by Ty Patterson
That’s how the first cruiser found him fifteen minutes later. More patrol cars joined and he was hauled away and it began all over again.
Should’ve left when the first shot failed. The assassin cursed as engine throbbed smoothly underneath him. His valise was fastened securely to the pillion and the leathers covered the body armor he wore.
He had made a cardinal mistake, he had let his ego take over and now Carter had the bike’s plates. He glanced at his GPS tracker and saw Carter was stationary several miles back. He looped back into the city, his eyes darting with urgency now, seeking another getaway vehicle. His ride into the parking lot was clean. There wasn’t anything in it that would lead back to him. It could stay in the lot. But he needed another set of wheels.
He got them in a strip mall’s lot, a Corolla, its keys dangling inside, parked between family wagons and trucks. He was driving away minutes later, still in his leathers. Another parking lot, a truck stop this time, gave him the cover and time to change. It also gave him yet another set of wheels and this time he drove straight to the airstrip and two hours later, he was in the air.
The cops weren’t pleased to see Zeb and their enthusiasm hit the floor when they inspected the holes in his vehicle. It buried through the ground when he produced the video of the assassin.
‘I’m sure that’ll help us nail him,’ the sergeant mumbled when he saw the black clad figure twisting and turning on the bike. ‘He’ll be dead easy to identify.’
Nevertheless, he called out the bike’s plates and by the time they reached the city, they knew it was stolen. He glanced sideways at Zeb when the call came and when he got no reaction, swore under his breath.
‘Just who are you?’ He burst out finally. ‘Those gadgets on your vehicle look like something out of Hollywood.’
‘I’m just a security consultant visiting your city.’
‘Yeah, and I’m the Pope.’
This time they released Zeb quicker; they knew the drill. If they kept him for long, calls would be made, their chief would come out of his office steaming and unhappy and no cop wanted that. Besides Carter was the one who was shot at, he didn’t fire a single round.
‘This shooter and the minister’s death are connected,’ Zeb told them helpfully. One of the cops grunted in disinterest. They would investigate their way; no out-of-town security hotshot was going to tell them how to do their job.
Zeb returned to his hotel room, made a call on the way to have the SUV replaced and when he had showered, he started thinking again.
Why me? He could’ve disappeared in the dark with none of us any wiser.
The answer was obvious.
I saw him. He knew that I knew. It was in his eyes. Maybe he doesn’t like witnesses.
Another thought struck him and he fired another message to his crew. Assassin might try to escape. Have him on the watch list at all ports.
Broker’s reply came back instantly. Done. Way ahead of you!
A knock sounded on the door and he frowned as no one approached his door. A muffled voice called from outside. The Glock leapt into his hand and the telescopic cable slipped under the door but all he saw was a sea of white.
White?
His brow cleared and he opened the door to see the beaming face of the Saudi minister.
‘I’m glad to see you unharmed my friend. I spoke to every policeman I could see and I even asked our ambassador to lodge a formal complaint.’ He talked non-stop, gesticulating furiously as he entered the room without waiting for an invite from Zeb.
‘I was going to call the police chief here, but I think the pressure I applied finally cracked them.’
Zeb put on a straight face and thanked the minister who waved it away. His restless eyes scanned the room and lighted on the bowl of fruit. ‘You haven’t had dinner? Of course, you haven’t! They don’t feed you in prison, do they?’
He clapped his hands and an aide rushed in bearing an enormous tray covered by a pristine white cloth. He laid it on a center table and when he had left, the minister gestured and commanded. ‘Eat.’
Zeb demurred and steered him gently to the table. Saudi hospitality. No wonder most of the royals and ministers are well rounded.
The minister inspected his room, commented about its small size, pulled the curtains wide open, and fluffed the pillows. He tugged at a wardrobe, frowned, and prepared to tug again.
‘DON’T.’
Move, grab him, dive!
A blast roared through the room, shards of glass and wicked slivers of wood flew from the wardrobe and buried themselves in the bed.
Zeb landed in the hallway on his shoulder, rolled over to shield the minister and rose swiftly to his feet when the explosion died. He hustled the bewildered minister away, gestured at his security detail to lead him to the lobby.
There could be a secondary explosion.
He entered his room cautiously, grabbed his backpack, his jacket and the armor and cast a last glance. The room was ruined and if he hadn’t acted instantaneously, the minister would have died.
I never use the wardrobe; never have anything to stuff in them. But the assassin didn’t know that. This was the assassin’s backup.
He joined yet another chaotic, noisy throng of guests rushing to the bank of elevators quelled the beast as it rose inside.
Time to go hunting.
The assassin was coldly furious as he paced an apartment in Florida the next day. The news on TV of the hotel explosion, no one injured or killed, had soured him and when Wasserman came online, the bitterness had turned to a raging fury.
The hacker had reached him when he had landed bearing news that had settled into a cold pit in the assassin’s belly. Carter had been in Riyadh almost immediately after the royal’s killing. He was seen entering the royal palace, there was confirmation that he had met the royal’s brother.
It’s no coincidence. He’s on my trail.
