The Damaged

by Brett Battles

  An era in which he would control every aspect of his life.

  Making arrangements for Trevor Hart to be suddenly unavailable for the job had been child’s play. A call to a morally questionable fixer Durrie knew had done the trick.

  “Don’t make it too dramatic,” he had told the man. “No one dies, but at least one should stay in the hospital for a day or two.”

  “You got it.”

  The man had not failed him.

  Removing the other operatives on Quinn’s go-to list from contention had been a bit more difficult, only due to the number. Durrie had spent an entire afternoon making phone calls and putting people on fictitious holds.

  The wild card had always been getting Quinn to hire Ortega. Durrie knew Quinn, knew how his old apprentice’s mind worked, and knew presenting Ortega as a potential team member, if the need arose, would require a delicate touch. Too heavy-handed and Quinn would’ve been suspicious of Durrie’s motive. Too light a push and Quinn might’ve taken it as a tacit devaluation of Ortega’s abilities. The key was to drop his new protégée’s name and throw in a few honest-sounding comments about the man’s strengths, so that Ortega’s name would remain in Quinn’s mind.

  Even then, that was not a guarantee Quinn would call Ortega when all his normal contacts proved unavailable. For this, Durrie had been counting on two things. First, that Quinn’s sense of obligation to help Durrie would make him think hiring Ortega was a vote of confidence in his mentor. Second, that the mere idea of showing faith in Durrie would please Orlando, even if she never found out about the hiring. This was likely the stronger motivation.

  Durrie sometimes imagined Quinn as a reincarnation of a chivalrous knight—probably more the fictional kind than the actual—who performed acts of duty or kindness with no thought to whether or not anyone knew about his deeds, or how such deeds might affect him.

  It was a bullshit code of ethics, as far as Durrie was concerned. There may have been a time when he’d been more inclined to understand Quinn’s actions, even if he wouldn’t have undertaken them himself. But he’d eventually seen through the crap and realized it was an act, the self-flagellation of one’s ego. And whatever “honor” Quinn thought he gained from acting this way was a lie he told himself to pretend it wasn’t a flaw in his character.

  But a flaw for one man was an opportunity for another. And damn if Durrie’s exploitation of Quinn’s flaw hadn’t worked perfectly.

  When Ortega had called to tell him he’d been hired to fill the empty slot, Durrie was rendered momentarily speechless.

  “You still there?” Ortega had said.

  “Yeah. Still here.”

  “So, are we going to do it? Or have you changed your mind?”

  “We’re doing it. Hang tight. I need to make some calls.”

  Now here he was, sitting on a red-eye flight to Costa Rica, Ortega two rows behind him, speeding headlong toward his self-changed destiny.

  Durrie wasn’t sure he had ever been so happy in his life.

  Chapter Seventeen

  TUESDAY

  TWO DAYS UNTIL OPERATION REDEEMER

  Quinn clutched the wheel and stared ahead, using more energy than normal to focus on the road to San José.

  It could have been worse, he supposed. Markoff’s hangover remedy—a smoothie containing coconut, banana, pineapple, some yogurt, and a couple of raw eggs—and the four aspirin Quinn had washed down with it had taken the edge off his headache. But the general sense of being reanimated roadkill refused to go anywhere.

  It wasn’t until he reached the airport outside the Costa Rican capital that he could claim to be half human again.

  What had he been thinking? He always tried to have a quiet evening the night before a mission. Even if he went out, he would never have more than a drink or two and would be in bed at a decent hour. But now he’d broken that rule twice in one month. And last night had been magnitudes worse than his evening out with Orlando in Mexico City.

  He could recall only bits and pieces of his walk back to Markoff’s place with Marta, and was pretty sure that without her, he would have washed up on the beach this morning, another overindulging tourist killed by his own stupidity.

  He could kid himself and say he’d had a few too many because he was having a good time, that he wasn’t paying attention. Or he could be honest and admit that his desire for a loss of control had been building in him for a while. A release, if you will. From his concerns about Durrie, yes, but mostly from his frustration with his feelings for Orlando.

  To that end, perhaps the evening hadn’t been a total disaster. Seeing everything through the pain-inducing sunlight of morning, he couldn’t deny the futility of his feelings for her. It was time for him to move on. Details on how to achieve that goal to be worked out later.

  With an hour and a half to kill until his rendezvous with Durrie and Ortega, Quinn hunted down a mild breakfast of dry toast and unseasoned eggs, and then proceeded to the offices of the private jet company taking his team to Rio. After a quick meeting with the owner, who would also be serving as pilot, Quinn was escorted to the hangar by a young male assistant. Sitting beside the aircraft were the two containers of special cargo Peter had arranged to be delivered.

  The assistant retreated to the side of the hangar, leaving Quinn to inspect the gear in private. Using the digital code Peter had given him, Quinn unlocked the first box. Inside, he found six pistols, a collapsible rifle, a shotgun, spare mags for the pistols and rifle, ammo, sound suppressors, and a box of ten flash-bang grenades.

