Must Come Down

by Brett Baker

  “Don’t give me that bullshit. You’re fishing for information, hoping I’ll confirm what happened. You can try that somewhere else, because it’s not going to work with me.”

  “Why haven’t you heard from the crew? Why haven’t you received confirmation that the plane arrived?”

  “Li diverted it,” Driscoll said. “He’s trying to go rogue on it, so he diverted the shipment, but I’ve got people looking for him. We’ll get it back.”

  “I was on the plane and it crashed in the Pacific. I parachuted out just before it crashed. The next day a Secret Service boat picked me up. Shortly after that a group of pirates boarded our boat. Their leader knew one of the guys on the Secret Service boat. He thought we had the gold, and our guy fought back. After a fire fight just another Secret Service guy and I survived.”

  “You’re just making shit up,” Driscoll said.

  “I’m not. The gold was packed on pallets, and those pallets were mixed in with pallets of other items, mostly stacks of plastic totes, but also some paper towel. The plane was a modified 767. Passenger, but modified for cargo. Not a full modification, but sort of half-assed. I’m surprised, actually. All of this money on hand to buy gold and you can’t get an actual cargo plane. Although I suspect you wanted it to look like a passenger plane to add to the deception.”

  Driscoll’s mouth hung open, and his body looked so relaxed in disbelief that Mia thought he might collapse to the floor.

  “Fabrice told you everything, didn’t he?”

  “Just about the operation. I was on the plane. Believe what you want, but facts are facts.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Driscoll. “You were on the plane, you weren’t on the plane, who fucking cares? You’re irrelevant to all of this.”

  “I’m not irrelevant. I know everything, which means I can take you down. I’m going to take you down. You had your chance to do away with this on your own, but you didn’t take it. So now I have to do away with it.”

  Driscoll smiled, started approaching her, and said, “Now I understand. I didn’t get it until that exact moment, but now I get it. You want in. We can do that. How much do you want?”

  “I don’t want in,” Mia said. “Do you have any idea how much damage this could do? We’re talking about fictionalizing billions of dollars worth of transactions, moving markets based on holdings that may or may not exist, and then just pulling the rug out from under everyone, and saying, ‘Just kidding, that money didn’t exist.’ It’s irresponsible, and it may not collapse the economy, but it will cause a lot of hardship for a lot of people. I won’t let it happen.”

  “You can’t stop it,” Driscoll said. “It’s too big. Everyone’s in too deep.”

  “You’re the only one who wants to keep going,” Mia said. “Li’s out, Buster’s out, Fabrice is dead.”

  “I thought you said Buster was dead,” Driscoll said.

  “He’s not dead. He’s still very much alive, and very motivated to bring you down.”

  “This is his baby, too,” Driscoll said. “They’ll never let him off. He thinks he’ll get immunity, but he’s just as guilty as me.”

  “I’m taking you down with or without Buster, so it doesn’t matter,” Mia said. “I can’t risk a change of heart from Buster. Fuck Buster.”

  Driscoll stood in front of Mia, and said, “You shouldn’t have come here,” and reached down, punching Mia once in the face. Although she expected it, the blow knocked her out of the chair and backward to the floor. Driscoll picked up the chair and threw it down on her. It landed on her back as she rolled out of the way, and by the time Driscoll reached her she’d risen to her feet. Mia delivered a hard knee to his groan, which made him double over in pain. She punched him five times in the stomach, burying her fist deep into him each time. A hard right to the chin sent him backward to the floor.

  She didn’t take her eyes off of him as she backed away from him, creating some space, and standing next to his desk.

  “You think attacking me is going to make me have a change of heart?” Mia asked. “It’s no wonder your plan failed. You seem to have a complete inability to read people. Not to mention your utter failure as a manager. You better stick to money markets because you appear incapable of doing anything else right. And on top of it all you have no idea how to fight.”

  Driscoll struggled to his feet as Mia spoke, and she could see his fists clench, and his jaw set, and his body become rigid as his anger increased. He stared at Mia, his chin to his chest, his eyes directed up. The resulting glare reminded Mia of an angry bull.

  “Just get the fuck out of my office,” Driscoll said, as he charged toward Mia.

  Like a charging bull Driscoll was fueled by rage, and as he ran toward Mia, she had no intention of engaging him. Instead she took one step to the side just as he reached out for her, and as he passed she shoved him in the back, continuing his momentum past her.

  Had she realized their proximity to the wall, she might not have pushed him, but she didn’t see the windows until she had turned her body as she pushed him. As she watched him stumble toward the glass wall, she said, “Ohh,” and reached out for him, but his momentum was too great. He crashed into the glass pane with his left shoulder and head at the same time, and his considerable heft and the momentum of his charge, combined with Mia’s extra push, proved enough to overcome the glass, and Driscoll broke through the glass.

  Mia took two steps toward him, but then stopped, not wanting to get too close to the bottom. She heard his cries grow faint as he plummeted toward the ground, forty-six stories below.

