Hellbent--An Orphan X Novel Read online

  He came out the front, hustled across the hourly-pay parking lot to a Subaru with a MY CHILD IS STUDENT OF THE MONTH bumper sticker. He’d swapped out vehicles early that morning in an office garage, taking advantage of a parking attendant’s bathroom break to snatch a set of keys from a valet podium. Assuming the proud parent worked a full day, that gave Evan until five o’clock before the car would be reported missing.

  He’d backed into the parking spot, giving him privacy by the rear bumper. He knelt down now and removed the license plate, switching it out for that of the Kia in the neighboring slot. One more layer of protection before he hit the road, free and clear to resume his pursuit of Van Sciver.

  He got into the car and pulled out of the parking lot, eyeing the freeway signs.

  He was just about to make the turn to freedom when he checked the rearview and saw the HILLSBORO HOME THEATER INSTALLATION! van turn into Union Station.

  17

  A Single Hungry Lunge

  A Hertz rental sedan moved in concert with the van. They parked side by side at the outer edge of the parking lot, reversing into the spots to allow for a quick getaway.

  Three husky men emerged from the van. They wore commuter clothes, Dockers and button-ups. Muscle swelled the fabric. There was no way around that. Loose-fitting jackets to conceal their builds and their pistols. They entered the waiting room and spread out immediately, fighter jets peeling out of formation.

  The driver in the sedan stayed put, his head rotating as he scanned the parking lot and roads leading to the train station. The lookout.

  The men streaked through the waiting room, sidling between passengers and heavy oak benches. They stepped out of three different doors onto the platform and into the shade of the overhang. In the distance a freight train approached, woo-wooing a warning, rumbling the ground.

  The whistle would provide good audio cover for a gunshot.

  The men looked through the clusters of waiting passengers on the side platform and the two island platforms beyond. One of the men spotted a rucksack tilting into view from behind a wooden post at the end. And part of a girl’s leg.

  His head swiveled, and he caught the eye of the man in the middle, whose head swiveled in turn to pick up the last man. They shouldered their way along the platform, closing the space between one another.

  Woo-woo.

  The freight train wasn’t slowing. It would blow right through the station, giving even more sound cover. The girl was isolated there at the end of the platform. That provided relative privacy to get the job done.

  Woo-woo.

  They converged on her, now shoulder to shoulder, linemen coming in for the sack.

  Fifteen yards away.

  Woo-woo.

  She saw them only now. Alarm flashed across her face, but even so she stepped back into a fighting posture, hands raised, jaw set.

  The man in the middle reached inside his loose-fitting jacket.

  They swept forward.

  Ten yards away.

  Behind them a form swung down from the metal overhang and crouched on the landing to break his fall, one hand pressed to the concrete.

  Soundless.

  * * *

  Evan couldn’t fire his ARES. Not with Joey in the background. But that was okay. He was eager to use his hands.

  Joey spotted him through the gap between the advancing men. They read her eyes, the change in her stance.

  They turned.

  Three men. One pistol drawn, two on the way.

  Evan moved on the gun first.

  A jujitsu double-hand parry to a figure-four arm bar, the pleasing snap-snap of wrist and elbow breaking, and—

  —Jack sways in the Black Hawk, hands cuffed behind him, wind blasting his hair when—

  —the pistol skittered free across the tracks, the guy on his knees, his arm turned to rubber. The second man gave up on the draw and came at Evan with a haymaker, but Evan threw a palm-heel strike to the bottom of his chin, rocking his head back. He firmed his fingers, drove a hand spear into the exposed throat, crushing the windpipe. The man toppled, crashing through a trash can, and made a gargling sound, his access to oxygen closed now and forever and—

  —Jack reeled back, a parachute rip cord handle clenched in his teeth, his eyes blazing with triumph, when—

  —the third man’s gun had cleared leather, so Evan grabbed his wrist, shoved the pistol back into the hip holster, hooked his thumb through the trigger guard, and fired straight down through the tip of the holster and the guy’s foot. The man was still gaping at the bloody mess on the end of his ankle when Evan reversed the pistol out of the holster, spun it around the same thumb, and squeezed off a shot that took off half the guy’s jaw. Evan blinked through the spatter and the image of—

  —Jack’s parting nod to the men pinballing around the lurching Black Hawk, a nod filled with peace, with resignation, before he stepped out into the abyss.

