Bad Ending (Agent Juliet Book 5) Read online

  Bad Ending

  By E. M. Smith

  Copyright 2014 E. M. Smith

  “Bad Endings” by E. M. Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

  For Officer Mary

  Thanks for the inspiration.

  Turns out I can stay out of trouble if I try. Who knew?

  Table of Contents

  Bad Ending

  A Note from the Author

  About the Author

  When we made it into US airspace, Mike removed my IV, pressed a cotton ball to the vein, and bent my arm up.

  “You know the drill, Juliet,” he said. “Pressure until the bleeding stops.” Then he went across the aisle and checked Bravo’s saline drip. “Yours is moving a little slow, but it should be done in a few minutes.”

  I checked to see if my arm had quit bleeding yet. Mike saw me.

  “Two whole seconds?” he asked.

  “It felt longer,” I said.

  “Give it at least a few minutes,” Mike said. “Fox’s airstrip is in Upstate New York. At best, we’re over Georgia right now. There’s no rush.”

  Sure as hell felt like there was a rush. It was only a matter of time until NOC-Unit found out that Kroeger hadn’t killed me and Bravo. Once that happened, they would double up guard on my nieces, and I’d never get the girls away from that psycho-bitch Ms. Baker.

  Mike went to the back of the plane to stow the med kit in his bag.

  I pressed the cotton ball down extra hard and tapped my thumb on my bicep. The way my heart was pounding, I would probably never stop bleeding.

  Across the aisle, Bravo squeezed his saline bag to speed it up.

  “What the hell, Mike?” I pointed at Bravo. “You get after me, but not him?”

  “You fucking snitch,” Bravo said.

  “Children,” Mike said. “Grow up or I’ll put you under.”

  I leaned back in my seat and started bouncing my leg, trying not to think what a relief unconsciousness would be. I didn’t have time for that escapism shit. I needed to think up a plan to get Della and Eva away from Ms. Baker without getting myself killed. Except I couldn’t focus. It felt like that time I had tried crack—like my brain and my heart were racing each other—minus the certainty that I could take a shotgun blast standing.

  Bravo was messing with his saline bag again. Mike leaned over the seat and took it away from Bravo.

  “You’re going to blow the vein,” Mike said, hanging the bag from an overhead compartment. “Leave it alone. It’ll run out when it runs out.”

  Romeo and Whiskey came back from the cockpit. Even though I reeked like chronic body odor and I was grimy and dirty from spending the last two days in a hot box, Romeo sat down next to me and slipped her hand into mine. That helped calm me down a little.

  Whiskey stopped in the aisle and leaned her hip against a seat. “Fox said we have about an hour before we touch down.”

  “Run this by me one more time,” Bravo said. “You think this KiloT-4 Captain America super-serum is the reason Trick was locked up in Afghanistan and the reason Juliet’s sister got murdered?”

  “Sister-in-law,” I said. “And my brother.”

  “Captain America super-serum?” Whiskey asked.

  “Comic book stuff,” Romeo explained. “It made Steve Rogers super-strong, super-smart, and invincible so he could fight the Nazis.”

  Whiskey shook her head. “KiloT-4 doesn’t do any of that. It speeds the healing process, but it can’t replicate previously healthy tissue, and the rapid healing was shown to increase scar tissue in the test subjects. It turned out to be more of a liability than an advantage, so they discontinued testing.”

  “But you got shot in the heart and you lived, so it’s kind of like super-serum,” I said.

  “No, it’s not,” Whiskey said.

  “Captain America was invulnerable,” Mike said. “KiloT-4 test subjects aren’t.”

  “Whatever,” Bravo said. “What makes you think that’s connected to all the shit going down now?”

  “The lockbox we took off that hostile in Afghanistan,” Whiskey said. “It contained a hard drive with digitized notes on the creation and manufacture of KiloT-4, the results of the clinical trials, and up-to-date dossiers on every agent who took part. Even the agents who’ve been scrubbed.”

  “So, the traitor is in NOC-Unit?” Romeo said.

