by James Phelan
“I always knew what you were, Pip,” Walker said, then crouched down and used Durant’s teeth as a chisel against the plastic flexicuff. “Nothing personal, douchebag.”
ZIP.
The first wrist was free, allowing Walker to use Durant’s metal pen to snap the other wrist free. For his part Durant remained still, his mouth agape. Walker pulled the officer’s CIA ID pass and lanyard from around his neck and pocketed it.
Walker stood and looked at the mirror, the metal chair in his hands. He figured he had taken a full minute: enough time for the agents to be waiting on the other side of the two-way mirror, with their side-arms drawn. Not tasers, but the 9-millimeter pistols and sub-machine guns from the safe house’s arsenal.
But they didn’t yet have their weapons drawn.
And they weren’t behind the mirror.
Walker knew this because that’s when he heard the gunfire, coming from downstairs.
A lot of gunfire.
15
Walker threw the chair through the mirror. The glass shattered to show a black void beyond. The flying chair took out a digital camera that had been on a tripod. Inside the darkened room a young guy was cowering on the floor, bits of broken glass twinkling over him.
The landlord.
Walker counted at least eight separate firearms crackling off downstairs and figured there could be as many as double that; 5.56 mm assault rifles. The Agency 9 mms popped back in reply. This was fast turning into an OK-Corral type shootout. He didn’t have much time.
Walker knocked out the shards of glass at waist level and climbed through. Jagged edges caught and ripped at his T-shirt on the way, and the floor on the other side crunched underfoot.
“Are you armed?” Walker asked the landlord once his feet were firmly planted on the other side.
The guy looked up, shook his head. Negative.
Walker dragged him to his feet, said, “What’s your name?”
“Bantram,” he replied. “John Bantram.”
Bantram looked about twenty-five, fresh out of college maybe, a recent Farm grad, sent here to babysit a house that was probably lucky to host a guest per month. There were worse places to be posted. He probably had a local girlfriend, or two. Spent his time most days sitting in here with nothing to do but jerk off to internet porn. Rome wasn’t exactly the mid-east but it was a better gig than driving a desk at Langley. Poor kid never expected this.
Walker asked, “Bantram, where’s the feed from the house cameras?”
Bantram pointed to a computer screen, said, “Toggle the arrow keys to change views.”
Walker could see live footage from six vantages. The front and back doors had been breached. The hallway downstairs was full of gun smoke and plaster dust. At the top of the stairs the Agency men had set up their defense. It wasn’t pretty, and it sure as hell wouldn’t last.
A flash-bang grenade concussed through the house. Although non-lethal, this explosive device was effective in disorienting an enemy’s senses, which told Walker that the attacking force was serious about one thing. These guys were well equipped, and they had a purpose—to get him, alive. Hence not shooting up through the floor, or burning them out, or tossing fragmentary or incendiary grenades up the stairs. They would soon storm the staircase and pick off the CIA officers on their way to the safe room, where they would probably blow the locked doors out with shaped C4 breaching charges.
That knowledge was an advantage for Walker; as long as they wanted him alive, he was virtually bulletproof. As an added bonus it made the attackers wary in their assault, buying him time.
Walker turned to the kid. “Firearm?”
Bantram pointed, still unable to speak.
In a steel drawer under the computer was a factory-new Beretta 9-millimeter with two magazines of ACP rounds. Walker could hear the firefight raging through the house as he loaded and checked the weapon.
“All right, Bantram, I need to get the woman out of here,” Walker said.
Bantram was still, looking up at Walker, wide-eyed. Walker noticed movement on the CCTV screen: it showed two guys scaling the drainpipe at the rear of the building, clearly planning to enter the hallway at a window and assault the defending force from behind.
Walker shook the safe-house landlord. “Where is she?”
“She?”
Walker pinned him up against the wall, feet clear of the ground.
“The woman! You’ve got a civilian in here! Bantram, where is she?”
“The room—next to yours.”
“Entry points?”
“Only the hallway.”
“Is the room locked?”
“Only from the outside—it’s a storeroom.”
Walker set the guy down and took the lanyard from around his neck. It held an ID card and a USB stick.
Bingo.
“You can’t take that,” Bantram said, reaching for the USB but not protesting convincingly when Walker brushed his hand away.
“How far off is back-up?” Walker said, hanging the lanyard around his neck and tucking it under his T-shirt.
Bantram stared at him. “There is none. All the lines are down.”
“Won’t that trigger some response?”
“Not until the next shift change. We’ve gone completely dark here.”
Walker paused. Assault rifles crackled. “Cell-phone signal?”
“Whoever’s doing this has blocked it.”
Walker recognized the MO as top-tier tradecraft in paramilitary assault. The A-teamers, cleaning up where the B-team failed.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” Bantram said. “You’re Jed Walker.”
“Get out of here, kid,” Walker said, taking position by the door.
“You can’t leave me here!”
“You signed up for this,” Walker said, then slid back the heavy steel locks on the door. “She didn’t.”