  People were screaming now, stampeding off the platform, the express train bearing down. Two corpses on the concrete, a glassy puddle of deep red spreading, smooth enough to reflect the clouds in the sky. The first man remained on his knees, straddling the yellow safety line on the platform, gripping his ruined arm as the hand flopped noodlelike on the broken stalk of the limb. Despite all reason he was trying to firm it, to make his wrist work again, when Evan wound into a reverse side kick, driving the bottom of his heel into the edge of the man’s jaw and sending him flying over the tracks just in time to catch the—woo-woo—freight train as it blasted through, flyswatting him ahead and grinding him underneath in what seemed like a single hungry lunge.

  Joey stared at Evan across the expanding puddle and the sprawled legs of the third man. Furrows grooved the skin of her forehead. She had forgotten to breathe.

  The engagement had lasted four seconds, maybe five.

  The other man had landed to the side, propped against the toppled trash can, one hand pawing the air above his collapsed windpipe. The motion grew slower and slower.

  Joey looked at him and then back at Evan, her eyes even wider.

  “He’s dead,” Evan said. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

  She cleared her throat. “Thanks.”

  “Grab your rucksack. Let’s go.”

  She did.

  They barreled through the doors into the waiting room. Chaos reigned. People shoved and elbowed to the exit. A homeless man was bellowing to himself, stuffing his bedding into a shopping cart. Workers cowered behind counters.

  There were sirens outside already, flashing lights coloring the parking lot. Lead responders spilled through the front entrance, bucking the stream of humanity.

  “This way.” Evan grabbed Joey’s arm, ushered her up the corridor to the bathrooms.

  They were halfway there when a service door swung open and two cops shouldered through. Their eyes lasered in on Evan and Joey, Glocks drawn but aimed at the floor.

  Evan swung her around, reversing course. They didn’t get three steps when, up ahead, responding cops filled the waiting room.

  They were trapped.

  18

  Short on Time and Short on Crowbars

  Behind them one of the cops shouted, “Wait! Stop right there!”

  Evan and Joey froze, still facing away. The corridor was empty, squeaky clean save for a dropped newspaper and fresh plug of gum stuck to the wall.

  “What now?” Joey said to Evan out of the side of her mouth.

  “We don’t kill cops.”

  Ahead, PD started locking down the big hall. Behind them the cops’ boots squeaked on the marble as they approached cautiously.

  “I know,” Joey whispered. “So what do we do?”

  “Get arrested. Face the consequences, whatever they are. We go down before we break a Commandment.”

  The cops were right behind them. “Turn around. Right now.”

  Joey reached up and flipped her hair over, exposing the shaved side of her head in its entirety. She brushed against Eva
n as she pivoted around, and when he followed her lead, he saw that she had his RoamZone in hand.

  “This is totally not fair,” she said. “Some big guy ran past us, all freaking out, and whammed into me. I dropped my phone and it’s, like, ruined.”

  Her posture had transformed, shoulders slumped, twisty legs, head lolling lazily to one side, a finger twirling a tendril of hair—even her face had gone slack with teenage apathy.

  And she was chewing gum. With teenage vigor.

  Evan shot a look at the spot on the wall where the fluorescent green plug had been a moment before.

  Joey yanked on Evan’s arm. “Dad, you are buying me a new phone. Like, now. There’s no way I’m going to school with the screen all cracked.”

  Evan cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Officers.”

  The cops looked behind them. “A big guy ran past you? This way?”

  “Yeah. You, like, just missed him.”

