The Killer Collective

by Barry Eisler

  I hoped he was just saying that. “I thought I might take you up on that whisky,” I said.

  “That would be lovely. When can I expect you?”

  “In about twenty minutes. Is that all right?”

  “More than all right. Do we need two glasses, or more?”

  No doubt, he had good instincts. “Three. I’m with a friend of yours. The one you contacted to reach out to me.”

  There was a slight pause. I wasn’t surprised. I hadn’t expected him to take a visit by Larison lightly. No one would, and especially not Horton.

  “That’d be fine. I’ll be out on the porch expecting you.”

  chapter

  twelve

  RAIN

  By the time we arrived, the sun had dipped below the tree line, casting long shadows across the winding driveway that led through a thicket of woods to Horton’s house.

  I stopped the car about thirty feet out. Horton was standing by a post, no doubt having heard the car’s tires crunching on the gravel from a long way off. And probably having been alerted by various electronic countermeasures as well.

  We got out slowly, giving Horton plenty of time to see our hands, as he was being careful to let us see his. Of course, he might have had something concealed in a holster behind him. The heavy post he was standing alongside could also conceal a weapon, while providing some cover if things became unpleasant. If it went that way, though, he’d have two moving targets to contend with. One of whom had a machine pistol in the bag slung over his shoulder.

  But the tactical analysis was mostly reflex. The only reason Horton might have had to kill us was fear that we would first try to do the same to him. If Larison had shown up alone and unannounced, one or both of them would have wound up dead. With me there, though, and with the call we’d made first, I expected everyone to behave.

  Horton didn’t come down the stairs to greet us, preferring to maintain the high ground. I took in his appearance as we approached. A shaved head had been his trademark when he was active-duty, but he’d grown his hair out now. Despite a fair amount of gray, hair made him look younger. And despite the sweater he was wearing against the chill of the approaching evening, I saw a bit of new girth around his middle. Still, he remained a powerful-looking, barrel-chested man, with the erect bearing of someone who took pride not only in his own distinguished army career, but in being able to trace his military ancestry all the way back to the Fourth United States Colored Infantry, which fought with Major General Edward Ord’s Union Army of the James at the decisive Battle of Appomattox Court House.

  We reached the top of the stairs and he shook my hand. “Good to see you, John.”

  “Likewise,” I said. “Thanks for having us.” Maybe that wasn’t an entirely accurate description of my showing up alongside a virtual killing machine with an enduring hard-on for Horton, and with only twenty minutes’ notice on top of it. But with age, it seemed, came something of a diplomatic touch that had eluded me during my youth, when all my solutions seemed to involve posturing and violence.

  Horton turned and extended his hand to Larison. “Daniel, it’s fine to see you, too.”

  Larison looked at the hand for a moment but made no move to take it. I felt an electric tension building and thought, Come on, do we not have enough people constantly trying to kill us without doing it ourselves?

  Then Larison nodded and accepted the handshake. “Been a long time, Hort.”

  Horton gave him a half smile, half grimace. “I’m glad you came. I’ve been meaning to tell you something for a long time. I wanted to wait until we were face-to-face, though maybe that wasn’t wise, because in other circumstances I might not even have seen you coming.”

  Larison said nothing, and Horton went on. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. And for what I threatened to do. It wasn’t right. It isn’t who I am, or at least not who I want to be.”

  Larison maintained his silence, and again I felt that electric tension building.

  “Easy to say now,” Larison said after a long moment, the gravelly whisper sounding like the shake of a rattlesnake’s tail. “When you’re out of power. When it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  I thought, Shit, here we go . . .

  Horton nodded. “That’s fair.”

  Larison glanced at me as though reading my thoughts, then shrugged. “On the other hand, I put you in a tough spot with those torture tapes.”

  Larison had made off with a number of CIA war-on-terror torture videos—many of whose subjects the government had subsequently disappeared. He’d demanded a hundred million in exchange for the return of the tapes, and claimed to have set up a dead-man switch that would propagate video highlights to every major media outlet if anything happened to him. Horton had been brought in to solve the problem. In the end, it had turned into a very ugly standoff.

