Dark Redemption (David Rivers Book 3) Read online

  He lowered the gun, cautiously eyeing the road behind me. “Come on.”

  I followed him as he trotted down the footpath, cutting left through a row of steel drums and crouching to slide behind a stack of sheet metal leaned against the wall. The stack concealed a manhole-sized tunnel that I felt my way through, my backpack scraping against the low ceiling.

  We crossed onto the other side of the wall into a cavernous space bathed in shadows. Micah erected a wobbly ladder from the ground, planting it against a second-story platform. Then he shot up it as I struggled to keep pace with my injured knee, relying on my opposite leg and upper body to haul myself upward.

  We entered a partially finished third floor atop the current structure. Concrete pillars separated floor beams from the uninstalled sheets of corrugated iron balanced above. Micah knocked the ladder sideways, letting it crash to the ground. Then he moved to the corner of a wall and whispered, “Nightingale.”

  “Raven,” Parvaneh’s voice said from beyond.

  We rounded the wall to see Parvaneh crouched in the corner, lowering the Beretta. My eyes stalled on her a moment too long.

  How did I ever think this woman wasn’t beautiful? She was stunning, the radiance of her eyes arresting my attention. My focus shifted to her angelic, peaceful face and her long, lean body rising to stand before me.

  Forcing myself to break my gaze, I unslung the M4s and the backpack and then unzipped it, pawing for the radios and setting them down beside the bag.

  Micah grabbed one of them, thumbing the keys to change frequency as I placed a GPS beside him.

  I set an M4 on the ground and split the magazines between us as Micah began speaking into the hand mic. “Silver Bullet, Silver Bullet, this is Jaguar Actual.”

  No response.

  “Silver Bullet, Jaguar Actual.”

  The hand mic crackled, and a tinny voice responded, “Jaguar Actual, this is Silver Bullet. Send your traffic.”

  He lifted the GPS off the ground, reading the latitude and longitude in careful phonetic pronunciation. Once he relayed our location, he finished with, “Primary and two pax ready for pickup time now, rooftop LZ marked by Jaguar Actual, how copy?”

  “Bullet copies all, helo is en route. ETA six minutes.”

  Parvaneh and I locked eyes. Her expression still held an air of thankfulness, now mixed with immense relief. I couldn’t match it. For some reason I suddenly thought back to Karma in the seat beside me, making our final hopeful eye contact in the moment before she was killed.

  The thought disappeared as Micah addressed me. “We’ve got a landing area on the roof next door. I’m going there to flag down the bird. Go back the way we came and make sure no one puts the ladder up and tries to follow us. Pull security toward the alley until you hear the helo coming in. When you do, escort Parvaneh to me.”

  “Micah, man, I thought you were the bodyguard.”

  “Save it.”

  “I mean, how about that landing area? I called it, we moved, and if we stayed in that hole in the ground we’d probably be dead right now.”

  “David—”

  “Seriously, do I get paid extra for this?”

  “Go. Now.”

  He waited for me to move, handing Parvaneh the MP5 and taking the spare M4 for himself. I put on the backpack and turned to leave, stopping at the corner to see him vanish out of sight around an unfinished wall.

  Parvaneh watched me, looking mildly amused. “Well?”

  I shot her a wink before rounding the wall, moving back the way I’d come.

  Turning the corner, I did a double take.

  The top of the ladder now rose over the edge of the floor as if Micah hadn’t knocked it down.

  Then the ladder moved—slightly at first, then a sudden shift nearly an inch sideways. Someone was ascending toward me, and with Micah securing the landing zone and Parvaneh between us, I was the only thing standing between her and an unseen aggressor. Karma sprang to mind again, and my body burned with boiling, visceral hatred. I wasn’t going to fail a woman under my protection a second time.

  My M4 raised itself toward the ladder as I stalked toward it, all pain forgotten, creeping silently until I took a knee a few feet away.

  The ladder moved again.

