Assignment- Danger A SpyCo Collection 4-6

by Craig A. Hart

  “Time crunch, Curvy.”

  “We wanted to get in here as fast as we could,” Charlie said. “We were concerned about the two of you.”

  The Glove indicated Lyndsey’s still-leveled gun. “They look like anything but damsels in distress, but your sentiment is admirable. Never leave a friend in need. That is a philosophy I would adhere to diligently, had I any friends.”

  “I’m still trying to get you, Junior,” Dot growled, giving him a poke in the chest with her red-tipped finger. “Is the resolution to that line, ‘That’s why I’m a killer,’ or ‘That’s because I’m a killer’? Either way, boo-fucking-hoo.”

  With a genuine smile, wide but still brimming with suavity, The Glove turned to the younger women. “She is simply delicious! Do you cherish every moment spent in her presence?”

  “Something like that,” Lyndsey said. To everyone’s surprise, she lowered the gun. Dot took a step back, but only a small one.

  “Ah! A gesture of good faith,” said The Glove. “I respect and will honor that. I will also accept the fact that you know who I am, but I do not know the same about any of you, except for the fact that, like me, you have no qualms about shortening one’s mortal ballet. For the time being, that will be fine. And in my final magnanimous act, I shall leave a clear path to the door and let you all slip out of here before I call the police and report that my tenant has apparently been the victim of a robbery gone awry.”

  BACK IN THE IMPALA, Dot fired up the huge V-8. A moment later the other women jumped in and she gunned it, squealing the tires with enough force to make any teenaged boy in his muscle car know he was not the one who would impress the cheerleaders today.

  Adabelle, who was riding shotgun, shook her head. “That was…”

  “…Fucked up!” Dot said, completing the thought.

  “Yeah. It was. It was fucked up.”

  Just then, a chirping sound emanated from the glovebox.

  “Get that, Foxy. It’s my cell.”

  Adabelle opened the compartment and grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

  “Baritone. Identify.” The code word “baritone” identified the caller as a dispatcher from the SpyCo comms center.

  “Vixen,” Adabelle replied. There was a brief pause as the caller keyed her codename into his system.

  “Confirmed. Patching you through.”

  “Patching where?”

  A series of clicks made completing the question pointless. A moment later, she heard Perry’s voice.

  “Adabelle, dispatch said it was you. Is it? Please let it be you.”

  The Turkish agent’s dark eyes sparkled, even as she read the urgency in Perry’s voice.

  “It’s me.”

  “Thank God. Listen carefully. We are in a helicopter, approaching the west coast of Ireland. According to the nav on this chopper, we’re going to make landfall near Hags Head.”

  Dot stole a look at Adabelle, then said to the other women, “It’s Perry. I can hear her heart pattering from here.”

  “Hags Head,” Adabelle repeated.

  “Clear on the other side of the island,” Dot muttered. “Three hours as the crow flies.”

  “How much longer till you make it to Dublin?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the thing. It doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Two reasons. First, we’re low on fuel.”

  “And the second reason?”

  “Nothing much. Only that we’re being chased by a chopper sporting nifty air-to-air rockets.”

  “I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”

  “I’d love to give that a charming rejoinder, but we need you to get to Hags Head as fast as you can. With any luck, we’ll—”

  Perry’s voice was interrupted by a very loud whooshing sound.

  “What was that?” Adabelle asked.

  “I think you’d call it a warning shot. I have to go, Ad. Come get us!”

  There was a second whooshing sound and the line went dead.

  Adabelle turned to the others. “I lost the call. They’re in a chopper and they’re being fired upon.”

  Dot let out a derisive hoot. “Men! Never leave ‘em to do a woman’s job! I suppose we have to go rescue their worthless hides, right?”

  Adabelle relayed what little she’d learned from the brief call.

  “Shit. I was hoping we’d have time for a cocktail. Hit speed dial 9 on that and hand it to me,” Dot said, holding her hand out.

  Adabelle dialed the number and passed her the phone.