  Horton’s silence was acknowledgment of the truth of Larison’s point. So Larison didn’t really need to add anything, but he did. “I’m sorry for snatching your daughter. I hope she’s doing fine.”

  Horton said nothing for a moment. Then he nodded. “Thank you.” For the thought, or for not having harmed her, I wasn’t sure.

  I blew out a long, silent breath, glad it looked like no one was going to kill anyone else. For the moment, anyway.

  “I expect you gentlemen have come a long way,” Horton said. “I have an exceptional Glenlivet I believe I mentioned to John here. Maybe we can open it and talk.”

  chapter

  thirteen

  RAIN

  Horton handed us each a cut-glass tumbler, retrieved the whisky from a cabinet, and led us back out to the porch, where we sat on some wicker furniture in the corner. In the cool air, moist from the recent rain, I could smell the sherry as soon as Horton uncorked the bottle. He poured three healthy quantities, and we touched glasses and drank.

  I raised my glass in appreciation. “If word gets out, this could put Macallan out of business.”

  He smiled. “It should. Better than the twenty-five, and a fraction of the price.”

  Larison glanced around. “I can see why you spend a lot of time out here.”

  That was about as much small talk as I imagined Larison would ever make. And even that much was probably at least half intended to be cover for his tactical scan of the property.

  “I don’t get many visitors,” Horton said. “Once I’d done my bit for king and country and eschewed the board memberships and talking-head positions I was being offered, people realized I was no longer of particular use.”

  He said it with an amused smile, and without any noticeable bitterness. If anything, he sounded relieved.

  “If you like the quiet so much,” I said, “why did you reach out to me?”

  “That was a favor for a friend,” he said, glancing at Larison. “Someone else I wronged and wanted to make things right with.”

  “The contact?” I said.

  He shook his head. “A contact of the contact.”

  Larison, approaching whisky as he did life, drained his glass and got right to the point. “I think this might be easier if you used a few actual names.”

  Horton sighed. “I imagined it might come to this. I have to ask you, what would you do with any names I might give you?”

  “I told your contact the answer was no,” I said. “But he revealed a little more than I think he would have if he’d known I was going to walk. Is that likely to be a problem for me?”

  I was hoping the prospect of learning more about what his contact was up to might, along with the whisky, loosen Horton’s tongue.

  Horton shrugged. “I suppose that depends on what he told you.”

  “Then there’s a possibility he could be a problem for me.”

  “I doubt he would have told you that much.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me who he is, so I can decide for myself?”

  A minute went by after that, no one saying anything, Horton and I sipping our whiskies, Larison scanning the grounds, each of
us waiting for the silence to affect someone else first.

  Finally, Horton cracked. “My contact isn’t a man you want to cross,” he said. “My reticence is more about protecting you than protecting him.”

  “He told me something similar,” I said. “And I told him I’d rather have the information so I can make up my own mind.”

  Horton nodded. “I understand. But as I said, there’s another player in the mix. And regardless, I don’t want another stupid war that could hurt people I care about. I’ve been through that once before, remember. I don’t care to repeat the experience.”

  “You started this when you reached out to me,” Larison said. “Now you want to just unring that bell? I don’t think so.”

  Horton shook his head. “I should have known. No good deed goes unpunished.”

  “Can we just cut the shit?” Larison said. “Let’s stop pretending this is about protecting someone else. It’s about protecting you.”

  Horton looked at Larison, a bit of irritation creeping into his expression. “The one doesn’t preclude the other, Daniel. The point is, in my considered opinion, the information you want is only likely to create danger where most likely none currently exists. John, you declined my contact’s offer. As far as I’m concerned, then, there’s nothing more to discuss. I won’t tell you his name, and I won’t tell him you want to know it. And we can all get back to—”

  He frowned, pulled a smartphone from his front pocket, and looked at the screen. He glanced at Larison, then at me. “If you gentlemen didn’t come here alone, now would be the time to tell me.”

