The Rimes Trilogy Boxed Set

by P. R. Adams

  “They’re not wearing any special gear,” Rimes said. “South Asian? They could be locals.”

  “Mercs?”

  “Probably.” He twisted around. “Unu, any metacorp field teams operate in this area normally?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Unu said, her voice shaking. “T-Corp, sometimes HuCorp. Mostly mercenaries, though. Brotherhood and the like.”

  “Mercs it is,” Rimes said. Brotherhood of Arms. Not the threat they used to be, but bad enough. “They’ll probably come through any minute now. Cover the door and stay where the sniper can’t see you.”

  “No worries,” Unu said. “I’m not moving.”

  Rimes belly-crawled to the front door, hugging the north wall as tight as he could. By staying atop the embankment, the sniper had limited his view into the room. Unu was safe so long as she stayed in the corner, and Kleigshoen was hidden in the hallway.

  As he crawled past the door, he saw that Desai had stopped breathing, although his blood continued to spread on the floor. Rimes stopped just beyond the door and sat up, his heels beneath his butt and his hand pressed against the wall for balance. He kept his eyes level with the knob. He would be the first thing the gunman would see when he came through the door.

  Surprise was all he had going for him.

  Suddenly, the knob twitched and started to turn. Rimes held a hand up and pointed at the door.

  Gunfire erupted at the eastern end of the building. An instant later, the door opened, and the gunman stepped in, barrel lowered.

  Rimes launched himself and grabbed the barrel, putting his whole weight into the maneuver. His momentum pushed the two of them out the door.

  The gunman tried to jerk the gun free, squeezing off a burst in the process. The rounds thudded into the ground. The barrel heated up, and Rimes gritted his teeth in pain. He shoved the gunman back, straining to keep the barrel pointed away and down, pushing until the gunman lost his footing, then driving a shoulder into his face and neck until he released the gun and tried to push Rimes off. Rimes pinned the gun between them with his hip, then pummeled the other man’s face, breaking first his nose, then his cheek.

  Rimes pinned the assault rifle to the ground with a shin, then scrambled onto the man’s chest and pinning him down, all the while punching and throwing elbows against ever-weakening attempts to fend off the attacks. Finally, the other man's arms went limp.

  Rimes freed the assault rifle and squatted low over the unconscious form. Sporadic gunfire sounded from the east. Rimes hastily retrieved two magazines, a knife, and an earpiece, then he delivered a swift kick to the bloody head, and retreated to the front of the building.

  He stopped at the front door, then slipped the primitive earpiece on, adjusting it as best he could and setting it to mute. He listened to the earpiece intently.

  It was quiet.

  “Jack?” Kleigshoen whispered from the front room.

  “Dana, you two make your way through this door to the parking lot,” Rimes called. “Stay low. Don’t go for the cars. We need to eliminate the gunmen on the eastern side of the building. Wait for me to engage the sniper.”

  “O-okay.”

  Rimes sneaked along the north wall until he had a view of the embankment. He scanned for any sign of the sniper, then squat-walked along the west wall.

  He stopped at the sight of the stunted tree, dropped flat, and brought the assault rifle up.

  He scanned the area through the rifle’s sights, waiting.

  Suddenly, the sniper moved, tracking to Rimes’s left. Rimes fired. The sniper rifle sounded simultaneously.

  The sniper pitched backwards. Kleigshoen screamed.

  Rimes jogged for the front door, his heart racing wildly. “Dana!” The roar of an engine drowned out his voice.

  Car. Approaching from the east.

  Rimes rounded the north wall in time to see Kleigshoen collapse in the doorway. His heart skipped a beat.

  He ran to her side.

  Tears welled in her eyes. Blood—and clots of other matter—dripped from her face and hair. Rimes wiped her face. She was fine.

  Next to her, Unu’s skull had been shattered.

  “He shot her,” Kleigshoen sobbed in a whisper. “She was right next to me and he shot her.”

  Rimes stood. Too many times to count, he'd survived a close call only to watch someone else die, and he'd never gotten past the survivor's guilt.

