Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

  There were no other RTI agents in Germany that he knew of, and no one else knew this place was anything more than a house where a bachelor lived a quiet life.

  Fool me once, he thought and tapped a concealed button to release a section of the wall behind which were a half dozen handguns. One of them was a Snellig loaded with Sandman. Jäger pulled it free, checked the magazine, and crept to the door, smiling and thinking the blackest thoughts he owned.

  “Wer ist es?” he asked, leaning close to the door.

  He peered through the peephole, and there he was. Tall, broad-shouldered, blond. Wearing a thick leather jacket.

  Ledger.

  Du Hurensohn! he thought, raising the pistol as he unlocked the door.

  He whipped it open just as Ledger turned around.

  Except it was not Joe Ledger. This man could have been his brother, but it wasn’t Joe. It was a stranger.

  And the stranger held a gun.

  A pistol with a long black sound suppressor.

  Jäger brought his own gun up, and both weapons fired at exactly the same time. The glass dart struck the sleeve of the leather jacket and exploded harmlessly.

  The man’s bullet took Jäger in the hip, tearing through meat and exploding the bone, spinning him, detonating incredible agony all through his body. The man shoved Jäger inside even before the agent could fall; then he kicked the door shut. The stranger slapped the Snellig from his hand and buried the hot barrel of the suppressor under Jäger’s chin.

  In very good, very clear German with a definite American accent, the blond man said, “Wo ist Joe Ledger?”

  Where is Joe Ledger?

  CHAPTER 125

  HOTEL TIMIȘOARA

  TIMIȘOARA, ROMANIA

  I washed Ghost and myself.

  I brushed him and pampered him. I ordered his favorite stuff from room service. I took him for walks and played with him, and spooned him when we needed to sleep. I’m pretty sure he knew I was feeling guilty and was milking the hell out of it.

  That’s fine. He deserved it.

  We went and visited the other rooms I’d booked during my fugue, and in the second one, I found the notes I’d written after my abortive conversation with Casanova. So much of that had been shoved back into the recesses of my brain because of the fight with the Fixers. It took a while for me to remember that I’d written it down already and emailed it to Bug. Which meant Church and everyone who mattered knew about what happened at the processing plant.

  That was good. It was important, and I had a feeling it was even more critical than it seemed. Those Fixers had cutting-edge gear and were wearing suicide vests. Ones that went boom in a way that was out of all proportion to what I knew of explosives.

  The possibilities were staggering. However, I trusted Church, Wilson, Bug, and Doc to grasp that potential and put the right wheels in motion.

  For now, though, I had to concentrate on this part of my mission. My self-imposed mission.

  Was this getting me anywhere close to Santoro?

  In a very weird way, I found that I almost didn’t care.

  I was becoming weary of hate. That was something I didn’t think was possible.

  My family was seven months in the ground. Nothing I did would change that. Not even their ghosts showing up.

  I was probably clinically insane, and this course of action sure as shit wasn’t driving me in the direction of a cure. I wasn’t sure if I could finish this mission.

  No, let me correct that, I wasn’t sure if I should.

  Not that mission. Not finding and killing Rafael Santoro.

  It took me a lot of hours pacing in my hotel rooms, walking Ghost, lying in bed staring at the ceiling to work it through. If this were a movie, I’d have covered a wall with three-by-five cards, Post-it notes, and colored pushpins, and tied everything neatly together with red string. But that was the movies, and this was my life.

  The Darkness had receded further this time. I could barely feel it back there in some corner of my mind. Don’t know why; didn’t care. What mattered was the picture coming together from what I’d learned in Italy, Poland, South Africa, the Netherlands, and Germany. On some level, I was pretty sure I had nearly all of it.

  The cybernetics.

  High-end body armor.

  Fighting machines with human drivers.

  Some kind of mind-altering chemical compound that drove the Fixers mad while giving them extra speed and strength.

  The suicide vests and whatever high explosive they were packed with.

  Something called the American Operation.

