The Warriors Series Boxset II

by Ty Patterson

  In Milton Mills. A town that had not been on their list.

  Theo, the pony-tailed wizard in Burke’s task force, took two days to crack the laptop. The security on it wasn’t NSA standard, but it wasn’t common garden variety either. Once his algorithms had done the job, the laptop opened its secrets to him.

  The first task was to download the emails, zip them down to a manageable size and send them to Burke.

  He then turned his attention to the IP addresses on the From and To emails. The addresses were hidden by proxies and no doubt were bounced from server to server.

  Not a problem. He was the best proxy hunter the Feds had. He activated his sniffer programs and pulled up the browser’s history. It was blank. The recycle bin was similarly empty.

  They wouldn’t be, for long.

  Burke and Kowalski were in a meeting room with the rest of the task force, examining the emails.

  The emails were initially baffling. One set was about commodity prices. Another set was about futures oil prices. Yet another lot was about currency exchange rates.

  The assassin signed off with just an initial, A, and so did his recipients. Recipient. Most of the mails were between A, who Burke assumed to be Ajdan, and one other person, who too signed off with an initial, P.

  ‘They are jobs, assignments,’ Burke said suddenly. ‘Each set of emails is about a specific job with his cutout, P. The commodity is irrelevant. The numbers next to them are either the price, or the timing of the hit.’

  ‘You’re onto something, boss,’ Kowalski broke out excitedly. He typed furiously on his tablet. ‘I’ll search timelines and see what went down in those windows.’

  Burke sifted through the printed sheets till she found emails before and after the Parker killings.

  She hit a wall.

  None of those mails had prices. They didn’t refer to the Parker murder.

  She dipped her fingers in a glass of water and applied them to her temples to ward off a migraine.

  He didn’t kill Parker? Or if he did, it wasn’t routed through the cutout?

  She decided to attack it from a different angle. Assume that he killed Parker.

  ‘Run a CCTV image search in and around Damascus. Gas stations, motels, car rentals, airports. I want images from whatever has a lens.’

  Kowalski bobbed his head in acknowledgement and spoke low in his phone.

  The Patriot Act had made things easy for the FBI; with its backing, there was little that they couldn’t grab. Emails, images, videos, files, records, nothing was beyond the reach of the Act, and what’s more, it required none of the bureaucratic hassle of the pre-Act days.

  Burke settled back, knowing she was close. She would crack this wide open. Ajdan might be the best contract killer out there, but Sarah Burke was the best the FBI had.

  Ajdan wasn’t taking new contracts.

  His cutout had approached him with a lucrative assignment; to take out a Turkish general. The job paid well, extremely well, but he would have to travel outside the country.

  He was wary of international travel. He didn’t know to what extent his laptop had been compromised, but he had to assume that it had been.

  Shiraz and he lived under a different cover now, in a different hideout, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He was using a different communication protocol with his cutout.

  He was still looking for Carter, but the man had disappeared and Ajdan didn’t want to activate his usual intel channels. There was no knowing if those sources were now being monitored.

  He went out one night, dressed in black, carrying just a blade and his handgun, ignored the look Shiraz gave him and stepped in the dark.

  He walked several blocks, to Frogtown, entered Western Avenue, a neighborhood known for its high crime rate.

  He came across the drug dealers behind a block of housing for low-income families. There were three of them, hanging about with their low-riders almost to their knees, popping joints and shifting from foot to foot.

  That time of the night, there was hardly any traffic. Maybe they were waiting for a trade to go down or a desperate buyer.

  Ajdan didn’t care. He watched them from a distance and when he was sure it was just them, with no other backup, he approached them.

  His right hand went to the blade strapped to his thigh; even steps brought him closer to them.

  One of them looked up, hearing his approach, muttered something to his companions.

  They straightened, spread out and watched him come.

  ‘You looking for a snort?’

  Ajdan wasn’t.

  The blade slipped into his hand easily, flashed once in the dull light and got buried in the speaker’s throat.

  No warning, no talking, in the blink of an eye, one hood was down.

  The blade came out smoothly, arced to the left and cut the second man’s throat.

  The third hood ran, a yell bubbling out of his throat.

  He didn’t get far.

  Ajdan tripped him, yanked his head back and ruptured his lungs.

  He wiped the blade on the dying hood’s jacket, looked around and walked away.

  He was a pro, one of the best assassins in the business. He only killed for hire.

  However, sometimes the killing urge had to be answered.

  Jenny Wade had a desperate urge to stop her car, jump out of it and snarl at the man following her.

  Dade Joyner, thirty-eight years old, thought he was a gift to womankind. He had a tight, hard body, had his blond hair styled to his shoulders and had a ready laugh and a smile for women.

  He had been through two wives; his womanizing had ended those marriages. He worked in a construction company and had made several passes at Jenny Wade when she had moved to the village.

  She had rebuffed him, but Joyner didn’t take refusal easily. He persisted and over the years, had turned downright nasty.

  He followed her openly whenever he spotted her, brushed against her if they were in a store or in Chuck’s bar, grinned and held his hands up in innocence when Jenny turned on him in a spitting rage.

