The Warriors Series Boxset II

by Ty Patterson

  The blade whispered in the air when he unsheathed it from a scabbard tied down low on his thigh. He waved it in front of Zeb, his teeth matching the glint on the steel.

  Kid.

  The beast stirred.

  ‘I want three questions answered and then you can do what you wish with him,’ Studelander replied coldly. ‘How much does he know? Who else knows? Who’s behind him?’

  ‘You heard that, asshole?’ The knife nudged Zeb’s chin. ‘Jase is very business-like. He goes in, does the job, and comes out. Boxer, Felix, and I are different. We enjoy our job. We like to milk it, the way we did to that bitch. She had some tits, didn’t she Boxer?’

  ‘Yeah, and she was tight too.’ Boxer bunched Zeb’s shirt and tore it off his shoulders.

  Pock Mark drew a line down Zeb’s left shoulder and watched raptly as it became red and a thin stream of blood appeared. ‘You’re lucky we’re not into men, cause cutting always gives us woodies. The bitch entertained us for hours.’

  The beast shook itself, stood swaying, taking in everything.

  The knife crossed his chest and another line of blood appeared. ‘You think you’re tough Carter?’ Pock Mark crooned. ‘When I’m through with you, you’ll be screaming and praying for death.’

  ‘I wonder if he and the bitch were tight? Maybe that’s why he’s got such a hard on.’

  ‘Nah, she didn’t have any boyfriends. Get on with it. Luke will be checking in soon.’ Studelander swung away impatiently and peered outside.

  They were in a cabin deep in the woods in the Blue Hills Reservoir. The cabin was just a single room; a sink and a tap at one end over which there was a rough shelf stocked with cans of food. It was a rest place for hikers and trekkers who kept the cabin stocked for their fellow travelers.

  Zeb gasped sharply and gritted his teeth when the knife sank deep in his shoulder. Pock Mark loomed over him, humming softly as he went to work making light cuts on Zeb’s upper body, the occasional deep jab.

  ‘Careful, you’ll reach his vitals,’ Boxer warned him.

  ‘No chance. I can keep going all night. Can he?’

  Zeb fell back in agony as the blade sank into the same wound. Blood was flowing freely now, patterning the wooden floor in shades of red and brown. The cabin was silent but for his harsh breathing and Pock Mark’s soft crooning.

  The beast surged through him, filled him with blackness, preparing itself. The wounds were shallow for now. Even the piercing hadn’t sunk as deep as he had made it out to be. But that wouldn’t last for long. The cuts would be deeper, the interrogation would become more aggressive.

  He gasped loudly, writhed and whispered. Boxer cocked his head and listened.

  Zeb choked out his words again.

  ‘Come again, Carter? You trying to tell us something?’

  ‘Backpack.’ Zeb gasped again and thrashed his head. The knife eased away from his body and the two men bent their heads closer to him. Footsteps sounded behind them.

  Studelander crowded closer. ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘Backpack,’ Zeb forced the words through his parched throat.

  Boxer swung his head, but Studelander was already moving. ‘I’ll get it. It’s in the vehicle. There was nothing in it though, except for his guns.’ His voice grew fainter as he stepped outside.

  Pock Mark nodded encouragingly at Zeb. ‘That was a start, but let’s get to the meat of it.’ He chuckled at his cleverness and the knife started its downward curve, this time over Zeb’s groin.

  The blast was a thunderclap that blew out the windows, shook the wooden cabin and caused cans and plates to fall from the shelves. A hot wave of air hit them and caused Pock Mark to fall sideways from his crouching position. He put out a hand to steady himself, his head swinging toward the explosion.

  The beast was ready. It was coiled. It was lethal.

  Zeb lunged up, his torso moving like a whip and his forehead caught Pock Mark on his right temple. The hardest bone in his body smashed into the pressure point on the knife wielder’s temple, plumb on the temporal artery and crushed it and fragmented the sphenoidal bones.

  Pock Mark fell sideways on Boxer, not even a sound escaping him.

  Boxer was slow to react, his attention still focused on the explosion. His head turned when the body fell against him, his eyes widened at the sight of Zeb rearing up.

