Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

The old man went down, the Libyan riding on his back as he pulled the two wooden handles with all of his might. He could see the top of the man’s ears as they turned a cyanotic blue. His fingers tore at his neck trying desperately to reach the line now cutting deep into his throat, closing off his air.

Suddenly the two wooden handles jerked. They moved several inches apart as if the line joining them had snapped. But it didn’t. Instead it held. Instantly the old man’s hands fell away and his body went limp as he slid down the stairs headfirst onto the cement below, blood and aerated bubbles pouring from the deep crevice cut into his neck. The Libyan let loose of the handles. The garrote had done its job, severing the windpipe and the jugular.

He stood up, grabbed the handle of the knife, and pulled it out. He wiped the blood from the blade and the handle on the back of the victim’s coat, cut the handles from the garrote, and quickly disappeared into the darkness, snapping the blade closed as he went.

Ana made her way around the buildings and back to the cobbled walkway along the river. She approached the entrance to the bridge from upstream just in time to see the man step away from the body on the ground. She watched as he quickly walked in the other direction away from her, headed west along the river, back toward the metal bridge she had just crossed.

Ana cursed herself for her lack of patience and then followed him. As she passed the pile of death lying at the foot of the steps she realized it wasn’t one of the lawyers. It was the other man. The one they dined with. She wondered who he was, but there was no time to find out, not now. As she looked up she noticed that the killer was walking swiftly along the river, opening the distance between them.

She picked up the pace and moved, her soft-soled shoes glided silently over the rough stones. The man in front of her seemed oblivious.

Ana stayed off to the left, toward the building side of the quay, away from the water. Each time the man looked back she was in the shadows, lost among the stacked chairs and canvas-shrouded stalls of the closed-up riverside bistros. After a while he seemed to slow down, but he still hugged the river’s edge.

She wondered if he was moving toward a rendezvous with the other man she’d seen on the roof. Ana stayed with him, searching for some way to get out in front so she could take him by surprise. He passed the wrought-iron bridge. Thirty meters farther on he walked by the intersection that Ana had taken in her circuitous course to get around him. It was a tactical blunder that now left her scrambling to catch up.

She watched as he crossed a small open plaza with a broad concourse of steps leading down to the water, geese squawking in the dark distance. She waited until he cleared the open area and then raced after him.

She saw him for a fleeting instant before he disappeared around a bend where the broad quay narrowed to a paved footpath. The slender track seemed to thread between some ancient buildings stacked up against the river and the water’s edge.

For a moment Ana hesitated. The path was dark, constricted, and dangerous. If the man stopped along the way she might run right into him before she realized. She looked down, gripped the handle of the object in her hand more tightly, and moved on.

Thirty seconds further along, the path intersected with another bridge over the river, this one quite wide, open, and well lit. For a moment she wondered if he’d taken it. But as she studied the broad span over the water and the straight road it connected to across the way, she realized he couldn’t have, not unless he ducked into one of the buildings either here or on the other side. If he was walking on the open road she would still see him. Both the bridge and the street beyond were deserted.

Ana continued along the water, picking up speed, moving fast, throwing caution to the wind. But always the object in her hand was pointed forward. She passed the swift running water at the dam as it coursed around the concrete baffle, a running rapid against the stone embankment on her side of the river.

Then just as she edged around a closed cheese vendor’s stall she saw him. He was maybe fifty meters out in front of her, walking at a steady pace but not rushing. He entered an area where the path narrowed once more, this time to the point where it formed a veritable catwalk suspended over the water. In places it appeared to be barely wide enough for two people to pass. The walkway clung to the side of several buildings that formed a cliff at the water’s edge.

Ana saw her chance. An intersecting street dead-ended at the river just at the point where the catwalk began. She ran toward it, wheeled to the left away from the river, and raced along the street. It skirted around directly in front of the line of buildings edging the water. Ana ran down the broad lane in front of a three-story structure. The sign mounted in front read: MUSEUM.

She continued running past the complex of buildings, a hundred and twenty meters in all. When she rounded the corner of the last structure, she raced toward the river once more.

By the time she got there, Ana’s heart was pounding. She was breathless, her back pressed against the white plaster wall of the building as she waited.

She looked down and checked the feathered fletches on the bolt to make certain they hadn’t become detached or frayed. The custom-made crossbow was compact, silent, and powerful. Fashioned of fiber composite materials, it featured two concentric cams mounted on the detachable split limbs of the bow.

The cams multiplied the power of the thrust from the string once it was wound tight by the small cranking device she carried in her bag. It could launch a projectile at three hundred and fifty feet per second.

The weapon could shoot both longer arrows and shorter bolts. Depending on the weight of each it could deliver more than a hundred pounds of kinetic energy to the victim at fifty yards. In a word, at close range it was deadly.

Tonight Ana was hoping she wouldn’t have to use it, that the medieval appearance of the device might be enough to hold the man in place and frighten him senseless so that he would tell her what she wanted to know. There was no need to kill him if she didn’t have to.

A second later she heard what sounded like shuffling footfalls mixed with the rushing water of the river. Ana snapped a quick peek around the corner and stepped out away from the building, moving quickly to the center of the walkway. She pulled the curved rear shoulder stock tight into her body to steady her aim and sighted down the barrel over the bolt until it was pointed at the center mass of the man’s chest.

At first he didn’t even see her. For someone who had just killed another man he seemed unfazed, his attention gripped by the splendor of the river. The unremitting sound of the cascading water seemed to have drowned his senses. His attention was focused on the other side. Maybe he was meeting his companion over there.

He was maybe twenty-five feet away and closing on her. Any second he would turn and see her. She stood stone-still.

He was young, maybe early twenties, slender, well-muscled, and wiry. She guessed he was probably quick and dangerous because of it. He had a dark complexion and short dark hair. If she had to guess she would say North African, perhaps Egyptian or Lebanese. But he could have been from anywhere.

When he finally turned his head to the front, the startled expression that washed over him seemed to drain the blood from his face. It froze him in place, fifteen feet directly in front of her with nowhere to go, the river on one side and the solid wall of the building on the other. A look of panic filled his eyes. Instantly his knees flexed, his arms extended out from his sides ready to fight as he turned his head first one way, then the other, looking for any avenue of escape.