Once Dead Page 15

  “I think Rachel may have been kidnapped as bait for Jack, the same way I think Rita Chavez was used.”

  “That’s a logical possibility. I’ll run the priority intelligence request on that basis.”

  “Levi, one more thing. If at all possible, I need the answers this afternoon.”

  The analyst’s distinctive laugh preceded his answer. “I’ll see what Big John can do. If he comes up with anything, I’ll forward it.”

  “Useful or not?”

  “Useful or not.”

  “Thanks, Levi.”

  Ending the call, Janet set her cell phone beside her laptop and walked to the closet to retrieve her mission kitbag. Unlike the larger military kitbags, this one was roughly the size of a gym bag. Setting the black canvas bag on the bed, she removed the contents, spreading them out on the duvet for easy examination. Selecting one of the five unused identity kits, she opened the manila envelope, setting aside the driver’s license and passport, and looked down at her unsmiling image centered above the name on the press pass, Christa Frost.

  Janet spent thirty minutes memorizing the details of her new fake life. A reporter for the German news magazine, Der Spiegel, she’d graduated from the Deutsche Journalistenschule, more commonly known as DJS, five years ago. She had taken her first job at Stern, where she’d worked until recently receiving a superior offer from Spiegel.

  Real reporters hated intelligence operatives passing themselves off as journalists. Janet understood why. This type of activity put reporters’ lives at risk. But it was one of the best covers for someone asking a lot of questions. Personally, she had no problem with it.

  By the time Janet finished prepping for the action she hoped was imminent, the bedside clock read 3:13 p.m. Thirty minutes later it read 3:43 p.m. Anxious for Levi’s response, she felt like a caged lioness, pacing back and forth as walking meat stared at her from behind the protective bars.

  The text message beep brought her back to her cell phone. It contained two words:

  Data Delivered.

  Immediately, she shifted to her laptop, logged into the secure site, and entered the commands to begin downloading the compressed files. Even though the hotel’s high-speed internet connection had reasonably good bandwidth, the download still took forty-two minutes. By the time Janet finished reviewing the data files it was a quarter to six. Strapping on her shoulder holster, she slid into her jacket, grabbed her bag, and headed for the elevator that would carry her to the parking garage.

  By the time she entered the on-ramp to the A9 autobahn, she’d made a decision. Although it was doubtful that anyone else, except possibly Levi, would have noticed the Jack Gregory connection in one of the files, Big John had come through. Buried amongst other conflicting data, a Nuremberg police report had jumped out at her.

  A young male prostitute had reported that a demon had attacked the man who had beaten him up. Although he claimed not to be able to identify either man, his description of the demon’s red eyes struck a familiar chord. The police had filed the report, no follow-up required. But Janet believed that, despite the prostitute’s history of drug abuse, last night he’d seen what he described.

  Even though nobody had been killed this time, the similarities between this incident and the one in Cartagena screamed The Ripper’s name. It was just a hunch, but it felt like a hell of a lot more than that. Jack had been in Nuremburg last night. She’d bet her life on it. The real question was: Why the hell had he been there prowling the dark streets that were home to the prostitutes and the johns they serviced?

  The image of another Jack prowling the foggy backstreets of London crept into her mind, along with another question. Had Jack Gregory developed some sort of dark fascination with his nineteenth-century namesake? If so, he was a much greater danger than anyone had imagined. The thought of someone with Jack’s special skillset, mixed with that kind of crazy, sent a cold chill up Janet’s spine.

  When she’d looked into his deep brown eyes in his apartment, she’d seen something, but it wasn’t crazy. Something else. She just didn’t know what, not yet. Regardless, the knowledge that Jack had been in Nuremberg last night wasn’t enough to put her on the autobahn headed to Bavaria. The other Big John data had done that.

  A street camera at the edge of Garmisch-Partenkirchen had captured an image of a woman in a silver Volkswagen Jetta. Even though she’d been wearing sunglasses and a knit cap that concealed her hair, the NSA facial recognition software had tagged the face as a possible match for Rachel Koenig, and she’d been driving. That meant she hadn’t been kidnapped; she was running. And she’d been on German highway 23, which meant her next most likely stop was the same as Janet’s.

