Severance Package

by Duane Swierczynski

  That wasn’t a chemical bomb.

  The crazy bastard, he rigged a real explosive to the door.

  But not here. There was no fire or smoke. The explosion sounded like it was somewhere else in the building.

  Was the bomb set somewhere else?

  Christ, was David planning on bringing the whole place down?

  Twenty floors down, Vincent Marella dreamed he heard an explosion. He woke up to find that his eyes were bleeding and he could barely breathe.

  He also heard a man scream.

  Amy released her grip momentarily—there was an explosion, somewhere, and it seemed to puzzle her.

  That was all that Ania needed.

  The lid of one of her wrist compartments flipped up easily. The blade slid down and landed in her palm. She had taken a chance, releasing her grip on Amy’s wrists to dig out her weapon. But what was true love without risks?

  Ania used her injured arm to brace Amy’s body and her right hand to slide the blade into the hollow of Amy’s neck.

  Then she sliced down, directly between Amy’s breasts and down her stomach to where her belt used to be.

  The bullet that had ripped through David’s brains also struck one of the large conference room windows, spiderwebbing it. That was a nice bit of luck, Nichole thought. It wouldn’t take much to push the rest of it through. Not to call for help. She was too high up to seriously entertain that. And with the explosion down below, well, attention would be scattered, to say the least, for the time being.

  Nah. Nichole Wise, code name Workhorse, was thinking long-term.

  If she could sever the stubborn piece of flesh attached to her hand—and a jagged edge of the conference room window might do the trick—she could drop her hand out the window. Thirty-six floors down, wave good-bye. It might take a while, but at some point, some investigator would stumble across it, bag it, and eventually do a fingerprint check. Langley would pop up. Questions would be asked. And maybe the story would finally be told. The story of her miserable years undercover at Murphy, Knox.

  Maybe she’d end up a black star, chiseled into the slab of white Vermont marble that was the CIA’s Wall of Honor:

  IN HONOR OF THOSE MEMBERS

  OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

  WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES

  IN THE SERVICE OF THEIR COUNTRY

  Buddy, you don’t know the half of it, Nichole thought.

  Then she died.

  Keene paused by the sea to watch the waves. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation he was about to have.

  Farther down on the beach Keene saw another dog—not a three-legged one this time. It was a fully equipped black Lab, and he was running into the crashing waves. A young red-haired mother, no more than thirty, was standing there with two preschoolers, both with reddish-blond hair. They were jumping and laughing at the dog, who rushed into the waves, stopped to relieve his bowels, then raced out of the water again before another wave could wash over him. Speed defecation. Keene had to admire that. The owner needed to be commended. He wondered if the children were trained that way, as well. Go on. Run into the water, kids. Go potty.

  Keene’s mobile rang. It was his second source.

  “I didn’t think I’d hear back from you,” Keene said.

  “I didn’t think I’d be calling.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a lot of activity here on my end.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a pause.

  “Look, just come out with it. Can’t be any worse than what I’m already thinking.”

  “Your man is behind it all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “David Murphy is a straw man. A burnout case. Your man McCoy plucked him from the wreckage, started to run him. Build him up again. But McCoy was behind everything. Including the financing of a particular tracking device that has been causing us much trouble as of late.”

  “I see. You just find this out now?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s not fair that I’ve been stationed with a traitor. For months now.”

  “We’re a big dumb animal, Will. You know that. Big and strong, but dumb nonetheless. The important thing is you helped us uncover him. If you hadn’t asked questions, we wouldn’t know. That’s the important thing.”

  “Is it?”

  The dog bounded up the shore. The mother and children raced after it. Nothing like a good run after voiding your bowels.

  “There’s something else.”

  “You need me to kill him, of course.”

  “We need you to kill him.”

  “Uh-huh.” Keene swallowed. “I’ve got a really bad cold, you know.”

  “I’m sorry, Will.”

  “Not looking for sympathy. It’s just … well, it’s really a pish day for this.”

  The mother, children, and black Lab were all headed away from the beach now, the dog’s transaction with Mother Nature complete. If Keene were to return to the same spot tomorrow, he would probably see the same event replay. He wondered how much of this dog’s shit was in his sea.

  “Yeah, I know. But is it ever a good day?”

  “You’ve got a point there.”

  “What about the other people on that floor in Philadelphia?”

  There was a pause.

  “That’s not something we can embroil ourselves in right now.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no. I understand. Hey, it’s a lousy day all around then, isn’t it?”

  “Will …”

  “Talk to you in a bit. Cheers, now.”

  CLOSING TIME

  Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.

  —CONRAD HILTON

  Vincent Marella tried to ignore the symptoms, hoist his pal Rickards up, get him out of the fire tower. He grabbed his partner under his arms, but he couldn’t resist. He touched the sensitive skin below his eyes, and his fingertips came back bloody. Jesus Christ. He couldn’t be checking out now. Not after last year. Not like this. Not like Center Strike.

  It was so, so hard to breathe.

