Johnny Wylde

by Wynne, Marcus

  “Guns?” she said.

  “Yeah. Guns. Pistols, actually. Handguns.”

  “Oh, hell yeah,” she said.

  “I own a gunstore with a small private range. Would you like to spend some time there?”

  “Your time is your own?”

  “Of course. As it seems yours is.”

  “Well, I am a working girl, but that’s what’s nice about business trips…I can always, um, squeeze in some fun. Or shopping. I think I could squeeze you in…”

  He grinned. “Let’s shoot first.”

  “Strange idea of foreplay you have, big boy.”

  ***

  Lizzy was gone and the absence of her filled these rooms like the lingering echo from a bell. A vibration, a sense of something gone. I laughed at my own sappiness, and dialed my I-Pod, mounted in my Bose player, till I hit that good Bill Withers tune: Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone.

  “…it’s not warm, when she’s away…”

  I sat down in my front room. Restless. I got up, went into my spare room/study, unlocked my green foot locker. Opened it up. Folded desert camos, dusty and beaten desert boots. My decorations in a glass faced display case, put aside. A team photo, me and the Task Force, sitting outside a Blackhawk, weapons to hand. I put that aside as well. There was a black leather bound book there. I reached for it, stopped. Closed the chest and locked it again. Took my gun cleaning equipment out to the front room and spread it out on an old towel. Drew out my Combat Commander, broke it down, wiped the parts carefully, inspected them, then ran a patch soaked in Break Free down the barrel, wiped all the parts down, reassembled the already clean pistol and worked the action. Took a silicone cloth out, and a set of surgical gloves. Put on the gloves, then emptied all the rounds out of the magazines and wiped them clean before reinserting them into the magazine, then chambered a round, press checked it to make sure it was in place.

  So much for fingerprints.

  Deon would have everything else we needed at the safe house.

  I holstered the weapon, sat back, and listened to music.

  Lizzy.

  I wouldn’t see her till tonight. After.

  Under the full moon.

  ***

  “So what do I get to shoot?” Dee said. She perused the selection of handguns in Deon’s showcases as avidly as he imagined she might jewels in a jewelry store. “Wow, those are nice!” She pointed at a Wilson Custom.

  “You have good taste,” he said. He took out the wooden presentation box, locked back the slide, handed it to her. “That’s a $3000 pistol.”

  She took it, looked inside the chamber, eased the slide forward, locked the safety in place, all with the ease of long practice. Locked the weapon in a solid low Isosceles ready, brought it up, thumbed the safety off and pressed the trigger.

  No wobble in the weapon at all.

  “Not bad,” she said. “What’s the trigger set at, 4 pounds?”

  Deon smiled. “Four pounds exactly.”

  “I like how they take all the creep out. Wilson really does a good job, doesn’t he?”

  “You’re familiar with their work?”

  “No,” she said, laughing. “I just like to shoot. Just fooling you, big boy.”

  “Uh, huh. Want to shoot that, or something else?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to dirty that up for some paying customer, honey. I’m more of a Plain Jane girl when it comes to pistols. I like that Glock 19, fits my hand pretty good.”

  “You do have good hands.”

  She smiled, tossed her hair. “So I’ve been told.”

  He took a Glock 19 out of the rental cabinet and two full capacity magazines. “Here you go.”

  She took the pistol in one hand, magazines in the other. Followed him into the back, after he locked the front door. He turned on the lights in the range, pointed at a shelf in the booth where she could set her pistol and magazines down. She was very sure of herself, something he noticed right away. She tucked her hair back, put on the shooting glasses before she put on her headset -- a common gaffe with the new shooter was to reverse the process and end up fumbling to get the glasses on with the ear protection in place -- and settled them comfortably in place.

  He set three fifty round boxes of 9mm practice ammo on her shelf.

