Free Fall

by Kyle Mills

  Beamon paused for a moment when the phone started to ring, but then continued around the corner as his friend pulled the door open.

  There was no one there.

  He tensed, reaching for his gun again, but then spotted the FedEx driver walking back toward the driveway. There was already one box on the porch, and by the time Beamon made it to the front door, the driver was digging around in his truck for another.

  Beamon didn’t follow his friend onto the porch, instead staying just inside the doorway as the driver struggled up the steps with the second box and laid it down on top of the other one. Sherman didn’t seem concerned—he’d already looked at the labels and obviously recognized the return address.

  The delivery man smiled politely and bobbed his head as he held out an electronic clipboard.

  “Thank you,” Sherman said, taking and signing it. The man’s response was another silent head bob.

  When Sherman handed back the clipboard, the deliveryman took a step back, but didn’t return to his truck. He still hadn’t uttered a word.

  Beamon chewed at his lip, concentrating on the man. There was something not right—he seemed to be making a conscious effort not to speak. “You. Say something.”

  “Mark! Look out!”

  Beamon jumped out onto the porch at the sound of Darby’s shout and grabbed for his gun. Unfortunately, he instinctively went for it with his right hand, which was attached to an arm that still wasn’t in working condition. By the time be had his fingers around the pistol’s grip, the deliveryman had a 9mm aimed at his chest and another man was crashing through the trees at the edge of the clearing with Darby firmly attached to his back.

  Beamon had no choice but to go completely still as the man in front of him stepped back to give himself a wider view. “I’m still watching you, Mr. Beamon,” he warned, shifting a little to allow him to better see his partner, who was struggling to unwrap Darby’s arms and legs from around his torso. The accent was Russian, or if not, no more than a solid two iron from the Russian border.

  Beamon suddenly realized he wasn’t breathing, but couldn’t seem to muster the concentration to start again. Ignoring the gun aimed at him, he turned and locked his eyes helplessly on Darby. Despite the much larger man’s efforts, she had tightened her grip on him over the past few seconds, and now had her feet locked together over his stomach. Her left forearm had worked its way under the man’s chin and she was using her right hand to sink it in deeper.

  To Beamon, they seemed to be moving in slow motion as the man finally tired of trying to shake her loose and aimed his pistol back over his shoulder at the girl’s head.

  “Darby! Let go!” Beamon shouted, but she didn’t seem to hear. His teeth clenched shut hard enough for him to hear them grind as Darby jerked away from the barrel of the pistol and arched her back wildly, pulling with everything she had on the man’s neck. Even with the distance between them, Beamon could see the ropelike muscles and tendons suddenly coil across her bare forearms. What caused the dull popping sound, though, he wasn’t sure of until the man’s knees suddenly went slack and he crumpled to the ground on top of her. Darby laid there for a second or so, then suddenly scooted out from under the dead body like it was burning her.

  The man with the gun trained on Beamon calmly muttered something in Russian. His face was devoid of emotion as he recalculated his plan in light of his partner’s untimely death.

  Beamon had been in a number of gunfights during his career—way too many, in fact. He’d lived through most of them more by luck and the stupidity of his opponent than anything else. Unfortunately, neither one of those things looked like it was going to work for him today. This guy was clearly a professional—probably one of the surviving dinosaurs of the KGB who had chucked their political philosophy and embraced capitalism a little too zealously.

  “Come here,” the Russian called to Darby.

  Beamon glanced over at Tom Sherman as she approached. He looked completely brain-locked.

  Darby stopped only a few feet from the Russian and stared him directly in the eye. The remorse and horror that Beamon had expected to see in her wasn’t there. If she felt anything about killing that man, it didn’t show.

  “And who might you be?” the Russian said quietly, his eyes moving smoothly from one captive to another and then along the treeline.

  She just stood there, glaring at him.

  “Is there anyone else out there?”

  She shook her head but still didn’t speak.

