Clean Cut Kid (A Logan Connor Thriller Book 1)

by Micheal Maxwell

  Logan dove through the shattered window. As he flipped forward, he trained his pistol on the one crouched beside the couch. The Spartan’s rifle barrel swung around, trying to keep up with Logan’s dive. Logan squeezed the trigger twice and didn’t even wait to see where the bullets hit. He landed on his right shoulder and rolled across his back to his left hip. The roll dissipated all of his momentum and any of the force of hitting the ground. He rolled to his knee as the one lying prone was squirming around to face him.

  Logan shot him one time in the forehead. He was dead before his head hit the ground. Sydney dove through the broken window as well, executing a similar combat roll in the opposite direction. She landed on her left shoulder and rolled to her right hip. She popped up onto her knees, firing up the staircase. The bullets that hit the Spartan’s vest staggered him like being punched in the chest, but the vests were bulletproof. Her third shot, to the head, finished him.

  Logan scrambled behind the couch to confirm that his first two shots did indeed hit the man beside the couch. They had. The Spartan lay bleeding into the hardwood floor. Logan picked up his AK-47. He released the magazine and checked for ammunition. About twenty rounds remained. He pushed the magazine back in, slapped the bottom to ensure it was seated, and charged the handle. Sydney did the same thing with the same professional efficiency. They moved like robots designed for the task.

  “Which way?” Sydney whispered.

  She kept her rifle trained on the staircase. Logan watched a doorway to the side of the large, open room. The dilapidated mansion seemed to sprawl outward and upward from this main room. If they cleared the first floor, they risked someone coming down the stairs behind them. If they went upstairs, they were risking someone following them up the stairs.

  Kings are never on the first floor of the castle, though. If they were here to do a job, then they should get to get busy. The longer it took the more danger they were in.

  “Let’s go for the king,” Logan whispered. “I’ll take point.”

  A beam of sunlight began to creep up the stairs. Logan crept one step at a time with his rifle at the ready, pointing up the stairs. Sydney kept her rifle pointed down as she crept backwards up the stairs. Above their heads, a floorboard creaked. Logan froze. He listened for more footsteps. He thought he heard a few but couldn’t be sure. The squeak was real, though. There was at least one person up there.

  They took a few more steps up the stairs. Then, they heard a voice shouting at them in heavily-accented English, “Have you heard the story of the Trojan horse? The Trojans were so confident. They thought they could not be beat. In their arrogance, they destroyed themselves.”

  Logan took a few more steps up the long stairwell.

  Menelaus shouted down the stairs again. “Tell me, Logan Connor, Prince of Troy, have you invited your own destruction inside your walls?”

  They reached the top of the stairs. Logan slowly moved his head around a corner. He caught a glimpse of Menelaus, a chubby Beninese man, wearing a business suit. He held a massive assault rifle of some type. The gun barked and sprayed thunder but, Logan was already behind the wall. The bullets slammed against the wall.

  Logan whispered to Sydney. “Where are the others?”

  A drug kingpin didn’t protect himself with only three recruits. Where were the other Spartans?

  “Do you hear that?” Menelaus yelled while laughing. “Do you hear the hooves?”

  * * *

  Park and Juliette sat in the jeep. They’d turn the engine off to conserve gas, and the air conditioner barely worked anyway. Mostly, it just blew hot outside air at them. Park sat with her feet on the seat and her butt where the headrest should be. She held an AK-47 in her lap. This gave her a good view of the surroundings. Juliette sat in the back on the jeep’s tailgate, supposedly watching Park’s back.

  If she’s the traitor, why would she watch my back? Wouldn’t she just let them run up and kill me? Park thought. Only if Menelaus sent a strike team. It would be too risky just to let some junior enlisted start firing in your direction.

  Nevertheless, she checked over her shoulder every few seconds just to be sure. If Juliette was acting, she was good at it. She whipped the gun barrel in the direction of every squirrel, bird, and particularly large insect that moved. She at least gave the appearance of being on alert.

  Verlay broke the silence in French. “So, you and Agent Connor. What’s that?”

