The Killer Collective

by Barry Eisler

And there it was, world-famous All City Coffee, occupying most of the first-floor corner of an old two-story brick building, a used record store to one side and some kind of glassblowing place to the other.

  He walked in, the door swinging shut behind him, and the second he smelled the coffee he realized how much he needed a cup. He’d flown first class and had slept on the way, but he was feeling the time-zone change now.

  He strolled up to the counter. A twentysomething tatted-up barista sporting a high-and-tight up top and a Grizzly Adams beard below said, “What can I get you?”

  Dox gave him an appreciative nod. “Coffee, black, and plenty of it.”

  “Large, then?”

  “I’d take it in a tureen, if you had one. Barring that, though, yes, a large.”

  The guy laughed. “Coming up.”

  While the guy went about preparing the coffee, Dox turned to scan the shop. There were a dozen people inside, most of them sitting alone, and it took him a minute to spot the delivery woman because man, she wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. He’d pictured a white lady, or maybe Asian, midthirties, fit, maybe someone he could make as former military or intelligence. But there in her headband, peering at a Seattle Times open on the table in front of her through the reading glasses perched on her nose, was a nicely rounded black woman who looked old enough to have a couple of grandkids, and an expression so sweet and gentle he wondered if maybe she did.

  He paid for his coffee and sat at the adjacent table so that his back was to hers. He took a sip—Ooh, yes, thank you, Jesus—then stretched and looked around as though taking in his surroundings.

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” he said quietly, leaning over. “I apologize for interrupting your morning paper, but can you tell me, is this place the only one, or is it a chain?”

  The woman turned and looked at him over the reading glasses. “It’s the one and only, sugar,” she said with a sunny smile. “You enjoying that coffee?”

  Good to go. “Yes ma’am, I am.”

  She turned to face him more fully, at the same time easing a canvas shopping bag from her lap to the floor alongside his chair. If he hadn’t been ready for it, the move would have gone right by him. Damn, but this lady was smooth.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. She raised the paper cup she was holding. “I prefer a latte myself—coffee’s gotten hard on my stomach, but milk keeps it tolerable. People so often forget to appreciate the little things, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes ma’am, in my experience that is a common affliction, though no less unfortunate for being widespread.”

  “Well, I can see you’re not like that. And I’ll tell you, it makes me glad.” She turned, folded her paper, slipped it into a canvas bag identical to the one now on the floor next to his chair, then sent the reading glasses in after it. She stood, picked up her latte, and lifted it to him as though in toast. “It’s been a pleasure talking to you, young man. And much as I’d like to linger, I have to pick up my grandkids.”

  “I’ll bet you do. And if you don’t mind my saying, I think they’re lucky to have you.”

  She smiled. “I like to think so, too. But that’s sweet. You be careful out there, all right?”

  “You’ve certainly made that easier, ma’am, and I’m grateful.”

  She left the café and turned onto the sidewalk, moving past the windows with slow, arthritic care.

  Damn, he thought. I hope I’m that good when I’m her age.

  Of course, it was one thing to handle a package, and another to put a round in a dime-sized target from five hundred yards in low light and other adverse conditions. One was a slightly more difficult and perishable skill than the other.

  Well, he’d faced his mortality before. He’d probably have occasion again. But not today. Today was someone else’s turn. Whoever was after Labee.

  He’d debriefed Labee extensively about her place, at the end of the call from the airport, and imagining things from the standpoint of the opposition, he envisioned three primary possibilities. One was to position someone, or a couple of someones, near the entrance to the building. But she’d told him that other than her loft—which the owner leased to her cheap just to have a cop living over the store—the place was industrial. An auto-wrecking operation, a metal-recycling plant, and a machine shop, all of which produced a lot of daytime activity around the building’s perimeter. Plus there was extensive antitheft video surveillance, especially around the entrance, all of it advertised with signs. So not an easy or desirable place for a gunman to wait. The second was to position someone inside her loft itself, which was on the third story, in a space otherwise devoted to storage. But Labee had assured him no way on that, her countermeasures were formidable. Meaning most likely possibility number three, which was a sniper.

  Dox had spent a little time with some online mapping applications in the cab on the way to All City, and if he had been the sniper in question, he would have liked what he saw. The entrance to Labee’s building was right on the east bank of a river called the Duwamish. The opposite side was industrial—barges, container storage, and junkyards, much of it looking overgrown and even disused. Somewhere in all that metal and fencing and weeds, there was going to be an elevated, concealed position with line of sight to the entrance to Labee’s building. If OGE had a sniper on the payroll—and since they attacked Horton’s house with a damn helicopter gunship, why wouldn’t they—that’s where he’d be.

  He shouldered his pack and hit the restroom to confirm the bag contained what he expected—yes indeed, Combat Tactical Supergrade, loaded, three extra mags, also loaded, bellyband holster. Good to go. He secured the holster and slid the gun into it, pulled the fleece over it, then checked himself in the mirror, liking the low profile. The spare mags he distributed among his cargo-pants pockets. He headed out, discarding the bag in a trash can a few blocks from All City, and continued on foot, knowing from his online exploration that it was about two miles to his destination.

