Quantum Kill (Cobra Book 4) Read online

  We moved along a straight road through gently rolling green hills and tall trees. There was something idyllic about the place. Harvest was in the air. Snow was coming in a couple of months. Here, you sensed, the seasons still ruled the year. Cottage roofs and chimneypots peered above hedgerows. There was a sanity to the place that had drained out of the rest of the world.

  I heard Diana’s voice from the back seat and realized I had been thinking aloud.

  “You believe that shit?”

  I didn’t answer. At the end of the village I turned left onto what some wit in the town hall had called Pacific Avenue, and rolled past a pond and vast meadows dotted with copses. Eventually we came to the Piapot Guesthouse and Saloon and I parked beside a blue Volkswagen Beetle and climbed out.

  Inside it was empty and quiet. It was a long room with wooden floors and wooden walls. A wooden bar took up the corner, and pictures and posters hung on the walls advertised musical events at the saloon. There was a guy behind the bar, leaning on it with his elbows. He had a short-cropped beard and dark hair. He was smiling, but there was a touch of insolence to the smile.

  “I thought they weren’t letting you guys out till the pandemic was over. Seems to me half of the USA’s passed through my saloon this morning.”

  “A hundred and seventy-two million people passed through your saloon this morning?” I climbed on a stool opposite him. “I hope you made a dollar on each one. You got any coffee?”

  “I got coffee. I got damn fine coffee. Other dudes said it was the finest coffee they’d drunk this side of the border.”

  “Well in that case we’ll have a cup each, and if you have any pie or something to accompany, we’d be grateful.”

  “I’ve got pecan or I got apple. You can take your pick.”

  Diana said, “We’ll have one of each and share, darling.” The last word was directed at me with a smile that was astonishing in its sweetness.

  The guy with the beard disappeared through a beaded curtain into what I figured was a kitchen. While he was gone Diana squeezed my arm and breathed into my ear, “I’m going to sit at a table. You find out.”

  I didn’t say anything and she went and sat down. The guy with the beard reemerged carrying a tray with pot of coffee, a jug of milk, a bowl of sugar, two small plates each with a piece of pie and two mugs that didn’t match. He put it all on the counter and said, “Where you gonna sit?”

  I said, “I’ll take it from here,” and took hold of the tray. “So who were these other Americans? We’re here because we live in Montreal, but the border is closed as far as I know.”

  I spoke as I carried the tray to where Diana was sitting.

  “We’re all Americans, mister,” he said. “You’re a citizen of the United States, and I am a subject of the Kingdom of Canada, but we are both Americans, sir.” I glanced at him, wondering if he was going to give me trouble, but he was just smiling his insolent smile, and carried on talking. “They said the same thing as you. They lived here and were on a driving holiday. Seemed strange to me.”

  Diana had poured me coffee and remembered how I had taken it that morning. I picked up the mug and had a sip, then tried the pie.

  “That’s superb pie,” I said with my mouth full. Then, “Why’d it seem strange? I guess there are a lot of US citizens living in Canada.”

  “No doubt you’re right,” he said, “but if you live in Montreal or Quebec, why would you go rent yourself a car in New York? I don’t think they’d let you into the USA in the first place, and I know for damn sure they wouldn’t let you back into Canada.”

  I made an “I’ll be damned!” face and for good measure added, “Well that is kind of strange.” I turned to Diana. “Isn’t it, honey?”

  “They are obviously on some kind of official business,” she said. “What’s odd is that they should lie about it.”

  His insolent grin turned into a chuckle. “Course, I don’t know anything ’cause I’m just a country bum, but I think…” He trailed off, gazing at the door. “You know what I think? I think they were cops, hunting for somebody in Canada. And I think the Canadian government turned a blind eye: you scratch my back today, I’ll scratch yours tomorrow.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “Tell you the truth, I ain’t no friend of the cops. Especially cops from the US. No offense. I don’t see any reason why they should be hunting people over here where they ain’t got no jurisdiction.”

  I nodded a lot. “None taken,” I said. “I agree with you. Were they asking questions?”

  “Asked me if we got a lot of strangers passing through. Made me think of you. You passed through just yesterday, didn’t you? You were on your own then.”

  “I did indeed. Did you happen to mention that to these men?”

  He shrugged. “You know how it is. You remember something, and then, no sooner did you think of it than you forgot it again. I guess I forgot.”

  I finished the pie and the coffee. Diana ate and drank in silence. She seemed to be oblivious to me and the guy behind the bar. I took my plate and my cup and put them on the counter.

  “How many of these guys were there?”

  “Four. They were dressed in leather jackets and jeans. But the way they had their hair cut, and the close shave, you knew they usually wore suits. Know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean. Did they say where they were going?”

  “Said they were going west, to Calgary.”

  “I guess I owe you.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll have a beer and wish you a safe trip.”

  I paid up and we stepped back out into the mild midday sun. I didn’t say anything until we were back in the car, moving north toward the highway.

  “New York, huh?”

  I flicked my eyes at the mirror and saw her shrug.

  “So what?”

  “It’s not exactly another continent.”

  “Again, so what?”