Setting up a call with the sponsor’s representative had been easier than he had anticipated. He had demanded the cutout set up a call with the sponsor’s people or he was quitting the assignment. The cutout had come back with a conference number that he was to dial into.
The sponsor’s man, who didn’t introduce himself, spoke in a distorted voice and the assassin knew he was speaking through a voice altering device. The assassin himself had a similar device at his end and had bounced his call through servers across the world.
‘Are you aware of this man?’
The answer made the assassin take a deep breath and listen carefully.
‘Yes. He’s come up against us a few times.’
The sponsor’s man outlined the events in Wyoming and Los Angeles without going into any specifics other than mentioning Carter’s presence.
‘You didn’t think about warning me?’
‘We didn’t lead him to you. His presence was coincidental.’
It wasn’t, but the killer kept quiet.
‘Are my killings connected to whatever went down in those two states?’ he asked.
‘Indirectly.’ The spokesman didn’t elaborate and the assassin didn’t press. He took on kill missions and didn’t really care about the ripple effects.
‘What’s my situation?’
‘You’re cold.’ The spokesman replied, meaning no law agency was looking for the killer. ‘Carter asked the DPD to look into you, but they are suspecting terrorist activity because of the international nature of the conference. Besides they have nothing on your identity.’
‘The Venezuelan minister?’
‘Passed off as an unfortunate accident.’
The assassin rubbed his hand over the stubble on his chin, saw himself in the mirror, saw a lean man staring back with burning eyes and smiled slightly. Another successful natural death.
‘The next assignment--’
‘Will have to wait,’ the killer interrupted him coldly. ‘If it’s outside the U.S. I won’t travel till this dies down.’
The spokesman’s voice was
contemptuous. ‘Getting cold feet? I thought you killers were used to traveling the world with several law forces after you. It’s part of the job, isn’t it? Surely, somewhere in the world there’s someone who’s hunting for you.’
‘Who, Where, When?’ the assassin asked after a long pause.
The spokesman told him.
It was the Nigerian oil minister. The kill would happen in that country in two weeks’ time.
Wasserman ended the call, crossed his arms behind his head, leaned back and stared idly at the fireplace. It promised to be another hot day, with the mercury already touching eighty, and yet the fire roared. He could hear faint noises as a cleaning crew went through the ranch and readied it for a batch of dude visitors.
Carter. The man had disappeared after the bust-ups in L.A., but Wasserman never expected him to turn up at the conference. Was he on the assassin’s trail? If so, how did he know about the killer?
Despite Carter’s annoying presence, events were moving according to the timeline. Another fracking company was in the process of being acquired, and Studelander was busy working on that. The assassin had his next kill.
The ministers’ replacements would be in place soon; Wasserman was not given to rubbing his hands in glee, but if he was, he would have. The principal had worked for years, had spent millions of dollars in different countries bribing politicians and dictators for getting his people in the right positions. Now his efforts were paying off.
The King of Saudi Arabia would be announcing his new oil minister, a candidate who was in the principal’s pocket. Wasserman knew the principal was working his phone all night to ensure his nominees would step into the dead ministers’ shoes. The nominees were in prominent positions in their governments and had started influencing the leaders and heads of states to their point of view. Their point of view was the principal’s.
The principal had chosen them carefully; in the first place, he had Wasserman prepare dossiers on each one of them, and when he had studied all their speeches and off-the-record comments, he had made a discreet approach, using attractive women as decoys.
It was only when the principal was convinced that the men shared his beliefs, as passionately as he did, that he had met them. Then commenced the machinations of moving the selected men into the right positions so that they would be selected as oil and energy ministers.
It had taken three years but now everything was moving like clockwork.
That’s why the principal hired me. Wasserman brushed aside a pesky housefly that had breached the ranch’s air conditioning. Carter? He won’t get anywhere.
But was Dallas a coincidence?
He picked up the phone.
Zeb was in a chain motel in Dallas, one of hundreds that dotted the country and guaranteed consistency to travelers in whichever part of the country they were in. The bed was neat and soft, the bathroom was clean and the room had a window through which he could exit. That was all that mattered to Zeb. Bone china service, fine linen and French wines mattered more to the rest of his crew.
He had left the conference hotel without checking out, had received a new Dodge Durango and had spent the rest of the night in the hotel. The next day he started his series of calls.
The first was to his crew.
‘Mohammed Rauf or Abbas Karim or whoever he is, is on the TSA’s No-Fly list. The FBI has been alerted to his presence and all law agencies are looking for him. DPD now have his details but haven’t revealed it to the media. As far as the outside world is concerned the explosions were a domestic terrorist activity.’ Beth brought him up to speed.
Zeb asked a question that had been bothering him. ‘Who benefits?’ He didn’t have to explain to his crew; they knew he was referring to the Venezuelan and Saudi minister’s killings. If the oil industry wasn’t affected by these killings, then who stood to gain by these killings?
He heard them murmuring, then Chloe spoke up. ‘Zeb, that escort agency is run by a Russian entrepreneur in L.A. He is rumored to have mob money behind him. Prince Abdul reached out to us when he couldn’t get through to you. His brother used the same agency.’
