Six Cut Kill

by David R Lewis

  “Right,” Charlene replied. “Sorry about the handwriting. I was in a hurry.”

  “And this is South Africa?”

  “He does business in East Rand. That’s part of the Johannesburg metroplex. He stays in the Africa Rock Hotel in Kempton Park.”

  Crockett made some notes on the paper. “And this is Kazakhstan?”

  “Correct. He uses the Cosmonaut Hotel in Karaganda. When he’s in China, he goes to Shanxi Province,” Charlene went on, pointing to another line. “He stays in Yangquan at the Artic Ocean Hotel.”

  Crockett made some more notes. “And these dates are when he was in those places?”

  “Yes. In Seattle, he stays at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, and in West Virginia he uses the Residence Inn in Charleston.”

  Crockett peered at the list. “Gotcha,” he said. “Good work. Does his bodyguard, ah…”

  “Clark.”

  “Yeah. Does Clark go everywhere with him.”

  “Everywhere,” Charlene said.

  “So Clark is gone now.”

  “Uh-huh. Jack will be back in about ten days or so.”

  “And you believe these locations and dates to be accurate?”

  “They’re what he had in his travel journal. Jack is very fastidious. He keeps complete records of everything.”

  Crockett smiled. “Perfect,” he said. “Thanks. This’ll be a real help.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just putting ducks in a row. Does he ever talk to you about his business?”

  “Just about when he’s leaving and when he’ll be back. I didn’t even know what hotels he used until I got to snooping around.”

  “Well, you are an excellent snoop, lady. The other security guy…”

  “Preston.”

  “Does he patrol the grounds and stuff?”

  “Sometimes when Jack is around. Other than that, he’s just there in case I need him. We have electronics to let him know if somebody in hanging around the gate or comes up the main drive, but that’s about all. I heard Jack talking with him about adding some alarms and things around the barn now that he’s got stuff in there, but he hasn’t done anything about it yet. I’d know if he had because it’s close to the house.”

  “Is the barn locked up?”

  “It is now. Why?”

  “I may want to get in there.”

  “Oh. Ah, there’s a small kind of trap door in the wall on the back side that’s sort of a pass-through. It might be open. I don’t know if Jack even realizes it’s there.”

  “Can you check?”

  “Sure.”

  “Please.”

  “Okay. I’ll let you or Satin know tomorrow.”

  “Just right,” Crockett said.

  Charlene stood up. “I better go,” she said. “Preston likes to know where I am after dark, and dark is on the way.”

  “Thanks again, Charlene,” Crockett said, accepting a brief hug. “I appreciate you.”

  Charlene hugged Satin, patted both the dogs, and scooted out the door. Crockett pondered the list.

  “What’s going on?” Satin asked.

  “That fucker is so dirty I can taste it,” Crockett said. “I gotta call Clete.”

  Satin smiled. “Of course you do,” she said.

  Thirty minutes later, Clete and Crockett were twenty-five minutes into a phone call.

  “Son,” Clete said, “why didn’t you just email me this stuff instead of reciting it to me over the phone?”

  “Email?” Crockett asked.

  “Never mind. Sorry. I forgot how techno-challenged you are. I think I got it all.”

  “Good. Bring your official burglar outfit when you come out. We’re gonna have to sneak around a little I think.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I wanna find out what Bryant is storing in the barn.”

  “We gotta way in without gittin’ caught?”

  “I’ll know tomorrow.”

  “Okay. I’ll make some calls, git after this info, an’ see ya in a week or so. Say hey to everbody for me.”

  Clete arrived two days later.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Cletus Marshal looked across the snack bar at Crockett. “Son,” he said, “I’m tellin’ ya we got a pattern here. Evertime the bladerunner hit, Bryant was back home. Evertime.”

  “Could be a coincidence,” Crockett replied.

  It was Monday afternoon in the kitchen. Clete was getting frustrated.

  “An’, at no time did the bladerunner hit when Bryant wasn’t home.”

  “Circumstantial. No proof. No trace, no DNA, no witnesses, nothing to hold up in court.”

