Red Right Hand

SEVEN YEARS AGO

THE MAN STAGGERED into the lobby of the Albuquerque field office shortly after three a.m. His hair, black streaked with gray, was matted down by rain. His face was dusted with stubble and deeply lined. Tattered clothing clung to his lithe frame. His feet were bare and bleeding. Water, tinged red, pooled beneath him.

Special Agent Charlie Thompson glanced up from her paperwork in surprise. He hadn’t shown up on any of the building’s exterior surveillance cameras. If it weren’t for the sudden roar of the storm through the open door, she might not have noticed him come in.

Thompson had graduated from Quantico only a month before, but somehow she’d already managed to piss off her new boss. Yancey had her pulling overnights on the front desk all week. Truthfully, she didn’t mind. The odd phone call aside-conspiracy nuts, usually, too tangled up in their delusions to sleep-the graveyard shift was pretty quiet.

Tonight, though, a thunderstorm had blown in like the wrath of God. Lightning forked across the sky. Rolling thunder shook the building. Sheets of rain reduced the streetlights to blurry smears.

Poor guy’s probably just a vagrant trying to get out of the rain, Thompson thought-although for some reason, she didn’t quite believe it.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

Pale blue eyes regarded Thompson from bruised sockets. The man opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a dry croak. He swallowed hard, wincing, and limped across the lobby toward her. As he approached, she realized his knuckles were scraped raw. She flashed him a smile intended to disarm and surreptitiously thumbed the emergency-alert button on the two-way radio clipped to her belt.

When he reached the desk, he tried again. “I…need to talk to the special agent in charge.” The words came out thick and wrong. Dried blood was caked in the creases at the corners of his mouth, and his jawline was misshapen, as if he’d recently had teeth removed, and not consensually.

“What’s this regarding?” Thompson asked.

He fixed her with his cold, unblinking gaze. A crack of thunder rattled the windows. “I think it’s better for the both of us”-he breathed deeply-“if I save that information for the special agent in charge.”

“It’s late, sir. SAIC Yancey left hours ago. He’s probably asleep by now.”

“Then pick up the fucking phone and wake him up!” He banged a fist on the front desk to accentuate his point-and only then noticed the security guards.

There were four of them. They’d come running when they heard Thompson’s distress signal via their walkies. Three fanned out to flank him, guns drawn. One attempted to approach him from behind, his hand resting on his holstered weapon, but froze when the man wheeled on him.

“Don’t move,” one of the guards shouted. “Hands in the air!”

The stranger crouched into a forward fighting stance, his eyes darting from one guard to the next. Despite his age and his disheveled appearance, he was corded with lean muscle like a middleweight boxer. The guards tensed, their fingers tightening on their triggers.

“I’m not playing, asshole! Get on the ground-now!”

Thompson stood and put her hands up, palms out-a calming gesture. “Whoa! Easy, guys. Everyone just take a breath. I’m sure we can sort this out.”

In that moment, lightning struck the building. The thunder that accompanied it was immediate, deafening. The lobby plunged into darkness.

And the stranger made his move.

He lunged at the nearby guard, his left hand extended. A flash of gunfire lit the room-blinding Thompson momentarily-as one of the other guards discharged his weapon. The bullet zipped through the space he’d just vacated and dimpled the far wall. Then the web between the man’s thumb and forefinger connected with his quarry’s throat. The guard gurgled sickeningly as his airway collapsed. He would have fallen had the man not grabbed his trachea in a pinch grip and yanked, twisting his wrist so that the guard’s back wound up pressed to his chest-a gasping, wheezing human shield.

The man drew the guard’s sidearm and opened fire.

Thompson saw the rest unfold in freeze-frames, the darkness punctuated by lightning and muzzle flashes. One guard’s knee exploded, and he went down screaming. Another took rounds to the shoulder, the wrist, the hip. The last guard standing rushed the man and tried to tackle him. The man released his human shield-who slumped, unconscious, to the floor-sidestepped the assault, grabbed his would-be attacker by the hair, and drove his knee into the man’s nose. Then he yanked the guard upright-blood spraying in an arc from both nostrils-and tossed him through a glass display case.

Less than thirty seconds had elapsed since the storm had knocked out the building’s power. Thompson clutched her shiny new sidearm in trembling hands and waited for the lightning to reveal her target.

The emergency backup lights kicked in, illuminating the fallen guards. Their assailant was nowhere in sight. Thompson, feeling suddenly exposed, took cover in the foot well of the desk.

For a long while, nothing happened. The only sounds she heard were the static hiss of rain against the windows and her own shallow, panicked breathing. Eventually, she mustered up the courage to climb out from beneath the desk and look around.

But when she emerged, she felt a gun barrel, still warm from firing, press against the back of her head.

“Put your weapon on the ground and get up slow.”

She did as he instructed, her hands raised, her heartbeat a manic drumroll in her chest.

“Listen very carefully,” he said. “I don’t give a flying fuck what time it is. Get your goddamn boss on the line and tell him that the Devil’s Red Right Hand would like a word with him.”