Run Among Thorns
Authors: Anna Louise Lucia
DEDICATION:
For Paul and Christine Lucia, the first people to show me the importance of words, and to inspire in me a love of stories.
Whoever thought reading Narnia stories in a tent at bedtime would lead to this?
Published 2008 by Medallion Press, Inc.
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is a registered tradmark of Medallion Press, Inc.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”
Copyright © 2008 by Anna Louise Lucia
Cover Illustration by Adam Mock
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro
ISBN# 9781933836331
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
To everyone who ever calmed me down, cheered me up, encouraged, challenged, brow-beat and inspired me during the long evolution of Jenny and Kier’s story – thank you.
But especially to Pete Bennett, for teaching me how. Dee Tenorio, for challenging me to begin. Julie Cohen and Brigid Coady, for being critique partners, cheer leaders, pep-talkers and most importantly friends. Kate Walker, my cyber-mum and precious mentor. Thank you. I am blessed beyond words.
Thank you to WritingGIAM, the Gonna Beez, the Struggling Writers and the Therapy gang. You know who you are…
Last, but oh-so-certainly not least, my heartfelt and loving thanks to my husband Ian, for endless patience and understanding, for plot brainstorming and for Kier’s hair.
Table of Contents
A man does not run among thorns for no reason: either he is chasing a snake, or a snake is chasing him.
African Proverb
Chapter
ONE
T
he video footage was from a CCTV camera perched above a courtyard. It gave a perfect view of the square yard, with the office buildings around the edges. They were new buildings, with little logos by the doors; a few businesses in rented premises. Only one logo was really recognisable, indicating a small office of the local National Park Service.
The film was black and white. In the corner of the courtyard grey geraniums flowered in grey pots.
In the middle of the scene was a knot of people. A row of people on their knees, hands behind their back. Four men and three women. One of the men was shaking so violently it was plainly visible; one of the women was sobbing.
In front of the kneeling line were three other men. They were dressed in dark clothes, with ski masks. The man in front was tall, huge, holding a massive handgun, and waving it at the kneeling people, in their suits and office haircuts. His body language was taut, violent, and he stepped back and forth jerkily, shoulders heaving, mouth working.
Behind him, to the left and to the right, were two others. One was smaller than the others, and slight. He held another pistol and looked around rapidly and nervously. The last man stood still, holding a semiautomatic across his chest.
In the video, the shouting man approached one of the kneeling men, who was shaking his head urgently and continuously. The big man pointed the gun at him. It jerked. The kneeling man clutched at his stomach as he keeled over and thrashed on the ground, his mouth stiffly wide open, his throat working.
The rest of the hostages wavered, as if buffeted by a strong wind, and the sobbing woman covered her ears with her hands. The woman next to her, the one with the long, curly hair tied back in a ponytail, reached out and laid an arm along the other woman’s shoulders, leaning close and comforting.
The big man jumped forward, mouth a thin line, and grabbed the long-haired woman by her ponytail, hauling her to her feet and out to the front of the line. He jabbed the gun into her back and she stumbled, long white fingers grabbing at the hand that fisted in her hair, her face screwed up in pain.
He held her still and turned back to the hostages.
He was waving the gun and shouting again, indicating the man writhing on the ground, threatening the man who would have gone to help him.
The long-haired woman stood very, very still.
Then she moved.
Spinning on the ball of one foot, she turned under the arm of the big man, sliding one slim hand down his arm to his gun hand. Once behind him she bent her knee into the back of his, making his leg buckle, making him turn. Holding his hand on the gun, tightening his finger on the trigger.
The small man shot first, and the big man jerked and quaked as the bullets struck him in the chest. Then the woman moved his arm with hers and shot the small man in the throat. In the black-and-white footage, the blood fountained high and dark.
As the semiautomatic began firing, she dropped the big man, snatching his pistol. She dived, rolled. Away from the hostages. A little line of dust spouts followed her, lancing from the spout of white flame that leapt from the muzzle of the other man’s gun. In a flurry of dust, she rose on one elbow and fired. The man with the semiautomatic staggered and fell backwards against the office exterior, forehead suddenly stamped with a black blot.
She got to her feet carefully. The big man was still moving, reaching into his clothes.
She shot him in the head.
Then she stood there, perfectly still, while the others knelt in shock before her. She looked up and stared into the CCTV camera. Her face was totally blank.
On the time readout of the footage, less than twenty seconds had passed.
A man whose security tag identified him as John Dawson stepped before the big video screen and looked back at the men seated in rows of chairs rising up the steps of the small amphitheatre. He lifted a hand and someone stopped the video, turned on the lights.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “That’s what we have.” He glanced down at the clipboard he held, lifting the sheets one by one. In the chairs, his audience began to murmur and shuffle the pages in the dossiers they’d been given.
“You have witness statements, backgrounds on all present, information on the businesses with offices there. On the face of it, it’s fairly simple. Charles William MacGreggor and Barry James MacGreggor ran an illegal hunting and guiding operation about to be prosecuted on evidence supplied by the National Park Service. They went where they weren’t supposed to go, and killed what they weren’t supposed to kill. There was likely to be a heavy fine and potentially a custodial sentence also. It seems, gentlemen, that they were not very nice people. Craig Watson was a hunter who ran parties on their land, and he was also a convicted felon. Assault and armed robbery.”
John let the papers fall, and glanced up. “But. And it’s a big but. None of that explains why Ms. Jenny Waring thought this a good opportunity to demonstrate some of the finest offensive moves in close combat ever filmed. For real.”
He turned back to the screen, and someone brought up a freeze-frame of the last shot, with the white-faced woman staring at the camera.
