The Barbarian King

Chapter 16

She did so and he started pulling her up.

As soon as she reached him, Meldrin knew they were in trouble. Running feet were never a good sound.

“Climb, now,” he said, the urgency clear in his voice. “As high as you can.”

She struggled up the fire escape ladder while Meldrin turned back and focused on what was coming

CHAPTER

18

THE MAN TURNED into the alleyway, stopped, cleared the lane by sight, and moved forward. Ten yards in he stopped again, looked left, right, and then ahead. He kept moving, his rifle swinging in precise, controlled arcs. He did this two more times. He was good, but not good enough, because he hadn’t yet looked up.

When he finally did it was just in time to see the bottom of Meldrin’s feet rushing at him.

Meldrin’s size twelves smashed into the man’s face and drove the rest of the attached body violently to the asphalt. Meldrin landed on top of the man, rolled, and came up in an attack posture. He kicked the rifle away and looked down. He didn’t know if the man was dead. But he was certainly unconscious. He took a few seconds to search him.

No ID.

No phone.

No surprise.

But no official credentials either. No gold badge.

He did find an electronic device with a blinking blue light in the man’s pocket. He crushed it underfoot and threw it into the Dumpster. He felt near the man’s ankle and pulled out a .38 S&W throwaway. He slipped it into his jacket pocket, turned, and leapt on top of the plywood. He grabbed the rope, made his way up, snagged the rung of the ladder, freed and pocketed the rope, and climbed.

Gaby was already near the top of the building when he reached her.

“Is he dead?” she asked, looking downward.

She had obviously been watching.

“I didn’t check. Let’s go.”

“Where? We’re at the top.”

He pointed upward, to the roof. It was about ten feet farther up.

“How?” she asked. “The stairs don’t go that far. They stop at the top floor.”

“Wait here.”

He found a handhold on a windowsill, and then another in a c***k in the brick. He climbed. A minute later he stood on the roof. He lay on his stomach, uncoiled the rope, and fed it down to her.

“Tie it to your backpack straps, like before, lock your arms together again, and close your eyes.”

“Don’t drop me,” she said, her voice panicky.

“I’ve already lifted you once. You weigh nothing.”

A minute later she was beside him on the roof.

Meldrin led her across the flat, graveled terrain, reached the opposite side, and looked down and then around. There was another fire escape on this side. He used the rope to lower Gaby down, then slipped over the side, hung from the building for a few seconds, and let himself drop. He hit the metal of the fire escape, grabbed her hand, and they started down.

“Won’t we have the same problem if someone is out there?” said Gaby.

“We would if we were going all the way down.”

They reached the third floor of the building and Meldrin stopped and peered in. He used a knife he carried in an ankle holder to defeat the simple locking mechanism.

He lifted the window.

“What if someone lives here?” hissed Gaby.

“Then we’ll politely leave,” answered Meldrin.

The apartment was empty.

They slipped through quietly and ran down the hall to the interior stairwell. A minute later they hustled down the street in the opposite direction from where they had come.

Meldrin finally pulled up and said, “They were tracking you. You must have a bug on you somewhere.”

“How do you know that?”

“Piece of equipment I found on the guy. I busted it up, but we have to cut off the source. Open your bag.”

She did and Meldrin quickly went through it. There were some clean clothes, a toiletry bag, a camera, some textbooks, an iPod Touch, a small laptop, notebooks, and pens. He popped the back off the iPod and examined the laptop but didn’t find anything that shouldn’t have been there. The pens were clean too. Meldrin looked through the toiletries methodically but found nothing. He closed the bag up and handed it back to her.

“Nothing.”

“Maybe you’ve got a bug on you,” she said.

“That’s not possible,” Meldrin said.

“Are you sure?”

He started to say yes, but then stopped. He pulled out the pinhole camera he’d thrown into his pocket. He popped the cover and underneath was the second blinking blue light he’d seen tonight.

“See, it was you. I was right,” Gaby said triumphantly.

He tossed it and the earwig and power pack in a garbage can.

“Yeah, you were,” he conceded.

They did not see a single cab. In fact, a cab was not on his wish list right now. He didn’t want a third party whom someone could interrogate to find out where his safe house was.

Meldrin broke into and then artfully sparked the ignition of an ancient pickup truck parked in front of a gas station. He got in the driver’s seat. Gaby did not follow. He looked at her across the width of the front seat.

“You decide to go

it alone?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. She fiddled with the straps on her backpack. He reached in his pocket, pulled out something, and handed it to her.

It was the pepper spray.

“You might need this, then.”

She took it but then climbed in the truck, shutting the door firmly.

He put the truck in gear and drove off slowly. Squealing tires in the middle of the night could attract attention he did not want or need right now.