  When he nodded toward his dead partner lying on the grass, uncertainty was hanging at the edges of his eyes. “You get involved with very dangerous women, Mr. Beamon. Youstav was actually quite good at what he did.” The Russian motioned Darby toward Beamon and the statue-like Tom Sherman with the barrel of his pistol. “If you wouldn’t mind, young lady, I’d like you to very slowly bring me your friend’s gun. Butt first, please.”

  Darby relieved him of his pistol as ordered and handed it grudgingly over to the Russian.

  “Thank you,” he said politely, turning to Tom Sherman as he stuffed Beamon’s gun in his waistband. “I’m here for a file. I believe you know the one of which I speak?”

  Sherman didn’t seem to hear.

  “It’s inside,” Beamon cut in when the Russian started to look a little put out.

  “Good. Fine. We’re going to go get it and then you’re going to help me carry some valuables out of the house to my truck.”

  This wasn’t good. Not at all.

  “That’s a union job,” Beamon said, trying to buy a little time to think. “Last thing I need is trouble with the union.”

  The man smiled and tossed him a pair of handcuffs. “I wouldn’t want to see you get in any trouble, Mr. Beamon. Why don’t you handcuff yourself to the railing? I think Mr. Sherman and the young lady will be enough help.”

  Beamon started to feel a slight pain in his lower lip where he’d been chewing on it. He was screwed—and what made it really fucking intolerable was that he’d done it to himself. “This botched robbery thing is a bit over the top with three deaths, isn’t it?” he said, attaching one side of the handcuffs to the railing and the other to his wrist with comic slowness. He was just stalling now and it was obvious.

  “I’m a little embarrassed about that, Mr. Beamon, particularly with you here,” the Russian said, starting to herd a seething Darby Moore and nearly comatose Tom Sherman back into the house. “Normally I wouldn’t have taken this kind of last-minute job, but the money….” His voice trailed off for a moment, leaving his paycheck to Beamon’s imagination. “All I can say in my defense is that this mimics the MO of a man who was recently released from prison, and whom I can guarantee doesn’t have an alibi for this evening.” With that explanation, they disappeared through the door and left him handcuffed to the depressingly sturdy railing.

  When they reappeared ten minutes later, Beamon’s mind was still a hopeless blank.

  “In the box, please,” the Russian said. Sherman tore open one of the boxes on the porch, placed the Prodigy file in it, and then covered the file with the pricey knickknacks Darby had brought out.

  “Okay,” the Russian said. “Just a few more of the bigger things—electronics and the like, and that will be all.”

  Beamon didn’t like the sound of “that will be all.” He yanked uselessly on the handcuffs as they disappeared into the house again, struggling to come up with something that would save their asses.

  They reappeared with Sherman’s television and part of his stereo system, just as the wind picked up and started to create a sad wail in the trees. Beamon watched helplessly as they crossed the dirt path to the FedEx truck and piled the stuff in the back. That was it, they’d had it.

  As the Russian led Darby and Sherman back toward the house, Beamon noticed that the gusting wind had diminished, but the wail had grown louder. The Russian obviously made the same observation and froze at the bottom of the steps. It took only a few moments to become clear that it
wasn’t the wind. It was a siren. No, it was multiple

  Sherman seemed to come fully awake for the first time in weeks when he saw the Russian’s momentary distraction. He suddenly lunged at him, grabbing his gun hand and swinging wildly at his head.

  “Tom! No!” Beamon shouted, throwing himself forward, only to be snapped back by the handcuffs.

  There was no chance—there never had been. The Russian was far too fast and much too strong. He slipped the punch easily and paused for the briefest moment, seeing in Tom Sherman’s eyes the same thing Beamon had—that he’d never expected to win.

  Darby and Beamon both jumped at the sound of the pistol firing and watched Sherman topple back onto the stairs.

  “Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Darby cried as she dropped to her knees and pressed a hand against Sherman’s wound, trying to stop the blood that was already flowing down his sides and through the cracks in the wood porch. “You … You son of a bitch! You shot him!”

