The Zoo Job

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Sterling sat back down on the couch, folding his hands on his lap. “There are three choices available to you, Spencer. One, you stand very, very still until we’re finished. Two, you move, three thirty-caliber rifle rounds rip through your chest, and I deliver your bloody corpse to the Butcher of Kiev as an early Christmas present and collect that price on your head. Three, you agree not to harm me in any manner—beyond, of course, your caustic wit, limited though it may be—and I call off the dogs and the three of us have a nice chat. Or six of us, assuming the rest of your little gang is listening in.”

  Eliot heard Nate’s voice in his ear. “Eliot, it’s your call, but right now option three’s our best bet. His smugglers are probably our smugglers, and you’re gonna be tripping over him either way.”

  Nate’s deference to Eliot’s own judgment was something of a compliment—he was usually enough of a control freak to want to maneuver all the chess pieces for himself, even from thousands of miles away—but it was also the right thing to do.

  “Fine.”

  The damned smirk again. “I appreciate the brevity of your answer, but you’re going to have to be a great deal more specific than that.”

  “I’ll take door number three.”

  “Smart choice.” Sterling reached up with one hand and snapped his fingers.

  The three red dots disappeared.

  Eliot then folded his arms, but didn’t move from where he was standing. Sophie worked better in comfort. Eliot worked better when he stood between their enemy and the room’s best exit.

  And no doubt about it, Sterling was the enemy. Eliot had disliked him from jump, back when they went to help out Aimee and her father after the stable fire, and Sterling had mostly gotten in their way. The former insurance investigator had done nothing since to make Eliot any happier to be in his presence—not when he forced them to blow up their headquarters in Los Angeles, not when he tried to take control of the team after Nate and Maggie were kidnapped in Kiev, not when he went after the team in Boston, and especially not when he poisoned Eliot’s coffee in Dubai and locked him in an electrical closet, an action for which Eliot fully intended to make Sterling pay sooner rather than later.

  Of course, Sterling knew that, which was why he had three snipers backing him up tonight.

  “There’s a smuggling ring,” Sterling said, once he realized that Eliot wasn’t going to sit down, “running through Malani, which I’ve been trying to bring down for several months now. I actually have your team to thank for that.”

  “How’s that, exactly?” Sophie asked.

  “The infrastructure for this particular operation was already set up by Damien Moreau. General Polonia took it over once your lot brought Moreau down, but he doesn’t have anything like Moreau’s skills at keeping things from getting messy. I’ve managed to shut down all the smugglers’ pipelines through Africa, but none of the people I’ve arrested have been willing to flip on their compatriots within the general’s government.”

  Eliot nodded. Things were starting to make a bit of sense. “That’s why they’re using the clinic now.”

  Sterling smirked, of course. “Yes. All the pipelines they inherited from Moreau are compromised, so they had to create a new one. After setting up a deal for some black rhinos that would have the international animal rights community, the World Health Organization, and Interpol dropping on the clinic like a bag of bricks, they have one over our dear Reverend Maimona.”

  “You’re Interpol, Sterling,” Sophie said quietly. “Why haven’t you done your impersonation of that bag of bricks?”

  “I may be a bastard, but I’m not a total bastard. I bring down the clinic, Malani’s already-appalling number of dead children increases tenfold. No, I need to find another way, and then the pair of you fall into my lap.”

  “What are you proposing?” Sophie was, Eliot noted, using her most neutral voice. She knew better than to try any grifter’s tricks on Sterling, who’d seen it all before, and twice since Tuesday, but she wasn’t going to give him anything either.

  “Simple. I need proof that contraband’s being run through the clinic. I have no idea what you need, but I’m sure that you’d be willing to help me do this. You’ve obviously targeted the clinic for whatever particular game you’re running. I’ll help you with it if you’ll help me in closing this case.”

  “What makes you think we even need your help?” Eliot asked.

