Dick Stivers: They Came to Kill

"What if their man doesn't want to come back?"

"Bang."

"Like that?"

"Just relaying the instructions. Soon as you get here, we go."

"Give me a few hours. Later." Lyons hung up and returned to the technician. "Can you do a rush job on the checkouts?"

"You're working?" Randall asked.

"Dirty work for the Agency."

Randall looked to the two other men. "What do you think?"

Bob shrugged. "Service while you wait."

Footfalls crunched on broken glass.

Powell lay on his living-room couch and listened as the slow, careful footsteps — advancing, pausing, advancing again — approached his apartment door.

Throughout the night, battles had raged. Militias hammered opponents with mortars and automatic weapons, explosions and firefights tearing up the neighborhoods along the Green Line dividing the city. From emplacements near the port, the Phalangists shelled the Druze in the Shuf Mountains, then Druze and Syrians replied with artillery and rockets.

The accurate 155mm high-explosive shells blasted the Christian forces near the port, but the barrages of Soviet 120mm and 240mm rockets fell throughout the city, indiscriminately killing and maiming Christians and Muslims.

One rocket hit a neighboring apartment house. Powell woke to screams and sirens. He left his bed and went to sleep on the couch. His bedroom opened to the balcony and a view of the mountains, but the living room had no windows, only a door to the hallway. The extra wall of masonry between him and the explosions would stop glass and shrapnel if a rocket hit his balcony.

Before dawn, the fighting stopped. Quiet returned as the sirens of ambulances taking the wounded to hospitals faded. The city remained unnaturally quiet, without the sounds of the morning traffic rush, as commuters and truck drivers waited in the uncertain safety of their homes rather than risk driving into another barrage of high explosives and phosphorus.

In the strange quiet, Powell listened for sounds outside his apartment door, and heard footsteps.

He thumbed off the safety on his Colt. Listening, he visualized the hallway. The explosion in the next apartment building had shattered the windows at the end of the hall, spraying broken glass over the linoleum.

Assassins did not come alone. They worked in teams. Unless they intended to bomb him. A killer? Phalangist? Iranian? Islamic Amal? Libyan? The thought of who might have paid an assassin to kill him distracted him for a moment as his memory reviewed the long list of his enemies. He gave up the effort.

Who cares who it is? They came to kill.

Slipping from under his blanket, Powell went silently into the bedroom. He put on sneakers, then his Kevlar vest. Through the dirty glass and blurry anti-shatter plastic film of the sliding balcony doors, he scanned the opposite rooftops. He saw nothing unusual, no one waiting to shoot as he came out. He slid the door open and stepped into the freezing morning.

He crossed his balcony to the balcony of the next apartment. The family living there had moved from the apartment after a hit from an RPG killed their infant boy and the grandmother. Since then, Powell had paid the rent on the apartment. He glanced through the shattered windows, saw no one in the empty interior. He hurried over the dust and blood-stiff carpets to the hallway door.

Months before, he had installed three fish-eye peepholes in this door. One lens looked to the right, one to the center, the third to the left. The three peepholes gave him a view of the entire hallway.

He saw a pale young man in heavy coat and wool hat knocking on his door. No one else.

By touch, Powell keyed the combination of the padlock on the heavy steel bar securing the door. He threw open the door and extended the pistol, sighting on the head of the wool-capped figure.

The figure turned, mouth opening, eyes going wide. Powell was almost as surprised. The person at the other end of the barrel was a woman! Stumbling backward, she almost fell, but braced herself against the wall. "Don't... don't... please don't shoot. I..."

"Who are you?" Powell demanded.

"I'm here to see..." She recovered from her shock and studied him for a moment. "I'm here to talk to you."

"Then answer me! Who are you?"

"Anne Desmarais, I'm a journalist."

"French?"

"Yes, from Quebec."

"Why you creeping around out here?"

"Creeping? The glass could cut my tennis shoes — and there are no numbers on the doors."

"Isn't that a shame. What do you want?"

"I want to interview you about the killing of George Clayton."

"Clayton who? Don't know who you're talking about. You must have the wrong address." Powell started to shut the door.

"I'll exchange information!" she called out.

"What information?"

"I don't want to talk out here."

"What information?" he insisted.

She stepped closer to him. Her right hand went into her coat pocket. Powell aimed the Colt at her face. She explained quickly, her voice tight. "I have a photo — here. This is the Iranian who had Clayton killed. His name's Rouhani."

The grainy black-and-white print showed two men talking. One had the unkempt hair and beard of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The other wore the Soviet-style greatcoat with the insignia of the Syrian army.

"Who's the other one?" Powell asked.

"Want to talk, American?"

"Sure, wait here." Powell closed the door and replaced the steel bar and combination lock. He waited a few seconds, then looked through the peepholes. The woman stood. No one moved at the ends of the hallway. Powell went back to his apartment. He paused to pull on his fatigue pants and shirt. Then he buckled on his black nylon shoulder holster for his Colt autopistol.

He listened for movement in the hallway before throwing open the door and standing aside.

"Who do you think I am?" she asked as she walked into his apartment.

"I don't know." He kicked the door closed and slid the locking bar across. Keeping the cocked and unlocked Colt pointed at the ceiling, he slapped the pockets of her coat with his left hand, finding a change purse, a note pad and pen, several photos, a roll of Lebanese pounds. He threw the note pad and photos on the couch. Returning to the search, he jammed his hand inside her coat to check for weapons and she slapped at him as he touched her breasts.

"Stop it!"

"Then take off the coat! Move wrong and you're dead!"

"The freedom fighters have you Americans shaking," she said as she shrugged off her coat and let it slide to the floor. She wore a snug sweater, jeans and tennis shoes. A Nikon with a zoom lens hung around her neck. Around her waist she wore a web belt with several pouches. By touch, he found her identification, then her film, a flash unit, another lens and various accessories. He threw her Canadian passport and papers on the couch.

"That military gear could get you killed," he told her.

"I'm a journalist. All sides respect my neutrality."

"Dream on, mademoiselle ." Powell sight-checked her. Her tight jeans concealed nothing. He jammed his fingers in the back of her waistband. He found only the sheer synthetic of her underwear. She recoiled from his touch. Then he patted her armpits, and in the instant before she twisted away, felt the undersides of her breasts.

"Don't touch me like..." she sneered.

"What do you have in your bra?"

"You pig! You Americans..."

"What is it? Take it out!" Powell shouted.

Turning away, she put her hands under her sweater. Powell jerked her around to face him. Defiant, she pulled up her sweater, exposing the white flow of her abdomen, then her bra.

She pulled a disc of foam out of one brassiere cup. The foam had been cut to conceal a microcassette recorder. She passed it to him. He threw it on the couch, then reached into the other side of her bra and pulled out the other pad. It had a few U.S. hundred dollar bills, traveler's checks and a thousand-franc note in a plastic envelope.