  Beamon focused on the Russian as he tried to get his mind back on-line. The sirens were getting louder and a hint of nervousness was becoming visible through the Russian’s icy façade.

  “Sound carries funny out here,” Beamon managed to get out of his constricted throat. “Those sirens aren’t far away—I’d say they’ve already turned up the only road in or out of here. You’ll have to get out on foot.”

  He could tell that the Russian wasn’t completely buying this—he was probably thinking that the cops were just chasing a local drunk. Fortunately, Darby was tracking on the conversation as she tried to stop Sherman’s life from leaking all over the porch. She reached a bloody hand under her sweater and threw Beamon’s cell phone down on the steps. “I called them, you bastard. Now maybe you’ll get to find out what it’s like to be shot.”

  The Russian looked up at the house for a moment, and then back at the treeline.

  “They probably heard the gun,” Beamon said, talking quickly. “And if they get here and find everyone dead, they’ll be coming after you. You’ll have a hundred rednecks who’ve been hunting this country for their entire lives all over these woods. And every one of them will have a rifle and a dog.”

  “Your proposal?” the Russian said. The sirens were getting loud now.

  “I don’t care about you—you’re just a hired gun. And I’m sure as hell not going to send a bunch of local cops to their deaths chasing a pro. I don’t want their blood on my hands.”

  The Russian looked at his fallen companion for a moment and then freed Beamon from the cuffs. They ran together toward the dead man and dragged him back to the base of the steps leading to Sherman’s porch. The Russian dropped his gun next to the body and started backing away, covering Beamon with his own .357.

  Once he’d disappeared into the trees, Beamon dropped down and pulled Darby’s hand from Sherman’s wound, replacing it with his own. “Get out of here, Darby! The cops can’t find you here. Go back to your truck, and when they’ve all passed by, drive out. Call me on my cell phone later.”

  “No!” she said in a voice thick with emotion. “I can’t! I can’t just leave him—”

  “There’ll be an ambulance here in five minutes. Go!”

  Beamon pressed down a little harder on his friend’s wound and felt the blood bubble up between his fingers as he watched Darby run for the trees. The cops were close now; the crunch of skidding tires was becoming audible beneath the scream of the sirens.

  Sherman’s eyes were half open and cleared a bit when he saw Beamon hovering over him. “I told you you were wasting your time,” he choked out. “Hallorin wins.”

  Beamon shook his head slowly, feeling the rage building up inside of him. “Not Hallorin. He didn’t know about the other file. And that son of a bitch was Russian.”

  Sherman’s laugh was weak and humorless. “Robert Taylor. Your knight in shining armor.”

  He lost consciousness just as the first police car came skidding to a stop and two cops trained their guns on them.

  “Fuck!” Beamon screamed suddenly. Robert Taylor. He was going to find that geriatric piece of shit and cut his heart out for this.

  “I dislocated my shoulder a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t think I had that much strength left,” Beamon said, finding it hard to concentrate on the story he’d concocted.

  The cop shrugged and leaned over the body to more closely examine the odd bend to its neck. “No big loss as I see it.”

  Fifty feet from them, two paramedics were hefting a stretcher containing Tom Sherman into the back of an ambulance. A few moments later, it was picking its way carefully but quickly down the dirt road toward the highway.

  “So you say he heard the siren …” the cop prompted.

  “Yeah. He’d made us help him carry out valuables and put them in the truck. What he didn’t know was that I’d been on the phone….”

  “The woman who called us. She didn’t tell us her name.”

  “She’s an old friend from college,” Beamon lied. “I was talking to her when the doorbell rang. Told her to hold on and I put the phone down on the counter. She must have heard what was going on.”

  The sheriff scratched his head, seeing no compelling reason to dispute the rather unlikely story. “You’re a lucky man, Mr. Beamon.”

  Beamon nodded his agreement. Damn lucky. “Anyway, when he heard the sirens, he was distracted for a second. Tom was closest to him and…”

  “The gun went off.”

