Shay pointed to the amulet. “It’s got the symbols that I’ve found all over, but it also has some I haven’t found elsewhere. I think the inscription is the key to unlocking its true power.”
“It’s pretty damn powerful as is.”
“Yeah, but I’m thinking you could do more with it.”
James slipped the amulet back underneath his shirt, the cool metal of the separation plate touching his chest. “Wonder if that’s a good idea?”
“Can’t know until you try, right? You want to come to terms with your past? That’s what you’re gonna need to do. I’ll keep digging into things and trying to figure it out for you. That’s the least I can do.”
James nodded. “And what about you?”
Shay looked confused. “What about me?”
“What about coming to terms with your past?” The bounty hunter shrugged.
The tomb raider snorted. “I did that already, remember? I got fed up with the killing and realized it was a fucked-up life. Did the whole fake-my-death thing and all that. Burned my fucking house down.”
“But you’re also still running from someone. You can’t move forward when assholes are gunning for you. I should know. I didn’t choose to burn down my house, a fucker with a rocket launcher did.”
“So what? We’ve all got baggage. I’m dealing with mine, just like you’re dealing with yours. Mine doesn’t involve alien amulets, though.”
James shook his head. “I run toward people, not from. The Harriken kept fucking with me, so I ended them. Now I don’t have to worry about their shit ever again.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Just saying I couldn’t have built a new house I would feel comfortable with Alison living in if I hadn’t taken care of the Harriken. So, like I said, what about you?”
Shay narrowed her eyes, discomfort spreading across her face. She looked away and didn’t speak for a long while. “The Nuevo Gulf Cartel. They are the ones who wanted me dead, but it was more an excuse. It’s not like I’m running from them in particular. They make it harder for me, since they’d come after me if they knew I was still alive.”
“Aren’t you tired of running? Tired of looking over your shoulder?”
Shay shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt to be careful, Brownstone. Even if the cartel disappeared tomorrow, I still have a lot of shit and people from my past I need to worry about. Fuck, I’ve already made a couple of enemies in my new career.”
“I’m careful, but I also know at the end of the day I don’t have to worry about the Harriken.” James rubbed his chin. “Not saying you have to deal with this shit alone. I can help. You know I can help. I might know fuck-all about ancient history and artifacts, but beating the shit out of people? I’ve practically got a degree in that.”
“It’s not your problem.” Shay gritted her teeth. “It’s my problem.”
James pointed to his chest. “I’m making it my fucking problem. You didn’t have to help me with the Harriken, but you did. It wasn’t your fucking problem. You made it your problem.”
“You don’t get it, Brownstone.” Shay shook her head. “These Nuevo guys? They own half of Mexico. I doubt you’ll find many bounties on them because they own the system. There’s no money here. This will just be a lot of ass-kicking with no payout.”
James marched over to Shay until he was so close she could feel his breath. “I killed a lot of Harriken before I started getting bounty money for it. Some shit is more important than money. Your fucking life is more important than money.”
Shay’s eyes widened. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but it’s your choice. Let’s end the cartel. Who gives a shit if it solves all your problems? It’ll take care of at least some of them.”
“Fuck it, you’re right. Might as well give them a real reason to hate me.”
The next day, James leaned against the wall of Warehouse Three and waited for Shay to finish gathering her gear.
Shay peered down at a selection of handguns. “You sure about this, Brownstone? This shit is gonna get bloody.”
“When does shit not get bloody when I’m around?”
“Fair enough. Just saying we’ll be killing even more people than in Tokyo, and we killed a lot of people in Tokyo.”
“I’ll go confess to Father McCartney later. We’re doing the world a favor by wiping those assholes out. They are helping strangle a country. They kill innocent people in a way even the Harriken would spit at. Fuck them. The sooner they’re dead, the better.”
Shay grinned. “Not saying I disagree, just wanted to make sure you knew what you were signing on for.” She picked up a pearl-handled pistol and aimed down its sights. “Might as well try this baby out. I don’t think I’ve broken this in. You got everything you need?”
James tapped the amulet underneath his shirt. “You have all the ammo I need here, and you also have the nice goodies like grenades and explosives so I don’t even need to go back to my place. This is like Walmart for ass-kicking supplies.”
“Great. Enjoy your shopping, but I’ll be right back. Gonna go check on something.” Shay put down the gun and headed around a corner toward more racks of weapons and equipment.
James pulled out his phone. Despite his big speech about not needing bounties, it wouldn’t hurt to check. He checked for an organizational bounty on the cartel and couldn’t find one. A quick cross-reference with the top ten leading figures in the cartel pulled up a few bounties, but the amount was pathetic. He’d never seen such powerful criminals with such low bounties.
Shay is right. They’ve manipulated this shit. This amount isn’t enough to get two flour tortillas warmed up with sand between them. I think the guys Trey is bringing in right now are worth more than half these guys combined.
The few bounties on cartel members were all from small private donations, with no government or large companies involved. It was like everyone was afraid of looking like they would dare oppose the cartel, and there were just a few villagers here and there with nothing left to lose.