  She retrieved her interceptor from Driscoll’s phone, turned off the lights in his office, and wiped everything she touched on her way out. People at ground level were no doubt already looking up at the hole in the side of the building, and the elevator would arrive any second. Mia had to get out of there, so she raced to the opposite end of the floor and exited into the stairwell. On the ground level she found the hallway that led to the back alley exit, and left through the door, and a minute later disappeared into a cab headed north on Second Avenue.

  49

  Chapter 49

  Mia met Randy for breakfast at an IHOP on Fourteenth Street the next morning. She’d waited a few hours after returning to her hotel to call Randy. In the interim she reviewed the conversations recorded on the interceptor, and confirmed that Driscoll had arranged for the hit man who got Fabrice and tried to kill Buster. When she called Randy she said nothing other than she wanted to meet him for breakfast. Randy agreed, wise enough to refrain from saying anything else.

  They sat in a booth away from the window and street traffic that also let them both keep an eye on the door. Mia always felt a sense of relief at the conclusion of a mission, but for a few days she also felt a bit on edge, unsure whether it was over, or whether something else would arise. Most of the time she couldn’t discuss the mission with anyone else, so she looked forward to talking through it with Randy.

  “I assume you made it to see Driscoll last night?” Randy asked.

  “I did. We talked, and he became angry. It might have ended like that either way, but he went through his window on his own. I gave him a slight push, but didn’t mean for it to end up like that. I’m not complaining. It made my job easier, since I would have had to do anyway with the way things were going in there.”

  “What’d he say before that?”

  “The pirates who boarded the boat, you didn’t know any of them?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean it was very dark, except for those lights, and they were so damn bright that I think they only made it more difficult to see anything they weren’t shining on. Why do you ask?”

  “Turns out they were rogue Secret Service. Driscoll said the leader was one of the guys who stumbled upon the gold in the warehouse in L.A. He wanted in on the action, so Driscoll sent him out to sea, told him to intercept one of the shipments.”

  “Only the shipments were going by air, not by sea.”

>   “Right,” Mia said. “And when they saw your boat they assumed you were there for the same thing, and since they hadn’t found it, you must have. Do you think Graham knew?”

  “Hard to tell,” Randy said. “He recognized the guy, for sure. I don’t know what what Graham knew and didn’t know about personnel, so it’s possible he knew the guy was on the case, and put it all together.”

  “How much of this are you reporting to your people?” Mia asked.

  “None of it. As far as I’m concerned, the gold was a dead end if anyone asks. I’m not spending any more time on it.”

  “Good. That makes it easier. I thought we were going to have to come up with a story.”

  “What about Fabrice and Buster?”

  “They got Fabrice in his room in Quanzhou. Poor guy never had a chance. They tried to get Buster, but he got lucky and then I stopped it. I’m sure news of Driscoll will make its way over to him, and he’ll know its over.”

  “And he just walks?”

  “I think so,” Mia said. “He wanted out by the end anyway, and with Driscoll gone the whole plan’s shot. He devised it, he ran it, he tried to make it work. We’ve got no other reason to pursue Buster. Just let him go.” Driscoll nodded in agreement. “I don’t know what will happen to all that gold.”

  “Well, it depends whether the attorneys on Driscoll’s will are good detectives or not. It’s not illegal to own gold. Even a lot of it. But they might not know about it. The others will want their gold back, but I’ll leave that up to them to fight about, and then they can handle the wild goose chase to find where it’s stored. I’m sure someone else knows though.”

  “I wish I could have seen that vault,” Mia said. “It sounds impressive.”

  “I can take you down if you want to check it out.”

  “That’s okay. If I never think about gold again it’ll be too soon.”

  “I’ll be honest though, if I ever run into financial troubles it’ll be difficult not to just go into that tunnel and find the answers to it all.”

  “Might as well,” Mia said. “It’s a good bet that gold’s not clean.”

  “What’s next for you?” Randy asked.

  “I don’t know. We’ll see where it takes me.

  “Where what takes you?”

  “Life.”

  Randy nodded. “So I guess this is the end of the line for us.”

  “It is,” Mia said. “Thanks for your help on this. I’m not sure I would have put it together without you.

  “I’m sure you would have. It might have taken longer, but you would have put it all together. Those guys never stood a chance.”

  After an awkward silence that reminded them they’d never discussed anything not related to gold, Randy asked, “So what are you going to order?”

  “Actually, I’m not that hungry. I think I’m going to go.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, thanks for meeting.” He extended his hand, and Mia shook it and smiled.

  “I’ll see you later,” she said, as she stood up from the booth.

  “Until next time,” Randy said.

  Mia nodded, exited the restaurant, and walked east on Fourteenth Street, in pursuit of something to keep her busy for the rest of the day.

  Also by Brett Baker

  For the Trees (Book 2 in the Mia Mathis series)

  Gruesome murders that hit too close to home. A past filled with enemies. Can Mia Mathis unravel the truth before it’s too late to protect herself?

  The Death Market

  In this stand-alone novel, Elliot Whitcomb must navigate an illegal, underground market in which investors wager on whether or not a person will die during a specific period of time. His life depends on it.

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  Must Come Down is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Brett Baker