Spenser was trembling, not from fear for the fate of Cody and Romeo, but from rage.
“I’m going to kill you, Ryker.”
“And just how are you going to do that?”
In answer, Spenser pressed a button on the walkie-talkie and sent a signal to its twin. The other unit was floating atop gallons of gasoline inside the plastic barrel Ryker was standing near. Spenser had placed it in there two days earlier and sealed the barrel tight with glue so that the fumes would build up. It was just one of several preparations he had performed while doing his due diligence.
Cody and Romeo thought he worried too much and was overly cautious. Truth be told, Spenser had only needed to use such preparations once during his years of working as an assassin. All the other times had been wasted efforts. And yet, wasn’t that the nature of insurance? It was something seldom needed, but when the need arose, it was a true lifesaver.
The battery inside the walkie-talkie created a spark, which ignited the gas fumes and blew apart the plastic container. Spenser was on the move even before the blast came. As he ran, he hoped that one of the screams he was hearing came from Vince Ryker.
102
Let’s Talk
NEW YORK CITY, APRIL 2018
Tang had contacted Tanner the morning after his apartment had been invaded by Monty, Craig, and Wire. Tanner agreed to meet with him inside Central Park, near the entrance to the zoo.
No one from the police had contacted Tanner, other than the uniformed cops who talked to the neighbors as a matter of routine.
The morning paper repeated the story that Tang had told the police detectives who investigated. Tang had kept to the truth. He only deviated from the facts when he stated that Wire had been killed by Monty.
Tang said Monty had saved him from being strangled to death because he feared having a murder rap pinned on him. Ironically, during their struggle, Monty broke Wire’s neck, killing him. Having recovered, Tang had then knocked Monty out and called the police.
The lead detective questioned Tang three separate times about his story and Tang was certain the man suspected he might be lying. It didn’t help that Monty was denying he ever touched Wire. Along with the fact that Wire was a trained professional fighter, there was bound to be suspicion.
There was also the knife wound in Wire’s side that Tang had no explanation for, other than to suggest that Wire may have been stabbed in an earlier confrontation of some sort. Despite the discrepancies, since Tang had a broken forearm, no one thought him capable of breaking Wire’s neck.
Another casualty of the day had been the building’s doorman. On his way up to the apartment, Wire had beaten the pudgy man into unconsciousness.
Tanner joined Tang only after he was certain the other man hadn’t been followed. As Tanner approached him, Tang, with his right forearm in a cast, cocked his head and asked a question.
“Who are you really, Tom Myers?”
Tanner decided to play a hunch. “I might ask the same of you… Jeong.”
Color drained from Tang’s face as his left hand drifted toward his hip.
“If you’re reaching for a concealed weapon, Tang, don’t. I won’t harm you and you’d never get off a shot.”
Tang let his hand drop while he continued to stare at Tanner.
“What sort of game are you playing? I don’t understand why you would save my life if you were sent to kill me.”
“No one sends me anywhere and I’m not playing any games. I encountered your brother-in-law years ago in Death Valley. Back then, he was calling himself Mr. Smith, and he tried to have me killed.”
“You tracked him down in Mount Vernon?”
“Yes.”
“And you killed Dalton?”
“No, but I was there when he died. That was when I discovered you were connected to him. I found a picture of the two of you that was taken about twenty years ago.”
“I still don’t understand why you moved into my building and befriended me.”
“I didn’t know you existed when I bought the penthouse, and remember, you first invited me to play chess.”
Tang nodded, “Yes, it was my idea, but that doesn’t explain how you know about Jeong.”
“Dalton Geary, or I suppose his real name was Ellsworth, anyway, he had a black book in his safe that had entries written in code. I took the book and had it deciphered. I only guessed that you were the Jeong mentioned in it.”
Tang cleared his throat. “What other information did the book contain?”
“The names Simmons and Carlton, and the fact that the three of you carried out assassinations.”
Something went out of Tang at the mention of his past. He took three paces and plopped onto a park bench. Tanner followed and sat beside him. Nearby, children chattered in happy and excited tones as they entered the zoo with their parents.
“My past feels like it took place a thousand years ago.”
“What were you, British intelligence?” Tanner asked.
A small smile played on Tang’s lips.
“Something like that, these days they would call it military black ops. It was a lie though, or I should say, some of it was, in the latter years. Simmons, Carlton and I were being played by Dalton, our superior. Many of our targets were unauthorized, which I didn’t discover until later.”
“Your brother-in-law used you three as his own personal hit squad? For what, money?”
“The bastard must have made millions. When I figured it out I threatened to expose him. I had just met Beth weeks earlier and was already in love with her. I didn’t want to be responsible for sending her brother to prison. Dalton and I made a deal. He would resign his position and in return I would remain silent. I also made it a condition that he would stay out of Beth’s life. That was no hardship for either of them, since Beth rarely saw her brother.”
“He was much older than your wife,” Tanner said.
“Beth was Dalton’s half-sister from his father’s second marriage. She’d never even met Dalton until she was seventeen. I had no idea he was living in the United States, and so close.”
