Stolen Arrows

“You sure this is the right address?” Linderholm asked, sliding a medical pack into her skirt pocket. The boss had sent her along in case Helen Dupont was found in the shower or the agents had to strip search for weapons. After the debacle in London, the Agency was toeing the line on every government regulation. At least, for the present conflict.

“Got it out of her personnel file,” Maynard said, parking the sedan on the street a few houses away. Down the block, a old man watering his lawn studied the strange car in frank disapproval, then turned his back on them to concentrate on the weeding and fertilizing.

Pulling out a monocular scope, Linderholm swept the vicinity for anybody standing guard. The house was a modest two-story. Fake wooden shutters sat alongside the windows for purely artistic effect, which was ruined by the addition of a plastic gnome in the flower garden. Returning the scope to her pocket, the black woman shrugged at the sight. At least it was better than those racist Civil War lawn jockeys.

“Looks clean,” she reported.

“Good enough,” Maynard said. “Then let’s go catch a traitor.”

A low-level G4 clerk in the records department of the Agency, Helen Dupont was rather plain-looking, but known for getting overly friendly on the weekends. Fair enough. Nobody cared about sexual peccadilloes, as long as they were discreet. Consenting adults, and all that. However, a routine security check revealed that Dupont seemed to only be going to bed with people in the technical repair department. And the technicians had been among the very first people told about the plan to recover the Zodiacs so that they would be ready to safely disassemble the bombs.

However, in the opinion of Special Team Leader David Osbourne, that sounded suspiciously like sexual backpay. A crude spy would offer sex in exchange for secret information. Sometimes that worked, mostly it didn’t. On the other hand, a good spy would have sex with the target several times, hundreds of times over many years if possible, to build a good rapport and then have emotional leverage on the victim. Now the requested intel seemed more like a favor, with the implied threat of ending the affair if denied. The Agency did that themselves, and the ploy worked more often than not. To discover it was being done to them was extremely disturbing.

New rules for sexual conduct were already being drafted, but that wasn’t the pressing problem at the moment. Plain, sweet, sexually repressed until the weekend, Helen Dupont had left the office complaining of a migraine headache exactly when the Scion had stolen the truckload of Zodiac bombs.

It could just be a coincidence, those did happen. But the team was taking Dupont to the section chief for questioning. Just routine. Unless she cracked, and then the traitor would be hauled down to the Tank, the soundproofed room in the basement where enemies of the nation could be strenuously interrogated without undue interruptions.

Getting out of the car, the agents started for the house, but froze at the sight of the slightly ajar front door.

Returning to the car, Linderholm pulled out a radio and called for more agents as Maynard moved along the driveway and to the side of the door. Openly pulling his piece, the man waited, holding his breath to try to hear any noises from inside. But the house was silent. A few moments later Linderholm was at the other side of the door, weapon drawn. The agents nodded three times in unison counting down before she kicked open the door as Maynard rushed inside.

The living room was immaculate, not a speck of dust in sight or a book out of place on the shelves. Linderholm eased beside him and jerked her Glock at the hallway when they both caught a familiar smell. Oh, hell.

Rushing into the kitchen, they found nothing out of order. They moved fast down the corridor and into the bedroom. Dupont was tied spread-eagled on the bed, a soup bowl on the nightstand containing her fingernails, teeth and ears. The woman was almost naked, her clothing slashed off her to expose the bare skin, then left there to partially drape the mutilated corpse. Both of her breasts were covered with the circular burn marks of a cigar, the left leg covered with round bruises where the bones had been broken by some sort of blunt instrument, a hammer, or perhaps a baseball bat. As per regulations, Maynard checked her pulse, but there really was no need. The woman was dead, and had been for hours.

“It’s Dupont,” Linderholm said. “But this doesn’t make any sense. There is no way Zalhares could have gotten here yet to do this.”

“And why torture her?” Maynard demanded, making to holster his pistol, then moving to the closet to check. It was empty. “If she was working for them, and it now certainly seems that way, they might kill her to plug the leak. But why torture their own contact?”

Even as he said the words, the truth hit them both.

“Zalhares was a double agent,” Linderholm said, pulling out her radio again.

“Playing us and some other group against each other so that he could steal the bombs? Damn, sounds solid.”

“Hello, base? This a priority two report,” Linderholm said quickly. “Inform Internal Affairs and the chief that our contact has been neutralized, and we now have gate-crashers at the party. We’ll be back in an hour to report.”

Closing and locking every door, the CIA agents returned to their car and raced for the highway. Helen Dupont had only been a pawn and Cirello Zalhares was a double agent. Yeah, made sense. Unfortunately, it didn’t require any great leap of logic to guess who his employers were. Or rather, who they had been, since it seemed he had also cut them out of the deal. The Agency was finally going to go directly against the Brazilian S2. And there was no doubt that the breakage in innocent human life would be very high before this mess was finally settled.

