Surviving The Dead | Book 9 | War Without End

by Cook, James N.

  “Holler if you need anything,” Alana said, and left.

  “What are we drinking to?” Kaminsky asked, holding his beer in my direction. I raised my glass.

  “To youth, and the promises it never kept.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  We clinked and drank. The moonshine was not much compared to the bourbon I missed so dearly, but it was not terrible either.

  “What do you have for me?” I asked.

  Kaminsky stared at his beer a few seconds. “Not sure how much I can tell you.”

  I glared at him. He noticed but did not look up.

  I ground my teeth and resisted the urge to slap him. It was like being back in the CIA all over again. Ask a question pertinent to your mission, and some asshole bureaucrat starts bleating about need-to-know. Seconds ticked by, but Kaminsky said nothing. He was trying to wait me out, get me to talk first so he could pretend whatever information he shared was a gift.

  Typical manipulative bullshit.

  I drained my drink, stood, donned my coat, and dropped a bill on the table. “Have a nice evening, Stan.”

  He finally looked up. “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “But I thought-”

  “Listen,” I said, cutting him off. “I didn’t ask to be a part of your investigation. You came to me. You asked for my help. And this whole time, you’ve been keeping as much information from me as possible. I’m sick of it. If you want my help, you’re going to have to trust me. Read me in. Otherwise, best of luck to you. I don’t need this shit.”

  I got five steps before Kaminsky stood up.

  “Wait,” he said.

  I stopped and turned around.

  “Come on, Gabe. Sit down.”

  “Why should I?”

  He walked closer. “Look. I’m out on a limb here. There’s information I’m allowed to share, and information I’m not.”

  “I know that song, Stan. I don’t dance to it anymore.”

  He held up his hands. “Alright, alright. Just sit down, will you?”

  I did. Alana brought me another drink and then disappeared through a door behind the bar. I took a sip and waited.

  “Okay,” Kaminsky said. “Everything I tell you stays between us. Got it?”

  I rolled my eyes and nodded.

  “Ok. Here’s what I know.” Stan leaned closer and lowered his voice. “About two and a half years ago, someone started knocking over drug gangs in the Refugee District. Touched off a turf war.”

  “I remember.”

  “Right. So, a few weeks go by, and nobody at the Bureau shows much interest in stepping in. Cops were not too concerned either. Figured the gangs were doing them a favor by taking each other out. But I knew better. In a street war, somebody always comes out on top. That’s a bad thing. Criminal organizations are easier to knock over when they’re divided, when we can play them against each other. The brass at the Bureau and CSPD were willing to take things at face value, but I could see the war wasn’t an accident. Someone was moving behind the scenes.”

  “Someone who wanted to take over.”

  “Exactly. I told anyone who would listen what I suspected, but I got nowhere.”

  “Let me guess. Not enough evidence.”

  A nod. “AD wasn’t willing to put together a task force based on one agent’s wild-ass guess.”

  “Until…”

  “Until somebody flipped.”

  “Who?”

  “Guy named Julio Rodriguez. People called him El Carnicero.”

  “The Butcher.”

  “Right. Liked to chop people up while they were still alive. Even cauterized the wounds to keep his victims from bleeding out.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Don’t think he approved. Anyway, I got Rodriguez on a buy-bust, joint thing with CSPD. Caught him, his brother, and his cousin with ten kilos of opium.”

  I whistled. “That’ll get you some time.”

  “No shit. Now, the thing you need to understand is his gang was the big fish in the pond. If you wanted to hustle in the Springs, you had to talk to Rodriguez first. He’d grown up working for the Sinaloa Cartel, along with his brother and his cousin. The three of them used to run the cartel’s operations in Dallas before the Outbreak.”

  “So these guys were professionals.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How’d you flip Rodriguez?”

  “I didn’t. He flipped himself.”

  I blinked. “Why?”

  “There’s a story to that. See, we made the bust on an anonymous tip. One of the agents I worked with at the time got a letter from a courier. Gave the time and place for the buy, named Rodriguez as the dealer.”

  “How much lead time?”

  “Less than twenty-four hours.”

  I nodded. “Of course. It was a setup. They wanted you scrambling, lessen the likelihood of word getting back to Rodriguez. Any luck finding out who sent the letter?”

  “I checked the office it came from. Everybody there had the same story. A kid came in with a letter and some money. Said his father wanted him to have the letter delivered.”

  “No ID on the kid?”

  “Guy who took the order asked, but the kid wouldn’t say. And since the kid paid cash in advance, the courier didn’t care.”

  “Figures. What happened then?”

  “The agent who got the letter came to me because he knew I had friends with CSPD. Drug busts aren’t normally our thing, so I made a call. Talked to a captain I knew. He got in touch with a few officers he trusted and told me where to meet. We talked, I told them what I had, and asked what they thought. They figured it was worth following up on, so we put our heads together and came up with a plan.”

  “Let me guess. You staked the place out, and, sure enough, the dealers showed up.”

  “Right. But the weird thing is, the buyers never did. When it looked like Rodriguez was calling it quits, we moved in.”