  “Listen, Diana, you want me to keep you safe? You want me to get you to DC alive? I need to know who—and what—we are up against.”

  “I have already told you as much as I can. Don’t insist anymore.”

  “What do you mean, as much as you can? What’s stopping you from telling me everything?”

  She didn’t answer and I glanced in the mirror again. There I caught her eye. She sighed.

  “If I told you that, I’d have to tell you who they are. And I can’t do that.”

  I let it go, but after a minute, when we came to the junction, as I turned on to the highway, I said, “Four guys who usually wear suits, a car rental from New York and they got across the border. That sounds like government officials or agents.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “What do you mean, not necessarily?”

  “It could be Mafia. It could be private security. Some of those private security companies carry a lot of weight. Some work very closely with the government and are qua-official.”

  “Qua-official?”

  “Yeah, look it up.”

  I felt hot irritation well up from my belly and had to fight it down. “Is that who’s after you? A qua-official security company? I don’t believe it. Who’s paying their fee? Besides, I know all the goddamn private security companies in New York, and they don’t carry out assassinations!”

  She was looking out at the passing landscape. She sounded bored. “I didn’t say they did, and I didn’t say they were after me. You said all that yourself. All I said was, you didn’t have to be a government agent or official to get across the border. Or to wear a suit.”

  I scowled at the mirror. “You are one prime pain in the ass, Diana!”

  “Yeah? Tell me something I don’t know, John.”

  “How about you tell me something.”

  She still wasn’t looking at me. She still sounded bored. She said, “Unlikely.”

  “How the hell did they know you were here?”

  “Maybe you have a leak.”

  I thought about it, thought abo
ut the brigadier and dismissed the possibility.

  “No. Not possible.”

  “You’re the expert, John. You work it out. I just paid for protection. I didn’t pay to be interrogated or put at risk. So why don’t you just get me to Washington and quit passing the buck.”

  We drove on in silence. My mind was racing. Everything was wrong and nothing was right. From the very fact of the brigadier giving me a job of this type—more than that—from the very fact of the brigadier accepting a job like this, down to the fact that the client was being taken to DC yet refused to talk about who she was fleeing from and why they were after her; refused even to give information that would save her life. It was all wrong.

  People refuse to give information when they are trying to protect somebody. So who was she trying to protect? Was she trying to protect the people who were after her? That made no sense, and yet, what other reason could there be for refusing to name them?

  And then there was the whole issue of why we were acting like US Marshals or Feds. We specialized in assassination, in taking out the trash. We did not protect witnesses or escort them into federal custody. The whole point of Cobra, was that we made that entire process unnecessary.

  So who the hell was this woman? And who the hell was after her?

  At just after two we stopped outside Regina for lunch and then pressed on another five hours through endless rolling green hills and woodlands, until at close to eight o’clock we came to the small town of Virden. There I came off the highway along Frontage Road and turned in to the Virden Motel. It was dilapidated, run-down and seedy. There was no asphalt parking lot, just an expanse of pockmarked dirt and puddles. I parked round back, where the vehicle was out of sight, and went to the main office to pay and collect the key.

  There was nothing remarkable about the office or the bald, portly guy behind the desk. He was friendly and polite and when I told him I was a light sleeper and would appreciate a room that didn’t face the highway, he was more than willing to oblige. I collected the key and we made our way to the room. On the way I spoke quietly.

  “You don’t need to answer me. You just need to think, and I know you can do that. There are just two ways they could have known where we were. One, they received information from somebody. In which case they will have to track us here, and I don’t see how they can do that unless they have exceptional resources. Two, they are tracking you electronically, in which case they will come tonight. If they do, then, after I have killed them, you and I are going to have a long, uncomfortable talk during which you are going to do most of the talking. Think about it while we wait.”

  Four

  I locked her in the room and walked across the forecourt to a Tim Hortons and bought two takeout burgers. When I got back to the room she was sitting motionless on the chair beside the bed, staring at me. I had the impression she had been staring at the door all the while I was gone.

  I held up the package with the burgers in it.

  “I hope you’re not a vegetarian.”

  She blinked a couple of times but came nowhere close to an expression.

  “That wouldn’t make a lot of sense,” she said. “Protein is most efficiently consumed as first-class protein from meat and cheese. Combining various types of second-class proteins to do the same job is not an efficient way of doing it.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  I pulled out her burger and tossed it to her. She caught it one-handed and started to unwrap it. She spoke as she did so.

  “I think it would be a bad idea for us to have sexual intercourse.” I stopped with my own burger halfway out of the bag. Several answers faltered and died before they reached my mouth. She bit into her burger and watched me while she chewed. “Those men are after us,” she said, “and I believe they are quite professional. Sex would leave you weakened and unprepared.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  “I hope that doesn’t make you feel bad.”

  “No. It doesn’t make me feel bad. It’s not a problem. How do you know they are professional?”

  She was quiet for a bit, chewing and staring at the bed, until I thought she was refusing to answer. I pulled the drapes closed, sat in a chair by the window and ate, watching the desultory traffic passing along the highway through a crack in the curtains. A lot of it was big trucks, and occasionally saloon cars: twin glares in the growing dark, approaching from the distance, then resolving into double cones of amber stretched across the blacktop as they sped by.

