Critical Space ak-5 Read online

  "I've got a packet I can fax you, if you give me the number. Dates, itinerary, so on. You can review it then give me a ring back, we can discuss terms."

  "Hold on," I said, and covered the mouthpiece. "Do we have a fax number?"

  "We have a fax number," Dale said.

  I removed my hand and repeated the number Dale gave me to Moore. "When do you need an answer?"

  "Can you ring me tomorrow?"

  "Done."

  "Talk to you then. Cheers."

  I hung up the phone and turned back to share the news, only to discover that the room had suddenly emptied, and that Dale and Natalie were now in the office at the end of the hall. Dale was making certain the paper tray was loaded, and Natalie was staring at the fax machine as if it would start reciting Homer at any second. As I entered, though, she pulled her look from the machine and put it on me.

  "Well?"

  "Robert Moore has left the SAS and is now in the personal protection business. He's got a job in New York and he wants us to assist. Details to follow."

  "Who's the principal?"

  "Didn't say."

  "But presumably it's someone who can pay?"

  "I'd expect."

  Natalie gnawed her lower lip for a moment. The fax machine bleated, once, then began humming, and within seconds pages were spewing forth. Dale grabbed them as they hit the out tray, handing them over, and Natalie snatched the first sheet before I read it.

  "Lady Antonia Ainsley-Hunter," she said. "Moore is protecting Lady Antonia Ainsley-Hunter."

  "I'd say she can pay," I said.

  Natalie socked me in the shoulder.

  ***

  Lady Ainsley-Hunter was, at twenty-three years old, one of the most visible advocates of children's rights in the world, and the founder of Together Now, a grass-roots group that had started in the U.K., similar to Rock the Vote. Hunger, disease, abuse, exploitation, ignorance – all of it was on Together Now's hit list, and the organization worked closely with UNICEF and the ILO to reach its goals, with Lady Ainsley-Hunter spearheading the assault. She was blond and attractive and surprisingly innocent-looking despite all she had undoubtedly seen, and her mission occupied most, but not all, of her waking moments. In interviews she could talk as easily about her favorite bands and foods and films as about mortality rates among infants in the Third World and incidences of child and spousal abuse in emerging nations.

  The media absolutely adored her, in both Britain and the U.S. It was that visibility as much as anything else that made her a force to be reckoned with: She got the message out.

  It was that visibility that also made her a target, because every wacko in the woodwork knew who she was.

  ***

  For the next three weeks, we buried ourselves in advance work, covering everything we could think of, just to be safe. All four of us knew that Moore had thrown KTMH a life preserver, and we weren't planning on letting it go. This was our big break, our chance to show all watching that we knew our stuff, that we were on the stick.

  And there would be people watching, none of us doubted that at all.

  We just didn't know who.

  Natalie and I started with close surveys of all the locations Lady Ainsley-Hunter would be visiting, from the hotels to the restaurants to the apartments, right up to the front entrance of the United Nations. We took photographs, made maps, racked our brains trying to imagine the worst that could possibly happen, and what our actions would be if it came to that. We practiced entry moves, debus moves, went so far as to put in extra range time. The last week of February alone, just prior to Lady Ainsley-Hunter's arrival, Natalie and I put a combined two thousand rounds through our weapons.

  While we were busy on the ground, Dale and Corry were working on the road, planning primary, secondary, even tertiary routes, driving them over and over. Wherever they were in the city, they knew the nearest hospital, the nearest precinct house, and the quickest routes to get there. They did the drives in daylight and darkness, at dawn and at dusk, learning the traffic patterns, learning where to expect delays and planning how to react should any occur. Corry repaired, overhauled, and polished all of our equipment, making certain it was in good order; he even paid for new radio batteries out of his own pocket.

  It was some of the best advance work any of us had ever done, and when Lady Ainsley-Hunter landed at Kennedy and we met her and Moore and the rest of her entourage, we were as ready as we could be. We were confident but cautious. We knew what we were doing.

