Full Ratchet: A Silas Cade Thriller Hardcover

by Mike Cooper

  “It’s good. Come on up.”

  “Catch.” I heaved up her nylon kit—the damn thing must have weighed forty pounds, but she caught it easily. “Give me a hand.”

  “I can’t pull you up.”

  “I know.” I stepped on the guardrail encircling the landing, which got my hand to hers. We clasped wrists in a climber’s grip, and I used that for balance while I got one foot onto the top edge of the door frame. Then it was an acrobat’s move: swing up, other foot scrabbling on the brick, grab the underside of the pediment left-handed in a counterpressure hold, release Harmony’s wrist and fling my right arm over the parapet. Another few seconds of scrambling and I was over the top.

  “Smooth.” She said it deadpan.

  “I’m up, and that’s what counts.”

  We took a minute to scan the streets below, looking for anyone who might have spotted us. Nothing happened. Harmony led us to the other side, about fifty feet across the flat roof. Two skylights jutted up from the tarred gravel, the seams patched and caulked. A headhouse at the end probably topped an interior stairwell, its sheet-metal walls rusting away at the base. Harmony knelt in its shadow.

  “Good view from here,” she said.

  Indeed. We could see the motel easily, its upper level lower than ours because of lower ceilings and a natural gradient in the topography. The panel van was still there, along with the same cars. I could hear occasional traffic on the streets around us, the faint noise of a television or video somewhere, and a brief siren, blocks away.

  “We can take shifts.”

  “No need.” I was at the headhouse door. “You have a screwdriver in that bag? Or a pry bar?”

  “Sure.” She unzipped an outside pocket and handed me an eight-inch flathead.

  “Perfect.” As is so often the case, the nuclear-silo level of security on the first door we tried was belied by a totally pathetic fastener up here. A cheap padlock hung from a galvanized hasp. It looked like someone had tried to shove their way out, more than once, deforming the hinge. I couldn’t quite reach the screws, but one quick yank levered them entirely out of the rotting wood. The lock flung free, clattering onto the roof.

  “In we go.”

  “Give me the driver back.”

  Inside we didn’t even need a flash. Enough light from the motel’s parking lot came through the wall of windows facing it to illuminate most of the interior. I stepped carefully down the wooden stairs, Harmony five feet behind, and stopped on the floor.

  “Wow.”

  “No shit.”

  The entire floor was open, like the industrial loft it must once have been. Brick pillars were spaced every fifteen feet or so. One wall had a row of benches, old scarred wood, with some scraps of packing and cardboard. In the middle a wooden rail surrounded descending stairs, and crates and cans and closed buckets had been piled carelessly nearby. It looked like the auto shop used this floor for materials storage. But the rest of it was empty, vast and echoing.

  “Clean it up and this would sell for seven or eight million in Soho,” I said.

  “Not to point out the obvious, but this isn’t Soho.”

  I examined the supplies in the middle of the floor. Solvents, paint, cans of filler. A faint, sweetly chemical smell came from below—the miasma of toxic solutions used on damaged cars.

  “It’s amazing they don’t all get cancer and die,” I said, studying one label. “Toluene, aliphatic polyisocyanate—it’s like Love Canal here.”

  “This is ideal.” Harmony stood a few feet back from the windows—careful, always careful—studying the motel. After a minute she opened up the carrier bag and started pulling out equipment.

  I checked the parking lot outside. When I looked back, Harmony had assembled a tripod, mounted a video camera and run a cable from it to a microsized laptop. She adjusted the camera using the manual viewfinder while the computer booted, then made further adjustments until the picture on the screen was just right.

  “I’ve got the van and the last five doors of the motel in the frame,” she said.

  “Okay.” The rig was impressive, but I wasn’t sure why we needed it. “Are you hoping to get pictures of them?”

  “Of course—we can run them against the databases, see if they’ve been flagged anywhere.”

  “Databases?”

  “CJIS. You don’t have a contact there?”

