Georges gives Ann a parting kiss on the cheeks before he leaves.
“What a nice fella,” I say as I slide into the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, a real charmer.”
“Say, uh, which side of the road do they drive on in this country?” I start the car, depress the clutch, and jam it into first.
“Right, same as you,” Ann says. “Not everyone on this side of the ocean drives on the left side of the road.” There’s more jest in her statement than annoyance. She attaches the GPS to the dash.
“Fair enough.” I pull the car out on to the road and head towards the lair of an AHA madman.
In the French Alps, little houses are built into the side of the mountains, stacked on top of each other. Lights spot the hillside, and if this were any other time, I would pull over and take a picture just to enjoy the serenity of the whole thing. Alas, I’m hot on the trail of a terrorist.
“Pretty place, huh?” I’m trying to make conversation more than anything.
“Yeah,” Ann says. “My family came here one year on holiday. We kayaked down the river near our landing site.”
“I didn’t think you spoke French?”
“I don’t. My mom did. Her parents were born here, and she learned the language as a girl. My dad and I spent the whole vacation listening to a language we didn’t understand and nodding our heads as my mom did all the talking for us.”
The family memory is touching. I try to picture Ann as a kid, kayaking down the river with her parents. The scene doesn’t look much different than me and my parents canoeing on the lake back home.
“Turn left in one hundred feet,” the GPS says in that polite, automated voice.
I take a deep breath, try to calm my heart. The damn thing is pounding against my chest. “You ready for this?”
Ann pulls her trusty duffle bag out of the back seat and holds it close as a lover. “Are you ready?”
Am I ready for another situation like McCarthy? I could really use another shot of whiskey, or six, for something like that. “Yeah.” I give a quick nod. Stupid fucking heart keeps beating like a bass drum.
We pull up to a house built into the side of the hill like the rest of them, only this one is the size of the communities we passed on the way up. The lair of a super villain? I park on the side of the road, 50 feet behind our destination. No use giving up the element of surprise, if we even still have it after McCarthy’s email.
“Let’s do this.” I get out of the car, check my gun, and hope to God Donovan has as little security sense as McCarthy.
A SLIVER OF A MOON
casts as much light as a dying lightning bug. The air has a heavy dampness, like the Earth is sweating as much as I am. Every one of these visits has been more intense than the last. I’m not Jack Ryan and I don’t like my chances if the stakes get much higher.
I stop just outside the illumination coming from the house. “Front door, or back?”
Ann adjusts the bag on her shoulder, surveying the area. She points up the hill the house is built into. “I think we can climb around back.”
The hill is steep and looks downright treacherous in the worthless light of the evening. I can make it up the incline, but I’m not going to enjoy any part of it. “Yeah, let’s go.”
We walk a few yards away from the house in case anyone happens to look out the window. Safe money says Andy got McCarthy’s warning and he could have any number of security keeping watch of his racist ass. The mountainside doesn’t believe in a gently increasing angle. Nope. Rock told Soft Rolling Slopes to fuck off when it decided to stretch straight up to the heavens like a goddamned French Babel.
I use as much of my upper body as I can to hoist myself up. Trees, big rocks, shrubs, and small animals all act as temporary hand holds on my trek. By the time we get parallel with the back of the house, my arms feel like jelly and my hip has numbed itself into oblivion. I’m sure I will pay for this later.
The back of the house is darker than the front. There are only two lights shining on the second floor, none on the first. I give Ann a look and she nods. She’s already got a pistol in her hand, ready to go. I draw my weapon and we creep to the open back patio. The porch has a concrete floor with a cinderblock fence that holds the mountain back.
We cross the deck to a tall glass door. There’s no light coming from the room inside and we take a position on either side of the entry. I hold three fingers up…
Two…
One…
My left hand tries the knob and the door swings in. Too silent silence greats us. No feet scuffling across tile, no attack dog, no TV blaring late-night television. I have a half-second to wonder what Jimmy Fallon sounds like in French before Ann steps through the door into a pitch-black room, weapon raised. Gun at the ready, I step in behind her. We pause, waiting, listening for sounds of life.
