Death and Conspiracy

by Seeley James

  “Four key words in your statement: we, not, don’t, and if. Are you a passive leader barely hanging onto the reins at the whim of your staff? Or a commander obscuring your order executed by your lieutenant?”

  Mercury stood behind Paladin with a disapproving look. Very Caesar-like, homie. Maybe there’s hope for you yet. Did you check the reaction of your biggest fan?

  Arrianne’s eyes had gone soft and glowed admiration my way. I said, How come Jenny doesn’t see this side of me?

  Mercury said, Who cares? The raven-haired beauty would make a fine substitute.

  I said, There are no substitutes.

  Paladin bit the inside of his cheek while he ran through a hundred possible replies. In the end, he decided on honesty. He grinned that magnetic Tom Cruise smile and shook a finger my way. “Oh, you’re good. I see why Lugh wanted you here. Yes, the order to teach you a lesson came from me. I did not order a beating quite so violent, though.”

  “You’re telling me you don’t know how to give commands?” I stepped close and checked him out. “Or that your people don’t follow them?”

  The tension in his face flexed his cheek as he fought an internal battle over whether to escalate or lighten the situation. I could take him in an instant, overbuilt muscles and all. But he had a Russian named Aleksei—who I suspected to be loitering in the hallway outside—who could take me down for trying.

  He slapped my shoulder and gave me another Oscar-winning grin. “That’s why we need you, Jacob, to help me get my act together. I see the injuries didn’t slow you down. So, what do you say, no harm, no foul?”

  “Sure.” I play-punched his shoulder hard enough to make him take a step back. “You’ll return my passport?”

  The smile disappeared, and Paladin-the-tough-guy took its place. “When we get our money’s worth.”

  I pointed to the balcony. “How about we sit down for a bit. You can tell me your expectations for the training sessions. Maybe I can conjure up a lesson plan.”

  We took chairs in the early sunshine. Nema arrived just in time with coffee and a folder. She gave out drinks and handed the folder to Paladin.

  Mercury leaned against the railing and raised his face to the sun. These people get along fine for a bunch of warring factions. Was Zack Ames wrong about them?

  I said, Lemme guess. You’re going to make me figure it out on my own?

  Mercury said, The only thing better than watching a mortal die from a pox they could’ve prevented with a simple vaccination is watching you guys think about things you’re not quite smart enough to figure out—but think you are.

  Paladin opened the folder and handed me a few crude maps of the Ooze. He said, “Lots of guys wish they were you. They’d like to stop a terrorist attack but lack the skills or the courage. Every now and then, a guy like you comes along. We want to know how to tell the difference. Which guy is capable of rising to the occasion?”

  “Why would you want to know that?” I asked. If Zack Ames was right about these guys, knowing which people in a crowd were threats and which weren’t would be a primary strategy in a mass-shooter’s plans. “Aren’t your guys trying to become the ones rising up?”

  Paladin looked stunned for a second then pulled himself together. “We’re all about defense. We’re hoping to find more guys like you to join our team. I don’t want to spend our time and effort on daydreamers.”

  I didn’t believe him for a second. “OK.”

  He pointed to his maps. A couple were blanks; a couple had X’s and O’s. “This one’s a scenario we’d like to start with in the morning. It’s a hostage situation. The O’s are victims. The X’s are the terrorists. We want to know how to kill all the terrorists and free the hostages.”

  A noble endeavor except for one frightening detail: the X’s were in the wrong places. They were guarding the entrances, not the exits or the hostages. This wasn’t a rescue. This was a blueprint for an attack.

  CHAPTER 18

  After choking down my reactions to the scenarios Paladin showed me, I had a decision to make, run away or keep playing the game. A guy named Brady tried what I was doing, and it didn’t end well. Undercover work is not my specialty. I’ve had zero hours of training. My expertise is breach and kill. That’s when it crossed my mind to kill them all and be done with it.

  Mercury said, Killing a thousand people would be considered a terrorist attack all by itself, young blood. And the French already set you up for it.

