The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (28 page)

He had the Walther out before he was fully awake. He slid up into a low squat, pressing against the column at his back, and peeked around the edge of it.

The shots had sounded from one of the pedestrian bridges suspended over the tracks, and Conor spotted Sedgwick, half- hidden in the shadows on the far side of the bridge. He stood within twenty feet of the staircase, gun gripped in one hand at chest level, but those last twenty feet were completely exposed. He was pinned in a shallow alcove, safely shielded but trapped.

He couldn’t tell if the agent had seen him, and he could not identify the enemy. Along the bridge, bystanders skittered like ball bearings dropped on the pavement. Some were running back to the terminal while others threw themselves to the ground. Several huddled together behind a sheet metal structure—a snack stand, he surmised—at the center of the bridge. Everyone seemed to be shouting.

He took in the panoramic mayhem and pulled his head back, letting it rest against the steel column. The surreal tableau resembled nothing so much as a shooting gallery. It seemed eerily similar to the weapons simulation facility at Fort Monckton. Hit the right targets and rack up points, hit the wrong ones and—well, no, on second thought, it wasn’t similar at all.

“Shit,” Conor sighed.

Briefly closing his eyes, he reviewed his options and made a decision. He repositioned himself to face forward, and bracing an arm against the girder, stepped out from his cover to squeeze off two quick shots.

A deafening crash sounded as the bullets hit the top of the snack stand. The roof lurched up and spun sideways while the rest of the structure skewed to the right with a stuttering screech. It was abrupt and dramatic, just as he’d hoped. He stood perfectly still to watch its aftereffects. The success of the strategy depended on being able to see something he recognized and to see it in time.

People who’d previously been upright dropped to the floor in fresh panic while others already down tried to flatten themselves more completely; and in the space of an instant, he saw a particular sort of movement from a figure crouched near the snack stand. He flexed his wrist an inch to the left and fired. The figure jerked spasmodically, screaming as he was struck, while at the same time a bullet glanced off the steel next to Conor and sent a shower of sparks streaming over his head.

“Target good, ten points for me,” he whispered shakily, ducking back behind the girder. More bullets ricocheted off the girder and surrounding pavement before another set of shots signaled that Sedgwick was drawing fire to give him cover. Conor darted out and immediately had the gunman in sight but had no clear shot. He put a few more rounds into the collapsing snack stand and ducked back, swearing. The air around him popped and pinged as the barrage shifted to him again.

The pattern continued until he finally saw an opening. He took the shot while Sedgwick bolted for the stairs, also firing as he ran. The figure on the bridge, seemingly hit from both directions, crumpled without a sound.

Conor’s eyes swept along the bridge as the silence continued. He emerged from hiding and was heading toward Sedgwick, who was yelling something as he raced down the stairs. The ground in front of Conor erupted in a series of tiny explosions.

“Second gun, second gun! There were two of them!” Conor dove, half-rolling and half-crawling back to the relative safety of the steel girder.

“He’s too close to this side. I don’t have an angle,” Sedgwick called from the stairwell when the shooting stopped. “I can’t even see him. Cover me, and I’ll come over to you.”

“Christ, no, don’t!” Conor shouted. “There isn’t enough here to shield both of us.”

“Then I’ll go back up and—”

“And be gone for your tea in about ten seconds. He’s right by the top of the stairs. You can’t do anything, Sedgwick. Just stay where you are. He’s got no shot at you there.”

“Well, what do you want to do, then?”

“Haven’t a clue,” Conor mumbled. He was close to the end of the little strength he’d had to begin with and what breath he could muster was coming in hoarse gasps. He also needed to reload.

“McBride, did you hear me?” Sedgwick called. “Are you all right over there?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just hang on a minute.”

He popped the spent magazine from the Walther, and with shaking fingers, pulled the spare from his shoulder holster. As he snapped it into place, he looked up and saw the station engine come into view. It was chugging slowly up the platform with the Pullman car in tow, gliding onto the scene like the proverbial
deus ex machina
. Conor watched its approach with grim determination.

“Right. We’ll have to make this work.”

He wiped his palms against his shirt and took a firmer grip on the gun. He waved it at the engineer, motioning for him to keep the train moving, but the wild-eyed man cowering in the cab needed no such encouragement.

