Under Fire

by Tom Clancy

  The Mexican restaurant, Chiquito, was just a block away, and it took Helen less than two minutes to get there. Chiquito had only recently become a regular stop for the girl, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night from seven-thirty until eight forty-five, with two of her girlfriends.

  Amy had been naughty, Helen’s surveillance had revealed. The girl’s newest boyfriend or hookup—one could never tell anymore, not even the kids themselves, she suspected—was, Robby, a thirtysomething busboy at Chiquito who apparently could make time for Amy only after his shift and before he went home to his wife and kids. Having spent time tailing Robby a day earlier, Helen didn’t understand the allure, but clearly Amy did. She seemed content with taking whatever time he allowed her.

  At seven twenty-five, Helen passed Rose Street and stepped inside the dimly lit plexiglass bus stand. The next bus was due shortly.

  The minutes ticked by.

  “Evening,” a man standing beside her said. “Chilly tonight.”

  “Piss off, wanker,” Helen shot back, her chin tucked into the cowl of her anorak.

  “Hey, I’m just being friendly.”

  “I said, ‘Piss off!’”

  Helen suspected the man was simply making conversation, but apparently “Piss off, wanker” was a perfectly acceptable response to unwanted attention on Rose Street. It seemed rude, she thought, but when in Rome . . .

  “Sorry,” the man muttered.

  Down the block toward Chiquito, Helen heard a trio of raucous giggles and immediately recognized one of them as belonging to Amy. She had a nice laugh, natural, not the mush-mouthed cackles many of her friends let out when drunk. Tonight Amy was with the most obnoxious pair, Margaret and Tera.

  Helen glanced left and saw Amy, flanked by her two friends, walking toward the bus stand. As they passed, Helen stepped out and followed. Amy was wearing a thick red cardigan against the chill. That makes things even easier, thought Helen.

  When they reached Princes Street the group disappeared around the corner, heading east. Good, Helen thought. Sticking to schedule. She slowed her pace, letting them gain some distance, then also rounded the corner. Fifty feet ahead, Amy and her friends were walking, shoulders pressing, talking and giggling and occasionally sidestepping to avoid collisions with fellow bar-goers.

  At the next intersection, Hanover, Amy and her friends stopped at a bus stand. Helen kept walking, passed them, and hurried through the crosswalk to the other side, where she stopped, got out her cell phone, and pretended to make a call.

  Across the intersection, Margaret said in a lilting Scottish accent, “Do you have to go, Ames? Stay with us. We’ll go to Voltaire!”

  “No, sorry, this is the only time we get to see each other.”

  “Yeah, right. Well, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “You do everything, you slag—what’re you talking about?” said Tera.

  “Hey, that’s not nice!”

  “Then what’s it gonna be tonight, Ames?” Tera asked. “Need to borrow a condom?”

  “God, no,” Amy shot back. “We haven’t done that yet.”

  “Yeah, I know what you’re doing,” Margaret said. “It’s all nice for him, but has he reciprocated? You know, south of the border . . .”

  “Stop, Margaret, you’re awful.”

  “I’m just looking out for you, girl.”

  “I have to go. Your bus will be here soon. Text me, let me know you got back to Pollock safe,” Amy said, and the three of them exchanged cheek air-kisses.

  As they parted, Helen pocketed her cell phone, then recrossed the street, passing Amy halfway across. Hurrying now, Helen headed down the block until she saw a break in the traffic, then jaywalked to the other side of the street and onto a gravel path leading into the tree-lined Princes Street Gardens. She glanced left and saw Amy in her red cardigan step onto the sidewalk and head in Helen’s direction.

  Helen kept going and soon was on the curving path that led past the garden-keeper’s cottage. On either side of the path, green tulip leaves were poking from the soil. The sounds of the cars on Princes Street faded until all Helen could hear was the hissing of tires on the wet pavement.

  Helen glanced over her shoulder. Amy was thirty feet behind, her face illuminated in the glow of her cell phone’s screen as she double-thumb texted someone—Robby, Helen assumed, letting him know she was on her way.

