The Blonde (27 page)

Across the room, Vanessa pushed herself up on her arms.

“I fooking wish you carried a gun,” she said.

“I wish I carried dental insurance,” Kowalski said. He opened his right fist and looked down at his bloodied tooth.

Vanessa reached out and found the towel. Kowalski realized that the free show was over, and he hadn’t any time to fully appreciate it.

Who was he kidding. He wouldn’t have allowed himself to, anyway.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I won’t be bringing the girls out to play anytime soon.” She rewrapped the towel around her torso.

“We have to get to San Diego. Now.”

“Figured that.”

They were silent as they quickly gathered their things.

H
aven’t figured it out yet, have you?” The interrogator was loving this. Possibly as much as the idea of using his little knife. What was that anyway? Something he took from the kitchen at home? Something his wife ordered at a Pampered Chef party?

“Yeah,” Kowalski said. “I figured it out. The first team pushed us to a specific car rental place. You had someone there waiting. You tagged the Taurus with a homing device.”

The interrogator shook his head, made a
tsk-tsk
sound. “And she said you were the smartest operative she ever worked with.”

He didn’t have to say who. “She” was enough to wedge the blade under his armor.

“Then again,” the interrogator continued, “she’s no longer with us.”

Kowalski said nothing.

“In answer to your theory: No, we did not bug the Taurus. We had something else.”

Kowalski said nothing.

And then it came to him. Oh, of fucking course. How stupid can one man be? Maybe he
had
been knocked in the brains one too many times.

He’d known it had happened. He just didn’t know it had happened so early.

“The Surgeon certainly thought the device came in handy.”

T
he Surgeon watched the targets take the stairs down from the apartment. They faded in and out of view. That was okay. He also had them on his handheld tracker. Two pulsing red dots, making their way slowly across a grid. No way of losing them.

So he was more or less relaxing, smoking a Pall Mall, something he had a hard time doing practically anywhere in L.A. In this empty apartment, though, it was okay. Maybe a rental agent would detect a faint hint of smoke, but by then, he’d be long gone.

He only expected to be here a few more minutes, actually.

Maybe just sixty seconds.

A quick phone call (fuck the Internet; The Surgeon was old school) had revealed that Lee Michaels owned the third garage on the left. The garages were positively Stone Age: just a box of concrete wedged into a muddy hill with corrugated steel doors. It was enough to accommodate most midsized vehicles. Like a Ford Taurus.

Even the most primitive of garages, however, have a door handle.

The trap was so easy to set. Just put The Stuff in your right-hand pocket, grab a stack of supermarket circulars, walk up to the apartment gate, give ‘em a circular, then on the way back quickly put on some gloves and coat The Stuff on the handle.

The Stuff was great. Mr. Brown loved working with it every chance he got.

The Stuff killed on contact with skin. Not right away, but within fifteen to twenty minutes. Knocked you unconscious. For good.

The Stuff was completely untraceable. Not even the CIA knew about The Stuff. Not
this
Stuff.

So Mr. Brown staked out an apartment across the way and smoked while he waited. Lie also tore open a packet of mint pastilles, and he scooped a handful into his mouth between cigarettes. It fought the nicotine breath. Women were so picky about that.

Maybe after this he’d go down to Sunset and try to get himself a date.

The great thing about the garages was that they were so narrow. Only one person could squeeze in at a time. The thing to do was
worm your way into the driver’s seat, back the car out, then have your passenger lower the garage door for you before hopping in.

That meant two people touching the garage door handle. The driver. And the passenger.

Oh, and here they were, heading to the garage, thinking they were about to make a clean getaway.

Yep.

The Surgeon was mildly surprised that Ms. Montgomery had failed to take them out herself. She was usually good. He hoped she wasn’t dead.

But then again, it was nice to strut his Stuff, too.

K
walski reached for the garage door.

“Wait,” Vanessa said.

“Nobody’s hiding in the garage,” he said. “I rigged it. If this had been opened in the last few hours, I would have known.”