The lights in the room come on full blast, blinding me. A hand grabs the wrist of my right arm and torques it in a direction it’s not meant to go. I turn my body to relieve the pressure and an arm—or a piece of iron for as soft as it feels—strikes my throat with all the delicate touch of a jackhammer. I cough. I gag. Try to swallow air, get bile instead. Someone screams. Hack. Cough. I heave peanut butter onto the floor.
My gun is out of my hand, but I’m still more worried about the lack of oxygen. Something sweeps my feet. My back hits the ground with what would be enough force to drive the air out of me, if I had any air to drive out.
The lights beam straight down. I turn my head to the side. Ann is on the floor, both hands wrapped around her stomach. Her mouth is open and I think she might be screaming, but my ears don’t seem to register sound right now. A booted foot connects with Ann’s face, spinning her around so she’s facing away from me. Her body convulses with each breath, but she’s not moving other than that.
I follow the leg attached to the boot. Black cargo pants, gun belt, black shirt stretched tight across a chest that would make a linebacker look svelte. His hand is wrapped around a nightstick that I’m guessing found its way into Ann’s stomach.
My throat finally remembers how to open and close and I manage to squeeze a gulp of air in. The inhalation burns my esophagus and my chest. A hollow ‘whoamve’ sound reverberates in my eardrums. Did I get hit in the head too? It all happened so fast. My eyes burn. I blink and turn my head. A pair of matching black boots are stationed right next to my limp body. A matching muscle-man stands in them.
The toes of the boots rotate, heels clicking together like a third of Dorothy on steroids. Fuck, I wish I were home.
“Madame, we found these two sneaking in the house.” The man standing over me has a thick accent, but not French. Czech maybe? Croatian?
The distinct sound of heels clacking on tile nears. “Do they have any form of identification?” The woman’s voice has the smooth French accent of the diplomat we spoke to earlier. Her English is perfect, with the exception of replacing ‘Th’ with a ‘Z’ sound.
Rough hands pat and grab at me. He lands on the wallet in my back pocket and pulls it free. I’m too worried about breathing to argue much. “His name is James Quig,” the guy over me says. “A police officer from the state of Georgia.”
“Her name is Ann Pretorius. She works for SHI,” a similarly-accented voice says. Matching bodyguards. That’d be cuter if I didn’t think they might be about to kill me.
The woman clicks her tongue. I imagine a cringe to go along with it. “These must be the two McCarthy warned me about. Kill them.”
Wait, what? McCarthy warned her? No, that’s not right, McCarthy warned Andy Donovan. Who is this woman?
Two guns cock in unison.
“But not here. I want no mess to clean. Take them behind the house. Bury them there, or leave them for the birds, I care not which.”
Fuck this lady.
The same rough hands grab my shirt by the collar and yank me to my feet. I catch a clear view of Ann. When the guy grabs her she twists his arm around in a way that looks less than comfortable. The guy grunts, but swings the butt of his pistol against the side of her head. The sound of makes my stomach heave. Ann’s body drops back to the floor where her head bounces off the tile.
“Fucking bitch,” her guard says. He shakes out his arm before reaching down and throwing her body over his shoulder.
I glance at the guard standing behind me. When he draws his gun back. I hold my hands up in surrender. “Easy, Killer. I can walk to my own grave.”
I GET ASSIGNED
a job where I’m told I have to interrogate and will most likely piss off people with super-human powers, capable of killing me without batting an eye. After a handful of those very same interrogations, I’m going to be killed by a Slovak mercenary.
The guy carrying Ann leads the way up the mountain behind the manor. The other guy follows me, his weapon trained on the back of my head, surely. I debate the odds of taking both of these guys out before one of them kills me and come back with zero chance of survival. As a police officer, I’ve been trained in a lot of combat situations. I know my way around a fight. Because of this training, I can easily recognize when I’m outnumbered and outgunned. Like right now.
Fuck, I’m not ready to die
, plays in my head on repeat. After every loop I wish I had some more prominent last thoughts. Something groundbreaking, epitaph-worthy. I want some last words that live up to the name Cool Jim Quig. Instead of some poignant parting quip, I’m left with ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuck,’ over and over.
