Maric's Reprieve Read online

  MARIC’S REPRIEVE

  Warwick Gibson.

  © 2018 Warwick Gibson

  All rights reserved

  Released briefly in 2015 as Resurrection: A Pendrith Joll Novel.

  Reworked and released in 2018 as Maric’s Reprieve.

  Cover by Rocking Book Covers

  Content 101,560 words.

  DISCLAIMER.

  This novel is a work of fiction. It does not draw from actual events. The characters in this story are entirely fictitious, and do not bear any resemblance to any persons living or dead.

  ALSO by WARWICK GIBSON

  Rough Justice The Unsound Prince

  Struggle for a Small Blue Planet

  PREVIEW.

  The first two chapters of the author’s next book featuring Maric, ‘Struggle for a Small Blue Planet’ can be found at the end. Enjoy!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  Maric worked his way up the rise. He slid into the shade of a stand of trees as he approached the crest. Close-cropped grass fell away on the other side of the rise. It dipped into a shallow basin, and surrendered its well-kept appearance at a row of suburban houses.

  An elderly man walked his dog through the basin, his back to Maric. The War Memorial Museum bulked large on his left, already closed for the day. The man passed through a set of public gardens running from the museum to the houses on his right.

  Turning round, Maric looked down the slope toward the heart of Auckland. It was the most spread-out city in the world. At least that was the common belief.

  It was pinched between the sprawling Manakau and the angles and inlets of the much smaller Waitemata harbour. A hub of more than one million people, it had started life as a portage point between the two harbours. Above it the North Island threw itself across the sea toward the equator, reaching out in one long, extended arm.

  As a child Maric had laid a ruler along a map of that arm. Then drawn a line across the Pacific to see where it would go. He smiled. His mother had not been impressed by his early attempt at geometry. The line made landfall at the small town of Kainan, on the edge of Shikoku, Japan.

  His many travels since had given him a chance to visit the town, and discover he liked the place. It was as much home as anywhere else.

  Beyond the city centre tiny scraps of white converged on elaborate breakwater and pier structures. These were marinas. Evening was coming on fast, and yachties were having to surrender their sense of freedom for another day.

  Maric scanned his surroundings one last time, and melted into the stand of trees. He was content that no one would intrude on his evening meal. Old habits died hard.

  He dumped a tattered bag of a faded, neutral material on the ground, then sat beside it. He rummaged inside, and took out a chicken roll in a plastic wrapper. One bite confirmed it was on the dry side. It was what he had expected from the corner dairy.

  He followed the chicken roll with a mixture of fruit and vegetables. He cut them fine and fed them into his mouth, as if he was feeding a garden mulcher. It didn’t matter that he had nothing to cook with tonight. Freshness had its own flavour.

  Maric hadn’t seen the grocery shop until he came out of the dairy. He’d gone straight into the place. He was glad he had. The last few days had contained far too much processed and boosted, unnatural, food.

  Dusk was falling fast as he finished his meal. He looked at the time on his cell phone. This far into summer it was still light at 9 pm, and he’d already had a long day.

  He stretched out on the dry needles under the trees, content just to lie full length and look up at the branches closing overhead. It was going to be a fine, starry night. The deep bed of needles would make a comfortable mattress. He’d slept on worse.

  In the stillness, bits of what Julie had said floated back to him.

  He’d been surprised when a woman on her own picked him up just south of Whangarei. When he saw her weather-beaten face and the condition of the truck, he’d understood. She was a market gardener. People of the land tended to take you as you were. He wasn’t clean-shaven, and his clothes were rough, but he was tidy. That was all she’d needed to know.

  It had been good to stretch out in the truck. Modern cars were usually too low for his two-metre frame. Sitting upright on the bench seat of the truck – not having to guess when he’d hit his head on the roof – had been an unexpected bonus. It helped their conversation that she was lean, like him. Not skinny, but seemingly made of bits of whipcord loosely joined. And a whole lot shorter.

  He guessed she was half Chinese. Not new Chinese, the flood of Asian ‘entrepreneurs’ encouraged into the country recently by the government. But old Chinese. Born of 19th century gold rushes in New Zealand and heartless land barons in China.

  He soon discovered she was a New Zealander through and through, delivered into a classless society with a natural interest in everyone she met. Near the end of the trip she had confided she had a Chinese name, in memory of her ancestors. But ‘Shau-zee’ (as he remembered it) had morphed into ‘Julie’ for clumsy, English-speaking tongues.

  They’d talked about the new faces of the country. How the old, egalitarian ways had changed. It was a topic they dissected all the way to Auckland. He was taken with her understanding of what was happening, and why. He’d been overseas more than home for much of his life, and he treasured her ability to help him understand the changes.

  He recalled one part of the conversation with a smile. She’d confided that her last child had just gone off to university. It was then he understood her need to talk. He’d been only too pleased to listen.