  Those pieces had all floated around loose because I’d collected them piecemeal here and there. And sometimes while in a fugue state.

  But now, a bit more clearheaded, I could see how there was a sense to it. A cohesion.

  Somewhere in America, Fixers with chemical enhancement, cybernetics, bulletproof armor, and advanced weapons were going to stage a strike. Knowing Kuga and Santoro, it was going to be big. Something that would draw a lot of attention, but at the end of the day, Kuga wanted to sell more weapons of conflict. Just as the Rage attacks in the two Koreas and at the denuclearization summit in Oslo were never really about unifying North and South Korea or stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Just the reverse. Kuga wanted to keep the world always on the brink of war, because when things are peaceful, no one’s buying as many guns.

  This, quite simply, made sense.

  I was here in Romania to see someone called Die Katze. The Cat. A salesman high in the Kuga organization. Someone who might actually know what this American Operation was. Or at least give me enough so I could keep going.

  “Keep going,” I said out loud.

  Did I want to? Need to? Have to?

  Or was it time to lay down my sword and shield and let Church take it from here?

  I smiled up at the ceiling. Yeah. Sure. Let me go sit on the sidelines and have a foot-long and a cold beer while the world blows up.

  Let me sit it out while other people—better people—put themselves in the line of fire in my place, because I was too sad and weary.

  “No fucking way,” I said.

  Ghost looked at me and thumped the bed with his tail. When I looked at him, he bared his titanium teeth at me. Maybe it was a snarl, maybe it was him laughing.

  He wasn’t buying that bullshit, either.

  I looked at my watch.

  “Game time, furball,” I said.

  CHAPTER 126

  HOTEL TIMIȘOARA

  TIMIȘOARA, ROMANIA

  They were being very careful.

  I stood with my face pressed against my door, peering through the peephole at the four men who stepped off the elevator. Three were big, with the kinds of faces that would pretty much guarantee they’d never work in customer service. Lumpy, craggy, with crooked noses and humorless, unimaginative eyes. They wore sport coats that they unbuttoned the moment they stepped out of the lift. Even from a third of the way down the hall, I could see the bulges beneath their jackets. Two right-handers and a lefty. All of them should have had THUG tattooed on their foreheads.

  The fourth man was approximately the size and shape of a mailbox. No neck, but not because he was overmuscled—he was simply very short and very obese. His face was florid and beaded with sweat. He had a sparse beard and mustache and a sharp nose that he could have used to peck a hole in tree bark. He was the one I cared about. He had the briefcase filled with money to buy something I wanted very much.

  Something he was going to buy from Die Katze.

  The four of them walked past my room, the guards clicking their eyes left and right, looking for threats but clearly not expecting any. It was a nice hotel. Elegant and quiet.

  As I watched the men in the hall, I could feel Ghost watching me. Patient and just as hungry as I was. He remembered what we’d had to do to get this far. Questions had to be asked. I always ask nicely the first time. Not so much if they stonewall me.

  The men s
topped at a door only four down from mine. The upside was that I now knew the room number; but the downside was that it was at a bend in the hall where someone inside that room doing exactly what I was doing might see me coming.

  That was a problem to be solved in motion.

  For now, I waited and watched.

  The small man with the woodpecker nose rapped four times on the door. Two distinct sets of two beats. He paused and repeated it. Someone inside spoke, but I couldn’t hear it; however, I did hear the small man reply.

  “Dragoș m-a trimis.”

  Dragoș sent me.

  I had no idea who that was and assumed it was just a code word. Like the old speakeasies. Lefty sent me.

  Then he repeated the double rap again.

  There was a three count, and then the door opened. The small man entered the room accompanied by one of his guards. The other two turned their backs to the door. Normally, you’d think that would skew the math, but it didn’t. With two guys watching the door, no one was likely to be peering through the peephole. I could work with that.