  That brought the smirk back. “All right, cards on the table—you’re after what happened to the black rhinos.”

  Neither Sophie nor Eliot responded in any way to this.

  “Of course, you won’t confirm or deny it, which means I’m probably right, since if I was wrong, you’d be gloating about it. But I’m not wrong—I know that the black rhinos were supposed to go to the Brillinger Zoo in Massachusetts, I know they didn’t make it, I know that the zoo’s in financial trouble, I know they haven’t made a claim with Nate’s and my esteemed former employers, and I know that the general manager of the zoo day-tripped into Boston via commuter rail and the T, getting off at the stop closest to McRory’s. So let’s dispense with the nonsense and get down to it.” Sterling leaned forward. “You help me, and I’ll provide proof that the Reverend Maimona acted in good faith with the Brillinger Zoo. Nothing that’ll exactly stand up in court, but I’m sure enough to satisfy you that the reverend was a dupe.”

  Sophie raised an eyebrow. “If that’s true, we don’t need proof, and we can just leave.”

  “Well, hardly.” Sterling leaned back and rested an arm on the back of the couch.

  Eliot shook his head. “We try to leave, you’ll stop us.”

  “Oh, much more than that. I don’t particularly want to ruin the clinic, but I’ll do it if I have to. And I’ll make sure that the reverend assumes that the two criminals pretending to be John Smith and Bernadine Onslow are the ones responsible.”

  “Fine,” Sophie said, folding her arms in her lap, “as long as we understand each other.” She looked at Eliot.

  With a sigh, Eliot said, “They’re running weapons. Did a test this afternoon with the pieces of a Russian-built RPG being smuggled in with some insulin, which was ‘confiscated’ by Polonia’s troops. I confiscated it right back.”

  Sterling nodded. “That fits. They’ve been supplying weapons to militia groups in the States, insurgents in the Middle East and Asia . . .” Then he shook his head. “Unfortunately, Spencer here ‘confiscating’ one weapon hidden in a medical shipment isn’t anything I can actually use.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly trying to close a case. That’s your job.”

  Standing up, Sophie said, “Sterling, I’ll offer you a deal. Let Eliot and me run this. We’ll provide you with the proof you need to make arrests and shut down the ring for good.”

  “And how do I know you’ll do that?” Sterling asked.

  “You’re blackmailing us.” Sophie spoke as if she was admonishing a not-too-bright four-year-old.

  Yet another smirk. “Yes, I am, aren’t I? All right. We’ll do it your way, for now—but if I don’t have results in two days, we do it my way.”

  With that, Sterling got up and left the hotel room.

  As Eliot quickly moved to the window, Sophie said, “Nate, what do you think?”

  Looking out the window, Eliot saw two snipers on the roof across the way, and another on the roof next to that one, all packing up their rifles. A second later, they were gone. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that Sterling had hired pros. He always had in the past, from Quinn and Geary to, well, Nate’s team.

  In response to Sophie’s question, Nate said, “I think that Sterling’s desperate. He only came to us last time because his daughter was involved, and he couldn’t get her back through Interpol, so he needed us.”

  “This time,” Sophie said, “he�
�s likely tried everything he can do as an Interpol agent, and it hasn’t worked.”

  “My guess is he’s getting pressure from his bosses to put this case down or move on to the next thing.” Through the earbuds, Eliot heard Nate let out a breath. “Sterling’s always been willing to play the long game, so if he’s given you a deadline, it means he has one also.”

  Sophie gave a determined nod. “Then it will need to be something we can accomplish in two days. And I have just the right woman for the job.”

  After she explained the outline of the grift she had in mind, Nate signed off. Only after Nate was offline did she let out a long breath, a rare show of emotion that had Eliot instantly worried.

  Just as she usually did, Sophie picked up on Eliot picking up on her sigh, and she smiled. “Oh, don’t worry, Eliot. I’m not an emotional wreck or anything ridiculous like that.”