  He crossed the river at the First Avenue South Bridge, which itself would have offered solid access to Labee’s building, but was otherwise unsuitable because of its lack of concealment combined with a fair amount of car traffic. Someone sufficiently skilled and patient—someone like Dox—might have found a way to set up in the steel latticework that undergirded the bridge itself. But since according to the signs the damn thing was a drawbridge, there would be a significant suck factor involved in having your devilishly clever sniper hide suddenly hoisted into the air and rotated ninety degrees above the river a hundred feet below. So no go on the bridge. The better bet would be directly across the river, somewhere along the western bank, in a part of town called South Park. Closer shot, fewer obstructions. And fewer moving parts, literally and figuratively.

  He walked, his breath fogging in the cool, moist air, over the bridge now, heading down a cracked and overgrown sidewalk, past a chain-link enclosure jammed up with steel barrels. There was a good amount of car traffic, but no pedestrians to speak of, just a few street people. The foliage under the bridge behind him was dotted with tarps and tents—homeless encampments. On another occasion, he would have helped out with a few bucks, but there was a time for humanitarianism, and a time for business.

  He passed some workmen at a building site, then came to a traffic light and saw the street he was looking for—South Holden. He made a left onto it and then another left, onto Second Avenue South. He passed the remnants of a solitary homeless encampment—a tattered mattress, a torn tarp, ashes from a cook fire—but whoever had been there was nowhere to be seen now.

  The road transitioned from paved to gravel. Twenty yards ahead, on the right side of the street, he saw shipping containers, stacked two, three, and four high. If any were open, they’d be damn near perfect concealment. This was it. This was the spot.

  He felt a little adrenaline surge and realized that what had begun as a Let’s rule this out exercise had morphed into something much more concrete. He wasn’t evaluating t
he possibilities from his own perspective any longer, but rather from his quarry’s, a man he was suddenly certain had recently walked this exact path, tactically evaluating it the same way he was. And who even now was positioned somewhere not fifty yards from here, proned out and watching the entrance of Labee’s building through a high-quality scope, his heart rate probably no higher than sixty beats a minute, a man who would precisely and dispassionately and almost certainly without ever even knowing why put a bullet through her brain before calmly walking away and never being found.

  This time, the adrenaline wasn’t a little surge. It was a full-on dump. He paused for a moment, looking out over the gray-green water. There it was, visible through a clump of stunted trees—Labee’s building. He couldn’t see the entrance from here, only the roof and the third story. But from on top of those containers, you would see everything.

  He breathed slowly and steadily. After a moment, he felt calm again. He continued walking, glancing at the containers as he went by. He didn’t see anything, but he would have been surprised if he had—the containers were closed on the side facing the road. If any were open, it would be on the side facing the river, with the view of Labee’s building. In or on or between them, that’s where you’d want to be.

  He kept moving, trying to decide on the best approach to the containers. And then he saw another possibility. Up ahead, inside a dirt lot behind a chain-link fence, was a collection of fat metal pipes, each about fifteen feet long, maybe three feet wide, and stacked four high and four across. They were rusted red, and the dirt around them was carved into what looked like a dry moat—a depression created by rain runoff. Whatever these pipes had been intended for, they’d never been used for it, and it looked like someone had decided it would be more expensive to move them than to just let them sit. And with one end backed up against a stand of trees and thick weeds, and the other end open to the river . . .

  Where would you set up—the containers, or the pipes?

  As he got closer to the lot, he decided the pipes would offer at least as good line of sight and substantially better privacy. They were surrounded by broken-down machinery—some kind of collapsed conveyor belt, the remains of a tractor, a pile of engine debris. Someone had hung a No Trespassing sign from the fence, but the sign itself was rusted and dangling crookedly from a single screw. And though the gates were chained shut, and the fence topped with barbed wire, here and there were holes big enough for a man to squeeze through. Overall, it looked like about as much of a no-one-gives-a-shit kind of place as you could reasonably ask for. Squirm through one of the fence holes with a sleeping bag and some provisions, and a man could wait in one of those pipes for days if he had to, the muzzle of his rifle well back from the opening, practically invisible from any passerby who might glance his way.

  He could have continued along the road as it hooked left until he was behind the lot. But that would have meant walking directly in front of the pipes, which would have A, alerted anyone inside one of them to a potential problem, and B, entailed strolling directly across said person’s line of fire, neither one of which was a particularly attractive possibility.

  So instead, he backtracked until he came to the parking lot of a place called Bob’s Automotive Repair. He followed the driveway to a parking lot around back, which he thought would likely lead to another lot, and then another. He might have to hop a few fences, but if all went well, in a matter of minutes he expected he’d be coming up from behind those pipes.

  But the if all went well part didn’t last long. Just as he reached the fence at the northern edge of the lot, he heard someone call out from inside the garage, “Can I help you?” Which in Dox’s not-inconsiderable experience in such matters was the polite way of saying, “What the fuck are you up to?”

  He looked over and saw a bald guy holding a steel ratchet and wearing dark coveralls with a patch declaring an eponymous Bob heading his way from the garage.