16
The carnage was not immediately apparent. Standing in the doorway of the surveillance room, Walker was at a dogleg in the hallway. To his right was the locked door of his interrogation room. Beyond that was the storeroom door with its slide-across, hardened-steel lock on a plate steel door and metal frame. It was armored against small arms, like the other doors on this level, only in this case the lock was on the outside. One room for keeping guests in; another for keeping others out.
Walker moved quickly past the doors to the hallway’s first corner. The Agency guys were in cover positions at the end of the hall. One was giving another first aid, blood pumping fast from a gunshot wound to the upper thigh. He would bleed out in a minute, maybe two.
Time was ticking for them all.
Another flash-bang clattered up the stairs.
Walker turned and moved away, his back to it, hands over ears, eyes shut against the flash and mouth open against the concussive force that would reverberate through his skull.
BANG!
Walker kept moving, away from the doors and the stairs, ears ringing, the gunshots muffled as the Agency guys repelled an attack from the landing, firing blindly but trained well enough to empty their mags quickly, down toward the threat, to give hell to anyone wanting to rush them after that disorienting blast. A fine tactic, so long as their ammo held out.
Walker slid open the window at the end of the hall: a simple sash mechanism, timber frame, a nineteenth-century renovation to the older building. The 3-millimeter glass was original, the tiny bubbles of the early industrialized process distorting the view outside. Aside from the secure rooms inside and the neat technogear installed, the outward appearance of this building was as regular as any other house on the block.
Leaning out the open window and looking up, Walker eyed the small digital video camera aimed at the rear alley below.
The two guys he had viewed on the monitor were climbing the drainpipe, itself a modern improvement, thick plastic piping as wide as a grapefruit and pinned to the brick wall with half-inch threaded steel bolts. The first guy was almost within touchi
ng distance.
A turkey shoot.
Walker brought up the Beretta. Sighted.
POP. POP.
Two bodies fell to the cobbled ground. One squirmed for a moment, but the extent of his headshot told Walker it was just residual muscle reflexes.
Walker moved back toward the storeroom and slid the bolt at the door.
Clara was seated on a small cot bed in the bright room, no more than a ten-by-ten-foot box used to store “guests.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
She rushed him and held on for a second, then he showed her out to the hallway.
“The window,” Walker said, guiding her before him. On the way down the hall she picked up her handbag from a plastic tub of their personal effects.
A glance back told Walker that their time here was almost up: each Agency guy was injured in some way, with only two of them still managing to return fire. They had put up a defense against an overwhelming force for near on three minutes, and considering their 9-millimeter firepower they had done a pretty good job of it. If the attacking force had entered from above, through the window or ceiling, it would have been all over in less than half the time. This told Walker that it was a rush job, put together with minimal planning. Pros, no doubt, but on the clock.
Whoever wants me wanted to make sure I didn’t have time to talk to anyone but them . . .
Walker steadied Clara as she reached out for the pipe and held on, her knuckles white with the fear and exertion, her bare legs tight against the pipe to add friction. Her slip-on shoes clattered to the ground, but she didn’t falter in her descent.
Inside, someone downstairs fired from an assault rifle on full auto. A suppressing fire, full clip of 30 rounds, prepping to rush the stairs.
As soon as Clara was a body length down, Walker moved out.
Clara descended the last few meters quickly, too quickly, landing with a thud on a still-warm body.
Walker jumped clear from three meters above the ground as Clara picked herself up.
“Run,” he said, taking her by the hand and not looking back. “Run!”
17
Somerville arrived at the safe house well after the local police. Hobbs had driven her, and to his credit he drove as madly as the locals. She had heard over the phone that Walker was not among the dead. The street was cordoned off with tape and carabinieri cars. No media were here yet, though a throng of residents had amassed. While her Italian was passable, Somerville caught enough to understand that rumors were flying about this being a mafia deal gone wrong.
“This is a shit storm,” a tall, red-haired woman in a wrinkled suit said to herself while exiting the house.
“Bev Johnson, this is the FBI agent,” Hobbs said, catching her on the footpath.
“Special Agent Somerville. We spoke on the phone,” Somerville said by way of introduction. “Walker’s gone?”
The three of them stood on the road. A fire crew exited, foam extinguishers depleted and the clear masks of their breathing apparatus, along with their uniforms, covered in foam and ash. Somerville knew that this likely meant that the landlord had followed protocol and set off the incendiaries in the control room, burning all the intel and sensitive equipment—and that meant that he might be alive for questioning.
“He’s disappeared, and three of my field officers are dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Somerville said.
“You need to tell me about your boy Walker,” Johnson said, her accent southern, perhaps that of a genteel lady in another circumstance. “Back at the embassy.”
“No, I really don’t,” Somerville said. “And he’s not my boy. He was yours, once, and he’s gone to the mattresses for good on a year—that’s about as caught up from me as you’re going to get.”
Johnson stared at her and, sensing something at least as hard as she, let it slide.