  I checked my weapon and made sure the magazine was full. There was a Sig Sauer 9 mm snugged into the waistband of my trousers, firm against my left kidney, and two extra mags for it in my right pants pocket. Nothing else in there to interfere with grabbing one; and the pocket opening was sewn with a strip of elastic so it would stretch for an easy pull.

  However, the pistol I held in my hand was my Snellig dart gun.

  Why the dart gun? Partly because it was whisper quiet. Partly because I wasn’t sure if some of the people in that room were noncombatants or nonhostiles. And partly because I wanted the option to exfil someone with a pulse so I could ask a bunch of questions they couldn’t answer if they were dead. The Sig was there in case things went sideways and I wanted to send some of these assholes to Jesus on a fast train.

  I paused to take a look at myself in the mirror. Nice, quiet business suit. Hair combed. Fake glasses and a fake mustache. I looked ready to sell used cars in Akron. I even tried on a smile. I wanted it to look convincing, affable, nondescript. But it felt wrong on my face and looked phony in the mirror.

  I haven’t been smiling all that much lately.

  I heard a soft whuff behind.

  “You can keep your opinions to yourself, fleabag.”

  He whuffed again. Eloquently.

  “You want to sit there being snotty or do you want to go play?”

  His bushy tail thumped on the duvet.

  “Well, then stop lying around eating bonbons and get your furry ass in gear.”

  He immediately launched himself from the bed and went to stand glaring at the door, giving me “hurry the hell up” looks.

  “Let’s go be naughty,” I said, and opened the door.

  CHAPTER 127

  THE PLAYROOM

  UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

  NEAR VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

  Kuga got through after six failed attempts.

  “Hello, my friend,” said Mr. Sunday.

  “Fuck you with hello,” growled Kuga.

  “Well, you seem like you’re in quite a state. Someone piss on your new shoes?”

  “Cut the shit, Sunday. I want to know what the hell you’re playing at.”

  “At the moment? I’m playing with my dick.”

  Kuga closed his eyes and resisted the urge to hurl the phone across the room.

  “You said that you were going to mess with Ledger.”

  “And I am.”

  “Oh, really? He’s out of his mind, but he’s also tearing my organization apart.”

  Sunday gave a long, exaggerated, and comical sigh. “Haven’t we had this conversation before? Is it nine times now or ten?”

  “He is out there killing people.”

  “And you are there, safe and sound, planning to kill a lot more people than he is,” said Sunday. “I’ve been having some lovely chats with our friends in all those well-regulated militias. We’re going to have such fun.”

  “Yeah? And what if Ledger gets to them and makes them talk?”

  “He won’t.”

  “How would you know? You haven’t stopped him from killing my guys in South Africa and Italy and all those other places.”

  “I haven’t because I did not try.”

  “What?”

  “Let me rephrase that,” said Sunday.

  “Yeah, I think you’d fucking well better.”

  “I haven’t stopped him from killing those people because I don’t care about them. I really don’t. They are nothing to me because they have already done what I—and of course, I mean ‘we’—have required of them. Ledger is cleaning things up for us while thinking he is doing you harm.”

  “You’re insane.”

  Sunday laughed. “If that is the worst thing that you think I am, my friend, then I am very disappointed.”

  And he hung up.

  Kuga stared at the phone. But he did not throw it.

  CHAPTER 128

  HOTEL TIMIȘOARA

  TIMIȘOARA, ROMANIA

  We stepped into the hall.

  Ghost can look like a middle-aged house pet when he wants to. And I can look shorter and slower than I am. It’s a posture thing, and the way you set your shoulders and how you walk. And I composed my facial features to sell it. My lips were loose, rubbery, as if I were lost in thought; and my line of sight was vague, as if I were in my own head and not looking at anything or anyone. I stood in the hallway patting my pockets like an absentminded guy making sure he had his car keys, billfold, and cell phone.

  There were security cameras in the hall, but I’d already hacked into the system using gear I’d lifted from the safe house in Germany. I’d recorded six minutes of empty hall and fed it back in on a loop.