  I ducked that question. “Ah, I knew Justice had a photo repository, not just fingerprints. But I didn’t think it had been digitized and indexed yet.”

  Harmony must have seen my expression. She laughed. “I’m kidding. Next Gen ID is the usual billion-dollar clusterfuck—they won’t have a photo database worth using for years.”

  Good to know I wasn’t totally behind the curve. “So what’s the point?”

  “Motion sensing.” She knelt to the laptop and started tapping keys, opening menus and adjusting settings. “I’ll set some baseline imagery—the doors and the van. Maybe the other vehicles, too. The computer will let us know if anything changes.”

  “Huh.” Maybe I did need a technical upgrade.

  “That way we don’t need to watch the whole time. I don’t know about you, but passive surveillance drives me nuts. I can’t tolerate just sitting and waiting.”

  “Right.” I looked at the laptop’s screen, which was now windowpaned into several different close-ups of the motel. “What happens if, I dunno, a pigeon flies by? Or someone goes down the sidewalk?”

  “That’s why the images are zoomed in on specific targets.” She glanced up at me. “They use this in the black-ops community now. After your time, maybe?”

  Ouch. “When did you take your discharge?”

  “Who says I was in the service?”

  “You weren’t?”

  “Maybe.”

  Almost anyone with her skill set acquires it in the defense of our country. There are plenty of training courses around—wannabes can spend thousands of dollars on anything from tactical shooting to combat driving. But nothing compares with actual experience in the field. There’s a reason the merc firms like Academi hire guys out of the service, not certificate holders from Joe’s School of Gunnery.

  If she wasn’t ex-military, her background was probably even scarier. Spookier, so to speak.

  “Want to tell me about it?” I said.

  Harmony looked at me and smiled. “No.”

  It was about six o’clock. Surveillance boredom began to set in. I watched the last of the sunset through the western windows, against Pittsburgh’s skyline. The computer beeped occasionally, always a false alarm—someone passing too close, a car driving in. Once a dog loped across the lot, maybe feral, maybe just out for an after-dinner run. I started to get hungry.

  “We should have picked up something to eat beforehand,” I said. “Seems risky to go in and out now, just to get some hamburgers.”

  “Oh, sorry, forgot about that.” Harmony went back to the carrier bag and tossed me a couple of granola bars. “I have a liter of water, too.”

  I’d found several broad pieces of thick, open-cell foam in the mechanics’ heap of junk. From the cutouts it looked like packing material, something that had been wrapped around bumpers or body panels. Stacked by one of the pillars it made a sort of sofa for us to sit on—low to the floor, but we could still see through the windows, and almost comfortable.

  Harmony finished her granola bar and crumpled the wrapper into her pocket. No clues to be left lying around. I drank from the Nalgene water bottle.

  “How long you been doing this?” I asked.

  “Long enough.”

  “Like it?”

  “It’s better than retail.”

  “Have many clients on the East Coast?”

  “Why would you want to know that?”

  I turned to look at her. “Is there any part of your personal history or outlook on life you’d care to share with me?”

  “Why?”

  “Ah . . . light conversation?”

>   “I used to play lead guitar in a South Central band. We opened for Against Me! once. It was great, but girl bands can attract some really scary groupies. So I decided to do this instead.”

  I nodded. “I don’t believe that.”

  She smiled. “Good for you.”

  Light from the windows fell on her face, leaving the other side in shadow. Her eyes were clear and steady. The perfect haircut was soft and disordered.

  Was there an invitation there or not?

  “You know my history,” I said. “Even about Dave. I don’t think I have any secrets bigger than that, and he’s really more in the way of a surprise than a secret.”

  Harmony nodded and her smile faded slowly away. She reached out and put a hand on my shoulder.

  Then she took it back. I was having all kinds of trouble reading the signals.

  “I had some trouble once.” Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear it.

  A long moment. That seemed to be it.

  “Trouble,” I said.

  “When I was young. Seventeen.”

  “Okay.”

  Another spell of silence.

