Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Ghost,” I snapped. “Done. Off.”

  He disengaged reluctantly.

  I grabbed all three of their guns and my sack of groceries, unlocked my car, and ordered Ghost to get in, but as he ran around to the open driver’s door, someone opened up with another handgun. I ducked down as the bullets knocked jagged splinters from the wall. Ghost screamed in pain, and I couldn’t tell if it was a splinter or a bullet. His shoulder was pouring blood, and when he tried to run toward the open doorway, his legs buckled.

  More shots punched into the hood of the car and the windshield, filling the glass with spiderweb cracks.

  I pivoted to return fire, but the gunman crouched behind an open car door, and there were terrified pedestrians behind him—some running, others frozen in shock.

  So I scooped to pick up Ghost, and it was a measure of his pain that he snapped at me. But I got him in and pushed him over and down into the passenger footwell. I started the car, keeping low, released the brake, and stamped on the gas. The Edge lurched forward, and I drove it right at the shooter, ducking low as he blew out the windshield. But then the left front fender smashed into the door behind which he was standing. I heard an awful shriek and the tire thumped over something, and immediately, the scream stopped.

  I muscled between that car and another and then cut left across the parking lot to the first exit. The passenger-side window burst inward, and I heard more shots, but I couldn’t see the shooter. I was too busy driving.

  We got the hell out of the parking lot and drove one block and pulled into an underground garage beneath an office building. It took me only seconds to break into another car and ten more seconds to disable the alarm. Easy when you know how. I transferred Ghost, who was whimpering piteously, into the back seat. Then I exited the lot and got the hell out of the area.

  Ghost needed a doctor, and we both needed a place to lie low. And I knew exactly where to go.

  CHAPTER 146

  OAKWOOD PLAZA

  HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA

  Stafford disconnected the call and sat behind the wheel of his rental Jeep Gladiator.

  Four dead.

  Four.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said aloud. And then repeated it over and over while banging his fist on the steering wheel.

  He’d sent a six-man team, all experienced militiamen from the New Founding Fathers, one of the most radicalized of the teams on Mr. Sunday’s list. Men who’d been involved in serious operations—the shooting of an anti-fracking senator, the kidnap and execution of a CEO who was moving his plant overseas and taking seven hundred American jobs with it, and counterprotesting at voting sites from Miami to the Rust Belt. Men who should have been able to handle one man and a goddamned dog.

  He debated calling Kuga, which he was supposed to do, but the boss had seemed a little twitchy lately. No, better wait until there was good news to report.

  Stafford took his tablet from the open briefcase on the passenger seat and called up the profile on Joe Ledger. Looking for where he might be going here in Lauderdale. Stafford did not think Ledger knew where he should have been going. If that were the case, if Ledger knew where the Fixers were getting their gear ready, that cocksucker would be leading the entire National Guard right there. Since that wasn’t happening, then the likelier scenario was that Ledger had gotten the name of the city from the Cat—which was all that idiot knew—and was going to hole up while trying to plan his next move.

  Fine.

  That meant that Stafford now had the time he needed to figure out where exactly that was. Unlike Ledger’s visits to the cities in Europe and Africa, this was home turf, and the whole Ledger family had ties to Fort Lauderdale. This part was just legwork, guesswork, and—if things went as he expected—gun work.

  CHAPTER 147

  THE PAVILION

  BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER

  STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON

  Top and Bunny had been taking a lot of walks and doing a lot of jogging over the last few weeks. Partly to establish these things as habits, but primarily to gather intel.

  It was a strange time for both of them and by far the longest they had been undercover in any operation, before or since working for Mr. Church.

  It was also deeply frustrating because they could not effectively sweep their rooms for bugs and so had to assume they were under constant surveillance. Even the old trick of running the shower and having a huddled conversation protected by the wall of sound wouldn’t work, because bathrooms could be bugged pretty easily these days. And the only way to find those devices would be during a concerted search, which would appear, on video, to be exactly what it was. Once in a while, they would jot a note on a tissue or a few sheets of toilet paper, but writing those notes could not be done anywhere in their rooms. Bunny did his in a porta-potty on the far side of the camp, and Top did his in a bathroom stall attached to the main training gym.

