by Ty Patterson
Beatty’s eyes stared blankly back at him. His wife struggled violently, shouted unintelligibly through the gag over her mouth. Her eyes were wide and Boiler thought he saw recognition in them.
He smiled slightly and brought out his blade.
Beatty and his wife died three hours later.
Blood from their bodies had darkened the ground around them. The sky had heard their deep groans and had witnessed their thrashing. The sky didn’t help.
Boiler removed his gloves, wiped his hands against his trousers, bit back the cold rage that threatened to drown him.
Beatty wasn’t Cezar. His wife wasn’t Cezar’s woman.
He lost his control for a second, swore loudly, kicked at the dead man in his stomach, in the head, in the groin. His two hitters pulled him back, and started wrapping the couple in plastic sheets.
Boiler crouched beside the bodies, removed a couple of photographs from his jacket, compared them to the dead couple.
He shook his head bitterly. They looked the same, but in the three hours of knife work, Beatty had steadfastly maintained his story.
He wasn’t Cezar. He didn’t know who that was.
He rose, ice-cold control returning to him, gestured at his men to resume the wrapping.
They dug graves and buried the plastic-clad bodies in them, covered the graves and went back to the vehicles.
A hitter tried the pickup truck. Its engine turned reluctantly, but it turned. He threw it in reverse, backed it out carefully and drove to the road where he fell behind Boiler.
Late in the day, just inside Pennsylvania, when the sky was turning orange, Boiler set fire to the red truck in a dump yard that he had used before.
He watched the flames leap up and consume the vehicle.
They didn’t consume his rage.
Where was Cezar?
Chapter 8
Big G grabbed at the underling, smashed his head against the wall in rage, made to smash it again when a couple of guards rushed in and separated them.
Beatty was not Cezar.
The underling’s words rang in his mind long after lights had turned out in the prison. Big G lay in his solitary cell, stared up at nothing and figured out his moves.
He wasn’t worried about the beatings the guards inflicted on him. He wasn’t bothered about the solitary confinement. His money ensured that the guards went easier on him than most other prisoners. Hell, if he wanted, he could’ve escaped from the prison a long time back.
If that El Chapo guy could escape from his max-security prison, so could Big G. He did not have that Chapo guy’s wealth and reach, but Big G was no mere prisoner either. The only reason he stayed put was the Feds. They wouldn’t let up on the hunt, would make life unbearable for him if he escaped to the U.S.
It was better if he stayed in his Mexican prison till they forgot about him. It wasn’t as if his empire was crumbling just because he was behind bars.
Nothing’s lost.
Except for the thirty million.
His fists turned into huge knots till the tendons on his arms stood out like rubber pipes.
Boiler should keep hunting. No other choice. Maybe he should find that stranger too and question him.
The stranger was in a café in Chicago, in an oasis of calm amidst the hustle of the city. He was aware of people coming, going, cups clinking, occasional laughter. None of those registered deeply.
He was going through pictures, photographs, names, in his memory.
Zeb was searching for Armenian assassins he had come across. In particular, he was seeking out one called Ajdan.
Churchey had sobbed through his pain as he revealed everything he knew.
Ajdan had contracted Churchey who in turn had set Maximus to follow Zeb. Churchey didn’t know why the Armenian wanted Zeb followed and he hadn’t asked. In Churchey’s world, money talked. Reasons didn’t matter.
Churchey had met Ajdan just twice. The first time had been several years back when the two men had commenced their business alliance.
The second time was when Ajdan had come to collect Maximus’s surveillance photographs of Zeb.
Churchey knew that the Ajdan was an assassin, and came with good references. The Armenian had carried out a few hits for him. Churchey, in turn, had occasionally ferreted out info for the assassin.
Their business was usually conducted remotely, through burner phones and dummy email accounts.
Churchey knew Ajdan had a couple of other killers working with him.
Zeb went through the countries he had been to, which covered large parts of a world map.
Nope. In all his years of hunting men, no one called Ajdan had crossed his path.
It could be an alias. Most probably it is.
He considered his options.
The twins, with their boyfriends, had joined Roger, Bwana, and their girlfriends and the eight of them were hiking and camping somewhere in Mexico’s forests.
Bear and Chloe were in Nepal. Broker was still in New York, but Zeb knew he had hooked up with a new girlfriend.
Clare was in D.C. Vacations were alien to her. However, this wasn’t an agency mission.
He shook his head unconsciously, missed the disappointed look a blonde cast his way.
My team deserves their downtime. I can do this myself.
He plugged his laptop into a socket, turned on his sat-phone giving him encrypted access to the internet, connected to Werner and typed in the search parameters.
Zeb could talk to the program with simple search terms. The twins or Broker took care of anything more complex.
He imagined Werner sniffing in disdain, if it could.
Armenian assassin named Ajdan. That’s all you got?
Yeah. If you’re the world’s greatest super computer, prove it.
He shut down his computer, stowed it away, stilled when a thought struck him.
Maximus. Churchey will take it out on Maximus.
Maximus was living high for a few days.
Rumor was that Churchey had his face re-arranged. Maximus could guess who was behind that, if rumor was true.
