Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

  Mr. Sunday killed the video feed and allowed for silence to settle over his presentation venue. He spent that time looking from one face to another and another. His smile was exactly the same as a Nile crocodile watching a limping gazelle edge down onto the bank for a sip.

  “Now, my friends,” he said softly, “I think we can start the bidding at one million dollars per unit. Ooooo, I see we already have some bids. Nice. I like that enthusiasm. Another bidder. And another. Very, very nice…”

  CHAPTER 47

  BLUE DIAMOND TRAINING CAMP

  CADDO MILLS, TEXAS

  Inside the building, they passed a room with an open door, and Bunny caught a brief glance of a man in what looked like the hydraulic power loader from the movie Aliens. A sturdy exoskeleton that gave the man a strange almost crustacean appearance, with enormous arms that had large pincers. Bunny lingered long enough to see the exosuit’s driver swing around and point one pincer at a wall. Bunny realized with a start that instead of actual pincers, the two prongs at the end of the arm were, in fact, gun barrels. Large bore, nearly as big as an M242 Bushmaster, but the overall barrel length was shorter. The recoil from a weapon like that would put any soldier, no matter how burly, flat on his ass; and that explained the heavy structure of the exoskeleton. It was, he realized, a short-barreled Bushmaster that could chase opponents.

  The sight of it sent a chill through him. He tapped Top’s arm and got a nod. He’d seen it, too.

  Saxon led them through another doorway into the main gymnasium. The room was big, with a floor painted out for basketball. The paint was faded and scuffed and mostly covered by exercise mats and racks and benches for weights, and a row of speed bags and a dozen heavy bags hung from chains. Along one wall were racks of training weapons—padded pugil sticks, throwing knives, paintball guns for nonlethal close-combat drills, training body armor, various kinds of rubber and wooden weapons, and handheld targets. About thirty men and women were training in pairs, some under an instructor’s eye, others—more advanced teams—working out on their own. Top and Bunny followed Saxon between the groups in what was clearly an attempt to impress them. And they were impressed. These were not raw boot camp greenhorns; they were seasoned fighters who knew their trade. Very fast, very dangerous.

  They stopped by one square where a fight was ending. The loser was on his hands and knees, goggle-eyed and purple-faced, crawling like a geriatric away from a man who was five and a half feet tall and about four wide, with no visible neck, a bull chest, pig eyes, and a blend of navy and prison tattoos. He also had a stylized 88 over his heart.

  “Sergeant Wilkes,” said Saxon. “Meet the candidates. Big one is Buck, older one is Guidry.”

  Wilkes ignored Bunny and looked Top up and down. His expression was one of abject disregard. To Saxon, he said, “Old Black Joe here looks like he’s past his sell-by date.”

  Top said nothing, showed nothing. Bunny couldn’t help but laugh.

  Wilkes gave him a sharp look. “You got something to say?”

  “‘Fuck you’ comes to mind,” said Bunny. That caused a murmur of comments and snickers from the watching crowd.

  Wilkes pointed a calloused finger at him. “You’re officially on my list.”

  “Don’t give a cold, dried shit.”

  That made the sergeant grin with ghoulish delight. He clapped Saxon on the shoulder. “I’m calling dibs on these two assholes.”

  Bunny turned to Saxon. “This how you run your recruitment program? Must have missed that in the sales pitch.”

  Saxon looked momentarily uncertain, then shrugged. “They’re not signed on yet,” he said to Wilkes, “but … yeah. Run them a bit. See how they shake out. It’ll tell me how much work we have to do to get them back in the game. Just don’t mess them up too much.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m officially shitting my pants,” said Bunny, punctuating it with a yawn.

  “Oh, hell,” said Wilkes with real delight, “I’m going to saw a good yard off this big cocksucker.”

  Bunny was six foot six and was easily the tallest man in the gym. “Let’s do it, old hoss. Let’s rock and roll.”

  “No,” said Top, and everyone looked at him. “I’ve got some things I’d like to discuss with the sergeant here. You step off, Farm Boy. Let the grown-ups have a chitchat.”