  “I decided,” said Harmony, then stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “That it would never happen to me again.” Her face closed in, suddenly hard and impenetrable. “Never.”

  I kept still. “Got it.”

  “Ever.”

  Another siren went past outside. In New York I could have told you police, fire, maybe even which ambulance company. Here, out of place, I wasn’t sure.

  The foam was compressed to the concrete floor underneath me, not as comfortable as at first.

  Some of the tension left Harmony’s face. She looked away, and her shoulders relaxed.

  “I don’t take any shit,” she said.

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “It’s mostly about attitude.”

  I’d noticed that, too.

  “Sometimes . . .” she said, “sometimes it gets tiring. Carrying the attitude around.”

  She looked back at me and smiled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I reached forward, a little hesitant given the discussion to this point, and met her halfway. The foam squeaked beneath us. Harmony put her hands on each side of my face and drew me in, a long slow kiss that gradually opened up into more exploratory realms.

  For the first minute it was gentle—slow and achingly gentle.

  My arms went around her waist, under the jacket, and I felt her muscles flow and tighten as she shifted into me. One hand went round my neck. She grabbed the back of my head and pulled. We separated for air, then back in, deeper, more desperate.

  I twisted, seeking leverage, and instead toppled over, pulling her with me. Her hands were all over my back and chest, tearing my shirt out of the way. I tried to slide my own hand into her pants and collided with the Glock.

  “Ow!”

  “Shit.” Harmony reached back, drew the pistol and dropped it on the floor next to us.

  “Yo, careful.”

  She slipped out of her jacket, started tugging my shirt over my head. I went for her belt, one-handed, tangled up.

  And then it was a frenzy. We tore at the rest of our clothing, mouths together, on our faces, our necks and chests. Harmony wore a dark sports bra, a wide band of lycra. I pulled it up, trying not to claw at her breasts. An odd weight on its side . . .

  A folding knife, in a nylon sheath.

  She yanked at my pants. The Sig fell out, clunking to the concrete. I tried to pull one leg from my pants but it got hung up on my backup Taurus in the ankle holster. Standing on one leg, pants at my ankles, Harmony all over me.

  “Don’t—”

  “Yes!”

  “Oh . . .”

  I had her panties down—more lycra, another hunk of heavy metal. A Kahr compact 9. I shoved it out of the way, grabbed her ass and pulled her close.

  Something rough between our bellies. I felt around front.

  “Duct tape?”

  “Don’t tear that off!”

  “What . . .”

  “There’s a razor under it.” She put her mouth on mine again, tongue reaching.

  “Jesus.”

  Boots—hers slipped off and another hideout gun tumbled to the floor. Mine took some work, more wasted seconds sitting bare-assed on the foam with Harmony straddling my waist while I reached around and yanked at the laces.

  Socks disappeared. Finally we were both almost naked, rolling on the foam. I hit my elbow on the floor and the pain almost distracted me for a second.

  “Cold,” Harmony gasped. The foam had slipped and her thigh was on the floor.

  I pulled her sitting, grabbed for the foam, but it went every which way, skittering out of reach.

  “Fuck,” I said. “Up, up, up.”

  We stood, her leg wound around me, pulling me off-balance. I toppled, banged into the pillar, found my footing and straightened up. With my back against the brick I embraced Harmony, a great enveloping hug, running my hands and arms up and down her back, feeling the heat of her skin. Harmony’s hair brushed across my face and I breathed it in. I found her ass, muscles dense and smooth and tight, then grasped it with both hands and lifted her up.

  She helped, reaching down with one hand to make some room while pulling up with the other hand round my neck. One leg rose, hooking around both of mine.

  I slid in, electric warmth and intensity. Ohhhh that felt good.

  Harmony gasped.

  We moved—the first moment out of sync, then finding the rhythm, gloriously.

  “Don’t . . . don’t—” Her voice slipped into incoherence.

  I felt the build and couldn’t help a groan.

  CRAAAASH—BAANNGG!