  The engine was closer now. He could hear brakes squealing. Voices shouted over each other in the earpiece. Someone said something about movement.

  The gunfire to the east had stopped. Rimes cautiously jogged east along the north wall, stopping at the edge.

  He heard a weak choking sound nearby and attempted to sneak a peek, but a round thudded into the corner, spraying his face with splinters.

  Two men were sliding Kwon into the back of a large HuCorp car.

  Rimes looked again. A third man with a pistol squatted behind the front of the car. He fired at Rimes but missed.

  The car’s engine roared. Blood trickled into Rimes’s eyes. He popped around the corner just long enough to fire a burst toward the gunman.

  He heard a satisfying howl, but then the car accelerated away.

  Rimes wiped away the blood, pulling a pinky-length splinter from his forehead. He waited a few heartbeats, then glanced around the corner again.

  The car was gone.

  The gunman was on the ground. He was breathing shallowly and reaching for his pistol.

  Rimes jogged forward, picked up the wounded man’s gun, and took away his earpiece, kicking the man’s hands away. Rimes muted the earpiece, then kicked the gunman in the head, stilling him.

  Rimes took in the carnage along the eastern wall. Two more gunmen were slumped on the ground, their blood-soaked shirts testament to Djerrkura and Metcalfe’s ambush.

  Rimes jogged back to the building.

  Inside the doorway, Djerrkura lay on the ground. The back of his head was blown in, and a tranquilizer dart stuck in the wall beside him.

  Rimes pulled the dart from the wall and examined the room, imagining what had happened.

  Kwon must have sneaked up on Djerrkura during the gun battle, then was knocked out by the mercs. Whoever they were, they weren’t Kwon’s friends.

  Two meters beyond, Metcalfe was slumped over a table, his head twisted at a horrific angle. He was still alive, barely. He wheezed as he struggled to breathe.

  His gun was gone.

  “Brent?”

  Metcalfe’s eyes opened, reflecting fear and a terrible awareness. Tears rolled down his face.

  He tried to speak, but didn’t have the breath.

  Rimes touched Metcalfe's shoulder. “Dana’s okay. She’s going to be all right. We’re going to find these bastards. We—”

  Rimes stopped.

  Metcalfe was dead.

  26

  7 March 2164. Darwin, Australia.

  * * *

  Rimes crept back to the front room and knelt beside Kleigshoen. He positioned himself between her and Unu’s corpse. Kleigshoen was still a mess.

  “We have to go,” Rimes said, softly at first, then again more firmly, as she didn’t respond.

  “Get Brent first.” Kleigshoen’s head shook in time with her breathing.

  Rimes hesitated.

  She knows he’s dead. She just needs me to tell her for her to accept it.

  “He’s gone.”

  Kleigshoen cupped her hands over her eyes. Her body shook, but no sound escaped.

  “Dana, we don’t have time for this. I need you to call the police. You need to tell them what happened, and they need to locate the mercs’ car. There was—”

  Kleigshoen shook her head and released a loud sob. She reached for Rimes and pulled him to her, clutching him tight. She shook violently for several seconds before sucking in a big gulp of air and slipping into a loud cry.

  There was nothing he could do to stop it, so Rimes let her get it out of her system. He wres
tled with conflicting feelings: anger, confusion, sorrow.

  Foremost, though, was the anger. Not only over Metcalfe’s death but over Metcalfe and Kleigshoen’s deception, their games and secrets, the way they doled out information and manipulated him.

  From the start, something had been amiss in the Bureau’s request for his assistance. Pursuing Kwon had been legitimate, or at least there had been legitimate reasons to pursue him. But they’d never come clean about the true motivation, either about the mission or about their need to involve Rimes.

  He held Kleigshoen. Her crying diminished slowly.

  A chill wind blew in from the sea. Darkness was approaching. He pulled away from Kleigshoen, but her hair had matted to his bloody forehead. He gently tugged the hair free.

  “Dana?” he whispered. “Can you contact the police? There was a security camera back up the road, just out of sight when we came off that dirt trail. They can get an image of the car off that.”