  Boxer was crouching, a position that killed mobility; rising took too much time, moving back or forward was awkward. It was a sitting-duck position when in combat.

  Zeb’s forward lunge changed to a sideways move and his forehead caught Boxer on his Adam’s apple. The sideways move reduced the power of his blow and while Boxer choked, it wasn’t a lethal blow.

  The killer fell back, roaring in pain and anger, scrabbled sideways, trying to get purchase to get to his feet. Zeb followed him, his movement hampered by his bound wrists behind his back.

  Don’t let him stand.

  He threw himself on Boxer and brought him down just as the man was rising, his right shoulder smashing into the man’s abdomen. Boxer chopped at his throat with hands as hard as slabs of concrete. Zeb caught the blows on the sides of his neck, but the beast was in ascendancy. The beast was invincible. It shrugged the blows that would have felled a grown man.

  Zeb moved sinuously, twisting and coiling his body again and brought his forehead down on Boxer’s mouth. The killer’s lips split, a tooth broke. He raised his hands to gouge Zeb’s eyes. Zeb caught one seeking hand with his mouth and bit his fingers.

  Boxer roared in rage, forgot about gouging and rained blows on Zeb’s head with his left hand. His eyes looked around wildly, landed on his gun belt a few feet away that he had taken off before the interrogation.

  He levered off his left hand, but Zeb forced him back down with his body weight. He knuckled a blow at Zeb’s throat; Zeb caught it on the side of his neck and retaliated with another forehead blow that broke the killer’s nose. Boxer yelled out in anger and pain and aimed another blow at Zeb’s throat.

  Zeb reared back and let the blow lose its power, used his abdominal muscles to power his upper body, twisted in the air, and landed heavily on Boxer with his elbow piercing the killer’s sternum. He reared again, moved his wrists high up his back, his right elbow cocked like an arrow and caught Boxer flush on his throat and crushed it.

  The killer thrashed in agony for moments and then fell silent.

  Zeb rolled off him, pushed Pock Mark’s dead weight with his shoulder and uncovered the blade that lay beneath. It took half an hour of slow, laborious effort before he finished sawing off the last of the plastic cuffs.

  He lay panting for minutes, sucking the clean air deeply, letting it wash through him, cooling down the beast and when energy flooded back, took stock of himself.

  His head throbbed from the effects of the crash, but there were no cuts on his face and he knew the throbbing would die down with time. His upper body was a mess at first glance, but he knew most of the cuts were superficial. The cut in the left shoulder was more serious, but it would heal. Pock Mark had been toying with him and hadn’t got to the serious business.

  He had fought through the wall of pain and had blanked it in the furious minutes of battle, but it returned now. So did his control though, and this time the pain went meekly into the white box and lay quiescent.

  The two men were dead. Boxer from a ruptured throat, Pock Mark from a fractured skull. The head injury alone might not have killed Pock Mark, but during the fight, his body had slipped to the floor and the knife beneath him had cut open his abdomen.

  Zeb flexed his wrists and rose to his feet gingerly and when blood started circulating again, he went outside.

  The carcass of Studelander’s vehicle lay smoking, the man himself was unrecognizable. Zeb made a mental note to thank Broker who had come up with the idea of inserting the newly developed explosive between the lining of his backpack.

  The explosive, not available at any commercial outlet, made by another de
ep black agency, was pliable and could be molded to any shape. It could be used with timers and the one on Zeb’s backpack was disguised as a compass.

  He had known the men wanted him alive the moment they had used the flashbang and Tasers on him in Labelle’s apartment. He hadn’t expected a third man, but had set the timer to five hours, figuring that they would capture him at some point.

  Zeb hunted through the wreckage of the vehicle but didn’t find his backpack or its contents.

  Probably blown to pieces.

  He searched the remains of Studelander’s body. No phone.

  He went inside and searched the two men. Both had throwaway phones, each with two stored numbers. One was the other phone’s, the second number on both was the same. That second number must have been Studelander’s.

  He tried the phones but there was no signal. He pocketed them, collected their guns, kept one Glock and two magazines and destroyed the others.