  Park chuckled and responded without moving her eyes off her area of watch. “Have you heard of the Bechdel Test?”

  Verlay responded, “In movies, a test to see if there are even two female characters and if there are, do they talk about anything other than a man?” Verlay shrugged. “I like men. I like to talk about them.”

  Fair enough.

  Park responded, “He is a good man. He’s good to me. At first, in my country, I thought he was only working me to help him escape, and I think I was right. I was working him, too. I needed to escape. When he got me out of detention, I knew he was being honest. The CIA has a million agents. He did not need me. He wanted me.”

  Verlay agreed. “It’s nice to be wanted.”

  “What did you do before you worked for your government?” Park asked.

  “Aha. Not a question about a man. When I was in high school, my friends and I would get together to eat junk food and write computer games. Eventually, some of us started writing a different type of code. About the same time, banks were starting to network their computers with banks all over the world. I wrote a code that made banks think the basement where I would hang out with my friends was a bank. We would request money transfers. Small stuff at first. Twenty, thirty euros. It was mostly just for fun.”

  She broke off her story when something rustled in the brush. She zeroed the AK-47 on it. A rat skittered in some fallen leaves and raced up a tree. She lowered the rifle.

  “We were too afraid of getting caught to take more than that. But, if we could convince the central bank of France that we were a bank, they wouldn’t think twice about moving thousands of euros. So, I wrote another code. This one was more complex and more ingenious than anything I had ever written. It was more like a painting or a symphony than a code. It worked. The Bank of France recognized our basement as a banking institution and we wired ourselves millions of Euros. We got caught when we began to spend it. Teenagers with Maseratis and diamond rings. We were foolish. The DRSD, military intelligence, offered me a choice. Return all of the money and go to jail or return all of the money and work for them. I have been here ever since.”

  A hacker. That could be her cover story. We usually use enough truth to make it easy to remember. So, the hacking part is probably true. But why would she admit to being military counterintelligence? Why would a spy hunter admit to being one if she was hunting a spy?

  All of these spy games were enough to make Park’s head hurt. In the distance, she heard a low whine. Juliette must have heard it too because she perked up.

  The low whine grew louder and louder until it was unmistakable: engines. They were hearing the sound of truck engines moving pretty fast.

  “Trouble,” Juliette shouted in French.

  Park dropped into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine chugged and chugged and chugged and sputtered but wouldn’t start. Park tried it again. Same thing. She tried it a third time and pumped the gas as she did it. This time, the jeep jumped to life.

  It was too late, though. A line of brand-new trucks came roaring down the road behind them. The truck in the lead had an M-2 machine gun bolted to the bed. One of Menelaus’s Spartans stood in the bed of the truck, ready to unleash the machine gun.

  Park tried to pull forward but another truck came from the opposite direction. This one too had a Spartan standing in the bed hands gripping a mounted machine gun. They were pinned in on a wooded road. The trees were too dense on either side to get very far. Park Dae Lun and Juliette Verlay had thought they were hiding but really, they were just trapping
themselves.

  The machine gunners on the backs of the trucks didn’t start firing yet. They just stood at their posts, waiting for orders. Perhaps, they would… their thumbs went to the triggers on the handle.

  Verlay sighed and said, “Park, it has been an honor to serve with you.”

  Park responded, “The honor is mine.”

  In unison, the guns started. The sound wasn’t independent gunshots or even the quick succession of an automatic rifle. This sounded like ripping canvas: a single, deafening screech. The bullets ripped the jeep apart, tore through Park Dae Lun and Juliette Verlay, and tore the ground to shreds.

  * * *

  The sound of machine guns was unmistakable. Sydney and Logan were still in the stairwell, and Menelaus lurked around the corner. The machine guns ripped for a few minutes and then, perhaps even worse, they stopped. They stopped so quickly. That meant the gunners were dead or the targets were.

  Menelaus laughed. “Oh, did you hear that? My Spartans have emerged inside of your walls.”

  “What have you done?” Logan shouted around the corner.

  “Go,” Menelaus responded. “Go and find out.”