  Eliot wasn’t entirely convinced. “So why the sigh?”

  “Sterling.”

  Sophie put a lot of feeling into those two syllables, and Eliot could totally get behind it. “Yeah, I owe him big-time for what happened in Dubai.”

  “He was rescuing his—”

  “I know he was rescuing his daughter!” Eliot started pacing across the hotel room carpet. “That don’t excuse what he did!”

  “True. And that’s exactly what worries me.” She hugged herself, as if she were cold. “Whenever I stole a bit of art that IYS had insured, I was always much happier when Nate was the one chasing me instead of Sterling.”

  “Well, yeah.” Eliot shot her a very Sterling-like smirk. “You didn’t have the hots for Sterling.”

  “It wasn’t because of that!”

  Eliot just stared at her.

  “Entirely,” she added weakly. “When Nate goes after you, he still thinks of you as a person. With Sterling, it was all about the goal of retrieving the art. Nothing else mattered, nothing else got in his way.”

  “Don’t worry,” Eliot said. “I ain’t lettin’ my guard down with him for a second.”

  “I know you won’t.” Sophie shook her head. “I just hope it’s enough.”

  While he would never admit this out loud, Eliot hoped it was enough, too. Every time they’d encountered Sterling, at best, he got exactly what he wanted. At worst, he improved his position, often at the expense of the team. Eliot would be more than happy for Sterling to arrest Mbenga, of course, but that was more because he wanted to see Mbenga finally be put away than out of any desire to see Sterling pad his arrest record.

  Eliot was bound and determined not to let Sterling get anything beyond that immediate goal of destroying Mbenga this time.

  TWELVE

  NOW

  The mistake that Jack Randall had made was trusting his brother-in-law.

  “I wouldn’t have married him if I didn’t think he was trustworthy,” his sister had said.

  “He’s a good guy, he knows his ass from his elbow,” his father had said. Dad had a tendency to judge people solely on their perceived ability to differentiate those two body parts.

  So when Bobby, the brother-in-law in question, came to him with an investment opportunity that was “guaranteed,” Jack heeded the advice of his sister and father and went along with it. After all, Bobby was trustworthy and he knew his ass from his elbow. What could possibly go wrong?

  Thirty thousand dollars later, Jack was screwed. Bobby had gotten the whole family to go in on the deal—then it all fell apart, and he got his ass and his elbow the hell outta Dodge. His sister had hired a private investigator, but had had no luck in finding her soon-to-be-ex-husband. Everyone in the family got completely hosed.

  Especially Jack, who was still too young to qualify for Social Security, but too old to have much in the way of job prospects.

  But he was still a beefy guy. Blowing out his knee in college all those years ago had ruined his football career, but he’d worked as a bouncer, security guard, and even done a stint as muscle for the Irish mob in Boston (though he generally didn’t include that on his résumé). Figuring he’d find security work at a museum or an office building, instead he lucked into a rich guy in Vermont named McAllister who had his own private wildlife preserve.

  It was easy work, mostly involving keeping an eye on security feeds from around the estate, making sure none of the wild animals got loose from their fancy electronic fences, and keeping an eye on the perimeter e-fence and making sure it didn’t break down, allowing the animals to roam free. McAllister had a veritable Wizard of Oz of animals—he actually had lions and tigers and bears—that mostly wandered around their designated area, ate, slept, and drank.

  Which meant Jack could get lots of reading done. Currently, he was going through the entire Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout. He’d just finished Murder by the Book and was in the process of downloading Triple Jeopardy to his e-reader when the alarm went off.

  Frowning, he leaned forward in the comfortable chair that McAllister had provided in the sunroom of his mansion, which served as security HQ for the estate. He looked over the massive screen that showed all the security feeds, but the animals were, as usual, doing the exact same things they were doing yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.

  Then he realized that the alarm was for the perimeter fence. Both eleven and seventeen were down.