  Still, that was why he was sleeping in the Domain tonight. Normally he would have waited at the start of the northern motorway, looking for a ride straight through Auckland. Now though, he was going to have to take public transport until he could clear the southern motorway. It would be a drain on his always-limited funds. A farmhand got paid reasonably well, but it was often seasonal. It didn’t help that he took time off just to travel around.

  Maric yawned, and stretched. Time for a quick check of the area. A ‘walk round the perimeter’, as he would have done when he was in the field. Not that he wanted any part of that world these days. Or ever would again.

  Old, black feelings of helplessness returned for a moment, a reminder of times he hadn’t been able to save lives. Or other, darker times when he’d taken lives and wished there had been an alternative. He bowed his head for a moment, in memory of the dead.

  Then he curtly returned his mind to the present. Of all his strengths, a mental toughness had saved his life most often.

  At the edge of the trees he paused and scanned his surroundings, his head barely moving. His stillness was deceptive. Even in the approaching dusk he’d quickly dismissed most of the scene in front of him as harmless. Now a trace of movement at one of the houses across the basin took his attention.

  Something was out of place. A trim woman in a business suit paused in front of a back gate. She seemed agitated.

  Maric shifted his attention to the street on the other side of the houses, and then an adjacent side street. He wanted some sort of context for her movements. A jogger hurried home, and an overweight woman was having difficulty getting into a car. Everything seemed normal. He figured the houses were on the edge of Newmarket. No more enlightened, he turned back to the mystery woman.

  For no apparent reason she hurried from the gate to the back door, a ranch slider leading off a bare concrete patio. She sat in the only ornamentation, a plastic chair. The house had hard times written all over it. What was a woman in a business suit doing here?

  The sense that something was wrong hit him again, and his skin crawled. He felt a jolt as alarm chemicals dumped into his blood stream. He tried to figure out what was triggering the reaction.

  The woman was trim, and fairly fit he imagined. He guessed that she was normally more self-controlled. So why was she acting like this? As he watched, she twisted her hands nervously.

  He decided she was putting on a front. But why?

  He looked around more slowly. As if on cue, a piece of darkness detached itself from the trees to his right, where the planting along the crest met the road. What the dark shape was exactly he couldn’t tell, but he could track its movements. It started down the tree line bordering the road, drawing closer to the woman.

  More of a shadow than a shape, it’s movements intrigued him. Maric watched with his head turned away so he could catch the movement in his peripheral vision. Before he was aware he’d made a conscious decision, he found himself moving to intercept it.

  Drawn into the other’s wake, like a
leaf behind a slow-moving boat, he slid along the top of the hill and down the tree line beside the road. He was almost certain now that the woman was acting. But the man – and by now he was sure it was a man – was not. The taking of a life took many forms, but they all had the same underlying intent. He could feel that intent radiating off the figure in front of him.

  The woman came down to the back gate again, and stood there looking out into the darkness. It was as if she wanted to be caught in the killer’s deadly game. The way she was acting made him think it was a set-up, a trap. But if that was the case, where was the backup? He’d seen nothing that might be cavalry.

  Much as the woman still puzzled him, the man did not. He meant to kill her, and he was minutes away from doing just that. Maric already knew, from the way he moved, that he was a professional. Someone trained to be lethal. Trained to take a life quietly and then disappear, like smoke in the wind.

  It was then Maric made up his mind. If he took down the assailant, he might find out what this was about. If he let it play itself out, he might be responsible for a murder.

  Swearing silently, he closed the distance between himself and the shadow ahead of him. He was only too aware that he was out of training. It had been years since he’d gone up against another professional. What if the Grouch had a knife (a target was always the Grouch. The Sesame Street reference made it more of a game somehow). A gun was easier to deal with, but unlikely in little ol’ New Zealand.

  Maric suddenly realised the man had disappeared from the tree line.

  He replayed the last few moments in his mind, and cursed himself for wasting his time thinking. Thinking was an indulgence, and it always weakened him. He needed to be one hundred percent in the moment to be effective.

  He scrutinised the area where the tree line ended and the houses began. Where was the Grouch? In the patch of shadow cast by a clump of trees on the adjoining section? The man had to be. It was just along from where Maric had seen him last.

  Street lamps played over the houses, creating pale yellow shapes in the back yards and casting deeper shadows along the back fences that bordered the Domain.

  Maric waited patiently for the Grouch to take his next step, but nothing moved in the shadows. He began to have an uneasy feeling. The sort of feeling he’d learned to trust during his years in the field. His target was already on the move, he was sure of it, but where?

  The fence line leading up to the gate! A sudden understanding gave him the idea. The figure moving down the tree line had been too small. As if doubled over, or short compared to Maric’s lanky frame. A small man might just fit into the shadow cast behind the back fence. He could be edging his way forward on knees and elbows.

