by Jon Land
“Except you’ve run your checks on men with military backgrounds, looking for one with a deformed foot perhaps as a result of service, and those checks haven’t yielded anything.”
“The injury could have come postservice.”
“You could send a memo to every hospital in the country. Ask them to check their records.”
“We have. We are.”
The cheese danish came, and Talley lifted it to her mouth but didn’t bite. “You were in the army, weren’t you?”
“What does my file say?”
“It doesn’t, not specifically anyway.”
“And your point is …”
“That some people with military backgrounds don’t have files.”
“Like me, for instance.”
“I thought you might have a few ideas on possibles.”
“Drawn from my nonexistent years of military service, you mean.”
“Yes,” Talley said. “Exactly.”
“I didn’t serve with Peet, Ms. Talley.”
“Anyone else come to mind?”
“I worked alone. Always.”
“Like Tiny Tim. He doesn’t leave any prints, blood, saliva, not even any sweat, Mr. Kimberlain. We’ve got no physical evidence, besides size fifteen boots, to pin on anyone even if we do get lucky.”
“Running into a guy this size won’t exactly qualify you as lucky.”
Talley hesitated and leaned back. The rest of her eggs had gotten cold and she seemed to have lost interest in her danish.
“Like you running into Peet in Kansas.”
“That’s wasn’t lucky, and I’ve got the scars to prove it.”
“You quit after that.”
“I stopped hunting the sick sons of bitches who fester in America’s underbelly. I didn’t quit.”
“You got Leeds.”
“Somebody had to.”
“Somebody has to get Tiny Tim.”
Kimberlain’s blue eyes caught fire. “It’s not going to be me. You’re wasting your time.”
“I brought the files. They’re in the car. I was hoping you could look them over, tell us what we’re doing wrong.”
“Not praying enough maybe. Might be the only thing that stops Tiny Tim.”
“If the two towns have nothing in common, how did he choose them?”
“They have something in common, Ms. Talley. There’s always something. The trick is finding it and figuring out the pattern so you can break into it.”
“That’s how you caught Leeds. And Peet. I think it’s him we’re after. I think he’s Tiny Tim.”
“Peet’s dead.”
“No body was ever found.”
“The search didn’t extend to Newfoundland. That’s where the body probably ended up.”
“There are tens of thousands of other towns that fit Tiny Tim’s pattern. We can’t watch them all, and no matter what steps they take, they won’t be able to stop Tiny Tim.”
“So you’ll have to stop him.”
Talley stopped her danish halfway to her mouth again. “Tell me how.”
“Try licking the icing off first,” Kimberlain said, as he stood up and slid out of the booth.
“You haven’t finished your coffee.”
“Caffeine spoils my day.”
“I think we can ruin it anyway. Take a look at this memo that crossed my desk yesterday,” Talley said, pulling a neatly folded set of pages from her handbag and handing it up to him. “We’re not planning to release it to the press.”
Kimberlain unfolded the memo. His eyes turned to stone as the first line jumped out at him:
The escape of eighty-four prisoners, including Andrew Harrison Leeds, from the maximum security wing of Graylock’s Sanitarium is being termed …
“When?” he asked.
“Night before last.”
Kimberlain read a little more and then looked down at Lauren Talley. “Tiny Tim’s the least of your worries now.”
“And what about your worries? Leeds was yours.”
“All I did was catch him.”
“That makes him yours. Now that he’s out you’ll have to catch him again.”
Kimberlain didn’t bother denying it. “I’ll need access to The Locks.”
“For a price.”
“Tiny Tim?”
Lauren Talley nodded. Kimberlain retook his seat.
“Your eggs are getting cold, Ms. Talley. Finish them so we can talk.”
Chapter 3
THE MACHINE GUN ACCEPTED the weight of the ammo belt grudgingly, the extra bulk of it nearly tipping the pedestal over. Hedda steadied the assembly and eased it closer to the missing window. She gazed down across the street at the former holy residence in the Moslem quarter of Beirut near the Hippodrome, just five blocks from the location of the U.S. marine barracks that had been destroyed by a terrorist bombing in 1982. Her binoculars dangled from her neck, but she did not lift them; her mind worked better when she absorbed the scene this way.
None of the Palestinian guards on duty inside and beyond the fence gave this apartment building a single glance. By all accounts it had been bombed out twice in the civil war, and even the city’s many homeless were smart enough to avoid it. Still, the terrorists should have been less lax in their duty. She supposed overconfidence was to blame. They had not lost a single western hostage to the kind of operation she was about to execute.
But this was the first time they had dealt with The Caretakers.
Hedda had learned from her control, Librarian, that the son of a high ranking American in Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil conglomerate had been kidnapped by a Palestinian group calling for the complete withdrawal of American capitalist influence from the region. No ransom demands for the boy or opportunity for negotiation. He was just a symbol, kept alive only to furnish videotapes and perhaps a severed ear or finger if things took a turn for the worse. The boy’s father had managed to reach the proper parties and proved both willing and able to meet the nonnegotiable fee. The rest had fallen into place swiftly.
