Edge of Tomorrow (11 page)

Trying to get up enough nerve to make a move
on the pretty one? Or something else? I’ve never seen any Arabs
around this part of Florida before. And why the suits? They have to
be sweating their balls off in this heat. Hardly anyone wears suits
and ties here at lunch time. And if they do, they are light-colored
linen suits. Hell, I’ve been in the antiterrorist business too
long. I’m getting paranoid.

The waiter delivered a glass of wine to the
“gorgeous one,” as he was now calling her in his mind. She smiled a
beaming smile, showing beautiful white teeth, and thanked the
waiter. Hatch caught the waiter’s eye and pointed at his wine
glass. The waiter waved and nodded his head, and went back toward
the bar. Hatch had decided to find out what he could about the
beautiful lady. His horniness was getting in the way of his good
sense.

The waiter came to his table with a fresh
glass of wine balanced on a tray. Hatch drained the last of his
previous glass and put it aside. The waiter put the new glass in
front of Hatch and picked up the empty and put it on his tray.

“Can I do anything else for you, Mr.
Lincoln?” asked the waiter with a trace of a Latino accent. “More
sauce for your crab cakes?”

“No, Carlos, thank you. Oh, one thing. Is
that dark-haired beauty you just served a regular?”

“Sort of, sir. She’s been coming here off and
on for at least three months. I think she moved to this area about
then.”

“Do you know her name?”

“Sir, there is such a thing as
waiter-customer confidentiality!” he said with mock indignity.

“Could that confidentiality be broached by a
fifty-dollar tip?” Lincoln laughed.

“Really, sir! Do you think my integrity can
be bought?”

“Yes.”

“You’re right. Her name is Sydney Steppe,” he
smiled. Then he added, “Ms., if you’re wondering. According to her
credit card, she spells Steppe differently.”

He spelled it for Hatch.

“Thanks, Carlos. Your lack of integrity has
earned you a big tip!” Hatch chuckled, happy that she was
apparently not married.

Carlos the waiter began to walk away, then
heard Hatch say, “Carlos, one more thing. What do you know about
those two men in the dark suits over there near the palm tree?”

Carlos did not look at the men, but looked
only at Hatch as he said, “Nothing, sir. I’ve never seen them
before. And they are very strange. Wearing hot suits in this
weather and drinking only coffee. They haven’t ordered anything to
eat yet, either.”

“Have they said anything to you? For example,
have they asked anything about Ms. Steppe? As I did?”

“No, sir. Only ordered coffee. They have
heavy accents—not a Latino one. Their English is very poor.”

“Thanks, Carlos.”

As Carlos ambled over to another table to
check on a customer, Hatch retrieved his Blue Phone and called his
Florida office, which was not too far from the restaurant. When the
call was answered by the receptionist, he asked for Sara Smith.

“Sara, this is Hatch. I’m having lunch
at
The Blue Grotto
…
”

“Alone?” she interrupted.

“Yes, alone! My meeting ran later than
expected. However, there is a gorgeous lady sitting not far away.
Maybe I’ll see if I can pick her up! Bring her home to Mother Sara
to be interrogated!”

He laughed, and so did Sara.

“Look, Sara. This gorgeous lady has two
swarthy guys eyeballing her. They look Middle-eastern to me and
Carlos says they talk with a heavy accent. They’re wearing hot,
black suits. It doesn’t compute. Can you check with the Terrorist
Desk in Virginia and see if we have a record of any of our Hot List
creeps coming into Florida? I’ve got one of those feelings about
these guys. Maybe you should send someone over here with a
telephoto digital camera so we can get a picture of these guys to
compare against our data base. Also, run a check on the woman. Her
name is Sydney Steppe.” He spelled it for her.

“You are a fast worker. Got her name that
fast? OK, Hatch. That ‘feeling’ of yours is correct more times than
not. I’ll get Danny on the way over there with his camera, then
I’ll call the Virginia office,” Sara replied.

“Thanks, Sara. Call me, one way or another.
Tell Danny these guys will be easy to spot. They are presently east
of my table and are wearing dark suits.”

“Wilco,” she said and hung up.

