The Equalizer by Michael Sloan Read Free Book Online

good?”
    â€œSuperb, as always.”
    â€œExcellent. Cold out tonight. They’re forecasting more rain. Like that police sergeant used to say on that wonderful old cop show I watch in reruns…” McCall shrugged on his coat. This was a nightly ritual. He could say it with him: “‘Be careful out there!’”
    â€œI always am.”
    â€œWe will see you tomorrow night? Molto bene. Be well.”
    McCall walked out into the night.
    Behind him, the man at the boisterous table lifted his eyes again.
    *   *   *
    He climbed up the steel ladder carefully, carrying the pelican hard case in his left hand, holding on to the railing with his right. He didn’t want to slip. The snow flurries were eddying a little stronger as the wind kicked up and the ladder was becoming slick.
    He had followed her to the safe house, had been a block behind her when the explosion went off. It had irritated him. He knew he was a backup, but he still didn’t want his prize killed right in front of him. He would be paid either way, of course, but she was beautiful and defiant and the thought of extinguishing her life was too sweet. They’d miscalculated. He was glad she had such quick reflexes. She had handled that Lada with style, swerving on and off the opposite sidewalk, avoiding the other cars. He’d been concerned when that huge wooden cutout had fallen right on top of her car, its white cup smashing through her windshield. What idiot would put that kind of a monstrosity on a neighborhood street anyway? It was hardly decorative or pleasing to the eye. But she had navigated that obstacle nicely. He thought she might have been hurt by the flying glass from the shattered driver’s side window, but when she’d got out of the car she had run to the wrecked train with no missteps. He had no idea what she expected to find in a rotting train carriage in the middle of an industrial wasteland. He suspected it was a backup procedure, a last resort destination because her safe house had been compromised.
    It didn’t matter.
    She would not be leaving this desolate place alive.
    Nothing lived here. He doubted that any tourists had been to this gruesome theme park in a very long time. The echoes of death, from the carcass of the airplane, to the twisted carriages of the train, up to the downed helicopter, whispered to him. They were comforting. He heard those whispers often. Usually right before or right after he’d taken a life. Not voices in his head. Nothing as tangible as that. They were more like audible shadows, crossing his mind, reassuring him that death was welcome here.
    His foot slipped on a treacherous step and he held on, his heart suddenly hammering in his chest. What had caused him to slip? He was climbing with great care. He set down the hard case on a slatted steel step, held on to the railing on his left side now, and raised his right hand off the railing.
    His hand was bleeding.
    Not profusely, but he’d slashed it on a nail that protruded from the underside of the railing. There were the remains of a wooden notice attached to the railing. He hadn’t felt the nail slash his skin, of course, but his body had reacted and had caused his foot to slip.
    He steadied himself on the ladder. He hadn’t wanted to put on gloves, but decided it would be better if he did. He pulled black, skintight gloves out of the pocket of his overcoat and slid them on. That would stop the bleeding. He leaned down, picked up the hard case again, and climbed up the last forty feet to the steel platform at the top.
    The wind blew fiercely up there. It would not be a factor, not like he was up in a skyscraper in New York aiming down at a target in the street far below with all the other buildings creating a wind variance. The wind in the theme park meant nothing, except that it was strong enough and cold enough to bring tears to his eyes. He remembered an assignment in Siberia