  “Thanks,” she said, all business. She opened the box, emptied the rounds into the rubber lined basin formed out on the metal shelf, then gathered up a handful and began to thumb them into the Glock magazines. Deon watched her. It was telling that she didn’t load the magazines all the way up, leaving them one down. She filled all three, looked at him, flashed him a huge smile, and said, “Okay to go hot?”

  “As if you were ever any other way.”

  “Flatterer.”

  She inserted a magazine, racked the slide back overhand, took a solid Isosceles on the pistol, brought it up on line with the B-27 human silhouette target hanging at 7 yards.

  Bap, bap.

  Two holes, an inch apart, appeared on what would be the bridge of the nose, if a silhouette head had a nose. She lowered the pistol slightly, arms still locked out, assessed the target, scanned left, then right, brought the pistol back on target…

  Bap, bap.

  Two more holes, this time touching.

  Bap, bap.

  Two holes so closely overlapped that they made one big hole.

  She grimaced. “It’s been awhile. I can’t believe it takes me this long to get warmed up.”

  “You’re shitting me, right?” Deon said.

  “Oh, no, sweet heart,” she said. “On a good day I can put it all in one hole. I’m good at that.”

  She smiled, so genuine and open and happy that Deon knew, in that instant, that he was going to have to kill her.

  Before she killed him.

  Chapter Forty Four

  “So tell me the story,” I said.

  Deon and the whole crew were in the garage, geared up and ready to rock and roll. Marcus and Joe were tinkering with their pretty little SAWs, the new toys that had started all this bullshit. And I still didn’t know what they wanted them for in the first place, though after taking in some of the tats that the silent three -- Larry, Curly, and Moe -- had, I was thinking Aryan Brotherhood. Maybe. Or one of the off shoots. Der Bruder Schweigen had gone deep underground after the FBI HRT has their hostage roast on Whidbey Island. And the countryside around Lake City had more than it’s fair share of survivalists, tax resistors, and land reform advocates.

  And just plain nut jobs.

  The Three Aryan Stooges stood aside with military discipline, never said a word unless spoken to, and took direction only from Deon. I knew he had a profitable sideline with training, both domestically and abroad. He taught firearms classes through the gun store, straight up stuff, and was favored by the cops for handgun and long gun training. But he never went in for any police training contracts or anything else in town, just the few gun savvy cops who dropped in to shoot and compete and take the cop discount on the toys he could get them.

  “We may not have to shoot anyone going in,” Deon said. “Ruiz is willing to stand aside with all his crew for the bank. Pay him off, we walk away with the goods. They walk away with a good pay day. He guarantees all the shooters, and the handlers, but he wants cash up front.”

  “Not going to happen,” I said. “He can get paid when we get done. And how do you know you can trust him with this? He’s got a direct link to you…”

  “And only me, oke. I’m the cut-out, you all will be masked, we’ll put them all down and secure them. Then do what we came to do.”

  “No gunfight then,” Marcus observed. “Just a straight up murder of a damn pretty woman.”

  That brought on a silence.

  “It will break the back of her organization,” Marcus said. “She won’t be able to get a crew, her street cred will be gone, all her bank, all her product…she’ll be turned out and selling that ass to raise cash. I won’t shoot a woman. Unless, of course, she’s s
hooting at me.”

  More silence.

  “I won’t be party to it,” Marcus said. “I’m not bashful about this business. But I have standards.”

  Joe started the laughter, and it spread.

  Deon turned to me and said, “Well, oke?”

  “If you’re asking me, I’ve always thought you should let her walk. I won’t be party to killing her either. She’s got nothing when we’re through tonight. She won’t ever be able to mount an operation in Lake City again. Go in, take what we need. And go.”

  “There’s always comeback,” Deon said. “She’ll know about me.”

  “If you’re that concerned, then you should have thought of that before you opened the ball with her.”

  The older man, Moe in my mind, otherwise aggressively nameless, said to Deon, pointedly ignoring everyone else, “I’ll do it. If you want that.”