Even worse, it was like the bastards were begging Shay and James to come and kill them. Shay’s checks on the dark web had revealed that the higher-ups of the cartel were having a huge meeting at a private resort—some sort of celebration of their recent successes.
James and Shay couldn’t take out everyone in an organization with thousands of direct and indirect members, but the bounty hunter was sure Sun Tzu’d had something to say about cutting off the head of a dragon and the body dying.
The cartel was already under siege from various enemies, both criminal and law enforcement. All it needed was a little push, and the piranhas would feast on the dead body.
Yeah, fuckers. See how you like being the hunted.
Shay’s information suggested there would be over five hundred cartel members at the resort. It’d be a tough fight, and the amulet would get a work-out. If it craved blood, it’d get more than its fair share.
James grunted. He should take more explosives. Sometimes you just needed to blow up a building or three.
Peyton emerged around the corner with a frown on his face.
“Problem, Peyton?”
The younger man looked around for a moment. “I’m always monitoring stuff in case people are looking for me or Shay.” He shrugged.
“Yeah, and?”
“I was, uh, poking around in the LAPD system, and I found out that AET is looking for Shay.”
James’ jaw tightened. “Why would AET want Shay? How the hell do they even know who she is?”
“They got a partial long-distance image from a drone from that airport fight when you guys took down that assassin. From what I can tell, the AET reached out and the FBI sent them some information back linking the image to…well, Shay. They don’t know her real name, but they know she was a hitman on the East Coast and think she’s dead—that sort of thing.” Peyton sucked in a breath. “Shit, what should we do? If they get serious, it’ll be hard for her
to hide. Too many drones and cameras in this city.”
James scrubbed a hand over his face. “Keep this to yourself for now.”
“Huh? You serious? Shay needs to know.”
“You heard me. Shay needs to concentrate on this cartel shit. This AET crap is my fault because they have such a hard-on for taking me down. Let me handle it. I’ll work something out.”
Peyton sighed. “You sure? This seems like something I should tell her.”
“I’ll solve the problem. For now, Shay needs to stay focused. Besides, if I can take down the Harriken and help take down a cartel, I can get a few cops off Shay’s ass.”
21
“Hello?” a deep-voiced man answered in Spanish. “This is the Hotel Azul.”
“Do you speak English?” James rumbled. He didn’t want his fumbling Spanish to mess up the message he needed to deliver.
“Yes, sir. How may I help you?”
“Tell the head of the cartel that James Brownstone and a friend are coming for him.”
He hung up.
James watched through binoculars from his comfortable hilltop perch as hundreds of cartel enforcers and guards spread out along the fences surrounding the main resort complex. Frightened resort staff poured through the gate into waiting buses and cars.
“Looks like they are clearing out everyone but the cartel douchebags. I don’t think they want anyone tripping over them when the bullets start flying.”
Shay glanced at the distant resort. “That shit works well for us. That means we can go forward with our plan.”
“Yeah. Can probably hit them in less than an hour. Maybe half an hour, at the rate they are booking it out of there.”
James might be ruthless when it came to wasting cartel assholes or gangsters, but he wasn’t about to lay out some poor maid because she just happened to be changing the sheets in some dickwad’s room. Even if the cartel owned the place, that didn’t mean that every random employee was a piece of shit.
He’d just concentrate on killing the tattooed motherfuckers with guns now setting up around the area.
Shay hauled a large metal case out of the back of the trailer connected to their first rental vehicle, a large truck. “You really think it was a better plan to threaten them ahead of time?” She laid the case down. “Whatever happened to the element of surprise? Not like I told marks I was coming for them. We could have kept it clear enough even without using any of surprise and just shot anyone with a gun.”
“Surprise is overrated. Fuck, it wasn’t like the Harriken didn’t know I was coming the last time. Didn’t do them a bit of good.” James lowered his binoculars. “We want these assholes on edge. They’ll make more mistakes that way.” He grinned. “You might have more experience as a killer, but I have more experience taking down large groups of fuckwads at once.”
Shay rolled her eyes. “For fuck’s sake, don’t get too cocky, Brownstone.” She opened the case and started assembling the sniper rifle inside. “I’ve taken out plenty of groups of people. Hell, I was with you on two of your Harriken raids, and when it comes to clever plans and timing that rely on something other than just punching or shooting anything that moves, I have way more experience.”
James shrugged. “Punching or shooting works most of the time.”
“But not all the time. Sometimes gunning down a lot of people requires finesse.” She winked. “And a woman’s touch.”
James moved over to the dozen drones parked to the side of the trailer and inspected the explosives strapped to each. Even with his bounty-hunting reputation, bringing in such large amounts of boom toys would have proven difficult, so they’d relied on Shay’s smuggling skills.
He chuckled at the ease with which she’d moved all the materials into the country. So much for Customs.
“I bet this shit’s gonna be real easy.”
Shay looked up. “You think so? I’m not saying it’ll be hard, but maybe they’ll give us a halfway-decent fight.”
“Once shit starts blowing up they’ll freak.” James grunted. “These assholes don’t have any real discipline. They are just a bunch of thugs used to scaring everyone. Now it’s our turn to fucking scare them.”
