Tiger

by William Richter

  “I’d forgotten,” Jake said. “I mean, about how out of control things used to be for us back in the day.”

  “I know,” Wally said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Ella said. “Not for back then, and not for today. We made it through, like we always used to. And we were there for each other, like always. That’s all that matters.”

  January and Bea poked their heads in around ten thirty, tricked out in their club clothes as always. One look at the situation on the couch told them everything they needed to know.

  “Whoa,” said January. “You guys are dug in already, huh?”

  “Pretty much,” Wally said. “But have fun.”

  “When do we not?” Bea said. She and January blew Wally goodbye kisses and took off for their night on the town. Moments later, they could hear the girls down on the street, shouting for a cab and letting out a “Woot woot” when one stopped for them.

  Ella looked at Wally and rolled her eyes.

  “They’re nice!” Wally defended herself. “I need friends here while the two of you are upstate milking goats or growing hydroponic broccoli or whatever.”

  “How would those two have done today at the smoke shop?” Ella asked, a sneaky smirk on her face.

  Wally laughed out loud, unable to hold it back.

  They went on watching The Wire but only made it through one episode, and it was obvious that Jake and Ella could barely keep their eyes open.

  “Take my room again,” Wally said.

  “Thanks,” Ella said. “G’night.”

  Ella and Jake headed to the bedroom, closing the door behind them. Alone in the living room, Wally stretched out on the couch and wrapped herself up in a heavy, old, cotton-knit blanket, one of the few items she had brought with her from her mother’s old Upper West Side apartment. The blanket was worn and soft and comforting—a transcendent reminder of the times when she had felt loved and in harmony with Claire.

  In the deep quiet of the night, Wally began to hear the sound of movement from her bedroom—it was Ella and Jake hooking up. She wondered if it was something they were able to do at Neversink Farm or if this time away gave them an opportunity they didn’t usually have.

  Wally wrapped herself in Claire’s blanket and went outside to the roof, giving the couple some privacy. She’d always been happy for her best friends for finding each other and being such loyal partners, but Wally couldn’t help feeling a little envious too. Jake and Ella made being a couple seem so easy and natural—something Wally had never experienced.

  Wally’s relationships with men always seemed to be complicated and elusive, just like they had been with Kyle. She thought about the closeness they had shared up at the lodge before Alabama had shown up and everything had gone to hell. Was there anything about their connection that was worth saving, or had she done the right thing by distancing herself?

  Maybe both. She wondered where Kyle was now and whether he was safe.

  20.

  TIGER AND RACHEL WALKED SIDE BY SIDE THROUGH the neighborhood, drawing little interest from the housewives running errands or the gardeners mowing lawns. The two of them wore tracksuits and tennis shoes, and both had nylon tennis-racket cases slung over their shoulders. They carried water bottles in their hands, hydrating at regular intervals the way any young, upwardly mobile power couple would on their way home from a tough match of mixed doubles. The two of them didn’t share a single word.

  The western end of the housing tract was bordered by a tall, dense row of trees, the kind that are planted specifically to block an unattractive view. From the sidewalk, Tiger and Rachel ducked off through the trees, soon coming up against a tall perimeter fence. Tiger flipped the tennis-racket case off his shoulder and opened it, producing a heavy set of wire cutters. Within just a few moments, they breached the fence and entered the property.

  For the next ten minutes they walked across open ground. It had once been cultivated fields but was now hard and sterile. They reached a wooded hill and ascended—it took only a minute to reach the top. They stopped there, shrugging off their bags and finding an observation spot behind a clutch of maple trees. Rachel pulled out a snaiperskuyu vintofku—a sniper rifle with a long-range scope—mounting it on a bipod at ground level.

  Tiger was surprised to see the weapon.

  “I thought we were just here to scout.”

  “We are,” she answered. “But if we’re spotted, things could get difficult.”

  Tiger pulled out a nonreflecting tactical spotting scope and used it handheld, crouching just a few feet from Rachel. In silence, they scanned the territory on the far side of the hill. It was a shallow valley—probably less than half a mile across—bordered on the other side by a hill almost identical to the one they were set up on. A single access road entered the property from the south. Paved with asphalt, it was sprung all over with cracks that had weeds spearing up through them. The road hadn’t been maintained in many years.

  At the center of the valley sat a large abandoned factory of some kind, surrounded by a high perimeter fence. The fence itself looked no more than a few years old and appeared completely intact. The factory contained by the fence, however, had obviously gone unused for years; graffiti covered every inch of the place, even the highest parts of the walls, which rose up to four stories in one section. The sheet-metal walls along the ground had been almost completely stripped away by scrappers, and what was left was completely rusted.

  “It was a munitions factory,” Rachel said. “It’s been shut down for decades.”

  “Are we going in?”

  “No. We’re waiting.”

  They perched there for nearly three hours, silent and unmoving. The sun eased down behind the hills to the west, and Tiger was surprised at how cold it became once the sun had fallen out of sight. If Rachel felt any discomfort, she did not let on.