  Their “snog spot,” as Margaret had dubbed it on Amy’s behalf, was the decidedly unromantic roof of a toolshed beside some railroad tracks; above these, atop a lush hill a quarter-mile away, sat the decidedly romantic Edinburgh Castle.

  The path straightened out. Ahead, Helen saw the van sitting on the maintenance road that bordered the railroad tracks. Yegor had positioned the vehicle perfectly, bisecting the path leading to Amy’s snog spot so she would have no choice but to go around the van.

  Helen slowed her pace and started rummaging through her purse until Amy passed her on the path and started across the maintenance road. As she did, Helen upended her purse. Its contents spilled onto the gravel.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” Helen cried, putting a little sob in her voice. “Of all the damned nights!”

  Amy stopped and turned around. “You all right?”

  “My boyfriend, that wanker . . .” Helen replied.

  “Here, let me help,” Amy said, and started walking back to Helen.

  Yegor, climbing from the van’s driver’s-side door, was already striding across the road to Amy, the flour-sack hood dangling from his left hand. Suddenly, Roma came around the rear bumper and charged toward the girl. His face was a mask of anger.

  Despite herself, Helen called, “Yegor, grab him!”

  Amy stopped in her tracks. “What?”

  Yegor grabbed at Roma’s shoulder as he passed, but it was too late.

  Amy had stopped in her tracks. “Yegor? Who’s—”

  She turned around.

  “No, Roma!” Helen screamed.

  Roma was already swinging, a right haymaker hook that caught Amy squarely in the jaw. Her head snapped around. She stumbled sideways, trying to regain her balance, but Helen, already rushing forward to catch Amy, saw the light go out of her eyes. She landed in a pile in the street. Roma was still charging, closing in on her inert form. Helen stepped in front of him and he skidded to a stop. She shoved him backward. “You fool!”

  At the van, Olik was climbing out the rear doors.

  Helen said, “Yegor, check her. Olik, get over here. Roma, you get in the passenger seat.”

  Roma didn’t move.

  “Do it!” Helen barked, and Roma stalked off.

  Helen looked around and saw no one. Yegor and Olik were kneeling next to Amy. Helen asked, “Is she alive?”

  “Yes,” said Yegor, relief in his voice.

  “Put the hood on her and get her in the van.”

  Tehran, Iran

  WHAT JUST HAPPENED, Jack?” asked Ysabel. She shrugged off her purse and let it drop to the floor, then tossed the binoculars and her keys onto the counter and walked to the sideboard, where she poured a glass of Scotch.

  Jack clicked the door shut behind him, then leaned his back against it and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, then another. It felt good to be . . . home. It wasn’t quite the right word, but Ysabel’s apartment had become not only Jack’s base of operations, but his safe house as well. So far, no one knew of this place.

  Ysabel said, “I saw his . . . His head just—”

  “I know.”

  “Who was shooting at us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What—”

  “Ysabel, stop. Let me think.” He paused for a few moments to orient his thoughts. “Do you have a washing machine in here?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack headed for the bathroom, calling over his sh
oulder, “We should both shower and wash our clothes.”

  “Why?”

  “Blood particles get everywhere, Ysabel.” Jack had no idea whether the Tehran police were sophisticated or dedicated enough to look for such forensics, but he was taking no chances. The idea of ending up in an Iranian prison—which was the best-case scenario—held no appeal at all.

  • • •

  AFTER THEY were both showered and their clothes were in the washer, they settled into the sunken living room, Ysabel with her second glass of Scotch, Jack his first.

  He took the nine-millimeter from his jacket pocket, as well as the Faraday bag holding both his phones, and placed them on the table.

  Ysabel sat in the chair opposite the couch, her legs curled beneath her and a glass pressed against her chest with both hands. Her eyes were vacant.

  “Were we followed, do you think?” she murmured.

  It was a good question. Jack had been careful to check for tails and they’d pulled into Ysabel’s apartment garage just as the police sirens began converging on Mellat Park. Though it seemed doubtful anyone had gotten the Range Rover’s license plates, Jack couldn’t be sure.

  “Tomorrow morning you’re going to call the police and report the Range Rover missing,” he said.

  Ysabel’s eyes went wide. “Jack, that’s crazy.”