  Whiskey shook her head. “The selection was cross-agency—FBI, CIA, black detachments, NOC-Unit… All I can say for sure is that the chief developer of the drug was Dr. White.”

  “The same Dr. White who’s helping Ms. Baker keep me away from Della and Eva,” I said. “The one who put the stop-notice out on me?”

  “Yes,” Whiskey said.

  “And she wants the girls because…?”

  “Out of all the dossiers, your sister-in-law Talia was the only test subject known to have had a successful live birth,” Whiskey said. “One subject’s wife miscarried six times. Another subject’s wife went to term, but had a stillborn. The notes my tech guy recovered conjectured that the mother needs to be the KiloT-4 host for the fetus to become viable. The most recent notes suggested further testing on the second-generation subjects once they reach puberty.”

  I put up a hand to stop her.

  “Whiskey, I just barely graduated high school. In Arkansas. It’s a miracle I can even read. If you want me to understand what you’re saying, I need the slow-kid version.”

  For a few seconds, Whiskey chewed on the inside of her bottom lip. Then she said, “Talia passed on effects from the KiloT-4 to your nieces. Dr. White wants the girls so she can study those effects. Once the girls reach puberty, she wants to branch out the experiments, try cross-breeding the girls to see if—”

  “Cross-breeding?” I clenched my fists so hard that Romeo jerked her hand out of mine. “Like they’re fucking lab rats?”

  Whiskey just stood there, waiting for me to work out everything she’d said. It took a minute.

  “‘Branch out?’” That meant Dr. White was already experimenting on my nieces. Hell, she had probably been doing it the whole fucking time and I’d just been dicking around, being a good little commando so I could keep my visitation rights. See y’all next Saturday, girls! Have a great week getting dissected and shit! I kicked the seat in front of me. “Fuck!”

  Bravo cut in. “Do you think Dr. White is the one selling the super-serum info?”

  “Stop calling it super-serum,” Whiskey said. “It’s not. And Dr. White isn’t the type to sell state secrets. I don’t think it would occur to her to put a monetary value on information.”

  “But we’re all agreed that she’s the boss of this shit,” I said. “I mean, she’s the one testing and experimenting and fucking with Della and Eva, right? And the one that had Delgado kill Owen and Talia so she could get the girls?”

  “Most likely,” Whiskey said.

  “A’ight.” I looked at Bravo. “Dibs on her.”

  *****

  It was full-dark outside when Fox yelled back from the cockpit, “Butts in seats.”

  I looked out my window. No runway lights. Nothing but tree-cover.

  “Don’t worry,” Romeo said. “Fox built this airstrip himself. He could land it blindfolded.”

  “Sure he can.” I buckled up anyway.

  The landing seemed bumpier than in NOC-Unit’s luxury jets, but Fox got the plane down without crashing.

  As soon as we stopped rolling, Whiskey called a team meeting.

  “We were never here,” she said. “Officially, we’ve been in Thailand this whole time, cooperating with the local APTF. At eighteen-hundred Thursday, we’ll fly back in
to JFK. As far as we know, Kroeger is alive and well. We haven’t seen Juliet or Bravo since they left for Rio de Janeiro. Is everyone clear?”

  Everyone was.

  Whiskey looked at Fox. “How long until we’re refueled and back in the air?”

  “Forty-five minutes max,” Fox said. “There’s a control building across the strip with some food and bathrooms inside. You’re all welcome to use the facilities, but I’m going to be a terrible host and go first so I can get back out here and set up the fuel wagon.”

  “Okay,” Whiskey said. “Wheels-up in forty-five.”

  Everyone got up and headed for the door.

  “Juliet, Bravo…” Whiskey shifted feet and crossed her arms as if she couldn’t figure out what to say. She landed on, “Try not to get killed.”

  Then she left, too. Bravo followed.

  Romeo stopped me in the aisle.

  “We have forty-five minutes,” she said once we were alone.

  “Yeah, but what’re we supposed to do with the other forty-three and a half?” I asked.

