Trent followed the truck as it re-joined I-40. Back at the service area, they had caught a glimpse of Floyd Ashman as he stomped off to the bathroom and a date with a bucket of fried chicken. The man was slightly overweight with skinny arms and legs, and a head the size of a pea. Overall, a man of odd appearance who wasn't likely to be fast forgotten. He made no effort to communicate or even be civil to anyone who crossed his path, and paid for his meal without a smile. A man thinking he had the weight of the world on his mind.
Ten minutes after they re-joined the interstate, headlights zoomed up in Trent’s rear-view. At first he thought they’d attracted a kid out to impress his latest sweetheart in Daddy’s BMW, but then a second dark shape loomed beside the first, occupying two lanes.
Silk sat up. “You gotta be kidding.”
“Afraid not.” Trent eyed the rear-view grimly. “Ashford has an escort.”
“Can you shake ‘em?”
“Of course.” Trent sped up. “But we'll lose the truck.”
“One of the escorts will stay put. The other will try to take us out.”
“My guess too.” Trent slammed the accelerator pedal and pulled out into the far lane, drawing one of Ashford’s escorts away. “Get Radford on the line.”
“Got him.”
Silk was already speaking. “Dan. You’d best be ready, bud. The truck and an escort are heading your way and we ain’t.”
Radford sounded stressed. “Crap. This place is better protected than we thought at first. Physically, at least. I’ll hang around, but it could get risky.”
“Don’t try to get back on the system yet,” Trent told him. “The truck won’t hit the outskirts of Dallas for another ten hours, I’m guessing.”
“Understood.”
Silk reached into the glovebox and came out holding a small Glock. “Time for some target practice.”
“Wait,” Trent said. “This is a civilian road, Adam, not a training ground. We have to—” he pointed. “There.”
The off-ramp led in the direction of some scattered woodland. Silk grinned. “They’re ours.”
Trent hit the ramp hard, making the vehicle bounce and Silk grab the door handle. At the top he swerved the car around the wide bend, letting it glide in a half circle, then gunned the accelerator when the road straightened out. The woods came up quickly, as did a service road to their left, but Trent angled the car in hard, ensuring their pursuers saw the manoeuvre.
He hit the high beam, spun the wheel to make the car perform a half turn, then let it drift backwards slowly, at its own pace.
Silk rolled out of the passenger door, whilst Trent mirrored his colleague on the driver’s side. Both men melted into the surrounding brush and trees, picking their way carefully forward, past their own gliding vehicle and drawing level with their pursuers, who soon came to a squealing halt.
Four men sat inside, illuminated by the high beams, trying to peer through the sheer brilliance of the light. Amateurs, Trent thought. It was good in a way. It meant less bruises and bloodshed. But the Razor’s Edge had earned their name by beating the best. They wouldn’t stay so sharp taking out third and fourth rate morons.
The Razor’s Handle didn’t have quite the same ring.
Silk fired first, two shots that took out the driver and one of the rear passengers. Trent fired a split second later, killing one man but only winging the fourth. Trent fell to one knee as the wounded goon stumbled out into the light.
“Drop the gun!” he shouted. “Do it now!”
“What . . . what do ya want?” The man held his bloody shoulder with the hand that also held the gun.
“You chased us,” Silk pointed out. “In my experience, it’s the bad guy does the chasing and the good guy who outthinks and corals them. Always worked with the street gangs, anyways.”
Trent watched their enemy carefully. Maybe they could save Radford a job. “Why were you escorting that truck? Where was it headed?”
“Six Flags Over Texas.”
“The theme park? But the SkyScreamer ain’t open yet.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. I’ll give you one last chance before I blow your knees out.”
Trent took aim.
“Wait. It’s a Greystone truck. Depot’s in Dallas. Offices too. You want the yard? I can give you that.”
“We want the unofficial stop.” Silk’s voice floated menacingly from behind the man. “The place where you drop the live cargo off.”
