The Joe Brennan Spy Thrillers

by Sam Powers

  ‘Just stay put!’ Drabek insisted. ‘Jesus H, Zoey, he tried to kill you already! The man is brainwashed, out of it.’

  ‘He loves me. I know he wouldn’t hurt me, Norm. That’s why he missed! Don’t you see, that’s why he didn’t shoot me. Because he’s the only person who ever…’ Her expression was miserable, overcome with doubt and pain. Then she bit her lower lip a little, her nostrils flaring from sharp intakes of breath, small signs that her indignant side was kicking in.

  Zoey jumped to her feet and ran for the door.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Drabek’s middle-aged muscles ached as he picked himself up off the floor and ran after her.

  SCARSDALE, New York

  The afternoon had fallen into ruin. They’d been scheduled to leave at noon, get to the conference just after one. Instead, Tarrant found himself in the back of Chan’s limousine, heading back to the city.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ he barked into his phone.

  ‘It’s chaos down here, sir,’ the agent at the scene told him. ‘We’ve got bodies everywhere, two suspects, both loose. The Chinese Premier’s limousine was destroyed, it doesn’t look like anyone made it.’

  ‘How? How did this happen?’

  ‘We… I don’t know, sir. This vehicle, a fire truck, it just came out of nowhere…It cut the limousine off for an attack.’

  ‘We had all the side streets closed, blocked off…’

  ‘We missed something, I guess…’

  ‘YOU GUESS? Find out what the hell is going on and call me right back.’

  He ended the call.

  ‘How bad?’ Adrianne asked.

  ‘The Premier’s vehicle was destroyed.’

  They both shifted their attention to Chan, anxious at his potential response. But the man was smiling placidly. ‘Okay,’ Tarrant asked. ‘What the hell is that about?’

  ‘The Premier is perfectly safe,’ Chan said. ‘The man in the limousine was his double.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Tarrant couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  ‘The risk, your preparations. It all became too much to accept. And so a last minute decision was made to replace him with his public double. It is not an uncommon practise, Jonah. As you’re well aware, your own president has…’

  ‘I understand that. Why didn’t you tell us? It might have led to fewer lost lives…’

  ‘How? The public expected a parade. There would have been one. There still would have been an attack. The difference now is that both of our leaders are protected…’

  ‘And dozens of our citizens are dead!’ Tarrant exclaimed. ‘We’ve lost officers, agents, good people, over nothing…’

  ‘But your objective – to ensure the Premier and President were not assassinated – has been achieved,’ Chan said. ‘Given how brutal the attack seems to have been, you should be proud of the work…’

  ‘GODDAMN IT!’ Tarrant exclaimed. Then he chastised himself internally for losing his cool. ‘That’s not goddamn acceptable.’ He began dialling his phone. ‘I’m calling JFK,’ he said to Adrianne. ‘We need to take Daisy Lee into custody immediately and find out what else she knows before these people silence her.’

  Chan gently shook his head. ‘These people? Anyway, it’s too late for that. We picked her up about ten minutes ago. But, as I promised, we will share anything pertinent….’

  ‘The way you shared the switch? I don’t think so,’ Tarrant accused.

  ‘In any case, she has already revealed to us that our interior minister, Wen Xiu, is the man formerly known as Dorian Fan. He will be arrested the moment his delegation is back at the hotel…’

  ‘Okay, but he’ll be arrested by us,’ the deputy director insisted. ‘If he’s behind this, he’ll pay for what he’s done here, first, before you get a crack at him.’

  Chan remained unfazed by any of it. ‘He has diplomatic immunity, deputy director…’

  ‘Typically waived in the case of felony capital offenses, and mass murder…’

  ‘We shall not be waiving any of his rights until he has had a trial at home, in our country,’ Chan said. ‘Lee has evidence directly from the man whose father performed Fan’s plastic surgery…’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘And that is all that we need.’ There was no percentage in discussing the nuclear plant with the Americans, Chan decided. They would figure out what it was soon enough.

  ‘Adrianne, what’s the Premier’s handler saying?’

