Avenger (7 page)

“What time you got?” asked Sutherland.

“Ten-thirty,” Morgan replied. “What are we doing for your birthday? You having a party?”

“Why the hell would I want to celebrate turning forty?”

“Because you should,” replied Morgan. “Any birthday’s worth celebrating in this business, especially forty.”

“I’ll be back in the States on the day. You’re welcome to come over if you’re not deployed. I think a bunch of guys from the teams want to get together at McP’s for a few beers. Drown my sorrows for getting old! Otherwise, I guess we could do something in London when we get back from this one.” He added, “You’re right, man, every birthday is a goddamn milestone in this business.”

Morgan remained silent, contemplating that disturbing reality. He knew only too well the temptation to overthink one’s own mortality, and while there was plenty of time to do that when not on an operation – usually well into the last couple of scotches of the night – there was no such luxury while deployed. He had to forget he was a borderline burn-out and focus.

“I don’t know if this is the right time to tell you,” Sutherland began. “I’m thinking about leaving the firm.”

“Seriously?” Morgan asked. “Come on, Dave. You can’t let a bit of birthday misery get to you like this.”

“I’m dead serious, bud. I’ve already flagged it with the general. He agreed we’d discuss it when I get back from this one.”

“Jesus,” said Morgan. “What will you do?”

“Naval Special Warfare Command has offered me a desk job training SEALS, or I might retire and do something completely different.”

“What – you going to consult on movies or something?” Morgan joked. They’d both previously contemplated the idea.

“Hey, don’t knock it! I’ll be just like George Clooney in
Three Kings
. Can’t you see me on the red carpet?”

“Jesus, get a grip. If you look like Clooney, then I look like Henry Cavill.”

“Asshole!” Sutherland said. They both laughed. “Anyway, truth is, we all have a shelf life, man. There comes a time when you have to get out ahead of your expiration date.”

The two of them fell silent. Sutherland had been Morgan’s friend and operational partner for almost four years. Not so long in the scheme of things, but as Intrepid agents, their bond had been forged under the most dangerous circumstances and, as far as Morgan was concerned, those four years were the equivalent of about twenty for normal people. Recruited direct from the SEALS, Sutherland had been with Intrepid since its inception in 2006 and Morgan knew that General Davenport held Sutherland in the highest regard. As did Morgan.

Due to the intensity of the work there were only ever ten operational field agents at any one time. The expected tenure of an attachment to Intrepid was usually no more than five years, although the rule didn’t apply if General Davenport deemed an agent exceptional. And after almost eight years, Sutherland was the only one of the original ten still on the books. One had been killed and two others had retired wounded, while the remaining six had returned to their parent organizations around the world.

Morgan felt that these facts had been bearing down on Sutherland for some time, like he’d been trying to outrun a lit fuse but was slowing and the gap was gradually closing. Morgan needed to get his friend’s mind – and his own – back on the mission. And while Morgan didn’t relish the thought of having to break in a new partner, they’d have to leave this talk about retirement for some other time. Meanwhile, he owed it to Sutherland to be on top of his game. Fatigue or not, he couldn’t let his friend down.

“I don’t like this, Dave,” he said. “Sitting around out here; two foreigners in a flash Range Rover. We need to keep moving.”

“You’re right, bud,” Sutherland replied, easing the vehicle into gear and pulling into the traffic. “I was hoping Lam might call in and give us the all clear. Their meet should have ended half an hour ago.”

“How close can you get us to the factory? Just in case.”

“I can get pretty close but there’s nowhere to pull in over there, we’ll have to keep mobile and circle the joint without being right under their noses.”

“Let’s do that,” said Morgan. “This sitting-around-waiting shit is starting to bug me.”

Without another word, Dave Sutherland moved the Range Rover skillfully through the narrow roads and lanes, driving randomly in ever-widening circles, away from the markets and toward the factory.

“Hang on a second,” said Morgan. “Is it just me or are there suddenly too many HKPD patrol cars around here?”

Elizabeth Reigns fought hard to control her emotions. This was something the training was designed to prepare you for, mentally and physically, but you never really knew how you’d react until it actually happened.

