by Brent Towns
Reynolds blushed while Axe shot him a thumbs-up. “Appreciate that, brother.”
“You’re a kind soul, Slick,” Thurston said. “But can we get down to business now?”
“Sure thing,” Swift replied. “Your target is the Devil Dog Saloon. A real shithole down in Queens. A lowlife loser by the name of Eddy Chance hangs out there. Looks like the DEA has been keeping tabs on the guy. The file indicates this Eddy fella might have some street-level knowledge of NYC’s narcotics trade. Good a place as any to start the ass-kicking.”
“There a picture of this guy in those files?” Kane asked.
“Coming right up.” Swift’s fingers clacked across his keyboard so fast that it sounded like an M134 minigun in “let ’er rip” mode. A grainy surveillance photo and a much clearer mugshot filled the room’s largest monitor. “Also sending copies to your phones for field identification,” Swift announced.
Traynor stared at the photos with an I-can’t-believe-I’m-seeing-this look on his face. “Is that a white guy with dreads?”
“Sure is,” Kane said. “We should probably kill him just for that.”
“Be doing him a favor.”
Thurston called out, “Reaper, pick your blitz team and grab your gear. You’re wheels up in ninety minutes.”
“Cara, Axe, Brick, Arenas, Traynor,” Kane said. “You’re with me.” He headed for the armory, the others falling in behind. “Time to hunt.”
New York City
LaGuardia was the closest airport to Queens, but it was completely locked down due to the terrorist attack, with fighter jets scrambled overhead. Despite the tensions and heightened security, Team Reaper managed to secure clearance to land their HC-130 at JFK International Airport. Once on the ground, nobody paid them much attention. The place swirled with activity, personnel and vehicles racing in all directions. They looked like they were just one more team arriving on the scene to assist with the aftermath of the strikes.
Nearly eight hours after the attacks, nobody had yet claimed responsibility. The world watched and waited, ready to put names, faces, or both to the perpetrators of the horrific strikes. News pundits bandied about a list of the usual suspects with ISIS topping the possibilities, but nobody really knew anything at this point. It was all speculation.
The primary strike team for this segment of the mission consisted of Kane, Cara, and Burton. They would be the ones hitting the streets and unleashing the blitz. Arenas, Traynor, and Brick would stay with the plane as the backup team. Traynor seemed annoyed about sitting out while his friend’s son was missing, but Kane didn’t give a shit. He didn’t run an op based on making people happy. His gut told him that keeping Traynor sidelined, for now, was the right call, so he made it.
The Devil Dog Saloon was a rough joint in a rough part of town, frequented after dark by a rough crowd. Definitely not a place for nuns or sissies, Kane thought.
Good thing nobody on Team Reaper was a nun or a sissy.
Sitting behind the wheel of the tinted-window SUV, Kane toggled his mic. “Reaper One to Reaper Four, you in position?”
“Copy, Reaper One,” Axe answered. “Reaper Four is in position.” He was prone on the roof of the deserted auto parts store directly across the street from the saloon, providing over-watch behind a sound-suppressed M110A1 CSASS, short for Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System. The weapon was fully loaded with ten rounds of 7.62x51mm NATO ammunition. He could reach out 800 meters with the rifle if necessary. From the end of the suppressor to the front door of the Devil Dog was less than 60 meters. A shot that close he could make with his eyes closed while eating a sandwich.
Kane looked at Cara, riding shotgun next to him. Shadows played across her face. “You ready?” he asked.
“You know it.”
“Let’s do this.” He toggled his mic again. “Reaper One to Reaper Four, we’re on the move.”
“Copy that, Reaper One. I’ve got eyes on.”
Kane and Cara exited the vehicle and crossed the street. They were dressed in jeans and loose-fitting light jackets to conceal the Sig-Saur M17s riding on their right hips. Slick had sent them more intel during the flight, so they knew the Devil Dog Saloon was part pool hall, part strip club, part drug den, and one hundred percent unwelcoming to strangers.
Kane figured they would just walk up and introduce themselves.