Zeb threw his duffel into the Durango and when he hit the I-30 to commence another sixteen-hour journey, dialed Clare.
‘Caused enough mayhem in Dallas?’ She replied in amusement when he told her he was heading to Los Angeles. He gave her Broker’s update and let the silence hang while she worked it out.
He had seen her once play chess while driving through peak D.C. traffic. She issued voice commands and played against a grandmaster in real time. By the time she’d reached her office, she had checkmated the more experienced player without once taking her eyes off the river of steel ahead of her.
‘That escort agency could be the connection. Nothing makes sense frankly. We know that the KSA will appoint a new minister today and we think we know who that appointee will be. That candidate is a friend of ours. The Foreign Secretary has reached out to the Venezuelan government, but it’s too early for them to consider a new appointee.’
‘Can you get me photographs?’
‘Of the minister and the prostitute? Sure.’
Broker had once bet a hundred dollars that if he Zeb asked Clare for the president’s credit card details, she would come through. Zeb hadn’t taken him up.
‘You’ll have to wipe me clean from the DPD’s records.’
Her laugh filled the Durango. ‘Broker’s already done that. Your pal, Leon, did most of the heavy lifting. His word carries a lot of weight apparently.’
She briefed him on the situation in Iraq and Syria as rubber ate concrete and spat it out behind. On ISIS and extremism. Zeb knew the area well, he also knew the organization. He had carried out surgical strikes against it in a past mission, blows that had stalled the terror group’s advances and had bought the West vital breathing space. Now the battle was evenly poised, but just the slightest shade in the West’s favor.
‘Could they be behind all this?’
‘First thing that came to my mind,’ she replied. ‘Especially since your last spot of bother in New York.’
Zeb had come up against home-grown extremists in New York in a previous mission, a highly trained and motivated bunch of young men who were led by a Hand of Fire killer. The HOF was another brutal extremist organization in the Middle East.
‘But like I said, the squares don’t fit. The ISIS already control certain oil fields in parts of Iraq and Syria but have virtually no presence in these other countries. Killing off a few ministers doesn’t do much. ‘Maybe Domingo was exaggerating.’
‘Possible,’ Zeb agreed but there was no conviction in his voice. He knew Clare shared his doubts.
‘I guess we’ll just have to pull the threads and see where they lead us,’ she sighed. ‘Be careful in L.A. I heard the 38th Street is looking for someone that matches your description.’
She signed off with another laugh. ‘They haven’t learned their lesson have they?’
Chapter 18
Wasserman had further news for the assassin.
‘Someone checked out your cover in Brunei. They confirmed that you were a genuine delegate.’
I know this. He kept silent though and listened to the sponsor’s man. Through the windows he could see palm fronds swaying in the breeze and waves crashing on the beach. If he rolled back the darkened windows he would hear Floridians enjoying their city. His apartment building, a thirty-story one, was very close to the beach and as was his norm, he had bought it using many layers of banks and offshore companies.
The assassin didn’t roll back the windows, didn’t stand in the small balcony, didn’t give any curious onlooker the opportunity to spot him and maybe photograph him.
‘Carter was in Saudi Arabia soon after your kill. We have traced a connection between him and Prince Abdul, though we aren’t sure what that is. We have to assume Carter suspects you of killing the Saudi minister.’
‘Where is he?’
‘We are trying to track him.
He hasn’t checked out of the hotel, but he isn’t staying there any longer. You caught the news about the explosion?’
The assassin grunted.
‘That was a neat trick, but no one was injured. I am sure he has left the city and he’ll now go after the escort agency.’ Wasserman prided himself planning for every contingency, for planting red herrings, and the escort agency was one such false trail. Once he had discovered that the Saudi minister frequented the agency, it had been easy to steer other energy ministers to the same establishment.
A discreet wink and a nudge over a drink; it was so easy to influence these worldly men or point them in a certain direction.
‘He needs to die,’ the assassin cut in on his thoughts.
‘He will.’ Wasserman smiled grimly. ‘There is a reception committee awaiting him in Los Angeles.’
Zeb had no intention of picking a fight with the 38th Street. But neither will I avoid one.
He checked in a hotel in Malibu, one that served French wines and had a rooftop swimming pool. He spent a day catching up on his sleep and on the intel dumps his team had sent him.
The agency was run by Julian Kozlov who had his office in downtown L.A. Kozlov was born to a prostitute on the streets of Moscow and grew up on the occasional bouts of generosity his mother’s customers threw his way. He had a finely developed skill for survival by the time an uncle brought him to the United States. He was eight years old then.
His intelligence got polished in the private schools of Los Angeles and he was groomed to take over his uncle’s business. His uncle, Vladimir Blokhin, had no heirs of his own and young Kozlov would soon run a mob business that went head to head with the Hispanic gangs in L.A.
Like any other gang, Blokhin’s mob was into drugs, women, extortion, and hits. Kozlov changed the face of the mob when he took over the reins.
He went upmarket; he started the escort agency that catered to the extremely wealthy and prominent. He provided the drugs for high society parties. He got involved in nasty divorces that needed a more direct settlement, and in business mergers which needed more than money to go through.