  “That’s what an innocent person would do. If someone reports it being near the scene of the shooting, you need to be disconnected from it.”

  “They’ll ask a lot of questions.”

  “All of which you’ll have answers to. We’ll talk it through. They won’t be able to make the connection between you, Seth, and the Pardis condo. You’ll be a victim of a crime, nothing more. Where’s the closest sketchy area?”

  “Sketchy?”

  “Run-down, away from things.”

  “Uh . . . there’s a bunch of vacant lots beneath Velayat Bridge about three kilometers from here.” Ysabel stood up, collected her MacBook from the credenza, and then, after it was powered up, showed Jack Velayat Bridge on Google Maps.

  Jack scrolled around on the map, then tapped the screen. “Take your Mercedes and meet me a block south of this bus stop in about twenty minutes.”

  • • •

  AFTER POPPING the Rover’s ignition with a screwdriver and tearing out the wires, Jack parked it beside a pylon beneath Velayat Bridge, then doused the seats and dashboard with a bottle of Ysabel’s nail polish remover, set the interior ablaze, then ran the quarter-mile to where Ysabel was waiting for him. Forty minutes after leaving the apartment, they were back.

  “What time would you normally go out in the morning?” Jack asked.

  “I guess about eight, for breakfast.”

  “Then follow that routine. Walk down to the garage, look for your car, then call the concierge and report the theft.”

  “What will you be doing?”

  “Making myself scarce.”

  “Who was that, the one that died?”

  “One of the men who kidnapped me,” Jack said. “I’d named him Balaclava. And don’t ask me who or what or why, Ysabel, because I don’t know. I need to sort it out.”

  Ysabel took his admonishment in stride, simply nodding. She downed the rest of her Scotch—her third one—then gave him a sloppy half-grin. She was tipsy, bordering on drunk. “I’m glad they didn’t shoot you, Jack. That would have been a bad thing.”

  Despite himself, Jack laughed. “Me, too.”

  And why aren’t I dead? he thought. Jack replayed the events in his mind. The sniper had him dead to rights. The slightest adjustment to that red laser dot would have put Jack’s skull in the crosshairs. The two pops he’d heard before the red dot went wild had come from a handgun; of that Jack was certain. Someone else had been on that roof with the sniper. Who was Jack’s guardian angel and why had he interceded?

  “You’re far away, Jack,” said Ysabel. “What are you thinking about?”

  “I’m wondering why I’m alive.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Jack opened Ysabel’s laptop, brought up the chat window, and entered Gavin Biery’s cell-phone number and typed: IT’S JACK. YOU THERE?

  A few moments passed before Gavin replied: IF THIS IS JACK, HOW OLD IS MY CAT?

  Jack smiled. Gavin enjoyed what he called “all that spy nonsense.” Jack indulged him occasionally. He replied, PEEPERS DIED TWO WEEKS AGO.

  GOOD ANSWER. WHAT’S UP?

  I GOT MY HIJACKED PHONE BACK. CAN YOU DO ANYTHING WITH IT? REMOTELY, I MEAN.

  DEPENDS ON WHAT THEY DID TO IT. WHERE IS IT?

  POWERED OFF AND INSIDE MY HOMEMADE FARADAY BAG.

  WHY BOTHER WITH IT?

  I MIGHT BE ABLE TO GET THROUGH TO SETH—THE REAL ONE.

  LET ME SEE WHAT I CAN DO. POWER IT UP. WATCH THE CLOCK. IF YOU DON’T SEE THE SCREEN FLASH TWICE IN THE NEXT SIXTY SECONDS, POWER IT DOWN AGAIN AND PUT IT BACK IN THE FARADAY.

  Jack removed the phone from the bag and turned it on. He watched the screen. Only ten seconds passed before the screen double-flashed.

  Gavin typed: GOT IT. IT MIGHT TAKE SOME TIME. NO GUARANTEES. BACK TO YOU ASAP.

  As Jack closed the chat window, Ysabel’s laptop let out a chime.

  “New e-mail,” she said.

  Jack called up the e-mail window. “It’s Ervaz,” Jack said.

  “Really?” Ysabel climbed out of her chair and sat down beside him. “What’s he say?”