A big, burly brute with the build of a professional wrestler blocked the entrance. He wasn’t quite as tall as Kane, but he was wider, with massive muscles bulging the seams of his leather coat. Probably a steroid freak. He gave Cara a look that made it clear what he would like to do with her—or rather, to her—and then fixed his stony eyes on Kane. “You’re in the wrong neighborhood, boy. Unless you want someone to pull a train on your girl’s ass while you watch, you’d best just turn around and go back to wherever the fuck you came from.” He pulled back the leather jacket to reveal a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum hanging on his hip to emphasize he meant business. Light from a bug-spackled streetlamp glinted off the stainless steel.
“Big gun you got there,” Kane said. “Guess that means you’re happy to see me.”
The brute scowled angrily. “Okay, asshole, you’re outta here.” He reached for Kane with ham-sized fists attached to oak-thick forearms, probably planning on snapping him in two like a dry twig.
Kane abruptly stiff-fingered the man in the throat. He stopped just short of collapsing the cartilage and killing the guy but struck hard enough to make sure he was out of commission for the foreseeable future. As the gagging goon staggered back, Kane pistoned a powerful sidekick into the man’s stomach. He put enough force behind the blow that you probably could have pulled his boot-print off the guy’s belly. The bouncer doubled over as the air exploded from his lungs. A wicked uppercut ended the fight—well, beating, to be perfectly accurate—by pulping the man’s nose like a hammered strawberry and putting the big boy down on the ground, out cold.
Axe’s voice came over the com. “Damn, Reaper One, you think you hit him hard enough?”
“He’s still breathing, ain’t he?”
“Not through that nose, he’s not.”
“Eyes peeled, Reaper Four,” Kane said as he and Cara stepped over the unconscious man sprawled out on the sidewalk like a sack of garbage. “We’re going in.”
“Copy, Reaper One. I’ve got the high ground.”
Kane and Cara entered the lion’s den.
With the night still young, there weren’t that many people occupying the Devil Dog Saloon. Kane scanned the bar and ten sets of hostile eyes glared back at him: Eddy Chance, the bartender, four guys playing pool, and another four guys clustered around a table snorting lines of coke. Despite the city’s ban on smoking in bars, cigarette fumes clogged the air, the acrid fog laced with the scent of reefer. The stripper pole was empty. Maybe the nude gyrations didn’t start until later.
Beer bottles littered the bar, drug paraphernalia littered everything else, and some kind of country-rap hybrid blatted from the jukebox in the corner. Kane had no idea why anyone would voluntarily listen to that crap. He was more of a rock ‘n’ roll kind of guy.
Eddy Chance occupied a booth to Kane’s left, sipping on—of all things—an umbrella drink. The punk was kind of hard to miss with his pasty white skin, greasy dreadlocks, and the loudest Hawaiian shirt in the history of gaudy clothes. The shirt was a fashion abomination. The white-boy dreads just completed the picture of stupidity.
The bartender was a baldheaded steroid machine who looked strikingly similar to the bouncer Kane had KO’d outside. Maybe they had been brothers. He treated Kane to a pissed off scowl that probably would have made the average person soil their shorts and snarled, “Something we can help you with, pal?”
“Looking to chat with Eddy.”
“Wrong bar, buddy.”
“No, it’s the right bar.”
“Yeah? What makes you so sure?”
“Because they said the bartender was a big bald bastard who looked like an
elephant’s dick.”
The barkeeper’s scowl turned scarlet with rage. “Okay, you shit-talking son of a bitch, it’s body bag time for you if you don’t waltz your ass right on outta here in about two seconds.” He raped Cara with his eyes. “The whore is free to stay.”
Cara treated him to a smile that practically dripped with fake sweetness. “You got it all wrong, chump. Whores get paid. I’ll fuck up your world for free.”
“The only thing getting fucked up around here is you,” the bartender growled. “Drag your ass outta here before you get hurt, little girl.”
“Hold on a sec,” Cara said. “I can’t hear you.” She whipped out her Sig and pumped a couple of rounds into the jukebox, killing the music mid-croon in a burst of sparks. Her smile broadened. “Much better. You were saying?”