The door opened into a large room, about thirty feet by thirty. It looked like a storage-cum-hangout room for the factory supervisors. Along three walls, metal shelves were stacked head high with boxed spools of thread, rolls of fabric, packets of zips, buttons, pins, needles and scissors scattered in every spare bit of space, even spilling from the lower shelves onto the floor. The room was lit by a dirty, chain-hung fluorescent tube and a large window on the far right wall that overlooked the workshop below. Beneath the window was a wooden table with an assortment of mismatched chairs scattered untidily around it. The table was strewn with newspapers, porn, ashtrays and unfinished coffee. It stank of sweat and cigarette smoke. To her left, Reigns saw a wooden chair lying on its side in a pool of blood, with a pair of men’s shoes and four lengths of rope. There were signs of something large having been dragged from the center of the mess and taken out through the door in the opposite corner. A hammer, covered in blood, lay on the floor nearby.

Ten feet from her, directly beneath the fluorescent tube in the center of the room, Inspector Victor Lam lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. He was on his side, wrists and ankles bound, clenched hands covering his face and knees pulled up tight to protect his abdomen as two men kicked the shit out of him. Reigns got the impression that this was just the softening up process, “the appetizer,” as Rodgers would have called it.

The two middle-management enforcers were nearly identical: Chinese, late twenties, about five-eight, with slicked-back hair. When she’d first seen them, in their black suits, black shoes, white shirts and thin ties, Reigns had thought it must have been some bizarre homage to Tarantino’s
Reservoir Dogs
. She tagged the first one as Mr Black and the second Mr Blue. Somehow, the private joke gave her confidence amid the stark terror she was trying to fight back. Mr Black was more solidly built than Mr Blue and he was the one who had beaten her when she had tried to protect Chi. They stopped what they were doing when they registered her arrival. Leaving the badly smashed-up Lam in the fetal position, groaning and spitting blood, they turned to face her. A pair of starving street dogs preparing to pounce on a cat.

“The pretty secretary is back,” said Mr Black slyly, swaggering up to her and bouncing on his toes, trying to achieve a height advantage over Reigns’ five-ten. It wasn’t working. “How are you, little flower?”

Before she could speak, the back of his left hand smashed her hard across the right cheek, the very spot he had targeted the day before. Reigns stumbled under the force of the impact, the already bruised flesh and bone absorbing it all. Her eyes filled with tears but she remained upright. Dazed and unsteady, she lifted a shaking hand but was slapped again with equal force. She let out a cry of anger and brought both hands up to her face, tears streaming. Mr Black struck a third time, this time from the other side. Reigns allowed herself to crumple to her knees. It was what he was looking for – to subdue her and bring her well beneath his own eyeline, asserting his power.

She looked up, awaiting another assault. Instead, Mr Black sneered, snatched her handbag, which had fallen to the floor, and retrieved her phone. He waved it in front of her face like a trophy and, without looking, clicked his fingers. Mr Blue responded by placing a cell phone – obviously taken from Lam – into Mr Black’s hand.

“Now, let’s connect the dots,” he said. For a few moments he thumbed the keypads of both phones until a look of triumph appeared on his face. He pressed his thumb down on one and, inevitably, the other rang. “And so we have it – book-keeper by day and friend of the police by night.”

He lifted Lam’s phone in one clenched fist and prepared to strike her again when a muffled voice from the floor caught his attention.

“She is my niece, you bastards,” groaned Lam. “Let her go. I told you, she has nothing to do with any of this.”

Mr Blue responded by kicking and stomping on the inspector. Mr Black watched the assault with the casual indifference of a man waiting for an empty chair in a barber shop.

“That’s not what we have heard, Police Inspector Lam,” he said, waving one finger at him. Mr Blue kept kicking. “We have a mutual friend who told us that this bitch is not your niece. No, she is your plant. A policewoman from Interpol!”

“Ridiculous,” Lam managed breathlessly. “You’ve got it wrong.”

“Maybe, but we’re not taking any chances. Not with the Witch arriving—” he checked his watch, “—in less than ten minutes.”

“Witch?” mumbled Lam. “What does a witch have to do with us?”

“Nothing,” replied Mr Black. “Although she’ll probably enjoy watching you both die. I believe she likes to watch. But don’t worry. Your old friend Wu Ming is waiting to see you, and your pretty little
niece
is going to be given to the Witch as a gift.”

