The Temporary Agent (8 page)

Sixteen

Tom scrambled, ignoring the sudden pain shooting through his torso as he pulled himself free of Savelle.

Getting onto his hands and knees, he ignored, too, the carpet of broken glass cutting into him.

He reached out for Savelle’s shoulder, shook her, but she did not react.

The only weapon he possessed was his Leatherman tool, but that was useless to him.

He remembered, though, the earpiece he’d seen their driver wearing.

Identical to those worn by Raveis’s men.

Raveis’s
armed
men.

Might she, too, be armed?

Lunging through the narrow space between the two front seats and turning onto his side, Tom reached around the driver.

Her full bodyweight pressing against the seat belt made it difficult for him to open her jacket. Finally he slipped his hand inside, hoping to find a firearm in a waistband holster on her right side.

Finding nothing here, he searched for a shoulder rig along her ribs.

Not finding that, he reached around to her left side and located at last a leather holster secured to her belt.

His heart rose, only to sink again: the holster was empty.

The weapon had to have either been flung out during the rollover, or fallen from the holster when the driver came to rest upside down.

But Tom was on his side and would have to roll onto his stomach to make a visual search of the ceiling.

The fact that the pairs of boots surrounding the sedan had started to flee one by one told him that he wouldn’t have the time for that.

It wasn’t long before the single pair of boots standing outside the rear passenger door—Tom’s door—was all that remained.

A gasoline container landed beside those boots, and by the sound it made Tom knew it was empty.

The boots paused before taking a step backward.

This was followed by the unmistakable click of the lid of a Zippo lighter being flipped open.

And that was followed by the sharp snap of the thumbwheel rolling briskly over the flint.

Once, then again, and then a third time.

Silence came right after that, during which Tom expected the lit Zippo lighter to be tossed onto the fuel-drenched vehicle.

Out of desperation, he began to scan the ceiling directly below the upside-down driver.

And there he saw it.

Her firearm.

A SIG Sauer p232.

Not far from which lay his smartphone.

He wanted both, of course, but knew he had to go for the weapon first.

He reached for it, but it was just beyond his grasp.

Rolling onto his stomach, he elbow-crawled over broken glass, turning onto his side again and pulling himself between the two front seats.

He felt his skin slicing as he scrambled to get closer to the weapon.

He strained his arm as far as it would go, felt his rear deltoid overextend, and then he finally had the muzzle between his index and middle fingers, which was enough for him to spin the weapon around and bring the butt close enough for him to grab with four clawing fingers.

There was no time to retrieve his smartphone.

And there would be no point in him possessing the thing if he were dead.

Wiggling his way out from between the front seats, he returned to the backseat compartment while establishing a solid one-handed grip on the firearm and pulling back the hammer with his thumb.

He was doing the only thing he could—what his basest instincts and years of training were telling him to do.

What hope, though, did he really have?

If he shot out, wouldn’t the men surrounding the sedan shoot back?

If they killed or even just wounded him, then Savelle and her driver would be left to burn.

But Tom had to do something, had to act.

He was extending his arm, about to open fire on the only target outside his window.

A single pair of boots.

Before he could extend his arm fully, though, he heard a sudden burst of small-arms fire.

Not close, but not far away, either.

Several more bursts followed.

Turning his head toward the noise, Tom looked through the driver’s-side window and saw a black SUV a half block away.

Its two front doors wide open.

Tom saw, too, two men approaching with weapons raised.

One of them took quick aim with his pistol and fired three rapid shots.

The sound of a sharp grunt coming from behind Tom caused him to look back at where the man with the lit Zippo had been standing.

Tom did so just in time to see the man drop into view.

Shot in the head, he landed hard on his side.

And then Tom saw the still-burning lighter tight within the man’s grip.

His lifeless body sagged as his lungs emptied for the last time.

All Tom could do was watch as the man’s hand fell to the pavement.

The shimmering gasoline that coated the ground around him ignited with a blinding flash of orange light.

The dead body was engulfed in flames that quickly burned blue.

And instantly spread.

The area surrounding the vehicle was consumed, as was the vehicle’s undercarriage.

And, Tom knew, its exposed gas tank.

The heat hit him like the blast from a furnace, and the oxygen inside the sedan was instantly sucked out.

Seventeen

He had seconds, if that.

Tom discarded the pistol and withdrew his Leatherman tool, swinging its four-inch serrated blade open with his thumb.

