The next morning Jack and Kathy left for Connaught Place in a hotel car where, after doing some browsing and shopping, they met Bernadette in Tiffany’s for coffee. Arjun joined them a few minutes later. His panel truck was parked nearby on a side street. At 11:00 a.m. they left the coffee house, and Kathy got into the panel truck with Arjun. Jack and Bernadette followed in a second car from Arjun’s agency with Bernadette driving.
Arjun’s deputy and another of his employees with impressive-looking security credentials had already taken control of Abdul Ali Fahad’s import/export office and home. Fahad’s assistant and servant staff were being questioned by Arjun’s people in an upstairs guest room. They would be released as soon as Arjun gave the all clear. As Arjun approached C Block 432 in Defense Colony, he could see the driveway gate was open as planned and drove right in as far as he could. The wall along the driveway concealed people coming and going from the car.
Kathy and Arjun climbed quickly out of the panel truck, entered Ali’s house and went immediately to search their assigned zones. Kathy gave herself the office and began loading the office files into a canvas bag. She found surprisingly few files for a business office that had been operating for two years. The last drawer in the file cabinet was locked with a lock she had never seen before, and she went to get Arjun to open it. It took Arjun five minutes to open the drawer. Inside were maps, more files, a loaded snub nose .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, and a number of CDs. They found no computer in the office. Kathy told Arjun Fahad must have had a notebook computer and taken it with him.
Parked a few houses up the street, Bernadette and Jack watched the front of the house. They saw a car stop and two men looking like Arabs get out and head toward the house, leaving the car blocking the driveway.
Jack said, “Let’s go.” Bernadette floored the car to a sliding stop in front of the attackers’ car. Jack leapt out, vaulted over the hood and tore down the driveway. Bernadette was right behind him.
The two men heard the car roaring up and turned around. A revolver was just clearing the closest man’s pocket when Jack pinned the weapon to the man’s side and kneed him in the groin. When the man bent forward, Jack broke his neck with a downward blow of his rigid right hand. Jack pushed the dying man into his companion, who was struggling to stay on his feet. His gun was on the ground, and he had both hands on his throat trying to stop the blood gushing down his chest. Bernadette crashed into the man, knocked him down, and pulled her double-edged throwing knife, embedded in the side of his neck, across his throat. Jack scooped up both guns and watched in amazement as Bernadette finished her man and retrieved her throwing knife.
Jack ran toward the door. Someone might have come in the back. Inside the house no one had heard the fight. Racing past the panel truck, Jack reached in and blew the horn. Kathy immediately dashed down the hallway to the office where Arjun was packing up.
She yelled, “Finish up! We’re out the front door now!”
Hurrying to the door, they saw Jack charging down the hallway to the kitchen and back of the house. Arjun called to his deputy to leave the people and come down immediately. Kathy changed her direction and raced down the hallway after Jack. She was carrying the snub-nosed revolver she had found in Ali’s locked file drawer. Jack’s charge carried him through the kitchen into the small, enclosed courtyard surrounded with a six-foot-high wall. The door in the wall to the back alley was hanging open.
Jack never saw the third attacker step out of a closet in the kitchen behind him and swing up his handgun. From six feet away Kathy fired on instinct and kept firing until the hammer fell on a spent round. The gunman turned to look at her, dropped his gun, and slid down the wall. While Jack checked the body, Kathy quickly wiped the revolver and put it on the floor near the dead man. They both turned, raced out the front door and into their getaway cars.
Arjun moved the assailant’s car blocking the driveway and backed his car out of the driveway. His deputy and his helper had gone out the back door and, no longer in their police uniforms, had disappeared into the neighborhood. Bernadette and Jack jumped in their car and, with Bernadette at the wheel, drove out of Defense Colony. They could hear the klaxons of the arriving police cars.
Arjun led them to a large house on the edge of an upscale housing area bordering a golf course. A few minutes later the two vehicles were in the garage. Arjun, looking a little shaken, took everyone into his private office.
He took a few deep breaths and said, “Violence is easier to deal with if it is not practically next door. As I have said before, the Delhi police are quite good. We need to do a damage control now. Do you agree?”
Jack said, “Yes! Let’s get started with your action inside the house. First, however, I have to ask Bernadette about the knife.”
Kathy said, “What knife? I didn’t see any knife!”
“The knife she threw into one of the attacker’s neck, while I was finishing the first one in the driveway.”
Kathy said, “Bernadette, you killed one of the armed attackers with a knife?”
“Yes. I told you I wasn’t a stranger to violence. The IRA was a hard school, especially for a woman. I know how to use and throw a knife. Come on, people, let’s get on with the debriefing.”
Jack said, “You heard the lady. Go!”
Buy “Justice Beyond Law” on Amazon, as well as the rest of the Jack Brandon series and other books by Barry Kelly, a former CIA agent and adviser to President Reagan.
ndon series was published on this blog site. I have greatly enjoyed sharing my first two novels with readers in serialized form, “Run to Freedom” and “Justice Beyond Law.”
Facts and Fictions 