  “I need a chopper,” Dot barked into the phone. “No, not tomorrow. Now. Newlyweds have it booked? Too bad, dump their asses. We’ll be there in…” Dot turned to look at a street sign as she raced through an intersection, running a red light and narrowly avoiding a delivery van. “…ten minutes.” She handed the phone back to Adabelle, who ended the call. “Imagine the nerve of that prick. Selling joyrides in a company chopper. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  MOORE GRIPPED THE YOKE, performing as many evasive maneuvers as possible. They had evaded the first two through a combination of luck and highly impractical flight patterns, but that strategy wasn’t going to hold. Their helicopter wasn’t capable of pulling the kind of g-forces necessary to make evading missile fire any sort of actionable plan—that was the purview of military jets, not choppers. Unfortunately, whoever was firing the missiles was displaying a complete disregard for basic fairness.

  Moore glanced over at Perry, who sat in the seat next to him and appeared ready to make a sincere conversion to any and all world religions.

  “Hall!”

  Perry shook his head. “It’s okay, Chief, you don’t have to say anything. I know we’re going to die and you want to clear the air by admitting I’m the best agent SpyCo ever had. I understand.”

  “What? No, you idiot, I was going to tell you to get off your ass and search those lockers back there for flares.”

  “Flares?”

  “Maybe you know them better as splints. Yes, flares! Bright, burny things. There ought to be some aboard.”

  “What do you want those for?”

  Moore jerked his head toward the enemy chopper. “Those are heat-seeking missiles. We might be able to use the flares to create a more appealing heat signature.”

  Perry’s face lit up. “Moore, you’re a genius!”

  “Obviously. Now move it!”

  Perry scooted from his seat and retreated into the rear of the chopper. He began jerking open every compartment he could find, searching for the elusive flares. His job was made much more difficult by Moore’s constant maneuvering.

  From a seat just behind Perry, Burke let out a moan.

  “If this bird doesn’t stop swooping around, I’m going to puke up my guts.”

  “If Moore stops evasive maneuvers, throwing up is going to be the least of your worries,” Perry said. “Ah ha!”

  “What’d you find?” Burke asked. “A New Testament?”

  “Nope, flares.”

  “You know, I was about to suggest those.”

  Perry pulled several flares from the locker and then made his way toward the chopper door. He pulled it open and felt his heart surge with adrenaline as he saw the enemy chopper closing in for a shot. He lined up the flares in a row, holding them steady against the constant rolling motion.

  A burst of light from the attacking craft signaled the launch of another missile. As fast as he could, Perry ignited three flares and threw them out the door with an underhanded motion, trying to give them some altitude and room to fall. As he watched, the oncoming missile suddenly veered off course and homed in on the flares. Seconds later, there was an explosion as the missile’s proximity fuse decided it was near enough to its target and exploded.

  All three agents let out a cheer.

  “Nice work, you bag of crap!” Burke called out. “Let’s see you do that again!”

  “It probably won’t matter,” Perry said. “I
think that chopper has two more missiles. But I’ll give it a try.”

  As if daring him to do exactly that, another missile launched. Perry repeated his rapid-fire flare release, which he fully intended to patent if he ever reached terra firma safely, and watched with extreme gratification as the flares once again drew the missile off track and caused a harmless explosion in mid-air.

  “I think that pissed them off,” Moore said. “They’re closing on us. Say your prayers, gents, I think we’re in for it. If anyone wants to bail out now, I wouldn’t consider it a bad move.”

  The enemy chopper grew closer and closer.

  Without warning, a gunshot sounded. Perry snapped his head around to see that Burke had retrieved the dead sailor’s pistol and had fired a round through the view-port, shattering it.

  “What the hell are you doing, Burke?” Moore screamed.

  “Shut up and hold this shitbox steady for ten seconds, would you?”

  “I think he’s going to kill the helicopter,” Perry said.

  Moore glanced back and saw that Burke was indeed pointing the gun out of the opening.

  “What the hell, he’s not even able to use his regular gun hand. The stress has made the man delusional.”

  “It’s fine,” Perry said. “He’s going to kill it. Just steady the chopper.”