“Rigged it with what? A piece of tape up in the corner?”

Kowalski didn’t say anything, because that was precisely how he’d rigged it. A piece of tape, up in the corner. It was still there.

“I’ll open it quick,” he said. “We jump if there’s an explosion.”

Vanessa looked at him. “Bollocks.” She reached down, grabbed the handle, and yanked the door upward. It rattled as it moved along the rusty tracks and settled into place above her head.

No explosions.

No gunfire.

No nothing.

Kowalski gave her a
See?
look.

“Well, go on then,” she said.

O
ne down,” mumbled the Surgeon. He helped himself to more mint pastilles.

But there was a problem now. The girl was good as dead, but the male target—this Kowalski—was squeezing himself in alongside
the car, making his way to the driver’s seat. Which meant he wouldn’t touch the garage door handle at all.

It was a good thing he’d prepared a secondary device.

This was even more ingenious. It was a strip of clear tape, running across the length of the garage, about six inches away from the outside of the door.

The tape was pressure-sensitive. Step on it—hell, stomp on it, hard as you can—and nothing. Just an ordinary piece of electrician’s tape. But roll the approximate weight of an automobile over the tape, and watch out.

Ka-Boomsville.

You can do all the forensic analysis you want, and all you’d find is a blown back tire that somehow, incredibly, sparked the gas tank, resulting in catastrophic combustion. That would be your best guess, anyhow. The tape would have long burned up into nothingness. You’d have nothing to analyze.

The Surgeon watched the male target start the car. Popped a mint.

Then he hit the remote control that activated the tape.

K
owalski started the car. He didn’t like this feeling. Jittery. Nerves on edge. Things moving too fast. Being forced out of his safe house—the safest place he knew—in less than an hour. Compromised. This wasn’t like CI-6. They weren’t usually this sharp. He thought he’d have more time to prepare. A week would have been nice.

Worst of all, he still had beers left up in Lee’s place. God, that pissed him off.

Kowalski reached for the gear shift. His hand missed. On the second try, he found it.

There was a fluttering in his stomach. He was almost
never
sick to his stomach.

Kowalski sighed, then turned off the ignition. Stepped out of
the car, feeling the blood rush out of his head. Squeezed himself alongside the Taurus.

“I need you to drive,” he said.

He threw the keys to the redhead.

She caught them, no problem. “I don’t know how to drive in America.”

“We’ll be on the 5 the whole time. Just stick to a lane. You’ll be fine.”

“To be perfectly frank, I don’t know how to drive. Like, at all.”

“Piece of cake. Just stay between the white lines.”

This was a lie, and Vanessa looked like she knew it. But there wasn’t much choice. The nausea was full on now, and the dizzy feeling refused to go away, no matter how much Kowalski controlled his breathing. It was going to take some effort to stay conscious in the passenger seat, let alone the driver’s seat.

Vanessa slid alongside the car, hopped behind the wheel, and turned the ignition. Kowalski stepped back. If she makes it out of the garage in one piece, I’ll consider it a good omen.

She put the Taurus in reverse and backed out of the garage.

T
he Surgeon braced himself.

He had a vision of the blast taking his target’s head off, bouncing it against the window here, leaving a smudge of burned flesh and a smear of blood.

Yep.

V
anessa managed to avoid running over Kowalski. She pulled up alongside him, hammered the brake.

The Taurus rocked on its suspension.

“Getting in then?” she asked.

W
hat the fuck?!

He saw it. The car ran over the tape.
Right over the tape
.

His devices had never failed before.

Never.

It was a good thing he’d brought along a tertiary device.

K
owalski had just snapped his seat belt—hey, she admitted she didn’t know how to drive—when this tubby, balding guy came stumbling out of the doorway, gun in hand. Running towards them. Aiming for them.

“Go,” Kowalski said. “Go now.”

Tubby fired once. The windshield cracked. Vanessa screamed.