“We’re not interested in the MacGreggor brothers and Watson. That’s with local law enforcement and out of our role—a simple case of intimidation gone wrong. This agency is concerned with Waring only. We know next to nothing about her. British Intelligence will be sending us what they have within the hour, but I get the impression they’ve been caught on the hop, too. Who is she? Why is she here? What was she doing on an exchange programme with the National Park? That’s what we need to know, gentlemen. And that’s what you need to find out.”
John turned back from the screen. One of the men raised an arm.
“Yes?”
“Where is Waring now?”
John gave a small, thin smile. “She’s here at this facility. We picked her up from local police custody, within eight hours of the incident. She’s been in interrogation here for the past thirty-six hours, but at the moment she’s sticking to her cover story. She was here on a temporary visa, purely on a work placement exchange. There’s no one local who knows much, either.”
The video flickered off again, and the man called John looked around at the men in briefing. “We were forced to rest her on medical advice, but we have plans in motion to break through that cover stat. In the meantime, you’re on background checks. As much information as possible. As soon as possible. This one caught the Agency with its pants down, gentlemen, and unless we get some answers soon, it’s not going to be pretty. We’re supposed to know about people like this
before
they spring into action. We didn’t. That’s unacceptable. Get to it.”
Later, John returned to the briefing room. Someone had set the video clip on loop, and it played in the dark, Jenny Waring moving, pirouetting, lunging, shooting. John went closer to the screen, until he distorted the edge of the projection and the falling body fell on his sleeve. He slanted a glance at the figure in the back corner of the room, light glinting on his glass as he took a drink.
“What do you think, McAllister?” John asked.
The figure in the shadows took another long, slow swallow from the glass. “She’s trained, that’s certain. I don’t think anyone has natural reactions like that. And it’s rare for someone with no experience of firearms to be able to execute something like that and overcome the social morals of the situation. If anything that’s what doesn’t fit.”
“How?”
“If you have a trained professional who might betray their training, it’s safer to provide a reason for that expertise. Make them a competing marksman, or a member of a gun club. It’s strange she has no alibi.”
John grunted. “So, you taking it on?”
Another swallow. The silence lengthened and John fidgeted with his clipboard. When McAllister finally spoke, there was a trace of amusement in his voice.
“Yeah. I’ll take her on.”
“He’s generally known as a trainer, sir. Unaffiliated with any particular agency, but endorsed by them all.” John Dawson glanced at the file in his hand, then back to the bulky, grey-haired man sitting behind the imposing desk. Arnold Davids was his boss, head of the facility, and today he was uncomfortable.
It wasn’t the fidgeting, exactly. Davids always fiddled with the papers on his desk, or with his gold watch. Usually irritated by the mannerisms, today John was feeling a little more sympathetic. Because the other man in the room—Jeremy Groven—made John nervous, too.
“Go on,” said Groven, now, sitting back at ease in one of the leather armchairs against the left-hand wall.
John glanced at Davids, who nodded. “Well, he’s rather more than a trainer. His background is hazy, but we know he’s from somewhere in Maine originally. We can attach him to the Marines and to the CIA via an advisory post. He’s turned up obliquely in a number of international conflicts, and worked for a while for the NSA. I suppose now he’s what you’d call freelance, sir. He could command just about any fee he chooses to name, but what he does request is surprisingly reasonable. He has houses in Maine and Toronto, and we believe a couple of properties in Europe. Nothing ostentatious. We believe that’s more about being global, than an acquisition of assets. He lives quite a while on the road, too, buys a new pickup every other year.
“We use him regularly for special training and occasionally in the field,” he continued. “He coordinates hostage recovery like no one on the planet and has a flair for debriefing agents and interrogating—”
“We’ve read the file, Dawson,” drawled Groven.
John paused. It was a damn big file, and Davids frequently relied on him to summarise. It was John’s job, after all, to find—and deliver—the information they wanted. He sent his boss a measuring look without acknowledging Groven’s interruption. “He brought all the information out of the Petersen debacle, and broke Wilson Chen in 2001,” he said.
“Sweet Jesus!”
“I think, sir, on the balance of the information, almost certainly not.” John allowed a hint of humour to creep into his voice, but the man behind the desk wasn’t responding. He cleared his throat. “How’s he do it?” asked his boss. “It’s the McAllister Method, sir,” he replied with a trace of wry smile. “He just stays as close to the subject as humanly possible, tries to create an emotional contact, make sure there’s no downtime, no time to relax. After a while the deception becomes too burdensome and the subject either breaks down or gives up. It plays on the whole Stockholm syndrome thing, I suspect.”
“Sounds extremely … unprofessional.”
“That may be, sir. However, he is the best.”
“And you’ve given him his briefing?” Groven asked. John went to put his file on the corner of the desk and thought better of it, holding it tucked against his left forearm instead. “Yes, sir. The briefing shows that she didn’t appear in any of our prelim studies, not any of our potentials list, not even the Professor Birkby File. It begs the question, if she got through, how many others did? We’ve made it plain that her existence threatens the validity of all our work here, sir. We want to know who trained her, why she’s here at all. And what was so important one sunny morning that she had to blow her cover. It’s his job to find out.”
“Good,” said Groven, with satisfaction. “Will it be enough?” Davids asked. “If you’re asking if he’ll do what we want … then, yes, sir, he will.”
He saw that Groven was smiling. “Good,” he said, again.
McAllister stood staring, playing with a cigarette he had no intention of lighting.
From the high windows looking down into the interrogation room, he could see clearly. He impassively watched the knot of men gathered around the subject.
They were still working on her, but she was either acting to within an inch of her life, or she was too damn tired to hear at all. He caught glimpses of her as the interrogation team moved around the table, sometimes leaning over her, sometimes shaking her shoulder, slapping their hand on the desk in front of her, pulling at the back of her chair.