Stones of Fire

Rather than make an empty promise he might not be able to keep, he said, ‘We shall find out soon enough.’

15

A fiddle fuck.

That’s what he had on his hands, a goddamned fiddle fuck.

Uncertain how things had turned so bad so quick, Boyd Braxton shoved his arms into his black turtleneck sweater, the unconscious Walter Jefferson still sprawled on the floor of the storeroom. Having retrieved his bundle of clothing from where he’d stowed it, Boyd had returned to the store, needing to reconnoitre. In a big-ass hurry, he yanked his black trousers over the top of the blue pair he already wore. He didn’t give a rat’s ass how he looked. He just needed to not look like a cleaner. Too many people had seen a cleaner firing into the crowd. No way in hell would he be able to get out of the museum decked out like some numb-nuts service worker.

He shoved the Ka-Bar and Mark 23 into his waistband. Next he checked his mobile, which was programmed with a preset number to immediately warn him if Edie Miller’s Jeep was moved.

He heaved a sigh of relief; the Jeep was still parked out the front.

The bitch was in the museum. He could make this right. Wherever the bitch went, he would follow.

Yanking open the door of the store, he stepped across the threshold, the museum concourse directly across from his present position.

Quickly he scanned the area. Blown-out glass. A couple of overturned tables. Some broken plates. People frantically sloshed through the water from the shattered fountain. A sobbing woman in a tight-fitting suit, hobbled by a pair of stilettos heels, limped past, Boyd nearly gagging in her wake, the broad doused in more perfume than a Bangkok whore.

He heard the blare of at least half a dozen police sirens. Any second the place would be swarming with cops.

No sense looking for the Miller bitch here; he already knew she’d fled the concourse, having earlier caught sight of her and that red-headed bastard heading towards the gift shop.

Just who the fuck was he, anyway?

Obviously, the guy was a player. He had to be. Nobody had reflexes that quick unless they’d been trained. Maybe the bastard worked for a law enforcement agency. Whoever he worked for, it meant trouble.

Boyd strode over to where the Miller woman had been sitting, snatching a sheet of paper off the floor.

‘Shit!’

On the sodden paper were two sketches, one a drawing of the relic he’d earlier stolen from the Hopkins, the other the Jerusalem cross that he and every other man at Rosemont Security Consultants wore on their right ring finger.

As he continued to stare at the piece of paper, he caught sight of a Muslim couple, the wife’s head wrapped in a hijab, propelling a pushchair, the kid bawling its head off. The couple stopped a few feet away from where he stood. The woman peered into the pushchair, the kid bawling even louder.

The bawling baby in the back room was gonna give away their position. There was a sniper in the building across the street and dozens of raghead fuckers prowling the streets of Fallujah in Toyota pickups. If the brat didn’t stop bawling, he and his men were gonna end up hanging from a street light with no head and no balls. Burnt toast.

Boyd strode into the back bedroom. ‘Hey, Fatima, shut the fucking brat the hell up!’ he hissed.

Wrapped in a big black chador, she stared at him. Like he was a freakin’ Martian or something.

‘Well, fuck that shit!’ He was sick and tired of getting his ass shot at for these ungrateful, godless people.

Lunging forward, he slashed the black-swathed woman’s throat. Then he grabbed a pillow off the bed and shoved it over the bawling brat’s face.

The piece of paper in Boyd’s hand began to shake, his head suddenly exploding in a corolla of pain.

Babies crying. Women crying. Everybody and their fucking Uncle Tom crying. Christ, you’d think he’d killed somebody. Like this was a goddamned war zone or something. This was nothing. A minor public disturbance. A cleaner gone nuts. Except this time around nobody got killed.

And that was the problem. Somebody was supposed to have ended up dead.

‘Kill ’em. Kill ’em all. God will know his own.’ Isn’t that what the colonel always said?

Still staring at the Muslim couple and their screaming baby, Boyd reached behind his back, his hand curling around the gun grip. Slowly he slid the Mark 23 from his waistband. Papa, Mama and Baby Bear. One, two, three.

No sooner did he pull the gun free than his mobile vibrated against his breastbone.

Boyd shoved his piece back into his waistband. Turning his back on the couple and their screaming brat, he reached for his phone. The digital display read ‘RSC’. Rosemont Security Consultants.

‘Fuck.’

It was the colonel calling for a status report.

Feeling like Joe Shit the Ragman, he pressed ‘Answer’. Since the colonel hated what he referred to as circumlocution — what Boyd and everybody else with a 12th-grade education called beating around the bush — he didn’t bother with the pleasantries. Instead, he simply said, ‘We’ve got a problem, sir. The target escaped. The place has turned into a three-ring circus, and the cops have just arrived.’

The statrep met with a moment’s silence, Boyd bracing himself for a world-class ass-chewing.

‘Is the Miller woman still on the premises?’ the colonel asked, his calm tone of voice taking Boyd by surprise. Usually this kind of fuck-up would meet with wrath second only to God Almighty’s.

‘I believe so, sir. Her Jeep is still parked out front. I found a sheet of paper with two drawings — one of the relic, the other a Jerusalem cross. And one other thing, sir…’ He hesitated, knowing the colonel would break his balls but good. ‘She’s hooked up with somebody. A tall guy with red hair. I’m not altogether certain, but he may be a player. What do you want me to do, sir?’

Another silence ensued, then in the background Boyd heard the muffled sounds of several voices. The colonel had put him on the speakerphone. Then he heard what sounded like a file folder being opened.

‘Gunnery Sergeant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Stand by for further instruction.’

16

Colonel Stanford MacFarlane took a moment to review the dossier just handed to him. Turning his back on his chief of staff, he discreetly removed his reading glasses from his breast pocket. He despised weakness of any sort, particularly in himself. Though physically fit, there were days when he felt each and every one of his fifty-three years.

Adjusting the reading glasses on his nose, he glanced at the file. With his contacts inside the intelligence office of the undersecretary of defense, he’d managed to obtain a full dossier on one C?dmon St John Aisquith.

He examined the photo attached to the upper right-hand corner with a paper clip. Red hair. Blue eyes. Fair complexion. He next glanced at the physical particulars. 6