  “Then git this, goddammit. Twice in the past year, both times when Bryant was in Seattle, there was a murder there involvin’ the same technique. Once in the past year in a suburb of Charleston when he was there. Nothin’ like that in either place when he wasn’t.”

  “Same thing. No proof.”

  “I got with Interpol. They cain’t git nothing outa China, but in the past two years they’s been three killins like these in the Karaganda neck a the woods in Kazakhstan an’ two in the suburbs a Johannesburg. Ever damn time he was there. Ever fuckin’ time. An’ no bladerunner kinda killings when he was someplace else.”

  “It wasn’t Bryant,” Crockett said.

  “What the fuck, Crockett. I gotta hit you with a brick? Fuck is the matter with you? You git stupid or somethin’?”

  Crockett smiled. “It was Clark,” he said.

  Clete stopped waving his arms. “Who?”

  “Clark,” Crockett repeated. “One who associates with the dark and the deep, or something like that.”

  “The dark an’ the deep?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “Who told ya?”

  “A psychic.”

  “A psychic?”

  Crockett held onto his grin. “Yep.”

  “Oh, hell! Here we go! Some more a that goddamn heebie-jeebie crap.”

  “She told me that last fall. I guess dark and deep means mining. Bryant’s alleged business. Somebody who associates with him. I just didn’t put it together at the time.”

  “Who the hell is Clark?”

  “Bryant’s personal body guard. Bryant doesn’t have the physicality or training to do that kinda thing. I’ve seen Clark a couple of times. Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Ex-military. Gotta be Clark. Bryant told me once that Clark had skills. Never goes anywhere without him. This guy would give Jack the Ripper chills.”

  “Don’t that ketch the hog in the fence. Son, we gotta do sometin’ about this fool. God knows how many people he’s killed.”

  “You go right ahead, Texican. I don’t wanna tangle with him. I damn sure know when I’m outclassed.”

  “Maybe we oughta git aholt a Pelmore.”

  “State Police can’t do shit, Clete. What part of circumstantial don’t you grasp? Besides, what the hell does the Missouri Highway Patrol have to do with killings that not only cross state lines, but stretch into Asia and South fucking Africa!”

  “That goddamn shit we started at the motorcycle shop went plumb to Italy and Afghanistan!”

  “There was an evidence trail and probable cause, Clete. Two things we do not have.”

  “Well we damn shore cain’t let this fucker just run around slicin’ folks up! We gotta do somethin’.”

  “Yes, we do. We find out how dirty Bryant is, get some evidence or probable cause to get evidence, and nail his ass. He’ll take Clark with him. Then, we push the bladerunner thing. First things first. If you’re right about Bryant flying out of places heavier than when he flew in, he’s not just making deliveries. We gotta get in that barn warehouse of his and look things over. If he’s confident enough to stash shit out here where all he believes he has to worry about is backwoods county law, he thinks way too much of himself. That’s about the only advantage we have.”

  Cletus smiled. “We’ve had less,” he said.

  �
�Damn right we have,” Crockett agreed.

  “So we go in and take a little look-see.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Suits me,” Crockett said. “You bring any toys?”

  “Who the hell do ya think yer dealin’ with?”

  Crockett grinned. “I’ll call Stitch.”

  “Go ahead on,” Clete replied. “I’d hate to do anything without the hippie.”

  At one o’clock Tuesday morning, Crockett, Clete, and Stitch, all dressed in dark clothing, climbed out of Crockett’s truck beside the horse barn and stood under a sliver of a moon from a slightly overcast sky. The dome light from the Ram pooled weakly around them before the darkness sucked it away. Shivering slightly in the crisp night air, Cletus slid an action packer across the rear seat to within easy reach and popped the top. Crockett looked through the white plume of his breath to the dull gleam of the porch light on Danni’s little house fifty yards away and listened to the comfortable stirring of a couple of horses in the barn. All else was quiet and still.

  “We okay for the back barn door, man?” Stitch said.

  “Yeah. Charlene checked on it today.”