“Gas pedal,” Kowalski said. “Gun it.”

She gunned it. The car shot backwards ten feet before she pushed the brake with both feet. The Taurus rocked. Tubby aimed again.

Kowalski plucked the cigarette lighter from the dash.

Tubby fired.

The shot went high.

Vanessa pushed the accelerator. The engine screamed.

“Put it in drive,” Kowalski said, then opened his door and winged the cigarette lighter at Tubby’s head. It nailed him in the mouth. Which was okay, but Kowalski had been aiming for his eyes. Tabby’s lips trembled, like he was fighting a sneeze. Kowalski reached down, grabbed the gear shift, said, “Brake, now!” and Vanessa did, and then he slid it into drive, and was about to tell her, “Gas!” but she was already there, slamming it.

The Taurus rocketed forward, smashed into Tubby.

“Go!” Kowalski said.

Tubby was airborne.

The Taurus raced down the hill.

T
he Surgeon tried one last time to shoot the girl in the face, but by this time he was tumbling through the air. He squeezed the trigger, but the bullet went wild.

Way
wild.

Right into the ground.

Right into a strip of clear electrical tape, running parallel to the front of the third garage.

Walk on it, stomp on it… nothing. You need something with the mass of a motor vehicle to set it off, when charged properly.

Of course, charged or not, there’s something else that will set it off.

A speeding bullet.

Yeah, that’d do it nicely.

So before The Surgeon was even able to crash into the ground, the explosion blew him back and upwards into the air, flipping him head over heels at least twice before he crashed through the very window he’d been looking through a minute ago.

And in that way, one little bit of the Surgeon’s vision came true. For a fraction of a section, burnt flesh was smeared against the glass, along with a little bit of blood.

Then the glass shattered, and through it came the Surgeon.

T
hat guy just blew up,” Vanessa said.

“Drive,” Kowalski said.

“Why did he blow up?”

“Just drive.”

“Michael.”

“What?”

“
Why did that guy blow up?
”

“Drive!”

“Jaysus.” She sighed.

“Now a left,” Kowalski said.

T
he blast woke Ana. Her eyes fluttered open, and quickly she realized she
was drowning in a sea of pain. Delicious pain. Pain she could use. Just as soon as she stood up.

Oh.

She couldn’t.

One of the two fucktards, either the cripple with the missing teeth or the naked bitch, had smashed in one of her kneecaps. Perhaps the most sensitive part of the human anatomy, aside from the sexual organs or the eyes. Physical trauma applied to the kneecap was immediately crippling, engulfing the pain centers of the brain to the point of overload.

Thus, a source of overwhelming power.

Ana wouldn’t need to walk. She could crawl on her elbows and one remaining knee and smite those who had done this to her. Smite them with their
own pain
.

She sat up.

Or tried to, at least.

But her arms were pinned above her. Handcuffed around the base of a toilet.

No no no no
.

This meant that the pain would have to stay within her, with no chance of release. And that was unacceptable. Because there was one thing Ana could not handle for long, and that was
pain
. Especially pain of this magnitude.

Ana screamed and cried and begged for release.

Any
kind of release.

Oh how it HURT!

K
owalski had to take a piss. But he’d be damned if he let the interrogator know that.

He considered just letting it go, right here, right onto the concrete floor, the body-temperature liquid splattering the interrogator’s shoes.

“Tell me,” Kowalski, “how you found her.”

“She came to us,” the interrogator said.

“What, she had your address?”

“Hang on, now. We’re off track here. I’m supposed to be asking
you
questions. You know the deal. You don’t answer, I slice pieces off you and put them over there.” He pointed to a metal bucket, which had been placed in the corner. “You continue to be stubborn, I get to feed you those pieces.”

“I’m answering your questions.”

“I know. You suck.”

The interrogator played with the paper cover of his little Pampered Chef knife.

“Well, go on. San Diego.”

“San Diego,” Kowalski repeated.

“San Diego.”