Diablo

by James Kent

  Eddie already knew his days were numbered and that he would have to engineer his way out of this weird setup and then take off in the dead of night on his Harley Davidson. Over the last few months, he had taken the precaution of securing his most important files. He kept a backpack hidden in a concrete pipe out back, behind a cinderblock shed. It contained a vital collection of discs, memory sticks, hard drives and various documents that could prove useful to the authorities if he ended up having to hand himself in. All he would need was a fast computer and reliable internet access, which he could get pretty much anywhere. His backpack also contained a silver bullet: Silva’s old cell phone that Eddie had found in a pile of old junk some months earlier. Silva told him to break it in half and sling it in the bin because he couldn’t afford to use it anymore, at least not after the Feds had used it to track him down four years ago and bust up his program. The cell number would be known and red-flagged by the FBI. But instead, Eddie had decided to keep it, just in case he needed a lever, a way to hurt Silva if for any reason things didn’t work out. He was now very glad he had taken the precaution.

  But most importantly, Eddie set a trap for Silva. He wrote a self-destruct sequence and installed it on all the hard drives and servers he was leaving behind; a program that would be almost impossible to locate and stop. The moment anyone tried to break into the system without Eddie’s secret new password, it would automatically lock the unauthorised user out as it permanently wiped everything using an advanced version of the famous BleachBit program. Everything would be overwritten with gibberish, rendering the entire system useless and unrecoverable.

  And he was about to leave a path of bread crumbs for the Feds to follow . . . all the way to Diablo’s door.

  9

  Diablo’s ranch. Near Kingman, Arizona. Present day.

  ‘There’s more than one way to skin a damn rat!’ said Vito Hernandez Silva to Pedro Torres and Buck Dolan. ‘I have another iron in the fire now that this “Mordor” dude, or whatever the hell his ridiculous name is, can take over his shit in a week or so!’

  A few minutes earlier, Silva gave notice to Eddie the Ferret that he was, as of now, fired. His ‘services were no longer required, but thanks for coming,’ he’d said with sarcasm. Diablo couldn’t tolerate slackers in his employ. Enough is enough! ‘So, if the Ferret won’t work for Diablo, the Ferret can take his chances like the dirty little rat he is, back on the goddam street, where Diablo found him!’ he declared angrily in the third person, as he stared at Eddie; his small black eyes searing the atmosphere between them. But he must keep his cool, he thought.

  Silva would have preferred to keep Eddie on if at all possible, of course, because two slick hackers were better than one. But he didn’t want one slick hacker and one slack hacker wasting his goddam time. He didn’t want someone around who was fixated on causing trouble out of revenge for some screwed up bitch who pushed all his buttons. And he reckoned Eddie was indeed angling for revenge. Silva therefore told Buck to ‘help our Eddie clear out his shit.’ But first, he wanted Eddie to write down all his cute passwords and access codes to his computers, laptops and whatever else so that someone else – meaning this Mordor character - can carry on where he left off. ‘Oh, and leave behind all your discs, hard drives, and memory sticks if you wouldn’t mind. Thanks so much!’ he added with a subtle mix of sarcasm and venom.

  Naturally, Eddie guessed that Silva had also told Buck to make sure he didn’t sabotage anything and then jump out the window and take to the hills on his Harley. He was to “play nice” for a bit, and then punch him in the side of the head before carting his lazy ass off to Chloride. ‘Or chuck him in a sack with a dog and a cock and throw them all in the river for all I care. But watch him like a bloody hawk!’ Silva whispered out the corner of his mouth. Buck nodded, then he turned and followed Eddie back into his computer room as Pedro watched on, the last orange filaments of the setting sun penetrating the room and lighting up the side of his face. He looked every bit the villain.

  ‘I’m supposed to let you pack some clothes and shit,’ said Buck, ‘but no computer stuff. Get it? And I need your keys too, just for a while . . . you’ll get them back after you’ve given me the passwords and whatever,’ he lied.

