Splicer (29 page)

Mohta had survived where others had become statistics. In Bahrain, the armored personnel carrier he traveled in to a late night Shiite meeting struck a Russian-built land mine. Two soldiers crowded into the front, their backs to Mohta, were turned suddenly into bloody hamburger meat. He sustained only a glancing slice across one retina. In Kuwait, a rusty 50-gallon drum filled with aged nerve gas shattered near his truck instantly killing a dozen volunteers. Mohta drove from the sight like a demon, suffering only severe sunburn when his truck broke down in the desert hours later. Bullets had entered his body on six different occasions always sparing vital organs.

It was with some surprise then that he felt the first intense crack of pain to his spine while walking along the flowerbeds next to the campus gym with his two silent hostages. The only sound that preceded the breaking of his neck was a slight whisper, like the sound made by a tennis ball being lobbed across a court through a stiff summer breeze. It was the sound of Rusty Redfield falling through the air.

When Mohta had caught up to the scuffle by the exit door - his team leader, a lifeless heap on the concrete - he calmly put two bullets through the brains of the two remaining football players. They dropped without a sound. The programmer, looking ready to run, hesitated, then slumped his shoulders and raised his arms. Mohta never said a word. He just pointed and the two hostages trudged off in front of him; the woman's hands balled into fists. He told them that his orders were to get information and if they resisted in any way, he was to kill them. The woman seemed resigned to it. The programmer glowered like an angry pet.

Mohta's detention in the fan room had been brief. With the main fan disabled, the blades jammed against Pierce's skull, he simply crawled around the ruined body of his ex-partner and made his way into the next chamber. It had an unlocked door. They should have killed him. They just didn't know any better.

:

Rusty, standing by the entrance, moved away from the doors when he caught a glimpse of Mohta rounding the turn of the tunnel. He could see that Mohta was wounded somewhere in the upper arm, but the agent was still moving quickly; his eyes alive with purpose. The professional coolness Rusty had detected in the man before had totally vanished; the muscles in his neck were shaking with barely contained anger.

Rusty ran up behind the hedging on the verge of the walkway and watched the trio leave the tunnels for the campus commons. Mohta was openly brandishing his weapon. Rusty watched with a kind of sinking helplessness augmented by a blistering rage. He knew he had little hope of braving an attack. He was unlikely to accomplish a task that three monstrous football players failed at - and probably paid for with their lives. The waste sickened him. He had approached the three men just outside the entrance to the tunnels. He told them a man was molesting a young woman with a weapon. They reacted instantly. It hadn't accomplished much. All their eager chivalry had proved useless against an enemy armed with the cool will to kill without compunction. This last assassin no doubt shared the same qualities.

Rusty watched them move away. This was hopeless. He was weaponless. He didn't care that much about Grieves' fate; he believed the programmer deserved what ever he got. But Jayne? She had tried so hard to believe in him. Was that foolishness or something else? He wanted to find out. But that meant saving her life. He saw them move towards the walkway that headed towards the northern parking lot. It made sense. An out-of-towner would choose the most obvious parking area on campus as a logical spot to leave a vehicle. It was also the most distant lot. In order to gain access to it, they would have to pass the walkway that ran the length of the campus gym, the Sports Complex. They were moving at a careful pace. That might give Rusty just enough time to beat them to their vehicle. He moved back through the dogwood bushes and sprinted across the gravel road that led to the gym.

When he reached the walkway, he had already come to the realization that being the first to reach the parking lot was of minimal value. He was still unarmed. And this wasn't a nervous convenience store thief he was planning to confront. This was a trained killer. He pulled back the front door to the gym and raced up the stairs to the top floor.  He had seen teams doing calisthenics on the roof when he was a student and that gave him a blurry idea. He found the exit to the roof. From there, the ground looked alarmingly far away. But he had no choice now. Just below him were the forms of Jayne, Grieves and the dark-haired man with the cold eyes. He stepped to the shallow edge of the gravel roof, gauged the man's speed as best he could, and flung himself over the edge. He aimed with his heels, his legs straight out. He had to hit the killer on the shoulders and hard if he had any hope of putting him out. He wasn't thinking about what would happen if he missed. The sound of their contact smashed into Rusty's brain and the night filled with angry colors.

