Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

At least I think it would have.

The Barrier safe house was a one-stop, two-room little pillbox near a bus stop. Lots of people coming and going all the time, lots of strangers. Good place to hide, right there in the open.

I knocked. There was no special trick. I didn’t have to knock three times then two then wait and knock four times. That was the movies. I knocked, and they answered.

Except that’s not exactly what happened.

As the locked clicked open and the door swung inward, Ghost stiffened and gave a sharp woof. Even dazed as he was he knew that something was wrong.

I pushed inside, driving whoever was behind the door in and back. I kicked the door shut as the man fell. I pulled the pistol and dropped into a combat crouch.

The man who lay on the floor staring up at me was Cyrus, the son of the man who ran the safe house. He looked up at me with eyes that were wild with fear and pain.

He was covered with blood, head to toe.

Ghost growled, but he was still trembling and looked ready to collapse.

I squatted near him and whispered in Persian. “How many are there?”

He tried to speak but only blood bubbled from between his lips. Cyrus gestured wildly toward the doorway at the end of the short foyer.

I was already in motion, running with quick, small steps, the pistol held in front of me, mouth set and hard. At the end of the foyer I crouched and did a fast look around the corner.

The living room was a study in crimson.

I eased around the corner.

Nothing moved.

But it was not empty. A man-Fariel Omidi-hung on the wall. Big carpenter nails had been driven savagely through his wrists and hands and feet. He had been crucified.

His head hung low, and from the damage I saw there was no way he could still be alive. No way in hell.

Ghost whined from the foyer but I waved him to stillness.

I could see through the living room into the eat-in kitchen. The back door was open to the sunlight. The door to the bathroom stood ajar and I crabbed sideways and wheeled around to cover the interior space. Toilet, sink, and tub. All bloody, all empty.

Every cabinet and storage trunk had been torn open. All of the weapons and equipment were gone. Even the trapdoor beside the fridge had been ripped from its hinges. The boxes of grenades, shape charges, detonators, and other explosives were gone.

At the back door I peered into the alley. There were two bloody footprints and then tire tracks in the dirt.

This was all past tense. I lowered my gun and pulled the door shut, engaged the locks and propped a chair under the handle. Then I grabbed a bunch of dish towels and raced back to the entrance foyer.

Cyrus was still alive, but only just. I gingerly peeled back the shreds of his clothes to see how bad he was hurt, and I was sorry I did it. Everything had been done to him. Cuts and punctures. The bruised and ravaged marks of tools, probably pliers. Big burned patches. Maybe a portable propane burner. That and more.

I was amazed he was still alive.

I sponged blood from his nose and mouth and rolled some of the towels to place under his head. God only knows how Cyrus had managed to stay on his feet long enough to answer the door. Hope, maybe? If so, it was one more crushing disappointment on the worst day of his life. Cyrus was shivering with shock. I rushed back to the living room for a throw rug and draped it over him. The rug was bloody, too, but that didn’t seem important.

“Hey, buddy,” I said gently. “Can you understand me?”

His mouth worked for a moment and he made only mewling sounds, but he nodded ever so slightly.

“Who did this to you?”

He shook his head.

“How many were there? How big a team?”

Cyrus managed to raise his hand a few inches. He held up a single finger.

“One?” I asked. “You’re saying that one man did this.”

He shook his head but held up the single finger again. I tried to get him to explain. It wasn’t one team, it seemed. It was one, but he objected to my choice of “man” or even “woman.”

Cyrus tried hard to speak, but each time it came out as a meaningless wet mumble. And then with crushing and horrible realization I understood why.

They had cut out his tongue.

I closed my eyes for a moment and tried hard not to scream. Ghost whined from the living room doorway.

When I opened my eyes I saw Cyrus looking at me. He was slipping past the point where pain mattered to him, and he knew it. We both knew it.

“Listen to me, Cyrus,” I said, dabbing cold sweat from his forehead, “I want to be straight with you, okay?”

He began to cry, knowing what I was going to say; but he nodded.

“You’re hurt bad. Very bad. I–I can call for an ambulance, but…” I let it trail off. I was feeling too cowardly to put it into words. Cyrus reached out with his swollen, bloody hand and did something that broke my heart. He patted my thigh. He was taking me off the hook from having to tell him that he was dying.

I took his hand and held it.

“I’ll find whoever did this,” I promised him. “So help me God, I will find them.”

He smiled with his ruined mouth. A small thing.

Cyrus touched one finger to his bloody chest and then slowly drew something on the floor. He used the pad of his finger to make a crimson dot, and then overlaid it with the symbol of the cross.

He looked from it to me and tried once more to speak the name of his killer. No-not a name. A word, a description. Two toneless syllables formed by a mouth that could not even speak that word.

Monster.

It was a horrible word, but it was no surprise to me. All this damage, all of the signs of physical power and rage-doors torn from their hinges, these men brutalized. I wonder if Cyrus and his father had stared into glaring red eyes as they were torn apart. A knight had done this, and if there was a better example of a monster hunting the streets of this country, I couldn’t imagine it.

Cyrus sighed and his hand dropped away. I sat with him while all that had made up this little man evaporated into the red darkness. I hadn’t liked him when I’d met him yesterday. A boring little guy who hadn’t much liked me either. But now that was different. He would live in my heart and head forever. Cyrus Omidi. A victim of the very old war that defines the Middle East? Or a victim of something new?

I spoke his name aloud seven times. Don’t ask me why. It felt like something I had to do.

I got to my feet and walked into the living room.

Fariel Omidi was past helping. There was nothing I could do for him. But I said his name seven times, too.

While I stood there, my phone rang.

“Captain,” Church said, “sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you. Give me a sit rep.”

Barrier Safe House

Tehran, Iran

June 15, 10:46 a.m.

I turned away from the dead man and stared at the floor. Ghost came and lay at my feet.

“I don’t know where to begin,” I said into the phone.

“Tell me,” said Church.

So, I told him. About Violin. About the Red Knight in my hotel room. About the dead men whose pain seemed to scream through the air around me. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but Church cut right through my words.

“Are you injured?” he demanded. “Do you need immediate medical attention?”

I paused. “No. No, I’m good.”

“Are you in shock?”

“I-” I began and then stopped, realizing why he was asking that. My mind replayed the last few things I’d said and there was a rising hysterical note to my voice. The room was too bright, the colors too vivid. And the smell…

I took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I’m good,” I assured him. “Been a bad day.”