  “Here we go, fellers,” Clete said, handing Crockett and Stitch each a web-strapped apparatus. “Generation three night vision. It’ll reduce your field of vision and mess with your depth perception so don’t get in a big hurry, but you should be pretty used to it by the time we hike to the warehouse. Strap ‘em on nice and tight, ‘cause they’re real front heavy. Pain in the ass, but you’ll have both hands free. Between the lens tubes are two switches. One closest to your forehead turns the thing on. One farthest away is infrared assist. Once ya adapt to everthing bein’ green and not havin’ no shadows, it ain’t so bad.”

  Crockett and Stitch spent a few minutes adjusting the fit of the headsets and peering around rather nearsightedly.

  “Far out,” Stitch said.

  Clete handed Crockett a small pry bar, a larger pry bar, and a crowbar. “Hook them two little ones through your belt,” he said. “Carry the big’un in case we run into Bigfoot or somthin’.” He handed Stitch a battery operated electric drill and a small case of bits. “After Crockett smacks Bigfoot, drill him full a holes so he bleeds out.”

  “Cool,” Stitch whispered.

  Clete lifted a metal briefcase out of the container, put the top back on, and quietly closed the truck’s door.

  “Which way?” he asked.

  Crockett pointed north-northeast. “That way,” he said, “about three-quarters of a mile. We’ll leave tracks.”

  “Can’t help that,” Stitch said. “We should stick to hard ground or fence rows when we can. Lead on, man.”

  “Ten yard intervals,” Crockett said, and began to walk.

  The darkness swallowed them up.

  Crockett stayed on worked ground or game trails as much as he could, the night vision both a help and a hindrance. He flushed one rabbit from under his feet, and his hopping reaction brought a snort of humor from Clete, thirty feet behind him. The night was unusually quiet, magnifying the rustle of weeds and grass, lending weight to the thud of footsteps. The thirty minute walk seemed to take three times that long, but eventually they stood behind the barn, all of them panting slightly, more from tension then exertion. Stitch located the door near the barn’s northeast corner, a three foot square trap variety about chest high, hinged along the bottom edge. It opened easily. He handed his burdens to Crockett and, using Clete’s knee as a step, squirmed his way inside. Crockett went next, then Clete, with no outside help, wormed through the opening, supported from falling on his face by Crockett’s grip on his collar.

  “I think I saw the Three Stooges do somethin’ like this once,” Clete whispered.

  The central arena was less than a third full of spaced pod containers, each around seven feet high and wide with lengths from eight to as much as twenty feet, constructed of a smooth plastic product over a metal frame and secured with case-hardened padlocks.

  “Don’t wanna git into none a these,” Clete whispered. “Too obvious. One look an’ they’d know we’d been here. What else we got?”

  “Got some smaller crates over here,” Stitch replied, sliding a stall door open.

  Stacked five high and nearly filling the fourteen by fourteen foot area were wooden boxes, each about a foot high by five feet long by twenty-four inches wide.

  “Jackpot, fellers,” Clete said. “Stitch, help me lift the top four off this stack.”

  After the top crates were moved, Clete carefully went to work on the bottom one with the small prybar. Two minutes later, they were looking down at ten carefully cradled and packed combat rifles.

  “AK-74’s,” Clete said. “Outa Russia or China. Damn. We hit it, boys. Let’s close this up, restack, and look around. He removed a camera from his briefcase, took several photographs, and replaced the crate to its original position.

  The three of them labored for the next two hours, sampling the contents of nine stalls, each packed nearly full. The crates that could not be easily opened and replaced in pristine condition were drilled with a quarter inch hole in an inconspicuous spot, and inspected and photographed with a flexible photo optic lens and tiny light system that Cletus snaked in from the outside. By dawn they were sitting in Crockett’s kitchen at the snack bar, drinking coffee. Clete looked up from some figures he’d been totaling on a legal pad.