  And look.

  There was a bloody human tooth on the floor.

  Wonderful.

  If that explosion up top was real, and he wasn’t dreaming it—and well, you know, the high and loud clanging of the fire alarm seemed to indicate that this wasn’t an event confined to la-la land—then he was seriously screwed. Because in the event of a fire, all elevators shoot down to the lobby level and stay there. The fire towers are the only way out.

  Like the fire tower they’d just left, which was apparently full of some kind of nerve agent.

  It made him choke.

  And it certainly wasn’t goddamn Lysol.

  Somewhere downstairs in the security office, up on the fake maplewood shelves, there was a thick paperback manual called Terrorism and Other Public Health Emergencies. A nice little handout everyone received about a year back.

  The manual had first aid tips. Vincent couldn’t remember a damn one of them, except wash your skin like crazy. And you could be sure that was the first thing he would do.

  If he could get down to that manual, he and Rickards might have a shot here.

  After that, he was seriously leaving the goddamned private security business for good, end of story. Did people still sell aluminum siding?

  But with the north fire tower out of commission, and the elevators gone, there was only one other way out. The south tower. Unless the terrorists had released the same nerve gas in there, too.

  Was that part of their plan? Dose the fire towers and then blow up the building, so everybody inside would die, one way or the other? But why pull this shit on a Saturday, when the building was mostly empty? Didn’t make any sense. The broken glass, his run-in with that psycho broad, none of it.

  Forget it for now. He’d have pl
enty of time to scratch his nuts and ponder the myriad possibilities after he quit. Now he needed to drag Rickards to the south tower and pray it was clear.

  “You’re heavier than you look,” Vincent said.

  Rickards said nothing.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.”

  Get yourself up off the floor, Jamie. C’mon. You’re not going to solve anything by sitting here. Try the other fire tower. Try the elevator button again. Try something. Maybe that explosion you heard canceled the bypass. Maybe it made things worse. But you won’t know unless you get up and do something.

  Jamie rounded the corner, back into the elevator bank. Sprinklers were gushing. White lights were flashing. The fire alarm was clanging violently.

  And Molly was standing there.

  Covered in blood.

  From her neck to the tops of her thighs, which were bare. Somehow, she’d lost her skirt. Or she’d taken it off to show off her plain panties, which would have been bone white had they not been soaked with blood. She looked like Carrie White, modeling for Victoria’s Secret.

  The sprinklers were washing away some of the blood, but not nearly enough.

  “We need to talk,” Molly said, loud enough to be heard over the alarm.

  “What happened to you?” Jamie asked. He meant it literally, but as he spoke the words, he realized he’d meant mentally, too. Where was the Molly he’d known? Was she gone for good? Or was she back?

  “You have a choice to make in the next minute, and it will be the most important one you’ll ever make.”

  She moved closer to him, one foot in front of the other, making a single, bloody trail up the middle of the carpet.

  “Where—?”

  “Shhhh. Let me speak. Then you can ask as many questions as you want.”

  Jamie swallowed.

  “Okay,” he said.

  But he was thinking: I have no weapon. Damn it. He should have taken the gun from the conference room. If only to keep Molly at bay for a few minutes, until he could figure out an escape plan.

  “David was going to kill you. I wanted to save you. This is why I’m doing all of this. You may not believe me, but it’s all for you.”

  “You’re right,” he said, almost shouting. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I cut your hand to convince my superiors that you could withstand pain. And you did. You did as well as could be expected. Now look at you. Seeking a way out. Many men would have curled up and waited to die. That’s what Paul would have done.”

  Paul.

  Her husband.

  Would have?

  She was closer now, which made it easier to hear. Jamie could see that she’d taken a beating, too. Her left shoulder had a wound that looked like it could have been made with a bullet, and her neck was torn and bruised. Her face might have been beaten, too, but it was hard to tell, because her long hair was wet and hanging down in her face. Molly never wore her hair down at the office. It looked strange. Almost as strange as the lack of clothes and the dripping blood.

  “I want you to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Away.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Europe. We can be happy there. You can write. You can spend all of the time you want writing. I know that’s what you want to do.”

  “Europe? Molly, I’m married. And you’re …”

  Insane.

  She reached out her hand to touch his cheek and he flinched.

  “Shhhh,” she said, more quietly now. “Molly Lewis was married, yes. But I am not Molly Lewis. My name is Ania Kuczun.”

  Anya who?

  “You can be whoever you want, too. As easy as a snake shedding skin.”

  Jamie had watched Molly survive a beating at the hands of Nichole. Watched her shoot David in the head. Felt the agony as she paralyzed him with just one simple move, then cut his fingers apart. Who was this woman? And what was she capable of? What did she really want?

  Europe?

  Wash away the blood, brush her hair, put it back in a conservative ponytail, get her dressed, and Jamie could almost see the old Molly. His office spouse. A quiet, thoughtful, pretty woman who was Andrea’s polar opposite.

  Sometimes, though, it’s the opposites that get you. Draw you in, when you least expect it.