  Hayes hung up on her call. ‘They’re incensed, of course. The conference is off. He won’t go ahead with a pair of assassins on the loose, even with the so-called ringleader arrested.’

  Chan’s face sank. ‘That is terrible news. This was our… our finest opportunity to affect real change in the region; to deal with Kim’s threat and further our openness to the world…’

  ‘I have agents with grieving families to worry about,’ Tarrant snapped. ‘My commiserations if your political plans have been derailed.’ He leaned over the partition to the driver’s cab. ‘Step on it, will you? Break the goddamn speed of sound if you have to, just get us there!’

  CHINATOWN, Manhattan

  ‘I said DROP. THE PIECE. DO IT! NOW!!!’ The officer screamed at Brennan, whose hands were up, the pistol trigger guard enabling it to dangle from one finger.

  A girl ran past in a blonde blur. It took him a second to realize it was Zoey. ‘Jesus H, call Brandon Mah! Call Mah, he’s our security liaison for the event…’

  ‘I’m giving you a three-count sir, then I’m going to drop you, I swear it!’ The young cop was getting nervous, not wanting to shoot a man from behind.

  Drabek ran past, trying to keep up with someone more than twenty years his junior. He turned and followed the girl into the old storefront that had once housed the school.

  ‘The guy who just ran past, he’s a cop, like you. His name’s Norm Drabek, he’s working this…’

  Behind him, the cop pulled the trigger of his service revolver, the rapport deafening both men for a few moments, hearing replaced by a high-pitched whine as the bullet tore through Brennan’s thigh. He slumped down to the ground, weight on his opposite hip, the pain from the slug chipping bone excruciating.

  ‘STAY DOWN!’ the cop yelled. ‘Stay down or I will shoot to kill!’

  Instinct and field training kicked in. Even though he was in agony, Brenna swung his other leg out in a harsh kick, taking the young cop out at the ankles, the officer tripping and falling, his gun clattering out of reach. The cop tried to frantically right himself, but before he could do so, Brennan leaned over and slugged him in the jaw with the pistol butt, dazing him.

  The agent pulled himself to his feet. The thigh was bleeding badly but the pain was a burning numbness, like a small area of flesh had been flayed from his body, rather than the searing agony of a broken femur. The blood wasn’t spurting, which meant he’d missed the main artery. He pulled off his shirt, his torso sweat-soaked in the afternoon sun, then tore a long strip of cloth from it. The cop began to stir, trying to shake off the blow. Brennan leaned over again and pulled the pen from the kid’s top pocket, using it to twist the tourniquet tighter, cutting off any blood flow, then looping it under the cloth to stay in place.

  ‘You’re… under arrest…’ the cop tried to say.

  Brennan ignored him and began limping toward the old schoolhouse, changing out his magazine on route and cocking the Heckler & Koch at the ready.

  Zoey charged into the building, the door ajar, barely hanging off its hinges. The entryway was a half-landing, with short staircases up and down. She listened for long enough to guess the tromping footsteps were above them and took off again, taking the stairs as quickly as she could.

  Drabek stumbled into the building right behind her, his pistol drawn. ‘Zoey, wait! Stop!’ he called out. But the girl wasn’t listening. He took the stairs two at a time, adrenaline willing him on when tired muscles protested. He looked up between the railing and caught a glimpse of her on the second-floor sta
irwell.

  Above her, someone leaned over the railing and opened fire. Zoey yelped and jumped backwards in fright, but Drabek wasn’t as quick. The bullet caught him in the shoulder and he cried out, grunting from the pain, dropping to his knees, his revolver falling to the steps beside him.

  Zoey glanced down over the rail and saw him, saw the blood pooling around him. ‘NORM!’ She turned back and ran down the flight, crouching beside him. ‘Norm, are you okay?’

  He was wincing from the pain, cupping his hand over the bleeding gash. ‘It’s just a flesh wound; hurts like a mother. I’ll live. Kid, listen… you can’t go up there…’

  But Zoey Roberson had been listening to other people tell her what to do her entire life. Even when they cared, her life still always seemed to come down to someone else’s choice. Ben Levitt had broken her heart, he’d tried to kill her and now he’d killed other people. She felt a malice in her that she didn’t know had been there, lurking deep down, and she knew what she had to do.