  Unfortunately, when it finally came down, none of that mattered. Not the prep. Not the gear. Not the two thousand rounds, or the hours spent driving the routes and poring over maps, or the brand-new batteries in the radios.

  When it finally came down, what mattered was luck.

  Pure dumb luck.

  ***

  Even before she arrived in New York, the invitations had begun pouring in, various celebrated people all trying to contact Lady Ainsley-Hunter, inviting her out to dinners, concerts, and clubs. For the most part, she turned them all down, sending regrets and thanks, but preferring to stay at her hotel and work.

  Until Carson Fleet invited her to attend the premiere of his new blockbuster, Long Way Down, starring – amongst others – Skye Van Brandt.

  "She'll want to go," Moore told me, after he'd read the invitation. One of his duties was to screen any incoming mail, and he'd opened and read the letter as a matter of course. "She loves Fleet's movies."

  "You think it'll be a problem?" I asked.

  "Nah," he said. "Invitation is for the movie and then a bash at Pastis on Ninth afterwards. She'll do both, we'll have her back by two in the morning, no later. She's not much of a party girl."

  "For which we are all extremely grateful."

  "You and Nat want to run the route, I'll let her know we've got security in place."

  "We'll do it this evening, after she's buttoned up for the night."

  "Right, then," Moore said. "Should be a no-brainer, really."

  ***

  Ingress was flawless.

  ***

  Egress was another matter entirely.

  ***

  We were using two cars, one driven by Dale to ferry Lady Ainsley-Hunter, Moore, and myself from location to location, and then a second car to follow, driven by Natalie, and loaded with Corry and Lady Ainsley-Hunter's personal secretary, a young woman named Fiona Chester. The vehicles were kept lined up around the block, and as each celebrity departed, the event staff would radio to tell each driver that they were free to move. Because we didn't trust the event staff to know their jobs, Dale and I were waiting on word from Moore.

  "Sleepy coming out in thirty seconds, " Moore said over the radio.

  "Confirmed," Dale answered, and as he started to roll us into position, I got on my radio and echoed the order to Corry. Natalie confirmed before we'd come to a stop, and I was out, holding the door open at the end of the red carpet, scanning both sides of the line. Natalie and Corry fell into position on either side, where photographers and autograph seekers were lined up three and four deep beyond the velvet ropes. The flashbulbs started exploding.

  Moore's voice came over my earpiece. "Sleepy coming out."

  "Confirmed."

  They appeared at the end of the carpet, making their way toward us. Lady Ainsley-Hunter was smiling, waving to each side, and Moore was sticking close to her, and there was another barrage of flashes, followed immediately by a yell, and without warning a fight erupted amongst the paparazzi that spilled onto the red carpet. Moore's left hand shot to Lady Ainsley-Hunter's shoulder, pulling her back toward him and tucking her in, and he tried to power through to the car using his body as cover. I stayed on post, watching as Nat and Corry did their damnedest to keep the route clear.

  Cops started swarming in, the gawkers got involved, and suddenly there was a furball of people pushing and pulling. The brawl was escalating, punches starting to fly wildly, and Moore abruptly went down like a dropped brick, a flai
ling photographer's elbow connecting with the former soldier's face, taking him utterly by surprise. For one horribly long moment Lady Ainsley-Hunter was motionless, alone, standing on the red carpet with the melee around her.

  I went off the car, diving in after her, using my hands to knock people out of the way. Over my earpiece, I heard Moore shouting for an evac.

  Lady Ainsley-Hunter gripped my arm as I reached for her, and I pulled her into me, looking for a path out. "Got you," I told her. "Got you, you're fine."

  "Bloody hell," she muttered.

  "Hold on," I said, already turning to fight a path back to the car.

  Then Corry was shouting, "Gun! Gun! Gun!"

  ***

  His name was Samuel Jeppeson, and we learned later that he was forty-three years old and recently released from Bellevue, where he'd been undergoing treatment for paranoid schizophrenia. When the cops finally managed to get a semicoherent statement from him, they learned that he'd stopped taking his medication four days before Lady Ainsley-Hunter arrived in New York. Jeppeson then explained that he had merely been trying to keep the British Crown from reclaiming the Colonies. What we didn't understand, he said, was that Lady Ainsley-Hunter was actually a member of the One World Government's Covert Action Staff, on a mission to New York City to seduce the mayor and recruit the NYPD to her cause.