However, Maximus hadn’t lived to reach his late twenties without being cautious.
He knew there was a chance Aristo would be hunting for him and hence he took great care. He switched apartments, rented a new set of wheels, stopped lifting for a while.
He even bade farewell to the babe and resolved to stay clean till he was sure there was no heat on him.
He even considered leaving Chicago and was giving this serious thought over a drink in his favorite bar, when the two heavies appeared beside him.
One of them was heavily muscled, a snake’s head tattooed on his right bicep, the other was bald, clean shaven, and shaped like a human battering ram.
Maximus’s hands trembled; he knew what their presence meant. Aristo had connected the dots.
He forced a smile. ‘Fancy seeing you guys here. A drink?’
Snake’s Head grabbed the drink from Maximus’s hand, pushed it across to the bartender, and shoved the lifter ahead of them out of the front door.
Bald held open the door to a dark van, bundled Maximus inside, while Snake’s Head eased his bulk into the driver’s seat.
The van sped off, jostling Maximus in the back. The lifter examined his confined space. There was no way to escape. There were no rear windows; the van could be opened only from the outside.
He tapped the partition, a darkened window slid open to reveal Bald’s glittering eyes.
‘Can we talk about this? I can pay you better than Aristo. You guys never need to work again.’ Maximus hated the whiny tone in his voice, but he was past caring.
His life was numbered in hours and if whining was what it took to extend it, so be it.
Bald said something to Snake’s Head and chuckled. The window slid back leaving the lifter in darkness.
Maximus knew where they would take him – an abandoned warehouse in Fuller Park that doubled as Aristo’s playground.
It was here that he toyed with his victims before killing them. The warehouse had iron girders, rusty chains, a crane that still functioned, hooks, and pointed things that were a killer’s delight.
Maximus yelled and shouted and pleaded at the dark window. It stayed shut.
The van took a violent right that threw Maximus against the door but before he could recover, something smashed into its rear, flinging him against the partition.
Zeb leapt out of the smoking SUV even before its engine had died. The van was still rocking on its wheels and from its passenger side emerged a bald man, shaped like a battering ram.
The man looked left, looked right. He spotted Zeb. His right hand flickered to his jacket.
Zeb shot him in the right shoulder, the silenced report lost in the sounds of the small street.
The man charged as if the .45 bullet was a mere fly, as if the spreading red blob on his body was paint.
Zeb sidestepped, slipped in a puddle of water. Arms made of steel were around him before he could recover.
He was rammed against the van. He lost his Glock. The shaven head butted into his chest with the force of a pile driver. He saw black for a moment.
Zeb brought his knee up when he got his breath back. The attacker took the impact on his thigh.
Another man emerged from the van, dressed in black with tightly-packed muscles that rippled, biceps that strained against a tight T-shirt, a snake head tat on one arm.
The second lowered the gun he was holding when he saw Zeb was captured. He smiled.
The smile faded and a look of shock crossed his face a second later. He looked down blindly at the spear sticking through his chest.
Knife. Not a spear. A Benchmade that had been strapped to Zeb’s thigh a few seconds before.
His left hand had drawn and thrown it in a move that practice and the heat of innumerable battles had perfected.
A move that one mistake by the first attacker had enabled. His steel grip had been too high on Zeb, giving his captive’s arms the freedom to move.
The second hood clawed at the knife, lost his balance, fell, striking his head against the van as he went down.
Zeb’s attacker turned his head a fraction to see what was holding his partner up. A second that left his ear exposed.
A second was all that Zeb needed. He bit the hood’s ear off.
The man screamed. His grip slackened.
Zeb’s right elbow caught him on his temple. A knife edged hand crushed the hood’s throat and he stumbled back. Zeb shoved him away, letting him fall in the puddle.
In two steps he was at the knifed man who was desperately tugging at the deeply buried Benchmade. He coughed in agony, his fingers scrabbled on wet concrete.
Zeb looked down at him pitilessly, thought for a moment about killing him.
Leave him be. Let Churchey know.
Maximus fingered his nose gingerly. It was swollen from the impact against the partition but didn’t seem to be bleeding.
He rapped the partition several times. ‘Hey, what’s up? If y’all are going to kill me, there are easier ways.’
The driver, Snake’s Head, swung his head sideways for a moment but didn’t reply.
Maximus watched him; the dude was listening to what was happening outside. Maximus took his cue and jammed an ear against the van’s sidewall.
Nada. ‘What’s happening?’
He got a reaction this time, but not the one he wanted; Snake’s Head swore loudly and jumped out of the van.
Maximus tried the sliding door, it stubbornly remained shut. He cocked his head and got the muted sound of traffic.
He yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Hello? Anyone out there?’
He jumped when something crashed into the side and a sliding sound came. He shouted again, beat the sidewalls with his fists.
Whoever was out there wasn’t responding.
He drew a breath and prepared to launch another attack on the unyielding van when the sliding door slid open.
He yelped in surprise. ‘You?’
The brown-haired dude from Damascus lasered him with a stare for a moment before moving to the front, checking it out to make sure it was clear.
Maximus followed him with blank eyes for a moment before realization flooded. He was free!
