The King's Tomb

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Jessica Clark padded around her kitchen as she talked. She was scrunching her neck up to hold the cell phone at her ear the way a violinist holds their instrument, waiting impatiently for someone to get back on the line. It was late and dark and the LED under-cabinet lighting gave a calm, arctic blue glow to the neat and ordered room.

“Garcetti?” she asked.

“Aaand I’m back.”

“You get the details I need, or what?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

“Give me the details, please.”

“You got a pen or something?”

She sighed and fought to control her temper. “You think people who do what I do write shit down? Why do you think I’m talking on a pre-paid cell phone?”

“Just asking… As I explained before, there’s a new international terrorist group on the scene.”

“You already said that.”

“Just listen up, Cougar. This is the official line and you need to know it. According to Pegasus, my contact in the CIA, they’re called the ECHO team. That’s Echo, Charlie, Hotel, Oscar and it stands for the Eden Covert History Organization.”

“Doesn’t sound like a bunch of terrorists to me.” She woke her laptop up and accessed the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists website.

“If Pegasus says they’re terrorists, they’re terrorists.”

“They’re not on the Most Wanted Terrorists list.” She slid a box of full metal jacket nine mil pistol cartridges off the kitchen table and started to push the primer-end of the bullets into the back of the fifteen-round magazine. As the tension on the spring increased she slotted her speed-loader onto the top of the magazine and finished filling it up.

“And we both know that’s the public Most Wanted list, Cougar. The list on my desk right now is the list of the real problem children.”

“What are my orders?” Pushing a box of Cheerios away to give her more room on the table, she put the full magazine into her bag alongside her Glocks and started to fill another one. The second one was much older with a weaker, used spring so she set the speed-loader down in the bag and filled it up manually.

“It’s the full package.”

The words made her stop in mid-flow. “The full package?”

“Uh-huh. ECHO’s members and everyone they know. All family and close friends are to be wiped.”

“You know how big a job like that is?”

“I don’t give a damn. You asked what your orders were. Now you know.”

“Names.”

Garcetti tried not to sound bored as he rattled off the names of everyone she was to terminate. There weren’t many. Just ECHO for now. She would work her way out to their friends and family as she went along.

“Where are they now?”

“They just arrived in Greece.”

“What, are they on vacation?”

“No, they’re not on vacation. They’re on a mission to obtain some relics they have no business trying to obtain.”

“You want me to fly to Greece to do it?”

“No, I want you to pour yourself a bath with some Shizumi luxury salts and let the stresses of the day melt away. Of course I want you to fly to Greece, but you’re only tracking them. You don’t take anyone out until I give the final execution order, but it will be soon, so be ready.”

Be ready. What an asshole. She was ready every minute of the day or night. That was how she stayed alive. “You’re the boss.”

“You got that right.”

She heard him again now. He was along the short corridor in his little bedroom, coughing in his bed. She put down her bag and walked toward him. “Wait a minute, Garcetti.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.”

“Don’t you put the phone down, Cougar!”

She put the cell phone down on the hall table and opened the bedroom door. The ghostly glow from the kitchen lights shone onto the bed and lit up her son. Ten now, his young life had been spent fighting severe asthma.

“You okay, buddy?”

A thin, pale face emerged from the bedsheets and gave a solemn nod. “I guess.”

She hated seeing him like this. The attacks came and went, but they were getting worse. Sometimes when she heard him coughing and wheezing for breath she broke down and cried before going to comfort him.

“You’re going to be fine.”

Fine. Sure, but it was relative term. She had no insurance. Wasn’t even in the system. She was like a wraith, moving through the world the way a ghost drifts through a cemetery. No birth certificate, no ITIN number for tax, no nothing and yet look here — a young boy of ten who spent his life fighting to breathe.

There was a new operation they said could help. It had something to do with radio waves. She didn’t understand all that stuff, but she knew how much it cost. A chunky five figures and she couldn’t reach that high. That was why she was coming out of retirement, just one last time.

This goddam stinking pile-of-shit world wasn’t going to get any more kicks torturing Matthew Clark and that was for damned sure. She knew what she had to do to stop his pain.

He peered over the sheets and saw the time. “You’re going away again?”

“I have to, Matty. I’m so sorry, baby.”

He started to cry and she felt her heart breaking for the thousandth time. She reached out to him but he pulled away. “I hate it when you go away.”

“It’s all right, baby. It’s just a few days, that’s all.”

“You always say that.”

She ran a motherly hand over his forehead and swept his hair back. “I know and I hate it, but it’s what I have to do. I can’t buy you the help you need unless I get paid, you know? This is all I can do, baby.”

And it was. No one gave regular jobs to a ghost. All previous attempts had winded up working alongside illegal immigrant labor or plain old-fashioned stealing. This was all she could do, but most jobs paid only enough to cover the rent and pay for food and Matty’s medicine. This job sounded different. It might just be the one to end their nightmare and start living a real life.

She walked back out to the hall and snatched up her phone. Garcetti might be her handler, but there was a healthy respect people like him had for people like her. After all, she could live with breaking into his apartment and taking him out, but he couldn’t say the same about her. “How much?”

“Kind of you to join me again.”

“I asked how much.”

“One million.”

She gave a weary sigh and raised her eyes to heaven. Money well-spent, she guessed, but it would be more than enough for Matty’s operation plus plenty left over to get out of this apartment and start a new life down in Mexico. “Fine.”

“You will be paid on completion of the mission. Got it?”

She looked along the corridor at the shape of her son in his bed. Watching his thin body shaking as he coughed and wheezed, she knew there wasn’t a damned thing she wouldn’t do for him.

“Got it.”