Fear distorted the man’s features so fast that Trent blinked. “We know it ain’t Lockley,” he said. “So don’t even—”
“Worse. So much worse . . .” The goon swung his arm out, gun firing. Trent shot him through the head before his firing arc even got close. The body bounced off the car and collapsed on to the gravelly road.
Silk came into view. “Back on the road?”
“Back to Vegas. Dan can handle the rest of this.”
*
Radford watched the activity by the light of a low-slung moon. The Texan night was hot, so hot he kept reaching out to switch the car and the AC on, before remembering he couldn’t afford the attention a burbling engine might attract.
He wiped his brow, fingers coming away slick with sweat, one of them still throbbing. A short way down the street, the half dozen rows of windows that comprised Greystone Transport's ground floor blazed with light. People came and went – smokers, a strolling security guard catching some air, a sizeable white Bentley that purred like the world’s biggest feline, men who looked like lawyers, investors and affluent clients.
It would only take one of them to notice the man skulking down low in his car, decide to report it to security, and this whole op would be blown. Radford didn’t want to be the one explaining to Anna Borstein and Monika’s son how he had failed their friend and mother.
Time ticked by at a steady pace. Radford could barely tear his eyes away from his watch. At last the time to log back into FleetSecure’s network arrived. Radford tapped awkwardly away, making sure his broken finger stayed away from the keyboard action, when his cell rang.
Amanda! Her face flashed up on screen.
“No.” Radford took a second to hang his head, groaning. His entire being yearned to answer the call.
If I don’t take it she'll think I’m with someone else.
It was their mutually agreed signal. No answer means no pants. Generally.
Maybe I could . . .
The hack uplinked faster this time. The little red dot that denoted the truck’s journey blinked slowly, already past the outskirts of Dallas. Radford stared. Damn, they had miscalculated!
The truck was already here. Floyd Ashman must have put his foot down, maybe hearing about his tail. Radford rebuked himself for not thinking of that, the still ringing phone now forgotten. There was no time.
The truck was home, pulling into Greystone Transport’s yard in an industrial area west of the city.
Radford’s heart sank so far it fell through the bottom of the car.
15
Frantically, Radford tapped at the keyboard, cascading displays. The phone went to voicemail. His finger joint began to pulsate with pain. Everything around him zoned out and he saw nothing but the map, following that route back on itself – searching.
And finding something. The route of the truck stuck to the main roads, the interstate and freeways, until it approached a patch of barren land near Running Bear Park. Radford let the cursor hover over the area, fetching up an exact address and wrote it down. It was the only anomaly.
Job done. They had a way forward.
A tap on the window sent his heart rocketing, this time into his mouth.
A figure stood outside, shadowy in the dark. Not even a street lamp shone near the spot Radford had picked.
He smiled, suddenly aware of the bright display, the running engine, the pistol hidden too far away to reach, the well-lit street ahead, the civilians coming and going, the sequence of the traffic signals up ahead. Most i
mportantly he became very conscious of where the figure’s hands were – down below the window, out of sight.
He cracked the window an inch. “Help you?”
“Please step out of the car, sir. We need to ask you a few questions.”
Decision made. Those two sentences told Radford all he needed to know. He already knew they weren’t cops. Officers of the law moved differently, approached differently, and would have come complete with flashing lights. This guy was formal and came with an unseen friend. They were security guards.
No guns. Not to protect a transport business. Probably.
Radford flicked up the handle and smashed the car door hard into the man’s knees, then pulled it shut. At the same time, he depressed the accelerator pedal, shoved the laptop into the passenger seat and hoped to God he’d timed the sequence right. Last thing he wanted was to run a red now. With their luck tonight, a cop would be sat across the road gobbling down a carton of donuts. Or an eighteen-wheeler would appear out of nowhere and obliterate him.