  Larison did another quick scan of the property, his hand instantly inside the shoulder bag. I looked at Horton. “What is it?”

  “Someone just turned into the driveway. We’ll hear them in a few seconds. By then it’ll be too late. We’ll be flanked by the other two approaching through the woods. I’d recommend you both follow my lead.”

  He stood and strode toward the front door. Larison pulled the machine pistol and started to raise it in Horton’s direction. I put a restraining hand over his and said, “No.”

  “How do we even know—”

  “We don’t,” I said. “But we’ll find out.”

  We followed Horton into the house, Larison shutting the door behind us. Horton opened an interior door under a stairwell, something that looked as though it would lead to a cellar. He started down without a backward glance.

  Larison looked down the stairs, then back to the front door. “I do not fucking like this. You gave him twenty minutes to get ready. That’s like a week for a guy like Hort. We don’t know what—or who—is down there.”

  I hated to admit it, but he had a point. “You’re right,” I said. “One of us should go down. The other should stay. My call on warning him, so you choose.”

  “You go. You trust him, I don’t. Shout if there’s a problem. I’ll do what I can.”

  I glanced at the Glock. “You can start by keeping that thing on semi-auto if you have to come to my rescue, thanks.”

  He gave me the shark’s smile. “Go. I told you, I’ve got you covered.”

  I headed down a long riser of carpeted stairs that led to a bare unfinished basement—concrete floor, unpainted sheetrock walls, and one enormous, built-in gun safe, the combination for which Horton was already dialing. He threw the wheel and glanced back at me. “Where’s Daniel?”

  “He stayed upstairs.”

  “He thinks I’m trying to set you up? Or wants to play cowboy?”

  “You know Larison. Probably a bit of both.”

  He pulled open the door to the safe. Inside was a walk-in space about a hundred feet square and containing an arsenal that would do a small nation-state proud. Pistols. Shotguns. Submachine guns. A Barrett M107CQ—a fearsome .50-caliber rifle that could stop almost anything short of a tank. Stacks of ammunition, the individual shelves labeled by caliber and load, with designations like tracer, armor-piercing, and incendiary. Night-vision equipment. Body armor. A steel trapdoor, which I assumed led to some sort of safe room below. And a wall of flat-panel monitors receiving a high-definition video feed from all around the property and surrounding woods. On one of the monitors, I saw a black Suburban coming up the driveway, the crunch of its tires playing through a speaker built into the wall. On another, two men moving stealthily through the woods in camouflaged full-body armor and carrying what looked like suppressed HK MP7A2 submachine guns. On a third, Larison sprinting across the front lawn and into the woods.

  “What’s he doing?” I said.

  Horton looked at the monitors as he pulled a body-armor vest from the wall and handed it to me. “Knowing Daniel, I’d say taking the fight to the enemy.”

  Larison made it to the woods. A different monitor picked him up and zoomed in tight. Whatever security system Horton had, it obviously involved motion detection and some form of AI.

  “Doesn’t he get it?” I said. “Whoever they are—and if we come through this, you’re damn well going to tell me—they knew we were here. Whether it’s satellite, or drone, or low-flying aircraft, they had eyes on you, and we walked right into it. And if they’re still watching, they’re relaying intel on our movements to the team on the ground. Yeah—there, look.”

  The Suburban stopped, still in the driveway, about fifty yards from the house. The two in the woods broke left and began moving clockwise, around the house and toward Larison’s position.

  “You could call him,” Horton said. “But I doubt he’ll answer. When Daniel gets focused on killing, he doesn’t care to be bothered.”

  “He’s carrying a satellite phone, but it’s powered off. What about all your cameras? Do they have speakers?”

  “Microphones, not speakers. We can hear what’s out there, but they can’t hear us.”