  Oberammergau.

  CHAPTER 48

  Rachel’s message had come as a surprise to Jack. In part a warning that someone was targeting him, it was primarily a plea for help. Considering she’d already paid him to make this problem go away, he couldn’t really back out just because she’d erroneously thought it had already been resolved. Especially since this was connected to Rita’s murder.

  Pension Enzianhof’s wood-shuttered windows and frescos adorned white walls that rose to the steeply pitched roof. Several of the southwest-facing rooms had spacious balconies with traditional Bavarian flower baskets hanging from the railing, each offering a lovely spot for lovers to share the view.

  While everything about the place looked normal, it was possible that this could be another setup; it was the reason Jack had been watching the pension since sunrise. None of the places with direct line of sight to the entryway or to the upper-right balcony room where he would meet Rachel had evidenced unusual activity. Everyone he observed looked like they belonged here. So why was his gut telling him something was wrong? Jack rechecked all the positions a sniper might position himself, even those with marginal lines of sight, but nothing specific backed up his intuition.

  As he waited for the ten a.m. appointment, Jack’s thoughts turned to Janet Price. He’d really expected her to come through with the requested information about Roskov, but Friday night had come and gone without any attempted contact. Jack didn’t know what that meant, but after having met the impressive young operative, it probably meant trouble. Someone at CIA was behind an effort to strip him of all his contacts, blinding him for the kill. Had they gotten to Janet Price as well?

  Jack glanced at his watch. Five minutes to ten. Well, he wasn’t going to find out what was wrong by standing around. With an adrenaline flood propelling him toward the danger he sensed, Jack crossed the street, walked inside, and, ignoring the young couple chatting with the proprietor, climbed the stairs to the second level. He turned right into the hallway, walked directly to the last door on the left, and paused to listen. Aside from the murmurs of the downstairs conversation, the hallway was silent. Jack raised his fist and knocked twice.

  After a brief pause, he heard Rachel’s voice. “Yes?”

  “It’s me.”

  Again a slight pause preceded her response. “Come in.”

  Jack hesitated. Something about the tone of her voice wasn’t right, almost as if it was recorded.

  Pulling the H&K from its holster, he reached for the door handle. Then he saw it, the glint from a tiny camera lens affixed to the top of the window frame at the end of the hall. It wasn’t a security camera, but something far more advanced. You don’t need line of sight if you’re watching your target through a high-end web cam.

  Jack launched himself back the way he’d come as the blast hurled Rachel’s door into the hall. The shockwave lifted him off his feet, sending his body rolling down the passageway, chased by the flames that rushed from Rachel’s room. Holding his breath to keep from inhaling the acrid smoke that filled the corridor, Jack regained his feet and managed to stay there as he staggered to the stairway. With the roiling inferno behind him hissing like Medusa’s snakes, he grabbed the handrail and descended to the ground floor.

  Jack’s vision blurred and when he wiped at his fo
rehead with his right arm, his leather jacket sleeve came away bloody. Based upon his empty right hand, he must have dropped his pistol upstairs. Right now he didn’t have time to worry about that. Seeing no sign of the proprietor or the couple he’d passed on his way in, Jack hobbled through the exit and out into the sunlit morning.

  The yell of a familiar voice brought his head around in time to see a black BMW sedan slide to a stop beside him, its passenger door swinging open toward him.

  “Get in!”

  Through a red haze, Jack complied, allowing the G-force of the accelerating automobile to close the passenger door for him.

  Janet Price, her attention firmly focused on the road, cornered hard, turned down a side street, and then turned again. She eased off on the accelerator and merged into traffic as the warble of multiple sirens faded away behind them.

  It seemed to Jack that he only blinked, but somehow they had left Oberammergau and were entering the tiny village of Graswang. Janet turned off the highway onto a narrow farm road and stopped the car in a wooded pullout.

