Dark Heart

by James Phelan

  “Would you do it? If it came to it, like if Almasi or Krycek were in your sights?”

  “In self-defense, sure. But I’d rather they got justice.”

  “Justice? We’ve established how much money these guys must be worth. What about defending the defenseless? All the people they’re making money off? The thousands of refugees they’re trafficking around the world? That’s not enough to make you happy to pull a trigger?”

  “I’ve never been happy to pull a trigger . . .” Walker trailed off. It was true, at first thought. But if he spent time really going back over some events in his life, there were certainly people he was happy to see in the ground, and he didn’t regret his part in it. In those circumstances, not regretting and being happy about the outcome weren’t that far apart.

  “I think your best bet will be to find out who that contact is, and pass the information to ICE or Customs or Homeland,” Walker said. “Or some old colleagues in State. These scumbags will get what they deserve, and you’ll probably be reinstated.”

  “You think?”

  “Sure, why not? You’d have proved your worth to them, that you can operate just fine in the field.”

  “Because you said yourself, just before,” Muertos said, “that people like this, with their money and influence, are able to make things disappear.”

  “Maybe I’ve still got a little more faith in the system than you do,” Walker said, slowing the car and making a turn down a B-road, headed further inland. Farmland stretched as far as he could see, with bands of trees along streams and brooks and hedging around buildings. It seemed to be all farmland, the closest town, Burnley, eight miles away. “If they’re as big a fish as you say, the Feds will make a big song and dance about busting them up—they’ll make news all over the world, and there’ll be no hiding or shirking from what’s coming to them.”

  “We’ll see,” Muertos said.

  Walker knew that there was more left unsaid, but he didn’t press it now. HOME was down a driveway, a hard right two miles down the road. The terrain was not becoming to any kind of slow and sneaky approach. He started to run through his options for overpowering Almasi in a remote farmhouse. None of them was good.

  •

  Almasi filled a coffee pot with water. A heavy stainless-steel pot, which would percolate the water up through the fresh coffee grounds and into a reservoir at the top. He checked his watch, a Patek Philippe that had been his father’s. Bahar was taking much longer than they’d planned. He poured the beans into an electric grinder and set it on. The machine burred away, and the smell of the fresh grinds filled the air. He turned it off, filled the coffee filter and tamped it, then assembled the coffee pot. He was headed to the stove when he stopped.

  A noise from outside. A car, approaching, the sound of tires on the gravel driveway.

  He put the coffee pot on the bench and headed to the front door. Out the window to the side he saw flashes of the black Lexus through the rows of conifers that lined the drive.

  Almasi smiled and went back to the kitchen, where he turned on a gas burner and set the coffee on the stove top, all the while whistling a tune from an Italian opera he’d seen in Damascus before his home country had imploded. Out the kitchen window the black mare had returned and was nuzzling its foal. He was happy with America, happy with how things had panned out. He could get used to life here.

  37

  Walker had seen a glimpse of the house from the B-road before he turned onto the treelined driveway. It was like a transplant from Connecticut, all white timber and slate-gray roof and shutters on its two stories of windows. The gravel driveway was a mile long and lined with conifers that were tall and thick with dark green needles. Dairy cows grazed in the fields on each side. There were no cars visible but there were lights on inside the house, giving the place a warm and inviting glow, and smoke rose from a chimney, the puffs darker gray than the sky. Walker noted a large barn to the west, which might have been used as a garage, or perhaps this was a working farm when not occupied by terrorists. No sentries in sight. No security of any kind. No vehicles. No army of bad guys. And it was, unmistakably, where the vehicle stated was HOME.

  Heat flared up Walker’s neck.