  “Well,” he said, “figurin’ on the crates we looked at, multiplied by the guestimation of the number of the ones we didn’t open that looked like the ones we did, what we got here is a shitload, boys. About two thousand AK-74 carbines with two magazines each, and around five or six hundred a them Saiga urban combat shotguns. Hell of a weapon. Much better than anything we make in the States. A thousand or more Makarov nine millimeter pistols, close to two hundred Dragunov rifles, and prob’ly more than a half a million rounds of assorted ammunition for all them guns. Plus, several thousand RGD-5 hand grenades.”

  “Jesus,” Crockett whispered. “This all Russian stuff?”

  “Probably started out that way,” Clete replied. “A lot of it coulda come from China. Look at the old AK-47. Russian design and original manufacture, but China build maybe three or four times as many of the things as Russia ever did. Cheap labor. I imagine Bryant gets whatever he can from where ever he can.”

  “What about South Africa?”

  “I speck that’s where it’s all goin’. Africa is a political shithole, son. Ain’t but a handful of even remotely stable guvmints on the whole fuckin’ continent! The market for weapons is huge. Any bidnessman in South Africa settin’ on a mess a easily portable, reasonably priced, one-man weapons is perched on a gold mine! Them folks love killin’ each other. Religion, politics, or just bloodlust, there’s been more atrocities in Africa than anywhere else on the globe. Look at Somalia for chrissakes. An’ it ain’t gonna stop anytime soon, if fuckin’ ever. Them ol’ boys hold grudges better’n a pissed off boar hog. Look at what them shitheads do to one another. Look how long it’s been goin’ on. Folks droppin’ like flies from starvation and disease, an’ still fixin’ to kill each other. An’ most of the aid we try to send ‘em gits grabbed by some warlord or clan leader or somebody before it even gits close to the people it was intended to help. That place makes all them sand lovin’ shitheads look like choirboys.”

  Stitch grinned. “Yeah,” he said, “but how do ya feel about Africa?”

  Clete grunted and stomped over to the nearly empty coffee pot for a refill.

  “This is way too big for us,” Crockett said. “The only real authority we have here is one Hart County Deputy Sheriff. That and a few bucks’ll get you the meatloaf special at Wagers Café. We need help.”

  “Who?” Clete asked. “Not Pelmore, he’s just the highway patrol. Not Ness, he’s just a city cop. What’s next, the BATF? Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms is the logical choice.”

  “Yeah,” Crockett agreed, “but what have they ever d
one for us?”

  “What the hell difference does that make?”

  “A lot. I think we need to go to the FBI.”

  Clete’s eyebrows soared upward. “The Feebs? That dumbass Kleffner?”

  Crockett smiled. “Montero,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Montero. The agent we dealt with on that shoot out by Cotton Gulch Road in South Dakota.”

  “The one we thought was just a deputy sheriff?”

  “That’s him. He and I got along real well. Let’s take this to him. Can you find him?”

  “I can try,” Clete grunted. “Want me to look up Jimmy Hoffa while I’m at it?”

  The group broke up about ten minutes before Satin came downstairs.

  “Coffee,” she said, looking toward the pot. She took the remaining half-cup and glared at Crockett.

  “Yes, M’am. Right away, Miz Satin,” he said, and hustled to make more.

  “I’ve been eavesdropping since a little after you guys got here,” she said. “Found a lot of guns, huh?”

  “A lot,” Crockett said, putting in a fresh filter. “Much more than we can deal with.”

  “So you’re calling in some other guy?”

  “Gonna try to. Montero. He was one of the investigators when Ivy’s was attacked and Ruby got killed.”

  “I don’t remember him.”

  “You probably didn’t even meet the man,” Crockett said, adding water to the coffeemaker and turning it on. “We thought he was a county deputy. Turned out he was a special agent for the Feebs. Showed up out in South Dakota when we went out there to deal with Carson’s ex-husband. Sharp guy. Played Clete and me like a banjo. Let us do most of his work for him. Good man, I think.”

  “You look tired.”

  “I am tired.”

  “Can I fix you some breakfast?”

  “Thanks, but no. “I’ll grab something a little later.”

  “You been up all night. Go to bed. Sleep. I’ll be on the way to work in thirty minutes. I’ll feed the dogs and stuff. You need to crash.”