  I pulled on the vest and affixed the Velcro straps. It was heavy, with integral plates, shoulder pads, and throat protection. “He thinks they can’t see him now because he’s in the woods,” I said. “But if they’ve got a drone or low-flying aircraft, they could have infrared. They’ll map his heat signature and direct those two guys right to him.”

  Horton pulled on his own vest and began adjusting it. “I imagine he’s counting on that.”

  Larison stopped for a moment, his head tilted up like that of an animal sniffing the wind for some trace of its prey. He looked left, then right. Then he started moving again, deeper into the woods. I could hear wet leaves squashing softly under his shoes.

  “You need to remember,” Horton said, taking an M4 from the wall and slinging it over his neck, “I know this man. I trained him. He moves like a cat, hears like a dog, and hides like a rabbit. And strikes like a damn rattlesnake. They’re not going to see him until they’ve practically stepped on him.”

  Larison reached a long rotting log. He stared at it for a moment, glanced around, then looked at the log again. He dropped to his knees and wiped his hands back and forth along the wet ground, then smeared mud onto his face and neck, creating some camouflage. He scored his fingers along the leaves at the base of the log, disturbing their natural pattern. Then he moved off a short distance to a depression in the ground that looked like a channel cut by the rain, thick with fallen leaves and branches. He dropped to his belly and began burrowing in. Within seconds, the camera had lost him.

  The two men crept closer, heading right toward his position.

  “You were right about the thermal,” Horton said, loading spare magazines into pouches on the armor. “They know where he is. Or almost know. Just like he was hoping.”

  The two men crept closer, moving slowly and carefully. But they were in the woods. And no matter how much you try to ninja your way in the woods, dead leaves, even wet ones, are a bitch.

  “From where he’s dug in, he might not even be able to see them,” Horton said. “But I guarantee you, he can hear them. That’s one more sense in play than they’ve got.”

  The two men stopped, the HKs at the ready, their torsos swiveling.
I could imagine their thinking: Where the hell is he? The spotter said he’s right here. Is the intel wrong? Did we overshoot?

  Then they saw the disturbed leaves under the rotting branch. One of them pointed. The other nodded. They brought up the HKs and angled their heads, aiming through their sights—

  There was a loud burst of machine-pistol fire. The men cried out and jerked and twitched as rounds ripped into their thighs, below the protection of the armor. They went down, one of them getting off a long suppressed burst from the HK en route. It looked to me like the shots went wide of Larison’s position, but I wasn’t sure.

  On the ground now, the men rolled to their backs and started to bring up their weapons. There were two more loud bursts from Larison’s Glock. The men screamed and rolled in opposite directions. From their backs again, they tried to sight on Larison. But the barrels were weaving and shaking. I looked and saw why—the last two bursts had shredded their hands. One of the men lost his weapon and groped for it on the ground next to him. The other switched to a left-handed grip and pointed toward where Larison’s fire had been coming from. There was another burst from the Glock. The man screamed and the HK spun to the ground. Larison sprang from his hide in a shower of leaves, a grim smile visible on his mud-smeared face. The man tried to pick up his gun with his bleeding hands, but in the time he struggled to do so Larison had reached his position. Without a word or an instant’s hesitation, he sighted down the barrel of the Glock and put two rounds into the man’s throat just above the ballistic neck protection. The other man rolled away. Instantly Larison pivoted and put two rounds into the back of his neck, precision shots again taking advantage of gaps in the armor.

  Larison dropped into a half squat and scanned. Apparently satisfied, he ejected the Glock’s magazine, popped in a fresh one, and slipped the gun back in his shoulder bag. Then he picked up one of the HKs, checked the load, and started moving toward the driveway, where the Suburban was still parked.

  “Damn it, that thing’s probably armored,” I said. “Give me the Barrett!”

  Horton hefted the Barrett and started to hand it to me, but then paused, looking at the monitor. “It’s a safe bet if they were wearing armor, they’re using armor-piercing rounds,” he said. “And Daniel just checked, I imagine to confirm that very thing. Besides, it’s too late. By the time we get there, it’ll already be over.”