  She could have gone to the police, but she had her pride. She had Livy, who she didn’t want to witness the interviews and the sheer hassle.

  Joyner had turned up at the post office just as she was leaving, spotted her, broke away from wherever he was heading and leered at her.

  She ignored him.

  He followed her.

  She quickened her steps and got in her car and swung away.

  He pursued her in his.

  She glanced once in the mirror. Joyner was stuck to her rear.

  She had to go pick up Livy from school, go home, prepare dinner.

  She took a slightly longer route to the school, hoping that Joyner would break away.

  He didn’t.

  He parked behind her, was still there when she came out with Livy skipping beside her.

  A bolt of panic shot through Jenny, but she swallowed it.

  Milton Mills was a safe haven for her. Joyner wouldn’t dare to approach her.

  He stepped outside his car though and hogged the pavement, watching her insolently, his eyes running up and down her body.

  She had to pass him to get to her car. She tried to skirt by, keeping as much distance as she could between them.

  That wasn’t enough.

  ‘Stuck up, bitch.’

  Her face flamed when she heard his low voice. She looked down once to see if Livy had heard.

  Thankfully she hadn’t. She was narrating her day at school.

  Jenny picked up the pace, hustled her daughter to the car, opened her rear door and bent down to place Livy in her seat.

  She saw Joyner’s feet appear in the edge of her vision, then his legs, then his upper body.

  Embarrassment and anger and fear flooded through her.

  She knew what would happen.

  Her skirt had tightened when she had bent.

  Joyner would brush past her, accidentally.

  She fumbled
with seat belts, hurried, but Livy wasn’t settling down.

  She gave up, ducked out of the car, but it was too late.

  Joyner was a just a foot away, his hip swinging toward her rear, his eyes burning hot.

  Then he wasn’t.

  A wraith appeared beside him, a shadow.

  It moved, became a person.

  Its hand reached out, grabbed Joyner by the neck, dragged him back, and slammed his head on the roof of his car.

  Joyner’s lips split. His left cheek split. Blood flowed down his face, reddened the smart shirt he wore.

  The shadow didn’t let up.

  It smashed his face again and only when Joyner had turned limp, the shadow let go.

  Jenny Wade blinked, her mouth opening and closing, stumbling back.

  It had happened so fast that her mind hadn’t yet processed what her eyes had seen.

  The shadow bent down and then her mind caught up.

  Mr. Carter.

  He bent over the moaning Joyner and said something. He rose, didn’t glance at her, moved past her, buckled her daughter’s seatbelt and then stood, one hand opening the door for her.

  She moved in a daze, noticing but not really seeing his brown eyes. They were flat, impassive, and dark.

  She slid in her car, turned the key and drove away, unthinkingly.

  Later, much later, when her daughter had slept, when she had laced a rare cup of coffee with liquor, something came back to her.

  Mr. Carter’s words when he bent over Joyner.

  ‘You can forget what happened, or you can go to the cops. The choice is yours. Whatever you do, remember this. The next time you even come close to Ms. Wade, I’ll break your legs.’

  Dade Joyner didn’t go to the cops.

  He nursed his injuries, explained them as a bathroom accident, and hid his hurt and rage.

  He spotted Carter a couple of times, thought about confronting him, attacking him at night, but when he felt those dark eyes on him, something moved in him. Something that was scared. Something that made him visit the restroom.

  He nursed his anger and bitterness and hurt over drinks at Chuck’s and that’s where he met Lambo and Diesel.

  They got talking, drinks were consumed, rage was ignored and temporarily forgotten when tales of women and their conquests came up.

  He rose unsteadily an hour later, headed to the john, relieved himself and when he returned, he settled down with his new friends with a sigh.

  His gaze moved in the bar and came upon a man in the corner. A man sitting alone.

  Carter.

  ‘Fucker.’ The curse slipped his mouth, caused his companions to look at him in astonishment.

  Diesel thought Joyner had sworn at them and was prepared to do battle, when he saw the man’s eyes were elsewhere.

  His eyes followed and an involuntary sound escaped his mouth.

  He nudged Lambo and directed his attention to the man in the corner.

  He knew it for sure, when Lambo went still.

  The man was Carter.

  Carter and Cezar’s woman were in the same town that hadn’t been on their radar.

  Boiler had to be informed.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Are you sure?’ Boiler asked the same question he had asked before; it felt like years now.

  Diesel’s voice rose as he explained in elaborate detail. How they had seen her. Their following her, confirming where she worked, lived. Double checking with Chuck casually and other villagers.

  ‘The timelines fit, boss.’

  ‘There’s no Cezar.’ Boiler replied flatly.

  ‘Nope. She came to town with just her girl.’

  Boiler thought about it while he flipped through the photographs Diesel had sent to his phone.

  He had passed them around to his crew and those who knew Cezar and his woman, confirmed that Jenny Wade was her.

  Asking the snitch in the Marshals office was pointless. He didn’t know any better.

  ‘Boss?’ Diesel’s voice brought him back. ‘About Carter –’

  ‘He’ll be handled,’ Boiler cut him off.

  ‘Boss, we should ask this Wade woman.’