  Wilkes burst out laughing. “You want to go a few rounds with me? That’s awesome.”

  “No,” said Top. “Just the one round’ll do.”

  That got an even bigger laugh, and Wilkes grinned so hard it looked like his gristly ears would fall off. He cut a look at Saxon. “Arrogant and stupid. You sure know how to find them. What’s the other one? An autistic faggot?”

  Bunny merely smiled and went over to lean against the wall, arms folded across his chest, watching as Top removed his wristwatch, hat, and shirt and placed them neatly on a corner of the mat. Beneath the shirt, he had a faded green, brown, and black camouflage tank top. His dark skin was crisscrossed with scars, old and new, and although he was muscular, he was not a muscle freak like Wilkes. Or like Bunny, for that matter. He was built more like a first baseman—solid, the kind who could block a runner sliding into base. However, his age was apparent in the white salted through his black goatee, and in the lines around his eyes and mouth.

  People were joining the crowd from the other training areas, drawn by loud voices and laughter. They looked from Wilkes to Top and elbowed each other, laughing, making bets on how fast the sergeant was going to dismantle the old guy.

  Wilkes made a big show of waving Top onto the padded training area, even to the point of giving a small comical bow like a ringleader at a dog circus. He never stopped grinning. When he stepped onto the mat, he looked Top in the eye and tapped the 88 tattoo. The eighth letter of the alphabet was H, and 88 was shorthand for Heil Hitler. There was a burning cross on the sergeant’s stomach.

  Top did not take up a stance or even bring his guard up. His only concession to the level of threat was to shift his weight subtly to the balls of his feet. He waited for the brute of a sergeant to make his play.

  When it happened, it all happened fast.

  Wilkes faked left and then stepped in very fast with an overhand right that was a rock breaker, a bone crusher, a lethal blow. His whole body went into the punch—good stance, the right kind of pivot to torque energy into his monstrous shoulders so that the punch was a blurred whipping loop of gristle and bone. A younger, faster man would have had trouble slipping or evading that punch, and it was very obvious this was Sergeant Wilkes’s deal closer, the blow he used when he wanted to prove a point to everyone within visual range. The kind of punch that would be talked about among the Fixers for years.

  Top did not evade, did not duck, bob, or weave.

  He stepped right into the attack, shifting only a little to the right as he brought his elbow up into the path of the muscular arm, the flats of his curled fingers pressed against his skull. And he used his step to drive a single punch into the narrow gap between one eight and the other. Every ounce of Top’s two hundred pounds, forty years of karate, and career as a tier-one special operator went into it. This was his deal closer. A tighter, smarter, less obvious punch that channeled all his muscle, mass, and momentum into an impact point no larger than a dime.

  The sergeant’s entire body folded around the punch. The blow knocked spit from his mouth, drove all the air from his lungs, took all the rigidity from his muscles, turned his legs to overcooked pasta, and sat him down hard on his ass in front of everyone. His eyes bulged, and his face turned an eggplant purple as he tried to suck in even a spoonful of air.

  Top knotted his fingers in Wilkes’s short hair, jerked his head back so violently there was a wet creaking sound, and then he spat in the sergeant’s gasping mouth. Top straightened, started to turn, paused, and shot a back heel kick into the man’s right eye socket. Wilkes flopped back, arms and legs splayed like a starfish. The right side of his face no longer held its shape. Blood leaked from n
ostrils, ears, and mouth.

  The room was utterly silent.

  Top went over and retrieved his shirt and stood buttoning it very slowly. His eyes were locked on Saxon’s. Bunny came and stood next to Top, but facing away, watching the crowd.

  “We didn’t come here to fuck around,” said Top quietly. “I thought we were here to audition for a job.”

  Saxon looked aghast.

  At first.

  Then a slow smile blossomed on his face.