  “What are you, five?” Moore growled. “You don’t kill helicopters with a pistol!” But despite his bile, Moore leveled the craft for a moment.

  A single shot sounded from behind them, followed an instant later by a blinding explosion. Where the enemy chopper had been was an ugly black scar of smoke and shredded, falling metal.

  “Holy…he must have…one in a million,” Moore stammered.

  Perry grinned. “Told you he’d kill it.”

  “Goddamn, Burke, you must have hit the missile’s detonator straight on. Do you have any idea how small that thing is? It’s got the diameter of a pencil! There’s no way you…”

  In a move that went against everything anyone knew about him, Burke declined to gloat about his incredible wrong-handed shot. Instead, he pointed ahead.

  The others followed his point. In the distance, they could make out the coast of Ireland, which in this region took the form of a long, uninterrupted cliff-face. They were called the Cliffs of Moher, and at various points along their length, they were a popular tourist attraction, rising as high as 700 feet above the Atlantic. The area they were approaching was not quite as imposing, but still too high, as part of Moore’s efforts to evade the missile fire had put them at a mere 200 feet above the water,

  “Looks like you need to climb a bit,” Perry said, winning yet another prize for the understatement of the year.

  “Do you think so, Eagle? Do you think that I should?”

  Perry feigned offense. “You get grumpy when people try to shoot you down.”

  Moore eased back on the yoke, and the chopper responded at once. However, as they began to gain altitude, they heard a sickening sputter.

  “Sounds like we’ve run out of gas,” Perry said. “Not the best of timing, huh?”

  “Stop underselling our crises!”

  Perry scanned the instrument panel. “Don’t these things usually have reserve tanks?”

  “I switched to that fifteen minutes ago. There wasn’t much in that either.”

  “Why the hell would they fly around with nothing in the goddamn tank?” Perry said, smashing his fist against the arm of his seat.

  “We used up a ton of fuel trying not to blow up. Those evasive maneuvers guzzle juice like no tomorrow. Not to mention we weren’t able to fly in a straight line, which added overall distance. Besides, they probably knew there was a chance we’d turn the tables and planned for it. I’m sure they had a refueling stop all lined up, but obviously, we don’t know where that was. And if they weren’t the ones flying the chopper, they were counting on it running out of fuel.”

  “Killing us from beyond the grave,” Perry whispered.

  “Oh my God,” Moore said. “Every time you open your mouth, I hate you a little more. Did I say I was reinstating you? Strike that. I’m going to kill you myself.”

  “By crashing us into a cliff? Come on, Chief, you can do better than that.”

  The wall was no more than a hundred feet ahead of them now, and they were still a good twenty feet shy of cresting it. The motor had moments where it almost sounded steady, but they were brief and quickly interrupted by the gut-wrenching sputter. In a last-ditch effort, Moore gave the yoke a hard, desperate pull, almost banging it into his chest. The copter lurched upward and jerked violently as the landing skids scraped the top of the cliff. The machine continued to rise and was about thirty feet above the ground when the engine died all together. Moore quickly disengaged the rotor from the dead engine, allowing it auto rotate, marginally slowing their descent.

  “Oh look! Sheep!” Burke said, pointing toward the ground.

  A fair-sized herd of Hampshire sheep were arrayed below them, blissfully unaware of the metal asteroid plummeting toward them. Five seconds later the chopper made a very hard landing in their midst. As the helicopter groaned with the impact, the three men looked at one another. All alive and all more or less intact.

  Perry broke the silence. “I’m never sailing with you again, Chief. And I’m never flying with you again. You’re down to cars, trucks, and maybe bicycles. And I’m not so sure about the bicycles.”

  Moore looked at him, too furious to speak. At last, he managed an exasperated cry of rage, climbed to the side door, and—with no small amount of effort—managed to push it open. As the three men groggily climbed to the ground, they heard a voice in the distance.

  “Jesus good Christ! You killed me fooking sheep!”

