Bravo

by Greg Rucka

  Jordan also thinks that this was not at all what she had planned.

  The woman is charging at her, heedless of the gun, or perhaps realizing that Jordan doesn’t want to shoot them, or perhaps not caring for anything but the safety of her daughter. There’s no time to get out of the way, and Jordan tries to twist with the impact. The woman is heavy and has velocity, and together she and Jordan smash into the kitchen table. Both the woman’s hands are on Jordan’s wrist, fighting for control of the gun.

  “Callie!” the woman says. “Run!”

  Jordan punches with her left, the way she was taught by the man in Singapore, her fourth teacher. She hits the woman in the side, hears her grunt, hits her again twice more in the same place, and the woman’s weight changes as her legs go weak. Jordan uses her knee, slams it into the woman’s crotch, and the grip around her wrist slips, and she shoves, hard, and the woman again hits the floor.

  The girl, Callie, is halfway down the front hall.

  Jordan points the Walther at the woman on the floor.

  “You open that door and I will kill your mother,” Jordan says.

  The girl skids to a halt, one arm extended, already reaching for the door.

  “You open that door, I will kill your mother,” Jordan says. “I will do it.”

  The girl doesn’t move.

  On the floor, the woman, Callie’s mother, says, “Run, baby.” The words come out on a wet wheeze.

  “I will do it,” Jordan says. She says this quite calmly, despite her racing heart and the ache in her right knee and the swirl of thoughts all saying that she should not be here, that she should have walked away, that she cannot fail at this, she cannot fail her Lover. “I don’t want to do it, but I will.”

  The girl’s hand is on the doorknob now.

  “I don’t want to hurt either of you. I don’t want to kill either of you. But if you open that door, I’ll do it. You’ll make me do it.”

  “Lying,” Callie’s mother says.

  “No,” Jordan says. “Trust me.”

  Callie’s hand drops. Her body sags. She turns around, looks at Jordan with an expression of hopeless confusion.

  On the floor, Jordan hears her mother release a single, agonized sob.

  “Come over here,” Jordan says.

  Callie comes over.

  “Why are you doing this?” the girl asks. It’s plaintive, almost bewildered. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to call your dad,” Jordan says.

  Chapter Nineteen

  SHE AWAKENS AND is once again unsure of where she is, sunlight cutting across a strange room, a ceiling unfamiliar. She smells coffee and eggs and bacon, the muted sound of a single voice in a one-sided conversation. The sheets are cotton. This is not a hotel room, and it is not Tashkent. She strains for the voice, recognizes it as Bell’s and that he must be speaking on the phone. The memory of the previous night comes back. She feels a muted shame at herself, not for sharing her weakness but for admitting to it. Elisabetta shows no weakness; it’s Petra Nessuno who doesn’t know if she’s coming or going.

  Nessuno rises, drags fingers through her hair. It’s still too long, outside of regulation. Elisabetta’s hair. She knows she should have cut it by now.

  She leaves his bedroom and returns to hers, the bed as pristine as the night before. She couldn’t even bring herself to lie down on it. She grabs her jeans from where they’re heaped in the corner, pulls them on, not bothering with shoes or socks, then heads in the direction of the scents and the sounds.

  “No, I already confirmed,” Bell is saying, his phone wedged between shoulder and ear. He’s at the stove and cooking a genuine heart attack, eggs and bacon together. He catches her eye and motions to the coffee pot with the spatula in his hand. “It’s a two-man team, they’re supposed to be there, just let them do their job.”

  Nessuno fills a mug from the pot.

  “Have her text me,” he’s saying. “I don’t know. I haven’t been here long enough to check.”

  Nessuno sips her coffee. She doesn’t bother to pretend she’s not listening, and Bell certainly doesn’t seem to care, so she suspects whatever the conversation is, it’s not operational.

  “I don’t know.” This time, there’s the edge of exasperation in his voice. “She’ll have to text me until I know. As soon as I can get online, I’ll let her know. But it’s a standard detail, Amy. They’re doing their job.”