CHAPTER FOUR

Atlantic Ocean

A steady thumping pervaded the small metal room and the air smelled strongly of machine grease. A rack of beds covered the far wall, a folding table stood in the corner, and in the middle of the room was a lead-lined safe draped with a fine wire mesh netting attached to an array of car batteries.

Kneeling by the apparatus, Zalhares carefully checked a voltage meter to make sure the Faraday Cage was working properly. Driving the armored truck into a private garage, there had been plenty of time to burn open the armor and then breech the safe. However, he suspected the CIA of having planted a tracer or even a repeater circuit in the Zodiacs, and thus had taken the precaution of having a Faraday Cage ready. With a steady current moving through the fine mesh, no radio signal could possibly penetrate.

Satisfied for the moment, Zalhares took a seat on the lower bunk and leaned back against the steel wall. The regular beat was oddly soothing, like the rhythm of a living heart.

Sitting at the table, Jorgina Mizne was sharpening a knife, her strokes unconsciously matching the pulse in the walls. Minas Pedrosa was drinking from a bottle of beer, while Dog Mariano groaned softly, holding a bucket between his shaky knees.

“Feeling any better, my friend?” Zalhares asked, crossing his arms behind his neck for a cushion. The thumping eased into a gentle background vibration.

Breathing for a moment, Mariano finally shook his head. “No,” he muttered. “How…soon….”

“Until we disembark? Quite some time.”

“Why couldn’t we take a plane?” the man muttered, closing his eyes. “I like planes.”

“Every airport was covered ten minutes after we left the park. No, my friend, this was the only way.”

“I hate the sea,” Mariano groaned.

“And yet you love the beach,” Mizne said, inspecting the edge on the blade. “One of God’s little jokes, eh?”

Unexpectedly, there was a knock on the hatch that served as a door for the small water-tight compartment.

“Fine,” Mariano corrected weakly, placing the bucket aside. “I hate submarines. Better?”

“Of course.” She smiled, sliding the blade into a sheath behind her back.

The knock came again, more insistent this time. Still drinking his warm beer, Pedrosa walked to the hatch and pulled it open on squealing hinges. The air tasted greasy, yet the metal was rusty. And this was considered a reliable transport?

In the corridor stood an unshaven slim man in rumpled coveralls, the tarnished insignia of a Taiwanese naval lieutenant pinned to his limp collar. Nodding to the passengers, the officer stepped through and tossed a casual salute to Zalhares. It wasn’t returned.

“Sir, there is a problem,” the lieutenant said, smiling widely.

Pushing away from the wall, Zalhares sat upright but said nothing, waiting for the man to continue.

“The captain has learned of your identity.” He glanced at the safe. “If not that of your cargo, and believes that our deal needs to be—how shall I say it?—adjusted properly.” The man grinned again, pretending to be embarrassed. “You are very wanted men by a great many people. Rich, powerful people.”

“A deal is a deal,” Zalhares said flatly. “We paid enough to buy this craft, and he wants more?”

With a sigh, the lieutenant shrugged, displaying both palms upward. “What can I say? My captain disagrees.”

For a few minutes the members of the Scion exchanged glances.

“Fine. You leave us no choice then,” Zalhares said. “Dog, pay the man.”

Pulling out a wallet, Mariano removed a wad of cash and offered it to the lieutenant. His eyes bright with greed, the man eagerly reached for the cash. Mariano Dog extended his arm past the hand, a stiletto snapping out from his sleeve to ram into the officer’s stomach. As the lieutenant’s mouth flew open wide to scream, Zalhares stuffed in a bunched glove, careful to not be bitten.

Still sipping the beer, Pedrosa stepped to the hatchway, a silenced Imbel .22 pistol in his other hand. Meanwhile, Mizne grabbed the bleeding sailor by the shoulders to hold him steady as Mariano slowly sawed the razor-sharp blade back and forth straight up the middle of the torso. Thrashing against the grip of the muscular woman, the officer was helpless, his eyes rolling back into their sockets from the incredible pain. Blood poured from the yawning wound as his intestines began to slither out, most of them plopping into the waiting bucket.

With professional detachment, Zalhares watched as the life faded from the man’s eyes and the body went limp, twitching a few times before finally succumbing to death. They all died so easily; it wasn’t even interesting anymore.

“Still feeling seasick, old friend?” Zalhares asked, retrieving the saliva-streaked glove.

“Not any more,” Mariano said excitedly, easing the gory blade out of the corpse and wiping it clean on the coveralls.