The Discarded

by Brett Battles

As they passed beneath the lit office window, they could hear snippets of Boyer’s voice.

  “…sure of that?…tell if the congressman…Wednesday. No, no. Wednesday…doesn’t matter. What does is if that asshole….Exactly…”

  Upon reaching the door into the wing section, Quinn retrieved a device identical to the one Orlando had used at Eli’s townhouse, and used it to deactivate the alarm in a way that would not alert Boyer to their actions. He then stepped out of the way and let Nate pick the lock.

  Just inside was a well-lit mudroom that made use of the goggles no longer necessary. Quinn noted only a single jacket on the hooks, all but confirming Boyer was alone.

  After trading their dart guns for the SIGs, they proceeded into the hallway that ran the length of the wing. At the end, where the annex met the house, was a set of stairs.

  Quinn went first as they headed up, quick and quiet, and emerged into an open area with a couch, a few chairs, and a television. Beyond was a shorter hallway running against the south side of the building. Two doors on the north side, with a third straight back at the very end of the hall, light leaking from under it.

  They stopped at the other two doors only long enough to make sure no one was inside before walking to the end.

  “…care. We can’t do it that way and you know it,” Boyer was saying. Though his voice wasn’t raised, his words were delivered in a way that said: Don’t mess with me. “Tell them to get it done, and then get the goddamn information to the client. I don’t want to hear about this again. Am I understood?….Good.”

  When Quinn was sure the call was over, he gave Nate a quick nod and pushed the door open.

  Boyer turned to them as quickly as his girth would allow. “Who authorized you to come in here?”

  In their dark clothing, they looked somewhat similar to the sentries outside but not exactly the same. A realization that took Boyer a moment to reach.

  When he did, he moved toward the large desk in the center of the room. But Nate got to him long before Boyer could reach it and jerked him back.

  “Get your hands off me!” Boyer yelled as he tried to twist free.

  “This will go much easier if you cooperate, Mr. Boyer,” Quinn said.

  Nate manhandled the McCrillis executive into one of the puffy leather chairs in front of the desk.

  “Sit,” he said.

  “Go to hell,” Boyer replied.

  “I said sit,” Nate told him as he kicked him in the back of the knees, forcing Boyer to flop into the chair.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “People you shouldn’t have screwed with,” Quinn said.

  “Oh, really?” he said. “I’m the one who shouldn’t be screwed with. That’s a life-changing mistake. My men will be here in a moment so I suggest you—”

  “I assume you mean the same men who stopped us from coming up here,” Quinn cut him off. “Yeah, none of them are going to be doing anything for a little while. Or do you mean the men who will be arriving because of the alarm we should have tripped getting in? Sorry, not happening, either.”

  Quinn had to give the man credit. Instead of looking frightened, Boyer’s anger seemed to increase. “You have no idea what I am capable of doing. I will ruin you.”

  “No,” Quinn said. “You will not.”

  With a nod from Quinn, Nate whipped the barrel of his gun into the side of Boyer’s head.

  Boyer yelled in pain. “You’ll fucking pay for that!”

  Quinn smirked. “I doubt that.”

  Boyer forced a laugh.

  Quinn took a step forward. “Where is the man you abducted earlier this evening?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Quinn signaled Nate, who hit Boyer again.

  “Fuck!”

  Quinn leaned in again. “Your people grabbed him, put him in a car. Where is he?”

  Boyer tried to spit at Quinn, but only succeeded in dribbling saliva down his chin.

  “Where is the man you took?”

  “You can go f—”

  Nate’s pistol slammed into the man’s head a third time.

  “Where is the man you took?” Quinn repeated.

  Boyer spit out some blood before looking at Quinn again. “If you know who I am, then you know I would never cower to little fucks like you.”

  Quinn placed his suppressed SIG against Boyer’s right knee and pulled the trigger.