  Whatever is said in response takes a while, and Nessuno watches as Bell tenses. He gives the pan a sharp jerk, makes the bacon and eggs jump, spattering grease.

  “I will not ask them to be removed. No.” A pause, and he catches her eye again, indicates one of the cabinets with the spatula. Nessuno opens it, finds glassware, opens the one beside it, finds plates. She takes down two, balances one in each hand. Bell serves up equal portions from the pan. He grins slightly, says, “I’m going to talk to someone about it, don’t worry. At the least, she shouldn’t have been able to spot them, let alone slip them…Amy…Amy…Amy, I am taking this seriously. That’s a serious concern.”

  Nessuno takes the plates to the table, looks to Bell again, mimes for silverware. He shrugs. She begins going through kitchen drawers, all of them with generic contents, as if whoever stocked the house had done the shopping in one go at the nearest Walmart.

  “Have her text me,” Bell says, now putting pan and spatula in the sink. He frees the phone, brings it with him to the table, sets it beside his plate when he takes the seat opposite Nessuno.

  “You cook,” Nessuno says.

  “And clean and sew. I’m a complete soldier.” He gets up again, realizing that he has no coffee. “Juice in the fridge.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He returns with the pot and his cup, tops off her mug.

  “What was that?”

  “My daughter made the security watching her and my wife,” Bell says, cracking bacon with his fork. “But she didn’t know it was security, and it scared the hell out of her.”

  “Counterintelligence?”

  “Yeah. They’re keeping an eye on them.”

  “How old’s your daughter?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “And she spotted them? Were they being sloppy?”

  Bell mixes broken bacon with his scrambled eggs. “She’s deaf, so she’s a watcher by nature. She doesn’t miss much.”

  “I’d never thought of that.”

  “Most people don’t.”

  “That’s why she has to text.”

  “We do video when we can so we can sign, but I haven’t had a minute to find out if they set up wireless with the house. Jorge’s place has all the bells and whistles. I’ll try to reach her from there later.”

  Nessuno tries the eggs. They’re moist and taste good, and she can practically feel her arteries seizing from the bacon fat. It’s an American breakfast, the first one she’s had in as long as she can remember, too heavy for her. In Tashkent, it was always tea and bread and milk. Bell is watching her as she sets her fork aside, the meal unfinished. She wishes she could read him, wishes she knew what he was thinking, and it frustrates her that she can’t. He cleans his plate, then takes both to the sink and begins washing up. When he finishes, he dries his hands on a dish towel.

  “Chaindragger stuck his head in before you got up,” Bell says. “We’ll start when you’re ready, you want to shower or anything first.”

  She wants to say yes, anything to forestall the inevitable. Instead she says, “I’ll save it for after. That’s when I’ll need it.”

  It’s a semifinished basement with a washer and dryer stuck in one corner, an old couch in another, some cardboard boxes labeled in black marker with different words: CLOTHES, PERSONAL, BABY STUFF. The walls are open post with wooden boards, and on the north side, five feet from the corner, there’s a metal light switch box. Bell pops it open, and there’s a separate switch inside. He throws it, and Nessuno doesn’t hear anything, doesn’t see anything change.

 
; “Letting them know we’re coming,” Bell says.

  He reaches up behind one of the crossbeams, fiddles with something, then pushes on a section of the wall and the wall swings open, becoming a door. The tunnel she sees is wider than she’d expected, finished concrete, with fluorescent fixtures running in a straight line along the center of the ceiling. Bell lets her in first, then closes up behind them. They walk abreast, and she can smell moisture and the faint traces of gunpowder.

  “Very high speed,” she says.

  “Isn’t it just.”

  “They do this for every team?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he says. She can’t tell if he’s lying or not. She can’t tell if the distance she’s suddenly feeling from him is the shift to operational stance or if it’s a distrust of her. The vague, indefinable sense that something ominous is approaching. The instinct that tried to warn her that night in Prague, is whispering to her.