“Was he blackmailing you?”
Tang looked shocked by the question.
“Dalton? No, I hadn’t heard from him in nearly seventeen years, not since Beth and I left England.”
“Then that means he was blackmailing the other men, Simmons and Carlton. They might also be responsible for you and your wife being attacked.”
“I was asked about a black book. Damn Dalton. The man is still causing mayhem from the grave.”
“Do you know where to find Simmons and Carlton?”
“No, and those are only aliases, like my own, Jeong.”
“You might not know where to find them, but they found you.”
“Perhaps, or maybe they tracked Beth down. They know of her and might have thought she had the book you mentioned.”
Tanner stood. “You’re going to have to deal with Simmons and Carlton. They won’t give up on finding that book.”
“But I don’t have the book, you do.”
“Yes, I do, don’t I?” Tanner said, and then he walked away.
103
A Very Dangerous Man
UTAH, AUGUST 2001
Cody stared down in disbelief at the dead form of the deacon he’d been contracted to kill. He wondered who had beaten him to the punch.
Someone had slit the bastard’s throat open. Given that he was hanging halfway out of his bed tangled in bloody sheets, Cody guessed it had happened while the man was asleep.
When he realized the act had to have taken place only minutes before he got there, he brought up the gun that was hanging at his side.
A look out a front window of the home revealed that no one was in the driveway. That didn’t mean there wasn’t someone on the road that lead to the home. Cody left the house and made it only a short distance before he heard sounds coming up from behind him.
Eight of Ryker’s raiders appeared from the rear of the
home. The men were smiling at Cody while speaking to each other in their native tongue. Although Cody spoke many languages and was learning a seventh, the Indonesian he heard was indecipherable.
Five of the eight men held shotguns, and one of them was a huge brute. He and two other raiders had scoped rifles. Cody knew if he even thought about raising his weapon he’d be cut in half by gunfire.
There was a cliff on his right with a short safety fence at its edge. Cody backed up to it, then risked a glance over the side at the thirty-eight-foot drop to the road below. One of the men raised up a shotgun and hollered at Cody while staring at the gun in his hand.
Cody released the weapon as he asked a question. “Who are you?”
One of the men, the huge one, spoke a little English. He answered Cody in a deep rumbling voice that sounded like an engine turning over on a cold winter day.
“We with Tanner. He want you dead.”
Cody’s face screwed up in confusion as he shook his head in disbelief.
“Tanner is my friend.”
“Real Tanner,” the man said. “Vincent Ryker.”
“Ryker sent you?”
“Get on knees, down,” the man said. “We kill fast. Shoot head.”
With no other choice available and death staring him in the face, Cody did what the man expected and bent his knees.
Romeo had spotted the many footprints in the mud as he approached the trailer and wondered if his target had given a party the night before. If so, the guests had left, as there were no other vehicles around other than the deacon’s old Ford pickup, which had to be twenty years old.
Like Spenser and Cody, Romeo found his man already dead. However, the deacon appeared to have attempted to defend himself, given that an old revolver was clutched in his hand. The cause of death was a series of stab wounds in the man’s back.
He must have been attacked from behind while facing off against another attacker. Romeo was splashing up mud as he fled the scene. He halted in a slide as three men stepped from behind trees and aimed shotguns at him.
Romeo hadn’t taken out his gun and was glad. It would have done him no good against three shotguns, and the men might have felt threatened and killed him.
They were small men, and skinny, with light-brown skin. Four more just like them came out from behind the trailer, then, all of them began to laugh.
“What’s going on, dudes?” Romeo asked.
One of the men holding a shotgun mimicked him.
“Dudes.”
This made the other men laugh harder, then a man behind Romeo shoved him while kicking the back of one of his knees. Romeo fell into the mud and felt someone remove the gun holstered on his hip. When the man who had mimicked him walked over, he ran a hand over Romeo’s blond head.
The man spoke to his companions in a language Romeo couldn’t understand, but he knew he was being insulted somehow.
The man had told his friends that Romeo reminded him of one of the prostitutes they had hired in San Diego. She too had blonde hair about the length of Romeo’s shoulder-length locks. Romeo stood and was shoved again, this time to fall on his ass.
He tried to rise, and again he was shoved, as the men laughed and taunted him. He understood they wanted to kill him, but first, they were going to have a little fun. As a muddy boot slammed into his ribs, Romeo crawled toward a group of bushes that bordered a row of maple trees. If he could make it past the trees, he might elude them with a little luck.
One man kicked his face, causing Romeo to taste blood. When a second boot connected with his chin, Romeo fought to stay conscious.
Vince Ryker lay on the ground wondering why one of his own men was hitting him in the head. It was Galong, and when the scent of burning hair reached his nose, Ryker realized that Galong was patting out flames.
Ryker had been knocked senseless by the explosion, but the screams of his men revived him along with Galong’s efforts to douse the flame in his hair.
“Is it out?” Ryker asked.
“Fire out, but Hawke run away, and three men burned.”