  I took his measure. It was considerable. No fear in his face, maybe early to middle fifties, stout, but hard. Lots of lines in his face, short grey hair, and he carried that M4 with the casual assurance of a man who had spent a significant portion of his life with that weapon in his hand. He glanced at me, then back at Deon.

  “Your call,” he said to Deon.

  Deon shook his head. “No. If it gets to that, I’ll do it. Nobody else. And only if there is nothing else to do.”

  I felt as though I were balanced on a precipice. Part of me wanted to speak up, walk away from this whole fucking mess; part of me realized that time had long passed and the only resolution was to see it through all the way to the bloody end. But I had to wonder: how did I get here? How did I get to this place? It was so far away, from that mountainside in Afghanistan…

  “If it comes to a fight,” I said mildly. “Then we do what we have to. But we’re not murdering her. She walks unless she fights. Then she’s fair game. She walks.”

  The older man squared up on me and his two back ups eased back. I smiled at him.

  Deon was quick to step up. “All right. We’ll do it that way.”

  “You’ll just have to find a way to live with it, Deon. That’s the tax you’re going to pay for this whole debacle.”

  “Debacle,” Marcus said. “I like that word.”

  Moe and Larry and Curly looked at Deon. He nodded and cut with his hand. It was over. Done.

  “What else?” I said.

  “She’s got a hitter on me,” Deon said.

  “What?” I said. “Any other great last minute news? Who is working you?”

  Deon hung his head, the first time I’ve ever seen him do that. He shook his head, then looked at me, seriously embarrassed. “The woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “From the bar.”

  It took me a minute to put that together. “Pool player?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I want to see this woman,” Marcus said.

  “Me three,” Joe said.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Is she conscious of this? The work tonight?”

  Deon sighed. “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t think so? You don’t think that might be a problem?”

  “She’s working alone. She’s supposed to meet me tomorrow morning for breakfast, a little bed play. I think that’s when she’s going to make her move.”

  “You know this how?”

  “I just know.”

  Now this was a complication I never expected. But there is no such thing as a plan that survives contact with the real world. The real gift in combat is the ability to read the situation and improvise. That was the master’s gift. And while I’d never think of myself that way, I’d learned, the hard way, that I could do that. So we’d just have to go with it.

  “Where is she?” I said.

  “At her hotel.”

  “Do you have anyone on her?”

  “No. We don’t have anyone to put on her.”

  It was my turn to sigh. Ah well. “Then let’s roll,” I said. “And hope she doesn’t pop up in the middle of the mix.”

  ***

  He knew. The son of a bitch knew. And it was her fault. She had to go and show off at the range. She’d seen the look on his face, and he knew. They’d shot together, and he was good…really good. And so was she. They were pretty evenly matched for speed, but her precision accuracy held up a little better than his against the clock. She’d never gone up, gun vs. gun, against somebody at his skill level. She wasn’t a fighter; she was an assassin and what she wanted to do was get the job done with minimal risk, no fuss, no muss. When she used her gun, she had everything stacked on her side, the same as when she used a knife.

  Now she’d lost that element of surprise.

  He knew about her skill, about her weapons…and he hadn’t bought off on the “armed woman” rap she gave him.

  She was too good, and that gave her away.

  Dee cursed herself. That damn ego of hers. And she wanted to show him up a little bit before she killed him.

  So she’d have to rethink the whole approach.

  And that damn Irina was demanding an update and a face to face at her rancho outside of town.

  One more damn thing to tend to.

  She slammed her hand down on the hotel room desk, shaking her laptop as she checked her e-mail.

  Shit.

  She signed off, geared up for a night out. Just light, a couple of knives and her pistol with a few spare mags in a pocket pouch, tucked in the outside pocket of her purse. Went downstairs and got into her rental car and punched the address into her GPS, and began to follow the directions of the mechanical voice out into the night, under the full moon, to the outskirts of town.

  ***

  “Just tell me straight,” Nina said. “No bullshit. I’m tired of fucking playing with you.”