  ‘Sure!’ replied Eddie as he switched on the desk lamps and tossed his keys to Buck who caught them and dropped them into his shirt pocket. ‘So I’ll show you how to log into this here machine so whoever the boss employs to take my place knows how to get into it.’

  Eddie turned on the main computer, networked to the others that he had set up over the past year. Buck waited patiently, familiar by now with what Eddie was doing - at least from an observer’s point of view. He waited for the obvious signs of things happening, he didn’t know what, to be honest, because Buck’s expertise was in blunt instruments, moving heavy weights around and digging holes in the ground.

  Eddie’s hands were trembling slightly as he typed in his password. He allowed Buck to note it down, then he clicked on something Buck didn’t understand, but it looked pretty normal and harmless. Some type of program for hacking he guessed. Whatever. He had the main password recorded so he didn’t care about the rest and was happy for Eddie to do whatever he wanted for a few minutes, kind of like he was saying goodbye to his familiar old junk, like an old jacket that he had to leave behind but was emotionally tied to, then log off and shut the thing down. Who cares? Buck felt he owed Eddie that at least, considering what awaited him back up the road in Chloride. Shame he has no idea what’s about to happen, he thought. Too bad. ‘Why are your hands shaking? he asked Eddie.

  Eddie ignored the question. He was nervous about what he was doing and about what he was about to do and he didn’t want it to be obvious.

  What Buck didn’t realize was that Eddie had just lit the digital fuse on his machine. The next time someone logged in, using his old password, the same one Buck had written down, the entire system would be bleached clean and overwritten with random noise. Nothing left. Nothing retrievable. He shut the machine down, smiled at Buck and shrugged his shoulders as though to say, Oh well, that’s that! as he reached for his bag of personal items, a hint of jauntiness in his step. His nerves had calmed. He felt relieved in a strange way.

  Before Buck knew what was happening, Eddie had quietly slipped a medium-sized, razor-sharp paring knife from one of the side pockets of his bag, and in the blink of an eye, he stuck Buck with it; a sudden lightning-fast thrust into the jugular vein of his neck. Eddie pulled the knife free immediately and stuck it in again, severing his carotid artery. Blood started spurting from the injury as Eddie pulled the knife free once more and stuck it into his jugular on the other side. Three rapid thrusts within seconds, in different places. Buck’s eyes went wide like saucers as he made a small squeaky noise out of surprise and shock; a whimper blended with a short, high-pitched wail as his hands came up to his neck, now spurting blood under high pressure. He made a desperate attempt to reach out and grab Eddie with one bloodied hand, but it was pathetic. Eddie easily dodged and smacked his hand aside. Then Buck realized he had more urgent issues to deal with. He clamped both hands back around his throat. His blood poured out between his fingers and from behind his palms as he tried to staunch the flow, a hopeless task. One he could not win. His eyes were wide and staring at Eddie as though he didn’t understand what was happening.

  Buck staggered backwards, his hands still up around his own throat and neck trying to maintain control. He stumbled and crashed into Eddie’s desk and sent a monitor flying off onto the floor. Eddie stood there watching the drama unfold, disconnected and disinterested, Buck’s warm blood on his hands and arms and shirt. It seemed to be everywhere. Buck fell to the floor onto his back, his two hands trying to clamp his throat and neck, trying to staunch the flow of his life ebbing out of him onto the floor. His legs were squirming as he tried to gain purchase on the carpet with his heels while his blood continued to pool around him. His panic slowed, and his life seeped out, and eventu
ally he lay still. Even though he was still breathing and panting, and his eyes were wide, he had given up the struggle and lay there peacefully, whimpering and staring up at the ceiling. His hands still clasped around his throat, his breaths came in spasms with the occasional gravelly noise and the odd whimper, and his heels occasionally clawed at the carpet. Token gestures. Then, like sleep, he was gone and the quiet returned. It had taken less than five minutes from the first stab for Buck to die.