  I thought IDC was a couple hundred, I said. You’re saying it’s that big? A thousand people?

  “They won’t all show up,” Arrianne said. “So far, we’ve had fifty cancellations.”

  “Still, that’s impressive.” I glanced around, uncertain how much of my sacred dialogue had spilled out.

  “Don’t let that bother you.” Paladin slapped my shoulder. “You only have to worry about the top guys. We call them the ‘Sixty-Four.’”

  Paladin declared we should visit the Ooze before Arrianne’s people served an American-style breakfast. The early-arriving conference attendees would be there.

  While the big Spanish cities have gone more mainstream, rural towns still cling to the old ways. Their business day starts after nine AM, has a siesta in the middle and goes until nine PM. Spaniards eat breakfast when I expect lunch and so on. Arrianne had arranged IDC’s schedule on the American timing to accommodate the majority of the attendees. Which was fine with me. I was starving with nothing but a large, weak coffee in me. Not to mention some holy fluids I’d rather forget about.

  Aleksei met us in the lobby. He frowned when he looked me over.

  “I’m hard to damage,” I said. “I’m even harder to kill.”

  A smirk of amusement flittered across the Russian’s face. I hadn’t won him over, only challenged him to try harder. He waved a hand at my core and said, “This not possible.”

  Only it sounded like “theees” and “poz-bul.”

  Arrianne scowled at him. She said, “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.’ Matthew 19:26.”

  Mercury leaned an elbow on Arrianne’s shoulder. She sure is trying to earn that Gospeler nickname, huh homie. She gets who helps you out. She might read the wrong book, but she’s closer to the divine truth than you.

  I said, OK, so you healed me. Thank you. Are you happy now?

  That’s what I like, an attitude of gratitude. Mercury straightened up with a grin. Even if you didn’t mean it, it’s a step. Say, you gonna win these people over before they kill you like they did Brady?

  I said, Thanks for the confidence builder.

  Arrianne and Nema left to organize the meal.

  “The first batch of the Sixty-Four arrived this morning,” Paladin said.

  We got in an SUV. Aleksei drove us to the shooting range.

  Twenty men between the ages of twenty and forty waited for us. For most of them, this appeared to be their first trip past the edge of the trailer park where they were raised. From the look of them, what those trailer parks lacked in worldliness they made up for in meanness.

  They introduced themselves to me, first names only, no points of origin. Half were Americans, the rest from all over judging by their accents. This group was better equipped than the men I met the day before. They had clean, fairly new assault rifles.

  One man twirled something between his fingers. I grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand up between us. It was a piece of twisted coat hanger with a unique but identifiable Y-ending. I said, “You made a DIAS out of a coat hanger?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned with all three front teeth. “Works great.”

  “Show me.”

  Several of the others scoffed as if a Drop In Auto Sear (DIAS) that wasn’t made of carefully machined steel was beneath them. What concerned me was the casual manner in which they all regarded the illegal modifier that converted a semi-automatic into a machine gun. In the US a DIAS could get you ten years. Saturn only knows what the
Spanish authorities, with their much tighter gun laws, would do.

  The man strode confidently to one of the tables, inserted his DIAS, and checked with the rangemaster. When he got the nod, he pulled the trigger once. Thirty rounds spewed in smooth, automatic succession.

  Another man thumped my shoulder and showed me his rifle. His DIAS was machined metal. He took a position at a shooting lane, got the rangemaster’s nod, and unloaded his magazine. His aim was above average. He left a tight grouping of holes dead center in the target.

  I did a double-take on the bull’s eye. Where yesterday’s crew had been firing at famous Muslims, today’s targets were pictures of me. All the posts had the screengrab of me from the Saint-Sulpice video. It wasn’t flattering. I was in the act of killing a man.

  Aleksei shoved my shoulder as soon as I got the joke. They crowded around me and started laughing. I did my best to laugh with them. There’s a fine line between making fun of the trainer and telegraphing a death threat.