  Then I clicked my tongue for Ghost, and we began walking along the hall, angled so there was no sense of obvious interception. Just a man and his dog.

  Until we were six feet away.

  Then I brought the Snellig out very fast and smooth and shot them both in the face. They went down right away. No pause, no groans, no cries of alarm. Sandman does not ask, it tells.

  I rushed forward and caught them both, groaning under their combined weight, and dragged them back from the door before laying them on the dark red carpet.

  I needed to get in, but modern hotel doors are notoriously hard to kick open. Especially in the better hotels. Last thing I needed was to raise a ruckus kicking the thing four times, or to lame my foot. So, I removed a small device roughly the size of three stacked quarters, peeled off the film on the back to expose the adhesive, pressed it to the locking mechanism, pushed the little silver button, and backed up quickly, raising the gun.

  The device—known affectionately as a party popper—blew the lock apart. I kicked the door and rushed into the room, firing through the thin veil of smoke.

  “Ghost,” I growled. “Hit, hit, hit!”

  He hit.

  We both did.

  There were seven people in the room. Six men, one woman. Ghost hurled himself like a pale missile at the closest man, a big bruiser who had to be six eight. Over the years, Ghost has lost ten teeth in combat. Each one has been replaced with a titanium fang, and there’s some additional reinforcement to allow the dog to use those chompers to maximum effect. Ghost bit into the muscular forearm of the big man as the guy was pulling his pistol. Even with all the noise, I could hear bones break. Man and dog went down hard.

  I fired at everything that moved. It was a hotel room, a suite, and one of good size, but everyone was clustered around a coffee table. My shots caught them rising, in confusion, reaching for weapons but not actually able to point them. Not in time. Sandman works at the speed of nerve conduction.

  Ghost left the big man screaming and went after the third of the guards who’d come with Woodpecker. That man went down with a savaged thigh, and he had a choice—try to shoot or use both hands to clamp down on a torn femoral artery. The man chose wisely.
>
  A man swung a pistol toward me, but I blocked the wrist with a blow from my left hand and shot him in the cheek.

  Suddenly, six men were down, and the only person standing was the woman. She gave me a look of mingled terror and lethal hate and dove over the back of the couch, coming up with a neat little handgun I hadn’t seen on her. She rose up firing, but I was moving, changing angle and distance, and the range was bad for her but good for me. I chopped down on her wrist hard enough to break things, then kicked her in the stomach. She folded into a knot that was tight as a fist.

  Then I shot the two men Ghost had injured. One was going to bleed out and die. Fuck it. The other was going to need a lot of surgery. Too bad.

  The whole fight took about four seconds.

  I looked down at the woman, shrugged, and shot her with Sandman. Then I left them all there and found a housekeeping closet, tricked open the lock, and grabbed a big canvas laundry cart on wheels. I took it back to the room and loaded my three sleeping beauties into it and then hid them with towels and sheets I pulled from the bed.

  “In,” I said, and Ghost jumped into the cart, and I covered him with a duvet.

  The briefcase Woodpecker had been carrying was on the coffee table next to an identical one. Both were locked, both went in with the laundry, along with everyone’s wallets and cell phones. Then I was out the door, wheeling the cart to the elevator. There was nothing in the room where Ghost and I had spent the night. My borrowed gear was downstairs in the first room where I’d awakened from my fugue. And, besides, I didn’t want to be anywhere near this room. So we took the service elevator.

  I got into that elevator just as the main elevator doors pinged open and two security guards and an assistant manager hurried out to investigate reports of a disturbance. I pushed up my sleeve to allow access to the thin, flexible tactical computer strapped to my forearm and disabled the video loop. They never saw me.

  I rode the car down to the fifth floor, fed the empty-hall loop to those cameras, exited, and—after making sure the hall was clear—wheeled the cart to the other room I’d booked. Got inside, reactivated the security cameras, and sent a signal for MindReader to erase all traces of my hack, closed and locked the door, leaned against it, and exhaled, blowing out my cheeks.