up on the armchair across from us. The First Metro police station had recently been remodeled and the waiting room was too nice for something paid for with taxes (said the man with the multimillion-dollar federally-funded computer chip in his brain).

  “She can’t say you didn’t warn her,” Rachel said.

  “Davie?” I started talking to her over our link, the cyborg’s version of passing notes in class. “I really like her, Penguin.”

  Rachel grinned at her nickname and leaned against me; we were at her workplace and she was a private person, so that was as much of a hug as I’d get. “You fall in love too easily.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed mentally.

  “But it’s better than never falling in love at all.”

  I chuckled. “True. Did you get the lake house?”

  “It’s all set,” Rachel nodded. “We’ll send a few officers with you so Metro has a presence on team. Don’t tell them that, though.”

  “Right. What do you want me to do with them?”

  She shrugged. “They’re professionals. Stick them on the front line, appoint them your official margarita makers… They’ll do whatever you tell them to, as long as they think they’re protecting you.

  “Oh, hey,” Rachel added, sitting up. “Who’s this?”

  Davie was walking down the hall towards us, Teresa Hemmingway at her side. They had been joined by a man in his late fifties. Rachel and I stood to meet them.

  “Agent Glassman, Agent Peng? This is Chris Rinehart, CEO of Friction Commodities.”

  Rachel and I shook hands with Davie’s boss. “Pleasure,” I said.

  “The pleasure is mine,” Rinehart said, grinning broadly. He was an odd caricature of a CEO, tall and lanky with the shock of steel-gray hair resisting male pattern baldness, but he also had a slight stoop to his shoulders and a terrific beer belly. “Thank you for saving our Davie last night. We couldn’t function without her. Literally. She’s the one who keeps us going.”

  “Chris likes to exaggerate,” Davie said, smiling warmly at Rinehart.

  “Nope,” Rinehart said, shaking his head. “No, I’m not. We’d be out of business if something happened to you. Heartbroken, too,” he added.

  “What’s the next step?” Hemmingway asked us. “With the fourth man shot and the shooter captured? Is it over?”

  “Probably,” Rachel answered. “But we’d like to move Ms. Costello to a safehouse until Metro finishes the investigation.”

  “Good,” Hemmingway said. “How long do you think that will take?”

  “Two or three days if things go well,” Rachel said. “But if Metro runs into problems, it might take more time. The Russians still aren’t talking, so we’re going to concentrate on the sniper. He was waiting on that roof for his shot, so someone knew the kidnapper would be taking that route.”

  “He was using a GPS,” Davie said.

  Rachel nodded. “The tech team already has it,” she said. “The route was transferred to the GPS using an anonymous burner phone. It’s going to take us a little while to track i
t down. It’s best if Ms. Costello stays at the safehouse until we do.”

  Hemmingway lowered her voice and leaned in close to Rachel. “Where is the safehouse?”

  Rachel said nothing and stared at a point on the far wall until Hemmingway moved away.

  “I’m not going to ask,” Rinehart said, holding up his hands. “Just promise me she won’t be stuck in some seedy motel room.”

  “Agent Glassman has arranged a house,” Davie told her boss.

  “It’s a nice place,” I assured him. “Great views, very secluded. We’ll have a full team of Agents and Metro officers for protection.”

  “Agents?” Hemmingway was taken aback. “You mean OACET Agents?”

  “Cyborgs,” Rachel confirmed. “Many Agents are former military. They’re looking forward for a chance to use their old training.”

  Rachel was former military herself. I noticed she was standing at parade rest, staring at Hemmingway as if expecting a fight.

  “Problem?” I asked her.

  “She’s angry. I’m trying to figure out why.”

  “A beloved coworker was almost killed? Twice?”

  “Could be,” she agreed. “But it’s always helpful to pin down the cause of an emotion.”

  “Good,” Rinehart nodded, and looked at Davie. “Is this all right with you?”

  “I should have agreed to a safehouse last night,” she said sadly.

  “It’s not your fault the Russian was killed,” I reminded her. The young assassin said he had received a photograph of Squirrelface (pre-squirreling) and typewritten instructions to take out the Russian and leave those around him unharmed. He had burned the photograph and instructions as soon as he had memorized them. Metro was trying to track down the person who had left the package in the drop box, but they had warned Davie it was likely to be a messenger service. Another link in a chain leading nowhere. Davie was beating herself up over the senselessness of it.

  “Listen,” Rinehart said, “Don’t worry about how long you’ll be gone. Your job will be waiting. Hemmingway’s already spoken with our contact in Charikar, and he’s appalled at what’s happened. Everything is on hold until you get back.”