  With pain hammering the inside of his skull, Jack watched Janet remove her sunglasses.

  “I thought I told you not to look for me.”

  “Lucky for you I have a problem with authority. You look like shit, Jack.”

  “I’ve felt better.”

  “We need to find a place to get you cleaned up. Then we’ll talk.”

  Leaning back in his seat, Jack let his eyes close.

  “Fine. Wake me when we get there.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Janet crossed the Deutsche–Austrian border on the small bridge where the winding two-lane St2060 became the L255, also known as the Ammerwald highway. Except for a sign beside the road, there was no indication that she had just passed from the German Alps into the Austrian Alps. She slowed at the hairpin turn and then accelerated through it, feeling the powerful German sedan sink its rubber claws into the hundred-and-eighty-degree curve.

  She glanced over at the killer in her passenger seat. Jack Gregory’s chiseled face was filthy, coated with blood-caked soot and ash from the scalp wound. Although his hair was naturally brown, he’d been blond when she’d last seen him. Right now his short hair was a gray mat. She’d seen pictures of people fleeing the September 11th attack in New York City as the first and then the second of the Twin Towers collapsed. Jack was giving a damned fine imitation of one of those survivors.

  At the moment he was either asleep or unconscious. Either way, he was certainly suffering the effects of a concussion. When he’d climbed into her car he’d been disoriented, passing in and out of consciousness as she’d sped away from the scene. Getting caught in an explosion tended to do that to you, if you survived the experience.

  Janet didn’t consider herself lucky to have found him. Last night, she’d found Rachel’s recently purchased Volkswagen Jetta parked outside Pension Enzianhof. Having found Rachel, she’d known it was only a matter of time until she found Jack. While it was possible that Jack wouldn’t come to the aid of the running Rachel Koenig, she’d discarded that possibility as quickly as she’d considered it. Although certain things about Jack Gregory were extremely unpredictable, he’d never abandoned a mission in his life. Everything she knew about this particular chain of events pointed to a tie between Jack and Rachel. It wasn’t a romantic tie. That meant Rachel had hired him.

  Janet had been sitting in the parked BMW, watching Rachel’s pension since three a.m. Rachel had never left the building, but just before ten o’clock, Jack had crossed the street and walked into the building. It was the meeting Janet had been expecting. She hadn’t expected the explosion that followed.

  The BMW rounded a corner and a beautiful view of Lake Plansee spread out before her. Janet loved Austria. Salzburg, the Austrian Alps, and its beautiful alpine lakes generated a nostalgia she got nowhere else, not even Switzerland. Perhaps it was childhood memories of her mom serving popcorn as the two of them settled onto their one-bedroom apartment’s couch to watch her favorite movie, The Sound of Music. Valerie Price had been a most wonderful person. Too bad Janet didn’t have similar memories of her father. She’d used her mother’s .38 special to pump five bullets into him, the last a point-blank head shot. Happy thirteenth birthday.

  Returning her attention to the highway, Janet turned off onto a side road that carried her along the north end of the lake into Campingplatz Sennalpe. Parking the car, she stepped into the main office. Ten minutes later she returned with the keys to a for-rent-by-owner trailer that had become a permanent fixture at this picturesque haven for RVs and tents. Finding the camp space where the gray, blue, and white double-wide occupied a concrete slab, Janet pulled the black BMW under the steel carport and turned off the engine.

  She opened her door and stepped out, pleasantly surprised to see Jack open the passenger door and stand erect opposite her. When he looked at her, his eyes held a clarity that hadn’t been there before.

  “This is it?”

  Janet nodded. “Home sweet home. At least for now. Let’s get you inside.”

  He closed his door. “Good plan.”

  Janet opened the trunk, grabbed her bag, and pressed the lock button on her key fob. She walked to the door, unlocked it, and stepped inside. The trailer’s interior was neat and clean, if not spacious. To the right of the door, the living-room couch provided a good view of the twenty-seven-inch flat-screen TV on the opposite wall. Immediately to her left, the kitchen appliances and small dining-room table appeared in good condition. Beyond that, a bathroom door stood open on the right, just before the bedroom at the far end.