  As he neared the house a thought occurred to him—this vehicle might be stolen, and HOME might well be Ma and Pa in retirement, the vehicle boosted by the killer last night when the two oldies were tucked up on their couch watching Jeopardy. They might still be there, oblivious to the fact that their car had been taken. Walker kept up speed along the driveway, thinking as fast as the wheels turned. There was no name on the letterbox, which was an old milk can painted white; just a number. The driveway had a gate, made from galvanized steel and set at each side onto concrete posts. A serious gate. The type of thing that people might have on a holiday house that they locked up for extended periods of time. Retirees hitting the road or going overseas, perhaps. But it had been left open. Inviting. Or careless.

  Walker slowed the car a little.

  “What’s wrong?” Muertos asked.

  “Almasi might not be here,” Walker said.

  “What?”

  “I’ve assumed that he was here the whole time, waiting for Bahar to return.”

  “And?”

  “Assumptions can be wrong.”

  Muertos said, “So, what are you going to do?”

  The crunch of gravel under the low-profile tires was barely audible in the plush cabin. Outside, on either side of the driveway, was green rolling pasture, largely flat but for very gradual undulations and, to the east, a crevasse that sprouted saplings munched by the cows. Patches of white frost had formed in the gullies, brilliant crystal droplets of dew on the rises. Wire fences and bands of trees delineated different owners on the lots beyond. Visibility all around, especially from the vantage point of the house, was good.

  Walker said, “I’m going to knock on the front door.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  “This place is hardly Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. No guards, no cameras. Look at it. Sweet little country pile. Maybe this is home to this car, but maybe home is not where Almasi is.”

  “But Almasi could be in there,” Muertos countered. “With other guys. And they could be armed. And they might shoot you before you reach the door. Or shoot you when they open the door and see you, like Hassan almost did.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “So, what? Turn around and watch the place awhile?”

  “It’s too late. Whoever’s in there has probably heard or seen our approach.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  Muertos was silent.

  “This is a bad place to recon, and it’s too late now, we’re committed,” Walker said. He drove slowly—but not too slowly. Five seconds to the front door. He’d stop close, so that the journey from the car to the door would be a few strides at most. “In other circumstances, we could stake it out, but we don’t have time for that.”

  The house was three seconds’ travel time away.

  “We do if it keeps us alive,” Muertos said, her voice rushed. “You can turn around and bug out.”

  “No,” Walker said. He drove up to the house in a burst of speed and then braked hard at the last moment, the tires dragging grooves through the gravel, pulling up to a stop just in front of the door of the house. “Sometimes surprise is all the protection you need.”

  38

  Walker was on foot and paused at the door. It was timber, painted the same slate-gray as the shutters and the roof. Solid. No peep hole. Why would you need one, out here? You wouldn’t. This was friendly territory, not a big city. Friends and family and neighbors and the occasional delivery person would be the only people to come knocking. Half those people probably just opened up the door—which might be left unlocked all the time that the residents were at home. He didn’t knock.

&nbs
p; He tried the handle. It turned, and he pushed the door open, keeping out of view to the side. The door moved and stayed fully open, silent on big, expensive brass hinges. No reaction from inside. No bullets flying his way. Nothing.

  Still none the wiser if he’d find Ma and Pa in the house, or Almasi, he took a moment to listen. No click-clack of Ma or Pa raking a shotgun to welcome him. No sounds of any inhabitant. A faint hissing inside the house, coming from the back, a kind of domestic white noise. The smell of coffee in the air.

  Walker slipped his boots off and entered, his socked feet silent on the highly polished hardwood boards. He was in a grand entry, where a wide staircase took center stage as though the owners might like to make big entrances as the help invited the visitors in. But there was no sign of Ma or Pa, or their help, or Almasi. Walker went by the stairs, moving silently, and down the hall, toward the back of the house, which he could see was a kitchen and informal dining area. He knew it was informal because to his left was a formal dining room with settings for twenty around an oval table. The noises of cooking cut through the house—the clang of a pan, something dropped. A curse word, short and sharp, from a man. Was it Pa or was it Almasi? Something was burning—toast, Walker thought. It reminded him of Overton’s apartment, of the smell of carbonized food left in the oven for hours. But this was a fresher smell—and the clang of a pan and the curse signaled it was a current affair, an unfolding situation. He was almost at the doorway when he heard a voice call out:

  “Making a late breakfast, American style.” It was a male voice, deep, accented, educated in America. “How’d your mission go?”