  I pointed a finger at him. “You’re supposed to have probable cause to do that. An anonymous tip wouldn’t fly with a judge, which means it wouldn’t fly with a prosecutor.”

  “No, but local ordinance allows CSPD to search anyone on public property for contraband. The meet was on public property, which, of course, was no accident, because the buyers were setting Rodriguez up and wanted him to get busted.”

  My glass made a low grinding sound as I spun it on the table. None of this was making much sense.

  “But why?” I said, still trying to see the larger picture. “Why go through the trouble? Why not just kill them and take the drugs?”

  “Pressure. Think about it.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “How about this. On my side of things, I didn’t have much to go on. But SRT didn’t know that. All they knew was an FBI agent was running around asking people if they’d heard about someone making moves on the locals. So, naturally, they think the feds might be on to them. They want to get rid of Rodriguez, but they don’t want another bloodbath to bring down more heat. So, they decided to handle things quietly.”

  I pondered that and realized Stan was right. I was thinking about this from the law enforcement side, which was the wrong way to go about it. The smart thing would be to put myself in SRT’s shoes. And if I were, and I heard the FBI was making inquiries that hit a little too close to home, I’d throttle back the violence until I had more intel on exactly how much the feds knew. The fact SRT was now murdering people in the streets again meant they had gotten that intel, and they were no longer worried.

  “Okay, I’m with you. So CSPD searches them, and…” I held out a palm.

  “And they’re all convicted felons, and they’re all carrying concealed weapons. Big no-no. Now we had probable cause to search their carriage, which, of course, was where they were hiding the dope.”

  “Okay. So let’s get to the part where Rodriguez flips.”

  “After the arrest, he’s fucking livid. Says he has information on wh
o they were supposed to be selling to. Says the buyer’s operation is all over the city, got their fingers in everything. Drugs, guns, extortion, smuggling, you name it.”

  The picture was becoming clearer. “So SRT touches off the gang war, which forces Rodriguez to defend against attacks on multiple fronts while at the same time trying to restore order. And when SRT starts taking over pieces of his syndicate, he can’t do much about it without stretching his resources even thinner. So, he decides to limit his exposure and focus on the known quantities.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Okay. Now let me run something by you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’m thinking Rodriguez, surrounded by enemies and weakened in the eyes of his own people, ran face-first into the fact that war is expensive and bad for business. And with people out gunning for his head, he needed to protect his interests, not to mention his life. He had product, but no way to distribute it without opening himself up to attack. Meanwhile, the only buyers he could go to were a bunch of outsiders with no established loyalty to one side or the other. Hence the drug deal with SRT, who he did not realize were the very people trying to bring him down.”

  Stan curled his hand into a gun and dropped the thumb at me. “Bingo.”

  “Did your AD buy it?”

  “Not exactly. Nor did I at the time. But I wasn’t about to waste an opportunity, either. So, I gave Rodriguez a chance to prove himself. If he gave us names that led to a major bust, maybe we could talk about reducing his sentence. Problem was, he didn’t have any names because the guys he sold to used cutouts. He did, however, know the names of people outside the organization, small timers mostly, who worked with the cutouts directly. I told him I’d follow up and get back to him. Only I never did.”

  “Bad information?”

  “No, the information was good. Rodriguez, however, suffered an acute case of internal hemorrhaging caused by a seven-inch shank to the kidney, lungs, liver, and throat. His brother and his cousin too.”

  “SRT got to them in lockup. Cut the head off the snake. Probably the plan all along.”

  “Dead men tell no tales.”

  “Any idea who did the job?”

  “No. A bunch of guys started a fight on the yard, and someone got to Rodriguez and company in the confusion. Guards couldn’t ID the killers.”

  “Or didn’t want to.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, it wasn’t a complete loss. The intel Rodriguez gave me was on a loan sharking operation in Southtown. Said he ran collections for a guy called Blain.”

  “Like Blain the Mono?”

  “Huh?”

  “From a Stephen King novel.”

  Stan blinked and shook his head. “Anyway, with the war going on, this Blain guy was escalating his tactics. Made it known there was a new administration in town, and anyone operating in the Refugee District or Southtown had to pay tribute. Didn’t take him long to cement his place. People who refused to pay started disappearing.”

  “Sounds about right. What did you get out of the loan shark?”

  “Nothing. Not a word. I offered protection, and when that didn’t work, I threatened him with everything I could think of. Total waste of time. Didn’t even make a dent.”

  “Meaning he was a lot more afraid of Blain than he was of anything you might do to him.”

  “Exactly.”

  I looked down at my empty glass and frowned. “How about you get to the part where all this led you to the Storm Road Tribe.”

  Kaminsky sipped his beer and laughed. “Luck. Pure damn luck.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody must have caught wind of me leaning on the loan shark, because two days later a couple of guys with submachine guns broke into his office in the middle of the night and served him a lead sandwich. Lucky for me, however, our loan shark had a couple of competent bodyguards on hand who managed to kill one of the attackers.”

  “And you got an ID.”

  “Name was Abner Grant, ex-Army, served two tours in Iraq. Came home after the war and fell in with a biker gang. Caught a dime for trafficking meth in Arizona. Released on parole a month before the Outbreak. But that’s not what put me on the trail.”

