The profile of the target danced in his mind’s eye as Joshua began to push the underpowered electric vehicle up the rolling hill, wincing inwardly at how strained the CRV felt as it went. Abdallah Amir, the name was a joke. He was after Raymond Gorra, a traitorous piece of filth that had turned on his own people, not some so called `Slave of God’.
Twenty years earlier, Joshua would have jumped at the chance for a mission like this. It had all the makings of an Agency Legend. A desperate terrorist target, the single agent sent in to rout him out. The stuff Hollywood blockbusters were made of.
Of course, it wasn’t quite that way. There was a team being formed under Langley’s direction in California, and they’d be coming in within three, maybe four days, to take over the mission, but Langley had wanted a man on the scene, before the team arrived to provide better intel.
Pushing forty-five years old, the last thing on Joshua’s list of desirable jobs at the moment was hunting down some crazed terrorist, who hadn’t made a peep for five years. With his luck, Joshua figured that he’d probably arrive just in time for the crazy son of a bitch to strap on his dynamite overcoat and take his last trip to visit Allah, or God, or whatever deity the bastard really worshiped.
The dark train of thoughts fled as the old CRV-EV topped the crest of the rolling hill and the sparkling glimmer of the Project greenhouse came into view.
“Christ,” the CIA Agent whispered, shaking his head.
The dossier on the place, not to mention all the documentaries and tourist pictures, really didn’t do it justice. The tower just didn’t look as tall as it really was, until you started to get some perspective. And, out in the outback, there was precious little perspective to be had. That all changed, though, once you got close enough to see the small city that had grown up around it.
It was one big tower.
Joshua shook his head, smiling a little ruefully as he realized that he’d been staring like a country-fired rube, and stepped on the accelerator of his dinky little CRV.
I should have taken the main road, he thought as the CRV-EV bumped and jostled along the poorly maintained side road.
The well paved highway would have been a smoother, and faster, trip, but Joshua was posing as the kind of stupid American who would drive out through the outback in a vehicle that really wasn’t ideal for the drive. He’d crunched his numbers carefully, figuring that he’d make Tower City, just before his charge ran out.
That was the plan, anyway.
If it ran out earlier, well he had a quick charge capacitor stored under the spare tire to cover that eventuality. Joshua wanted to look stupid, he didn’t want to be proven so.
Of course he didn’t feel too bright, as a stray rock clanged hard against the undercarriage of his car, wincing at the noise and the vibrations that made it through to his seat. Other than the quick charger and his Agency issue portable, all he had to complete his mission was a couple credit cards that would appear almost maxed out if anyone checked them, and the mission assigned sidearm he had under the seat of the car.
Another reason to hate the mission, he supposed. That and the country in general. Australia’s strict policy of gun control had spilled out into so many other areas over the past decade that it was practically impossible for a civilian to get a permit to carry a knife, let alone an automatic like the Colt Avenger 9mm Extended he had checked out of the Embassy.
In a worst case scenario, Joshua knew that he could claim diplomatic status to avoid arrest, but that would burn him in a heartbeat if Raymond Gorra had penetrated the local police. His job was to gather intel, so the gun shouldn’t be needed, but he’d paid his dues in the field and knew that shouldn’t didn’t equate with wouldn’t nearly as much as he wished it would.
As he entered the city limits, Joshua Corvine wished once again that he could have sent his junior agent in his place. Unfortunately the damn punk kid was greener than the grass that grew on his neighbor’s lawn and there was no way that he would have sent the poor brat on a solo mission, not even if Joshua knew that he, himself was too old, too slow, and too damned fat for this kind of thing.
Gwendolyn Dougal led Anselm into the large space the Tower City PD had put aside for maintenance work on their vehicles, and walked straight toward the badly battered Eliica that sat alone in the huge room.
“Alvin!” She yelled, grinning.
There was a bang and a yelp of pain, causing a pair of legs to twitch and jerk from where they were sticking out from under the Eliica. A few moments later a white-haired man that Anselm guessed to be about fifty, rolled out and glared at the redhead who was smirking at him.
“You watch yourself, girl,” the older man, Alvin, Anselm presumed, said as he glared at Gwen. “You’re not so old that I couldn’t put you over my knee.”
“You can try it anytime, Alvin,” she told him sweetly. “We’ll see who winds up over whose knee.”
“Ah now,” the old man grinned. “Either outcome wouldn’t be so bad, from where I stand.”
“You old pervert,” Gwen grinned. “How’s my car”
Alvin lost his smile, eyeing her with a look one might expect him to give to some lower form of life. Like a tax collector, perhaps. “You’ve got some nerve asking me THAT question, Gwenny. You’ve gone done a bad thing here, Girl.”
“It’s a police car, Alvin,” Gwen defended herself, holding up her hands. “It’s here for a reason.”
“Aye,” Alvin nodded. “And that reason isn’t to be bouncing around like a rubber ball just cause you think it’s a four-wheeler.”
“There was a life at stake.”
“Aye,” he said again, this time grudgingly in agreement with her. “And don’t you think that I don’t understand.If it had been anything else, I’d kick you out of my garage, Girl.”
Gwen smiled, more seriously this time, and nodded. “How bad”
He clapped his hands clean of the dust he’d picked up while working under the car and seemed to consider. Finally he sighed and shrugged, “not so bad as you deserved, but bad enough. You’ve completely bent out the bottom shroud, so I’ll have to rip that off. It’ll take a week to get a replacement it, but I think I can fabricate one in a couple hours.”
“Could you” Gwen looked hopeful.
“Don’t you go getting any ideas,” Alvin growled. “The body work is going to take all day, and I’ve got to strip all eight of the motors to make sure you haven’t got grit into the workings.those things seize up and we’ll lose the car for three weeks at least.”
Gwen looked like a kid who’d just been told there was no Santa Claus, almost drawing a laugh from Anselm as he looked on.
Alvin rolled his eyes, then shook his head and cuffed his feet on the cement floor. “Look, come back tomorrow afternoon.One o’clock, mind you! Not twelve fifty-five.One! I’ll.well, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks Alvin,” Gwen smiled again, giving the older man a kiss on the forehead. “I owe you.”
He brushed her off, growling. “You already owe me, Girl.and none of that or I’ll have you up on harassment charges!”
Gwen just laughed at him and turned away, dragging Anselm out with her.
“He’s a sweetheart,” she told Anselm after they were back in the police station house. “Likes to talk gruff, but a real softy. A born tinkerer too, you’d think he was born with a wrench one hand and a keyboard in the other.”
Anselm just nodded, busy trying to decide what course to follow next.
Gwen keyed into his distraction quickly, but didn’t say anything as they continued walking back toward her office. Once inside, she finally spoke up, “What’s wrong”
“What Oh. Nothing really,” Anselm said. “I’m just trying to figure out what to do next.”