The guard he’d hit fell into the gutter. The other gave chase on foot until he saw Radford had indeed timed the lights well. The rental vehicle shot through. Would they have taken down the plates? Probably, but it didn’t matter.
Mr. Levis would be out of the state in a matter of hours.
*
When an operation goes wrong, there are two choices. Either slink off into a corner with your tail between your legs, or take a breath and get straight back into the fray. The second option is usually the best way to go. It eliminates doubt, fear, and certain kinds of investigation. The Edge had been relatively lucky that Radford had remained in place, but it was a luck born of experience, skill and design.
By the time Radford arrived back in Vegas, Trent and Silk were already probing the address he had taken down. According to Google Maps it was a sizeable construction site, half completed, with a smattering of sprawling, luxurious dwellings. One half of the site remained mainly stagnant, but was dotted with the half-finished shells of more well-appointed houses, the carcasses giving the site the appearance of an old dinosaur graveyard from an aerial view. There were various articles written about The Lakeside, as the area had been named. Most of them attributed the half-complete state to the recession, others to laziness on the part of the construction company, still others to a lack of interest from investors or even the unsound financial standing of the construction company itself.
Roth Construction.
“Since we don’t know the exact location that Flash visited, but can assume it probably wasn’t one of the occupied houses, then Roth Construction is the place to start.” Trent watched as Radford dug into the mini-bar.
“Rough night,” Radford said in reply to the stare.
“Why assume anything?” Silk wondered.
“The volume of deliveries in itself, over time, almost certainly excludes the occupied houses,” Trent said. “Even paradise has its fair share of busybodies, spies and nosy neighbours. Someone would notice something. And that’s not taking into account the area’s security personnel.”
“Less reason to watch over the unfinished areas.” Silk nodded.
“And more reasons to explain a transport vehicle’s regular presence.”
Trent examined what little literature existed on Roth Construction. The only salient point was that it was part of a parent company called Roth Holdings.
“Time to dig,” he said aloud. “Radford, you feel like calling up a contact or shall we get Doug involved?”
Radford swigged a miniature whiskey straight off. “Doug,” he said without hesitation. On the journey back he had tried returning Amanda’s call twice. No answer. He wasn’t in the mood for any kind of conversation.
Doug returned their call after a half hour. “Sorry. Something came up.”
Trent brought him quickly up to speed, ending with a request for information on Roth Holdings.
“That’s good. That’s good.” Doug sounded distracted, not his usual self.
Trent jumped on it. “Something wrong, Doug? Has Anna called again? How’s Artur doing?”
“It’s not that.” Doug hesitated. “It’s something else entirely.”
“Something . . . good?” Silk ventured.
“Something I need to get my head around.” Doug sounded as serious as Trent had ever heard. “I’ll call you guys back.”
Even Radford took note. “What the hell is all that about? Doug’s usually the happy one.”
Trent grimaced. “We all have our off days.”
“Nice try at a joke, Aaron.” Silk laughed. “One day, you’ll maybe even pull one off.”
“The only person I ever heard of able to make Doug the Trout serious was Natasha.” Radford said. “Maybe she’s back in his life.”
Trent shook his head. “It’s best not to speculate. Doug will tell us soon enough. In the meantime we have work to do.”
“The kidnapping of Donny Lockley?” Silk asked hopefully. “If ever there was a scumbag needs teaching a lesson – there’s one.”
“We’ll save that as an alternate,” Trent said. “Though I share your feelings.”
They talked it out for a while, running through the details they already knew. Everything always came back to the prime problem, Monika Sobieski’s whereabouts. Radford knocked back the tiny bottles of alcohol until the bar ran dry. Silk finally got fed up with quizzing him, being nice to him and wondering aloud about Doug’s new problem, and took himself off to one of the many restaurants, mumbling comparisons to Jenny’s home cooking. Radford said he needed some fresh air and headed down to the Strip, stating a desire to see the Luxor’s sphinx at night. Trent didn’t ask. He remembered Radford’s confession all too well, and expected the problem to develop into disaster before too long.