  Like a few months ago.

  On a walk home from an after-work happy hour.

  Hey, I’ll walk you to your car. Well, here it is. Nice SUV. Guess I’ll be going. Yeah, good hanging with you, too … and that’s when it gets you, when you find yourself leaning forward to give her a kiss on the cheek but really you’re aiming for her lips, and she pulls back, a little startled. And you console yourself by saying, Hey, that would have been stupid. I have a pregnant wife at home.

  Still, in that drunken moment, you really wanted that kiss.

  The look on her face slides from puzzlement to embarrassment, and then she climbs into her car, and you walk home, and it’s really not that far away. The humid night air gives you time to think about what you narrowly avoided.

  It’s not different in work the next day, or any other day, except maybe she sometimes looks at you oddly or warmly or knowingly. You forget about it. You’re about to have a kid.

  You have a kid. You come back to work.

  On a hot Saturday morning in August.

  Those lips you momentarily wanted to kiss are now spotted with blood.

  And she’s talking about shedding your skin.

  “There’s something you need to leave behind,” Molly said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jamie said. “This building is burning. We need to leave. Now.”

  She moved closer to him. Her lips. Smiling a little. “I have another way out. If you come with me.”

  “How?”

  “It won’t hurt much.”

  Did she really know another way?

  It didn’t matter. Jamie had trusted her before, and she’d ended up slicing his hand open like a roasted chicken. He wasn’t going to fall for the same ploy twice. He might be a public relations flack, but he wasn’t brain-dead.

  Molly was closer now. Even with the spraying water, he could smell her. The copper penny scent of blood.

  So Jamie did the only thing he could think of. He pushed her. Hard. Like they were schoolchildren in a playground.

  She stumbled back to the ground.

  Jamie bolted.

  Keene opened the hall cupboard and lifted the false plywood bottom. Beneath it was his backup gun. A silver Ruger, Speed Six .38 Special. He never thought he’d need one here in Porty. Went through a lot of trouble to get one. Bought it from a fat guy from Haddington named Joe-Bob, as unlikely as that sounded. But he’d planted it months ago, nonetheless. It was hard to shake the Moscow Rules, even though he hadn’t been CIA in many, many years.

  Build in opportunity but use it sparingly.

  He stuffed the gun in his waistband, near the base of his spine. And as he headed up the stairs he recalled another old espionage chestnut:

  Everyone is potentially under control of the opposition.

  And as he put his hand on the doorknob and thought about killing McCoy …

  There is no limit to a human being’s ability to rationalize the truth.

  It wasn’t an entirely bad trip down; Vincent fell only once and dropped Rickards twice. If Rickards asked later, Vincent planned on shrugging his shoulders. I don’t know how you got those bruises, man. His muscles were trembling and it was hard to breathe. But there was no sitting down and taking a breather. The longer they stayed in this tower, the more likely they were going to die.

  The guys from the Philadelphia Fire Department had begun to arrive by the time Vincent hit the ground floor. They were scurrying in the lobby and on the sidewalk outside the building. Crap. Two guys in full gear with pickhead axes and Nomex hoods came up to them, tried to take Rickards off his hands.

  Vincent pulled back and warned them:
“We’ve been dosed with chemical agents. We need a hazmat team or Homeland Security or whatever you guys are supposed to call out for this stuff.”

  “Where?”

  “I was up on sixteen, the north fire tower. Tell your guys now before they go charging up.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “No idea. And hey—there are people up there. I heard someone yell.”

  “What floor?”

  “I don’t know. Up higher than I was. Could be anywhere.”

  “All right, let’s go, move, move!”

  There, warning done … now he had to get Rickards back to the washup room and find that goddamned Terrorism manual. No telling how long it would take for the scientists to show up and analyze this stuff. If he lived through this—if it wasn’t blood he felt streaming down his cheeks, though Vincent kind of suspected it was—he was sure he was looking at weeks and weeks of blood tests and cheek swabs and anal pokes. His son would be fascinated. Ask all about it. Question is, does a dad tell his kid about stuff like this? Is it educational?

  Vincent Marella was going to do two things after all this was over.

  He was seriously going to quit.

  And he was going to put Center Strike in a garbage can, piss on it, then light it on fire.

  Jamie keyed the door code with his good hand, then yanked open the door. He ran down the short hallway and was immediately confused. Why was it dark outside? He couldn’t open the nearest office door—it was locked—but he looked through the slats of the window to the outer windows.

  That wasn’t darkness. It was smoke.

  And that was because the building was on fire.

  He could see the flashes of red in the sky. Fire trucks.

  Goddamn David Murphy.

  Hang on now. Worry about that later. Jamie needed somewhere else to be, away from Molly. If he could circumvent her, he could make it to the other fire tower. Maybe it was rigged to explode, too. Maybe not. But it was his only option.

  That’s not true, DeBroux. Molly told you that she has a way out.

  Yeah, and she also said it wouldn’t “hurt much.”