  He never explained where he got the gun, which was a Llama Model IX, a semiautomatic pistol manufactured in Spain, with a magazine capacity of seven nine-millimeter rounds. The gun hadn't been well cared for, and specks of rust were visible around the barrel and along the slide, though they certainly wouldn't keep the weapon from firing.

  Any other weapon, and things could have turned out very differently. But Jeppeson brought the Llama, and from that single decision everything else sprang forth.

  ***

  By the time Corry was shouting "gun" a second time, I had my hand on Lady Ainsley-Hunter's shoulder and was pushing her down into the crouch, hoping that Moore had drilled her on this, hoping she wouldn't go flat. If she went to the deck, down on the carpet, it would be impossible to move her quickly. She stopped on her haunches, and it's to Her Ladyship's credit that she remembered what she'd been taught, and she was in her crouch when I spotted Jeppeson.

  He was in full lone-gunman mode, making straight for us, right into the critical space, the pistol out in his right hand, shouting some condemnation that I never actually heard. My stomach had shrunk to the size of a marble, I didn't have time to index my own weapon, in fact I didn't really have time to do anything at all. I remember thinking, quite clearly, that if Jeppeson shot Lady Ainsley-Hunter I'd end up getting blood all over my only suit, which was from Brooks Brothers and which I was rather fond of, and which I didn't think I could afford to send to the dry cleaner because certainly if our principal died I'd never get work again.

  He broke through the line with people moving to get away, and I stepped in front of him and grabbed the pistol with my left, trying to force the slide back and out of battery, trying to keep the hammer from falling on the bullet in the chamber. It wasn't a conscious attempt to do anything clever; it was a move of panic more than anything else, an act to do something – anything – to keep the Llama from firing.

  The force of my grip on the gun drove Jeppeson's arm back against his body, and I started to reach up between us, to grab his elbow and pin him back. There was the vibration of something metal snapping in my hand, and then my grip on the gun was gone, so I reached for him again, catching his right shoulder with my left hand, catching his elbow once more, and then I pivoted and pitched him headfirst into the carpet. The flip dislocated his shoulder, and Jeppeson hit the deck howling.

  As soon as my hands were clear I indexed my weapon with my right, scanning for another attack, and shouting at Lady Ainsley-Hunter, "Get in the car! Get in the car!"

  She sprang up from the crouch, and I fell in behind her, looking at the mass of people, wincing at the onslaught of more flashbulbs. Lady Ainsley-Hunter slid into the backseat, and I pitched in after her, slamming the door shut and then literally covering her body with my own. The engine had been running, and we were out into the street in roughly a second, Dale accelerating, speaking quickly into his radio.

  "We're clear, we're good," Dale told me, after a minute. "Moore and the others are en route, they'll meet us at the hotel."

  I rolled off Lady Ainsley-Hunter and helped her sit up, then began running my eyes and hands over her body, making certain she hadn't taken a wound I might've missed. Given enough adrenaline, a person can take a bullet and keep moving for quite a while, and I didn't want us to arrive at the hotel only to discover that we should have been headed for the hospital instead.

  "Fresh," Lady Ainsley-Hunter said.

  "You'll forgive me," I said. "You're all right? You feel okay?"

  "I'm fine, Mr. Kodiak."

  I took my hands off her and slid back. She was flushed, still breathless, but as best as I could see she was telling the truth. "We're taking you back to the hotel."

  "I heard. Somehow I didn't think Mr. Matsui was racing us to the party. It would be anticlimactic after all of that, I think," Lady Ainsley-Hunter said lightly. She smiled.

  Then she put her hands on her thighs, doubled over, and vomited.

  I pulled her hair out of the way, realized I was holding something in my left hand, and tried to imagine what it could be.

