▪
The warehouse was nothing to look at. They never were. Down a street that looked like an alley, with all manner of industrial real estate on each side, this was an area of the city that was designed to be cheap and functional. That’s all. Each business had a small sign, or maybe just a number, and anywhere from one to a dozen large roll-up cargo doors for trucks to on and off-load. These warehouses were resting places. Goods were not made there, nor did they end up there. The garages were simply distribution points for the entire US economy. Everything went through these spaces—including highly explosive chemicals.
When the door rolled up in front of Axel Bossonov and the brothers Petrov and Roschin, a skinny man greeted them with a huge smile on his face.
“It’s nothing less than an honor to meet you, Mr. Bossonov,” the skinny man said. “The Belarusians say very good things . . .”
“Joey, right?”
“You got me.”
“Sure do.” Axel chuckled and checked his watch. “Where are the containers?”
“Oh? Thought you knew. They’re at the other location . . .”
“That wasn’t what we discussed.”
“What’s it matter?”
“I’m here now. We have a truck. We’re ready to take delivery like you promised,” Axel said.
“And you will, you will . . .” Joey replied. “After you come to our second location.”
“No,” Axel replied. “Deal’s off.”
“That’s funny,” Joey said. “Me and Tiko were taking bets on you. What you’ve ordered . . . That ain’t in high demand. Fact is only been ordered one other time this year. And that client . . . Well, let’s just say that client was a serious problem. But at least they were real. So I told Tiko, if you weren’t Axel Bossonov, I wouldn’t have even taken your call. But you are. Big man of Bensonhurst. So then I told Tiko exactly how we’d know if you were for real. If you were real, Axel, you’d be okay with driving to the other location.”
“Screw you,” Axel replied. “No one’s gonna talk to you again after they hear ’bout this.”
“How are they gonna hear about it when you’re dead?” Joey asked. Behind him, a bodyguard named Tiko and two other henchmen stepped out of a side office. They all held guns trained on the Bossonovs.
“Fine.” Axel pulled the keys to their truck from his pocket and flung them at the skinny man. “If it matters that much to you, you drive. I don’t care. We need the stuff. Let’s go get it.”
“C’mon,” Joey commanded Tiko and his henchmen. They lowered their guns. The group stepped out of the warehouse and warily looked around.
Just a dead street, just as it had been before.
“Where are they?” Joey asked.
“Who?” Axel replied.
“The cops.”
Axel began to laugh. It was a big and deep guffaw that emerged from his lower belly. “I hate cops, Joey.”
“All right, let’s get in your truck. Tiko, one of the brothers goes with you.”
The men loaded into the Bossonovs’ truck, as well as their own SUV. The two vehicles started up and drove away from the warehouse.
▪
Inside the truck, about a half mile from the warehouse, Joey began to calm down.
“You weren’t bullshitting me, were you?”
“Are you going to get me what I need, or does the street gotta hear how unreliable you are?” Axel asked.
“Joey don’t let anyone down. Sorry about all that. It was just a test.”
“So where are we going?”
Joey sent a text on his cell phone and then commanded Petrov to turn the truck around.
“Back to the warehouse.”
“Same warehouse?”
“Yep.”
“You’ve got to be shittin’ me.”
▪
A few minutes later, the two vehicles arrived back at Joey’s warehouse. The skinny man jumped out and rolled open the garage door. Both crews walked into the warehouse for the second time. Sitting in the back were two large refrigerator boxes. They’d been there the entire time. Joey strolled up to one of them, grasped the cardboard in his hand, and pulled it vertically off the ground. The boxes were not holding fridges. In actuality, they were simply covering two large slightly opaque containers of a green-hued liquid.
“Tada,” Joey said. “Synthesized peroxysulfuric acid with tetrahedral geometry.”
“You know what all that means?” Axel asked Joey.
“Nah.” Joey pointed to a small label on the canister. “That’s just what we order from the Chinese.”
Axel barely glanced at the containers before turning to his nephews. “Load it up,” he commanded.
Petrov, Roschin, and Tiko began to wheel the containers towards the truck using a small forklift. When they reached the back of the truck, Petrov grabbed the lift remote and pressed a button. The liftgate began to rotate downwards. Suddenly, as the liftgate of the truck reached ninety degrees . . .
Sirens erupted.
The back of the truck sprung open, and before Joey could reach for his gun, a phalanx of hyperaggressive SWAT operators pounced on him.
“On the ground! Hands up! You are under arrest!” A full-on SWAT team poured out from the back of the Bossonovs’ truck, while multiple police SUVs converged on the warehouse.
▪
Joey and his men lay on the ground in handcuffs. Police officers stood around them—while the Russians milled about freely with nothing to do. After the crime scene was fully secured, Tony Villalon strode over to Axel.
“That’s a wrap, right?” Axel asked Tony.
“Yeah, you’re all done,” Tony confirmed.
“I’m not going to get any more calls from the DA either, ya?”
“Little trust goes a long way. It won’t be in writing, but you should be happy. You’re the luckiest man in Brooklyn.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment—and an assurance,” Axel replied.