Hedda did not know how The Caretakers had uncovered the boy’s whereabouts, nor did she care. Her job was to get him out and reach the rendezvous point. Her job alone. Caretakers never worked in groups and only occasionally in pairs. Twice she had been coupled with Deerslayer; in their last teaming, he had lost an eye. Only fast intervention by Hedda had saved his life, and she had heard that he became even more deadly after donning the black eye patch.
Hedda checked her watch. She had seen the boy escorted outside to play in the sun the last two days at precisely the same time. His captors had tried to get him to kick around a soccer ball, but he resisted, moping and avoiding them.
The boy had still been dressed in his school uniform, the white shirt grimy and one of the legs of his gray flannel pants torn through at the knee. Hedda had raised the binoculars then and focused on the boy while he sat alone on a bench within the once well-sculptured courtyard of the holy residence. Tear stains ran down both his cheeks. His upper lip was swollen and showed traces of a scab. His long hair hung wild and uncombed.
Hedda pulled a snapshot of the boy from her pocket. Crinkled now and poorly focused to begin with, it pictured him smiling in the same school uniform.
Christopher Hanley, age twelve …
Hedda’s mind returned to the scene in the courtyard from the previous two days. The terrorist pair trying to interest him in a game of soccer, the ball kicked the boy’s way and left there. That scene was about to be repeated, and this time she would make use of it.
Hedda pulled what looked like a transistor radio from her duffel bag and began the task of affixing it to the machine gun.
Fifteen minutes later she was hidden among the remains of three burned-out cars on a side street bordering the compound. She checked her watch.
4:20.
According to routine, the boy would be emerging with his captors in the next twenty minutes. It was time to move.
There were only two perimeter guards on
the outside of the six-foot-high stone wall to complement those within the courtyard. All of them wore standard PLO khaki uniforms and baggy Arab headpieces that draped down over their shoulders as well. She had viewed their motions closely enough to see the yawns and disinterest. Eliminating one to allow access would not be a problem; the only issue was timing.
Hedda tucked the headpiece over her head and readied herself to move. The duffel bag she had brought with her contained a uniform that matched those of the Palestinian guards. She was big for a woman at just over five-foot-ten, so a glaring discrepancy in size would not be a problem in the plan she was about to enact.
4:30.
The holy residence stood as a virtual oasis in the midst of a desert of destruction. This part of Beirut was mostly abandoned, except for a few homeless and beggars who came to these dead streets to avoid the shooting war. Hedda had decided while observing the residence from the apartment building to launch her strike from the holy residence’s right flank. The guard who stood between her and entry had a beard, so her final action before leaving the apartment building had been to affix a false beard to her face.
Hedda slid as close to him as she dared and crouched behind an ancient stack of garbage cans rank with flies and maggots. A Palestinian spotter watched over the street from the circular dome that topped out the holy residence, but the sun was in his eyes from the west now, which accounted for her choice of the right flank.
The guard was passing by her. Hedda sprang.
She covered the width of the street in a single breath, bouncing on her toes to stifle any sound, knife already in hand. Hedda clamped a hand around the guard’s mouth and plunged the blade through his back into his heart. His body spasmed, feet kicking as he rasped a scream that her hand swallowed. He was still twitching when she dragged him across the street to be hidden amid the garbage.
After stripping off the dead Palestinian’s machine gun and making sure he was sufficiently covered, Hedda grasped the soccer ball she had wedged between two fly-infested cans. The ball was an exact twin of the one the boy’s captors had attempted to interest him in the day before, right down to the dirt stains on its panels. She picked it up and held it in plain view as she made her way back across the street. On the sidewalk, she bounced it a few times and then hurled it casually over the fence. Her target was the part of the courtyard where the captors had been kicking their own ball the day before. To anyone who bothered noticing, her action would have looked perfectly harmless. A ball lost over the stone fence retrieved and tossed back in.
Hedda heard the ball bounce twice before it started rolling. When no commotion or shouts came from within, she breathed easier. All was ready now.
4:35.
Christopher Hanley would be emerging any minute. Hedda continued on the appointed rounds of the guard she had slain.
The gate permitting entrance to the courtyard from the right flank of the wall was located two-thirds of the way up and forward. It was locked from the inside even now, but she had studied the lock’s construction long enough through the binoculars to have her pick ready for what would take eight seconds at most. She would time her entrance to the courtyard with the perfect distraction as cover, something sure to draw all interested eyes to it: the appearance of the young hostage in the courtyard.
Hedda did not have to see Christopher Hanley’s emergence; she heard words spoken loudly, followed by the thud of a soccer ball being kicked.
Hers or theirs? she wondered.
She reached the gate and had the lock picked in under seven seconds. She swung it open and locked it behind her.
Hedda walked briskly through the courtyard toward the rear of the house. The boy was sitting as before on the bench, stubbornly kicking at the ground with head down while his captors kicked the soccer ball about.
No, two soccer balls. They were kicking both hers and theirs. One landed far off in the bushes and Hedda lost a breath thinking it might have been hers. But the one they began exchanging, trying to coax Christopher Hanley into joining them, she recognized as her own, its black squares slightly darker. Perfect.
