Jack Coughlin - Clean Kill

“Jeff must be paying her pretty good. What was the price tag on this thing?” Kyle asked.

“This one, with all of the extras, goes for about £40,000.”

“Awright, girlfriend!” Sybelle laughed. “That’s about $80,000 in real money.” She was already in the comfortable leather driver’s compartment. The five-speed stick shift on her left console would control the 2.8V6 engine. She arched an eyebrow at the young man. “Now, if we only knew where we were going.”

He pointed to the compact flat display screen in the dashboard. “I’ve programmed the voice control navigation system. A map will show on the touch-screen monitor when the ignition comes on, and Linda will guide you from here to there, every turn of the way as soon as you clear the airport. It will take a little more than an hour if you do the speed limit.”

“Linda?”

“That’s what Ms. Tabrizi calls the female voice imbedded in the avionics of the car. Linda gets quite peeved if you do not mind her.”

Sybelle turned the key and the big engine thrummed. “So do I,” she said. She had no intention of doing the speed limit, no matter how peeved the Linda machine might get.

Kyle adjusted the passenger seat and belted in, and the young man handed him a plain cardboard box. “I am also to give you this, and here’s my business card in case you need anything else,” he said, stepping away.

In five minutes, they were out of the airport and the soft, polite voice of Linda instructed Sybelle to turn left. A colorful map on the screen pinpointed their exact position. Kyle opened the box and found a pair of black leather identification holders with Federal Bureau of Investigation shields and identity cards and a Glock 17 for Sybelle. He took the heavy Colt.45 semiautomatic for himself. After checking out the weapons, he returned them to the box and wedged it between his feet.

“Please, do not exceed the speed limit,” Linda reminded in a pleasant tone. The top was down, the day was pleasant, and the wind whipped over their heads. Sybelle adjusted her dark glasses and punched the accelerator.

K YLE SOON TIRED OFwatching the countryside. He would see Jeff soon, but what would he say? The man was more of a father to him than his real father, whom Kyle never knew. The fact that Jeff was badly wounded filled Swanson with worry. And what of Pat? She had seen Kyle at all of his many extremes and somehow kept bringing him back to believing that life was worth living.

Now there was Delara, she of the hot car. Kyle had led a raid on an Iranian bioweapons laboratory and saved her life, then she helped on another raid that brought down an even bigger lab. The former schoolteacher was beautiful and brave and was branded as an outlaw in her home country. She never wanted to return to the nation that had slaughtered her family and where she and all women were second-class citizens. He figured that this fast yellow sports car was most likely a gift from Jeff, an in-your-face insult to the religious zealots who controlled Iran.

Kyle knew he was falling in love with Delara, but would not admit it. He could hardly wait to hold her again, and knew she felt the same. The idea that the three people he cared for the most having been in jeopardy filled him with a seething rage. Sir Jeff had tried to bring some old enemies together to see if a new peace could be forged, and had been repaid with disaster.

Loud rock music brought him out of his reverie. “I’m trying to drown out Linda’s constant bitching,” Sybelle explained. “Make yourself useful and see what else is on that CD player.”

He worked the buttons on the console, the map replaced by the names of available albums of music. When he leaned forward to hunt for the CD controls, he heard a sudden sharp curse by Sybelle and was thrown violently against the seatbelt straps. He looked up and saw the checkerboard dark and light green side of a boxy East of England ambulance flash across his spinning vision. It had pulled onto the road right in front of them, and Sybelle was doing about 90 miles per hour. She hit the brakes and swerved sharply to the right, cutting the front tires back into a controlled skid. Sliding rubber screamed against the road.

Kyle grabbed the dash for support as the belt held him tight against the centrifugal force that threatened to fling him from the open car.

Sybelle worked the gears, accelerator, and the emergency brake, pulling the Saab through a complete 360-degree turn before it steadied and stalled out. “Motherfucker!” she said, exhaling hard and her hands gripping the wheel so tightly that the knuckles were white. “He damned near T-boned us. Missed us by inches.” She got the Saab running again and spun the steering wheel. “I’m going to catch that fucker and kick his ass!”

“Wait!” Kyle said, reaching a hand to the steering wheel to stop her. Something had caught his eye. “Hold on for a minute.” He switched the computer screen back to the voice navigation system. “Linda, how far are we from the hospital clinic?”

“You are now exactly ten and one-half kilometers from our destination,” said the warm voice. “Have you had an accident? I can notify the proper authorities.”

“No. We are fine. Do not do anything.”

“Please slow down,” Linda said.

“Shut up,” Sybelle responded. “What’s going on, Kyle?”

“Up there. Straight ahead about a half-mile. Check out that jumble of junk off the edge of this side road. Some metal gleaming in the sun? Let’s take a look. Something weird is going on.”

As they drove forward, Kyle saw the dark blue, square rear-end of a minivan disappearing in the distance, speeding away from them, raising a layer of dust. Why? He picked up his Colt.45 and tucked the Glock beneath Sybelle’s thigh as she coasted to a halt. Kyle stepped from the car, and Sybelle moved out to his right and a little to the rear, both of their guns ready. He stepped over a shallow roadside ditch and into the thick bushes and she followed.

The polished rails of an ambulance gurney were reflecting the flare of the sun. A dead woman, small and old, and frail, was strapped to the mobile stretcher, with an oxygen mask still on her face. Uniformed ambulance attendants lay on each side of her. All had been shot twice in their heads. Kyle and Sybelle hastily checked for vital signs. All of them were dead.

Without exchanging a word, they ran back to the Saab. Sybelle did a three-point turn on the narrow road and gunned the big engine. By the time they regained the main road, there was no sign of the green ambulance.

“Get him, Sybelle.” Ten and a half klicks to the clinic, only about six miles, and the ambulance had a good head start and was probably hauling ass. Kyle studied the console map and Linda continued to complain until he turned down the audio voice. “It’s a straight road all the way and there will be signs for the hospital. Damn, we can’t call this in because we don’t even know who to call.”

The speedometer needle climbed to one hundred miles per hour without any engine strain, then higher as the Saab flashed around a delivery truck and a few cars. Kyle turned the audio back on. “Distance to destination!”

“Three kilometers. Please slow down and drive safely!” Insistent. Strident. Kyle turned it down again.

“I see him!” Sybelle called, and Kyle picked up the tight square edges of the ambulance. The driver was unsteady behind the wheel, whereas a real ambulance driver would have been smooth at even a high rate of speed. When the vehicle slowed for the hospital turnoff, the driver for the first time turned on the flashing lights and the shrill beep-burp of the siren. By the time he was coming out of the turn, Sybelle was screaming into it, neatly flattening the skid and gaining ground. The brick clinic and its rows of shiny windows loomed on the right. “See any guards?”