Showdown (49 page)

AN EXCERPT FROM
SAINT

I SEE DARKNESS. I'm laying spread eagle on my back, ankles and wrists
tied tightly to the bedposts so that I can't pull them free.

A woman is crying beside me. I've been kidnapped . . .

My name is Carl.

But there's more that I know about myself, fragments that don't quite make
sense. Pieces of a puzzle forced into place. I know that I'm a quarter inch shy of
six feet tall and that my physical conditioning has been stretched to its limits. I
have a son whom I love more than my own life and a wife named . . . named
Kelly, of course, Kelly. How could I hesitate on that one? I'm unconscious or
asleep, yes, but how could I ever misplace my wife's name?

I was born in New York and joined the army when I was eighteen.
Special Forces at age twenty, Ranger at twenty-one, now twenty-five. My
father left home when I was eight and I took care of three younger sisters —
Eve, Ashley, Pearl—and my mother, Betty Strople, who was always very
proud of me for being such a strong boy. When I was fourteen, I hit Brad
Stenko over the head with a two-by-four and called the police when he
slapped my mother. I remember his name because his proposal to marry my
mother terrified me. I remember things like that. Events and facts cemented
into place by pain.

My wife's name is Kelly. See I know that, I really do. And my son's name is
Matthew. Matt. Matt and Kelly, right?

I'm a prisoner. A woman is crying beside me.

Carl snapped his eyes wide, stared into the white light above him, and immediately closed his eyes again.

Opening his eyes had been a mistake that could have alerted anyone watching to his awakening. He scrambled for orientation. In that brief moment, eyes wide to the ceiling, his peripheral vision had seen the plain room in which he was held captive. Smudged white walls. A single fluorescent fixture above, a dirty mattress under him.

And the crying woman, strapped down beside him.

Otherwise the room appeared empty. If there was any immediate danger, he hadn't see it. Then it was safe to open his eyes.

Carl opened his eyes again, quickly confirmed his estimation of the room, then glanced down at a thick red nylon string bound around each ankle and tied to two metal bedposts. Beside him, the woman was strapped down in similar manner.

He was dressed in black dungarees pushed up to his knees by whomever had tied them down. No shoes. The woman's left leg had been pulled over his and was strapped to the same post that held his right leg. Her legs had been cut and bruised and the string was tied tightly enough around her ankles to leave marks. She wore a pleated navy blue skirt, torn at the hem, and a white blouse that looked like it had been dragged through a field with her.

This was Kelly. He knew that, and he knew that he cared for Kelly deeply, but he was suddenly unsure why. He blinked, searching his memory for details but his memory remained fractured. Perhaps his captors had used drugs.

The woman whose name was Kelly faced the ceiling, eyes closed. Her tears left streaks down dirty cheeks and into short blonde hair. Small nose, high cheek bones, a bloody nose, and several scratches on her forehead.

I'm strapped to a bed next to a woman named Kelly who's been brutalized.
My name is Carl and I should feel panic, but I feel nothing
.

The woman suddenly caught her breath, jerked her head to face him, and stared into his soul with wide blue eyes.

In the space of one breath Carl's world changed. Like a boiling heat wave vented from a sauna, emotion swept over him. A terrible wave of empathy laced with a thread of bitterness he couldn't understand. What he did know was that he cared for the woman behind these blue eyes very much.

And then, as quickly as the feeling had come, it fell away.

“Carl . . .”Her face twisted with anguish. Fresh tears flooded her eyes and ran down her left cheek.

“Kelly?”

She began to speak in a frantic whisper. “We have to get out of here! They're going to kill us.” Her eyes darted toward the door. “We have to do something before he comes back. He's going to kill . . .” Her voice choked on emotion.

Carl's mind refused to clear. He knew who she was, who he was, why he cared for her, but he couldn't readily access that knowledge. Worse, he didn't seem capable of actually feeling, not for more than a few seconds.

“Who . . .Who are you?”

