Against the Clock Read online

  The baggy shirt and black jeans she wore were scattered through various waste bins on her shopping spree through the Grand Plaza.

  The guns collected from the dead men were secreted within the pockets of a new gym bag. Wearing her newly purchased Lycra long-cut shorts, running shoes, and tight singlet top, she looked like one of many other young ladies on their way back from the gym.

  Her breath had come back quickly, and the adrenaline of the encounter was just now ebbing slowly away. Sipping a tall, full cream cappuccino, she headed back to the train depot. Her mind worked quickly over the events of the last few hours.

  The ambush had been well executed, a four-man team, three converging on her from intersecting planes, the fourth, she assumed, from a higher vantage point. She had identified two of the three quickly, the third soon after, but too late to slip free of their sightlines. Deciding to wait for a better opportunity, she let them get closer to her, steering them toward a busy outdoor café close by.

  Hoping to obscure any field of vision for potential snipers or security cameras, Shirin had ducked under the outdoor canopy, walked through to the middle of the crowded café, then headed toward a small vacant table.

  She paused at the table as a steward deftly cleared it, wiped it over, and set down new cutlery. She had taken mental note of where her pursuers would be and prepared herself.

  She felt the firm hand on her shoulder before she saw it. It squeezed hard on the pressure point toward the top of her shoulder joint.

  Before the man could whisper his practiced threats encouraging her to do exactly as he said, Shirin thrust her arm up and slightly forward, releasing the pressure on her nerve. Gripping his wrist with her other hand, she pulled him in toward her while thrusting her head back violently into his face.

  The impact had been fast and hard. She'd felt his nose give way on the back of her head, and before he could react she had his hand twisted up and out, opening him up, exposed to the brutal assault on the side of his neck.

  Her fist connected with force, and as he buckled under the blow, she followed through with an open palm strike to his throat. The trauma was instant. The blood flow to his brain, stopped. His airway, crushed. He fell, dying.

  The second man had pushed his way through the crowded café, drawing his weapon before the first man hit the ground. The silenced weapon had begun its sharp arc up from the folds of his jacket as Shirin hurled herself forward.

  Her left hand reached for the cutlery on her table and gripped a metal fork while her right hand parried the gun up and away. She sidestepped fast to her right. She ducked under his raised arm, then thrust forward and up into his neck with the fork. The gun bucked in his hand as the first shot was fired, sending the bullet wildly skyward. Still moving fast, she stabbed the fork into his throat a second time and circled behind his back.

  His shock lasted only a moment. She left the fork dangling from his flesh, gripped his head and chin, then twisted vertically with a sickening crunch.

  His body crumpled on the spot like a rag doll. He was mid-fall when Shirin dislodged the silenced Glock from his grip and pointed it toward the third man as he stood momentarily stunned.

  Four seconds had passed since the first man gripped her shoulder. Two men were down, the gun in her hand pointed toward the third man. The crowd snapped free from their initial shock and started screaming and scrambling away. The third gunman seemed uncertain which path to take―to continue after her or to run.

  She gave him little choice and fired the silenced weapon at him quickly while running at full pace straight toward him.

  The first shot buried itself into his shoulder. The second shot found his collarbone, the third his biceps, the fourth his gluteus as he turned to run, and the fifth thumped into his shoulder blade.

  Shirin bounded after him, chasing him onto the street. His vision seemed impaired as he staggered forward, reaching out with his good arm, gun still gripped awkwardly in his ruined arm's hand. She was close enough to grab him.

  Whack! A speeding van passed by, missing Shirin by only a foot but smashing into him. His body flew forward, twisting and turning in the air. The sound of the impact reached her moments later, and then the screeching of tires braking on the road, and the broken body falling, landing twenty feet away on the pavement, completely still.

  Tucking the silenced pistol into the waistband of her jeans, Shirin ran toward the motionless agent, hoping her baggy shirt would conceal the shape of the bulky gun.

  He was dead. He would answer none of her questions now. In the distance, the chaos of the café galvanized into a morbid curiosity. She worked quickly to search him for any signs of identification or clues as to who he was, and who had sent him. There were none. Even his clothing labels had been removed. A professional. Although, judging by his momentary hesitation earlier, new to the field.

  Pocketing his gun, she peered into the massing crowd. She looked through them, searching faces, searching behaviors, looking for the telltale signs of other killers out there coming for her. There were more of them, she was sure.

  A big man loomed through the crowd, glanced at the two men dead at the café, then looked out, beyond the converging onlookers. It was then she saw his face. Their eyes connected from a distance. Trent Barratt. She recognized him instantly, turned her head, and left.

  Two hours after the ambush, she found herself staring at the empty coffee cup in her hand as the train pulled to a stop. She exited just as the doors were closing, her mind still focused on how they had managed to know where she would be, and when.

  Her mind worked quickly over the possibilities. There were not many. Somehow, they found her. Somehow, they followed her. The burning thought in her mind was, how long had they been following her?

  The arrival of Barratt also clung to her consciousness. She could never forget those eyes. Would never forget that man.

  Barratt was muscle, the kind of muscle that made people disappear, and he was good. In a past life, she had known him well. She wondered if he knew whom he was hunting.

