The Nowhere Man

53 Some Delicacies

Confusion and mayhem roiled through the ballroom, catching like a flame. Sark had someone by the lapel — a Somalian warlord? — his drawn-back fist restrained by one of the narcos. Dex staggered out leaving a jagged trail of blood, another narco at his side. Candy and Orphan M had appeared. They alone looked composed, leaning against the grand piano in the rear of the room, a nightclub act between sets. Candy caught Evan’s eye.

And she grinned.

Behind her beautiful teeth, there was hunger.

René gestured frantically for the guards to get everyone under control.

Evan sat calmly on his chair watching the show.

As the commotion built to a crescendo, Xalbador swapped out his less-lethal shotgun for an AK-47. Standing on a chair, he swept the barrel across the crowd. “¡Cállense!” he shouted. “Shut up!”

It took some prodding from the other narcos, but at last a version of order had been restored.

“I can sell him, box and all,” René said, addressing the crowd of bidders. “You can buy him and starve him to death, like a lizard in a jar. Savor every minute.”

“This is not our agreement,” Sark said. “I want it to be worse than this for him. I want access to his soft flesh.”

The Widow Lakshminarayanan made a throaty sound of agreement. The others voiced their displeasure.

“He has a gun,” the Somalian said.

“He’s locked inside a bulletproof box,” René said.

“What if he—”

“If he so much as opens that door, he’ll be looking straight down the barrel of an AK-47.”

Evan made eye contact with Candy in the back of the ballroom. Though he couldn’t be sure from this distance, it seemed she was enjoying herself almost as much as he was. The clamor grew, and René waded into the group to make assurances.

A debate raged over what to do. No simple solution was forthcoming. Evan had taken René’s biggest strength, his ingenuity, and turned it against him.

Lexan is bullet-resistant, impact-resistant, heat-resistant up to 212 degrees and cold-resistant down to 40 below. And that’s at normal thickness. The vault walls were a solid foot deep. René had thought he was building Evan a cage.

But he’d made him a suit of armor.

Evan relaxed in his chair. He wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. And the customers were growing increasingly displeased.

“—sarin nerve gas through the rear vent,” the Serbian was recommending.

“How does that get him in hand?” Sark said. “We must hire a crane. Drop this box from a great height and shatter him free.”

The Hong Kong gangster’s translator was working overtime to keep his employer in the conversation. “—get the entire unit offshore on one of our crude-oil tankers. We can slide him off into the sea and watch him sink.”

A chorus of protests went up, the argument threatening to explode into violence. At last Assim pulled René aside. They quietly conducted a more serious discussion at the fringe of the chairs.

When they were done, René signaled to Xalbador, who quieted the scrum once again.

“We have a solution,” René said.

Sark’s glaucomic eyes found a sudden focus. “Which is?”

“Breaching the vault,” Assim said.

At this, Candy stepped forward, interested at last. M hung behind her, his eyes level with her shoulder, observing the scene quietly.

“Mr. al-Hakeem and I were just discussing the risk of damaging the goods,” René said. “We’d hate for the overpressure from the charge to pancake the Nowhere Man’s vital organs.”

“Yes,” Sark said. “That would be a shame.”

“Fortunately, I have quite a bit of experience,” Assim said.

“Blowing shit up,” Sark said. “This is not breaching.”

Assim raised a shaking hand and smoothed his wispy mustache. “Al-Mansoura, Yemen, 2010. Bucheli, Colombia, 2011. Gombe, Nigeria, 2012. Taji, Iraq, 2013.”

“What are these?”

“Prisons,” Candy said, her grin growing broader. “Jails. Detention Facilities.” She turned to address the group. “The good news is that this piece of shit has busted through perimeter walls, cells, and dungeons on three continents.”

“Four,” Assim said. “Edmonton Max Security Institution.” A wan smile. “Last month.”

René turned, casting his brown gaze at Evan. “You have to get him out alive.”

“I could blast a sardine out of a tin without snapping a slender little bone. Believe me…” Assim smiled, showing his broken front teeth. “I want him alive more than you do.”

“Do you have explosives on the premises?” Candy asked.

“Dex is being choppered out for medical attention as we speak,” René said. “My exceedingly discreet transport team will deliver whatever Mr. al-Hakeem requires within a few hours.”

“Take your time.” Candy looked across at Evan and ran her tongue along her lips. “Some delicacies are worth waiting for.”

WHERE R U?

EN ROUTE WITH THE TEAM. CONFIRMING COORDINATES, BUT WE LOOK TO BE LESS THAN AN HOUR OUT.

VAULT ABOUT 2 B BREACHED. THEN AUCTION WILL COMMENCE.

STALL IT. WIN THE AUCTION. ORPHAN X IS NOT TO LEAVE PREMISES UNTIL I ARRIVE.

HURRY.

The air tasted recycled. Evan tucked the edges of the plastic trash liner into the shock collar, making sure the buffer hadn’t slid out of place. He could hear his breaths off the Lexan walls, vibrating his eardrums, an inside-a-snare-drum effect. The folding chair pressed hard and cold into his lower back. The bidders milled about, their focus directed at him in passing, as if he were a fish tank in a crowded lobby. So many of his enemies were right in this very room. And yet they constituted only a fraction of those who wanted him dead.