Reaching between the front seats, he grabbed the seat belt holding the driver and sawed through the dense fabric.

Two strokes were all that were needed.

The driver fell free and, still unconscious, slumped onto the glass-covered ceiling.

Tom heard a voice outside the sedan, yelling, but in English this time.

He yelled back, “Driver’s door! Driver’s door!”

But doing this voided Tom’s lungs, and inhaling only filled them with the gathering smoke.

Holding the steering wheel with his right hand for leverage and bracing his back against the side of the passenger seat, Tom pushed the driver with his left hand across the ceiling and toward the window.

As he did, he saw something being laid over the flames directly outside.

A jacket.

A black nylon jacket.

It did not smother the flames but covered them enough to provide a clear extraction path for the driver.

A pair of hands in tactical gloves appeared in the window, seizing the driver by the collar of her jacket and pulling her through and out.

By the time she was clear, the nylon jacket was in flames, but Tom didn’t care about that.

He slid once more into the backseat, turned onto his right side, and shoved Savelle with both hands toward the rear window—the only exit not currently blocked by flames.

The smoke that seconds ago had been gathering was now filling the cramped space, stinging Tom’s eyes and burning his throat and lungs.

The rear window of tempered safety glass was shattered but still in place, so Tom rolled onto his back and began to stomp at it with the heels of his boots.

It was then that Savelle regained consciousness.

To Tom’s surprise, she quickly assessed the situation and began stomping at the rear window with him.

They were out of sync at first, but then in unison.

Their third collective stomp heaved the opaque sheet from its frame, and almost immediately the still-intact window was pulled clear.

Seconds later someone appeared there, lying on his side on the pavement so he could fit into the narrow space between the street and the overturned sedan’s trunk.

Through tearing eyes, Tom recognized the face of the man who had met Carrington on the sidewalk outside the Gentleman Farmer.

Scarred face, shaved head.

Reaching inside with one outstretched arm, the scarred-face man grabbed Savelle’s ankle and dragged her through the window.

Alone in the car now, Tom thought only of one thing.

The smartphone in the front compartment.

If things go wrong, I will text you from this number and this number only,
he had said to Stella prior to leaving the apartment.

She had looked at him with concern and asked,
What are you afraid might happen, Tom?

He hadn’t replied, simply wrote down in his notebook the four-digit code Stella was to look for and showed it to her.

1111
—easy enough for him to type quickly with one hand, should time not be on his side.

And meaningless to anyone who might intercept it.

Tom now needed her to execute the emergency protocol she had promised to follow, no matter what.

The scarred-face man appeared in the rear window again, reaching through it for Tom.

“Give me your hand!” the man yelled.

But Tom ignored him—ignored the heat and the fumes and the smoke, too—and dove once again into the front compartment, feeling around blindly, this time for his only direct connection to Stella.

He felt only broken glass.

He’d pushed his luck too far, had taken in too much smoke.

He was choking, his lungs aching for oxygen, his eyes rolling back behind their tightened lids when his fingertips brushed the phone.

He closed his fist around the device just as he felt a pair of hands clutch both of his ankles and begin to pull him backward over the broken glass.

One swift, violent motion that reminded him of the start of a carnival ride, and Tom was out.

Flat on his back on the pavement, looking up through eyes blurred from tears at the starless November night sky.

Eighteen

“We have to move!” the scarred-face man said.
“Now!”

Tom was gagging and coughing, could barely see, but he knew the reason for the man’s urgency.

The relatively thin metal shell of the sedan’s fuel tank was burning, heating the gasoline within.

He rubbed his eyes, clearing his vision enough to see that scarred-face man was standing protectively between Tom and the bodies of the Chechens, his firearm held in a two-handed grip, extended forward but muzzle tilted so it was aimed at the street.

A quick count of the fallen told Tom there were four.

The scarred-face man’s partner was already on his way to the cover of the SUV with Savelle.

Tom looked and spotted the unconscious driver lying on the pavement. Rising, he staggered to her, knelt, and scooped her with his arms, then rose again and headed toward the SUV.

Reaching it and moving behind it, Tom lowered her to a seated position, gently leaning her against the back bumper.

Touching her shoulder with his left hand to keep her upright, he saw that his palm and fingers were torn and bloodied.

He was clutching his smartphone with his right, and the palm was just as torn up.