  Jack sighed, really hoping this wasn’t another damn raccoon.

  When he first got the job, he asked why McAllister didn’t have two people working at the same time. The boss’s answer was, “You’re here to keep an eye on the animals, not ask stupid questions.”

  But it wasn’t a stupid question, and this demonstrated why. Two nodes down meant a hole in the fence, which he’d need to go out and check himself. Better to have two people, so one could keep an eye on the rest of the estate while the other did triage on the perimeter.

  Not to mention the fact that he was half convinced that one of the animals was going to burst free when he was taking a leak.

  He went out through the sunroom’s door to where McAllister kept four electrically powered golf carts. After hopping into one, he started it up and took it through the estate.

  Jack was actually somewhat grateful for the break in routine. He spent all day in the sunroom, mostly following along as Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, and the gang solved the latest murder in New York City, so it was nice to get the opportunity to drive one of the golf carts over the hilly grasslands and trees. The carts had built-in, specially modified GPS devices that indicated where the electric fences were so that Jack could avoid them as he rambled through the estate.

  It freaked him out a little driving this close to a tiger or an emu, and feeling like it could charge and attack at any time. Intellectually, he knew the animals couldn’t do this—they’d be hit with a nasty electric shock to the collar they all wore if they tried—but it still felt like they could.

  Right after he passed the tiger, he suddenly realized that he had no recollection of whether or not he’d closed the door behind him when he left the sunroom.

  At one point, something made a noise in one of the oak trees, and Jack instinctively hunched over, reaching for his Taser, and cried out, “Jesus H!”

  Jack was an excellent shot, but he hated carrying because the mere presence of a firearm tended to escalate matters. A Taser, though, was a damn handy thing to have when you were facing an animal intent on chowing down on your throat . . .

  However, looking up, he just saw one of the capuchin monkeys leaping down out of the tree, then back up.

  Finally, he arrived at node seventeen of the perimeter fence.

  Or, rather, what was left of it. Just like that time right after he started the job, it looked like a raccoon or a fox or a ferret or some damn thing had gotten zapped by the fence and taken out its annoyance on the node. That was when McAllister reali
zed that he needed a few extra nodes for redundancy.

  This, unfortunately, didn’t help when two of the nodes were taken out. Jack tossed the remains of number seventeen into the back of the golf cart and then drove it down the fence line to number eleven.

  Jack shook his head. Sure enough, it was another nest: six eggs being watched over by the world’s most agitated eastern bluebird. This was the third time this had happened. Jack had no idea why starlings thought proximity to an electrical field was a good place to put a nest, but there it was. Maybe it kept the eggs warm.

  At least number eleven had just been knocked off-kilter, so once he set it back in place, it clicked back on, and all was right with the world. Seventeen was dead, but eleven and twelve would take up the slack until they could get another replacement.

  Jack climbed back into the golf cart and drove it back to the house, maneuvering around the animals. After he parked by the sunroom, he went into the house, relieved to see that he had, in fact, closed the door. Once he was inside, he checked all the security footage from the past twenty minutes to be sure that nobody had snuck into the temporary hole in the perimeter. Nobody had, and the animals were just putzing around like usual. Then he called up a window on the computer so he could write a memo to McAllister about the latest animal attack on his security.

  AN HOUR AND A HALF AGO

  Parker had thought that moving the bird’s nest would be the easy part.

  The first thing she did before heading to the hiking trail was to find a thrift shop in Weston where she could get a change of clothes. She had started to steal the clothes when Hardison gently said, “Uh, Parker?”

  “What?”

  “That’s a thrift shop in a small town in Vermont that’s barely makin’ it as it is. Remember, we only steal from people—”

  “—who deserve it, right, right.” Parker shook her head. Old habits died hard.

  Then a thought occurred to her while she was flipping through one of the thrift store’s racks in search of a medium black T-shirt. “Hardison, did you hack into McAllister’s security system?”