She
blinked, as if she wasn't sure she'd heard him right. “What did they do to you?”

He didn't know. They'd hurt him, he knew that, but he didn't know who
he
was much less who they were.

She spoke urgently through her tears. “I'm your wife! We were on the cruise, at port in Istanbul when they took us. Three days ago. They . . . I think they took Matthew. Don't tell me you can't remember!”

Details that he now remembered rehearsing in his mind before waking flooded him. He was with the army, Special Forces. His training was extensive and dark. They'd been taken by force from a market in Istanbul. Matthew was their son. Kelly was his wife.

Panicked, Carl jerked hard against the restraints. He was rewarded with a squealing metal bed frame, no more.

Another mistake,
he thought. Whoever had the resources to kidnap them undoubtedly had the skill to use the right restraints. He was reacting impulsively rather than with calculation. Carl closed his eyes and calmed himself.
Focus, you have to focus
.

“They brought you in here unconscious half an hour ago and gave you a shot,” she said hurriedly. “I think . . . I'm pretty sure they want you to kill someone.” Her fingers touched the palm of his hand above their heads. Clasped his wrist. “I'm afraid, Carl. I'm so afraid.” Crying again.

“Please, Kelly. Slow down.”

“Slow down? I've been tied to this bed for three days! I thought you were dead! They took our son and you want me to slow down?”

The room faded and then came back into view. They stared at each other for a few silent seconds. There was something strange about her eyes. He was remembering scant details of their kidnapping, even fewer details of their life together, but her eyes were a window into a world that felt familiar and right.

They had Matthew. Rage began to swell, but he cut it off and was surprised to feel it leave as quickly as it had come. His training was kicking in. He'd been trained not to feel. So then his not feeling was a good thing.

“I need you to tell me what you know.”

“I've told you. We were on a cruise—”

“No, everything. Who we are, how we were taken. What's happened since we arrived. Everything.”

“What did they do to you?” she asked again.

“I'm okay. I just can't remember—”

“You're bleeding.”Her eyes stared at the base of his head. “Your hair . . .”

He felt no pain, no wetness from blood on his neck or in his hair. He lifted his head and twisted it for a look at the mattress under his hair. A fist-sized red blotch stained the cover.

The pain came then, a deep throbbing ache from the base of his skull. He set his head back down and stared at the ceiling. With only a little effort he disconnected himself from the pain.

“Tell me what you remember.”

She blinked, still breathing deliberately. “You had a month off from your post in Kuwait and we decided to take a cruise to celebrate our seventh anniversary. Matthew was buying some sugared ginger when a man grabbed him and went into an alley between the tents. You went after him.

I saw someone hit you from behind with a metal pipe. Then a rag with some kind of chemical was pushed over my face and I passed out. Today's the first time I've seen you.” She closed her eyes. “They tortured me, Carl.”

Anger rose, but again he suppressed it. Not now. There would be time for healing later, if they survived.

His head seemed to be clearing from whatever drug they'd given him. More than likely they'd kept him drugged for days and whatever they'd put into his system half an hour ago was waking him up. That would explain his temporary memory loss.

“What nationality are they?”

“Hungarian, I think. The one named Dale is a sickening . . .” She stopped, but the look of hatred in her eyes spoke well enough.

Carl blocked scattered images of whatever Dale might have done to illicit such a reaction from her. Again, that he was able to do this so easily surprised him. Was he so insensitive to his own wife?

No, he was brutally efficient; for her sake he had to be.

Their captors had left their mouths free—if he could find a way to reach their restraints . . .

The door suddenly swung open. A man with short cropped blond hair stepped into the room. Medium height. Knifelike nose and chin. Fiercely eager blue eyes. Khaki cotton pants, black shirt, hairy arms. Dale.

He knew this man.

This was Dale Crompton. This was a man who'd spent some time in the dark spaces of Carl's mind, making himself hated. Kelly had said Hungarian, but she had been talking of someone else because Dale was the Englishman.

