David Dun - Overfall

“Anna is just stunning this evening,” the man said.

“Yes. Well, it’s not my job to notice. I’m just security. But her date is arriving by separate limo. Should be here any second.”

“No kidding. This is straight?”

“Oh, yeah.” Sam took an earpiece out of his inside coat pocket and popped it in his ear, leaving a tiny cord coiled back around his lapel. “Hey, I’ve got to run and check out the crowd.”

But the reporter was already busy telling the guy next to him that Anna’s beau would be arriving any second. Sam heard them guessing celebrity names. After nodding at a few cute girls, he grabbed a glass of sparkling water, gulped it down, and retired to the men’s room, where he took a couple of big drags on a Winston, then, not trusting himself, threw the pack in the garbage.

After a pass through some spectacular food, where he had some exceptional lox but skipped the bagel, he removed the earpiece and found Anna.

“Stick around,” she whispered, nearly gritting her teeth.

He nodded. “Do you have a confession you’d like to make?”

She hesitated, no doubt wondering if he was still bugging her calls. “I just mentioned it to the publicist. That’s all. I told her not to make a big deal.”

“Yes, I can see the press is oblivious.”

“You look so good in that.” She put a hand on his lapel. There was no question that she was letting everyone know what she and her hand thought about the tall guy in the tux. There were no press nearby.

“Be right back,” Sam said as a well-known producer approached.

Sam wandered deliberately through the crowd with his earpiece until Mr. Green Steno approached.

“So where is the boyfriend?”

Sam moved close, giving his best confidential cock of the head. “I can trust you not to reveal the source-right?”

“Absolutely.”

Sam put a doleful look in his eye. “The beau didn’t show.”

He’d planted a medium-sized, second-page headline in the morning news, the way he had it figured.

It turned out to be a big headline, but like a worthy adversary Anna played the good sport and refused to let him see her consternation. Sam wondered if he had made the right move.

He sat in the seat next to her; the eight men accompanying them had spread around the coach-class cabin of the 747.

“Coach is just fine,” Anna said.

“How long since you’ve even been on a commercial flight?” Sam asked.

“I would do it.”

Sam laughed.

“You know I’m fine with it You’re just trying to needle me, and it’s working. Now will you finally tell me who we’re meeting in Fiji?”

“Aussie. Real name is John Hammer. A retired CIA agent. He emigrated to the U.S. from Australia as a young man, became a citizen, and joined the government service. Pacific Rim specialist. When he retired, he integrated into Fijian society pretty successfully, for a white man.”

“I gather he’s good.”

“The best.”

“I want to check on Grady.”

“I already did. She’ll be safe with Spring. They’re staying with my cousin Kier. Nobody but nobody will find her, and if they do they’ll wish they hadn’t.”

“Well, I hope she’s okay. You know, mentally. How awful to be paralyzed and fully conscious.” She shuddered.

“I think that was the point. This guy gets his kicks watching people die by inches.”

“Will he go after Jason directly?”

“It’s you and me they want dead. I’m guessing that’s job one. And that’s not going to happen.”

“I appreciate everything you’re doing.”

“You’re welcome.”

They fell into silence. Sam was mildly surprised that Anna hadn’t asked him about the details of the plan. It seemed proof that the trust between them was near complete, despite their game-playing.

Aussie was managing the details, starting with the equipment, which had come to Fiji from Australia and New Zealand via Federal Express. They’d have plenty of weapons but only rubber bullets. Sam hoped it would be enough. This was to be a ploy, not a mass killing.

Each of the eight men had worked for Sam on more than one occasion. On the ground T.J. would give most of the orders, leaving Sam free to think and to modify the strategy for the mission as needed. Two men had come from Japan. Both did security work for the emperor’s family on special occasions, as well as providing protection for Western celebrities traveling in Japan. Both had been friends of Shohei and wanted to make things even. One of the men, Yodo, had been a student of Shohei’s. Three were English, outright mercenaries who had been in live combat on several occasions. The two Aussies had served in their government’s secret service. Sanford, an ex-linebacker from Florida State University who couldn’t stand the tedium of private detective work, had jumped at the chance to join one of Sam’s more exotic assignments. Also he had a promise of dinner with Sam and Anna. Already Anna had autographed her picture, and been corrected when she started writing it to Sandy, a name his friends used. Turned out that Sanford always wanted to be called by his full name.

“I think that’s good,” Anna had reassured him. “If you don’t feel like a Sandy, then insist on Sanford.” That advice and her grin obviously had made him feel like a new man.

Yodo sat behind Sam in the next row back. When Anna would rise he would always nod his head, and when she went to the rest room he was an ever-present shadow.

“He seems like all he does is watch. Does he ever read?”

“Yodo is fierce and loyal. He never relents and that’s why he’s protecting you.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “Aren’t you fierce and loyal?”

“Do you want me standing outside the rest room when you pee?”

“Good point.”

If these men had anything in common, it was an unflappable disposition that allowed them to be rational and calculating when other more ordinary men would be distracted or shaken by serious fear. Each of these men had climbed Denali with Sam, and thus had contemplated their own death seriously on at least one occasion.

Sam had asked them not to talk about the details of the assault in front of Anna. Until she learned or demanded otherwise, the plan was for her to wait out of harm’s way while they snatched Jason Wade.

It took half an hour for Sam, Anna, and Yodo to get to the Fiji Air departure gate in Nadi that would take them to Taveuni. T.J. and the others would take later flights. Anna wore a hat, sunglasses, and a blond wig, at Sam’s suggestion.

The Fiji Air ticket counter attendant greeted them. “Bula.”

“Bula,” Sam replied. It was the universal greeting; everybody said bula to everybody all the time.

The agent took their tickets and produced boarding passes. “The departure gate is just down there.”

At the gate a man was saying their names loudly. “Sam Brown and Anna Brown, please.” He couldn’t pronounce Yodo’s last name, so Yodo nodded and the man nodded back.

It was an agent standing on the far side of the screening machines, motioning them through. Sam carried their luggage straight through the metal detector, while Anna paused. No one seemed to be performing any screening.

“Come, come, come,” the man called to Anna. She walked through the metal detector with her handbag, looking like a horse eying a suspicious bridge.

“Even after New York?” Anna said.

“About like it was last time I was here,” Sam said. “It’s only this way in the interisland flights. Going back to the States or practically anywhere outside Fiji, it’s the full pop.”

“I wonder what Fiji Air will be like,” she said.

“Like a horsedrawn airplane,” Sam said. “Manufactured near my birth and painted like a sixties flower-power Volkswagen bus.”