“Get ready to run for it,” Conor shouted to Sedgwick. “You first. I’ll count it off and you’ll go on three, right?”

“And who’s going to cover you running for it?” Sedgwick countered skeptically.

“If I hit him, I won’t need it, and if he was any good, he’d have got me the first time.”

“Not a smart plan. It’s too dicey.”

“Too dicey?” He very nearly laughed. “Get on your mark and get ready, you horse’s ass. One, two . . . three!”

Sedgwick sprang from the stairwell as Conor opened fire. He took the first three shots while still protected behind the girder, and the next several he released on the run. Since they were all more or less blind, he aimed them high, unwilling to risk an indiscriminate spray at the bridge. Ahead of him, Sedgwick twisted and began shooting as he continued running. With the additional firepower providing at least the illusion of cover, Conor stopped in the middle of the platform and took more careful aim.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sedgwick yelled. “Keep moving, for God’s sake! Get on the train!”

“It’s all right,” Conor murmured, mostly for his own benefit. “I’ve got him.”

In the next instant the dark shape on the bridge pitched over the side, and after a drop of forty feet, landed facedown on the rails of Track 27. Conor swayed forward a few steps and dropped down to brace his hands on his knees as Sedgwick arrived at his side.

“The other one. Is he dead as well?” Conor asked.

The agent gave him a level look. “What answer would you prefer to hear?”

He hung his head, not responding. Sedgwick put a hand on his shoulder.

“Come on, ace. That station engineer looked like he wasn’t stopping until he hits the ocean. We’ll never catch him if we don’t get going, and we don’t want to be around when the police get here.”

“A bit weird that they’re not already, isn’t it? We made enough noise.”

“Yeah, I thought that, too.” Sedgwick looked up at the shrieking pedestrians on the bridge with a frown. “Those guys didn’t strike me as Rohit Mehta’s typical lowlife taporis. They don’t usually carry guns. Something even weirder—they were clearly targeting me. Unless somebody already discovered what really got buried down at the Sassoon Dock, Khalil had no reason to come after me.”
 

“What do you think it means?”

“Damned if I know,” Sedgwick said. “Anyway, we don’t have time to figure it out now. We need to run for it.”

With his head still down, Conor tried to fortify himself with a deeper breath and failed. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“You can do it,” Sedgwick insisted, putting a hand under his arm. “Your brother will have my guts for garters if you don’t.”

Straightening slowly, Conor began an acerbic remark, but the words caught in his throat. Doubling over again, he struggled for breath around a spasm of gagging coughs while pressure mounted in his lungs like a tightening knot. Sedgwick caught him as he fell and lowered him to the ground. Still coughing, Conor pressed his hands on the pavement, bracing against the unbearable pain in his chest. He felt something give way and finally could breathe again. He opened his eyes and stared at a spot between his arms where the concrete was stained with a dark patch of blood.

“Oh. Fuck.” He gazed at the spot in mild, surprised annoyance.

Sedgwick knelt in front of him, white-faced, his anxiety yielding to tentative relief.

“That’s it? ‘Oh, fuck,’ like you just snapped a friggin’ shoelace? You’ve just—literally, it looks like—hacked up a lung and scared me shitless, and that’s all you can say?”

“Sorry.”

“You should be.” Sedgwick sat on his heels and pressed his hands against his eyes. When he looked up again, he brightened. “Here comes Tom. He must have managed to get that bug-eyed engineer to pull over and wait for us.”

Thomas was coming at a run, peppering them with questions as he approached. “Are you all right? What the hell was it about, then? Are they gone? Are they—holy mother of God . . . ” He broke off as he saw the body lying across the tracks, and registered even greater alarm as he caught sight of the blood. “How bad is it? Where are you hit?”

“No, it isn’t . . . I didn’t get shot,” Conor stammered. He drew a hand across his mouth and gave a slight start as he looked at it.

“Here.” His brother pulled out a handkerchief and passed it to him, his weathered face twisting in anguish. “Sedgwick, we’re mad to be hauling him away to the mountains. Sure there’s nothing up there. We ought to be taking him to a hospital to see a doctor.”