She passed within two yards of the boy and would have been tempted to meet his stare had he not been gazing forlornly into the ground beneath him.
You’ll be out of this before you know it, she thought, trying to push it into the boy’s head. I promise… .
Christopher Hanley’s head came up slightly, as if in response to a call of his name, then sank again. Hedda made her way around behind the house. With the boy outside now, all eyes would be focused his way, leaving the back clear.
Two guards patrolled the rear of the holy residence, a third maintaining a vigil near the back door. Hedda yanked her silenced nine-millimeter pistol from her belt and concealed it by her hip. Not hesitating, she walked straight toward the door guard. Either of the other two could have observed her if they had bothered to notice.
“What are—”
They were the only words he managed to utter before she shoved the pistol against his ribs and fired twice. Then she shoved him backward against the door as he died. Supporting the guard there as if he were feather light, Hedda worked the door open and brought him in alongside her. There was a small alcove off to the right, and she dumped his body in it before sealing the door again.
She heard a door close on the floor above her. Hedda reached the majestic staircase that spiraled upward, just as a slightly older man in uniform started down. Their eyes met, and his told her enough. She shot him in the head, and the man crumpled. The commotion drew a Palestinian from the front of the house, turbanless, starting to go for his gun as he moved. Hedda shot him three times in the chest and pressed on.
Another guard lunged out from a doorway and grabbed for her pistol. She saw his mouth opening to form a shout and slammed her hand over it. The force of the blow cracked his front teeth, and the man’s eyes bulged in agony. Her right hand let him have the pistol, trading it for a grip with her iron fingers around his wrist. She twisted, and the resulting snap! was louder than any of her silenced gunshots. The man’s agonized scream was lost to her hand, and she rotated her palm under his chin. Hedda could see his eyes watering in pain as she snapped the chin back. A crunching sound came this time, muscle tearing away from ruined vertebrae. The man’s neck wobbled free and then flapped down near his shoulders. Hedda let him slump and pushed him into the doorway he had emerged from. Then she crept to a window that looked out over the front of the holy residence.
Christopher Hanley was off the bench now, hands wedged in his pockets as he kicked stones about the ground. Nearby, but not too near, his would-be playmates continued kicking her soccer ball about. Hedda pulled the detonator from the small pouch at her back and activated it. Two of the three lights upon its black exterior glowed red.
A button rested beside each of the glowing lights. One would trigger the explosive gases pumped into the soccer ball to mix with finely milled pieces of glass. Harmless until they were sent rocketing out under explosive force. The second button would remotely activate the Russian-made 7.62mm machine gun she had set up across the street in the apartment building, aimed dead center for the courtyard. Even if it didn’t claim a single victim, it would succeed in drawing the remaining guards’ attention to the apparent point of attack, this an instant after the soccer ball had laid waste Christopher Hanley’s nearest captors.
Chaos would result, and Hedda would be able to approach the men from behind while their attention was focused entirely on the apartment building. She would make it seem as though she were coming out to get the boy back inside and then take them all out from the rear.
Hedda’s fake beard was starting to itch horribly and she wished she could strip if off. The Kevlar bulletproof shirt she wore inside her uniform top was baking her with sweat that had soaked through at her underarms and midriff. But the beard was still important to her plan, and the time when she might need the Kevlar was fast approaching.
Hedda judged the Palestinia
ns kicking her soccer ball to be comfortably away from Christopher Hanley. She raised her detonator and moved a pair of fingers to the top two buttons.
Wait! The main gate was being opened, a Jeep ready to enter the complex with what looked like a troop-carrying truck squeezed behind it. Reinforcements? Replacements? It didn’t matter. Her last guard count from the apartment building had numbered fourteen, with five of these dead already and most of the rest hers to take from the rear. But now there were additional troops entering from the front as well. Her plan was blown, everything was blown!
But there was still a chance for success, if she acted fast enough. The gate was just now swinging open. The troops in the truck were still outside the complex, and she was in. Hedda pressed the top button on her detonator.
The soccer ball exploded with a poof. A brief scream followed in the instant of hesitation she gave herself before pressing the second button. The rapid fire of the 7.62mm commenced immediately, echoing nonstop through the sifting breeze. The hundred-shot burst would be good for between ten and eleven seconds.
Instantly Hedda spun away from the window toward the front door. She threw it open and rushed down the steps into the chaos she had created.
Magnificent! Everywhere terrorist gunmen were firing into the empty apartment building, none looking her way. The Jeep that was barely through the gate was equipped with a heavy-caliber machine gun in its rear, and one of its occupants was trying to slam a belt home to join the battle. Those that had come in the truck had been effectively pinned outside the gate. Some were already firing their own barrage as well, which added to the staccato symphony. Others had merely dived for cover.
Christopher Hanley, meanwhile, was crouched behind a nest of bushes, trembling, his back to it all. The guards who had fallen to her soccer ball lay twisted in misshapen heaps just yards away from him.
Hedda knelt over the boy.
“No!” he wailed at her.
“I’m here to rescue you,” she said, and her perfect English made the boy turn her way.
His face was dirt-stained and scared. Hedda reached down and hoisted him to his feet.