  Walker entered the kitchen to see the speaker: Almasi. He had his back to Walker. He was alone, cooking eggs in a pan and juggling burning toast with a stainless-steel pot of coffee bubbling on the gas burner. He was either speaking with someone who was out of sight, or he’d seen the car approach and thought Walker was Bahar returning from a night of killing. Either way, it gave Walker time to act.

  Walker moved fast. But not fast enough.

  39

  Walker took in the kitchen scene as he made his advance. His peripherals and senses told him the room was clear but for Almasi. To his right was an empty room with an informal dining setting, the table hewn from a slab of timber from a giant California redwood. The kitchen, to Walker’s left, was set out in a U-shape, with the oven and stove against the far wall to his left, running ninety degrees off that was a bench with a sink and with a view out to the fields. The bench made another ninety-degree turn to form a breakfast bar, the counter-tops made from polished red granite. Steam rose from the stove top. Almasi was six paces away, his back to Walker. Walker moved quickly and silently and then threw caution out the window as he knew he was being made.

  Almasi’s head rose from where he’d been looking down at the sizzling pan. His eyes level, Almasi saw Walker in the reflection of an overhead glass-fronted cabinet. They locked eyes for a split second, and he turned as Walker was halfway across the room—and in that motion Almasi threw what he had on hand.

  Walker was four paces away by the time Almasi turned to face him. The Syrian made a pirouette, spinning around on the ball of his right foot, fast. In his right hand the coffee pot—a couple of pounds of searing hot metal and boiling liquid—was thrown in a fluid motion, a slinging action that carried through Almasi’s turn.

  Walker raised his left forearm and the stainless-steel pot bounced off, hitting the floor, but on impact with his arm the lid popped open and the boiling coffee splashed his jacket. He felt the hot liquid soak through his sleeve and the front of his shirt, searing his skin and sticking his shirt to his chest. He didn’t stop his advance, though. He took two more strides by the time Almasi’s motion stopped and began in a different direction.

  Almasi’s empty left hand grabbed a knife from the chopping block and he swung back, the opposite direction his arm and body had just moved through. An agricultural slash, arm outstretched, seven inches of carving knife slicing at Walker.

  Walker halted his forward momentum and moved his mid-section back a split second before the knife sliced through the air where his stomach would have been. But Walker didn’t stop. Not completely. His socked feet and the wet floor combined to keep his feet sliding forward, out of control, and the motion of pulling his mid-section out of the way of the blade unbalanced him. Walker’s feet continued onward, as his body, torso and head, moved backward.

  Walker slipped over. On his back. On the floor. Prone.

  Almasi smiled and tossed the knife between his hands like it was a toy. Like he was comfortable with a blade, any blade. Like he’d used a knife on a man before. He had that look in his eyes.

  Damn.

  Walker hadn’t wanted to kill Bahar, and he’d succeeded in that. He certainly didn’t want to kill Almasi—if anyone had answers about what went down in Syria, and about his father’s involvement, it was the guy standing above him with a knife. But Almasi really wasn’t giving him much choice.

  It was the coffee pot that did it.

  Almasi dropped forward toward Walker, the carving knife out in a double-handed stabbing action that would bury the blade to the hilt into Walker’s chest.

  But Walker was having none of it. He didn’t want to die. Not today. Not for many thousands of days. So, he reacted, improvised. Saving his life in that moment was more important than preserving Almasi’s. His right arm raised and slowed Almasi’s fall by catching him in the chest. At the same time Walker reached out to his left and grabbed the handle of the overturned steel coffee pot and swung it up and across his body, using the swiping motion to deflect the blade away to his right, and it made a metal-on-metal noise as it was smashed from Almasi’s hand and buried half an inch into the timber floor next to Walker. The handle wobbled on the impact, and kept vibrating side to side for the full second it took Almasi to react.

