The Last Minute

47

Ming building, Brooklyn

I hurried down the stairs to the second floor. Were the doors unlocked? I waited at the top of the stairs that led down to the ground floor.

August opened the door. He came through with gun drawn, arm extended, classic stance to sweep the room. He froze when he saw me. I kept my hands raised, empty of a weapon.

‘Hi.’ I didn’t know what else to say.

My best friend stared up at me in shock. For one moment he wavered. Five long seconds ticked by. But he kept his gun leveled at me. ‘You look like you’ve been beaten to hell, man.’

‘Yes,’ I nodded.

‘What are you doing here, Sam?’

‘I have a favor to ask you. Biggest one ever.’

‘Come down here.’

I stayed put. ‘This is what I need you to do. Turn around and leave. You hear from Jack Ming again, you ignore it. Let him go.’

‘Jack Ming. Is that my new friend’s name? Why would you want me to give him the cold shoulder?’

‘Shut the hell up and just go.’

‘No. Why are you here, Sam?’ Now August’s voice rose.

I started to walk down the steps. My gun was holstered in the small of my back. My hands were in the air.

I knew there was a spy inside Special Projects. Another traitor who’d likely been bought. Maybe this Ray Brewster. And if I told August the truth the traitor could learn it, no matter how careful August was. It could be his team-mate, his boss. And they would never give me back Daniel if I exposed their man.

So I lied: ‘This is a trap. Novem Soles wants to capture you. Pick your brain.’

‘What are you doing here?’ And I heard what I didn’t want to hear in his voice. Suspicion. ‘How did you even know I’m here?’

He thinks I’m one of them now.

‘Oh, my God, Jack Ming is here,’ I heard Leonie’s voice in my earbud. ‘He just ran to the door from the building across the alleyway, he’s coming in now… ’

No time. No time to react.

The door slammed open and caught August with its edge. He staggered back. I saw Jack Ming power up a gun, aimed at August’s head.

‘Drop your gun,’ the young man screamed.

And August did and the young man looked up at me. I’d pulled my weapon and he still had his gun leveled at August.

‘Drop it!’ he screamed. ‘Drop it now!’

Shoot him, I thought. Just shoot him and this is over. But the gun, his gun, so close to August’s head. I couldn’t. I dropped the gun.

‘ You,’ he said and I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me or to August. But he aimed his glare at me.

I was the surprise. Not August.

‘The Chinese hacker from Amsterdam.’ August paled. ‘You were shot.’

‘You were dead,’ I said. ‘We thought.’ He didn’t need to know I was hunting him. I wanted him to think I was just as surprised as August at his identity. Notice my clever use of we.

If he was surrendering to the CIA then let him think I was part of the CIA. Even if it bought me ten seconds of confusion.

I would have to kill him in front of August. That was that. Then run, like a coward, in the slim hope that Novem Soles would give me my child back.

August said, ‘The past is the past and I’m guessing since you’re coming to me that all is forgiven.’ I remembered the CIA team roughed up Jack a bit.

Jack gave a little shrug.

‘We had a deal. I’m ready to carry forward that deal. Lower your weapon. Let’s talk about Novem Soles,’ August said.

The young man’s gaze slid to me. I remained very still. If I moved for my gun he could blow August’s brains onto the wall.

But then he swung the gun toward me. ‘Not yet. Why is he here? He’s one of them.’

‘No. I’m not.’ This had all gone south. I couldn’t draw on him and risk August’s life. But for Daniel to live he had to die.

‘I saw you in Amsterdam,’ he said to me. ‘You were working with Nic.’

‘No. I was working with him.’ I nodded toward August. August, thank God, kept his mouth shut at this lie.

‘No. The CIA was hunting you. You’d run from them. They talked about you in front of me when they thought I didn’t understand.’ Jack Ming’s mouth narrowed. ‘What the hell is this? Why is he here, August?’

After a long, long moment, August said: ‘Answer the man, Sam.’

I said nothing.

August said, ‘Listen to me. Sam used to be CIA, he has fought against Novem Soles, and he’s okay. I can assure you of that.’ He stared up at me.

Jack’s hand with the gun was shaking, ever so slightly. The hacker had claws and didn’t know what to do. A weird back corner of me wanted to say your mother is dead, I’m sorry. I’m sorry it’s come to this kind of awful. I’m sorry I have to kill you.

I couldn’t use August to help me.

‘I said only you to come,’ Jack said to August.

‘I didn’t invite him,’ August said.

Oh, no.