  “Do you have a dossier?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Have you been arrested before?”

  She hesitated before answering, suspicion in her voice. “No.”

  “Did you go to school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Secondary only, or college?”

  “Hofstra.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “College.”

  “And what did you study?”

  “Business.”

  They were quiet for a while before she broke the silence.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “It makes me curious. It seems to me there are many choices for you, many possibilities. But you choose this.”

  In the dimming light, Tiger could feel Rachel watching him closely.

  “This is business,” she finally said. “Our family business. And yours.”

  Tiger considered this. Of course she was right—his path through life had been determined by the circumstances of his birth. He had assumed that the pull of such things wasn’t as strong in America, but maybe he’d been wrong.

  Minutes later, they spotted two large, black SUVs—Ford Expeditions—entering the valley and approaching along the access road, from the south. The vehicles reached the perimeter fence and continued on to the entrance gate, just two hundred yards from where Tiger and Rachel were waiting.

  A man emerged from the passenger side of the first car. He was burly looking and wore a dark suit, his hair shaved in a close buzz cut. He unlocked the gate and rolled it to the side, allowing both vehicles to enter the yard that surrounded the factory. Once the cars had stopped, things got busier: eight other people stepped out of the vehicles, two adult Hispanic-looking men and six younger people who Tiger guessed were in their mid-teens—at least two or three years younger than himself. Four were boys and two girls, and all of them equipped with weapons—assault rifles
and automatic handguns.

  Tiger watched them closely through his scope. The teens were of various ethnicities. One of the boys and one of the girls were black, very dark skinned. Two other boys were Hispanic, and one of each gender was Caucasian, with an Eastern European look to them. They moved with purpose, constantly scanning the area with their eyes. Despite their youth, they carried their high-powered weapons as if they were natural extensions of their limbs.

  Tiger had an uneasy feeling of recognition. There was a man who was known as Sweet, a black-market transportation pasrednik—a “fixer”—who operated throughout Eastern Europe, Africa, and South America. His chosen name was Swede, but during his operations in the eastern Congo—delivering shipments of weapons to tribal guerrilla troops—the locals had pronounced his name as Sweet, and it stuck.

  As far back as the mid-nineties, Sweet had surrounded himself with a multiethnic cadre of very young bodyguards, rootless and war-ravaged teens he assembled from areas where he did dirty business. Sweet trained the youths himself and always kept them close, valuing them for their boldness and unfailing loyalty. They were not drugged or brutalized like other child soldiers but instead were highly incentivized with cash and perks. Most of all, they were a very effective security measure. There was something inherently terrifying about a teenager with a submachine gun, a sense that bestial, bloody havoc could be set off by even the slightest miscue.

  Tiger had once met Sweet face-to-face, during a weapons exchange in Gjilani, Kosovo. Only fifteen himself at the time, Tiger was part of a security team backing up one of the bosses from Piter . . . St. Petersburg. Though he was a low-level member of the team, his boss had made a point of introducing him as the son of Alexei Klesko—apparently, his father and Sweet had done profitable business over the years, and Tiger’s presence as a member of his crew lent his boss a certain credibility.

  Sweet was a short, pudgy man with wispy blond hair and a fair complexion that seemed permanently scarred red after so much time spent in sunny equatorial destinations. Tiger remembered the man as having an oddly warm manner, smiling more than you would expect from someone involved in the arms trade. Sweet had shaken his hand, a gesture Tiger found especially reassuring at the time, since they were surrounded by no fewer than twenty of Sweet’s heavily armed teenagers.

  Now, sitting undercover atop the hill in eastern New Jersey almost three years later, Tiger was nearly certain that the group of young fighters he was observing were an arm of Sweet’s security force. Tiger wondered if Rachel and her father could possibly be aware of his distant connection to Sweet. He also wondered exactly how far across the planet he would have to travel to escape the influence of his father—he had a nasty suspicion that no distance would be great enough.

  “What are we looking at?” Tiger asked Rachel.

  “You tell me.”

  Tiger looked through the scope, focusing on the group below as they entered the abandoned factory together, most of them carrying flashlights now as they systematically made their way through the complex. The layout of the factory started to become clear to Tiger: the left side of the factory was low and long, thirty feet high, but obviously one large room. This had to be the manufacturing side of the plant, probably a long assembly-line system. To the right was the management side, a tall building with five separate floor levels.

  Tiger watched the flashlight beams move through the complex, first along the manufacturing side—quickly—and then moving on to the taller section as the team scanned every floor. The team was moving much too quickly for this to be a search.

  “A security sweep,” he said. “They have something planned for this space, and this is their early recon. We’re scouting them as they scout the site.”

  Rachel nodded, confirming his assessment.

  “What are they protecting?” Tiger asked, sure he already knew the answer but interested to hear what Rachel’s answer would be.