  She smiled, but not wide enough to distort those pink cat-scratch scars on her cheek.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” I said. I pushed a piece of hair out of Romeo’s eyes. It would’ve been nice to have the time or the energy for a lay in case I died trying to get the girls away from Ms. Baker.

  Romeo shoved me. “Don’t look at me like that, you asshole!”

  “Like what?”

  “Like this is the last time we’re going to see each other. Fuck you, Juliet. I hope you do fucking die.”

  I snorted. “Who the hell says shit like that?”

  That made her smile for real.

  “Just be careful,” she said. “I know you’re new at this, but you’re still, like, the worst operative in the history of the world.”

  “Yeah, well, you give shitty pep talks. And you’re short.”

  Romeo stretched up on her tiptoes, grabbed the back of my neck, and pulled my face down. I kept my lips together while we kissed. Critical dehydration can give you some disgusting breath.

  “Oh, sick,” Bravo said. He was leaning in the doorway, watching us. “Get some standards, Romeo.”

  “Fuck you,” Romeo said. But she stepped back.

  Bravo nodded at me. “Let’s go, bitch-boy. Whiskey and Fox want to talk to us before we bug out.”

  I gave Romeo one more kiss on the top of her head. “Later, shorty.”

  “You’re such an asshat,” she said.

  “Yeah, but I’m your asshat,” I said, backing down the aisle.

  She flipped me off with both hands.

  *****

  Outside, Fox was on a set of wheeled stairs, hooking the hose of a little tanker wagon up to the plane. Whiskey stood by the wagon. I wondered if she was fixing to give us another “strike before NOC-Unit finds out you’re not dead” lecture, but she didn’t say anything.

  Fox climbed down and hit a switch on the tanker’s controls. The pump rattled to life. He gestured for me and Bravo to come over.

  “Two-point-one miles due south there’s a broken-down outhouse,” he said, raising his voice just enough for us to hear him over the noise. “If you come to an old foundation wall or new-looking split rail fence, you’ve gotten off track and gone too far. Pry up the boards on the left side of the seat. Inside is a locker. The code is 915686*1020. Repeat it back to me.”

  Bravo and I did.

  “Good,” Fox said. “Get it wrong and the place is rigged to blow. Get it right and you’ll hear the seal release. Then it’s safe to open. Take whatever you need, just do it before you close the lid. The passcode is set to renew every time it’s been opened, and like I said: Boom if you get it wrong.”

  “What’s in it?” I asked.

  “Weapons cache,” Bravo said. “Right?”

  Fox nodded. “I wouldn’t pack light on this if I were either of you. However much firepower you think you’ll need, triple it. You’re not going to bankrupt me.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Fox said.

  Then he nodded at Whiskey. She came over.

  “From here on out, it’s you versus the rest of the world,” she said. “No phones, no computers, no electronics at all. Don’t touch anything that can be traced or tracked. Avoid stoplights, toll plazas, store fronts, anywhere with surveillance cameras, and anyone with their phone pointed at you. Don’t trust anyone and don’t for a second assume that you’re safe.”

  When I realized why Whiskey was telling us all that again, I almost laughed.

  “Love you, too, boss,” I said.

  Bravo snorted.

  It was too dark to tell whether Whiskey was glaring at me or smiling.

  “Get the hell out of here,” she said.

  Bravo and I took off jogging south. When we were out of earshot, he started laughing.

  “You’re lucky she didn’t have time to cut your balls off,” he said.

  “I was banking on it,” I said. “You think I would’ve pulled that shit if I thought I’d live to see her again?”

  *****

  Compared to the Ouachitas where I grew up, the Adirondacks weren’t really mountains, they were gently rolling hills with a couple extra piles of loose rocks thrown in. The running wasn’t any problem. Keeping a straight path was the problem.

  “Stop,” Bravo said. He turned a circle, then pointed at the sky. “North Star. That means…” He stretched his other arm out in the opposite direction. “South.”

  “What, now you’re a Boy Scout?”

  “You got a problem with the Scouts?”

  “You really were?” I shook my head. “I don’t see it.”