I played my hand. ‘Listen to me. There are two dead women upstairs. They were here waiting for you, Jack. Novem Soles is hunting you. I became… aware of this fact.’

‘And aware that this was where we were meeting? How could you know?’

‘Because I figured out who you were. Really were. Not a Chinese student from Hong Kong. Jack Ming, New Yorker and runaway hacker.’ I needed three seconds to shoot him. I needed him not to be aiming at August’s head. ‘I know because I was smart enough to find you.’

‘Who are these women, Sam? Did you kill them?’ August asked.

‘Kill Jack, what are you waiting for,’ Leonie hissed in my ear. ‘ What are you waiting for? ’

I was waiting because, if I didn’t kill him, I wanted to find a way to burn Novem Soles to the ground and still get my kid back. The thought had been in the back of my mind, a constant trickle I wouldn’t hear.

But consider the sisters. They tried to take me without killing me, and it didn’t work out. I couldn’t end up like them.

Ming swung the gun away from August and aimed it at the center of my chest. He clutched it with the other hand and for an amateur it telegraphed he meant to fire. August threw himself into Ming and the bullet cracked, two inches from my head. I jumped down from the stairs and pulled them apart. I wrenched the gun from Ming’s hand and knocked him to the floor. His gun dropped to the concrete. Jack’s foot hit it as we struggled and it skittered into shadows beyond the dim gleam of the entry light.

August stood, raising his own gun. Oh. Did not want that.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and slammed my fist into the side of my friend’s head. He staggered and I hit him again, hard, across his wrist. The gun fell from his nerveless fingers.

‘What the hell!’ he yelled and he parried my next blow. ‘What are you doing?’

Leonie, who had been silent, started screaming in my ear, wanting to know what was happening. I couldn’t shoot August. I wouldn’t shoot him. I just needed him sidelined so that I could kill Jack Ming. I would explain later, if he let me. If he didn’t shoot me on sight.

I hit August, a hard right cross, catching him off balance, and he fell. But as he hit the concrete, he kicked out at my legs. I hit the floor, mad. We’d entered Special Projects together, trained together, sparred together. August was bigger than me, heavy with Minnesota farm and college football muscle that he maintained. And now he was mad at me for screwing up what had to be a career highlight. He delivered a kick toward my chest and I caught his foot.

Corner of my eye, I saw Jack Ming scrambling for his gun.

He might shoot both of us. I would if I were him.

I pulled on the foot, going into a roll, knocking August off balance. He was bigger than me but I was more wiry and faster. I couldn’t think of him as a friend, I couldn’t. Not now.

He wrenched free from my grip – despite his bulk, I underestimated how strong he was – and kicked me, catching me in the face. Heel hit jaw, hurt like hell where I’d already been battered by the sisters. I felt blood on my lips. August circled me, a look mixing disgust and confusion on his face, and hammered three hard, fast punches into my chest. I fell back against the wall; I felt the raised thumbs of the light switches stab my spine. He started to scream at Ming and I, stumbling back, twisted to see Ming running. Gun in hand, but running. From both of us, throwing himself out into the alley.

‘Grab him!’ August screamed and I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to a partner who was listening in, same as Leonie.

I yelled ‘Ming’s heading out!’ But I already heard footsteps pounding on the stairs. Leonie dashed past me and August. He made a grab at her but she dodged him, mostly because I roundhouse-kicked him as hard as I could in the chest.

He fell but as I turned to pursue Ming I stumbled over his backpack. He’d left it behind in his panic. I fell. August, huffing, closed hands around my throat and threw me into the adjoining, unfinished wall I’d complained about to Meggie when she was pretending to be Beth Marley.

The drywall gave way and we tumbled through it together. Coughing, I fought to free his grip from my throat. He wouldn’t let go and those damn sausage-thick fingers started to squeeze the life out of me. He didn’t want me dead, he wanted me out of the way. So I sagged, like I was passing out. He let go and levered back a fist to slam it into my face.

I clawed my hands around his fist and held it still.

‘Why?’ he yelled.

‘They’re gonna kill my kid if I don’t,’ I said, before I could think.

‘Evacuate the informant if you have him,’ he yelled. Oh crap. He was talking to someone. He was wired. A team was here.

I shoved him off me and I seized a splintered support from the broken wall. I wrenched it free and I skimmed it right across the back of the skull. He collapsed.

For one horrifying second I thought I had killed him. I checked him. He was breathing.

I ran, stumbling into the alley, after Leonie and Jack, into whatever awaited.