by Brent Towns
“Where is he?” the big man asked.
“I – I don’t know?”
“You warned him, didn’t you?”
With a furious shake of his head, Chester said, “No, no.”
The big man took out his gun and then reached into his pocket. His hand came out with a cylindrical tube which he screwed to the end of the weapon.
“Did you warn him?”
“No, no.”
“Put your hand on the counter.”
Chester never moved.
The big man nodded to his friend who walked around the end of the counter and drew his own gun. He placed it against the side of Chester’s head and with his left hand, grabbed Chester’s right and placed it on top of the counter.
Once more he placed the end of the silencer against flesh and repeated his question, “Did you warn him?”
There was terror in the motel owner’s eyes and sweat formed on his wrinkled brow. He shook his head, unable to speak.
The gun fired.
Chester screeched as the bullet smashed through bone and flesh, the heavy timber of the countertop retarding its downward motion. Reflexively, he dragged the wounded hand back and cradled it against his chest. Blood ran from the wound, leaking between his fingers, and dripped onto the floor at the motel owner’s feet.
He gasped in pain and tears ran from his eyes. Fear took hold fully now, and his bladder let go, and he pissed himself.
“The other hand,” the big man said in a calm voice.
Chester took a step back and shook his head. “No. Please, no!”
The other man drove the barrel of his gun up under the frightened motel owner’s chin. Through gritted teeth, he said, “The other fucking hand. Now!”
The hand went up onto the countertop, and Chester felt the splinters from the previous shot dig into his palm. The end of the silencer touched the back of his hand, and he tried to pull it back. The other mobster, however, prevented him from doing so.
“Where is he?”
Chester opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He knew that if he said what he was going to, the man would shoot him again. He clamped his jaw shut.
“I’ll ask you once more, and then I’ll shoot you. Where is he?”
“I don’t … No, wait. The female deputy, Cara. She might know.”
“Where do I find her?”
“Maybe her house.”
“Where?”
Chester told him. When he was finished, he blurted out, “Please don’t kill me.”
The big man stared at him for a moment with a contemptuous look and then shot him in the head.
Kane hung up from the call and placed the cell back into his pocket.
“Is she OK?” Cara asked.
“Yeah. No one’s been there asking.”
“That’s good.”
“I asked him about Jimmy. He said there would be room for him there anytime you wanted it.”
“That’s something I guess.”
Ferrero appeared. “All right, I have a mobile team that will be here day after tomorrow. They’ll bring with them vehicles, armaments, and a few other odds and ends that we’ll need.”
“How many in this team?”
“Three.”
“Big team.”
“Big enough. What we do need, however, is a place to house us for the duration,” he turned to Cara. “Any ideas?”
“There are a lot of abandoned buildings about the town. Take your pick.”
“The old furniture store across the road from the motel I’m at,” Kane said. “It looks big enough.”
Ferrero nodded. “Let’s see, shall we?”
They agreed, and Cara turned around. “Jimmy?”
He appeared in the doorway, a wireless PlayStation controller in his hands. “Yeah?’
“Yes.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes.”
“I’m going out for a bit. We’ll be back soon.”
“Kay.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Another eye roll. “Yes, ma’am.”
The black SUV parked along the street, and the four men in it watched them drive off. The man behind the wheel said, “You want me to follow, Bannon?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Look at the front yard of the house. What do you see?”
“Junk?”
“What kind of junk?”
“Kid’s junk.”
“Now you’re seeing it,” Bannon said.
“What’s a bunch of kid’s junk got to do with it?” the driver asked.
The man in the seat behind clipped him in the back of the head.
“Ouch, what did you do that for?”
“Because you’re stupid. What Bannon means is that there’s a kid that lives here. Instead of us going after them, we make Kane come to us.”
“Oh. I knew that.”
“Putz.”
“Get us over to the house.”
The driver turned the key, and the engine started to purr. He eased it into drive, and they pulled away from the curb.
A minute later Bannon knocked on the door. After about twenty seconds, Jimmy opened it and looked up into the face of the big man in the suit.
Bannon smiled. “Hi, kid.”
They pulled up in the lot across from the motel and climbed out of Ferrero’s vehicle. Standing in front of the building, they cast a cursory eye over it. There was a main entrance door at the front and a large roller-door on the right side.
The building itself was wide and long.
They walked around to a side door and tested it. It remained closed.
“Locked,” Ferrero said.
Cara pushed past him and kicked it next to the mechanism. The door sprung back, and Cara stepped aside. “After you.”
Inside was much like the exterior, rundown and dirty and had that unused smell about it. The main floor was open plan and stairs ran up to a mezzanine office area. Out the back where the storage area would have been, all the shelving and such had been removed, and it was like the front portion, open and empty. However, it would comfortably accommodate quite a few vehicles.
Ferrero nodded. “This’ll do. We can set up in the building, have a place to park the vehicles; our people will slot right in.”