  Kleigshoen nodded. Rimes handed her his handkerchief, and she wiped her face. After a moment, she walked down the hallway.

  He watched her go. When she was out of sight, he returned to the unconscious gunman on the front lawn.

  Rimes pulled the gunman’s belt from his pants, rolled him onto his stomach, then started to bind his hands behind his back. The man began to struggle. Rimes planted a knee in the small of the man’s back, pinning him down, then finished the crude knot.

  Rimes pulled a knife and put the blade against the man’s neck. He quit struggling.

  Rimes paused, letting the man imagine what might be in store for him.

  Sometimes, imagination is worse than the reality.

  On the back of the man’s neck, Rimes found the edge of a partially hidden tattoo. Rimes pulled the man’s collar back. The tattoo was a stylized fist—clenched and armored. A combat knife and a pistol crossed behind the fist.

  Brotherhood.

  “We don’t have long to talk,” Rimes said. “So I’d suggest you think carefully about what you say. The police will be here soon. There are four of their own dead in the building back there. What’s T-Corp want with Kwon? Tell me and you’re free.”

  The man tried to glare at Rimes from the corner of his eye. “They never told us. They want him alive. There is a ship. We were supposed to get him onboard.” His voice had a nasal quality to it.

  “Name?”

  “The Argo.”

  “How many were on your team?”

  The gunman hesitated. “Nine.”

  “Counting you?”

  “Ten.”

  Rimes considered the numbers. “You only brought eight.”

  “Basu, he got sick with the malaria. Atish ran the operation from the motel.”

  Rimes set the man’s earpiece on the ground, then untied him and rolled him into a sitting position, still holding the knife at his throat.

  Rimes fit the other earpiece in his ear. “I need you to do one last thing. Tell Atish you escaped and want to get back to them when things cool down. You’ll need some medical attention, but you’ll live.”

  The gunman looked at the earpiece uncertainly. He hesitated for a moment, then gritted his teeth and put it in. “Atish.” He blinked slowly, waiting for the connection. “Atish, hello?”

  Rimes tightened his grip on the knife, watching the man’s face for any hint of artifice. The silence dragged on for several seconds.

  Through his earpiece, Rimes heard a voice ask, “Anwar? Where have you been?”

  “Atish, I am hurt.” Anwar rubbed at his ruined face. “The bastards, they got me.”

  “We can’t get you. It’s too much trouble now.”

  “I know, I know. I need medical help, but I will be okay,” Anwar said. “My nose, it is broken. I think my cheek too.”

  “Okay, yeah,” Atish said after a moment. “Tomorrow. On the ship. Now don’t call me again.”

  “Tomorrow. Do not leave me.”

  Rimes smiled as the link closed. He held out his free hand, and Anwar returned the earpiece.

  “Don’t try to contact them again.” Rimes pulled the knife away from Anwar’s throat and pointed to the west. “Go that way. I wouldn’t go near the ship if I were you.”

  Anwar rose with one eye on Rimes, backed out of reach, then jogged away.

  Kleigshoen stood in the north doorway. Her eyes were puffy, and she was shivering but otherwise in control.

  “You shouldn’t have let him go.”

  He looked Kleigshoen in the eyes. She held his gaze without blinking or looking away.

  Good. I need your head in this. I’ll need your help getting Kwon back, then you can answer whatever questions he can't.

  The anger was back. He was going to get answers, no matter what it took.

  “Did they identify the car?”

  Kleigshoen nodded. “They found it dumped off Stuart Highway. They’re gone.”

  “All right. I guess they’re not totally incompetent.” Rimes handed her Anwar’s earpiece. “Can you run a trace on that, get a log of the calls? I want the location of the most recent one first. That’s where we’re headed.”

  Kleigshoen took the earpiece, still trying to stare him down. “You’re not giving this to the police?”

  “No,” Rimes said. “We’re going to handle this ourselves.”

  27

  7 March 2164. Darwin, Australia.

  * * *

  The Darwin Seaside Resort Lodge consisted of three dirty, peeling two-story buildings in an inverted “U.” Despite its name, it was positioned closer to the McMinn Street ramp onto Stuart Highway than to any shoreline.