  Beamon nodded. “I was too late. I knocked it out of his hand and got him around the neck. Like I said, looks like I got a little overzealous….”

  “Matter of opinion,” the man said. He apparently liked Tom Sherman and seemed to think that Beamon had been just zealous enough.

  Beamon allowed his mind to wander for a few moments as the cop broke off from him and walked around, looking for nothing in particular.

  There was no one to blame but himself for this. He’d underestimated Taylor, and now his best friend was lying in an ambulance, most likely dying. Sherman had been right. They were all the same—Hallorin, Taylor, whoever. After twenty-some years in the cynical service of the government and now facing a trumped-up felony charge for the convenience of the Beltway elite, he had no excuse for not seeing this coming.

  He couldn’t seem to stop his anger and hatred from continuing to build, and he had to struggle to keep it off his face as the cop came full circle and leaned over the body again. “Trouble just seems to follow you around, doesn’t it, Mr. Beamon?”

  fifty-five

  Through the back window of the tiny Japanese compact, Beamon could see two shadows moving through the parking garage. They were coming in his general direction so, for what seemed like the fiftieth time, he laid down in the cramped backseat and wedged himself between the doors. The pain in his shoulder was nearly unbearable as he tried to keep himself hidden, and that just fed his anger. It was 7:30. Where was that dumb bitch? Quitting time was two fucking hours ago.

  He hadn’t been to the D.C. hospital Tom Sherman had been transferred to—though he knew things looked bad. He’d told himself over and over that it wasn’t his fault, that Sherman had fucked up bad and then fallen apart—a poor combination. Logic wasn’t working for him any more than it had for Darby, though. The truth was that Tom Sherman had saved his ass more times than he could count and when, for the first time in their long friendship, Tom had needed help, he ended up shot

  There was nothing Beamon could do to change that now, though. All he could do was hit back.

  Another half an hour went by with Beamon in an only slightly more comfortable position. It was fairly dark in this part of the parking garage—he’d made sure of that by strategically knocking out a few lights before he’d broken into the car. That, in combination with the fact that the car’s rearview mirror was now in pieces on the floorboard, ought to be enough to suit his purpose.

  When the echoing click of dress shoes became audible, he lifted his head slightly and peered out the rear window.
At first, all he could see was a shadow moving in his direction. The figure slowly gained detail and color as it got closer, finally taking on the slightly pudgy female shape of his victim. It was about goddamn time.

  He remained completely still as the woman approached and jabbed at the lock in the semidarkness. He could see her perfectly through the side window—attractive in a slightly disheveled, businesslike manner, with hair cut into a practical bob and large wire-frame glasses.

  He followed her with his eyes as she ducked into the car, not noticing the missing rearview mirror until she had closed her door and was reaching up to adjust it. From the side, Beamon could see the confusion cross her face and then change to terror when he sat up and stuck the barrel of Tom Sherman’s .38 in the back of her head.

  “Oh, my God,” she said in a panicked voice. “Please. Take whatever you want. I—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Beamon said, his mood continuing to darken. She tried to turn her head, but he put a stop to that by moving the gun barrel to her cheek, which was billowing in and out with her short, desperate breaths.

  He hadn’t seen her in years. It seemed impossible, but she looked precisely the same. In fact, he was pretty sure she had been wearing the same oddly colored pantsuit the last time they’d run into each other.

  Helen Block wasn’t the sleaziest reporter he’d ever met, neither was she the most respectable. What he remembered about her was her drive and the fact that she was incredibly bright. Her star had continued to rise at the Washington Post as his at the Bureau had fallen. All in all, she had just the right combination of qualities to make this happen. A perfect instrument with which to inflict pain.

  “You think you’re about to have the worst night of your life,” Beamon said, reaching onto the floorboard and grabbing hold of Tom Sherman’s copy of the Prodigy file. He dropped it next to her on the passenger seat. “But you couldn’t be more wrong.”