“Fine, he’s your problem now,” she said, looking around as though salvation were a world away. “I’ve got seven bodies: three of mine, four of theirs. Go get the son of a bitch, and his damned friends who busted him out in this shootout. Hang ’em all from up high, you hear? And they’ve got a good twenty-minute head start, so don’t dawdle now.”
“I need to talk to any survivors,” Somerville said.
Johnson paused, considered Somerville’s tone and poise, then pointed to a nearby ambulance.
Somerville walked over, Hobbs close behind her.
Inside the ambulance two men were being treated. One had a smashed face, gauze held to it by a paramedic; the other was a slight, young guy on oxygen.
“Leave us,” Somerville said in Italian to the paramedic. When he did, she took his place and closed the doors behind her, shutting out Hobbs and any witnesses.
•
Walker and Clara were fifteen kilometers away, in a pensione three floors above a street full of shops, cafes and bars. The little old lady who let the apartment to them insisted on bringing in a plate of cheeses and meats and bread and a bottle of Chianti. Walker waited until she left, then he locked the tiny wooden door and buckled over, clutching his side and gritting his teeth.
“What is it?” Clara asked.
“Busted ribs, I think,” Walker said. “I had to hold my breath walking up those stairs just now.”
Clara helped him into a wicker chair at the small dining table by the open balcony door. Starting with the back, she carefully lifted his black T-shirt over his head, then off his arms.
Walker leaned back, and winced.
“Hurt?” Clara asked, prodding.
“Not bad,” he replied. He breathed deeply, in and out a couple of times, and self-diagnosed that his ribs weren’t broken.
“Good news: your ribs seem fine,” she said. “But you are cut badly.”
Walker looked down—he had a three-inch laceration, deep in the middle, where he must have caught himself on some mirrored glass getting into the control room. His adrenaline and focus at the time had kept it quiet. Now it screamed pain.
“You need a doctor,” Clara said.
“No,” Walker replied, looking at the blood oozing, running down his side and catching in his black jeans. “I need a needle and thread. Some gauze. Maybe a drink.”
Clara looked in his eyes, saw his determination, and searched the apartment. She came back from a dresser with a needle and blue cotton thread. Walker went to the basin and wet a hand towel with cold water, pressing it against the cut.
“I’ll do that,” Clara said. “You sit.”
“I’ve got it.”
“Just do as I say.”
She took his hand and he followed. She led him first to the bathroom, where she stripped off his boots and trousers, then wiped him down, continually dousing the cloth in cold water to rinse it of blood. She then passed the cleaned cloth to him and he held it to the cut while she spread out a folded towel on the bed.
“Lie down,” she said.
Clara left the room as Walker carefully lowered himself onto the bed. He heard the gas stove spark alight. In a minute she came in holding the blackened end of the sterilized needle, thirty centimeters of single-thread cotton through the eye.
“This will hurt,” she said as she knelt next to him.
“I’m a big boy,” Walker said, watching her tanned hands as her delicate fingers pinched the cut closed with one hand and began to sew it shut with the other.
“Ouch,” Walker said.
He closed his eyes and focused his breathing, letting his mind wander away from the pain. Durant had made it clear: Walker was now on their radar. Whoever Durant was working for was the same person who had burned him in Yemen. The person who had placed the kill order on him and thought it a success for the past year now realized that they had a thorn in their side—a thorn who was looking into their dirty business. The head-case courier. The surviving assassin who fled to the embassy. It was someone still connected to or inside the CIA, of that Walker had no doubt.
“You’ve done this before?” he asked
Clara, returning to the present.
“I have sewn before,” she replied, her fingers moving carefully, precisely.
Walker felt around his neck for the USB stick he had taken from the safe-house landlord.
“Done,” Clara said, placing a clean, dry face cloth over the wound and moving Walker’s free hand to keep it in place. She closed her hand over his and applied gentle pressure for a moment. “Not exactly Prada quality, but the bleeding will stop.”
“Thank you,” Walker replied. “Now, I need to find a computer.”
Seventy-six hours to deadline.
18
“We’ve got new activity in Rome,” McCorkell said.
“It’s Walker,” said Hutchinson, looking at the report coming in on a screen that was linked to Intellipedia, the information-sharing service run by the US intelligence and military communities. On the surface Intellipedia was a place for posting all kinds of mundane intel so that connections could be made and time saved, thus economizing the intel community, an entity that had grown so bloated since 9/11 that it needed anything that might help. “He was just busted out of the CIA safe house.”
McCorkell read over the details posted on the site.
“Question is,” he said to those in the room, “do we think he’s working for INTFOR? Is Walker Bellamy’s man, like the guy who went to the embassy?”
“It’s possible. They went in hard to get him from the safe house. Could have been an extraction.”
“Could have been a silencing op,” an analyst said.
“Then why not just blow the joint?” another countered. “Says in the initial report that there was a sustained firefight.”
“They wanted him alive,” Hutchinson said. “Whatever the case, we need to consider that Walker had been working with them all morning, not against them.”
“And the dead guy at the apartment? And the car chase through Rome? No. I don’t buy it,” said McCorkell.
“We can’t rule it out,” replied Hutchinson.