  “Run in circles, then. Fuck if I care. I’m going that way.”

  He took off running. I didn’t have any better ideas, so I followed.

  Every few minutes, Bravo stopped us to check for the North Star. I was starting to think he’d screwed up and sent us the wrong direction when we came over a rise and saw Fox’s outhouse.

  Bravo flashed a fake gang-sign at me. “Webelos, bitch.”

  I flipped him off and went to the outhouse. There wasn’t any indication the place had been used in the last hundred years, much less wired to blow somebody to hell. The wood handle felt brittle enough to fall apart in my hand and the hinges screamed when I pulled the door open.

  I popped up the boards to the left of the seat. A three-foot by two-foot locker was sitting in a compartment just under that.

  Bravo leaned in the door. “915686*1020.”

  “I remember,” I said, punching it in.

  But I still didn’t breathe again until I heard the seal hiss. Lights clicked on inside the lid when I opened it.

  Bravo whistled in appreciation.

  Every square inch of the locker was packed. Pistols, rifles, boxes of ammo, tactical knives, brass knuckles, a katana, a pair of sais, half a dozen burner phones, and about twenty pounds of shaped charges wired to the code panel.

  I picked out a pair of double-stacked Sigs, a .22 with an ankle holster, a boot knife, and a set of brass knuckles because I’d never seen any in real life. The double-stack on the Sigs made them fatter, which meant they would be harder to conceal, but I figured the extra bullets were worth the tradeoff. Especially since I wasn’t that fast at swapping out magazines.

  After I got out of his way, the first thing Bravo went for was a pair of snub-nose .38s.

  “Thinking of becoming a private eye?” I asked.

  “Says the guy packing knuckles.” He shoved the revolvers into his pockets, then dug around in the locker until he found a pair of Berettas. “Revolvers jam less than semi-autos. You should take one. They’re good backup.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never shot one before. I’ll stick with what I know.”

  “You’re probably fucked either way,” Bravo said, shrugging.

  “Yeah. Throw me some ammo, will you?”

 
; “What do you need?” Bravo asked.

  “Nines,” I said.

  Bravo handed me a couple 50-round boxes, then got a few for himself.

  Outside, we sat down and started loading extra magazines. We didn’t talk much. I was thinking about how to get back to Manhattan. All the cash I’d had on me was somewhere in Brazil—probably with whoever had my luggage and fake passport—so calling a cab was out. I could try it on foot, but the last few days had taken a lot out of me. I wasn’t sure I could make it more than a few miles without keeling over.

  “How far do you think we are from Manhattan?” I asked.

  Bravo shrugged. “Anywhere from two to three hundred miles.”

  I shoved a full magazine into my pocket and started working on the next one. I wished I had on my fatigues. I could’ve fit at least half a dozen reloads in each pocket. The best I could do in these jeans was four—two in the left pocket, two in the right. Both Sigs and the .22 had full clips and one in the chamber. Eighty-four bullets, counting reloads. Probably not enough.

  Bravo stood up, popped his neck, then went into the outhouse. When he came back out, he had a burner phone in each hand. He programmed one and gave it to me.

  “The number in your contacts goes to this phone,” he said, holding his up. “Just in case you need your bitch-ass saved. I’ll try to give you a heads-up if I have to ditch mine. A blank text means the line’s been compromised. If that happens, toss your phone, too.”

  I put the phone in my pocket. Stood up and shoved one of the Sigs in the front of my waistband. My hoodie did a decent job hiding it, but I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on it very fast in there.

  “Give me your hoodie,” Bravo said.

  “Are you trying to get me naked?”

  “You wish. Hand it over.”

  I did. Bravo turned it inside out and used the knife he’d taken from the locker to slice a hole on the inside of the pocket.

  “There,” he said. “Keep one hand in your pocket and you’ll be able to pull your gun no problem.”

  I put the hoodie back on and tried it. “Nice.”

  “Learn all kinds of useful shit in Boy Scouts,” Bravo said. He pulled out his burner phone and dialed.