He whooped and started to clamber out when a hand shoved him back.
‘Wait here.’
The dude removed something from his jacket pockets, bent over Bald who seemed to be unconscious and cuffed his hands.
Unconscious and bleeding, Maximus noted when he saw the large stain on the hood’s chest.
The dude checked out the other hood, didn’t bother to cuff him.
‘Is he dead?’ Maximus couldn’t control the quaver in his voice.
Give me a break, he remonstrated himself. I came this close to dying.
The dude’s laser stare returned.
‘You get to start again every day. Which way will you choose?’
The eyes seemed to burn inside him for a long second and then just like that, the dude turned and walked away without a backward glance.
‘Hey, wait. What do I do now?’ Maximus shouted.
The dude didn’t reply. He ducked under a steel railing, crossed the street, and vanished.
Maximus hopped out, looked left, looked right, looked down at the two hoods. He kicked Bald for good measure, peered round the van, and hustled his ass away.
Later, much later, when he had checked into another hotel, using an alias, after he had showered, scrubbed and changed into new threads, once his favorite beer had coursed through him, the dude’s words came back.
Maximus looked at the brew in his hand, at the way it caught the bar’s lights and turned gold.
He made a resolution.
Straight and narrow, from now on.
Zeb kept watch outside Maximus’s hotel the whole night, watched him check out in the morning, check into another hotel and when evening fell, he ended his surveillance.
He’ll be fine.
Aristo, on the other hand, won’t be.
Chapter 9
Ajdan watched as Masis and Shiraz, his two fellow assassins, paced the living room of his apartment in Chicago.
The three of them lived close by and when news of Churchey’s accident had reached him through the underground grapevine they had cultivated, he had summoned his partners.
The three of them went a long way back, trusted one another implicitly and undertook any new job or any decisive action only after consulting one another.
Most assassins were solitary animals; the three of them worked as a team, bringing complementary skills to the table.
Ajdan was the best shooter of them all and was their leader.
‘We don’t know if Churchey spilled your name.’ The bristles on Masis’s chin made a rasping sound as he ran a hand over them. He was the most cautious of them all; he played the role of devil’s advocate.
‘We don’t even know if it was this Damascus guy who damaged Churchey.’
The Damascus guy was still unidentified. Ajdan’s man had run his plates through the system, but those plates didn’t exist. Ajdan had reported back to Boiler and had written off the guy.
Till now.
‘Agreed,’ Shiraz acknowledged Masis’s point, ‘but in our business, we can’t make assumptions.’
Ajdan looked each one of them in the eye, got a nod in return.
That comment had sealed Churchey’s fate.
‘Where’s my drink?’ Churchey snarled at the bunch of people around him. One of his flunkies rushed out to find out; hopefully it would calm him.
Aristo Churchey was in a foul mood.
His right arm would take a month to heal and the stitches on his face itched. The dentist, who had worked on his teeth, had seemed to take an unholy pleasure in inflicting further pain on the gang boss.
His gang had turned Chicago apart but hadn’t found a trace of the dude. Not a single camera in Churche
y’s home had recorded the guy.
On top of that Maximus had disappeared, one of his men was dead, the other, Bald, was shot.
Bald had confirmed it was the dude who had freed Maximus. ‘Took us apart as if we were made of paper.’
The rage in Churchey blossomed on seeing Bald’s pale face and hearing his weak voice.
He took his rage out on those around him. One of the women had her jaw broken, a flunky had his face rammed into a mirror.
His men kept asking questions, scouring bars, questioning hotels and motels with a description of the dude.
They didn’t get any hits. It was as if the dude appeared and disappeared at will.
A full bladder roused Churchey at night. He stumbled out of bed awkwardly, the sling around his neck restricting his movement.
He yawned and took a step to his bathroom when a faint noise came from outside.
He listened. He didn’t hear anything.
He withdrew a handgun from a bedside chest and opened the bedroom door cautiously. Ever since the dude, security around his bedroom had been beefed up.
Three hoods stood guard at all times, three of his best men.
Churchey relaxed when he saw the three shadows. ‘Everything alright, Carl?’
Carl grunted. Churchey let out the breath he had been holding, shut the door and went to the bathroom.
A relaxing five minutes later, he emerged, yawned, and lay down on his bed.
‘What…?’ He shouted and scrambled out of the bed on seeing the figure over him.
‘Hello, Aristo,’ Ajdan’s smile had no humor in it. He pushed the gang boss back on the bed with a lazy hand.
‘You’ve been telling tales.’
Churchey began screaming ten minutes later.
Ajdan washed his hands in Churchey’s bathroom an hour later.
Blood swirled in the sink for a few seconds and then was sucked away by the swirl of water. He patted his hair in place, emerged from the bathroom, glanced once at the dead gang boss and exited the bedroom through a window.
Masis and Shiraz were outside, waiting in a getaway vehicle.
The three of them had entered Churchey’s mansion and had taken out eight men on Churchey’s floor.
They had planted alarms at the entrance to the floor to warn them of the arrival of Churchey’s crew, and then Masis and Shiraz had left Ajdan alone with the gang boss.