  A loud, agonizing scream filled the room. If there hadn’t been so much space between the homes at The Hilltop, one of the neighbors might have heard Boyer, but with the way the community was laid out—not a chance.

  Quinn moved the gun to the other knee. “Where is the man you took?”

  Boyer writhed in his chair. “Goddammit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!”

  “Answer my question or I pull the trigger again.”

  “Wait! Wait!” The man fell back against his chair, his jaw tensing in pain.

  After a moment, Quinn shifted the position of the suppressor half an inch to remind Boyer he was still there. The man’s eyelids popped open.

  “Where is he?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  Quinn pulled the trigger.

  Another scream, but shorter than before because Boyer blacked out.

  Quinn let ten seconds pass, then said to Nate, “Wake him.”

  Nate slapped Boyer’s cheeks until the man sucked in a deep breath and looked around as if unsure where he was. Then the pain hit him again and he began to groan. “Oh, God!”

  “Where is the man you took?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Quinn moved the gun to Boyer’s shoulder.

  “No, please! I’m serious! I don’t!”

  “Then what happened to him?”

  “He’s…with one of…my people.”

  “Who?”

  A hesitation. “Gloria…Clark.”

  “The same woman you met in the courtyard near the Ritz-Carlton this afternoon?”

  Even with all the pain, Boyer looked surprised. “Yes…the same.”

  “What is she going to do with him?”

  “She’s supposed to find out why…he was following…me, and who he’s…working for.”

  “I can answer that last part for you right now. Me.”

  The man looked like he’d already figured that out.

  “You must have some idea where she took him,” Quinn said.

  The guarded look in Boyer’s eyes told Quinn he was right.

  “Tell me,” the cleaner said, poking the man’s wound again.

  Boyer moaned, “I don’t know.”

  This time Quinn grounded the muzzle deep into the wound. Boyer’s scream was so intense, it was almost soundless.

  “One of…one of our local facilities.”

  “Which one?”

  Boyer shook his head. “I prefer not to know that…information.”

  Quinn could see Boyer was telling the truth, so they’d have to use what he’d given them and figure out the rest on their own. But that didn’t mean Boyer didn’t have more information to give.

  “What was in the suitcase Gloria Clark gave you?”

  “Suitcase? Oh…clothes, mainly…some travel stuff.”

  “Whose?”

  “A guy named…Becker. We’re checking it…for a data chip.”

  “And did you find one?”

  “The lab’s looking now.”

  “So what’s supposed to be on this chip?”

  “Information…about…about a girl.”

  “What girl?” Quinn asked.

  “A girl who’s supposed to be dead.”

  “And is she?”

  Boyer’s response was lost in another tidal wave of pain. “Please,” he finally said. “Call…an ambulance…”

  The man’s voice was growing weaker, and Quinn knew they didn’t have much more time to get anything out of him. “What did you tell the woman to do with my friend after she’s done?”

 
; The man looked away, acting as if he hadn’t heard the question.

  “What did you tell her to do?” When Boyer still didn’t answer, Quinn grabbed his chin. “Look at me.”

  The man kept his eyes averted, so Quinn squeezed his jaw.

  “Look at me.”

  Reluctantly, Boyer did.

  “Did you tell her to eliminate him?”

  Boyer didn’t need to speak to provide Quinn an answer.

  The cleaner stood up and raised his gun.

  “No,” Boyer pleaded.

  “I told you already—you screwed with the wrong people,” Quinn said, and then shot Boyer through the forehead.

  They siphoned gas out of the cars in the garage and doused every room in the house. Before the now deceased McCrillis International executive vice president received a thorough soaking, Nate emptied the emergency container of dissolving chemicals from his kit into the wounds on Boyer’s head and knees. It wouldn’t completely hide the damage from the coroner, but it was fast acting enough to confuse things, leaving a mystery about what had happened here.

  After dragging the unconscious security guards far enough away from the building to be out of harm’s way, Quinn started the fire.