“Don’t worry . . .” Tony said.
“What?”
“Maybe your past is wiped clean, but I’ll keep on hunting you,” Tony said.
“I’d expect nothing less. And you don’t worry, either, detective.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I’ll keep running,” Axel said.
The two men chuckled, but they didn’t shake hands.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE MORNING WAS BITTER COLD. Jake had found an old axe in a shed beside Borin’s lake house and had spent about twenty minutes cutting logs to prepare enough firewood for the rest of the day. Once he was back inside, he carefully placed the logs in the fireplace. After a few minutes, flames lapped up the sides of the wood, and soon the fire was roaring. Jake turned back to the center of the room. Dr. Borin was still strapped into the machine. He’d spent the entire night hooked up. Jake reached for the handcuffs around Borin’s hands and unclasped them. He began to untie the doctor and then lifted the MRI machine off his head. The man said nothing. His eyes were open but glazed over.
“Still there, doctor?” Jake asked.
“Yes,” the doctor mumbled.
“Do you want to lay down for a while?”
“I do.”
Jake arranged some pillows on a couch in the back of the room. He nodded to the couch, and the extremely groggy and compliant doctor stumbled his way towards the furniture and collapsed upon it. Within seconds, Dr. Borin was asleep.
After he was sure the doctor was out, Jake set upon the machine. Using a wrench, a hammer, a pair of pliers, and a screwdriver, Jake carefully disassembled the technology. He chose to leave the plastic pieces of the MRI chassis and all of the wood to the side in a pile. It was the circuitry he was interested in. Whenever Jake found a circuit board or wiring system, he broke it down to small components. He threw each piece into the fireplace. The room quickly began to smell with a pungent chemical odor, but Jake kept going. He took each of the professor’s three computers and pried the cases off them. The cir
cuit boards were thrown directly into the fire, but Jake went further with the hard drives. He drilled holes through each of the computer hard drives with a wide bit. After the hard drives and the machine itself had been physically destroyed, Jake took his time while he searched the entire cabin for any and all physical documents. The doctor had lugged a few file boxes’ worth of paper material—his life’s work, apparently—to the cabin. Jake made sure it burned. Then he turned to the rest of the cabin, incinerating every single bill, piece of mail, document, receipt, or photograph he could find. By the end of the process, the cabin had a thick cloud of dark smoke inside. But Dr. Borin was still asleep.
Jake grabbed him roughly. It took a few slaps to the face before Dr. Borin’s eyes slowly opened.
“What?” Borin asked, squinting through the haze.
“How do you feel?”
“I . . .”
“Max, focus. What do you want to do?” Jake asked.
Suddenly, Borin’s eyes jolted wide open.
“I want to go swimming,” Borin said.
▪
The two men stood on a dock outside Dr. Borin’s lake house.
“Get in,” Jake said, nodding to a small rowboat floating in the water next to the dock.
“No,” said Borin.
“But you want to go swimming, don’t you?”
“I . . .”
“Say it with me,” Jake commanded.
“I want to go swimming.”
“Then get on the boat.”
“But I can’t swim,” Dr. Borin said.
“But you want to go swimming, right?”
“I do,” he said. He stepped onto the rowboat as instructed, gripping the sides of the craft with clenched fingers. Jake followed. Jake rotated the rowboat’s oars and slowly rowed the two of them towards the center of the small lake.
“You made a lot of mistakes, doctor.”
“I can see that now . . .”
“Why not before?”
“I’m not a normie.” Borin shrugged. “You wouldn’t understand. I don’t fit in with the rest of the world. I become addicted to my goals. I have blinders on. Whatever I’m thinking about becomes the only thing that matters. Unfortunately, I guess it’s all for nothing. But you only learn that at the end.”
A long silence ensued.
“I understand—more than you know,” Jake finally said.
“Good,” replied the doctor. He stared at the ice-cold lake. “My mother always wanted me to learn to swim. Didn’t have the patience . . .”
“You should be happy about one thing, doctor.”
“What?”
“You’re the proof of concept.”
“I know. I thought about that.” The doctor smiled.
“Right before you go down . . . you’ll know. You did it. You succeeded.”
“It’s time?”
Jake nodded. “Jump in.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Yes, you do.”
“I . . .”
“Say it with me,” Jake suggested.
“I want to go swimming,” Dr. Borin said.
Dr. Maximilian Borin stood up in the rowboat. He crouched for a second before launching himself over the side of the boat. He hit the lake with a large splash, but once he was submerged, his arms and legs didn’t move. He didn’t bother trying to tread water or paddle or even splash his hands. Dr. Borin didn’t do anything to save himself at all. Within seconds, his mouth had fallen below the surface of the water, and all that remained was the top of his head, surrounded by a ring of bubbles.