  “Basically, ‘Who the hell is this?’” Jack typed in: FRIEND OF SETH’S.

  SETH IS MISSING.

  I KNOW. I’M TRYING TO FIND HIM.

  GIVE ME PROOF THAT YOU ARE HIS FRIEND.

  I CAN’T, Jack replied. I DON’T KNOW YOU, DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOU AND SETH. HELP ME FIND HIM. HE’S IN TROUBLE.

  The reply took sixty seconds to arrive: MAYBE. HAVE TO THINK. I WILL GET BACK TO YOU.

  Jack closed the laptop. “Now we wait.”

  “Now we sleep,” Ysabel replied with a yawn.

  • • •

  AS PLANNED, Ysabel left the apartment at eight a.m. Jack rode down in the elevator with her. When the doors parted on her parking level, she said, “I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  “Right. Use the cloned phone number.”

  He took the elevator down to the ground level, left the garage, and wandered into Mellat Park. It was another rainy day. Sheltered under one of Ysabel’s umbrellas, Jack strolled the path around the park’s north end, resisting the impulse to head south to where Balaclava had been gunned down the night before. The police might still be canvassing for witnesses, and that was a list Jack didn’t want to be on. Even so, he eventually needed to get into Seth’s condo, as well as onto its roof. Unlikely though it was, perhaps the sniper and his guardian angel had left behind something useful. It seemed unlikely Seth had been keeping anything of value in his condo, but it was still a stone Jack wanted to turn over.

  He made his way to the shores of Mellat Lake, where he found a canvas-covered vendor stall. He bought a cup of coffee and a bag of bread crumbs, then picked his way through the trees to the waterline, where he crouched down. The rain pattered softly on the umbrella. A pair of ducks spotted him and paddled over, squawking and turning small circles until Jack tossed them some bread crumbs. Clearly they’d been through this routine hundreds of times.

  For the second time in as many days Jack wondered what he’d gotten himself into. The murder of Balaclava had changed everything, and not just in terms of violence. Jack’s gut told him Balaclava had been taken out by one of his own, perhaps by his own partner, David Weaver, perhaps by a player Jack had yet to meet. If so, someone was deeply and dangerously invested in whatever Seth was doing here—so much so that Balaclava had been deemed better off dead than talking. Who had made that decision? Spellman and/or W
ellesley were the obvious choices, but Jack was reluctant to buy into that answer. Spellman was American, like Jack, and Wellesley was from the UK, America’s closest ally. What would drive one or both of these men to order last night’s ambush? And who’d saved his life?

  Jack found a nearby rock, set it between his feet, then drew his disposable cell phone from the Faraday bag and laid it on the ground. He took the rock and smashed the cell phone into several pieces, then shoved the debris into the water.

  Jack’s clone phone trilled.

  “Hello.”

  “It’s done,” Ysabel said.

  Jack dumped the rest of the bread crumbs into the water, watched for a moment as the ducks gobbled them up, then shoved the bag into his pocket and started walking.

  • • •

  “YOU WERE RIGHT,” Ysabel said a few minutes later. She was standing in the kitchen. She poured him a cup of coffee. “They asked a few questions, but seemed nonchalant about it. They said someone would get back to me.”

  “Good. If they’d already found your Range Rover and connected it to the shooting, you’d be in an interview room talking to a detective right now.”

  “They will find it eventually, though.”

  “Probably today or tomorrow. Unless they’re incompetent, they’ll see the bullet holes, make the connection, then process the car for prints—”

  “But yours are all over it.”

  “I’m not in their system,” Jack replied. Not in any systems, unless you’ve got a lot of horsepower, he thought. Working at Hendley had more than its fair share of perks, as did being the First Son. Then again, if he was arrested and they had prints on file, none of that would help him.

  “After they’re done with the Range Rover,” he went on, “they’ll come back to you and ask more questions. Just stick to your story. You probably won’t get your car back for a while, as long as the murder’s unsolved. Call your insurance company and report the theft.”

  “How do you know all this stuff, Jack?”

  He shrugged, took a sip of coffee. “How do you feel about getting into some more trouble?”

  “What kind? Man getting killed in front of me, or something else?”