After all, unlike the Brownstone Agency, they didn’t have a Marine DI training them. Royce would whip the men into shape.
James furrowed his brow. Everything was almost ready. “And you’re sure you managed to get everything set up last night?”
“Yeah. Unlike you, I’m sneaky and good with disguises. No one suspected a thing.” Shay nodded toward the resort. “They don’t empty any of the main trash bins until noon, so all my surprises should still be there, and since they didn’t evacuate the place before your call, I’m guessing no one found anything and all the other ones I slipped around the resort are still there.”
“Don’t know how many we’ll get with the surprises, but it’ll at least confuse them.”
Shay chuckled. “This shit’s gonna set a record for both of us. Lots and lots of guys in there. Guess they were worried about someone attacking them even before your little threatening call.” She finished setting up the sniper rifle and placed it atop its bipod. “It’s annoying as shit, though.”
“What is?”
“Those assholes are so cocky they don’t even have any surveillance drones up. I feel kind of insulted on some level.”
“You want them to have better security? You’d prefer if they had a row of assholes in exoskeletons and weird-ass Oriceran monsters down there?”
Shay shrugged. “I just don’t like their arrogance.”
“I bet they figure, with that many guys it doesn’t matter.”
“See, this just proves why it’s important not to get a big head and push too hard.”
James hauled an RPG and a crate of ammo out to place next to the sniper rifle. “What do you mean?” He returned to the trailer and started stuffing magazines into his tactical harness.
“They got too big, even with other guys fucking with them. Thought they were untouchable, even when I was slitting the throats of some of their guys.” Shay stood and double-checked her knives. “When you push too hard, eventually someone’s gonna push back.”
“Sure some Harriken were saying that shit about me.” James gave her a feral grin.
“Well, never push someone you know is stronger.” Shay nodded toward their second vehicle, a Toyota 4Runner. “Did you get the maximum insurance again?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know how much of it’ll they’ll honor if I bring it back full of bullet holes. And that’s assuming it even survives.”
Shay laughed. “You know what you need to do? You need to buy a whole shitload of junker cars for situations like this. Why do you think I have a lot of those ugly-ass vans and shit in the Warehouse Three Annex? Sometimes you just need a piece of shit to ram through a gate.”
James shook his head. “My life used to be fucking simple. This whole attacking-assholes’-bases thing didn’t used to be something I did every other week.” He shrugged and lifted the binoculars again. “Looks like the last bus pulled away. Huh. Wait. That’s fucking annoying.”
“What?”
“Six trucks with heavy machine guns just rolled in. They look military, but it doesn’t look like soldiers driving them. Looks like cartel douches, from what I can see.”
“Probably took them from a local unit or bribed one.” Shay shrugged. “As long as they aren’t rolling in with tanks the plan should still be good.” She pointed at his chest. “Can the Whispering Amulet of Doom protect you from a heavy machine gun?”
James snorted. “Don’t know. Let’s just kill those fuckers before I have to find out.” He grabbed a few more grenades from the trailer. “I’ll need about twenty minutes to get into position, but I think we should get this shit started.”
Shay fished a large antenna-laden military-grade jammer out of the back of the truck. “We need to find some sort of magical walkie-talkie, so if we have to do this shit in the future we can
still talk to each other.”
“That sounds complicated.”
Shay laughed. “Is there anything about this plan that isn’t complicated?”
“Just saying, adding magic makes shit even more complicated. This plan just involves blowing people up or shooting them. It’s about as fucking simple as things get.”
“Anyway, I’ll flip this baby on once the first round of fun begins, so if you’re gonna contact me do it before then. You comfortable with the timing?”
James shrugged. “Not like it won’t be obvious when the party starts.”
“Glad to hear you’re onboard.” Shay clapped. “Okay, let’s get ready to decapitate ourselves a cartel.”
James flattened himself behind a large bright-yellow truck with obscenely huge tires in the parking lot. Shay and Peyton’s intel indicated the ranking cartel men would all be on the top level of the resort. By the time shit got serious and they realized the danger it’d be too late for them to flee, but cutting off their escape routes would ensure their doom.
The bounty hunter sent a text to the local police department with only one sentence in both English and Spanish.
Brownstone is fighting the Nuevo Gulf Cartel. Stay away.
Even if the local authorities didn’t want to take on the cartel, he doubted they wanted to die to protect them. The enemy already knew he was coming, so it didn’t matter if a corrupt cop tipped off the cartel.
“Everyone finish getting into position!” a man shouted in Spanish.
I’ll just note, lad, that it’ll be a lot of time to spend with the lovely Miz Carson.
The bounty hunter smirked at the memory. He didn’t doubt the Professor’d had this exact sort of thing in mind.
It’s more fun than hanging out at the beach, that’s for sure. Plus, this doubles as a public service. I’m being all efficient and shit with my time.
“What the fuck is that in the sky?” another man shouted.
The whirring hum of drones filled the air.
Time to blow some shit up.
She Is The Widow Maker_An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure Page 16