  Logan looked to Sydney. Sydney shook her head. “The mission,” she whispered.

  Logan pleaded with his eyes. He must know what happened to Park. He needed to save her. He would just have to kill Menelaus quickly.

  He took a few steps down the stairs and aimed at the wall about where he thought he’d seen Menelaus. He flipped to semiautomatic and squeezed a few rounds at the wall. They seemed to fall dead from the wall.

  Menelaus laughed. “These walls are cement. You are in a castle, remember?”

  Okay. New plan.

  Menelaus shouted. “My Spartans will be coming back soon. You should go now.”

  Not yet, Logan thought.

  He untied one boot and pulled the lace out. He tied the bootlace to the trigger of the AK-47 and flipped the selector to fully automatic. He crept up to the top of the stairs. He tossed his AK-47 into the hallway with the barrel facing in Menelaus’s general direction. He yanked the bootlace. The gun erupted with a blast of bullets.

  Menelaus grunted. He sprayed back a stream of bullets from his rifle. Logan felt pretty good that grunt meant he’d hit Menelaus. When the shooting stopped, Logan rolled into the hallway, spraying a burst of bullets. Menelaus sat on the ground at the end of the hallway. Blood covered his left arm, and his rifle was propped under his right arm. He sprayed return fire but couldn’t aim with only one hand.

  Sydney leaned around the corner with her stolen AK-47. She put three rounds into Menelaus’s chest. The kingpin slumped over.

  “Some king,” Sydney said.

  Logan was already running down the stairs.

  He sprinted the half-mile through the woods. Sydney followed him. They went through the woods to avoid Menelaus’s men on the main road.

  They met a truck full of Menelaus’s men waiting at the jeep. The firefight was brief. A recruit in an opium drug lords paramilitary just couldn’t shoot like Agency trained operatives.

  Logan pulled Park’s body out of the bullet-riddled jeep. The .50 caliber bullets ripped her to confetti. He cradled her head against his chest and cried. He didn’t expect to cry. He hadn’t cried in probably a decade. Seeing her torn apart like that brought it out of him. She was only in-country because of him. He talked her into defecting. He had brought her to Benin. He’d brought her to her death. She was dead because of him. Death was part of the game, but the death of a comrade, a person who trusted him, saved his life, was not in the manual.

  Juliette Verlay lay in the dirt behind the jeep.

  Sydney knew better than to move a dead body. It was an old insurgent trick to put an improvised explosive under a body.

  She pointed at Verlay’s body and said, “I guess this means she’s not the rat.”

  Logan wiped tears on his sleeve. “Or they thought she was no longer useful.”

  Sydney disagreed. “We’re still alive. We’ve escaped twice. This time they would have kept her alive until they were sure we’re dead. No, I don’t think it was her.”

  “Me neither, you’re right.”

  Logan got to his feet, carrying the body of Park Dae Lun.

  Sydney said, “What are you doing?”

  Logan responded, “I’m going to bury them, then I’m going to blow up Menelaus’s house, then I’m going to kill whoever betrayed us.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The market sold everything they would need. The fuel oilman was glad to see the Americans return. Logan bought his entire supply of fuel, 550 gallons of diesel, gasoline, and fuel oil. Then, he paid the oilman to help him load them into the truck they stole from Menelaus.

  They bought ammonium nitrate fertilizer in forty-pound bags. Then, all they needed was gunpowder. They ended up having to buy a bunch of fireworks and pull the black powder out of them.

  Sydney and Logan spent the next day at the safehouse turning the various barrels of petroleum into bombs.

  “Menelaus is dead,” Sydney said. “This serves no purpose.”

  Logan gritted his teeth. “When you kill a king and win the war, you sack the city. It’s a message for anyone else who wants to mess with me.”

  The ten-barrel bombs weighed over four thousand pounds. The truck bumped along slowly with the weight of the barrels bottoming out the suspension.

  Logan drove and Sydney rode in the back. Sydney’s sniper rifle rode in the passenger seat. She sat on one of the bombs, holding onto the mounted machine gun for stability. Every time the truck bounced over a bump and the suspension clunked, she prayed that Logan made the bombs as stable as he claimed. Fertilizer bombs weren’t known for their stability.