Kane walked to the far end of the building and looked out the rear window. The building took up the width of the block and a street ran along behind it. Weeds grew from a seldom-used footpath that had cracks and dips in it.
He turned away from the window and walked back to the center of the warehouse area where Cara stood. He was about to speak when her cell buzzed in her pocket. She took it out and looked at the screen, frowned, and then answered.
“Hello?”
“Put Kane on.”
“Who is this?”
“If you want to see your kid again, you’ll do as I say. Put him on.”
Cara’s eyes opened impossibly wide, and Kane could tell that something was very wrong.
She snarled into the phone, “If you hurt him, I’ll kill you, asshole!”
“Put him the fuck on!”
There was a moment of hesitation before she handed the cell to Kane. Anxiety was etched on her face, and she began to wring her hands. “They’ve got Jimmy.”
“Who has?” Ferrero snapped.
Kane put the cell to his ear. “Kane.”
“We’ve got the bitch’s kid. Who we really want is you. We’ll trade, you for him.”
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
Kane thought for a moment. “You’re not O’Brien. That makes you Bannon. Am I right?”
“You’ll have to come to find out.”
“Where?”
“Edge of town. The place called Arno’s, you know it?”
“Yeah.”
“After dark. Come alone.”
Kane passed the cell back to Cara. “Who are they? Who has Jimmy?”
“They’re muscle for O�
�Brien.”
She gasped.
“What do they want?” Ferrero asked.
“Me. They said to meet them at Arno’s, after dark. They said they’ll trade.”
“And you’re entertaining the idea?”
“Nope.”
Ferrero’s eyes shot across to Cara. She said, “They won’t let him go. He’ll have seen their faces. The only chance to get him back alive is to take him by force.”
Kane looked at Ferrero. “We’ll need communications and weapons.”
The DEA agent nodded. “I can do communications.”
“I can get the weapons we’ll need,” Cara told him and held up a set of keys.
Kane said, “Let’s do it.”
They’d only just gone outside when the first of the stationed deputy’s cars pulled up at the motel, siren howling.
Kane growled. “I think I know where they found out about Jimmy.”
Chapter 11
Retribution
Kane felt nervous. Not about the impending action, but the fact that there was a kid in the mix. Cara’s kid, and he’d be damned if he was going to let anything happen to him.
He’d waited for an hour without any sign of Bannon. The temperature had dropped significantly as it did in the desert at night. Especially with no cloud cover.
Arno’s was shrouded in darkness, the only illumination, the quarter moon which had started its arc across the sky.
Cara and Ferrero had set up earlier, before dark. Ferrero was inside the gas station in tactical gear and armed with a Colt M4 carbine, while Cara was on a ridge, hidden in a clump of boulders some three hundred meters out. Her right eye stared through a night scope perched on top of an M110 semi-automatic sniper rifle. It had a range of eight hundred meters and fired a 7.62mm round.
Even though it was dark, with a clear field of fire, she would hit anything she aimed at.
Kane was the only one not wearing tactical gear. All he had were his communications, and the H&K USP tucked into the back of his pants.
“Zero, we’ve got a vehicle inbound, maybe a mile out.”
With everything that was at risk, Cara was being a consummate professional. Kane heard Ferrero answer. “Copy, Reaper Two. Reaper One, you copy that last?”
“Roger, Zero. Reaper Two, just one? Over.”
“Roger, Reaper One. Only one vehicle.”
“Copy,” there was a pause. “Cara?”
“I’m here.”
“Don’t miss.”
Kane remained beside Ferrero’s SUV and waited. Suddenly the lights on the approaching vehicle appeared, followed by the sound of the engine.
“Here we go. I’ll buy the beers when we’re done.”
The SUV with the kidnappers in it pulled off the road and did a full circle on the gravel around Kane’s position before it stopped in a cloud of dust, headlights still on.
Kane waited for them to emerge. He said softly, “Reaper Two, you got a clear line of sight?”
“Roger.”
“Wait for my signal.”
Four doors opened, and men disembarked from each. He recognized Bannon who walked to the front of the vehicle. The driver moved out to the left while one of the men who’d climbed from the back moved out to the right. The fourth man stayed beside an open left rear door. All were armed with handguns.
“You look a mite better than the last time I saw you,” Kane said, as a way to break the silence.
Bannon said, “So does my boss.”
“Pity that.”
“Did you come alone?”
“Would you expect me to? I mean, did you? You don’t think I’m a total moron, do you? Ferrero, come out.”
“Reaper, what are you doing?” Cara asked hurriedly.
“Easy, Reaper Two,” Ferrero said. His voice was calm and professional. If Kane’s action had taken him by surprise, he didn’t show it.
The door to the gas station opened, and Ferrero walked out, the M4 cradled across his chest.
Bannon wasn’t happy. “You were told to come alone.”
“What? And have you kill me and the kid. Not how it works. Where is Jimmy?”
Bannon waved a hand at the man by the rear door. He said a few words to someone inside and then stepped back.
Jimmy climbed out and went to walk forward but was stopped by his guard.