  And so they were roommates, forcing themselves into routines and conversation habits that reinforced their credibility as disgruntled ex-military who were training to be upper-tier Fixers.

  Every day, they went to classes to study the technology, the strategies and tactics, the politics of likely client nations, and similar classes on corporate structures for multinational businesses who routinely hired private military contractors. They did physical training in the morning, with long runs in full kit, clanking iron in the gym, swimming laps in the pool, climbing trees using hand and foot spokes, and hand-to-hand combat drills. Top had risen to the rank of assistant instructor, working with a Chechen ex-commando. They disliked each other at once, so there was no male bonding going on. However, they made a good team.

  Day by day, though, Top faced the reality that he was actually training killers to be even more lethal.

  Bunny kept his skill level from showing, though he got high marks on the gun range. Of the two, he was the better shot, though not by much.

  And every other day, groups of Fixers were trained in the use of the high-tech battle gear. The guns and armor were easy. The fighting machine took practice. Only for Top, though. Bunny was far too big to be a candidate for a K-110 driver. But Top found he actually liked being inside the shell of that machine. The servos were so responsive that it wasn’t like lifting weights, which was how it looked. The level of resistance was less than walking chest deep in a pool, which was why all the drivers spent two hours a day practicing in the water. Top hated the first ten days of that, and then his body seemed to shuck the years. His muscle tone was as fine as when he’d been a spry twentysomething running with the 101st Airborne.

  He gave his machine a nickname—Hot Mama—and painted that on the cowling.

  Over the last few weeks, the camp had begun to empty out. Truckloads of Fixers had rolled out already, and there was only a skeleton crew left behind—thirty Fixers, five scientists, six techs, and a dozen support staff that included the mess cook and room maids.

  On the same day Joe Ledger was racing through the streets of Fort Lauderdale with a bleeding Ghost, Top saw HK pulling a suitcase toward a big Lincoln Navigator. He’d been out jogging and was both surprised and alarmed that HK seemed to be moving out as well.

  “Hey, boss lady,” called Top, slowing to a walk and falling in beside her, “don’t tell me you’re leaving, too.”

  “It’s that time,” she said, giving him one of her brilliant smiles.

  “Well … damn,” he said, smiling back. “Won’t be nothing left here but ugly-ass Fixers to look at. You’re taking all the pretty with you.”

  HK’s eyes flickered a bit at that, as if deciding whether his comment was charming or a step too far, but she kept her sunny disposition.

  “I’m sure you’ll find something to keep you occupied, Mr. Guidry.”

  He offered to stow her suitcase in the back of the car, and she shrugged and allowed it.

  “In all seriousness, HK,” said Top, “Buck and I really appreciate you taking us on here. We feel like we found a home wit
h y’all. A family.”

  Now the smile changed, mingled tones of surprise and warmth. “That’s sweet of you to say. We try our best.”

  “That’s obvious, ma’am, but hey … we’d like to earn our keep. Everyone else has rolled out, and it’s obvious there’s something big about to happen. You can feel the excitement. You can taste it, though I don’t know what it is. It’s all hush-hush. When do Buck and I get a chance to join in the fun, maybe kick a few asses and take some names?”

  She looked up at him for a few seconds, and he watched her eyes and calculated the wattage of that smile. It was obvious she was deciding on how much to tell him.

  “We have plans for you and everyone else left here at the Pavilion,” she said. “Your team isn’t part of the other operation we have running. No, Mr. Guidry, your unit will be shipping out overseas. Can’t say where exactly, but I can say that I hope you like heat and humidity. Though your Hot Mama is, after all, air-conditioned.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said. “That’s cool. But I made some friends in the other squads. Wouldn’t mind seeing some of those cats again.”