  About twenty-five feet along, they pass an open room on her right, small, storage. The brief glimpse she gets tells her enough; it’s a loadout room, weapons and gear. Another twenty feet past, this time on the left, is the range, lights on inside, and she sees the man called Steelriver at the bench. He’s got range glasses over his eyes, his ear protection around his neck, and two pistols in front of him, one of them in pieces. He looks up when Bell stops.

  “Master Sergeant,” he says.

  “Master Sergeant,” Bell says.

  Steelriver grins at Nessuno. “Blackfriars. Gonna give that son of a bitch one hell of a jolt when he sees you, huh?”

  “Yeah, that’s the plan.” It comes out flat. Nessuno’s words, not Elisabetta’s.

  She sees Steelriver’s grin falter, then fade, a new gravity apparent. Nessuno thinks it may be sympathy, or at least empathy, but maybe it’s something else.

  “No easy days,” Steelriver says.

  “Only if you’re a marine,” Nessuno says.

  Bell’s laugh surprises her. Steelriver goes back to rebuilding his pistol. “Holler if you need me,” he says.

  The hard room is just beyond the midway point of the tunnel, its door to Nessuno’s right. There’s a keypad beside it, but Bell ignores that, just taps the door three times, and the one called Cardboard opens it immediately.

  It’s a larger room than Nessuno expects, almost twenty by twenty, with an industrial carpet that she’s sure is called seafoam or ocean mist or like that, which she can feel through her boots has been laid over the same cold concrete that lines the hall. Walls and ceiling covered with waffle pattern acoustic tile, and an open archway off to the far left. She can hear the sound of running water, the distinct slap of it hitting plastic, and Nessuno concludes that it’s a basic bathroom, a shower and shitter and not much else. The one called Chaindragger is leaning against the wall by the opening, but he straightens up when they enter. Nessuno sees a cot against the far wall, blanket folded, pillow atop, a set of clothes beside them. A sink and mini fridge are to the right, along with a couple of folding chairs. In the center of the room is a six-foot-long table that folds width-wise in the center, and it matches the chairs, all from the same set. In two of the corners, where the ceiling meets the walls, she sees cameras, small and black and glassy-eyed.

  “We’re recording?” Nessuno asks.

  “Yeah,” Cardboard says. He’s got a southern drawl she hadn’t noted before. “So watch your language, missy.”

  “Bone still asleep?” Bell asks.

  “Presumably.”

  “How about you?”

  “We’re both awake, even if we don’t look it.”

  Bell takes his .45 from his hip, makes it safe, then hands it to Cardboard. “You two watch the feed.”

  “He’s not going to try anything. He’s on easy street.”

  “Take a hike.”

  Cardboard tucks the .45 away, and Bell and Nessuno part to let him and Chaindragger pass. They step out, and the door falls closed, latches with authority.

  The water in the shower stops. Bell moves to the table, pulls one of the chairs out for Nessuno. She considers not taking it, wonders at the message she will send if she remains standing, decides it will make her look defensive. She sits, and Bell shifts to her right, to get a better view of the bathroom as Tohir emerges. He steps into the room slowly, favoring his good leg, a surprisingly lush-looking blue towel wrapped around his waist, hair heavy and wet. He’s carrying his glasses in one hand, puts them on as he speaks.

  “Your shower is shit,” Tohir says.

  Then he sees her.

  “Elisabet.”

  “Vosil.”

  He speaks softly, and deliberately, and in Uzbek. “I am going to kill you for what you did.”

  For an instant it’s everything out of her nightmares. It’s the road to the farmhouse and the tangled sheets and the difference between standing before him naked rather than nude, and she knows that’s absurd, with him wearing a towel and her fully clothed. Not a threat or even a promise, just a recitation of fact. He will kill her.

  Then the fear snaps into fury, and she’s out of the chair and lunging at him before Bell can move, driving him back into the wall, fists working into soft tissue and bone. The glasses drop, Tohir trying to both cover and defend himself, and she’s snarling, spitting rage, cursing him in Italian and Uzbek both. He screams in pain, the sound deliciously gratifying, and she punches at him again, now shouting, barely able to make out her own words.