Hatch put his sunglasses on so he could watch
the two more easily without being noticed. Carlos delivered lunch
and another glass of wine to the lady and she began to eat. It
appeared to be a pasta dish from where Hatch was seated. The two
men kept glancing her way. Occasionally, they would glance over
their shoulders, nervously.

Even if they are not terrorists, there is
something fishy going on here. They are stalking that woman, I
think. After Danny gets here and gets their pictures, I’ll see what
I should do about this. There is nothing the police can do, or
would do, based on my suspicions. I’ll just wait and see what, if
anything, develops.

He noticed that the woman had finished her
lunch and had signaled Carlos for another glass of wine. Carlos
acknowledged her order and headed back to the bar. She then arose,
picked up her purse, and strode across the deck in the direction of
the restrooms, which were around a corner and out of sight of
Hatch’s table. Hatch loved the way she carried herself!

Shit!
he
thought.
No sign of Danny yet. I can’t
keep her in sight and still watch the two creeps. Do I follow her
or watch them?

That question was answered immediately as the
two men got up and followed the Steppe woman toward the restrooms.
As they passed his position, Hatch got up and followed, but not too
closely. Ms. Steppe disappeared around the corner, and the men
quickened their pace. So did Hatch. The pair disappeared around the
corner about ten steps ahead of Hatch. About eight steps later,
before he had rounded the corner, he heard a woman’s voice yell
out.

“Hey! What are you doing, assholes!”

Hatch dashed around the corner and saw that
each man had grasped one of her arms, and they were trying to drag
her through an archway that led to the employees’ parking lot. A
white-haired woman came out of the Ladies’ Room and screamed when
she saw the woman being assaulted.

The two men looked up at the screaming woman,
startled. With a quickness and smoothness that surprised Hatch, and
certainly her assailants, Ms. Steppe stomped the instep of the man
on her left, which caused him to loosen the hold on her left arm.
She whirled to her right and sent her left knee into the crotch of
the man holding her right arm. He doubled up in pain and let go of
her. Her back was to the man whose instep she had crushed, and she
did not see him draw a six-inch dirk from a scabbard on his left
hip. She was too busy delivering a knee to the face of the bent
over man. She then chopped his right shoulder, breaking his collar
bone, and he fell to the ground. When her knee had smashed his
nose, blood spurted everywhere. She had heard him scream in Farsi,
“Kill her now, Ali!”

When she saw the blood, the white-haired lady
screamed again.

The man called Ali grabbed a fistful of Ms.
Steppe’s long, black ponytail and yanked her head back, then moved
the knife toward her exposed throat. By now, Hatch was there. He
put his left hand on the back of Ali’s head, grabbed his chin with
his right, gave a sharp jerk, and Ali’s neck snapped like a match
stick. Ali released his hold on her hair and dropped the knife as
he fell to the ground. Sydney Steppe spun her head toward Hatch to
see what had saved her from getting her throat slit. She saw Hatch
step back as the limp body dropped to the ground like a sack of
grain.

While she stared in amazement at Hatch and
the dead Ali, the bleeding man on the ground picked up the knife
with his left hand and lunged upward at her.

“Look out!” Hatch yelled. “The knife!”

She quickly spun back around, grabbed the
wrist of the hand that held the knife with her left hand and pushed
it to her left, grabbed his left elbow with her right hand and
twisted the arm in one powerful, smooth motion. This maneuver sent
the point of the knife, not into her as intended, but into the
man’s right chest. He screamed as it went into his body up to the
hilt. Blood came out of his mouth as he crumpled to his knees, then
fell to the ground on his face. She took her toe and rolled him
over. Red foam was bubbling out of his mouth.

“Asshole!
” she
growled furiously as she stomped his crotch.

Hatch knelt down and felt his throat for a
pulse. There was a very weak one, but he knew this man would not
live much longer. The internal wounds were bleeding him out
rapidly.

Carlos had run to the scene as soon as he
heard the woman scream, and had seen most of the incident.

“What’s happening, Mr. Lincoln?” he
gasped.

“
Call 911, Carlos. Cops and
paramedics, and an ambulance! Now!” Hatch said calmly, but firmly,
as if giving orders in the field was nothing unusual for him.
Carlos scurried away to do his bidding.