  CHAPTER 48

  PHOENIX HOUSE

  HEADQUARTERS OF ROGUE TEAM INTERNATIONAL

  OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE

  Mr. Church moved through the rooms of his big apartment on the top floor of the ancient castle he’d purchased and had brought—stone by stone—to the island. The gigantic building had once belonged to Francis II Rákóczi, a Hungarian nobleman from the early eighteenth century who had been a prince of Transylvania and a celebrated member of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

  As was his habit when deeply troubled, Church lingered in his study, which was lined with bookshelves on which were volumes in scores of languages, books both new and ancient. There was a rack of scrolls, and a row of small and exquisite busts in a case. Church opened the case and looked into the marble faces of Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel; Gian Gastone de’ Medici, last of the Medicis; the Marquis de Créquy; the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau; the occultist Giuseppe Balsamo, who preferred to be called Count Alessandro di Cagliostro; the Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova; the duc de Belle-Isle; and the theosophist Madame Blavatsky. Other faces watched him from canvases carefully framed and hung so that they leaned slightly forward from the walls as if bending to participate in hushed conversations.

  Speakers of superb fidelity in the other room played an aria, Op. 36 XXXII, Povero cor perche palpito in G Major, sung by a Japanese soprano whose voice called to mind an angel wreathed in light. It was a necessary change from the improvisational jazz he’d listened to while making all those calls.

  Church’s cat, a Scottish fold with fur the color of woodsmoke, watched him from his favorite niche between a high-quality bound photocopy of Inventio Fortunata, written by a fourteenth-century monk whose name was lost to time, and a pair of George II flintlock brass-barrel militia officers’ dueling pistols made by George E. Jones in 1803, with an inscription carefully scrolled onto the brass butt plate of the right-hand gun. The inscription read, “Post tenebras spero lucem”—“After darkness, I hope for light”—though the inscriber was not referring to the old Calvinist catchphrase. That phrase had very special meaning for Church and was also chiseled into the first foundation stone when the castle was erected here on this small Greek island.

  A discreet bell rang in the foyer, and he walked out to look at the screen mounted beside the door. A young and very muscular man stood there, face lifted to the security camera. His name was Luke Merishi, and he was a moran—a Maasai warrior from Kenya—and a former member of the Lion Guardians. Luke’s grandfather had been a close friend of Mr. Church, and together, they’d torn down a huge poaching ring. Luke was one of Church’s private guards but was also in training for possible inclusion in an RTI field team. He wore a standard gray patrol uniform but with a red-and-black-checked Maasai sash, ornate multicolored arm bracelets, necklace, and earrings. A pistol was holstered in a nylon shoulder rig, but he carried a twenty-inch rungu, the deadly throwing club made of polished ebony wood, in one strong hand.

  Church pressed a button. “Yes, Luke, what is it?”

  The young warrior stepped aside to reveal a second man standing behind him. This man, though still in his thirties, was ten years older than the Massai. He wore distressed jeans and a dove-gray T-shirt with a French tuck.

  “Mr. Chismer is requesting a meeting,” said Luke. “He insists it’s urgent. Mr. Wilson sent him up.”

  “Very well,” said Church and opened the door.

  “My apologies, sir,” began Luke, but Church waved it away.

  “You were quite correct to bring him up here, Luke,” said Church. “Thank you.”

  The young Maasai frowned and turned to Toys. “Don’t make me regret doing this.”

  “Cheers, mate,” said Toys. Then he turned to Church. “We need to talk.”

  “So it seems. Come in.”

  He stepped aside and allowed Toys to come inside. Guests in this part of the castle were exceptionally rare, and normally, Church would never have allowed Toys up here. However, Church was intrigued by the young man’s urgency. He nodded to Luke and closed the door, then ushered Toys into the study, waving him to one of the big leather chairs positioned before a modest fire. Toys refused a glass of wine and instead flung himself into the chair and spent a few moments staring at the books and art.

  Toys frowned and nodded to a manuscript of a play left open inside a Plexiglas case.

  “The History of Cardenio?” he mused. “Really? I thought that was one of Shakespeare’s lost plays. So, what’s this? A re-creation? A novelty? Or did someone sell you a high-end phony?”