  ‘We will.’ Boiler’s face was a frightful sight to behold. ‘We’ll talk to her.’

  He hung the phone up and called for Knuckles.

  ‘We’re leaving for Milton Mills.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  Boiler explained.

  Knuckles’ furrowed brow cleared. Going to some unheard of town, now made sense. ‘When?’

  ‘At the earliest.’

  ‘Ten-man crew?’

  Boiler drew out his blade and polished it unnecessarily. The knife was gleaming steel and could cut through flesh as if it was butter. He thought about crews and likely opposition.

  The village was small and while the town of Milton had a police department, it wasn’t big.

  The plan was to hit the village like a gale, question Wade and disappear before any alarm could be raised.

  It could be done. He had done it before. Several times. In several small towns in Florida and in other states.

  The villagers were mostly old. They wouldn’t offer any opposition.

  Carter? Maybe he was shacked up with Wade, though Diesel said they lived separately.

  Neighbors. They didn't interact, but that didn't mean anything.

  Still, Carter was just one man.

  Ten men should be enough.

  ‘Twenty,’ he ordered.

  Burke stretched, stifled a yawn and rubbed the back of her neck. They had been poring through Theo’s findings for twelve hours straight.

  They had made progress.

  A gas station near Damascus had a grainy image of a man who looked like Ajdan. He was accompanied by two men who looked like the other two assassins.

  Theo had run the images through enhancement programs and was confident the three men were the killers.

  The timing fit. The images were two days before the Parker killing.

  Her crew was now chasing down motels in Damascus and the surrounding towns; the killers had to have spent the nights somewhere.

  It was all coming together. Burke shared a rare high-five with her crew and ordered them back to their workstations.

  She chewed her lip as her fingers stroked her phone.

  Should I? He did send the laptop. Anonymously.

  She fired off the text to Carter.

  High probability that Ajdan killed Parker.

  She didn’t wait for a response. She knew none would be forthcoming. She turned her attention to printouts on her desk.

  They had revealed other secrets.

  They now had Ajdan’s movements in the country. They had been able to crack several of the identities he used, and from there, it had been relatively easy to place him on the few flights he had taken, and at several car rental agencies.

  They were also able to group his flights around possible hits in the country. A state government official in Kentucky. An oil company man in Texas. A lady chief executive in San Francisco.

  There was just one flight a few years back that was seemingly unconnected to any killing.

  A flight to Florida.

  Kowalski and her crew had debated it for hours, but they hadn’t got anywhere.

  She had a nagging feeling that flight was important.

  She idly flicked through sheets on her desk. Reports from all over. Chicago P.D.’s reports on Churchey. On Carter.

  Her hand stilled.

  It went back to the report on Churchey.

  Mobster. Chicago based.

  But how about gangs in Florida?

  Energized, she bent back to her laptop.

  Moving twenty hoods from one part of the country to another wasn’t easy.

  Boiler decided to drive rather than fly. That was something he had learned from Ajdan.

  Airports and train stations had clusters of cameras.

  Cameras were bad for assassins and gangs.

 
He called one of their garages - they owned several - and asked for six SUVs to be readied.

  All black, untraceable plates.

  The garage acknowledged. The vehicles would be ready in two days.

  He called Ajdan. The call was brief once they went through security protocols.

  ‘Carter’s in Milton Mills. So is Cezar’s woman.’

  He explained, not to any great length. Ajdan and he were similar in that respect. They didn’t go in for lengthy, wordy conversations.

  ‘Yes, we’re sure,’ he answered Ajdan’s question and hung up.

  They were sure, this time.

  Lambo and Diesel had followed the Wade woman extensively and had videoed her. They had videoed Carter too.

  His entire crew swore that Jenny Wade was Cezar’s woman.

  He conveyed one last message to a runner.

  That runner passed the message to another courier in San Francisco. The Frisco guy spoke to a brother he knew in New Mexico, who knew a coyote.

  A coyote was a people smuggler. Coyotes moved Mexicans and others from one side of the border to the other.

  The movement was in one direction only. From Mexico to the United States.

  The coyote moved the message down the line and it finally reached Big G.

  Cezar’s woman has been located. Boiler is going after her.

  Big G whooped in delight.

  Zeb didn’t get Burke’s text.

  He was kayaking in the Salmon Falls River, when his phone fell in the water. The phone that he used to communicate with Burke.

  He thought of diving to retrieve it, but scrubbed the thought. He would contact her once he got back to the village.

  In any case she needed time to piece together whatever was in the laptop.

  He stretched back in satisfaction and looked up at the blue sky high above. The river was calm, silent, just like him. It had no other kayakers, which suited him just fine.

  The river was life. For some, he was death, but the river understood him. It had run on its bed for hundreds of years. It knew all there was to know about life and death and good and bad.

  Werner logged the text from Burke to Zeb. It paused its humming for a moment and sent the message to Broker and the rest of Zeb’s crew.

  Werner was bored. There was nothing on its plate that tasked it unduly. It flirted with supercomputers from around the world. There was one in Switzerland that it liked, but the Swiss Miss was yet to come online.