  The cops exchanged a look and bolted back down the corridor to the service door.

  Joey called after them, “If you find him, tell him he’s paying for my new phone!”

  The door banged shut after them. Joey swept her hair back into place, blanketing the shaved side. “‘Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.’”

  “Odysseus?”

  She took the gum out of her mouth, stuck it back on the wall. “Bruce Lee.”

  He nodded. “Right.”

  They moved swiftly out through the service door, skating the edge of the parking lot just before more cops swept in, setting a perimeter around the building.

  Evan peered across to the outer fringe of the lot. Even through the windshield glare, he could discern the outline of the man in the rent-a-car. He was trapped for now; the cops had blockaded the exits.

  Joey took note of the man. “The lookout?”

  “Yes.”

  Evan hustled her away from the commotion and into an employee parking lot shielded from view by a flank of the building.

  “Is the car this way?” she asked.

  “No. I parked it a block to the south.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  He stopped by a canary-yellow Chevy Malibu.

  “Evan, this isn’t the time to swap cars again. We can’t drive out of here anyways. You saw the exits.”

  Dropping to his back, he slid under the Malibu. He unscrewed the cartridge oil filter and jerked it away from the leaking stream.

  He wiggled back out from under the car.

  She saw the filter and said, “Oh.” And then, “Oh.”

  He shook the filter upside down, oil lacing the asphalt at his feet. Then he examined the coarse threading inside. “Give me your flannel.”

  She took it off. He used it to wipe oil from the filter and then his hands. It wasn’t great, but it was the best he was going to do. Holding the filter low at his side, he stepped over a concrete divider onto the sidewalk and started arcing along the street bordering the station, threading through rubberneckers.

  “Why are we risking this?” Joey asked. “Right now?”

  “Given their response time, these guys have some kind of headquarters in the area. We saw at least seven more men at your apartment building, including the Orphan. We find the HQ, we get answers.”

  “You think the guy’s just gonna tell you? This place is swimming with cops. It’s not like you can beat it out of him.”

  “Won’t have to.”

  They came around the fringe of the parking lot. The lookout’s car was up ahead, backed into its spot, the trunk pressed to a row of bushes. The majority of cops were at the main exits or across the lot at the station proper, scurrying around, gesticulating and talking into radios.

  Evan removed his slender 1911. He knew that the threading of the oil filter would be incompatible with the threading of the barrel, so he tore a square of fabric from the flannel, held it across the mouth of the filter, and snugged the gun muzzle into place.

  A makeshift suppressor.

  They skated behind a group of looky-loos who had gathered by the main entrance and vectored toward the rise of juniper hemming in the parking lot.

  Evan said, “Wait here.”

  He sliced through the bushes. Three powerful strides carried him along the driver’s side of the sedan. The lookout picked up the movement in the side mirror and lunged for a pistol on the passenger seat. Evan raised his 1911 to the window, held the oil filter in place at the muzzle, and shot him through the head.

  The pop was louder than he would have hoped.

  Between the flannel patch, the oil, and the muzzle flash, the filter broke out in flames. Evan dumped it onto the asphalt and stomped it out.

  He squatted by the shattered window and watched, but no one seemed to have taken notice.

  He opened the door, releasing a trickle of glass. The lookout was slumped over the console. Evan wiggled the guy’s wallet and Samsung Galaxy cell phone from his pocket. Then he lifted his gaze to the object of his desire.

  The Hertz NeverLost GPS unit nodded from a flexible metal stalk that was bolted to the dashboard.

  Evan tried to snap it off, but the antitheft arm required a crowbar.

  He sank back down outside the car, reshaped the flattened cartridge oil filter as best he could, and firmed it back into place over the muzzle. The sound attenuation of the first shot had been far from spectacular, and he knew that a makeshift suppressor degraded with every shot. But he was short on time and short on crowbars.

  He took a few breaths. Juniper laced the air—bitter berry, pine, and fresh sap undercut by something meatier.