  Eddie stared down at him, himself covered in Buck’s blood, ‘That’s for Angela!’ he whispered. Then he wiped the knife blade on Buck’s loosened shirt and slipped it back into his small bag. He wiped has hands on the drapes and on the cushions on the sofa. He walked over to where Buck lay with his eyes wide open staring up at the ceiling, but seeing nothing, and he ripped the keys to his Harley Davidson from his shirt pocket, then ran for the window. He slid it open quietly, but quickly.

  He looked out at the darkening sky, the first few stars appearing. An ideal time to slink away. He had to get away from Silva, from Pedro, from Kingman. But first he had to retrieve the pack he had secreted in the concrete pipe out back. He had a last look around to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything; and, still trembling from the adrenalin rush, he climbed over the sill and jumped to the ground. Looking around again, and listening for any shouts of alarm, he bolted, doubled over, towards the cinderblock shed a few yards away. He ran around behind it and found the old concrete pipe that had his hidden pack inside. He moved away the loose rubbish, old building materials concealing the pipe, then he reached inside and pulled out the pack, unzipped it and threw the smaller bag that he’d taken from his room inside it, after taking out the paring knife again. It still had traces of Buck Dolan’s blood on the handle. Then he zipped the pack up, slung it over his shoulders and ran quietly back around to the parked vehicles on the southern side, carefully avoiding any windows on the way. He quickly moved in the darkness from one vehicle to the next with the knife gripped firmly in his right hand, slashing as many tires as he could, including those of Silva’s personal ride, his pimped-out Cadillac Escalade which Silva prized more than anything. Slashing those tires especially gave Eddie some satisfaction.

  Sticking a steel blade into a tire requires carefully-aimed force into the thinnest part of the side-wall of the tire. It requires a sharp, fast stabbing motion with the blade at a right-angle to the tire, otherwise a thin blade will bend or snap or ping out of the hand with the risk of serious injury to the palm. Eddie had researched it online a few days earlier, just to make sure it was actually feasible. By the time he had slashed twelve tires on three vehicles, his hands were red and sore, even after swapping the knife from one hand to the other; his palms throbbed from the strain of holding the handle so firmly. He was sweating and scared and panicky, hoping no one would notice the fact that things had gone suspiciously quiet in his computer room and then go looking to see what was going on. So far so good. No noise. No alarms.

  The knife blade finally snapped off on the left-rear tire of Pedro’s Jeep Cherokee. He left it embedded, partially sticking out, and threw the remains of the handle into the bushes. But there were three more tires to deal with. Eddie reached into his pack for the folding multitool, something he normally carried on his belt, but now had it in his pack. He unfolded it to reveal a pair of snub-nosed pliers, then he reached down to one of the valves on the remaining tires. He gripped it firmly in the jaws, twisted it back and forth, pulling with all his strength until it finally ripped out of the wheel rim. The satisfying hiss of escaping air told its own story. The tire quickly deflated. Encouraged, he performed the same operation on the other two. A total of four vehicles disabled, temporarily. Good enough. At the very least it would buy him some time.

  That done, he ran over to where his Harley Davidson was parked, leaning on its foot-stand; he climbed on and shakily inserted the keys. The machine burst into life with a powerful throaty roar, then he took off into the darkness towards the Cerbat Range and the Stockton Hill Road, his rear wheel kicking up loose stones and dirt. He decided to head in the direction least expected by Silva and his boys. They would assume he would head east, toward his home in New Mexico. So instead he decided to go south and then north, and to stay in the general area. He planned to be in Needles, California, in a few hours. Once there, he would find a cheap dive to hang out in for a couple of days, buy a new phone and then plan his next move.

  The sound of Eddie’s bike starting up alerted Silva to what must be happening. That was the last thing he expected to hear. Moments after the sound of the Harley had faded into the background, Pedro burst into the computer room and found Buck lying there staring up into the void, his glassy black eyes seeing nothing; a huge spread of pooled blood surrounded his corpse. And there was no sign of Eddie.

  Pedro called out to Silva who was on his way anyway. He appeared at the door and shrieked as though he’d just seen the most hideous sight imaginable. His face went white and he broke out into a cold sweat. Jeez I hope he’s not going to puke! Pedro thought, as he looked at Silva’s reaction. Odd how Diablo seemed to enjoy hurting people; he liked dreaming up the most bizarre methods of punishment, yet he couldn’t stand the sight of blood up close. He hated the smell of death.