  “What did?”

  Kaminsky reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a laminated photo. “Recognize this?”

  I looked. The photo was of a man’s wrist with a tattoo of a skull. The skull had a lightning bolt on its forehead and two crossed M-16 rifles beneath. Instead of teeth, the skull had three letters in old English script.

  SRT.

  “Look familiar?”

  “Yeah. This guy must have been a member since SRT’s early days. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep letting people get these tattoos. Not if they’re trying to rule the city’s vice trade anonymously.”

  “Like I said. We got lucky.”

  “So how did you make the connection?”

  “I’d been hearing stories about these guys for years, mostly from guys coming in out of the wastelands. You know how career criminals are. If there’s one thing they can’t do, it’s keep their mouths shut. I always thought it was a bunch of boogeyman bullshit until I started working the gang war. After that, and after seeing how the new players were operating, I started paying attention. What I gathered was these guys got their start somewhere in the wastelands, carved out a foothold in the city, and built contacts with all the local players. And having seen their hits, and the fact Abner Grant was ex-Army, I started thinking these guys might be connected to the military somehow. It was thin, but it was a lead. So, I contacted the Bureau’s defense liaison.”

  My warning antennas went up. “Really?” I said, trying to sound genuinely curious. “What pushed you in that direction?”

  “I guess you could call it a hunch. SRT’s methods were…calculated. Precise. Executed with strong attention to detail. Not like regular crooks. These guys were disciplined. The whole thing smelled like military to me. Also, some of the stories I heard were corroborated by documented incidents. Like that caravan attack you told me about. The Bureau has a file on that.”

  Time to change the subject. “What did the liaison tell you?”

  “A lot more than I was expecting. Apparently, these guys made the Army’s hit list a couple of years back. Some kind of spec-ops thing. General Jacobs over at JSOC caught wind of them, classified them as a verified insurgent group, and laid the fucking hammer down. Afterward, the Army figured SRT was done for and closed the books.”

  I kept my face neutral. I had been a part of the proverbial hammer the Army had laid to the Storm Road Tribe. My part had been to save a group of women being trafficked as sex slaves. In the process, I saw for myself exactly how ruthless the Storm Road Tribe really was. The idea of them here, in the Springs, taking control of the city’s crime syndicates … it was not good news.

  “So that’s what got you chasing after these guys?” I asked.

  “Yep. And it only took me a fucking year to convince the assistant director to put together a task force to deal with it.”

  “Better late than never.”

  Kaminsky drained an inch of fluid from his IPA and sat back. “You happy now?”

  “One more question.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “When you came to ask for my help, you said you were referred to me by an old colleague of mine. I assumed you meant someone at the CIA.”

  Kaminsky nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “Come on, Gabe. You know I can’t tell you that.”

  I went quiet for a few seconds. “I’m going to throw a name at you.”

  “Gabe…”

  The light was low, so I leaned in for a clear view of Stan’s eyes. “Tolliver.”

  The face remained expressionless, but the pupils did not get the memo. They dilated ever so slightly, telling me I had struck a nerve. I sat back in my chair and took a pull from my moonshine.

  “
Yeah,” I said. “Tolliver. Should have known that fucker would survive. The roaches always do.”

  Stan stared, his face twisted in irritation. “How do you do that? I mean it. I’ve been in law enforcement a long time, and I know for a fact I’ve got a world-class poker face. But you always see right through it.”

  I grinned at him. “Maybe your poker face isn’t as good as you think.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  We sat and laughed at each other for a few seconds, and then the laughter faded.

  Stan said, “What do you make of all this? You obviously have history with these SRT guys. You wouldn’t know so much about them if you didn’t.”

  “You knew that before you ever came to see me, didn’t you?” I said. “You did your homework, you saw my jacket, and you decided to approach me. How exactly did you meet Tolliver anyway?”

  Stan said nothing.

  “Okay, I won’t push. I’m going to operate on the assumption that my name came up while you were gathering intel on SRT. I’m guessing you checked the Archive, found out I was ex-CIA, and reached out to someone. Maybe Tolliver, maybe somebody who gave you Tolliver’s name. Either way, once you confirmed your suspicions, you wound up on my doorstep. How am I doing so far?”

  Rather than answer, Stan employed the classic deflection technique of asking a counter question.

  “What was your involvement in the JSOC operation that damn near wiped SRT off the map? Why didn’t the Army finish the job?”

  “Ask General Jacobs.”

  Stan scoffed. “Right. Like that’s going to get me anywhere.”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my face with both hands. “Look, it’s getting late. Do you want a history lesson, or do you want me to help you shut these guys down?”

  A sigh. “The second one.”

  “Okay. Well, from what I’ve heard, there’s only one way to make that happen.”

  “And that is?”

  “You’ve been going at this backward. You’re trying to hunt them down, but you won’t succeed that way. These guys are too good. However deep you think they’re dug in, the reality is ten times worse.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You have to make them come to you.”

  A frustrated laugh. “Sure. And how, exactly, am I supposed to do that?”