  He leaned into the car, aimed at the spot where the stalk met the dashboard, and fired.

  The unit’s arm nodded severely to one side. He glanced through the blood-speckled windshield, saw some of the cops’ heads snap up. They were looking around, unable to source the sound. As Evan worked the metal arm back and forth, several cops moved into the parking lot, Glocks drawn.

  They were moving row by row.

  The stalk proved stubborn. He sawed it back and forth harder, polyurethane foam swelling into view on the dash.

  A female cop worked her way up the line of vehicles directly ahead of Evan. In a moment she’d step around the end car and they’d be face-to-face.

  The unit finally ripped free of the molded plastic above the glove box. Evan backed out of the car, already powering down the GPS so it couldn’t be accessed remotely. Staying low, he reversed through the juniper. He saw the cop come clear of her row and spot the windshield an instant before the foliage wagged back into place, enveloping him.

  He popped out the other side onto the sidewalk, bumping into Joey. He handed her the NeverLost, unscrewed the filter from the tip of the pistol, and dumped it into a trash can. Then he holstered his 1911 beneath his shirt, took Joey’s hand like a doting father. She understood, folding her clean fingers around his, hiding the oil smudges.

  They crossed at Irving Street, blended into a throng of pedestrians, and headed for the family car.

  19

  More Than a Mission

  November was a pleasant month in Alabama.

  Van Sciver sat in a rocking chair, sipping sweet tea. On his knee rested an encrypted satphone, the screen dancing with lights even when it was at rest.

  The plantation-style house wasn’t so much rented as taken over. Though relatively humble compared to some of the mansions in the region, the place still showcased classic white woodwork, a formidable brick chimney, and an impressive pair of columns that guarded the long porch like sentries. It was a National Historic Landmark. Which meant that it was under federal jurisdiction—the Department of the Interior, to be precise.

  The Orphan Program had a special relationship with the Department of the Interior. When the DoD required cash for Program operations, they made use of the bureaucratic machinery of Interior, figuring correctly that this was the last place that any inquiring mind would look for Selected
Acquisition Report irregularities.

  The money itself came straight from Treasury, shipped immediately after printing, which made it untraceable. And which meant that Van Sciver could quite literally print currency when he needed it. The life of an Orphan was not without hardships, but those hardships were cushioned by secret eight-figure bank accounts sprinkled throughout nonreporting countries around the world.

  When forced to leave his data-mining bunker, Van Sciver didn’t generally pull strings with Interior. But this mission was more than a mission.

  It was a celebration.

  So he’d made a single phone call, the effect of which had rippled outward until he found himself here, sipping sweet tea on the veranda, waiting for mosquitoes to stir to life so he could swat at his neck with a kerchief just like they did in the movies.

  One of his men circled, his bushy beard and sand-colored FN SCAR 17S battle rifle out of place here among the weeping willows and lazy breeze.

  “Perimeter clear,” he said as he passed, and Van Sciver raised his iced tea in a mock toast.

  Jack Johns had been the number two on Van Sciver’s list. But killing him was not what had given Van Sciver his current glow of contentment. It was the fact that killing him had made Orphan X hurt.

  That alone was worth the cost of a Black Hawk and six men.

  Van Sciver’s history with Evan stretched back the better part of three decades to a boys’ home in East Baltimore. Their rivalry at Pride House had been nearly as vicious as it was now. Van Sciver had been a head taller, with twice the brawn. He’d been the draw, the one they’d scouted for the Program, the one they wanted.

  And yet Evan had squirmed himself into position, had gotten himself picked first. Now Van Sciver held the keys to the kingdom and Evan was a fugitive. Van Sciver had played the long game.

  And he had won.

  Yet even here, rocking soporifically on a centuries-old porch at a mansion requisitioned on a whim through the federal government, even surrounded by ranks of trained men ready to do his bidding, even with the levers of power awaiting the slightest twitch of his fingers, he knew that it wasn’t enough.