  Dox stopped and gave a little wave. “Apologies if I startled you,” he called out in a Yankee accent. “I’m embarrassed to say, my father’s AWOL from the senior-care facility again, and the last three times, we found him sleeping rough around here. You haven’t seen him, have you? Big guy, bigger than me, but older, obviously. Got a patchy white beard and answers to Bill, though pretty much everything else he’s forgotten.”

  “No,” Bob said. “I haven’t seen anyone like that. Have you called the cops?”

  “Yeah, I call them every time. And never hear back. Reckon they’ve got bigger fish to fry than an escaped nursing-home resident. So I’ve gotten in the habit of just reeling him in myself. Got a change of clothes for him in the pack, some clean dignity pants just in case. I’ll tell you, it’s hard watching your parents get old.”

  Bob looked around. “Why does he come here? He used to work around here or something?”

  For a second, Dox wondered whether the guy was legit. But the coveralls, the grease stains on his hands, and just the overall vibe made him confident the thought was needlessly paranoid. Still, was the guy trying to trip him up by getting him to commit to specifics? Probably not, but no sense taking a chance, either. “No, it seems he and my mother began their courtship, such as it was, by hooking up in these parts unbeknownst to their parents. Sometimes he forgets she’s long gone, and I guess in his mind he’s back in better times. In some ways, I’m glad for him, because they had a happy marriage. But on the other hand, I can’t just let him wander around outdoors and freeze to death. Anyway, I’m sorry again if I startled you. I’m just going to head on through these lots and see if he turns up.”

  He turned and hopped the fence before the guy could respond. He felt he’d been convincing, but on the other hand the guy had been suspicious enough to challenge him, meaning he might also be the type to feel it was his civic duty to inform the police of something mildly untoward.

  He hustled across the next two lots and jumped the next two fences without further problems, then began moving in stealthily, keeping his trajectory perpendicular to the pipes, away from the openings. He wanted to go faster, but was mindful of the possibility of trip wires and of the problems that could ensue if one of his boots snapped a branch or crushed a stray leaf. He reached the middle of the pipes and carefully moved along, away from the water, until he was just short of the tree-side openings.

  Which one? You’d want to be up high, of course. Over to the right, because the angle is slightly better. But not all the way to the right, because being on the end would feel less random and less secure.

  And then he smelled something. Blood. He looked down and saw a depression in the weeds at the tree-side pipe openings. The ground underneath was wet and stained dark.

  All at once, he knew what had happened to the mysterious inhabitant of the empty homeless encampment. Poor bastard must have seen someone sneaking in here, probably late at night. Come over to investigate. Or maybe he thought it was another homeless person and was looking to share resources, or just for some simple human company. And got his throat slit for his troubles.

  For some reason, even beyond how he was feeling about protecting Labee, seeing what had happened to some poor homeless guy made him mad. By instinct and experience, he pushed it away. He could indulge all the feelings in the world later, and in fact he knew he would. But he had a task at hand, and the right approach was to focus on the mechanics of what was needed to get that task done.

  He carefully set down the pack. Drew the Wilson. Inhaled deeply and blew out. Showtime.

  He ducked his head around for a quick peek inside the nearest ground-level pipe. Clear.

  Then again for the nearest second-level pipe. Clear.

  The one above that was too high to see into from the ground. He’d have to climb.

  He moved carefully left until he was in front of the ground-level pipe he’d just checked. Squatted and peeked into the one to the left of it. He knew from the smell even before he saw the shape—the body of the homeless guy, his head tilted back an
d his throat wide open. The sniper must have dragged him in by the ankles from the other end.

  Dox didn’t think about it. He just popped his head up for a peek into the opening of the pipe above the one with the dead guy. Clear.

  He planted a boot carefully on top of the pipe with the dead guy, tested the footing, and slowly pushed up, his free hand on top of the second-level pipe so as not to give himself away to anyone who might be lurking in the one above it. Keeping the Wilson alongside his head, he raised his head until his eyes were just over the bottom edge of the third-level pipe, and bingo, there he was—a sniper, dressed all in black but silhouetted perfectly against the opposite opening. Classic prone position, feet turned out, a rifle on a bipod pointed forward, and the man obviously relaxed and intent behind the scope. Dox watched him for a moment, surprised and wanting a moment to examine why. He’d been expecting the guy to be in a pipe one level higher, that was it, but as much as he’d been trying to get in the guy’s head, it’s not like he was psychic, and you had to allow for variations.

  But why not the top one? The angle would be better, and—

  He heard it. Or heard wasn’t quite the right way of putting it, it was subtler than that, his unconscious applying a template built from long experience to something otherwise imperceptible from up and to his left. What it was he wouldn’t ever be able to say, because in fact it was less a sound than just . . . something out of place. Something stealthy. And unnatural. And malevolent.

  He understood everything then, not in words, but the instantaneous language of survival—

  shooter one level from the top, spotter on the top level and to the left of the shooter to engage any problems from an elevated position while forcing a right-handed intruder to shoot across his own body, rotating team, one man behind the rifle to engage the target, the other focused on rear security, switching off periodically to prevent fatigue, and if you’d approached the pipes from one of the open ends instead of from the side you’d be dead now