  Unlike the blaze in Copenhagen, this was one act of arson for which he felt no regrets.

  CHAPTER 22

  VIRGINIA

  MCCRILLIS INTERNATIONAL HAD three permanent black ops sites within fifty miles of the capital, each well equipped for Gloria’s purposes. The one closest, near College Station, Maryland, was being used by another team, so she had been assigned the facility in an industrial park in Springfield, Virginia.

  The interrogation room was below ground in a soundproof space with one-foot-thick concrete walls, a chair bolted to the floor, and cameras that could be turned on or off, depending on what the situation dictated.

  The prisoner, an Asian man with a goatee and shoulder-length black hair, had been brought in by a McCrillis transport unit twenty minutes after Gloria and her team arrived. The man was immediately taken to the interrogation room and strapped to the chair.

  Gloria had then spent the next fifteen minutes watching him on the monitor, hoping to pick up something she could use, but the whole time he just sat there, staring straight ahead, his expression blank. Even the bullet he’d taken didn’t seem to be fazing him. The wound had been treated before he was brought to the facility—nothing fancy, just a clean-and-bandage job. Given what was about to happen, any further treatment would have been a waste of resources.

  “Going in,” she said to King.

  “You want me to record?” he asked.

  She thought for a moment and then nodded. “Until I say otherwise.”

  She pushed the cart holding her bag of tricks toward the door.

  __________

  THIS WASN’T THE first time Daeng had been shot. It wasn’t even the first time he’d been shot in the leg. And as wounds went, this one hardly rated mention. It was a through and through, the bullet cutting a tunnel in his thigh muscle before exiting his leg. No bone hit, and, based on the fact his body hadn’t drained of blood, no artery, either.

  As for the pain, the mental training he’d received during the brief time he’d been a monk back in Thailand helped him let much of what he was feeling flow out of him. What pain remained, he was able to mask, cringing with each burning wave on the inside, while outwardly showing nothing at all.

  After being shoved into the van, he had been taken to the lowest level of a parking garage, where, about ten minutes later, a dirty white cargo van screeched down the ramp and pulled into the adjacent spot. One of the men he’d been squeezed between climbed out and then wagged his gun at Daeng and said, “Let’s go.”

  As Daeng gingerly scooted across the seat, the side door of the cargo van opened. From his angle, he could see four people inside—two up front and two in the cargo area.

  “I don’t need to tell you what to do, right?” the man with the gun asked.

  Daeng answered by hobbling over to the van and sitting in the opening. From there, he could see a fifth guy in back.

  “All the way in,” someone behind him said.

  If only these assholes had shot him in the arm instead. He could have made quick work of the guy with the pistol and then run like hell. He could still accomplish the first part in his current condition, but escaping on foot was not going to happen, so he swung his legs inside and scooted out of the doorway.

  “Ari, you’re up,” the guy closest to Daeng said as he closed the door.

  The guy in the back picked up what looked like a hard plastic toolbox and moved over to Daeng. From the box, he removed a pair of heavy-duty shears that he used to cut away the portion of the pant leg covering Daeng’s wounds. He then cleaned everything out and bandaged Daeng.

  “That should hold him,” the man announced.

  With that, the van left the garage.

  Though there were no windows in back that allowed Daeng to see where they were going, he knew by the time the vehicle stopped that they were well out of Washington.

  The guy in the front passenger seat hopped out, and a few seconds later, Daeng could hear the squeaky sound of a metallic roll-up door being chained open. When it stopped, the driver pulled the van several feet forward and turned off the engine.

  It wasn’t much of a stretch to guess they were now inside a building. This was confirmed a few moments later when the side door opened. No one asked Daeng to get out this time. Instead, two of the men grabbed him by the arms, hoisted him out of the vehicle, and guided him to a stairwell in the corner of the room. At the bottom they entered a dimly lit hallway that looked to Daeng to be concrete all the way around.