Jayne McEwan became suddenly confused by the jumble of bodies in the dark and by the soundlessness of the attack. Their kidnapper made no noise going down; he simply disappeared into a pile on the sidewalk. His gun skittered on the cement and bounced into the grass on the edge of the walkway. Then everything went still, even Grieves.

Rusty had been lucky. It was all a matter of how he landed. He was traveling at about thirty miles an hour when he struck Mohta; the weight of his impact, with the momentum, the equivalent of half a ton. At first he fell feet forward, but his center of gravity forced a correction in his flight and Rusty had to windmill his arms to maintain his upright posture. The fall was dizzying; the dark concealing the secret of the ground, which rushed at him suddenly, when his eyes finally focused. A miss would have shattered most of the bones in his lower body. Fortunately, his knees met the assassin in the hollow of his neck, cushioning him from the total shock of landing. In a silence broken only by the muffled snap of Mohta's spine, they landed together in a still heap on the ground.

Rusty was conscious but dazed and hurting. The jar to his back had caused a compression shock, which left him unable to move. The night had broken into a fireworks display, which filled his head with an unsettling combination of light and sound. For a few moments nothing was said as Grieves and Jayne searched the dark for an answer to their sudden confusion.

Rusty had taken a leap into the night, which Mohta, with all his training and cunning, would never have attempted. They didn’t know that their assassin was afraid of heights.

Grieves acted first. He got down on his hands and knees in the grass to find the lost gun. Jayne, just beginning to understand what had happened, knelt down and found Rusty's head. It was moving slightly. She reached for an arm and felt for a pulse. It was strong and warm against her fingertips. She leapt back, ready to run. Then she realized it was Rusty's arm she had held. He groaned. He pulled himself up stiffly, his back hunched over, his hands on his head.

"Are you ..." Then she looked up the side of the building, aware for the first time that he had jumped on their stalker - from three stories up. Her voice caught, hitched.

"Are you alright? Anything broken?" she whispered.

"My head," he answered sleepily.

"Your head was broken before you even jumped, you crazy idiot."

"You're welcome," he grimaced, feeling his numb legs and arms, searching for a bone poking out of the flesh. Then suddenly he was being attacked again and he jumped back awkwardly, a bolt of pain shooting up his lower back. It was only Jayne hugging him. He would have liked to return the favor but as yet had no feeling in his arms or hands. In the dim light from the distant parking lot he could make out Grieves just getting up from the lawn, wiping his knees with one hand. In the other hand he held Mohta’s gun, now being raised in their direction.

God laid lousy carpet on the pre-Cambrian shield. Under the bulging escarpment that was two-thirds of Ontario lay the scattered remains of half a continent swept under a great rug. A mere billion years later and the crown was ground from a mountain of granite into a mass or rubble that formed the undulating base of off-kilter tabletop peaks and debris-filled valleys. Over this base grew a wild layer of flora, like an unruly carpet. Driving through the northern part of this geography, on roads cut through sheer rock, one observed the littered remains of an ice age poking through the landscape, wrinkling and tearing it. Rusty Redfield and his lawyer, Jayne McEwan however had no way of knowing what the scenery looked like. They were both crouched uncomfortably in the trunk of Rusty's 1999 Cutlass.

"He's going to drive this car, with us inside it, into the bloody lake," Rusty said into her ear, his hands cupped around his mouth.

Jayne was still for a moment. She was digesting their situation. It was giving her heartburn. Rusty could hear her ragged breathing over the loud thump of the speakers just above their heads.
Love Shack
was blaring, filling the space of the trunk with a low disconsolate rumble. She was breathing fast.

"Where?" she asked. She gasped it out, barely under control. But it was still some kind of control. She said it loudly in his ear, the warmth of it surprisingly erotic. He turned to her in the dark. The car swerved, throwing them against each other.

"Grieves' father. Owns a cabin by the lake. Red Lake. Near some place called Alders Bluff. He calls it Ragnarock." He felt he had to explain more but was afraid that Grieves would hear their voices, would somehow discern their feelings. Of hopelessness. Rusty wasn't going to allow that. Grieves would enjoy it too much. The car bounced and the jack bit into his back and a pulse of anger slammed into his head with such force he felt like screaming. 

"Shit! He talked about this. About taking Ludd out there and forcing him into the trunk and just driving off the dock." He remembered the conversation.
It's a deep lake
said Grieves. 
Hundreds of feet deep. Real cold. They'd never find it
.

She grabbed his shoulders to steady them. "He talked about murdering Ludd?"