  Zoey grabbed the pistol and made her way back up the stairs. Behind her, Drabek called out for her to stop.

  But she didn’t listen. Ben was going to pay for what he’d done. He wasn’t going to hurt anyone else.

  45/

  Brennan looked around the corner of the door then entered the building, quietly pushing the door closed behind him. He found his cell phone and texted the only person who he knew would definitely be somewhere near by.

  A few miles away, Jonah Tarrant’s phone buzzed. He looked at the text on the screen. ‘Two gunmen left, cornered in old school. Send backup.’ He switched to the phone app and dialled for help.

  At the school, Brennan crept up the stairs. The place was a two-up, one-down three story, from the early part of the Twentieth Century. Its floors and walls were concrete, and faint, random sounds echoed around the cavernous stairwell, not voices, just bass frequencies and air being pushed around; enough to know they were up there somewhere.

  He turned the corner to the second floor and saw Drabek on the landing above. ‘Where?’ he said simply.

  Drabek nodded up the stairs. ‘She followed them up there.’ Downstairs, they heard the door swing wide open. Jonah had gotten the message to officers on scene, it seemed. ‘Wait for them,’ Drabek suggested.

  Brennan shook his head. ‘She’s in danger. Send them up after me.’ He took the stairs gingerly, trying to keep his normal gait, to not limp or let the pain in his thigh overwhelm him. At the top landing, a corridor stretched nearly the length of the storey, past rooms that might once have been dormitories. It appeared to stop short of the back wall, a larger open entrance suggesting it emptied into one larger chamber.

  He could hear voices as he crept down the hallway, pistol extended. ‘…don’t understand. I checked the connections and leads myself,’ Gessler was saying. ‘There’s enough C4 in that thing to level a building.’

  ‘It’s not working,’ Levitt hissed, a clicking noise suggesting he was trying a button. ‘If the truck doesn’t blow, we’re trapped in here.’

  Water’s plan had been ingenious; a sewer access juncture started just past the point where the truck was to blow. It would’ve taken out any remaining law enforcement and opened up their escape route. But the C4 wasn’t firing. ‘I thought you were supposed to have expertise in this,’ he accused.

  ‘It was improvised,’ Gessler snapped at him. ‘You knew that. I told you the leads looked crimped this morning! I’m doing good this time!’

  Brennan peeked around the corner. Zoey Roberson was lying prone, unconscious, Drabek’s pistol a few feet away from her. She was partially face down, like she’d been hit from behind, probably as soon as she ran through the door. He leaned fully around the corner and lined up Gessler, letting the trigger work, anticipating the gun’s kick. The shot caught the man in the side of the head, through his temple, a fine red mist spraying the wall past him as Gessler slumped dead to the ground. Levitt turned, cell phone in hand. His pistol was on the table next to what looked like some sort of transmitter or range booster, and he reached for it.

  ‘Ah! Ah, ah, ah… steady now,’ Brennan said, limping into the room, pistol at the ready. “You won’t make it before I take the shot, that I guarantee. And from this range, I will not miss.’

  Levitt stared at him like a cornered animal, his eyes alert with anxiety. Then he glanced at the pistol again. Then at Brennan.

  ‘Don’t…!’ the agent managed to yell as the other man grasped for the pistol grip. Brennan squeezed the trigger.

  And it jammed. ‘Oh, shit,’ was all that Brennan could mutter as Levitt grabbed his gun and wheeled to fire. The sound was explosive once more, deafening, and Brennan flinched, his eyes closing in an involuntary wince, anticipating the sting of the fatal shot.

  But it never came.

  He opened his eyes.

  Zoey was standing next to him, Drabek’s revolver at arm’s length. By the table, Levitt was clutching his chest at the entry wound, looking down at the blood flowing through his fingers. He looked frightened, puzzled by what was happening, as if snapped back to something resembling reality. Then he dropped to his knees, his head bobbing slightly, muscle control disappearing. ‘But…’ he muttered. Then he looked her in the eyes, and his were alone, and frightened and tear-stained. They belonged to Christopher Platt, a boy long forgotten by anyone who should have cared. ‘I’ll be good,’ he implored ‘I’ll be good. I promise.’