  “All right, all right,” her snitch said. He was a wiry white boy, with the darting eyes and taut skin stretched over bone look of the meth head. “Komorov and her crew, they’re expecting something heavy. They got some product in, but they’ve been selling it off, cut rate. Dumping a lot of guns on the street. I can get you anything you want: Sigs, Glocks, Berettas, machine guns, whatever.”

  “When is this something heavy supposed to happen?” Nina said.

  “Soon,” her meth head said. “Maybe even tonight.”

  “Go find out when. And who else is playing.”

  He ducked his head in the fashion she was used to seeing when he wanted money. “Not till you produce,” she said. “Come back and I’ll have something for you.”

  He slinked out of the car, disappeared into the rush on Journey Street, just another piece of trash in the sewer that was night time Lake City, at least the part she saw. The full moon was rising in the sky, and the level of lunacy was peaking in the street.

  Tonight? The Komorovs?

  She pulled out and started to weave her way through traffic.

  Might be worth while to see who was working -- and who wasn’t -- tonight at Moby Dick’s.

  ***

  “I’m not trusting these motherfuckers,” said Ruiz’s partner, a bulky Colombian named Ochoa. “No money up front, just lay our fucking guns down and get prone, let them take the product and then put a bullet in my brain? No fucking way. Not going to happen.”

  “Deon is straight up,” Ruiz said. “We get out of the way, we get to walk with our money and some product. Get out of town for awhile, let it blow over, come back, he’ll put us on the payroll.”

  “Maybe to you. To me, he’s nothing. And I’m not going to do this. I’ll take the money we’re getting up front from Komorov. I want money in hand, not a promise to let me go when they got a gun to my head. We don’t roll that way, hermano. No fucking way.”

  Ruiz sighed. “Then get sick and go home, mano. I don’t want a problem with you, brother. But this is going down.”

  “I got a better idea,” Ochoa said. “I’ll go sick. But I’m going out there in the woods with one other guy and we�
�ll watch this shit go down. First sign of trouble, I light they asses up. Which you should of thought about, instead of getting greedy.”

  He was right, Ruiz said. He was comfortable with Deon, felt he could trust him. But he hadn’t thought it through. You always need a back up, and a back up to your back up.

  “You’re right, man. That’s a good idea. Take Taylor with you. And a handset. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “No shit you weren’t thinking,” Ochoa said. “And not even any pussy involved. That’s what you got me for, mano. Let me do the thinking from now on, all right?”

  ***

  Lizzy toyed with her playlist. There was a song, an old song from the 70s she couldn’t get out of her head. Credence Clearwater Revival. “Don’t go round tonight, because you’re bound to lose your life…there’s a bad moon on the rise…”

  She looked out her window at the gleaming moon rising.

  Something…

  ***

  Dee pulled her Taurus up the gated entrance to the Komorov farm. The two big guys at the gate house gave her the look, almost to the point of rudeness.

  “I’m expected, boys,” she said coolly.

  One nodded, a big leer on his face. Opened the gate. She drove by, ignoring the comments they were making between themselves. She thought about saying something to them, but that would be raising her profile. And saying something to Irina would be pointless. Because she was never going to work for this woman again.

  And maybe, depending on how she held her temper, nobody else might either.

  She parked right in front of the house, got out. Another goon with a gun was on the door step. He stepped aside, disrespect in his bones, and let her in.

  What was going on here?

  “Irina!” she called as she walked down the hallway.

  “In here,” a muscled Hispanic with a sneaky look said. “I’m Ruiz. You’re her…friend?”

  “Oh, just a shopping buddy,” Dee said brightly. This didn’t feel right. There was something going on with the security staff. “Thanks!”

  She brushed by him, and was conscious of how he made no attempt to disguise his look at her. Irina sat by herself in a big arm chair looking out over the lighted expanse of the front lawn. She looked up and waved Irina to an adjoining arm chair.