  He removed Boxer’s shirt and tried it. It was a tight fit, but it would have to do; Pock Mark’s was too small for him. He removed Pock Mark’s shirt, balled it up and soaked it under the tap. He washed his wounds slowly, the pain now a white heat that the box was trying hard to contain. He tore a strip off the shirt and fashioned it into a rough dressing that he applied to the wound. It would have to do till he got to a physician.

  Physicians will lead to cops. He flung the thought from his mind. First things first.

  He washed his face, ran his fingers through his hair and using a shard of glass as a mirror, made himself as presentable as possible in the circumstances. He belted on Boxer’s holster, covered it with the shirt and stepped outside.

  Dawn was breaking and the woods were alive with the rustle of its denizens. He had a rough idea of where he was, and set out at a pace as fast as his body would allow.

  He knew his crew would have lost GPS contact with him and knowing them, they would be assembling a strike force. He didn’t want Bwana, Roger, and Bear descending on Boston with their war paint on.

  The woods started clearing after forty minutes of hiking, during which he rested several times, the white heat becoming more difficult to contain. He stumbled to his knees once and nearly passed out; but the beast didn’t let him. The beast wasn’t ready to die. Not here. Not like this.

  He could see a snake in the distance. Paler than the surroundings, winding, and curving.

  Not a snake, a road.

  He crossed it, and sat on the metal barrier and blacked out for a second. When he came to, the universe was still empty but for him. No savior had appeared miraculously. Neither had any more killers.

  He used his sweat soaked shirt to wipe his face, adjusted it over his injuries and looked to both sides. There wasn’t anything to see. Tarmac with the central yellow divider vanished into the distance to his left and right.

  He squinted at the sky. It felt like it was nine a.m., the weekend was just starting. No, his dulled brain responded. It’s Friday. Last night was Thursday.

  Two hours later the first set of lights appeared in the distance. He squinted and waited till they got closer; a dark sedan, speeding in the emptiness. He drifted back and lay low. He would wait for the right vehicle.

  That came another four hours later; a white pickup truck wending its way in no particular hurry. Country music blasted from its open windows and when it got two hundred feet away, he spotted a solitary figure through the windscreen.

  He stepped on concrete and waved his hands.

  ‘You wrestled with a bear, son?’ The grizzled old man asked him when he had leaned back on the torn leather seats, enjoying the warmth of the cab.

  ‘Three of them.’ Running low on energy, his mind couldn’t come up with any cover story and the truth spilled out. The old man kept silent, darting glances at his companion, lowering his window a couple of times to spit out a stream of tobacco juice.

  Zeb leaned against the door, twisted to face the man, tried hard to focus, but it was difficult. For some reason, the man’s face was blurred. Something dangled from the rear mirror. Zeb squinted and thought it looked like a cross. Behind it was something metallic that clinked.

  He leaned forward to get a closer look when the old man reached out behind him and produced a flask. He watched silently when Zeb drank and leaned back again and closed his eyes.

  Whatever was inside the flask, filled Zeb with a delicious warmth. Got to keep awake. Man may take me to cops. Not ready for that.

  Let me rest for a second.

  Just a second.

  The truck slowed and then came to a stop and the old man sat still as he watched his passenger and the road ahead of him. It felt like the two of them were alone in the woods, in their private bubble. He waved his hand in front of the unconscious man; he didn’t stir.

  He turned the truck around and drove slowly back to the clearing where he had found the man. He locked the truck, glanced one more time at the wounded man and tracked back. The trail was easy to follow for a skilled woodsman like him and twenty minutes later, he was at the cabin. The bodies and the burned out vehicle corroborated the man’s story.

  The injured man was still dead to the world when he reached his truck, turned it around again and continued his journey in silence.

  The man woke up once, looked wildly around and mumbled. Gotta call Broker. The old man soothed him. ‘In good time, son. Sleep now. You need your rest.’

  The eyes grew wilder, the voice became urgent. ‘No. Now. He’ll panic.’ The unfocused eyes turned on him and a hand grabbed the wheel. The truck swerved and when the old man had it under controlled, he wheeled to a gentle stop. ‘You got a number?’