  They drove right down the main road. First, they encountered a truck just like the one they were driving doing patrols. Each truck contained a driver and a gunner. As they turned onto the main road, Sydney killed the gunner with a burst from the machine gun. He didn’t even get his thumbs to the triggers. She sprayed the front windshield, killing the driver.

  They kept driving. Closer to the compound, they encountered a foot patrol. Logan parked the truck. He and Sydney moved on foot. A stray burst of AK-47 fire could puncture their 55-gallon drums and drain the fuel out of their bombs.

  They took up shooting positions behind trees. Logan leaned around a corner and shot a Spartan. Sydney shot the other one on patrol. They no doubt had already settled who was the new king.

  They got back in the truck and moved closer to the compound. About a half-mile away, they parked on the road.

  Logan handed Sydney her sniper rifle, a Barrett 99. It was effective to a range of over a mile. Without a spotter, the best she could do was probably about a half-mile.

  Sydney climbed onto the roof of the truck, lying prone with her rifle. “Watch my back.”

  “Always,” Logan responded. He’d buried Juliette and Park. He was never going to let another woman down.

  The gun barked once, and Sydney’s entire body shook from the recoil. The Syssitia, Menelaus’s house, was too far away to hear the impact. Logan knew that each bullet meant another drug soldier died. He was getting tired of killing young men, for whom drug militias were the only way for them to make a life for themselves.

  He swept the area with his AK-47, watching for Spartans.

  Crack. Another Spartan dead.

  Pop. Another Spartan dead.

  In the distance, among the trees, something crunched the underbrush. Logan pulled his gun up to see. He scanned the area, sweeping the gun barrel back and forth. A team of Spartans crept through the woods. Logan dropped to his knees and then lowered himself to a prone position.

  He whispered to Sydney, “We’ve got three of them at six o’clock. I got em.”

  One of them peeked his head around a tree to look for Logan. He sent a spray of bullets in the Spartan’s direction. Three of them ripped chunks of bark and wood out of the tree, but one bullet met its mark. The Spar
tan dropped to the ground.

  Logan scrambled to his feet and pressed his attack. He slid behind a tree and waited. Nothing. So, he darted to another tree, closer to where the Spartans were hiding.

  Another one poked his head out from behind a tree. Logan shot once in his direction but missed. How many times did he shoot? Four at the first Spartan and one at this one? Twenty-five bullets left.

  He raced to the next tree. Now, he was maybe fifty feet away from the two remaining Spartans. He darted to another tree. Thirty feet. If they were going to hunker down like this, he was going to have to get closer to make his shot. A gun barked somewhere in the woods behind him. Something punched him in the leg. He dropped to his knees and swung the rifle backward in the direction of the shot. More shots followed it, overlapping each other.

  A tall skinny Spartan ran at him while firing. He would have been better off just taking a good shooting position and firing. Facing a storm of bullets, Logan dropped onto his face and fired from a prone position. The first two bullets hit the spartan in the chest. His vest absorbed most of the force. The third hit the spartan in the arm. Instantly, his arm went limp, and he dropped his rifle. He skidded to a halt, flailing with an arm that wouldn’t respond. Logan ended him with a fourth shot.

  By this time, the two hiding behind the trees were advancing. Logan rolled and sprayed them wildly, barely even bothering to aim. They both fell, and his rifle bolt stayed open. He was out of ammunition. Hopefully, there were no more Spartans lurking in the woods.

  He tried to get to his feet and immediately fell back down. Nothing punched him. He’d been shot. A bullet slammed into his right thigh but it didn’t go out the other side. His pants were soggy with blood. Only now that the battle was slowing down did his mind register the pain. It felt like knives in his blood trying to stab their way out of his leg from the inside out.

  He groaned and worked his way back to his feet, using his rifle as a cane. He hobbled back to the road where Sydney was standing with her AK-47 in a ready position. The sniper rifle was back in the passenger seat.