He looked at Savelle, leaning against the back bumper as well. Her face was smeared with smoke stains.

She nodded once, and Tom nodded back.

Sirens could be heard in the distance, approaching fast from at least two directions.

The scarred-face man said, “You shouldn’t be here when the cops arrive.”

He was standing beside Tom, holstering his weapon.

Now that the man wasn’t wearing his jacket, Tom could see that he had a thick but hard build. He was older, maybe in his midfifties, maybe even early sixties. He spoke with a heavy Cockney accent.

“Can you make it, Seabee? Or do you need help?”

The scarred-face man was smiling.

His teeth were so perfect, they had to be false.

Before Tom could reply, the overturned sedan’s fuel tank burst under the pressure generated by the buildup of expanding gases.

The fuel that sprayed from it ignited in midair and fell back to the street like burning rain, instantly doubling the size of the inferno.

All eyes turned to the blaze—except for Savelle’s.

She watched as Tom turned and started walking away.

Touching the display of his smartphone with his thumb several times as he went.

He was pocketing his phone when he turned a corner and was gone.

Tom’s injuries became evident as he made his way to his pickup.

The side of his head was cut, and though it was a simple flesh wound, capillaries were bleeders, so beneath the layer of smoke covering the right side of his face was dried blood.

His left forearm was burned in several places, the skin dark pink and blistered and aching sharply.

And the mysterious pain Tom had felt when he’d first pulled himself free of Savelle revealed itself to be banged-up ribs on his right side.

Not broken, but definitely bruised.

All that plus the cuts to his palms and elbow and knees.

And the burning in his throat and lungs.

He’d suffered graver injuries, of course, and had moved on foot through more treacherous places than this, so he chose to be grateful that he wasn’t worse off.

He was grateful, too, that he was alive and on his way back to Stella.

What he needed was for her to text him, as he had instructed her, and let him know that she had reached her secured location.

This was all that mattered right now.

It wasn’t till he was more than halfway up the Saw Mill River Parkway that he felt the phone finally vibrate.

The message was what he had instructed her to send.

What he most wanted to read.

SAFE

He was just under two hours away, so he replied with:

2 hrs.

Now that Stella was safe and he had informed her that he was on his way, the gravity of his situation began to sink in.

The horror he had just escaped. Horror that reminded him of a chaotic firefight in a barren landscape that had always struck Tom as having been carved out by the clawed hands of Satan.

Ambushed by insurgents during a late-night sandstorm, Cahill’s squad had been pinned down by heavy fire.

The arrival of Tom and his men allowed the Recon Marines, some wounded, to begin a fighting retreat to the waiting armored Humvees.

Tom and Cahill took position and began laying down suppressing fire—Cahill with a M249 SAW, Tom with his M4 carbine.

Ammo was running low as more insurgents began to come up from the south.

But as Tom and Cahill were readying to displace and catch up with their men, a grenade came out of the night and landed in the sand.

A Soviet-era F1, ten feet from Tom’s position.

He could recall—would never forget—Cahill falling onto his side, facing Tom, his back to the grenade.

A human barrier between Tom and the device.

The last thing Tom remembered before the blast was being eye-to-eye with Cahill for a second, maybe two, maybe less.

A long time, whichever it was.

When Tom was a mile from his destination, he texted Stella one last time, informing her that he was a few minutes away.

Turning into the parking lot of the roadside motel, he saw her car parked outside the room farthest from the manager’s office.

He also saw the vehicle parked next to hers.

An unmarked state trooper’s cruiser, a solitary figure seated behind the wheel.

As Tom steered his truck into a parking spot, he got a look at the driver.

His name was Conrad, and he was one of Stella’s more loyal regulars at the diner. He had known Stella all her life, had gone through the public school system with her and worked for her father during the final years of the man’s career.

Conrad had also, Tom knew, expressed without reservation his feelings about Stella letting into her life a man who hadn’t held a steady job for five years.

A man who looked like trouble.

Conrad and Tom stared at each other as Tom shifted into park and killed the motor.

Stella appeared in the doorway of her room, dressed as she had been when Tom left her—black sweater, jeans, boots, and pearls.

She was smiling as Tom approached, but her expression darkened when she got a good look at him.

Battered and torn and burned, walking toward her.

She hurried to him, hugged him once, and led him inside. Conrad’s off-duty vehicle pulled away.