  Church sat back in his chair, crossed his legs, and brushed a tiny piece of lint from his trouser leg. “What can I do for you, Mr. Chismer?”

  Toys kept looking around for a few more moments, making occasional grunts. Then he sighed and looked at Church.

  “Did Junie Flynn tell you about her premonition the night Ledger went missing?”

  “She did. She also discussed it with Dr. Sanchez.”

  “Did she tell you she passed out when she had it? We were at FreeTech, celebrating the completion of the water purification system we set up in Botswana, and she dropped her glass and went tits up. I thought she’d had a bloody heart attack. But it was that vision of Joe Ledger being in some kind of trouble. And she hasn’t been the same since, and it’ll be a month tomorrow.”

  Church said nothing.

  “I know she’s been calling here ’round the effing clock, and all Scott Wilson will tell her is that Ledger is on a mission and unavailable. But I know for a fact that Top and Bunny are in the States working on something else. And that Belle and Andrea are off working on something in the UK. All of which suggests the ‘on a mission’ thing is tosh.”

  Church did not ask how Toys knew all this. The young man was notoriously resourceful.

  “Given what happened on Christmas Eve,” continued Toys, “my guess is that Ledger has gone ’round the twist. Something dodgy like that. Maybe you have him locked up somewhere for his own good, and if so, then all’s right in the world and I can go back home. I can even try to sell Junie a story that’ll let her get some sleep at night. But … I don’t think that’s it, is it? I think something’s happened to Ledger, and on some level somehow, Junie knows it. Feels it. Whatever.”

  “Is there a point to all this?” asked Church.

  Toys leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I think we both know that I don’t give a leper’s missing left nut about Ledger, and I’m hardly his favorite bloke. But I care a lot about Junie. Fair to say there’s no one I care about as much. She is the best human being I’ve ever met, and she treats me—a total piece of shit like me—like I’m a person. She has from the jump, even though she knows my past. She knows the things I’ve done, and she doesn’t care about it. She judges me on who I am now, which is something I don’t even bloody well know how to process. Are you following me?”

  “Get to your point,” said Church.

  “My point is that if Ledger is in trouble, then I want to help.”

  Church folded his hands in his lap. “There are a lot of people already positioned to help Colonel Ledger.”

  “Sure,” said Toys, “and so what?”

  “Why would I even consider putting you into the field?”

  “For the same effing reason you pick up the phone every time you need a throat cut,” snapped Toys. “You keep doing it, too. When you’re resource poor, you make a call, and I come running. Want to or not, I bloody well take that call because I have a
debt outstanding with you we both know I can’t ever repay.”

  “You are doing the work that best suits you.”

  “With FreeTech? Give me a sodding break. A trained monkey could do what I do. I write checks that allow Junie and her people to do the real work. I sort out logistics, rent offices, and all of that shite, but it’s a misuse of who I am, and we both know it.”

  “And who are you, Mr. Chismer?” asked Church. “In your eyes, who are you?”

  Toys looked into Church’s eyes. Deeply enough that the ambient temperature of the room seemed to drop.

  “I’m a killer,” said Toys. “And I’m very damned good at it.”

  Church pursed his lips for a moment. “You are.”

  “Know what else I’m good at? Know why Sebastian Gault, the Seven Kings, and Hugo Vox all knew about me? I can find things. I may be out of the game, but my connections are still out there. I used to be wired in everywhere. You have your cronies—Lilith and her Arklight witches, friends in the industry, that lot—but my connections are likely off your radar. Or maybe below your radar. Look, I know that you’re hunting Kuga. I know that Kuga took over most of Ohan’s black market network after Lilith cut his throat. That’s fine. But I’ll bet Kuga allowed or encouraged a lot of the key players in Ohan’s network to come over to his team. Why? Because that’s the smart way to run a business like that. I have connections on the dark web left over from my time with Gault and Vox. Just because I stepped away from that life doesn’t mean I can’t work the game if I really wanted to.”