  “Don’t you threaten me,” she’s saying. “Never again, never again, you bastard, you piece of shit, you bastard piece of shit. Never threaten me, never again, I am not yours, I was never yours.”

  Bell has an arm around her waist, one hand at her right wrist, she feels the floor leave her feet. The room turns, she’s standing again, and Bell is pushing her back, toward the door.

  “I was never yours.” She starts forward again, blocked by Bell, who sends her back again, until she can feel the acoustic tile digging into her skin.

  “We’re all right,” Bell’s saying. “We’re all right, we’re all right.”

  She realizes he’s talking to the others, Cardboard and Chaindragger, the men watching them on video. She can feel the heat high in her face.

  Opposite her, Tohir is down on the floor, wedged against the wall, one hand straining for his glasses. The towel has slipped, bunched around one ankle, and his other hand covers the wound at his hip. He is naked, and raw, and when he brings his glasses to his face and raises his head, hissing in pain, his lips are bright with blood. It’s only then that Nessuno feels the ripped flesh on her knuckles, the soreness where her fist met his mouth.

  “She does that to me again,” Tohir says, “you get nothing. Nothing.”

  “It’s not going to happen again,” Bell says. He’s still fixed on her, not him. “Is it?”

  “He threatens my life, he tries to—”

  “Is it?”

  Nessuno shakes her head.

  Bell takes a step away from her, moves to Tohir to offer a hand that Tohir petulantly shoves away.

  “I can get to my own feet.”

  “Then do it, and put on some clothes.”

  Tohir works himself upright, using the wall and the cot, dripping beads of water from his hair, the room cool enough to bring goose bumps to his flesh. His mouth has tightened, and his nostrils flare as he inhales. Nessuno sees his nakedness in a new way, sees the vulnerability of his body, the still-puckered and inflamed flesh around the stitches at his hip, a narrow thread of blood running from the sewn skin. She hit him in the wound, she knows, just as she knows it was no accident but pure malice.

  She should feel remorse, or guilt, or shame, she thinks. Watching him struggling into his underwear, his pants, she should at least take pleasure in his suffering.

  As it is, she’s feeling nothing at all.

  “I haven’t eaten,” Tohir says. “You have to feed me something.”

  “In a bit,” Bell says.

  “Now.”

  �
��Vosil,” Nessuno says. “You’re acting like a child.”

  He blinks at her behind his wire-rimmed glasses. In his eyes, she sees his desire to hurt her, so palpable it’s a presence of its own in the room. He moves with effort to the table, seats himself with a grunt.

  “So you starve me, you beat me, that’s how this is going to go?”

  She stares back at him, finds that he cannot hold her gaze. It’s almost satisfying.

  “Tell us about Zein,” she says.

  Tohir smirks. “You can’t find him, can you?”

  “We will,” Bell says.

  “And if I told you there were five other men just like him, all of them here, now, in your country?” He shifts his gaze from Nessuno to Bell. “What would you say to that?”

  “I’d say you’re trying to buy yourself more with what little you’ve got left.” Bell takes one of the folding chairs from the wall, snaps it open, and turns it in his hand, sitting on it backwards. “At a certain point, Vosil, the shop closes, you understand? At a certain point, we’re not buying what you’re selling. You’re at that point.”

  Tohir matches gazes with Bell, and for a moment, Nessuno is certain this is about to devolve into a cock contest. Then Tohir looks at her.

  “You remember in March?” he asks her. “When I sent you to Moscow?”

  “I remember.”

  “Did you fuck him, too? That’s what you do, right? Fuck for your country?”

  Nessuno almost dignifies that with a response. He’d sent her to talk to a man who was laundering money for them, the proceeds from the heroin that Tohir was bringing up from Afghanistan. It had been a lunch meeting at Bar Strelka, she bringing the routing numbers Tohir had made her memorize and the banker swearing up and down that he was taking no more than was his agreed-upon cut. He’d tried feeling her beneath the table, fat fingers on her thigh, and she’d taken his thumb and twisted and told him that if he tried it a second time, she’d be sure to tell Tohir that he was skimming the take. He’d lost his color but found his manners.