  Rimes watched the parking lot through his earpiece’s display.

  “What a sad little dump,” Kleigshoen said.

  Compared to the rest of Darwin City, it looked old and neglected. The place reeked of hopelessness, desperation. They’d seen an example of its typical clientele earlier: a lonely businessman opening his door for a grungy prostitute. It would appeal to unsavory sorts who preferred to be left alone.

  Like the Brotherhood mercenaries.

  “You see anything new?” Rimes asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Rimes drilled down on the image on his display until he saw a grainy “122” on the door. He pulled the zoom out, stopping when “123” showed on the adjacent door.

  “At least the camera’s working. Perfect placement.”

  For the last half hour, they’d been parked beneath a broken lamp, twenty meters from the parking lot. The only activity had been one of the mercenaries leaving from, then returning to, Room 122 with dinner, using a blue van.

  For the third time since their arrival, Rimes checked the assault rifle he’d taken from Anwar. It was an ARDE AWS-3, a knockoff of the Cytek Advanced Assault Weapons System, and not a particularly good one. It had a reputation for jamming after less than a hundred rounds. The three magazines he’d taken from Anwar held twenty 6.8-mm rounds; one was already half-empty.

  I don’t even have enough rounds to worry about it jamming.

  Kleigshoen had settled into a quiet calm. “What’s your plan?”

  Rimes adjusted the holster to Desai’s pistol before replying. “When the time comes, I’ll retrieve Kwon from our Brotherhood friends.”

  “And when is that?”

  “It shouldn’t be long.” He locked eyes with her. “While we wait, why don’t you tell me what you and Brent were really up to? It sure as hell wasn’t figuring out what was behind T-Corp 72.”

  Kleigshoen looked out the passenger-side window, into darkness.

  After a long pause, she sighed. “That’s not completely true. We were very interested in what happened at T-Corp 72, just not in the compound.”

  “All right. What were you interested in?”

  “The X-17.”

  “You knew all along they had that?” Rimes shook his head. “Wait. You knew those genies were going to be there?”

  “We suspected. Jack, it’s complicated.”


  Rimes’s eyes narrowed. “Give me a try.”

  “You don’t want to—wait.” She held up a hand. “Who’s that?”

  She sent Rimes an overlay on the camera image through her earpiece. Rimes squinted at the image, then grabbed the assault rifle.

  A man with a swollen nose was edging toward the motel parking lot, looking over his shoulder. Anwar.

  “It’s the gunman you let go. I told you not to—”

  After a few seconds, Rimes opened the car door.

  Kleigshoen turned. “What are—”

  “Get ready.”

  He walked across the street and into the parking lot. He held the assault rifle vertically off his left hip, shielding it from the view of anyone looking from the front of the motel and maintaining a normal stride as he crossed the parking lot.

  Anwar knocked on the door, talked to someone inside, then disappeared inside Room 122.

  Rimes stopped at the door to Room 121, leaned against the wall, and edged to the right of Room 122’s window. He shifted the assault rifle into both hands.

  Raised voices leaked through the window. Anwar’s voice was recognizable, although it was Atish and someone else doing the shouting.

  Rimes was almost sure that Kwon was in the adjoining room, 123, away from the argument, with maybe a couple of guards. Rimes had planned to start with Room 123 and eliminate any men guarding Kwon first, but the shouting gave Rimes second thoughts. He’d wanted a distraction, and the mercenaries were as distracted as they were going to get.

  He listened a moment longer, trying to visualize as well as he could where Atish and the other shouter were. Before planting the camera in the parking lot, Kleigshoen had managed a few image grabs of other rooms, so Rimes had a good idea of the rooms’ layouts: rectangles, deeper than they were wide, with a bathroom and small closet at the back, a table and two chairs beneath the window looking out onto the parking lot, two beds on one wall, a dresser and console on the opposite.

  Atish and the other shouter were near the window; Anwar sounded like he was still near the door. The one who had malaria should be in the room with them, too, away from the prisoner, on one of the beds.