  If they had sent him, it meant they wanted her gone. She had to believe they had not been watching her long. They wouldn't take the risk that she would spot them and run. Barratt didn't work that way. When he got the target, he worked quickly. Find them, track them, kill them. That was his way.

  Crossing the road to a taxi rank, she considered for a moment that they either knew what she was doing or were scared of what she might be doing…

  Letting them know that she was coming after them had always been part of the plan, just not so soon.

  She had to assume they had found her safe house and the files she had kept there. It pissed her off they'd gotten to her.

  She gave the taxi driver the address of a townhouse in the suburbs. She knew where they would be now. Time to hurt them.

  10:24:48

  Director Zelig sipped instinctively from the cup of coffee on his desk. It was cold. He couldn't remember the last time he'd finished a coffee while it was still hot. His colleagues had joked constantly that when he died, they would pour hot coffee on his grave. His reply was always the same: they'd be dead before he was. He wasn't joking.

  It was nearing 10:30; he expected his secretive associate to contact him with an update on the Shirin Reyes/Bill Civic fiasco.

  How it had come to pass that he relied so much on a man he had never met and didn't really know was still robbing him of sleep each night. But as he grew older, he began to see the merit of letting someone untraceable and unknown to him do much of his dirty work.

  He had tried to find Smith once. He'd woken in bed with a knife to his throat and a warning. He'd not tried again.

  Instead, he had given Smith the tasks he himself could openly not complete. Over the years, their relationship garnered many successes. Zelig rose in the ranks within his Agency, and they had both grown very rich in the process.

  Zelig's private cell buzzed. Without pleasantries, Smith relayed the latest findings at
the apartment.

  "Mr. Civic remains resolute in his beliefs regarding this woman. My men believe him. The forensic team you sent found numerous fingerprints throughout the apartment, but at this stage they have not been able to match any to the prints on file for Reyes. My man did find a miniature camera outside the office window. Mr. Civic is adamant that he was not aware of it. Whoever installed it must have rappelled down from the roof and fixed it to the masonry wall without triggering the sensors on the glass."

  Zelig gripped the cell harder in his palm. He wanted to smash it to pieces. He knew of several missions where Reyes had used this same technique to monitor targets in the past. He calmly asked, "What could the camera see?"

  "It transmitted wirelessly to a recorder. I'm told the range could be 100 meters, possibly more. We hacked into the wireless feed. The camera had an unobstructed view of the entire office. Given its positioning, anything on Mr. Civic's desk could be clearly identified. The resolution and automatic zoom would have allowed the observer to see in fine detail anything that happened in that room."

  "Tell the forensic team to stop whatever they're doing. I want that room stripped clean! Nothing left! Peel off the paint if you have to and look behind it. And I want Bill Civic either dead or talking!"Zelig thumbed the "end call" button hard, looked at his watch, and stormed out of his office. He had someone to blackmail, and he was running late.

  10:47:08

  It took just over twenty minutes in the cab to get out of the city. The young driver had been talkative at first, his friendly nature infectious, but he soon understood Shirin's focused look and intense quiet.

  She told him to take the next street on the left.

  "The street you gave me is the next one after that," he said, trying to be helpful.

  "I know."

  He looked at her and didn't argue.

  "Drive slowly," she said calmly, "but don't stop."

  They traveled down the long street in silence. From the front passenger seat, she glared past the driver, out past the houses on their right. Her safe house was on the other side of the block, behind these homes. She glimpsed its roof in the pockets between the houses; then, she saw the window of her en suite, then the bedroom. It was only a glimpse, but she saw movement in them, then landscaping and neighboring homes obscured her line of vision to the townhouse as the cab continued along the road.

  They were inside.

  "Okay, turn right at the end, and then right again onto the street I gave you."

  The cab rounded the corner. Shirin saw it straightaway. A dark blue van parked a hundred meters before her townhouse, on the opposite side of the road. Its windows were tinted, the antenna coming from its roof unmistakable.

  "See that blue van up ahead?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I want you to keep driving slowly, and when I tell you to, hit the accelerator and speed past that van. Got it?"

  "You're really starting to freak me out, lady!"

  Shirin looked at him "I'll make it up to you."

  The cab drew closer to the van. She saw the chassis rock slightly; people were inside. Her hand disappeared into her backpack, felt the comforting grip of the silenced pistol she had taken from one of the dead men at the café.

  "Okay, get ready…not yet… Now! Hit it!"

  He stomped on the accelerator. The cab lurched forward. The van was only meters away.

  In her mind, time slowed. She smoothly drew the gun from her bag, struck him hard in the sternum, gripped the wheel, spun it hard to the left, opened her door, and jumped out. She landed in a full run and circled around the back of the cab as it continued in its trajectory, veering straight into the side of the van.

  The collision was loud; it rocked the van sideways. Its right wheels lifted off the asphalt for a moment before bouncing back down. Her driver was stuck behind the wheel of the crumpled taxi, gripping his chest, struggling to breathe, his eyes wide and bulging.