  When the heaves became dry, Lady Ainsley-Hunter pushed my hands away, then sat up once more. Tears were streaking her face now, shimmering in her eyes, and her mascara had run. She wiped her nose with her fingers, and I found my handkerchief and handed it over.

  She took it and blew her nose energetically, dabbed at her eyes, tried the smile on me again. "I'm sorry."

  "Not to worry. It's a natural reaction."

  "I'm afraid I've made a mess."

  "Dale'll clean it up."

  She laughed, just barely, but I took it as a good sign. Then she focused on my left hand. "What's that?"

  "I'm not sure," I said, and opened my hand to see a chunk of metal about four inches long. "I think it's the slide."

  "The slide?"

  "From the gun."

  From the front seat, Dale said, "From the what?"

  "The slide-stop must've snapped when I was trying to force it back," I said. "Came off in my hand, and I was too amped up on adrenaline to drop it."

  Lady Ainsley-Hunter leaned back and used the handkerchief again. "Nicely done," she said. "Taking the man's gun apart like that."

  "Oh, hell yeah," Dale said. "He so meant to do that."

  "How do you know I didn't?" I asked.

  "I know you."

  ***

  The plane was descending into Kennedy, and I was watching the sunset light slide away from Rockaway below us, thinking it was a beautiful thing, that it would be a beautiful image to keep and preserve. Much more worthwhile than yards of videotape and mountains of photographs that almost, but didn't quite, tell the truth.

  It was the cameras that did it, that lofted me and the rest of KTMH into the same orbits as Skye Van Brandt and Carson Fleet and even Lady Antonia Ainsley-Hunter. The still photos and the endlessly looped videotape that showed, again and again, what appeared to be my magic trick, the effortless one-handed dismantling of Jeppeson's gun. The full-color photo that, for one week, was on the cover of Time, taken the moment after Jeppeson hit the deck, showing me with the slide in one hand, my weapon in the other, and Lady Ainsley-Hunter dashing past, sprinting for the car.

  Within days of the attempt on Lady Ainsley-Hunter, we were swamped with requests for our services, everything from legitimate protection work to puff show jobs to one query asking if we'd be willing to fly out to Idaho for a week and train a militia unit in the finer points of personal protection. We took a pass on that one; we said yes to just about everything else. We were invited on talk shows, including a couple of national ones. We appeared on Charlie Rose and Larry King Live. New York magaz
ine did a cover story, entitled "The New Security." Natalie, certainly the best looking of us, got singled out for particular attention, with one photograph of her running with the caption, "Cover me!"

  We weren't working out of Dale's house in Queens anymore. We had an office in Manhattan, below the West Village by the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, in what was once the Printing District. We were almost rich, and certainly comfortable. We had more work than we could handle, and of late Natalie and Dale had been agitating for hiring on another couple of hands, just to help with the load.

  We were, by all reckoning, successful.

  My dumb luck.

  Chapter 2

  It was six past nine when the cab let me off in front of my apartment building in Murray Hill, and I unlocked the foyer door and checked the mail, discovered the box empty. I took the stairs two at a time to the top and let myself into the apartment. Elvis Costello was playing on the stereo, and beneath his voice I heard others, though those stopped when I shut the door. I locked up after me and tossed my bag into the bedroom, which is inconveniently right off the front hall, then turned around and saw Bridgett Logan as she came around the corner from the living room.

  She smiled when she saw me, and that made me feel better. I'm a sucker for her smile, for the way her mouth opens and the way the lower left corner of her lip kind of tugs off to a side a little bit. Then again, I'm a sucker for just about everything about her, and in more ways than one, from the hoop through her left nostril to the tattoo on the back of her right calf. She's an inch taller than me, long and lean and with pale white skin that makes her black hair and blue eyes all the starker, and I think she's a total knock-out, but I freely admit to a bias. We've known each other just over three years, and in that time we've gotten together, pissed each other off, made separate, concerted efforts to sabotage our relationship, and finally returned to one another in a shaky comfort. A year ago, we were barely speaking.