“Why the change of heart?” he asked.

“Bad guys don’t give weapons back.” She paused. “And you saved my life back there. Twice.”

“Fair enough.”

“So people are after me. Who’s after you?” she asked.

“Unlike you, I know who they are,” he said. “But I don’t have to tell you. And I won’t. It would not be good for your future.”

“I’m not sure I have much of that anyway.”

She settled back in her seat and grew silent, staring ahead.

“You thinking about somebody?” asked Meldrin quietly.

She blinked back tears. “No. And don’t ask me again, Will.”

“Okay.”

Meldrin now drove fast.

As shockingly bad as tonight had been, he had a strong feeling it was only going to get worse.

CHAPTER

19

Meldrin MADE ONE STOP, at an all-night convenience store to get some groceries. A half hour after that the truck lights flickered across the face of the small farmhouse. Meldrin pulled the truck to a stop and looked across at Gaby.

Her eyes were closed. She appeared to be sleeping, but after seeing her defend herself against the attacker on the bus, Meldrin was taking nothing for granted. He didn’t want to get blasted with pepper spray so he didn’t reach out to jostle her. He simply said quietly, “We’re here.”

Her eyes instantly opened. She didn’t yawn, stretch, or rub her face, as most people would have. She was just awake.

Meldrin was impressed. Because that was exactly how he woke up too.

“What is this place?” she asked, looking around.

They had driven down a gravel road. Woods starting to turn color bracketed the gravel. The drive ended at the front of the white clapboard house. Painted black front door, two front windows, a small porch. In the back a barn rose high above the apex of the house.

“Safe,” he said. “Or as safe as possible under the circumstances.”

She stared at the barn. “Was this like a farm or something?”

“Or something. Long time ago. Woods have reclaimed the fields.”

This was Meldrin’s fail-safe. His employer provided other safe houses for Meldrin and people like him. But this place was his alone. Ownership under a shell company. No way to trace back to him.

“Where are we?”

“Southwest of D.C., in Virginia. Technical term would be the boonies.”

“Do you own it?”

Meldrin put the truck back in drive and headed for the barn. He stopped, got out, unlocked the barn doors, and drove the truck inside. He got out again, grabbed the sack of groceries, and said, “Come on.”

Gaby followed him to the house. There was an alarm system. The beeping sound stopped when Meldrin put in the code. He was careful to not let her see the numbers he punched in.

He closed and locked the door.

She looked around, still clutching her backpack.

“Where do I go?”

He pointed up the straight set of stairs on one side of the small entrance hall. “Spare bedroom, second door on the right. Bathroom across the hall. You hungry?”

“I’d rather sleep.”

“Okay.” He lifted his gaze to the stairs in a prompting manner.

“Good night,” said Meldrin.

“Good night.”

“And make sure you don’t shoot yourself with the pepper spray. It really stings the skin.”

She looked down at her hand where the small canister was hidden.

“How did you know?”

“I saw you had it pointed at me the whole drive over. Don’t blame you. Get some sleep.”

She set off. He watched her trudge up the stairs. He heard the bedroom door open and close and then the lock engage.

Smart girl.

Meldrin went into the kitchen, put the groceries away, and sat down at the round table across from the sink. He set the .38 throwaway on the table and took out his cell phone. No GPS chip was in there. Company policy, because a chip could work both ways. But he had screwed up on the pinhole.

And they must have suspected he wouldn’t fire on the woman tonight. They had the tracker on him in case he gave them the slip.

A setup from the get-go. Nice. Now he needed to figure out why.

He clicked some buttons on his phone and looked at the photos he’d taken at the dead woman’s apartment.

Her driver’s license stated that her name was Jane Wind, age thirty-five. Her unsmiling photo looked back at Meldrin. He knew she would be lying on the D.C. medical examiner’s metal exam table shortly, her face not just unsmiling but badly disfigured by the rifle round. Her child would be autopsied too. Having taken the brunt of the round’s kinetic energy, the boy would no longer really have a face.

Meldrin looked at the photos of her passport pages. He enlarged the screen so he could make out the ports of entry. There were several European countries on there, including Germany. Those were usual. But then Meldrin saw Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait. Those were not so usual.

He next looked at her government ID card.

Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense.

Meldrin stared at the screen.

I’m screwed. I’m totally screwed.

He used his phone to access the Internet and scrolled through news sites looking for any information on Wind’s death or the bus exploding.

There was nothing on Wind. They might not have found her yet. But the bus blowing up had already attracted attention. However, there were few details. Meldrin obviously knew more than any of the reporters out there trying to find out what had happened. According to the news accounts thus far, the authorities were not ruling out a mechanical cause for the explosion.