  Someone clanged pots together at the back of the mob. We turned to find Arrianne with a breakfast buffet set up. Nema helped her dish out scrambled eggs and bacon. We grabbed our chow and sat in a circle, paper plates in our laps.

  Mercury sat next to me. You better win these guys over before they use your face—and not a facsimile of it—for target practice. Find some common ground with these guys. Get the leaders to respect you.

  I pointed at one grizzly looking guy’s shoulder. “Is that an Airborne patch?”

  He glanced at his shirt before scowling at me. “173rd Airborne, Operation Northern Delay at Bashur. You ever jump?”

  “A few times.” I ate a bite to delay the punchline. “My first was Objective Serpent.”

  Eggs fell from his open mouth. The few veterans in the group went quiet at the mention of the legendary night raid conducted under heavy fire. He pointed his fork at me. “How many tours?”

  “Eight.”

  “Lotsa night jumps?”

  “Beats making yourself an easy target.”

  “Any HALO?”

  Mercury turned to me. Izzat some kind of Christian code? You’re not converting on me, are you, bro?

  I said, He’s talking about High Altitude Low Opening jumps. Different kind of halo.

  Yeah. I knew that, Mercury said. Just checking.

  “My favorite is a nighttime, wingsuit HALO,” I told Grizzly. “I can jump from 40,000 feet, fly straight to your ’hood, and land on your outhouse roof.”

  The others laughed and shoved Grizzly. It took him a minute, but he laughed too.

  Paladin, sitting across the group, said, “I’ve done a lot of skydiving, have a B license. I’d love to do a HALO.”

  “You? HALO?” Grizzly laughed at him. “You gotta have balls of steel for that shit.”

  “You have the balls, right?” I asked Paladin. “Because, I can arrange a HALO jump.”

  After a glance around at everyone watching him, he nodded.

  I turned to Aleksei. “You’ve jumped for the Spetsnaz, right?”

  The Russian smacked his chest with his fist. “Dozen night jumps.”

  “Are you ready for HALO?”

  “Sure.” He ate some eggs. “Whenever you ready. You crap pants before HALO.”

  The group laughed.

  Paladin said, “I’m in. When can we do this?”

  “How about three hours from now?” I asked.

  “Sure.” The Russian kept eating. He suddenly jerked his head up. “Today? Three hours?”

  “Yep. I have eight rigs and a jet, ready to rock and roll. We can get over the Pyrenees, jump from 35,000 feet, and be back here before the siesta is over. What do you say?” I paused a beat. “You have the balls for it?”

  Every man in the circle turned to Paladin.

  “Uh.” He swallowed hard. “Sounds great. I’m in.”

  I turned to Aleksei and waited.

  He finished his eggs and wiped his mouth. “You jump, I jump next. You get scared; I push you.”

  The group hooted and laughed.

  I stood. “That’s three. It’s the most dangerous jump you will ever attempt. I can’t guarantee you won’t die of a heart attack in the air—which has happened more than you might expect. And I can’t guarantee the strain of falling that far and fast won’t cause you to black out and forget to pull your chute—which has happened even more than heart attacks. I’ve got five more rigs. Anyone man enough to join us?”

  A few hands went into the air.

  Mercury said, Headsup, homie. Remember the crew that jumped you outside of that bar in Paris?

  I said, Yes, I do. And I see him.

  One of the raised hands had a tattoo the size of a watch. It was round and made of a thick circle with an equally thick triangle in the middle of it. Identical to the man who tried to beat me up outside the Junkyard.

  I picked him first.

  CHAPTER 19

  We drove to the airport where Sabel Three waited for me in a private hangar. Miguel and Tania wore coveralls from the local executive jet service company. I was impressed they put together such a great cover story on short notice. Tania met everyone outside the small side door and called out something in Spanish.

  Paladin looked at me. “She wants the guy who’s paying. We’re to wait here.”

  I started in. He grabbed my arm and said, “A lot of these guys don’t trust you. Maybe I should go with you to translate.”