  Janet motioned toward the open bathroom door. “You get the shower first. You need some help?”

  A slow grin spread across Jack’s filthy face, his teeth appearing unnaturally white. It was the first time Janet had seen him smile, and she found herself liking it.

  “I think I can manage. A couple of Advil would be nice though.”

  “I’ve got some in my bag. I’ll bring them to you.”

  Janet retrieved a bottle of ibuprofen and carried it to the bathroom. Finding the door open and the shower going, she set the white plastic bottle on the sink and paused to glance at the closed shower curtain before stepping out and closing the door behind her.

  She didn’t know what it was, but something about Jack Gregory definitely had her on edge. Bullshit. She wasn’t on edge. She was excited. Not just sexually. It was deeper than that. Or maybe it wasn’t. There was no denying that the man had a certain aura about him. Part of it was reputation, but the other part was something she didn’t yet have a handle on. Whatever it was, she’d put the hobbles on it, right now. This wasn’t a man she wanted a relationship with, sexual or otherwise.

  Just then, Jack stepped out of the bathroom, a white towel tied around his waist.

  “Sorry. My clothes are trashed.”

  “You’re not impressing me.”

  “Not trying to.”

  Janet’s eyes swept his body. Lean, powerful legs, towel-draped midsection, hard-muscled torso covered with a crazy-quilt of knife scars, Jack’s body screamed power and pain. His deep-brown eyes held a hint of the same, along with something else. Cleaned up, the head wound was invisible in his hairline.

  “So you’re going regimental?”

  “I’m not Scottish.”

  “And that’s not a kilt?”

  Jack laughed. “The point is, I’m going to need some pants, underwear, a shirt, and some socks before I go out in public.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll drive into Breitenwang and do a little shopping. Clothes for you, food for both of us.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “You ready for a conversation?”

  Jack looked at her. “How about after dinner? I lost my weapon. Don’t suppose you have an extra?”

  Janet walked to her kit bag, unzipped it, and extracted a small pistol and two nine-millimeter magazines from a side pocket. She turned and handed them to Jack.

  “I
t’ll be a bit small for your hand.”

  She watched Jack clear the H&K subcompact, insert a fresh magazine, and rack the slide to chamber a round. “This will work just fine. Thanks.”

  Janet nodded toward the bedroom. “You can have the bed. Nothing better for a concussion than a few extra hours of sleep. I’ll be back from town in a couple of hours. I’ll wake you for dinner.”

  Jack didn’t argue. Janet watched him walk to the bedroom and stretch out on the bed, and then turned and walked out of the trailer, locking the door behind her.

  CHAPTER 50

  The news wasn’t good. Petor Kline searched the web for stories about the terrorist bombing in Oberammergau, but there were no reports of casualties, killed or wounded. The building that had once been Pension Enzianhof had burned to the ground, but the two guests that had been in the building had escaped, along with the proprietor. They had reported seeing another man stumble from the building, get in a car, and drive off, but except for a vague description of the black vehicle, they were able to provide no helpful details. It was possible that The Ripper’s body had been so badly burned that it would take the authorities several days to find the bits of bone and teeth that remained, but Petor doubted it.

  Gregory had spotted his hidden webcam, something Petor would have thought impossible given the size of the tiny WiFi device and the dark space in which he’d positioned it. But he’d seen The Ripper pause outside the door to Rachel’s room and turn his gaze directly into the camera. If he had entered the room, he would be dead. He should be dead anyway. When he’d started sprinting back down the hallway, Petor had remotely triggered the detonation, apparently a full second too late.

  Rumor had it The Ripper could sense the future. Rumor had it he was returned from the dead. Rumor had it pigs could fly. What a complete crock of shit. Petor could name the game the man was playing. He’d chosen a cliché nickname that subconsciously generated fear. Then he let that cliché drive a certain kind of business his way. It was basic marketing 101, but that didn’t mean the man wasn’t very, very good at what he did. Petor harbored no illusions about that.