  He pitched forward into the growing puddle of blood. Zoey dropped the gun and her hands went to her face as she realized what she’d just done. She ran over to him and cradled Ben’s head on her lap, and she held the man she loved, sobbing, her tears flowing freely.

  46/

  Jonah Tarrant’s intervention allowed them some peace a day later, after the interviews. He tapped some contacts and found a house a few miles upstate, along the Hudson River, in which everyone could decompress until the investigation was complete.

  The conference would go on, he’d told them. The loss of twenty-three lives meant that a day of mourning would be announced by the President. Then they would get back to the business of trying to prevent nuclear war.

  But Zoey wasn’t thinking about any of that. She sat on a cedar bench along the home’s wrap-around deck and looked down at the river. Or perhaps, past it. She couldn’t get her mind off Benjamin and the fact that, to her, he’d been as real as anyone. She knew he’d died the moment he got that fateful phone call, two weeks earlier. But that didn’t make it any easier to take. He was gone, forever, but she would always want him there.

  ‘You okay?’

  Norm had his hands in the pockets of his brown corduroy trousers, looking worried. But that was par for the course. She was long past the point of fearing another motive, or that he viewed her as pitiable. He just cared. ‘I know I will be, eventually. But all I can think about is that moment when he died, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. He just seemed trapped and confused, and alone. And… I don’t know; I guess I’ve been there. I know how that feels… and then to die at that moment, when you feel the least loved, the least connected.’ She looked up at him, years of pain etched into the small lines and wrinkles. ‘That’s a horrible way for someone you love to go.’

  He sat down next to her. ‘Yeah. I’ve always kind of figured Nicole must have felt alone, or unloved, or unworthy. There were things I could’ve done differently. I could’ve considered them more… my family, I mean.’

  ‘She made her decisions, rational or not. You didn’t force her…’

  ‘No, but I didn’t help, either. And I’m her… I was her father. That was my job, more than any other. Those kids… the ones in China. From what we can tell, their parents were roped in, drugged, brainwashed themselves. They didn’t make their children into killers, they just made a terrible decision to trust the wrong side, the notion that it was a force for positive change…’

  She snorted a little at that, then apologized. ‘I’m sorry, that’s ins
ensitive. But really, I’m beginning to wonder if there will ever be a right side.’

  Brennan was standing in the doorway to the living room. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘It’s human nature to pick a side, join a group. We need a tribe to protect us. We need the strength of numbers. But sometimes, we pick the wrong group, the wrong idea. And we stick with it because the group makes us feel safe, like any other animal. The difference is that we can do better. It’s inherent, but it doesn’t stop us from bettering ourselves. What you did yesterday… you probably saved hundreds, possibly thousands of lives. A crimp in a wire broke the connection to a detonator they were going to use to blow up about sixteen pounds of C4 explosive, over a road that contained a major natural gas trunk line.’

  Zoey’s mouth dropped open a little. ‘I didn’t know…’

  ‘Neither did we. So even though the loss of life was brutal, and unacceptable, and as unnecessary as that goddamned parade, while the politicians were busy making the world worse, you were making it better. And the Ben you remember, the one you fell in love with? He was a surgeon. He would’ve appreciated the Hell out of that.’

  Then he walked back inside.

  Zoey’s head dipped again but there was a tiny hint of a smile, and that made Det. Norm Drabek smile for the first time in longer than he could remember.

  MANHATTAN, New York

  The Grand Ballroom at the Plaza Hotel was an opulent architectural gem, an expanse of marble floor, a gigantic crystal chandelier suspended from wisps of wrought iron, pillars and arches ringing the room, inset tray carvings between the arches and the ceiling. It could’ve been lifted from Paris’ Belle Epoque, the great artistic era. Daisy Lee gazed around it with admiration, the tables beginning to fill, guests drifting over from the adjacent room’s cocktail party.