  ‘Looks like he’s been stabbed in the neck a few times,’ said Pedro.

  ‘Clean this disgusting mess up!’ ordered Silva as he turned away from looking down at the corpse. Then he walked out with Pedro following and told him to assemble the others, whether they’re in the sack or not. ‘Go hunt down the dirty sonofabitch and bring his sorry ass back here so I can kill him myself!’

  *

  Eddie the Ferret understood the implications of what he was doing. He was under no illusions that he was taking a huge risk both in running and planning to crash and burn Diablo’s world. He knew that his life would be over unless he got lucky and managed to make contact with whomever the Feds sent to hunt down Silva once he put his plan into action; he would need to convince them that he had useful information, enough to make a deal. It was a calculated risk, but the chances of survival were higher. Slightly.

  10

  Diablo’s temper was incendiary. He was convulsed with rage like a white-hot flare, seething and spewing his fury at anyone within spitting distance. Pedro stood there wearing it. Sometimes he thought about knifing Silva and putting this El Diablo Gordo asshole out of business forever with a blade in his ribs, especially when he was throwing one of his epic tempers. But “The Fat Devil” had some very nasty friends and business acquaintances, so killing him off would do nothing but bring a world of grief down on his own head. Someone somewhere would hunt him down because such an act would be considered a breach of good manners between hardened criminals who have “business relationships” to protect. Taking someone out of the chain carried the risk of vengeance. Probably not worth it then. Pedro realized that he might get away with it. But then again, he might not. So you have to be sure because the moment you take the plunge, there’s no going back.

  Instead, Pedro endured the withering infuriation with stoic silence. He wore the spittle as Silva sounded off in his personal space. Silva’s moist consonants sent little droplets of spittle across the small void between them. They landed on Pedro’s cheeks and chin, and in his left eye every time the letters ‘P’ or ‘T’ were involved. He abused Pedro’s incompetence, up close and personal, his forefinger stabbing Pedro repeatedly in the chest. ‘How could you let this happen? You incompetent bloody fool! How could that useless, sneaky little bastard rat overpower Dolan, someone twice his size?’’

  But Pedro knew how. He wiped all Silva’s wet, discarded consonants off his face with his right arm. Sure, Buck Dolan was much bigger, but he was also a lot slower and it didn’t take a great deal of strength to stick a razor-sharp, pointy knife into someone’s throat, especially when they don’t see it coming and they’re not expecting aggression from someone who’s not known for it. Dolan would have thought Eddie incapable
of any such violence, so his guard would have been down. He would even have been cheerful and friendly, letting Eddie do his thing with the computer as he watched on. Yet all you need is speed and balls. And apparently, Eddie the Ferret had both. He almost admired him for it.

  Pedro also knew that Silva’s mindless raging would pass when he ran out of steam, so he just battened down the hatches and waited it out, like you do a passing tornado. And then, in the blink of an eye, like a prophecy coming to pass, Silva was calm again; his rage spent.

  Silva started pacing and muttering curses and oaths to no one in particular. His own face was red and wet with perspiration, and his lips and chin wet with his own spittle from his conniption fit. Pedro waited for him to decide what should be done about the damned Ferret in practical terms, his damnation to Hell aside. Silva probably wouldn’t care about poor Buck Dolan because, even though Dolan had his uses around blunt things, he was stupid. As dumb as a sack of hammers. You could find stupid anywhere you looked. Stupid-but-useful grew on trees, so Dolan would be easy to replace. No loss there, as far as he was concerned. But Eddie the goddamned Ferret was another matter. People like that didn’t come easy or cheap. You had to be lucky, or know someone who knows someone. Fortunately, Diablo knew someone who knew someone, which is how he’d managed to score Cricket, or “Mordor” as he fancied himself in the hacking world. What’s with all the weird names? thought Silva. Whatever.