We crest the hill into some trees covering the plateau. I squint to make my way without tripping over anything. Every time I turn my head, fluid in my ears sloshes around. I almost fall over. I really wish I could remember the point when that fucker hit me in the head. Was it before, during, or after the throat chop? I swallow and the gulp presses against the bruise forming around my trachea.
“That’s far enough,” says Merc Asshole Number One. He drops Ann off his shoulder. Her body hits the ground and stays there. I’ve never seen anyone hit in the head be out that long. I’d be worried about brain damage if both of our brains weren’t about to get a new lead ornament.
Other than the little bit of glow from Donovan’s house (Was that even Donovan’s house?) there is no light to be seen. No other houses, no people, no hope of rescue.
“Any last words?” The merc’s heavy accent makes this whole thing feel like a bad eighties movie. Is he Turkish?
I face the asshole merc. They both have their guns trained on me. Ann is on the ground behind them. Through the darkness, I catch a slight movement of her head. Her hand rolls a couple times, the universal symbol for, ‘keep them fucking busy’.
“Do I have any last words?” I say, hoping I am better at stalling than epitaph writing. “Yeah, yes. I do. Are you sure you want to be out here?”
“Why wouldn’t we be,” Asshole Merc Number Two asks.
With the patience of a slug, Ann puts her hands under her body.
“Because,” I say, “you don’t know what I am.”
Merc One spits. “You’re a cop, from Georgia. You’re nothing.”
Ann pushes up to her knees.
“Exactly. Why do you think a cop from Georgia is in France, breaking into your boss’ house?”
The two mercs exchange a look.
Ann walks her hands backward until she’s flat on her feet in a crouch.
“You’re nothing. If you were, you wouldn’t have given up so easily,” Merc One says.
“Maybe I just wanted to kill you out of your boss’ sight.”
They both laugh.
“And how are you going to kill us?”
I swear I’m waiting for one of them to tell me he’s going to crush me with his fucking super-villain accent.
“You,” I point at Merc One, the guy who socked Ann with the club. “You’re going to get your neck broken. And you,” I point at Merc Two. “You’re going to be choked until you’re brain dead. Payback, you understand.” I point at my throat.
“Let’s see you do that with two bullets in your head.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, fellas. I didn’t say
I
was gonna do it.”
The wording clicks into place for Merc One first. His eyes bulge as he glances at Ann. Only she’s not laying on the ground any more. She kicks out a foot, connecting with his stomach. Merc Two catches on and swings his gun. I lunge, throwing my shoulder into him. The gun goes off, but he’s aiming at the less-than-ample moon by the time the shot fires.
I grab the merc’s gun hand. A rock sticks out of the ground next to his head. I take the sign from God and slam the back of his hand against the jagged object. The gun bounces free, but his other fist connects with my cheek. I see stars—not the ones in the sky. A bone in my face crunches. Goodbye Handsome, hello Rugged Good Looks.
The merc turns underneath me trying to scramble away. Bad idea. I wrap my legs around his waist, holding his back against my chest. My arms instinctively snake around his neck. We play paddy-cake with our extremities for a few moments before I feel my elbow slide under his chin. I squeeze with everything I’m worth. They say a few seconds of this kind of choke can leave a person unconscious. Let’s see what happens when I hold it a minute. He struggles under my grip, slapping at my face and arms.
From my position on the ground, I’ve got a good view of Ann and Merc One. She’s got a combat knife in her hand—presumably taken from him. He’s bleeding in more than a couple places.
Merc Two’s struggles grow weaker until they stop all together. I tighten my grip. My arms scream in protest, my vengeance screams harder.
Merc One lunges. Ann buries the knife up to the hilt in his abdomen. He bends at the waist. His arms wrap his stomach much the same as Ann had earlier. Ann takes his head in her arms. She twists, snapping his neck, then drops his dead body to the ground and walks over to me with all the calm of a Zen master.
Ann kicks the shoe of the guy in my choke hold. “He’s dead.”
I release my grip and shove the body off of me. Killing a man doesn’t seem so hard now that I’ve done it. If I were back home at the department, this would be followed by mountains of paperwork and a weekly visit with a psychologist. Out here, in another country, working for SHI, I have a feeling none of that is going to come up.