Hatch glanced at Sydney Steppe. She seemed
more in a rage than scared to death as most women would have been.
But he had seen her demonstrate that she was far from an ordinary
woman.

He asked her, "Are you all right?"

“
Thanks to you I am. Mr. Lincoln? Is
that what Carlos called you? I owe you my life! I can't believe I
let those two camel drivers get the drop on me like that. I'm
usually not that careless.”

“
Do you know who they are? Are you
implying you know they’re Arabs?” he asked.

“No. I don’t know them. I’ve never seen them
before. I know they are Arabic because this one,” she pointed to
the one with the knife in his chest, “yelled in Farsi to the other
one to kill me,” she answered. “Based on his accent, I would say
they were Iranians.”

Hatch saw a flash in her dark-brown eyes that
could be anger, or something else. He wasn’t sure what it meant.
She was obviously not a random target. She was highly trained in
hand-to-hand combat and understood Farsi well enough to discern
accents. He had never seen that maneuver she had used to turn that
man’s knife back into his chest, and he thought he knew most useful
defensive techniques in existence.

“Shit! I got that bastard’s blood all over my
shirt! And it’s one of my favorites!” she exclaimed, looking down
at her breasts, which were splattered with blood.

“There is blood on your knee, too. It must
have happened when you smashed his nose,” commented Hatch, as he
took the opportunity to stare openly at her breasts and lovely,
long legs.

A crowd had formed at this point. Some of
them had screamed when they saw the bloody scene, others swooned,
some lost their lunch. A restaurant security guard appeared and was
staring at the two men on the ground.

“Get those people back onto the patio,” Hatch
told him, taking charge. “All except that lady over there. She was
a witness.”

He pointed to the lady who had come out of
the Ladies’ Room and screamed, possibly saving Steppe’s life.

“What’s your whole name, Knight in Shining
Armor?” Steppe asked Hatch.

“Van Lincoln,” he replied. “And yours
is?”

“Sydney Steppe. And I am
very
pleased to meet you. I was in
big trouble.”

She thought for a second, then looked at the
men on the ground. Sirens were getting closer.

“I’m not going to have trouble with the
police over this, am I?” she asked finally. “Or for that matter,
are you?”

“I hope not. They assaulted you. A clear case
of self defense. Fortunately, we have a witness, assuming she is
coherent enough to relate what happened. It all happened very fast.
Carlos, the waiter, saw some of it. Of course, I’m a witness. I saw
them attack you and you defended yourself—admirably, I must say.
Where did you learn to do what you did here today? The ordinary
housewife doesn’t have moves like that.”

“First of all, I’m not a housewife—or
ordinary. Second, I could ask you the same question. You snapped
that guy’s neck like it was a twig.”

Hatch saw two uniformed cops and two
paramedics, the latter carrying emergency equipment, coming in
their direction.

“Let’s have that discussion at some other
time, Ms. Steppe. Let me do the talking to the police. You just act
like a distraught victim,” Hatch cautioned her.

“I
am
the victim,
Mr.
Lincoln!” Her dark eyes flashed at him. He liked it, and
smiled inwardly.

This is one tough lady! I need to arrange
things so I can spend some time with her. I may get lucky after
all!

“I said
distraught
!” he smiled wickedly.

“I
am
distraught!
Do I have to act like
your hysterical ordinary housewife? I wish I could have cut their
balls off and stuffed them in their mouths. Slimy bastards!” She
was fuming.

“Calm down, the cops are here,” he said in a
low voice.

When the two cops saw the blood and the two
men on the concrete walkway, they put their hands on their gun
butts and unsnapped the safety straps. Hatch saw potential,
unneeded trouble brewing. They seemed familiar to him; he attended
most police social functions when he could, contributed to the
Policeman’s Ball Fund, and passed out free turkeys on Thanksgiving
and Christmas. Maybe they would recognize him. He stepped in their
direction and waved.

“All secure here, officers,” he said, trying
to reassure them that the trouble was over. The bigger of the two
waved back as they approached, seeming to relax a bit.