  Box two contained nine comm sets, two extra sets for each team member in case of malfunction; an electronics detector; an alarm detector; tracking chips; audio bugs; rope; zip ties; and duct tape. If all went according to plan, most of the supplies would not be needed, but it was always better to be prepared. He resealed the boxes and signaled to the assistant to return. Together they loaded the boxes into the jet.

  Quinn proceeded to the rendezvous point, where, despite the fact there were still twenty minutes until meeting time, Durrie and Ortega sat waiting. When Durrie noticed Quinn walking up, he pushed to his feet and smiled. Following Durrie’s lead, Ortega did the same.

  “Morning, Johnny,” Durrie said. As Quinn drew closer, his smile faltered a little. “You look like crap. Are you all right?”

  “A bad meal,” Quinn said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “That sucks.” Durrie held out his hand. “Good to see you, though.”

  Quinn shook with him. Durrie seemed like the old Durrie again, the surly mentor who had expertly guided Quinn’s training.

  “Have you met Angel yet?” Durrie said, nodding at the third member of the team.

  “Only on the phone.” Quinn shook hands with Ortega. “I appreciate you being able to join us on short notice.”

  “No problem. Happy I could help.”

  “Tell me, Johnny, what time does our plane leave?” Durrie asked.

  “As soon as we board.”

  “Private jet?” When Quinn nodded, Durrie’s smile broadened. “I like the sound of that.”

  The flight to Rio was uneventful. Quinn spent most of the time going back over the mission brief, making sure he had every detail memorized, and all contingencies accounted for.

  He was more nervous than usual. While he’d been running his own operations for a few years now, and successfully so, anytime he and Durrie had been on a job together, Durrie had been lead. With their roles reversed, Quinn couldn’t help but feel like he was the one being judged instead of the other way around.

  On the surface, the mission was straightforward. One, load the bodies into a transport van. Two, clean the scene. Three, deliver the bodies to the plane, and strap them into the seats they would “die” in during the crash. Four, clean the van. Five, go home.

  The only potential complication was the number of targets. Six on the low end, eleven on the high. If the strike team was unable to subdue all of El-Baz’s security detail, some of the agents might
be killed, too, upping the body count. This was one of those contingencies Quinn and his team needed to prepare for. Standard procedure for any operative killed during a mission was that he or she would be processed in country. In other words, the agent’s body would also need to disappear.

  Quinn couldn’t put any dead friendlies on the plane with El-Baz and his people, however. Though the plane was to be ditched in the middle of the ocean, there was always the chance it would eventually be discovered. If extra bodies were found on board, the idea that the crash had been an accident wouldn’t hold up for long.

  A separate method would be needed, which meant adding a step to Quinn’s to-do list. During his prep work before he left Los Angeles, he’d researched the viability of implementing several of his go-to methods in Rio, and had been pleased to find he had some excellent choices. After talking to a few people he trusted who had experience in the Brazilian city, he settled on a mortuary with an owner who was known to help out in the war on terror when needed.

  The team’s jet was still two hours from Rio when Quinn finally shut his computer and leaned back. Behind him, he could hear Ortega’s deep, slumbering breaths. The man had fallen asleep minutes after takeoff and hadn’t stirred since.

  Durrie had also passed out not long after wheels up, but now, when Quinn looked in his direction, Durrie was sitting up, looking out the window. He must have sensed Quinn’s attention, because after a couple of moments, Quinn’s mentor looked over his shoulder.

  “Hey, Johnny. All done boning up?”

  It was a trick question. Durrie lesson number 17: You can never be too prepared.

  “Just taking a break,” Quinn said.

  Durrie smiled. “Words starting to melt together, are they?”

  “A little.”

  “I’ve been thinking. After this job, I’d be happy to work under you again.”

  “Oh, um, okay. That’s good to hear.”

  “I guess what I’m saying is, you’re giving me a chance, and I want you to know I appreciate that.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You got something lined up after this? Something you can slot me in for?”

  Quinn wasn’t sure he was ready to talk about future work yet. “Let me take a look at things and I’ll let you know.”

  “Sure, Johnny. Just wanted to throw that out there.” Durrie turned back to the window, making Quinn think that was the end of the conversation. But after a lengthy pause, his mentor said, “There’s a whole lot of world out there.”

  “There sure is, isn’t there?” Quinn said.

  “Hard to find a place to be alone anymore, though. People are everywhere.”

  Quinn said nothing, not sure where this was going.

  “You remember that first time you went with me to Rio?”

  “Of course.” Quinn had been Durrie’s apprentice for only a few months, and it had been his first time crossing the equator.

  “That had been a little messy. But not our fault.”

  “No, not ours.”

  A hit on a Rwandan war criminal who had escaped justice for far too long. The target sensed the trap and tried to escape, making it out of a building and onto a dark and all but deserted side street where he shot a woman and stole her car. Before he could pull away, a bullet to the back of his head from the assassin put an end to his freedom.

  It was the civilian Durrie was talking about, though.

  Quinn was the first to reach her. She was twenty-three and had just finished a shift on the last of three jobs she worked every day to support her family. Those, of course, were details Quinn learned later. Something he figured out at the scene was that the war criminal’s bullet had missed her heart but clipped an artery, leaving her to bleed out.