With some fanfare the explosives arrived at last, a wooden shipping crate stickered with a hazmat logo and carted in by three narcos. Assim directed them to place the crate in the back of the ballroom behind the rows of folding chairs. His motor skills might have deteriorated, but at the sight of the explosives he snapped into his body differently, all simmering intensity and curt directives.

Again Candy and Evan locked eyes across the rows of chairs. She pursed her lips. Let them pop open. A good-bye kiss.

This time Evan actually found himself smiling back.

After assessing the crate, Assim walked over to the Lexan vault and measured the door, a pencil protruding from his lips. He ignored Evan, focused only on the task. Then he walked back to the crate and ordered the men to unload it. They lifted out a spool of hundred-grain detonating cord. Thin plastic tubing packed with pentaerythritol tetranitrate, det cord explodes at four miles a second, giving the effect of simultaneous detonation. A linear precision cutting charge, it can be wrapped around a concrete pylon or contoured to any outline of choice, the best bet in the world of explosives to get that Wile E. Coyote — shaped-hole-in-a-wall effect. It is ideal for rock-carving work, building demolition, dock-pile removal.

But it is best for breaching.

Before Assim was done, it would knock the Lexan door off its hinges and Evan off his feet, leaving him exposed to a firing squad of AK-47s.

The explosives and gunpowder amassed in the ballroom could take out a small militia group.

Evan had a handgun.

To be precise, he had six bullets in a Kimber .45. Given what he was facing, it wasn’t much of a weapon.

He heard Jack, perennial teacher and father, laughing at him from beyond the grave. That Kimber’s not your weapon. You are the weapon. And your finger’s the safety.

As a child, as an operator in high-threat zones, as an impostor in the ordinary-life world of Castle Heights, he moved alone. For as long as he could remember, loneliness had been his companion. But never had he felt as isolated as he did now, locked in a transparent box, surrounded by people competing for the right to slaughter him.

He wished Jack were here.

Over the years he felt Jack’s absence acutely — as loss, as guilt, as remorse. But not like this.

Right now he missed Jack himself. Jack of the baseball-catcher build. Jack of the world-class squint, the well-grooved crow’s-feet. Jack who always knew when to not say anything, when to just rest a hand on Evan’s boy-skinny shoulder.

Evan had been unwilling to admit to himself what a toll the last week and a half had taken. But now the rawness overtook him, threatening to divert his focus. He snapped himself back into line, reminded himself where he was and what was at stake. He was in a shark cage circled by great whites; the last thing he could afford right now was a stroll down memory lane. Jack was dead. It was up to Evan and Evan alone.

The bidders had settled in to wait not so patiently on the folding chairs, quarreling or sitting sullenly. Candy McClure and Orphan M were the only two not in the room. Evan wondered what plans they were hatching in private. As much for show as for anything else, René kept one dedicated guard standing by the vault door, his AK trained on Evan. Back by the grand piano, Assim was on his knees, cutting precise lengths of det cord off the spool.

A ring of duct tape dangling from his mouth, Assim walked back to the Lexan vault again. With shaking hands he taped a length of det cord along the hinge side of the door. He used smaller strips to augment the main charge. When he was done, he stood back to admire his work.

For a moment he and Evan faced each other through the Lexan.

“Ready to get yanked through the looking glass?” Assim tapped the Lexan. “We’re minutes away.”

Evan felt his heart rate quicken, so he focused on his breathing. Right now there was nothing to do but inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale.

Heading back down the aisle toward the staging point in the rear of the ballroom, Assim snapped his fingers. Two guards carried over a hefty olive green ammo can. They moved cautiously, setting down the metal box with extreme care. Assim unlatched the lid, smiled down at the contents. It took two men to lift out the initiation assembly. They did so gingerly. It was a factory-assembled unit, fifty feet of wasp yellow nonelectric shock tube wound around a coil, the blasting cap already crimped onto the end. Given that it was shock-sensitive, even a four-foot drop onto the hardwood could set it off.

The non-el shock tube, once unrolled and connected to the det cord, would function like a fuse. From a healthy standoff, Assim would flip a lever, propagating the firing impulse through the shock tube snaking across the ballroom floor to the vault door. A fraction of a second later, Evan would be lying on his back inside the blasted-open Lexan vault, bleeding from his ears.

Sensing that a climax was near, the bidders vacated their chairs, gathering around Assim.

René turned to Xalbador. “Two of our guests are missing.”

One of the other narcos said, “They’re resting in their room until the auction starts.”

“Get them,” René said.

Xalbador nodded and started out.

René turned back to the room. “Are we ready?”

Assim rose, his legs trembling from the exertion. He’d sweated through his shirt. “Just have to connect the shock tube to the det cord.”

Sark elbowed his way through the cluster. “What will you use to initiate?”

A faint whirring sound carried across the rows of empty chairs and then a loud clank. The bidders turned as one.

Evan lowered his palm from the inside panel, the vault door clicking open. He jabbed the door out, knocking the guard onto his ass, then swung it back to use as a shield. He peered from the slender gap, the Kimber .45 pointed.

“I have a suggestion,” he said.