  “All I can tell you for now,” she said suddenly into the gloom, “is that they are highly trained, and highly professional.”

  “Who trains them?”

  “Don’t try to draw me into a conversation, John. It won’t work. I’ll talk to the relevant authorities when we get to Washington. Not to you and not before.”

  I kept my answer to myself, inside my head, and turned my attention back to the sporadic flow of traffic. The darkness grew dense beyond the small pool of limpid light created by the motel, the diner and the bistro. It gave the highway, just beyond Frontage Road, the appearance of an eerie, desolate stage set.

  After a while people began to arrive in trucks and cars. They either went to Tim Hortons, to the right of our room, or they pulled up outside the Farmhouse Bistro and Tavern, over on our left. I watched each truck and each car, and registered each man who climbed out of his vehicle.

  Ten o’clock came and went, and the trucks and the cars started to leave in ones and twos and occasionally in threes, until the Farmhouse started to close down for the night. Then I said to Diana, “Brush your teeth and go to bed.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Brush your teeth and go to sleep.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “The chances are you won’t get much sleep tonight. We’ll probably have to move on before dawn. I need you awake and alert when the time comes. You won’t be either if you don’t brush your teeth and go to sleep, now. Don’t make me explain everything to you, Diana. Just do it.”

  I turned to look at her. She was staring back at me and had a copy of National Geographic on her lap. “Do I have to drag you in the can and brush your teeth for you?”

  She gave her head a single shake and went to the john. I turned my attention back to the traffic. A blue Ford Pickup moved onto Frontage Road and accelerated away. Quiet seemed to settle over the area, as though it were seeping out of the darkness itself. Above, the sky looked vast. One or two icy stars winked through the dull, amber glow from the spindly lamps on the highway.

  I heard the rough, rapid strokes of a toothbrush, then the hiss of the tap. I heard the shower and rolled my eyes. If Cobra ever published a handbook for its operatives, I must remember to include a chapter on why not to take a shower when expecting an imminent attack by trained assassins.

  The shower stopped and the hair dryer started. I called her but she couldn’t hear me because of the dryer. If I went to get her I’d have to take my eyes off the entrance to the forecourt. A small hot coal of irritation started to burn in my gut. Life and death, especially other people’s lives and deaths, are not things you should be flippant about. I’d have to put that in the manual too.

  The bathroom door opened and she stepped out, naked and barefoot, wrapped in a towel.

  I wasted two seconds looking at her, then growled, “Get dressed and go to bed. Don’t argue, don’t talk, just do it! Now!”

  Ten minutes later Frontage Road and the highway had gone quiet and still, and behind me I heard the heavy sound of Diana lying on the bed. I heard a sigh, and shortly after that she started snoring softly.

  I allowed myself to relax then. I did it systematically, beginning with my feet and working up through my legs, my back and shoulders and down through my arms. It’s easy to do and as good as sleeping or better. But the trick is to allow your body to sleep, while your mind remains awake. That takes practice, and practice was something I had had plenty of.

  They came at two A
M. They rolled in off Frontage Road, not too fast and not too slow. There was no emergency, neither did they seem to be looking for something. It was just two bright headlamps that rolled off the blacktop and bumped slowly across the pitted forecourt to come to a stop thirty paces from our front door. There it stopped, the lights died and a guy climbed out. The car was a dark Audi 4. The guy was average in size and build, but he was silhouetted against the highway so I couldn’t make out any more details.

  He walked around the side of the building to where I knew the reception was. Five minutes later he walked back and leaned with his hands on the passenger side of the car, talking through the window. I jumped, shook Diana violently and hissed at her, “Get in the can and lock the door! Lie in the bath till I call you. Go!”

  She was groggy and hesitated. I shoved her hard and pulled the Maxim 9 from my waistband. I shoved the pillows under the duvet, like a long sausage, returned to the window and heard the bathroom door close and the latch click. The guy had stood back from the car and the three passenger doors were opening. Three more men climbed out, all silhouettes against the glow from the lamps on the highway. But I could make out the leather jackets, and I could make out the handguns as they pulled them, screwed on the suppressors and cocked them.

  They approached like they were walking into a store or a pub, no creeping or crouching. A pro doesn’t do that. It attracts too much attention. They stood either side of the door—two to one side, one the other, and the fourth put a round through the lock. The door swung open toward me and I watched his back disappear as he stepped into the room.

  I could have taken him then. Two rounds through the door would have done it, but that would have left the other three. I had to let them come into the room and trap them there. I took one silent step so I was close to the door, with my back to the wall, and slipped the Fairbairn & Sykes knife from my boot.

  They filed in and the first guy stood at the foot of the bed. The last to enter closed the door and stood no more than four feet in front of me. I held my breath as the first guy raised his weapon in both hands and started to fire. The dark room lit up as though with lightning and his semiautomatic spat phut! As it did so I slid my right foot forward and rammed the razor-sharp point of the blade into the back of the nearest guy’s neck.