A minute after that, all the bubbles were gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
JAKE RIVETT’S MOTORCYCLE KICKED DIRTY snow as it shredded the road leading out of One Forest Park Lane, but the camouflaged men in the woods did not move. One of them kept his binoculars pinned to the lake, while the other continued to shoot high-resolution photographs on a camera with a zoom lens. The spot where Dr. Borin had gone under turned to a quiet ripple. After another five minutes, his lifeless body floated to the surface at the center of the lake. His face was still submerged with his back to the sky. Only once the lake was still as glass did the two men move. They slowly and methodically packed their gear into cases. After that was complete, they scanned their surroundings for any sign of their presence. Once they were sure they had left no trace, they slowly walked through the forest and away from the lake house.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
WHAT RIVETT HAD DONE TO the doctor didn’t make him happy, but it didn’t worry him. There was the law, and then there was Rivett. He wasn’t scared; he was liberated. He ripped down the country roads, leaving the agricultural pastures and farmlands of northeast Long Island and watching the behemoth of New York begin to peek back over the edge of the horizon. The city was an hour or two away, but he wasn’t going back there. He might pass through, sure. But for the first time in his life, New York City had no pull. Neither did his job. The technical fact that he might now be a fugitive only weighed on him ever so slightly. There was something else out there for Jake, something much bigger than being a detective. He just hadn’t put his finger on what it was yet. He’d know it when he saw it.
But first, he heard it.
Over the steady roar of his motorcycle engine, Jake began to make out the torrential clamor of a much louder engine. He whipped his head back briefly and saw a Black Hawk helicopter in the sky. The helicopter zoomed past Jake until it was about a mile or two ahead and then abruptly began to descend to the ground. Jake realized that the Black Hawk had an objective—he was the objective.
The helicopter set down upon the country road ahead of Jake. Another car, on the opposite side of the helicopter, was forced to slow and stop. The car began honking wildly before turning around and driving away. Jake slowed down as he approached. The helicopter’s rotors were still whipping through the air when a man pushed the cabin door open and ran out from underneath the vortex of wind. It was Sheldon White.
“We need to talk,” Mr. White screamed.
“Is that an order?” Jake yelled back.
“Not like the one you gave Max Borin . . . Jump in.”
Mr. White’s comment hung between the two men as Jake pondered.
“What about my bike?”
Mr. White shrugged. “Do you still need it?”
Fair point. Jake rolled his Ducati to the side of the road. Then he took a deep breath and followed Mr. White. The two men ran towards the helicopter. They jumped onto the landing skids and entered the cabin, closing the door behind them. The Black Hawk took off.
▪
“Am I under arrest?” was Jake’s first question.
“I’m escorting you. Not to jail,” Mr. White replied.
“Where?”
“The way I look at it . . . to more like freedom.”
“What?”
“Where were you goin’? Just now.”
“I don’t know,” Jake answered truthfully.
“Why?”
“Because I got them all, so I’m done.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Rivett—very wrong. Hanafi’s locked up and the rest of them are dead. You got the doctor. But what’s that gonna do? I’ll tell you. Absolutely nothing. They’re just a cell—just a little branch on a big tree. Me . . .” Mr. White pointed to himself. “I don’t like branches. I don’t even care about cutting down trees. I’m trying to burn forests and then salt the fields, root by root.”
“That’s all you do—metaphors,” Jake shot back.
“I’m going to find and kill the man from Dubai. How’s that for a metaphor?”
“Who is he?” Jake asked.
“The real power center. He’s the jihad banker. Funds plots all around the world. He and his family have been doing it for years. You want to stop them?”
“What are you offering? A job? I’m gonna be a CIA agent? Contractor? What?”
“I can never get you Mona back, Jake. But what I’m offering you is th
e chance to save a thousand more Monas across the globe. I told you a long time ago what I do. I kill bad guys. The world ain’t black and white, but I am. I think you are, too. I’m offering you the chance to be a good guy. What do you say?”
Jake stared out the window of the helicopter.
▪
The Black Hawk landed on a small airstrip in New Jersey. As Jake and Mr. White jumped out, Jake saw a gleaming Gulfstream jet idling on the tarmac. Shep Moseley ran down the stairs of the Gulfstream, wearing festive patterned shorts, a billowy white linen shirt, and a wide-brimmed safari hat.
“Nice outfit,” Mr. White said.
“‘Be prepared.’ It’s the Boy Scout motto. It’s a hundred and ten where we’re going, and heck if I ain’t going to dress for who I want to be,” Shep replied.
Mr. White turned back to Jake, who was decked out in black leather from head to toe.
“So who do you want to be, Rivett?”
“A good guy,” Jake replied.
Mr. White nodded with approval, and Jake Rivett boarded the jet.
THE END
DEAR RIVETTER:
1) Reviews are the lifeblood of an independent author. I would be grateful if you would post your review on Amazon, Goodreads, or any preferred site.
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Most importantly, thank you for reading Jake Rivett!
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The Rivett Thrillers:
FLASH CRASH
NEVER GO ALONE
TERROR MACHINE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Denison Hatch is the creator of Rivett. Denison is a writer in Los Angeles. His original screenplay, Vanish Man, is set up at Lionsgate. He is presently working on a standalone science fiction adventure, as well as the fourth Rivett novel.
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