Trent paced the empty suite alone. Why did Lockley transport only a few people at a time? Why did the trail lead to a half-built construction site, graced by upscale homes? Who the hell were Roth Holdings?
He worried about Doug too. Radford was right. Doug had always been the high-spirited soul. After the Edge had been disavowed, Doug had been there to pick up the pieces and cheerily offer them a lifeline. The concepts of distress and uncertainty weren’t even in his stable.
Maybe Natasha was back. Shit, Trent thought. That would make a few of the big dogs start shitting their pants.
As if in answer to his speculations, the phone rang. Doug’s ringtone.
“Hey.”
“Roth Holdings.” Doug got into it straight away, another irregularity. Usually he started out in a jovial manner, a trait that sometimes irritated Trent no end. Tonight, he missed it. “Is the parent company of countless subsidiaries. One of those is Roth Construction. Another is Roth Scaffolding. You get the picture. Well, Roth Holdings leads back to one man. Can you guess?”
“Mr Roth?”
“Close, but no fluffy prize. A Mr Oleg Roth. Heard of him?”
Now the name triggered something in Trent’s memory. He ran it through his head. “Oleg Roth? Wasn’t he—”
“The very same. The boss man himself. The self-appointed leader of the Polish mob.”
Trent pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t get it. Why would the Polish mob be interested in such a small-time operation?”
“It could be one of a hundred.” Trent could almost see Doug shrugging his thick shoulders.
“Unlikely. One truck a week could easily come and go at the building site, but a hundred? Even if the construction was going ahead at full steam it would raise eyebrows. And it isn’t.”
“Oleg Roth,” Doug continued. “I’m not sure what you know so I’ll give you the legend. Born into poverty, he became a street fighter. From bare knuckle to martial arts to knife-fighting duels, this man rose to the top. When he saw a chance he took control of a small mafia-run outpost in Gdansk and worked his way up the ranks. Moved to the US.”
“And that’s when things got really interesting,” Trent put in.
“You got it. Roth kept on fighting and became an MMA champion. An Ultimate Fighting champion. He truly ruled the roost. This guy was the real deal.”
“Whilst controlling the branch of the Polish mob that ran the north and east of the United States.”
“Yep. And he still does.”
Trent trawled through his memory. “Roth was never considered the kingpin because of his MMA contests. But he used puppets, putting other men in the spotlight whilst he pulled their strings. When the news came out, clearly, he was forced to retire.” Trent gave a slight laugh.
“As head of the Polish mob his biggest rivals were the Serbians,” Doug said quietly. “You know all about them, don’t you?”
“Davic?” Trent didn’t answer the rhetorical question. “Blanka Davic was the real reason we were disavowed.”
“After his father was killed in Hawaii, Davic went a little crazy,” Doug went on. “As we know.”
“Why are you bringing that up now?”
“I’m guessing you’re alone?”
“Yes.”
Doug sighed, but stayed quiet. Trent guessed this was the source of all his discomfort. “Doug?”
“How good are my contacts, Aaron?”
Trent took a physical step back, surprised at the abrupt change of subject. “Better than the president’s,” he said, with only slight exaggeration.
“What if I told you that one of my best, deepest, contacts had sent me some very disturbing information?”
“I’d say you’d better damn well listen to it.”
“Information that concerns you. And Silk. And Radford.”
Trent froze. The entire world went away. “What?”
“Yeah. That’s what I said before I heard the details. Afterwards, I had to decide what was hardest – shooting myself or telling you guys.”
“Shit, man, what could be that bad?”
“First, you have to understand. This is a snippet. A tiny shred of information that has not yet been confirmed. It may never be confirmed. You have to understand that, Aaron.”
“Get on with it.”
“Second, I’m doing everything I can to confirm, but it has to be done low-key. That takes time. And patience.”
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