  In a rush of exhilaration, I realized that the man on the ladder had to be Agustin. His retreat from the devastated church was no cowardly bid to escape with his life—I should have known as much from his calmness during Ribeiro’s meeting. Instead, his withdrawal was a tactical ploy, and a brilliant one at that. He’d not risked getting shot while facing his opponent with equal odds. Down to himself, he’d simply followed me back to her, and was now coming to claim the ultimate prize.

  My thumb rested atop the selector lever of my M4. I didn’t dare flick it off safe and risk betraying my vigil until the instant before I fired. I waited for his bearded face to appear, relishing the opportunity to observe him in the pregnant pause before I drilled a 5.56 round through his forehead.

  A hand appeared on the top rung—even if the other held a pistol, he’d never beat my reaction time to the first shot. The top of his head cleared the edge, and I waited for the face to appear before clicking my assault rifle to fire, my index finger pulling the slack out of the trigger before I stopped abruptly.

  It was Gabriel.

  His perpetually nervous face turned a ghastly shade of white as he reluctantly drank in the sight of a suppressor inches from his face. Lips trembling, he kept a hand on the top rung and raised the other to reveal an open palm, fingers quivering.

  I lowered the barrel before he fell off the ladder. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “I…I dove into a pile of trash and hid…I’ve been looking for you all day, until I saw you running down the street. I almost missed you and Micah turning into the alley.”

  “Anyone follow you?”

  “No, I…I don’t think so…”

  I stood and stepped to the edge, sweeping the low ground with my M4’s optic. The space between structures was dark in the fading light, but I would have been able to distinguish a human form.

  “Hurry up,” I said, “the helo will be here any minute.”

  I used a free hand to grab his wrist and hoist him over the edge, and then kicked the ladder sideways until it fell askew once more.

  Holding the shoulder of his shirt, I pulled him toward the corner of the wall and said, “Nightingale.”

  “Raven,” Parvaneh replied.

  We turned the corner to see her standing out in the open, lowering the MP5 as she looked from me to Gabriel.

  I spun and left them together, stalking around the wall. Returning to my position beside the ladder’s previous resting place, I took a knee with the M4. The odds of anyone returning to right the ladder were slim to none, but I couldn’t take any chances. If anyone was going to make a last-minute bid to take her life, it was Agustin. I thought of his sprint from the building toward the alley, where I’d seen him possibly link up with a sixth man just before I opened fire.

  The sixth man.

  My blood ran cold.

  I was back to the corner in seconds, this time forgoing the verbal challenge and password as I noiselessly angled around the edge.

  Parvaneh faced away from me, her near-black hair cascading to her shoulders toward the Beretta stuffed into her waistband. The MP5 was slung at her side and her hands were open, palms skyward as if gesturing.

  Tilting my head sideways another fraction of an inch, I saw Gabriel a few feet away, his quaking hands pointing a revolver at her chest.

  I took a single step and launched myself airborne, hurling into Parvaneh with all the strength I could muster as I twisted my rifle sideways toward him.

  Gabriel reacted to my appearance with alarming speed, turning the revolver to me as I flicked my weapon to full auto. I only caught a single word Gabriel murmured before we opened fire on each other. It hung in the space between us in the fragment of time before my shoulder impacted Pa
rvaneh to knock her out of the way.

  “…sorry.”

  I mashed my trigger as his revolver erupted in volcano blasts of fire.

  Adrenaline should have delayed the onset of pain, but it didn’t.

  The bullets were white-hot nails inside me, radiating a vibrating, electric agony throughout my flesh. My body betrayed me as I fell, my determination lost along with control of my motor functions.

  I tried to rise and failed. Clutching at the hot wetness seeping across my torso, I raised a bare hand to my face with impossible slowness. My fingers appeared grotesque, foreign, coated in slick crimson blood as if it were a glove. Was the bleeding arterial? I couldn’t tell.

  I made no valiant effort to defend myself from being shot again, or to face my assailant. In the seconds that I fought to stay awake, my view was encompassed by my own blood spreading across the floor. I laid my head against the ground, the simple act of closing my eyes an indescribable bliss that stopped the physical agony altogether.