The barkeeper cursed. “You’re dead, bitch!” He pulled a sawed-off Remington 870 shotgun out from under the counter.
Big mistake.
His last mistake.
Kane reached for his Sig as Cara hit the trigger and blasted a trio of red-hot slugs into the barkeep’s chest. The 9mm triple-whammy sent the man crashing backwards into the shelves of liquor behind him. Bottles of booze smashed to the floor. Blood mixed with Jack Daniels to form a puddle of gore. Kane thought that was a waste of good whiskey.
The gaggle of guys playing billiards clawed for their hardware as Kane swung his arm up, gun bucking in his fist as fast as he could pull the trigger—and he could pull it pretty damn fast. None of them ducked or dodged, believing they could beat him to the draw.
They were dead wrong.
Kane hammered the first target in the center of his chest. He went down spewing frothy blood from his gasping-fish mouth. The other three joined him in hell a heartbeat later as bullets struck with shattering impact, ripping the lives right out of them.
In the blink of an eye, five tangos down.
The remaining men grabbed for their guns.
One two words could describe them.
Too slow.
Kane and Cara cut them down. Bullets scythed through bad guys in a blizzard of hot lead. Blood sprayed the air and gave all the cigarette smoke a red tint. Kane punched the ticket of the last man standing, leaving him draped across a table with his brains drizzling all over the lines of coke.
Without missing a beat, Kane swung his gun around and kept it trained on Eddy while Cara performed a tactical magazine exchange, replacing her partially depleted clip with a full one. Always better to have a maxed-out weapon than one half-empty. She then returned the favor and Kane did the same.
The dreadlocked drug dealer hadn’t moved so much as an inch during the mayhem. It was like the bench was an electromagnet and his butt made of metal. He now surveyed the chaos and carnage they had conjured up in mere seconds and slowly clapped his hands. “That, man, was pretty damn impressive. You looking for a job? ’Cause I would hire you two in a flat second.”
Kane and Cara, guns at the ready, walked over to Eddy’s booth. “We don’t work for dirtbags,” Kane rasped. “We’re just here to ask you a few questions, and then we’ll be on our way.”
“Will I still be alive when you’re on your way?” Eddy asked.
“One step at a time,” Kane said. “Answer the questions, and we’ll go from there.”
“That doesn’t exactly fill me with comfort.”
“Do I look like the kind of guy who gives comfort?”
“You look like the kind of guy that gives enemas by Smith and Wesson.” Eddy thrust his chin toward his pastel-colored beverage. “Mind if I take a drink?”
“Go ahead, but I’d make sure your moves are real slow.”
Eddy reached for his umbrella drink, took a sip, and let out a contented sigh. “That hits the spot. Just what I needed to wash down all the gun-smoke.” He looked up at Kane. “You guys wanna sit down?”
“We’ll stand. We’re not staying long.”
“Let’s speed this up,” Cara said.
“Go ahead.” Eddy brushed a pair of dreads out of his face. “Let’s hear your questions.”
“You know anything about a DEA-cartel alliance?” Kane asked.
Eddy twirled the umbrella in his drink. “Answering that could be very hazardous to my health.”
Kane gestured around the corpse-strewn bar. “Does it look like we’re with the Boy Scouts? Not answering the question will be hazardous to your continued existence.” He hefted the Sig for emphasis.
“Well, when you put it that way…” Eddy nodded, the dreads writhing around his face like hairy snakes. “All I can give you is the word on the streets. A name, to be precise.”
“So, let’s have it.”
“Dick Mason.”
“Who is he?”
Eddy shrugged. “No idea, man. Just heard his name in connection with the alliance you just mentioned.”
Cara raised her pistol. “Maybe if I put a bullet in your balls, you’ll remember more.”
Eddy held up his hands. “Whoa, lady, back up and slow your roll. You know what I know, I swear. You can play with my balls if it’ll make you feel better, but it won’t get you any more information, ’cause I ain’t got any more to give, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“God’s got nothing to do with this,” Kane snapped. “You sure the DEA is in bed with the cartels?”
“I ain’t sure of anything, man. Just telling you what I’ve heard.”