The man's right arm hung by his side, hand snug around an Eastern bloc Makarov 9 mm pistol. This detail was brightly lit in Carl's mind where other details remained stubbornly shrouded by darkness. He clearly knew his weapons.

Without any warning or fanfare, Dale rounded the foot of the bed, pressed the barrel of the Makarov against Kelly's left thigh, and pulled the trigger.

The gun bucked with a thunderclap. Kelly arched her back, screamed, and thrashed against her restraints for a moment, then dropped to the mattress in a dead faint.

Carl's mind passed the threshold of whatever training he'd received. His mind cried out for him to feel nothing, to lay uncaring, cold and calculating in the face of brutal manipulation, but his body had already begun its defense of his wife. He snarled and bolted up, oblivious to the pain in his wrists and ankles.

Naturally the movement proved useless. He might as well be a dog on a thick chain, jerked violently back at the end of a sprint for freedom.

He collapsed back on the bed, and gathered himself. Kelly lay still. A single glance told him that the bullet had expended its energy without passing through her leg, which meant it had struck the femur, probably shattering it.

“I hope I have your attention,” Dale said.“Her leg will heal. A similar bullet to her head, on the other hand, will produce far more satisfying results. I'd love to kill her. And your son. What is his name,Matthew?”

Carl just stared at him.
Focus. Believe, you must believe in your ability to
save them.

“Pity to destroy such a beautiful woman,” Dale said, walking to the window. “Just so you know, I argued to tie your son next to you and keep Kelly for other uses but Kalman overruled me. He says the boy will be useful if you fail us the first time.”

The Englishman put the gun on the sill, unlatched the window, and pulled it up. A fresh breeze carried a lone bird's chirping into the room.
It's
spring,
Carl thought.
I can smell fresh grass and spring flowers. I can smell
fresh blood.

The Englishman faced him. “A simple and quite lethal device has been surgically implanted at the base of your hypothalamus gland. This explains the bleeding at the back of your head. The device will release chemicals that will destroy your brain within ten seconds of being released, an event that will be triggered by any attempt to remove the device or by a remote signal. Your life is in our hands. Is this clear?”

The revelation struck Carl as perfectly natural. Exactly what he would have expected, knowing what he did, whatever that was.

“Yes.”

“Good. Your mission is to kill a man and his wife currently housed in a heavily guarded hotel at the edge of the town directly to our south, three miles distance. Joseph and Mary Fabin will be in their room on the third floor. No one else is to be killed. Only the targets. You have two cartridges in the gun, I suggest you use them wisely. No head shots,we need their faces for television. Do you
understand?”

A wave of dizziness swept through Carl. Aside from a slight tick in his right eye, he showed none of it. Beside him, Kelly moaned. How could he ignore his wife's suffering so easily?

Carl eyed the pistol on the sill. “I understand.”

“You'll be watched closely. If you make any contact with the authorities, your wife will die. If you step outside the mission parameters I've outlined, she dies. If you haven't returned within sixty minutes, both she and your son will die. Do you understand?”

His mind screamed in protest. He spoke quickly to cover any fear in his eyes. “The name of the hotel?”

“The Andrassy,” Dale said. He walked over to Carl, withdrew a knife from his waistband, and laid the sharp edge against the red nylon rope that tied Carl's right leg to the bed frame.

“I'm sure you would like to kill me,” Dale said. “This is impossible, of course. But if you try, rest assured that you, your wife, and your son will be dead within the minute.”

“Who are the targets?”

“They are the two people who can save your wife and son by dying within the hour.” The man cut through the bonds around Carl's other ankle and then casually went to work on the rope at his wrists. “You'll find some shoes and clean clothes outside the window.”With a faint pop the last tie yielded to the Englishman's blade.

Kelly whimpered and Carl looked over to see that her eyes were open again. Face white, muted by horror.

For a long moment, lying there freed beside the woman he loved, Carl allowed a terrible fury to roll through his mind. Despite Dale's casual dismissal of him, he knew that he stood at least an even chance of killing him.