  Maric was already moving. He made the tree line quickly, still trying to move quietly. A small breeze stirred the branches about him, and he went faster, banking on the noise of the breeze to hide his passage. He still couldn’t see his target, but something told him the Grouch intended to strike soon.

  It was odd the way the noises of the forest stilled when there was a predator about. It was a stillness that had saved his life on many occasions. To those tuned to it, the same thing happened at night, even in cities. There were few animal noises to still, but the darkness developed a flat, deadened effect. It was precisely this he was hearing now.

  Maric played out the most likely scenario in his mind.

  If the Grouch was working his way along the fence line, he’d be scoping his victim. Running through in his mind where his hands would go, and which sudden movement would drop her lifeless.

  It would take all the Grouch's concentration, his will fully focused. Maric knew he had to move now. He surged forward, rising up on his toes to lighten the sound of his footfalls. He mentally prepared himself for the wooden fence. He’d been a good hurdler in his day, his height and speed making him perfect for the sport. He was going to need that skill again.

  As the woman turned away from the gate, the man rose out of the shadows. He came swiftly through the gate and clamped his hand over her mouth. As he went to twist her head toward him – to throw her down or break her neck was unclear – Maric brushed the top of the wooden fence and landed beside him. He drove the point of his elbow into the attacker’s shoulder, paralysing it completely.

  To his surprise the woman had twisted and dropped out of her assailant’s grasp. Maric barely had time to register how fast she was when he saw the gleam of metal. The man was using his other arm to draw a pistol from the back of his belt. Then he was turning, trying to bring the pistol to bear.

  Maric’s heart rate doubled, and he saw the Grouch in slow motion as his awareness accelerated. He didn’t need to think about his response. Thinking was far too slow. Reflexes honed years before positioned him automatically as the man whipped around.

  A short step forward allowed him to trap the attacker’s pistol hand under his arm. He drove sharply ridged knuckles into one of the pressure points that ringed the man’s solar plexus. Too many fighters strengthened the muscles in their abdominal wall to withstand a direct attack. A strike to the side dropped them just as effectively.

  The attacker grunted in pain. Then to Maric’s surprise he snapped a right leg up in what looked like a kick boxing move. Lifting the kick higher than the Grouch had intended, and twisting the arm he’d trapped, Maric got the man airborne. He moved down and under to complete the throw. It was a moment’s work to bring the edge of his hand down hard on the back of the attacker’s neck as he did so. The man was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  Maric glanced down and saw that he’d been right, the assailant was below average in height. He thought he detected Asiatic features, perhaps Mongolian. His heart rate started to slow. He became more aware of his surroundings.

  He turned back to the woman, intending to help her to her feet. Maybe now he’d get some answers about this strange charade. A game played against a deadly opponent on what was, incongruously, a peaceful summer’s evening.

  Where had she gone?

  A cold metal barrel pushed unpleasantly into the line of his jaw, just under his right ear. His fingers found themselves in a vice-like grip that forced his arm into a painful double bend. He recognised a variation of the police ‘come along’ hold. At the same time a hulking figure burst out of a bush at the side of the back yard, carrying a stubby rifle. As the figure got closer he could see a night scope and silencer reflecting the weak light from the street lamps.

  “Where – were – you?” hissed a female voice loudly from behind him. It was clear the attacker hadn’t been meant to get that close. Maric could feel the woman shaking with tension, or was it just plain anger, behind him.

  “Bozo here got in the way!” protested the rifle carrier, dropping the weapon and drawing his pistol so he could point it at her prisoner. Close up he was enormous, a body builder at the least.

  “Besides,” the man continued. “You’re always saying you can look after yourself!”

  The way she’d moved when the Grouch attacked told Maric she did, indeed, know how to look after herself. He admired that level of dedication in any of the martial arts.

  “Stay closer in future,” grated the woman, and her partner fell silent. It was plain she outranked him. The barrel of the pistol pushed Maric’s head to one side, and his fingers were twisted viciously upward. He grunted against the pain.

  “Who the hell are you?” said the low, threatening voice behind his ear.

  This was a tricky one. He had no wish to be known to these people, and he didn’t want to be involved in cleaning up whatever frickin’ mess this was. He’d left that sort of intrigue behind long ago, and that was where he intended it to stay.

  Another vicious twist on his fingers, and he rose onto his toes again.

  “Thought we didn’t have reciprocal agreements with American agencies,” he countered, fairly sure he detected a faint East Coast accent.

  “Not American,” said the woman. “Educated there, recruited in Europe.”

  He felt a glimmer of hope. Unsolicited information. It meant she might see her way clear to doing a deal. He could smell her now. Fastidiously clean. Unvarnished by cosmetics or deodorants.

  “What are you doing!” growled her partner, moving closer and taking more careful aim at Maric’s chest, as if that would shut them both up.