  Though it was a fruitless task, Quinn kept pressure on both the entry and exit wounds.

  “Let her go, Johnny,” Durrie had said.

  “Call an ambulance!” Quinn said.

  “There’s no coming back from where she’s going. Leave her be.”

  This was the first time Quinn had seen this side of his mentor. Though it was the practical response, to Quinn it felt heartless.

  The girl, her eyes wide in fear, whispered something.

  Quinn leaned his ear toward her mouth. “Say it again.”

  This time he heard her, but her words were in Portuguese, a language that—at the time—Quinn didn’t understand. In the coming months, her native tongue became the first of many languages he would learn.

  Her voice became softer and softer as she kept repeating herself, until the only sound was that of her lips tapping against each other. And then even that stopped. Moments later, her heart beat for the last time.

  When the fear in her eyes turned into a cold, lifeless stare, he knew he had failed.

  “Clean yourself up, then bag her,” Durrie said, dropping a body bag beside the dead woman.

  Quinn looked up. “What are we going to do with her?”

  “You know the protocol.”

  Quinn did. All deaths associated with the Rwandan’s assassination were to be cleaned. It had seemed a logical directive, but he had never truly thought it would include someone like her.

  “She must have family. How are they going to find out?”

  “No idea. I just know they’re not going to find out from us. Do the job.”

  As respectfully as possible, Quinn bagged her, and then helped Durrie do the same with the Rwandan. Both bodies went in the trunk of the woman’s car, since the vehicle, too, needed to be disposed of.

  On the flight home, Durrie told Quinn that in cases like this, families were often compensated by whoever had ordered the hit. That did little to quell the unease in Quinn’s mind. After they arrived back in the States, he had come close to quitting.

  Two things had kept him from doing so. The first was the fact that, by offering him the apprenticeship, Durrie had stayed the hands of the powers that be from terminating Quinn. If he’d left so soon after beginning this new life, there was every chance his death sentence would’ve been reinstated.

  But the main reason he’d decided not to walk away was the death of the woman, and his desire to prevent something similar from ever happening again. He knew Durrie would never care, but Quinn would. He would do everything in his power to help any innocent victims survive.

  If Durrie had known about this, he would have scoffed and said it was a stupid vow made by an innocent punk. And yet, after Quinn’s five-year internship and now his time on his own, it was still one of the guiding principles he lived by.

  No, the woman’s death in Rio had not been Durrie and Quinn’s fault. It had just always felt that way.

  “Any chance this gig is going to be as messy as that one?” Durrie asked.

  “The location is isolated, so hopefully not,” Quinn said.

  Durrie grunted and nodded, and said something that startled Quinn. “You were right to try to save her, you know. Not sure if I ever told you that.”

  It took Quinn a moment to find his voice. “No…you never did.”

  Another grunt. “Well, you were.”

  Quinn glanced away for a moment, then said, “Thank you.”

  A gray SUV—not too old, not too new—awaited Quinn and his team at the hangar in Rio. They loaded the trunks into the back and drove to their hotel in the city, five kilometers from where the job would take place.

  Their adjoining rooms were on the twelfth floor, facing Guanabara Bay—Quinn in his own room, Durrie and Ortega sharing the other.

  After they were settled, Durrie stepped through their shared doorway and said, “Angel and I thought we’d go out and grab some dinner. Want to join us?”

  “I’ve got a few things I need to take care of first,” Quinn said. “Text me where you end up, and if it doesn’t take me too long, I’ll come over.”

  Smirking, Durrie said, “You know, all that extra work is the one thing I don’t miss about being the boss.”

  After they left, Quinn stared
out the window for a few minutes. If anything, he was more confused than ever about how he should feel about Durrie. First, there were the rumors and the warnings from Peter, and the stories from Orlando. Then there was the missed job in Mexico. All of which had soured his already skeptical view of his former teacher.

  But then there had been the meeting at Leonetti’s. Durrie attentive, engaged, almost contrite. Yes, there was that moment at the end that had been out of character for the evening. But the more Quinn thought about it, the more he felt it was simply a veteran agent wanting to make sure the woman he loved was taken care of if something happened to him. His admonition to Quinn a cover for his fear of failure. But since they had rendezvoused in San José, Durrie had been nothing but friendly and respectful, as most agents in the role of second would be.

  Could it be that Durrie had hit rock bottom and was finally ready to turn his life around?

  Dear God, Quinn hoped so.

  For Durrie’s sake, and even more so, for Orlando’s.

  Whatever the reason for the change, it boded well for the job.

  Quinn sat down on the bed and made a few calls, confirming arrangements he’d set up prior to leaving Los Angeles. Then he contacted Peter.

  The head of the Office answered with a heartwarming “Well?”

  “Everything’s on track,” Quinn said. “Arrived in Rio about an hour ago and have checked into the hotel.”

  “Good. Juarez wants to move your meeting tomorrow up to eight a.m.”

  “We can do eight. Location?”

  “I’ll have him text you the address.”

  “Thanks.” As Quinn said this, his phone buzzed with a text, presumably from Durrie with the address where he and Ortega were eating.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Peter said. “You might want to go alone.”