  The room they took him into was three doors down and no more than twelve feet square. It had a single chair in the center of the room, facing away from the door. As he was pushed onto it, he discovered it was bolted to the floor. The men handcuffed his wrists and ankles to the chair and then left.

  He had seen the cameras when he was brought in, so he knew someone was watching him. The watcher no doubt expected to see a man in pain and fear. Instead, he kept his expression blank and pictured himself lounging on a hammock in Chiang Mai, the scent of pepper and basil in the air, and a Thai pop song somewhere in the distance.

  Finally, he heard the door behind him open.

  Footsteps. The click, click, click of a woman’s shoes. And the rolling of wheels.

  Not far into the room, the moving wheels stopped but the clicks continued.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Daeng saw her come around his left side. He kept staring ahead, so it wasn’t until she was standing right in front of him that he got his first good look at her.

  The woman from the courtyard. Of course.

  She studied his face and then looked him up and down. “Well, you are an interesting specimen,” she said. “I understand you haven’t told anyone your name yet. Perhaps you don’t speak English.” She slowed her speech, pronouncing each word carefully. “Do you understand me?”

  Using the southern California accent he’d perfected while living in L.A. as a teenager, he said, “I understand you better when you speak normally.”

  “So you do talk. Then how about giving me your name?”

  “You’re the host. You should go first,” he said.

  “All right, then. I’m Gloria. And you are?”

  “Not in the habit of giving my name to someone who holds me hostage. You can appreciate that, can’t you, Gloria?”

  The smile she gave him was closed lip and humorless. “And you can appreciate that cooperation is the much easier path.”

  “For you, perhaps.”

  “Why were you following the Maserati?” she asked.

  Daeng knew he had one job—buy time. And to do so sometimes meant dangling a carrot. “Why did you meet with the man who was in the Maserati and give him a suitcase? Was it full of items you took from Mr. Becker’s townhome? Or were you with him in Florida, too?
”

  She stared at him, fake smile gone. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Careful. Your lack of control is showing.”

  She stepped forward and punched him in the cheek.

  He stretched his mouth and said, “That was more for you than for me, I believe.”

  Predictably, that brought on a second hit. “Who are you?”

  Blood trickled out of Daeng’s mouth, but he kept his expression relaxed. “You choose what you want to call me. I’m flexible.”

  Breathing heavily, she raised her fist as if she were going to strike a third time, but seemed to get ahold of herself at the last moment and lowered her arm.

  As soon as her breathing steadied, she walked back to whatever it was she had wheeled into the room. Daeng didn’t try to see what she was doing. He’d know soon enough.

  He heard a latch opening, followed by a squeak of movement. There was a moment or two of things knocking together, then relative quiet. When she walked back into view, she was holding a syringe.

  “You’re not going to enjoy this,” she said. “Not only will this make you tell me everything I want to know, it’s going to make you feel like shit, too.”

  He smiled and said, “I appreciate the warning.”

  MARYLAND

  QUINN COULD SEE the glow of the fire in the rearview mirror as he and Nate drove away from The Hilltop. He gave it another couple miles to make sure they hadn’t been spotted, and then called Orlando.

  “Did you find Boyer?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And you two are all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then give me a second.” The speaker went silent as she put him on hold.

  “I guess we’re not priority anymore,” Nate said.

  Quinn grunted.

  After nearly a minute, Orlando returned. “Sorry.”

  “Everything all right there?” Quinn asked.

  “Yeah, just had to talk to someone. Did Boyer know where Daeng is?”

  “Not exactly, but he pointed us in the right direction.”

  He gave her a quick rundown of his discussion with Boyer. “I’m hoping that you can track down where these McCrillis facilities are located, then Nate and I will do drive-bys and see if the tracker on the woman’s car is still working.” The trackers, unfortunately, only had an effective range of four miles. After that, the signal became spotty before dropping off to nothing.