  “Oh, sorry. They won’t be coming back here,” she said, making a little sad face. “That’s why their gear’s already been forwarded. But … who knows, maybe we’ll all have a big class reunion. Have to run now. Bye!”

  And she punctuated that with a big wink.

  Then she got into the back of the Escalade, and Top watched the vehicle drive off.

  He didn’t linger and instead went back to his daily run.

  The path took him through all the small buildings used as suites for the Fixers. There were no guards back there, and Top slowed down, pretending to be out of breath. He walked slowly through the now deserted alleys between the buildings. Every now and then, he leaned on a windowsill, ostensibly for balance as he stretched his quads, but really to catch quick glimpses through the windows. What he saw made him grunt in surprise.

  Because he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts for the run, he did not have his button cam. So he walked back to the suite he shared with Bunny and gave his partner a small gesture to indicate they should both go outside. It was a lovely day, and they strolled in the general direction of the pool.

  When Top was sure they were out of range of likely surveillance, he told Bunny what he’d seen. Bunny frowned.

  “Their stuff’s still here?” asked the big young man.

  “Yeah. In every window I looked. Seems like they just walked away from it. Clothes, gear, personal stuff.”

  “And HK said they weren’t coming back?”

  “So she said.”

  “Why would she lie about something like that?”

  “Maybe ’cause she doesn’t want the rest of us ‘Fixers’ to know that we’re all single-use products.”

  Bunny stared at him.

  “Well … shit…”

  CHAPTER 148

  ABOARD THE SOPHIA YIN

  FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA

  When I got to Lauderdale, I didn’t like the way the cut on Ghost’s shoulder was looking. I’d cleaned it off, but he seemed to be in a fair amount of pain. And he was getting grouchy and even snippy about it.

  In perhaps the only bit of luck I’ve had in who knows how long, I actually knew a veterinarian in town—one of my dad’s friends, Jean McGee-Thompson, a fifty-three-year-old general practice animal doctor who had a curious sideline of doing what she called “private salvage” work. Jean’s not exactly a private investigator—she just does the occasional favor for friends. Hiding me out is one kind of favor. Like her father before her, Jean is smart, shrewd, funny, idealistic, and pretends to be a cynic. But she has a huge heart. I first met her at her husband’s funeral twelve years ago. He was apparently killed in a failed mugging, but Jean didn’t believe that’s how it played out. So she went hunting, looking deeper than the police bothered to. A week or so later, there was a news story about what a sad coincidence it was that her husband’s business partner fell off a roof. Terrible luck, the reporters said.

  My dad told me that Jean deconstructed the situation and found that her husband’s partner had picked clean every bit of money their underwater photography business had and borrowed right up to the hilt against the physical assets. Dad said she got a bit more than half of it back. He never told me how she’d managed it or how the partner managed to be on the roof of their boathouse. Or how he somehow tripped and took that fatal fall.

  I knew he had his suspicions, but even if he had proof, I doubt he’d have called one of his cop buddies in Lauderdale. His dad, my grandfather, had been a close friend of Jean’s dad, and there were some tall tales about what the elder McGee had been doing his whole life. All Dad ever said was, “Joey, there’s the law, and then there’s justice.”

  I got to know Jean better after Junie and I came down for one of her legendary boat parties. Twelve couples, including Rudy and Circe, my brother, Sean, and his wife, and some folks who were strangers when we set off and friends when we docked. Jean and Junie had spent a lot of that trip talking, walking together on beaches, drinking wine in a drifting skiff. Junie never said what they talked about, and I have never asked.

  Jean kept a low profile except among the tight community of permanent boat people, and she’d extended the invitation for one or both of us to visit anytime. And, at the end of that ten-day excursion, when Junie was already in the car and I’d come back for the last of my scuba gear, Jean took me aside and told me that if I ever needed a place to lie low, to come see her. She’d been shaking my hand when she said it and maintained her firm, dry, powerful grip for an extra second or two. Not as any kind of come-on but the way one soldier might do with another. The message was clear, and I thanked her.