“Let us go!” Reigns cried out as loud as she could, taking the opportunity to straighten up and fill her lungs. She felt blood coursing through her body again, preparing. She took a mental snapshot of the room, tagging Mr Black and Mr Blue directly in front of her and the third man, the guard, behind her.

“No, we won’t be letting you go, pretty secretary,” Mr Black replied. “That would not make the boss man very happy. He’s promised you to the Witch and that’s what’s going to happen. Now, by the look of it, there’s one other number in here that you’ve contacted recently.” He thumbed through her phone. “Unusual for a young woman, wouldn’t you say, inspector? So sad, your niece doesn’t have many friends.”

Regaining her composure, Reigns could see that Mr Black was calling the other most recently used number on her phone – Dave Sutherland’s.

It was now or never.

Reigns brought her attack mode online. The thought of Dave Sutherland receiving a call from her, strictly against protocol, was all she needed to reinforce the harsh reality of her new profession. She was an Intrepid agent, obliged to consider herself the last line of defense in protecting the rights of the weak and vulnerable, any time and anywhere in the world, no matter what the cost. Well, that time had come.

Theatrically, Mr Black placed her phone on speaker and held it high above his head so they could all hear it. The phone rang twice before it connected. The hollow crackle of open airwaves filled the room. A surly grin of conquest was smeared across Mr Black’s face, mirrored on that of his obedient dog, Mr Blue. They waited and waited. The call had been answered yet there was nothing but silence at the other end. Reigns watched Mr Black intently. She saw his self-assurance fade as he listened, mesmerized by the quiet. He was expecting the caller to ask for her, only it didn’t happen. Silence filled the room. Mr Blue stopped kicking Lam.

Reigns knew exactly what this was. The call to Sutherland from her cell phone was off schedule. At the other end of the line, Sutherland too was waiting, listening.

Annoyed, Mr Black looked straight at the phone and said, with all the menace he could muster, “Who the fuck is this? Answer!”

With Mr Black’s attention on the phone, Reigns called out with everything she had their pre-arranged crisis word: “Defender!”

Mr Black and Mr Blue looked blankly at her, stunned by the randomness of her cry. In that moment, she sprang into action. She snapped into a fighting stance, finely tuned muscle memory positioning her: right foot slightly back, knees bent, legs shoulder width apart. Her hands came straight up to her face balled into fists, right hand to the side, left hand leading. The extent of her fear and submission had mostly been an act and now months of dedicated training and drilled precision took control. Mr Black stared, utterly perplexed, realizing too late what was about to happen.

With the power of a hydraulic press generating from her back and shoulders, Reigns executed an explosive right cross, connecting with the point of Mr Black’s jaw. She felt the elation of a perfectly placed hit and immediately followed with a textbook combination: left foot jab to his chest and right foot round kick to the side of his head. Her muscular right leg unfurled with a crack like whiplash, driving Mr Black from his feet and across the floor. She spun and dropped into a push-up position, facing back the way she had entered, staring straight at the knees of the third man. He had drawn a weapon, an automatic, from the waistband of his trousers and was attempting to fire as she vanished beneath his line of sight.

Using his confusion to her advantage, she pushed off with her hands and twisted on to her back, scything her long legs around in a semicircle to sweep the guard’s legs out from under him. The man fell in a heap on the floor, his weapon clattering from his hand. Reigns continued her attack, scissoring his head and neck with her calves before locking him in tight between her knees. As he grappled to pull himself free she struck fiercely at the side of his head with two unrestrained blows that took him to the verge of unconsciousness. Releasing him, she grabbed his gun, leaped to her feet and finished him off with a kick to the head. Reigns’ decimation of Mr Black and the guard had taken just seconds.

In a flash she was facing down Mr Blue with the guard’s gun in her hand. Mr Blue, smiling nervously but unsure, had Lam by the hair and the muzzle of an automatic against his temple. Mr Blue began to issue a threat, but without hesitation, Elizabeth Reigns fired twice into the center of his body. The rounds hit his chest and he slumped across Inspector Lam. To her left, Mr Black was recovering, a gun in his hand. Coldly, efficiently, Reigns turned to him with the weapon locked steady in both hands and fired again.

Both rounds hit Mr Black in the face.