  The passenger mumbled a number and lapsed into silence; when the driver looked at him, he was unconscious. The old man pulled out his phone from the glove compartment, donned a pair of glasses and punched the number slowly.

  It rang just once and was picked up promptly.

  ‘Yeah, who’s this?’ The voice had authority.

  ‘Is this Broker?’ The man asked him.

  The voice hesitated for a second. ‘Who are you?’

  The old man sighed. ‘Look, son, I am tired. I want to get home, wrap into my robe and get a drink in me. Now I have an unconscious man with me who said he wanted to speak to someone called Broker. If you aren’t him, or don’t know who that is, let’s end this.’

  ‘Describe him,’ the voice was strained, urgent, panic lacing it.

  The old man did so and winced and moved the phone away when the voice at the other end yelled.

  ‘We’ve found him.’

  Chapter 23

  The acquisitions were happening quicker now; two more large wells were now under Wasserman’s management; the usual façade of shell companies covering the ownership. The previous acquisitions had their production lowered and after an appropriate passage of time, the drilling would stop.

  The Venezuelan oil minister was announced, the same candidate the principal had wined and dined. In his first interview he commented that the country would have to relook at its priorities and decide who its friends were. He declined to elaborate when asked to clarify.

  The principal was happy, but Wasserman was less so. Studelander and his two men had failed to report in. The grab at Labelle’s apartment had clearly failed. Studelander had reported seeing Carter but there had been no communication after that.

  Labelle was dead and while the cops had no clues, they were investigating the whereabouts of two vehicles reported by onlookers, as well as the military grade flash bangs. Wasserman wasn’t worried about them. The cops could be led to a dead end; he was worried about the three men. Their ride had disappeared, the GPS trackers were dead. Their last known position was on the outskirts of Boston.

  He was reluctant to deploy more assets to find the men till he knew what had gone down. Carter might have them. For the first time a sense of unease came over him. They were three of his best men and knew who and where he was.

  He forced himself to ana
lyze the situation. Even if Carter has them, what do they know? Not even they know who I really am. Studelander knows where the ranch is, but this place is a fort. Not even Carter can get through. None of them know about the principal or what’s going down.

  He made another call when he had calmed down; it was a request for funds to buy the largest well in Nevada. The principal agreed and they worked out transfer details. Funds weren’t an issue. The principal had a war chest of billions.

  A thought struck him when he had hung up and punctured his calm exterior.

  Studelander knows we are buying wells.

  Werner was stumped. That hadn’t happened in a long time and it certainly didn’t want to admit it to the twins. It kept going back to them for more parameters, but they too had run out of ideas.

  It had run Elena Petrova’s sheets through all the code cracking algorithms it had, but all had failed. It had examined Petrova’s reading habits – which Meghan had fed – and had substituted letters and words from her favorite books.

  Nada.

  It turned to the Bible, and then to other holy books. It looked up keywords in Bob Woodward and Cal Bernstein’s All the President’s Men, two journalists that she greatly admired. That lead was useless.

  It ground its electronic teeth together in frustration, flapped its cabling and went into thinking mode. Two ideas emerged. Where had Petrova visited? Where was she from?

  Zeb woke to a calm room with white walls and ceiling. A fan turned lazily high above him. He turned his head and met Bwana’s grinning face. ‘You had us worried, bro.’

  Roger came into view, the old man behind him, and silently grabbed Zeb’s hand tightly. ‘Look what happens when we aren’t with you.’ He stepped aside for the old man who studied Zeb keenly with green eyes, lifted his shirt and examined the dressing.

  Zeb lowered his eyes and saw that the dressing had been changed while he was out cold. His wounds had been cleaned and the superficial ones had been left alone. ‘Pete Eastman,’ the old man introduced himself. ‘Your guys gave me a fright, son. A coupla hours from my call to your guy, Broker, these two gentlemen appeared at my cabin, loaded for bear.’ He chuckled. ‘Lucky I was the friendly sort, or else I would be laid out next to you.’