  17

  The atmosphere in Castle Grimstark was both tense and anticipatory. Zmaj had banned all personnel from his office, save one—his favorite valet, Higgins. Although Zmaj trusted no one completely, Higgins came as close as anyone ever had. It was toward Higgins that Zmaj felt the merest twinge of companionship. They had been together for many years and the valet had become almost indispensable. Normally, such reliance would have caused Zmaj to react in revulsion or unease, but he’d somehow been able to squelch those tendencies in Higgins’ case. In short, Higgins was as close to a friend as Zmaj was likely to ever have.

  Zmaj drummed his fingers on his desk. “Well, Higgins. The time grows near. Have you set everything in motion?”

  The valet, a tall, thin man with a wild thatch of white hair and a hawk nose, nodded. “Yes, sir. I have passed the word to the appropriate individuals. All that is left is for you to speak the word.”

  “Excellent. And you’ve told them what that word is?”

  “Yes, sir. All arrangements have been made.”

  That was something Zmaj especially appreciated about Higgins. Not only was he loyal, but he was proficient, clever, and resourceful—a rare combination, especially in this business.

  Zmaj stopped his drumming fingers, immersing the spacious office in almost total silence. The only discernable sound was the ticking of a grandfather clock on the other side of the room. Zmaj turned his attention toward it and, after a few quiet moments, said,

  “Do you know where I got that grandfather clock, Higgins?”

  “Yes, sir. From your father, wasn’t it?”

  “My father, yes. What else do you know?”

  “About the clock, nothing. I don’t recall you ever talking about it, sir. The only reason I know it came from your father’s estate was because I handled the arrangements for its delivery.”

  “Ah, yes. Well, I believe it’s time you knew the whole story.”

  “If you wish to tell it, I would enjoy hearing it, sir.”

  “My father and I were not close,” Zmaj said, leaning back in his chair. “Never were, not from my earliest memory. There were times I was sure he hated me, and I know he never loved me. And, most of the time, I was fine with that arrangement. The entanglements of
familial love seemed unnecessarily burdensome, especially from a father. I still think so. A very odd relationship, that of father and son, surpassed only by that of a son with his mother. That is why I’ve never sought to produce an heir, although I certainly could.” Zmaj said this last with a good measure of extra emphasis, as if striving to make an important point.

  Higgins nodded. “Of course, sir. Any woman would be fortunate to have you.”

  “I’m not without my charms.”

  “Certainly not, sir.”

  Zmaj cleared his throat. “Ah, but back to the clock. Have you ever noticed, Higgins, that it is missing the minute hand?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s difficult to miss when trying to set the time.”

  “I would imagine so. What else have you noticed?”

  Higgins took a moment to look back at the clock. “Well, that it’s a large piece. The face is one of the largest I’ve seen on a clock of that kind. That it’s a fine piece of craftsmanship. The wood has been hand carved, much from a single piece of wood. It would bring a pretty penny at auction. I have wondered, sir, why you don’t sell it, given that it’s impossible to tell accurate time.”

  “Two reasons. First, the few thousand it would bring wouldn’t keep me in biscuits for a month. Second, it serves as an important reminder.”

  “Sir?”

  “Do you know what happened to the minute hand, Higgins?”

  “No, sir. I thought it went missing in the move. I was going to contact the company and complain, until you objected.”

  “I objected because the moving company didn’t remove the minute hand, Higgins. I did.”

  “You, sir?”

  “Yes. And do you know why?”

  “I couldn’t imagine, sir.”

  “I used it to kill my father.”

  “Sir?”

  “I used it to kill my father. Drove it right through his eye while he slept on the sofa. Through his eye and into his brain. He died instantly.”

  Higgins remained silent.

  “And do you know why I killed him? No? I will take your silence to mean you are rapturously awaiting the answer.” Zmaj rose from his chair and moved crablike around the desk to stand in front of his valet. “I killed him, Higgins, because he didn’t choose me. He never chose me. School performance? He had to work late. Graduation? He wanted to get the onions in—we didn’t even raise onions, Higgins. Throughout my life, it was always the same. At last, I grew weary and realized that, not only did I no longer have to accept his nonsense, but I could repay him for past transgressions. And so I did. By taking a piece from his prized possession and driving it straight into his brain. Almost poetic, don’t you think? Still no reply?”