  “If they don’t trust me, tell them not to get on the jet.” I looked over at Tania. “Someone in there probably speaks English. If not, I’ll give you a holler.”

  I jogged over to Tania. The main doors for aircraft were closed. We entered through a human-size side door with a small window in it. Paladin pressed his face to the glass to watch me. Inside, Tania showed me a table with all the harnesses, suits, and rigs laid out. Miguel stood behind it. He went through the motions of showing me the equipment, as if I were inspecting it.

  “You counted on us to hear your HALO challenge on our directional mics?” Tania asked. “Pretty risky.”

  “I believe in you.”

  “We picked up a few side conversations,” Miguel said. “They talked about Ross Gio. They’re low-key about him. Whatever’s going down, he might be the leader or mastermind. We think he’s coming in soon.”

  “They keep pushing Paladin as the big dog,” I said.

  “He’s in a three-way power struggle with Arrianne and someone else. We think it’s this Ross Gio.”

  “What do we know about any of them?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” Tania was disgusted. “They’ve been careful with social media, passports, and any facial recognition. We can’t get past those codenames.”

  Miguel added, “Not just Paladin and Arrianne. Most of these guys have been off the grid for years. Arrianne and a couple of her guys have been off the grid since they were kids. No fingerprints, no arrest records, nothing. Or—and we’re not sure about this—some agency or another has suppressed them. Like they do for witness protection.”

  “Any news on the Moulin Rouge bomb?”

  “Inconclusive,” Miguel said. “Virtually every government requires explosive manufacturers to add special chemical markers in C4 and dynamite, anything that goes boom. This had nothing. And you know what that means.”

  “Professional assassins.” Tania gave me a grave look. “Free Origins and Birth Right are both well financed. This means they’re better connected and more dangerous than we thought. We don’t know about Fair Heritage, but the safe play is to assume the same.”

  “What about the rosary?” I asked.

  “No solid leads,” Tania said. “Anglican, Lutheran, Episcopal, any number of churches sell that brand. However, an Anglican outpost in Málaga sells it in their bookstore. When I showed them a picture of Diego, they clammed up. It could be they know him, or maybe they saw his picture from Saint-Sulpice. We’re still working that angle.”

  “And the markings at the UWZ?”

&
nbsp; “Street names in London’s financial district.” Miguel lifted an oxygen bottle and face mask as if he were showing me the finer points. “Saint Paul’s Cathedral fits for distance, but they seem focused on a set of office buildings. It doesn’t make sense for any kind of terrorism. The buildings are only half-occupied and mostly by business consultants. No cash, no valuables, white English males, not a high-value target. Can you ask about that?”

  “I can try. Too many questions will invite suspicion.”

  “OK, let’s get these guys suited up.” Tania turned to the entrance and shouted in Spanish again.

  The seven handpicked jumpers filed in and crossed the big space. In addition to Paladin and Aleksei, I brought Grizzly and the tattooed guy plus three others who seemed influential and had at least a skydiver’s B license. The B license certified at least 30 minutes of free fall. A C license means sixty minutes. Miguel and I were way over the D license requirement of three hours. I suspected Aleksei was near our level, but the Russians don’t fund a lot of expensive HALO jumps.

  Tania shouted directions in Spanish. Paladin translated to English. Several of the men treated her with disdain. No one said anything about Miguel. When a man meets someone big enough to crush his skull with one hand, he tends not to say anything rude.

  Grizzly grabbed my shoulder. “I want a rig that wasn’t packed by a monkey.”

  Tania looked back and forth at us, pretending not to understand English and waiting for an explanation of the problem in Spanish. Paladin provided what he considered a pleasant version. She said something rude to him, pulled enough chute out of the pack to require a re-pack, tossed it roughly at Grizzly, and pointed to the folding table.

  Aleksei laughed and gave him a push.

  Grizzly walked to the table, scowling at us. “Fuck you, Aleksei. You’re going to die because you let a monkey pack your chute. You’ll see.”