  “Does it matter? Tell me what they’ve decided.”

  “The left side is a large open space, not a good place to defend anything or anyone at risk. The tower on the right is more secure—especially the upper floors—so whoever or whatever they are guarding will be found there.”

  The two of them watched as the team below filed out of the factory and back into their vehicles, the same big white guy locking the gate behind them and climbing into the lead vehicle before they drove away, their headlights necessary now in the dim twilight as they sped back along the access road and disappeared from the valley.

  After waiting just a few minutes, Rachel stood up and shouldered her racket case.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She reached into her bag and pulled out a medium-sized handgun—a 9mm Beretta—and held it up for him to see.

  “Finding a place for this,” she said, and started walking downhill, into the valley. “Wait here.”

  Tiger watched her progress as Rachel reached the bottom of the hill, then jogged across open ground to the locked gate of the complex. Less than a minute later—did she have a key, or did she pick the lock?—Rachel was through the gate and prowling inside the old factory building itself.

  He saw the glow of Rachel’s flashlight moving through the building, in much the same way the recon team’s had, except Rachel moved directly to the tower side of the structure, climbing the steps to the top floor as her first order of business. At that point, the flashlight glow settled in one place and did not move.

  Tiger watched and waited. He felt uneasy—he wasn’t sure why—and a thought came into his head: he didn’t have to stay there. He could easily turn and go, disappearing into the night and putting Rachel, Archer Divine, and the Ranch behind him for good. This possibility—that he could reclaim a sense of control and independence that he hadn’t felt in months—gave him a warm feeling.

  Just as easily, though, he imagined himself out in America alone. He’d be capable of surviving, but to what end? He had dreams of a new life—naive dreams, maybe—but the pact he’d made with Divine offered the only tangible route toward achieving what he wanted most. There was a price for holding on to his dream, and Tiger had been paying it.

  He would not stop now. If fate threw obstacles in his path he would face them like a man, just as he had done every day of his youth, in the streets of Piter. Tiger held his ground and waited. Soon Rachel would return from the compound below. Before long, Tiger would certainly learn what destiny had in store for him.

  He would be ready.

  21.

  WALLY WOKE FEELING A POWERFUL NEED TO BE

  productive—at anything. For all the danger and hassle they’d been through the previous day—finding themselves at the mercy of Afrika Neems and the rest of the GMBs, and then getting blasted by Greer for blowing up the surveillance at the smoke shop—Wally had precious little to show for it. She was as far from finding Tiger as she had ever been, and just as far from understanding what was behind Alabama’s attacks.

  She decided to surprise Lewis Jordan by actually showing up for work.

  Jake and Ella were still asleep, so she left some cash out on the kitchen counter with a note. She hoped they’d go out and spend the money having fun. Wally left a chunk of frozen fish on Tevin’s island, but this time he sulked and remained fully immersed.

  “There’s such a thing as being too low maintenance,” Wally said to the snapper. “If I wanted warm and cuddly I’d have gotten a cat, but you could show me a little something.”

  She headed out of the apartment and made her way toward the subway. Watching her back along the way to make sure that she was not being followed, Wally scanned the cars parked outside her apartment building. She half expected to see Alabama or some similar creep waiting for her. Whatever it was the men wanted from her—or whatever connection they had with Tiger—Wally had the powerful sense that they would keep comi
ng for her until they got it. She didn’t see anything or anyone that worried her, but made a mental note to be alert and aware of her surroundings throughout the day.

  It felt good to get on the G train again, just for the sense of routine and continuity, and she began to look forward to a long day of work on the Society’s database. When she arrived at the office, she was relieved to find that there were no new handsome young clients waiting there, ready to turn her life upside down.

  Wally made tea and got right to work, setting a huge stack of case files on her desk and plowing through them at blinding speed with little or no comprehension. When Lewis finally arrived late in the morning, Wally emerged from her trancelike work mode and found that of the twenty case files she had begun with, only one or two remained.

  “Well, hello there,” Lewis said, surprised to see her. “You’re back with us again? How was your time away?”

  “Hey Lewis. It was okay.”

  “You sound discouraged.”

  “I’m fine. I’ve had some personal things going on.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?” Lewis asked as he hung up his coat and hat.

  Wally hadn’t decided yet what she wanted to tell him—where would she start, anyway? With the total fiasco of her trying to help Kyle, or the part where gunmen were chasing her all over the state for reasons unknowable?

  And she had killed a man—there was that. A memory that she was able to put out of her mind for hours at a time, only to have the images of that terrible moment explode back into her consciousness. One day soon she would share the details about all of it with Lewis, but now was not the time. She kept her eyes focused on the screen in front of her, worried he might read her face and realize her situation was more dire than she was letting on.

  “Can I hit you back on that, Lewis?” she said. “I’m not sure I have it in me right now, and to be honest, I’m enjoying the grind of my Herculean database project.”

  “That’s fine,” Lewis agreed as he turned on his computer, readying for work.