  Almasi reached quickly, drew the knife and sat up, his weight on Walker, Walker’s free hand gripping the front of Almasi’s shirt at his neck, the knife rising in the air for another plunging attack—

  Walker swung the pot. It was a backhanded motion, reversing the arc over his body, this time swiping from left to right. The pot hit the side of Almasi’s head and the bulbous bottom of the stainless-steel jug made a dull clang as it hit the man’s skull.

  Almasi’s eyes rolled back and he fell to Walker’s right, onto the floor.

  Walker checked for a pulse, but he knew there would be none. The blow had caught Almasi in the temple, where the skull was thinnest. There was a big dint there, the concave shape matching the base of the coffee pot. A trickle of blood ran from Almasi’s nose.

  Walker got to his feet, swearing under his breath. He turned off the stove and turned around to see Muertos entering the room. She looked spooked. Walker was about to explain the situation—then stopped. Muertos wasn’t spooked by Almasi’s death.

  Behind her were two guys dressed in suits. Each had a pistol drawn.

  40

  Walker and Muertos were each ordered at gunpoint to sit at the huge timber table, and plastic flexicuffs were placed around their wrists. The two guys were official, which had Walker worried. Official in the sense that they were employees of the federal government. Homeland Security, Walker figured, but different from the pair he’d seen yesterday. Yesterday’s crew were tough and hard-edged, the crew of choice for getting the hard work done. These two were different; the older one seemed like he’d spent the best part of the past couple of decades sitting behind a desk. Which of itself wasn’t a bad thing, nor something to worry about. The issue was that they were either working for someone in addition to Homeland, with an agenda related to Almasi, or someone bent at Homeland. Walker knew this because of their reactions, and because one of them was on the phone, allowing Walker and Muertos to hear every word. Sure, they only caught one side of the conversation, but it was enough.

  “So,” the agent said into his phone, “this Walker guy did our work for us. No more Almasi.
Yeah . . .” He poked Almasi with the toe of his scuffed black shoes, turning the dead man’s head to inspect the dint. Then he looked at the puddle of spilled coffee, then the stainless-steel pot that had rolled to a stop in the middle of the kitchen floor. “He killed him with a coffee pot. Yep. Coffee pot. Yeah, in the head. What? No, one of those steel ones you put on a stove. Percolator, yeah, that’s it. A percolator. I don’t know—you want me to check? No. Right. Looks expensive. Shiny stainless steel. Yeah, not one of those angled aluminum ones, this one’s round and shiny. Right. Yep. Ah, not now, no. Yeah, got them here, bound, seated, not going anywhere. Sorry, what?” He looked over to Walker and Muertos, seated at the huge timber slab of a dining table on the other side of the room, then back to the body of Almasi, then out the window out at the grounds. His voice went quieter when he said, “Really? Yes, that’s right. Yep. Right. Okay. Yes, I know. But that’s not what we’re—okay. Okay. Leave it with us.”

  He ended the call, then motioned for his colleague to follow him out to the hallway. Walker couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they were animated.

  Walker was weighing up options of getting to a knife in the kitchen when the two agents came back in.

  “Up,” the one who’d spoken on the phone said to Walker. His partner had his Glock drawn and pointed at Muertos’s head—a sign for Walker, taller and bigger than either of these two, someone they knew was capable of killing a man with a coffee pot, not to make any kind of break for it.

  Walker stood.

  “Now you,” he said to Muertos.

  Muertos stood.

  “Back to back,” he said.

  Walker turned and took a couple of steps backward to Muertos, then bent at the knees and felt Muertos’s hands touch his.

  “Keep still,” the guy said.

  Walker kept still. Muertos was shaking. He felt the guy pull their arms tight together, looping a couple more flexicuffs through to connect their wrists.