“Are you happy now?” Bannon asked.
“Bring him closer. I want to see if he’s all right.”
The mobster and Jimmy came closer. “Are you happy now?” repeated Bannon.
“Are you OK, Jimmy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’ll all be over soon. Just walk to me.”
The man with Jimmy placed his handgun against the boy’s head.
“That ain’t how this works,” Bannon threw his own words back at him.
Kane nodded. “It’s OK, Jimmy. If you’re scared, just close your eyes.”
“What are you up to?” the man with Jimmy snarled.
Kane ignored him. “Just close your eyes.”
“He’s up to something, Bannon,” the man said, his voice starting to crack. “He’s fucking up to something.”
“Take it easy,” Bannon cautioned.
Kane’s right hand edged around behind his back. “That’s it, keep them closed.”
“No! No! It ain’t right, Bannon. It ain’t fucking right!” the man screeched, and he took the gun from Jimmy’s head and began to point it at Kane.
The 7.62 NATO round whistled out of the night. There was a sickening wet sound as it punched through the mobster’s head and blew his brains out all over the gravel. There was no sound to the shot because the weapon Cara had used was silenced.
Before the rest of the mob men could react, another round slapped into the mobster on the right, and he dropped without making a sound.
After the first bullet impacted the man with Jimmy, Kane wrapped his right hand around the H&K’s grip and brought it forward and up. Once the foresight settled on Bannon, Kane squeezed the trigger. The slug hammered into the enforcer’s chest and made him stagger. He fought to bring up his gun, but before he could, Kane fired three more shots in quick succession. All of them grouped about the first.
Bannon jerked under the impact of them like an epileptic drunk. Then his legs refused to hold his weight, and he sank to his knees, head slumped forward onto his chest.
Off to his right, Kane heard Ferrero open fire with his M4. A line of bullets stitched the last surprised mobster from crotch to throat. Their force threw him onto his back in the dirt where he spasmed and died.
With the echoes of the shots fading across the desert, Kane moved forward, his progression swift, his H&K still trained on Bannon. When he reached the enforcer, there was no movement. The man just knelt there, arms limp at his sides, head resting on his chest, blood dribbling from his slack mouth.
Kane said, “We’re clear.”
He checked Bannon’s coat while Ferrero checked on Jimmy. In the inside top pocket, he found the enforcer’s cell. He pushed a few buttons and found only numbers. He started to try them.
The first belonged to someone named Michael. The second, a woman named Francis from some business in Manhattan. He struck gold with the third.
It rang twice, then, “Did you do it?”
“They’re all dead.”
Silence.
“Is it you?”
“Is it me what?”
“Are you the bastard who shot me and killed my son?”
“Yeah.”
O’Brien’s voice grew cold. “I will kill you.”
“Piece of advice for you, Paddy,” Kane growled. “If you keep sending men after me, I’ll kill them all and then come after you. However, if you’re not some chickenshit asshole, come after me yourself, and we’ll have it out. It might save a few of your subordinate’s lives.”
“I’ll cut your fucking heart –”
Kane hung up. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
He looked up t
o see Cara jog out of the darkness. She carried the M110 in her right hand, and when she reached Jimmy, laid it on the ground to have her arms free to wrap the boy up.
“Oh, Jimmy. Are you OK?”
“I’m OK,” he said, more than a little shaken.
“Did they hurt you?”
“No.”
She hugged him again.
Kane walked over to them and tossed the cell to Ferrero. “You might find something useful on there.”
Jimmy noticed the rifle on the ground and stared at the body of the man who’d held him. “Was that you, Ma?”
Cara hesitated. “Yes.”
He looked at her, his eyes as wide as saucers. “Wow! You are shit hot!”
“Jimmy Billings!” she scolded. “That was not shit hot. That was me keeping you safe. It is something I hope you never have to do in your life.”
“Is he all right?” Kane asked.
“Yes, thanks to you.”
He shook his head. “It was because of me that he was in this mess.”
Cara stared at her son. “Jimmy, I need to keep you safe. You can’t stay in Retribution. I have a place for you to go where you’ll be safe.”
“OK,” he said, which took her by surprise.
She patted him on the shoulder. “Agent Ferrero has a way to get you there. I need to finish the job here.”
“I understand.”
Cara hugged him again. “I knew you would.”
“I hate to break up the party,” Ferrero said. “I think we need to do something about this mess.”
Kane glanced at Cara and then at Ferrero. He said, “I’m sure you can sort that out.”
They began to walk away, Jimmy in tow.
“Hey, where are you going?”
No answer.
“Hey!”
They kept walking.
“Shit!”
Nogales, Sonora
Pete Traynor wandered into the stinking backstreet bar and stopped. It had changed some since he’d been there last. It certainly wasn’t just a bar anymore, that was for sure. The premises had been extensively renovated with the bar pushed back, new lighting, large mirrors against one wall, stripper poles, and armed men were strategically placed around the large room. Cartel men.