  So I used one of the burners to call her. She said she was home and to come right over.

  Forty minutes later, I was there.

  Jean is tall, with long, wiry red-gold hair, pale eyes, and a look of constant, amused skepticism. She had that rare blend of relaxed vitality and obvious high intelligence. A brainy doctor in a jock body. And she was sunbaked to a golden brown. There were some interesting little scars here and there that could be reasonably accounted for by either her profession as a veterinarian or her avocation as a boat bum. I knew knife scars when I saw them.

  She took Ghost down below and said that there was a splinter of something buried under his fur. Apparently, the shot that missed me and grazed him carried a piece of the stone wall with it. It was pressing on some nerves.

  “I need to put him out and remove it,” she said. “And I’ll shoot him up with antibiotics. Won’t take long, but he’ll need to sleep it off, so while I’m working, you’d better go out and do some shopping. I don’t have toiletries for a guy, and you need a shave, shampoo, and shower. And maybe some fresh clothes.”

  I thanked her, kissed Ghost’s head, and went out. I bought more than toiletries and clothes, though. There’s a woman in town who is part of the Arklight extended family. I told her what I needed, and she said to give her an hour. My guess is that most of that time was making calls to Lilith and Violin. By the time I arrived at her place—which looked like an LGBTQ bookshop—she had what I needed. I tried to pay her, but she got so offended I apologized.

  I took the stuff around the corner to my rental car, and it took me nearly an hour to find the three tracking bugs she’d hidden in the big suitcase. An hour was a long time, which meant Violin was likely at the airport now and would be here by morning.

  Then, reasonably sure my new gear was clean, I headed back to the marina to see how Ghost was coming along.

  CHAPTER 149

  THE TOC

  PHOENIX HOUSE

  OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE

  “Okay, guys,” said Nikki Bloom, “we put together two lists of events in the areas Joe said might be strike zones.”

  She sent the data from her laptop to the big screen at the front of the room.

  The tactical operations center was packed to the rafters. Th
e brightest minds from each department were there, along with the regular mission command team. Church, Doc, Wilson, and Bug stood at the foot of a wide aisle between rows of workstations.

  “If we start at the two-month mark,” continued Nikki, “you can see that there’s something like two hundred and fourteen events with estimated populations over two hundred. More if you include the Lauderdale metropolitan area. And for LaBorde, we don’t know which part of the county is a possible target.”

  Long lists of events appeared on the screens. The green list was LaBorde County, and the blue was Lauderdale.

  “There are convention centers, high school and college stadiums, baseball and football stadiums, track-and-field meets, summer camps, car shows, gun shows, political rallies, music concerts, art shows…”

  Doc leaned close to Church. “Oh, lordy.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Church.

  Wilson said, “Have you assigned values to these events?”

  “Sure,” said Nikki. “About a zillion different sets of metrics. Largest anticipated crowd density, indoor versus outdoor, recurring versus onetime, entertainment versus governmental; and we have breakdowns by political parties. Though, since we’re between elections in midsummer, there isn’t a lot of political heat right now, and the ones that are scheduled have some of the smallest potential crowds.”

  “What are the political ones?” asked Wilson.

  “There’s an anti–stem cell research rally at a library in Hollywood, Florida. Based on previous events by the same group, they expect a hundred people. The speaker is a former state senator,” she said. “There’s the governor’s conference on police funding in Nacogdoches—which sounds like it would be hot button, but it’s not. Mostly reading of proposals and photo ops. A bipartisan thing that’s so dull it’s struggling to get press. Figure maybe two hundred. And the other is a little likelier, a Second Amendment event set for the week before the new background check legislation comes up for a vote in the Florida state senate. A lot of opposing groups are blasting about it on their social media, so you can expect everyone from BLM to the Proud Boys to show up for that. It’s in two weeks and will be held outside the Greater Fort Lauderdale Broward County Convention Center, where the Florida Gun Show will be held. Much bigger numbers.”