Axe’s voice came over the com. “Reaper Four to Reaper One, the guy you left outside is starting to wake up.”
“Copy that, Reaper Four. If he makes a move before we get out there, put him down.”
Eddy stared at him in disbelief. “Call sign Reaper? Really? Who the hell are you guys?”
“People you don’t want to fuck with,” Kane replied. “Now, I’ve got just two more questions.”
“Fire away.”
“Got any cigarettes?”
“Sure.” Eddy reached into the breast pocket of his Hawaiian shirt and pulled out a crumpled pack of Marlboros. He handed the cancer sticks to Kane.
“Thanks.” Kane crushed the pack in his fist and dropped it to the floor.
“Hey!” Eddy protested. “What the hell was that for, man?”
“Those things will kill you,” Kane said. “Last question—got a light?”
“What do you want a light for? You just jacked up my cigarettes!”
Kane touched off a round. The umbrella drink shattered in a pastel-hued explosion right in front of Eddy, splattering his shirt. “I’m asking the questions, not you.”
“Sure. Sure, yeah, okay, no problem. A light. You want a light. Here ya go, man.” Eddy produced a Zippo and handed it over.
Without another word, Kane and Cara headed for the door. He toggled his mic. “Reaper One to Reaper Four, we’re coming out.”
“Copy that, Reaper One,” Axe replied. “Be advised, big boy is on his feet at this time.”
Kane paused a few steps from the exit and flicked on the Zippo. The flame danced from the stainless-steel lighter. “You might want to blow town,” he said to Eddy.
Eddy’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Why’s that?”
Kane gave him a wolfish smile. “Because things are about to get real hot around here.”
With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the Zippo across the room and behind the bar where the broken bottles of alcohol instantly ignited. Flames whooshed to life and began barbecuing the bartender’s corpse as the fire spread rapidly. The place would soon smell like burnt meat, but they would be long gone by then.
Eddy yelled, “My bar! You bastard!”
“And then some,” Kane rasped.
He opened the door to find the bouncer standing in front of them, swaying on his feet like a punch-drunk boxer, blood pouring from his crushed nose to splatter on the sidewalk. As soon as he saw them, he snarled a curse and reached for his .357 Magnum. He missed on the first grab but got it on the second try.
Before he even cleared lea
ther, Kane buried the toe of his boot in the bouncer’s balls, driving his scrotum up against his pelvic bone with crushing force. All sorts of soft, tender tissue ruptured, and the man fell to his knees, a high-pitched wail keening from his shivering lips. The girlish scream got choked off when vomit spewed from his mouth.
Kane powered his knee up into the brute’s chin, snapping his head back with enough force to nearly break his neck. The bouncer flipped over backward and crashed down on his spine with a heavy thud, lights out once again, probably dreaming of his new life as a soprano.
Kane and Cara stepped over the bouncer’s blacked-out body and climbed into the SUV. Smoke began to billow from the Devil Dog, and they saw Eddy stagger out, coughing and hacking as he stumbled down the sidewalk to safety.
Axe joined them moments later, sliding into the backseat, and Kane drove off into the night, leaving behind death and flames to mark their passage.
They all knew things were going to get a whole lot hotter before they were done.
Kane pulled into an alley, called headquarters, and got Swift on the line. “Need you to run a name for me.”
“You finally found a match? I gotta tell you, Reaper, people don’t typically use their real names on those hookup sites.”
“You’re a funny guy, Slick. Are you done?”
“Yeah, sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry at all. Kane heard a machinegun-like clatter of keys and then: “Okay, give me the name.”
“Dick Mason.”
“Richard Mason,” Swift corrected. “No parent names their kid Dick.”
“Yeah, well, plenty of parents raise dicks,” Kane said.
“Stop being an old, grumpy, millennial-hating bastard,” Swift retorted over the sound of clacking keys. A few seconds later he said, “Bingo. Here we go. Okay, bottom line is that Richard Mason is a nobody, a low-level paper-pusher for the DEA.”
“He might be a nobody, but he’s got some connection to this alliance crap.”
“Or maybe Eddy fed you a load of bull.”