"One of his crazier fantasies," answered Rusty. "I never took it seriously" He tried to move his leg, which was cramping.
Jump off a three-story building then fold yourself into a car trunk
.
Drive for three hours at high speed
.
A great recipe for life in a wheelchair. If I was going to have a life at all.
He grunted and swore again. His head and his back hurt like hell. The music was pounding a painful tattoo into his brain. He couldn't think.
This must be Grieves' idea of some kind of inventive psychological torture.

:

When Jayne and he had finally picked themselves up off the pavement next to the Sports Complex, Grieves had hustled them along to Rusty's car at gunpoint. He told them they needed to get away before the police arrived. They were both tired of guns and people telling them where to go but he looked crazy enough to use it. And his logic sounded vaguely convincing although Rusty was starting to look at a prison cell as a pretty attractive alternative to being chased all over the countryside by trained assassins.  When they arrived at his Cutlass and Grieves ordered them to crawl into the trunk, Jayne's face couldn't hide her surprise. They were still not safe. Grieves blamed them for his cover being blown. And he knew that Rusty had a copy of the
Splicer
subroutines.
Was he crazy enough to believe that they actually worked?
They climbed in reluctantly, the last vestiges of their dignity finally stripped away.

Rusty rolled painfully with the sway of the old car, finally convinced that it needed new shocks. "I've got an idea," Jayne said loudly against his cheek. He could smell her perfume mixed with the rubber and the soggy carpeting. She turned but he could barely make out her eyes in the dark. She whispered into his ear again. Her plan sounded absurd - but it was a plan.

"And where did you learn how to do that? Law School?" he asked.

She reached out in the dark and steadied herself against the frame. "My brothers.  They're car freaks. I spent a lot of time around 327 Chevys and small block Fords."

He reached around in the dark, felt her leg, then touched her side. She didn't pull away. He felt beyond her, up by the spare, in a depression in the metal pan of the trunk. There was a pile of miscellaneous tools. He pushed through the contents as quietly as he could. She heard a soft click and then blinked from the light. He had a flashlight in his hands, its thin yellow beam shining into her face. Then he turned it away from both of them to the back wall of the rear seat. She pointed with a broken fingernail at a number of rusty bolts. They were going to attempt to remove the back seat.  She had done this once before as a teenager, fixing up an old Malibu that belonged to one of her brothers.  Because of her size she was the only one who could crawl into the trunk to loosen the bolts holding the back seat in place. She took the flashlight and shone the beam along the punched steel frame and springs.  "We're going to loosen six bolts," which she pointed to. "Then you're going to crawl through and brain that bastard."

"With what?" he asked, shrugging, realizing it was a useless gesture in the dark. He reached behind her again and she heard metal striking metal. The music continued to pound. He turned with a ratchet and a socket in his hand and smiled with a mixture of bravado and relief.  She felt like weeping but instead she took his arm and turned him sideways, pulling him towards her. He turned his head to hear her, to place his ear near her mouth. He waited but he heard nothing so he turned slightly. Her mouth met his shakily. She clung to him, kissing him. He could hardly breathe, her face pressed against his nose. She was cool and wet, her breath hot. He felt a tear on his face where she had pressed against him. Then she slowly released him. "Break a leg,” she said.

"It's already broken," was all he could think of to say.

:

The bolts were badly oxidized and they gave themselves up reluctantly. Jayne and Rusty worked slowly, afraid to let the ratchet click, removing the socket carefully on each turn. As he worked, he caught himself imagining the cold lake water rushing in on them.
We have time
he thought.
We have time
. She passed the bolts to Rusty who tucked them away under the tattered matting. Then the music stopped. They both froze.
He's listening.
Rusty's forehead was soaked with sweat - he could smell their fear now, a stronger odor than the mold and wet dust. The music came back up. He felt the car pick up speed, the feel of the road change beneath them.
The highway.
Jayne removed the next bolt with even more care. Then she turned to the last one and twisted it carefully. Nothing. It was frozen in place with age and oxidation. She picked herself up on one arm and tried again then fell back. She turned to Rusty. "You're turn."

"Sure. It's always the last one." He reached up carefully, grasped the ratchet and turned it. It refused to move. His arm shook with effort, and then suddenly it gave way with a high-pitched groan. Rusty swore under his breath.  He looked at Jayne who held the flashlight. With her eyes wide, the pupils dilated, she looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming train.