“I’ve seen one already, Thomas,” Conor said quietly. He wiped his mouth and wadded the bloodied handkerchief in his hand. “And he’s seen all he needs to of me. The drugs will either work, or they won’t. It’s only been a few days.”

He put a hand against his side and took a cautious breath, the deepest one he’d managed all day. “To be honest, I’m feeling a bit better. Maybe I shook something up in there.”

“Then get up and start moving,” Sedgwick said briskly, looking at his watch. “We’ve got ten minutes to hook up with our train.”

They half-dragged and half-carried him down the tracks and up the stairs into the Pullman. Within twenty minutes— after one of those Indian feats of organization that pulls improbable success from a cauldron of chaos—it was smoothly riding along at the end of the ten o’clock train to Nagpur.

As soon as he stepped on board, a quick glance was all Conor needed to recognize he had seriously underestimated the charms of the “Redwood Special.” Unlike the shopworn exterior, its interior was designed to satisfy the creature comforts of the most discerning maharajah, or, in this case, mobster. With plush, royal red carpeting and upholstery; gold-plated fixtures; marble accents; and a dining room complete with crystal chandelier, the car was nothing short of a rolling mansion.

Unfortunately, he got no immediate chance to enjoy its amenities and no immediate answers to the questions that were piling up at an accelerating rate. He had barely eased into the comfort of the long-awaited couch when he was being forcibly dosed with a handful of antibiotics, followed by a paregoric chaser. Fiercely, he fought to hold his ground against the soporific haze stealing over him.

“Sneaky bunch, the lot of you,” he croaked, scowling as Kavita put a hand to his forehead, lips pursed in diagnostic concentration. “Like a feckin’ ambush. Well, you won’t get out of it that way. I’ll not be going quietly until I get answers. Let’s have the story you promised, Sedgwick, and hurry up about it.”

“Afraid it’s going to have to wait a little longer,” Sedgwick said. “I’m getting off the train at Nasik to head back and see if I can figure out a few things. I’ll catch up with you again in Agra. You’ve got a twelve-hour layover when you get there.”

He shifted his gaze to Thomas and found no help there either. “You’ll not be getting anything out of me. This was all his idea. Let him tell it.”

“Okay, then. Fine.” Conor struggled obstinately against the insidious embrace of the sofa cushions and turned back to Sedgwick. “We’ve got a few hours before Nasik, so start talking. Like you said earlier, we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

From their respective chairs across the room, Thomas and Sedgwick exchanged an ironic glance. The agent’s face quivered, and Thomas responded with a half-suppressed snort. A few seconds later, they were both convulsed with laughter.

“Do you not think it’s long enough already, you silly gack?” Thomas gasped. “You’re cracksome, little brother, no mistake. I love your spunk, but Jaysus, have a look at yourself. You’re covered in dirt, pale as the white bull of Connaught, and have bloodstains all down the front of you. You’re looking like something the tide wouldn’t take out.”

Conor looked down and winced in distaste. Contrary to Sedgwick’s presumption, the sight of a moderate amount of his own blood pooling on the pavement—where it had no business being—had produced a substantial shock. As supporting evidence making the diagnosis more certain, he could have done without it. The sight of the rusty stains drying on his shirt was just that last bit of melodrama that proved too much for him. His resistance disintegrated.

“You’re right,” he whispered and closed his eyes.

27

F
OR
A
WEEK
,
THE
R
EDWOOD
S
PECIAL
CONTINUED
ITS
HOPSCOTCH
journey from one scheduled train to another, attaching and uncoupling from each like a faithless consort. It rolled from Aurangabad to Nagpur to Ahmedabad, clattering across the powder-dry Indian countryside in a zigzag pattern; and apart from brief intervals when he was made to sit up and swallow something, Conor slept through most of it.

After defying it with such persistence, his capitulation to illness was so complete and his exhausted surrender so out of character that Thomas and Kavita became openly anxious for the return of his “cracksome” obstinacy.

They had valid grounds for concern. When he was awake enough to be sensible, Conor was unnerved by the intensity of his symptoms. No matter how still he kept, everything ached, and the awareness of each laborious breath produced such fatigue that he worried he might unconsciously stop trying.