  An ethereal white mist replaced my vision. It seeped in from the periphery until I could no longer see the ocean of stark red in which I floated, adrift.

  MIDNIGHT

  Fluctuat nec mergitur

  -It is tossed by the waves but it does not sink

  7

  Boss, Matz, Ophie, and Caspian stood side-by-side, arms around one another. A fifth figure joined them from the periphery: it was Karma, in a cutoff denim skirt and halter top exposing the extent of her tattoos. A sixth figure sauntered in from the left, putting his arm around Karma with a kiss on her cheek and a lopsided grin.

  It was me.

  Was this death? It couldn’t be. It was too clean, too slick, defying the depth of machinations of my troubled psyche, tranquil compared to what my mind was capable of at its darkest pits.

  At the same time, I had no connection to a physical form. My consciousness was weightless, grounded neither by gravity nor worldly perception. I was an aura, a shadow upon earth, if I existed there at all.

  They were standing before me, but their voices echoed down a hallway of sound.

  Their figures faded, then reappeared at the end of a tunnel. The edges were blurred, distorted, as I struggled to focus. I heard them, but it took a moment to register.

  Karma broke ranks with the row of men.

  You’re the only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t believe in God but still hates him.

  What?

  After this is over, come back to Savannah with me.

  Ophie cut her off. If murder ain’t fun, we’re doing it wrong.

  Couldn’t be an out-of-body experience because my world was spinning again. Too much bourbon? Falling down the stairs on a Wednesday night—time to cut back. Have to piss, bladder about to explode. Nothing but bourbon on the rocks since noon.

  Luka’s voice screaming, IT WASN’T ME! IT WAS THE IRANIAN!

  Ophie with his knife to Luka’s throat. Say hello to Caspian for us.

  I asked, who’s the Iranian?

  Matz answered. He’s dead already. Stop talking.

  The view blasted back to a foggy morning on the farm of my boyhood: the Virginia air cool and damp, a morning mist just beginning to lift as I followed my father through the wet grass of our backyard.

  My father stopped at the fence, picking up three tin cans riddled with pencil-width holes and setting them back atop the fencepost. Stepping back, he wiped his fingertips dry on his flannel shirt.

  “A rifle can hide your inadequacies, compensate for them with a long barrel, with precise sights, with managed recoil. A rifle is your wife—steady, reliable, the one who cooks and raises your children. A pistol,” he continued, reaching into his pocket to pull out a tiny handgun before locking the slide to the rear, “is a mistress. Happy birthday, David.”

  I took the pistol from his outstretched hand.

  Boss spoke next. And that was the Handler himself, not his assistant.

  What’s the mission?

  To kill them all.

  Ian’s voice. The world isn’t big enough to hide his enemies. A challenge to his organization is an open-ended death contract that can’t be bought or backed out of.

  “What’s a mistress?” my youthful voice asked.

  My father answered, “It means the ability to use one is highly perishable, they’re hard to control, and if you don’t watch your step and master her she can bring your whole world down around you. You can lie to a rifle, but never a pistol—it will highlight your every shortcoming, not conceal them.”

  Matz now. There were six of us when we started, and Ophie wasn’t one of them. Boss and I were there from the beginning, and so were four others who died along the way. Caspian was just the last to get killed.

  Caspian stepped before me. Sergio chose a good crop to interview for this job.

  Did Sergio recruit you, too?

  No, I had this Iranian dude named Roshan—

  “Dad, this is a toy.”

  “The fundamentals don’t change, boy. If you master this little .32 pistol, then one day you can shoot anything. Even my .44 Magnum.”

  “Is there anything bigger than that?”

  “Sure. There’s a .454 Casull that’ll make my .44 feel like a BB gun.”

  “Then that’s what I want.”

  My father replied, “Son, a .454 revolver would take your arm off. Master the .32, and we’ll move you up from there.”

  “But a .454 is the best.”