Ryker looked at his men and saw that two of them had sustained serious burns on their legs. They lay moaning on the ground near a third man who was burnt on the left side of his face. The blackened skin around the man’s right eye looked nasty.
Spenser had somehow rigged the gasoline container to explode, and he must have done so on a previous visit. It was unexpected and not something that Tanner Five had trained Ryker to do. It seemed Spenser Hawke had come up with some new tricks of his own while acting as a Tanner.
Ryker pointed at one of the men who had come out unscathed and told him to bring over a car to place the wounded men into. He could drive them to a hospital and say that they were burned by a faulty barbecue grill.
“What about Hawke?” Galong asked.
“We’ll get him. He left his truck behind, is on foot, and only has a gun. He’ll be easy to track down and corner once the other men join us.”
The man returned with the car and Galong helped him load the wounded onto the rear seat. Despite the loss of the three men and the man driving the car, Ryker still had five men with him. When the other fifteen joined in the hunt for Spenser, the man would be run down like a rabbit.
Ryker was walking toward his pickup parked among the trees when he heard the shots ring out. He turned in time to see Spenser Hawke firing into the car with his wounded men in it. The car left the road and ran up onto a small tree stump, lifting the front wheels off the ground.
By the time Ryker had the rifle on his shoulder to take aim, Spenser had placed another two rounds inside the car and snatched a shotgun off a seat. He then used the vehicle for cover, as he crouched and moved into a grouping of trees. Those trees ended near a spot where the land dipped. Once Spenser made it there, he would be out of sight of the rifle.
Ryker saw Spenser dart out from behind a tree and fired at him. The shot missed by two feet because Spenser had only been feigning a run, and he had stepped back behind the tree as Ryker fired.
Again, Spenser revealed himself, and once more he got back behind the tree. Ryker had wasted a second shot, then watched as Spenser sprinted and dived over the crest of the small hill, to vanish from sight.
Galong let out a string of Indonesian curses, then grabbed Ryker’s arm.
“This Hawke, he like you, very dangerous.”
Ryker nodded, and hoped he had brought along enough men.
104
Help
NEW YORK CITY, APRIL 2018
Simmons and Carlton had learned of Monty and Craig’s failure by reading the newspaper. They weren’t worried about the boys dragging them into a police investigation, since they didn’t even know their true names.
Wire’s death was mentioned in the story, along with the fact that he was an accomplished mixed martial artist. The claim that Monty was able to break the man’s neck seemed unlikely. Equally implausible was the contention that Beth Tang’s husband could have bested the boys.
The newspaper story stated that Tang ran a chain of appliance stores. How could such a man defeat two much younger and street-smart men in a confrontation?
Simmons and Carlton decided they needed to know more about Eric Tang. That was why they were near Tang’s apartment building two days after the incident occurred.
Carlton took another bite of lemon meringue pie as Simmons stared out the window of a coffee shop. The eatery was across the street and four doors down from the entrance of the apartment house. Although he was nearing sixty, Simmons eyes were as sharp as ever. It would be a simple matter to spot a man with a broken arm.
They had been watching since four o’clock in the afternoon while hoping to get a look at Tang when he returned home for the day. Although the paper had stated that Tang managed his appliance stores, the truth was that Tang spent his time overseeing his considerable investment portfolio.
Still, luck was with the pair. At 7:29 Tang stepped out of a cab with his wife and daughters
and headed into the building. There was a man accompanying them. He was tall and bulky and looked around warily, like a cop, or perhaps a bodyguard. Simmons snapped photos of them and was astounded when he magnified one of the pictures that displayed Tang’s face.
“No wonder Monty and Craig had trouble.”
“What do you mean?” Carlton asked.
Simmons passed him the camera and saw the shock he felt reflected in his old friend’s eyes.
“Eric Tang is Jeong? But Jeong is dead.”
“That’s what we were told by Dalton Ellsworth, and damn me for believing a word that came out of the lying bastard’s mouth.”
Carlton grew red with anger.
“Jeong married Dalton’s little sister. I’ll bet you he was also involved in blackmailing us.”
“I don’t doubt it. He never liked us, and he still has the book and can continue to milk us dry.”
“We have to get that book back. I won’t continue to be blackmailed. We couldn’t track down Dalton, but we now know where to find Jeong. I say we kill him.”
Simmons was leaning back in his seat inside their booth, looking thoughtful. When a smile crept over his face, Carlton knew he’d come up with a plan.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Remember one of Jeong’s more notable assignments, when he eliminated Nathan Powers?”
“Of course. That was a beautiful piece of work. Jeong killed the man on a yacht out at sea and escaped in an inflatable raft.”
“Right, but he was undercover as a part of the yacht crew, and the people on board knew his face, including Powers two teenage sons.”
“Rafe and Ronnie? Last I read about those two they were on trial for murder in Nottingham.”
“They were found innocent, and there was talk of a threatened juror, but they’re free. I also remember hearing that they moved to Boston. Knowing what they’re like, I’ll wager they’re running a gang just like their dad Nathan. Do you think they would be interested in knowing where to find Jeong?”
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