  Shirin crouched low as she circled around the front of the van. There was no driver behind the wheel. She reached the rear axle. She could hear the men inside scrambling for their weapons and shouting at each other.

  Two men flew out of the back doors of the van, guns at the ready. They looked clearly shaken. Gripping their weapons, they scanned the unfamiliar area, confused, disorientated. They aimed at the stunned and dazed cabdriver. Shirin knew instantly they were not killers, they were techies.

  She came up behind them fast, without hesitation. She shot the first man in the back of his leg just above the knee and followed through with an elbow to his head as he fell. She kept rushing forward. As the second man spun to face her, she delivered a quick bullet to his upper arm, then used her forward momentum as the powerbase for a flying kick to his sternum. He flew backward, connecting hard with the stalled taxi, and sank slowly to the tarmac.

  Both men lay useless on the road. Their guns out of reach, Shirin wasted no time and jumped into the back of the van, gun drawn and ready. There were no other men. Instead, a mess of computers and electronic monitoring equipment littered the interior.

  She searched the computer towers, looking for portable memory cards or accessible hard drives. The monitors were off. All internal power seemed to have been reset by the collision. If there was information to be gained, it would take more time to find than Shirin had.

  Jumping out of the van, she scooped up the techies' weapons and headed for the driver's door. As she tucked one of the collected guns into her waistband, she saw the taxi driver struggling to get out of the cab. His door was jammed shut by the crumpled front end. Pointing her gun at him as she walked, she said, "Hey! Stay in the car! Do exactly as they tell you. Tell them everything. If you don't, they will kill you." She stopped, locked eyes with his. "Do you understand?"

  He nodded meekly.

  She smashed a hole in the window with her gun, unlocked the door, and slid in behind the wheel. The keys were still in the ignition. The engine turned over on the second attempt. The radio squawked.

  "Team Theta, check in."

  She recognized the voice instantly. Barratt. She put the van in gear, gunned the engine, and pulled away from the curb. The front fender of the cab clung precariously to the side of the van before tumbling free as Shirin did a sharp U-turn and left the street.

  10:47:23

  Barratt looked at his watch. They had been there too long, and with nothing to show for it, he felt the pressure mounting. He ran through the final communications checks with his team. All was good.

  The two-story townhouse had yielded no results. It was frustrating, but expected. This woman was clearly a professional. He didn't expect her to return here after the failed ambush that morning, but it was the only lead left to chase.

  At first glance, it looked like any normal suburban home. It was nicely furnished inside; there were photos on the walls, potted flowers growing, knickknacks on bookshelves, and even shampoo bottles, toothbrushes, and towels left lying about. But what Barratt noticed more than these homely artifacts was that there was no hair in the brush, no hair in the shower drain, and no fingerprints anywhere. It was as though the house had been lived in by a ghost.

  His team had searched vigorously. There was nothing to find. He only hoped that whoever this woman was, she might return at some point, and then, he would have her.

  He brought the radio transmitter to his mouth and gave the clearance for all teams to evacuate. This woman had chosen her safe house well. It was in the middle of a long, quiet street. Any surveillance here would be quickly discovered. It was the kind of neighborhood where all the neighbors knew each other. He made a mental note to interview them if he couldn't find her within the next few days.

  Looking at his watch again, he gave the final signal for the surveillance van to swing past and pick him up. He made his way back downstairs.

  From his encounter with the woman in the morning to seeing her safe house first hand, Barratt knew in his gut that this woman was no ordinary threat; she was of a cali
ber he had not seen in years. Not since—

  Crash!

  Barratt heard it from the top of the stairs. He bounded down. Two of his agents met him at the door. They had heard it also. Something was wrong. He instructed one of the men to take up a position by the back door, the other to get a higher vantage point upstairs while he took a look outside. He grabbed the transmitter from his belt and tried to contact his men in the van. There was no response.

  Running onto the footpath, he saw but could not believe. The van was gone, and in its place a taxicab sat perpendicular to the curb, with a crumpled front end. As he reached the middle of the road, he saw the back panel and taillights of the van disappear around the corner.

  10:48:09

  Shirin sped around the corner. They would find the van eventually, she knew. It was sure to have a tracking beacon. She didn't plan to be around when they arrived.

  She didn't slow for the next corner but instead skidded deeper into it, accelerating out of the skid and racing down the long road. She was parallel to the street of her safe house.

  She pulled up outside the house that shared her own house's back boundary, already jumping out of the van before it stopped moving.

  She knew all the people in the properties surrounding her safe house. She knew them better than their own families, she was sure. She raced through the front yard of the block behind her safe house. It belonged to Loren and Dan Francis. They were both at work now. They had no dog. No external alarm. At the side access, she leaped over the six-foot gate and skirted the Colorbond fence until she reached their backyard.

  She peered over the fence. She could see one man at the back of her safe house, near the laundry door, and another upstairs in her bedroom. Both men looked distracted but dangerous.

  She deposited her bag in the corner behind the trunk of a gum tree. She needed to travel light and fast. She took one pistol, tucked it in her waistband, then leapt up and over the fence.

  She landed silently, rolled, and was up, gun raised, waiting, listening, watching. She had not been seen yet.