  “No, it’s just the biggest. Have you learned about Franz Ferdinand in school?”

  “No. Who’s he?”

  “His assassination started the First World War. Tens of millions of people died because of a single round fired by a pistol no bigger than the one you hold in your hand. Don’t underestimate the little guns, son.”

  Boss next. You think the Handler doesn’t bleed? We could get to him, too, if we took the time. But if any of us survived the effort, it wouldn’t be for long.

  I’m going to kill him.

  Why?

  Who cares.

  I told you to be careful, David. Because this is the view. Have you had the ship dream yet?

  Twice.

  Has it sunk beneath the wave?

  Yes. In Somalia.

  Then you’re next.

  Rolling mist swept before me as if smoke from a fire, erasing them from view with a ghostly hiss of air. A sensation of lightness overtook my body, now floating to the surface in a blurry pool of subconscious thought.

  8

  I awoke suddenly, my return to awareness bringing with it a clawing search for my M4. But an explosion of pain paralyzed me, and as I fought through it with a rocketing heart rate, I looked up, expecting to see Gabriel stepping over my body to aim his revolver at my face.

  But the ceiling was no longer the primitive corrugated iron of a favela roof. Instead it was a technological marvel, a cylindrical metal hull bearing infinite wires and tubes snaking across its surface.

  I was off the ground though still horizontal, lying behind a blue curtain beside a row of shelves bearing neatly ordered packs of medical supplies.

  My legs were flat atop a stretcher, my upper body propped into a reclined position. Looking down, I saw my left bicep held rigid by a moldable field splint and wrapped within a sling, its strap tightened to pin my left forearm against my stomach. My left shoulder above the splint was buried beneath medical dressings, while my right bore only white gauze and a small amount of medical tape. Black straps were buckled with seatbelt fasteners across my ankles and waist, the latter assembly joined by two shoulder straps.

  A clear IV tube ran into my forearm, and I could feel the catheter shift in my vein as I bent and straightened my right arm. I flexed my hand, feeling only the slightest buzz of objection from whatever wound lurked beneath the bandage on my shoulder. When I pulled my hand back I saw that it was clean except for the blood caked deep beneath my fingernails.

  I realized I was on a cargo plane in flight, the vibrating hum makin
g it impossible to distinguish any voices beyond the curtain of my medical area. My mind pulsed backwards through the nightmarish sequence of dreams I’d just awoken from, trying to determine what had happened before I’d lost consciousness. I clearly remembered glimpsing Gabriel pointing a gun at Parvaneh, followed by my leap through time and space as I tried to shoulder-check her out of the way while shooting him. He opened fire first, and while I recalled pulling my trigger with the weapon on full auto, the tremendous pain of getting shot erased all else from memory.

  Had I knocked Parvaneh out of the line of fire? Had I saved her, or had Gabriel finished her off and left me for dead? Micah hadn’t gone far to await the helicopter, and the sound of gunfire would have brought him racing back to Parvaneh’s side. Gabriel had either escaped or been killed, but there was no alternate universe in which he could possibly outshoot Micah.

  The Handler was going to kill me upon my return no matter what, I remembered; if Parvaneh was dead, the amount of torture preceding that would increase exponentially. He’d assured me of that much in no uncertain terms before my departure. Hell, if Parvaneh was dead, I might save him the trouble. Karma’s death was too much to bear, and I couldn’t survive if Parvaneh’s name was added to the tally of my failure.

  Then I thought of my father, and the world war that began from a single pistol shot.

  Where was the .32 handgun?

  Whatever my circumstances, I wouldn’t be left alone for long. Mustering my focus from the fog of sleep, I looked for my backpack with increasing panic.

  The field splint around my left bicep was a type I knew well from my Army medical training. In combat we’d always kept the casualty’s equipment with their body, whether wounded or dead. Nothing was abandoned to the battlefield, and serial-numbered military hardware was never left to chance. In my case, the backpack held sensitive radios and GPS from Ribeiro’s kill team that some technical division would certainly be waiting to exploit upon landing.