  An explosion shattered the room. I jerked in shock. Harmony screamed, eyes shut, head thrown back.

  Fireworks in my brain. The loft was filled with gunshots, smashing glass, yelling. Synesthetic overload—I smelled gold bursts, saw screams, heard gunsmoke.

  Two figures had crashed through one skylight, jumping in even as a third provided covering fire from above. In the fractured instant, I saw rifles and goggles, body armor and muzzle flash.

  Harmony and I fell, landing on enough foam. I threw out an arm, found a pistol by sheer luck and fired without aiming.

  I was still inside Harmony and the lizard brain had its way—I came in a great heaving spasm. I jerked the handgun’s trigger repeatedly, no more control over my fingers than I had over any other part of my body.

  A few seconds. An eternity.

  The pillar provided some cover, in particular from the man still at the skylight. One of the jumpers remained on the ground. Bad landing.

  The other was on his feet, a dazzling beam from a superbright LED mounted under-barrel swinging through the haze.

  Two Russians remaining, one below and one above. Reinforcements, sure enough.

  I fired once more, then the slide locked open. Empty.

  Harmony shoved at me. “Go! Go!”

  I rolled out and off, skin shocked by the freezing concrete. The handgun—Harmony’s Glock—was empty. I dropped it.

  She went the other way. I had a flashing glimpse of leg and back and golden hair, then she tipped the bench up and over and slid into cover behind the heavy wood.

  A burst of automatic fire cut through the air above my head, chips spattering from the wall and pillar. I lunged, no plan—scraping my totally unprotected, still half-mast privates on the concrete. I screamed and curled up.

  Gunfire from behind the overturned table. Harmony must have found a weapon, or maybe she’d had yet another holstered somewhere I didn’t notice. The LED flash swung in her direction.

  I saw the pile of auto shop materials, realized what Harmony was doing, and went to ground, wrapping my arms around my head.

  KA-ROOONNNK!

  The toluene detonated first. Not much explosive pressure but it immediately set the paint and solvents on fire. Pinpricks stung across my back a
s superheated shrapnel blasted through the room. Yelling—Harmony? The Russians?

  No, me. I forced myself to shut up.

  Rolling across the floor, I’d snagged the sports bra. Even as I stared wildly around, trying to locate our assailants, my hands were busy extracting the knife. I flipped it open with the thumb lock, shifted automatically to a saber grip.

  Flames roared at the stairwell. Acrid smoke rapidly filled the entire room. The man at the skylight fired three-round bursts this way and that, randomly. I guess he couldn’t see any better than I could. The LED beam shone at floor level, motionless in the fug—the attacker had either dropped the flashlight or was down himself, lying beside it.

  “Silas!”

  I looked over. The haze was just thin enough that I could see her emerge, standing from behind the table with guns raised in each hand, glaring at the ceiling.

  Stark naked. Under close-quarters attack, probably about to die from gunfire, flames, smoke inhalation or all three—I still stopped for a moment, dumbstruck.

  She fired two-handed, the pistols in exact parallel, rapidly alternating her shots.

  The LED beam moved.

  The attacker on the floor was back. He had the assault rifle.

  I screamed and ran straight at him. The beam swung my way. A burst cut the air but I ignored it.

  The man was an indistinct lump in the smoke, crouched in a kneeling stance. I leaped, crashed into him and punched as hard as I could with the knife.

  It struck the ceramic plates in his chest armor, jarring my grip so hard I almost dropped it.

  He grunted. I struck again, this time aiming for the gap between his helmet and chest armor. Missed again—the knife bounced off his neck guard.

  If he was smarter, he’d have dropped the Vikhr—I was inside the radius, too close for him to do any immediate damage with it. But the noise and choking smoke and explosions had rattled him—he clung to the weapon, and that let me strike one more time.

  Up, into his armpit, right between the side plates and the pauldron. The knife ripped straight through his jacket, into the shoulder. I’d put so much force into the blow that he stumbled left, knocked off-balance—even as blood gouted out, covering my hand and forearm.