A Man Beyond The Law

by Dan Ames

  These guys were private, or at the very least, very poorly trained.

  Tallon completed his threat assessment and immediately went into action. He already had a gun in hand and now he shrugged on a bulletproof vest, then pulled on a baggy T-shirt.

  He went to the front door, and casually opened it.

  “Morning,” he said.

  “Michael Tallon?” the one on Tallon’s left said. He was a big guy, with pale, sweaty skin, blond hair cropped close, and black sunglasses. His voice was unusually high-pitched. Tallon wondered if he’d added so much bulk as compensation.

  “No, he just stepped out. Something about a farmer’s market downtown. Who’s asking?”

  The guy on Tallon’s right didn’t move.

  He knew what they were thinking. They’d probably been given a photo of him and now they were trying to gauge if the man on the doorstep in a baggy t-shirt, messy hair and gym shorts was one and the same.

  It could be a relative. A brother maybe.

  Tallon knew they were both wondering how to proceed.

  Double check the photo or photos they’d been given for reference? But that would imply they were less than confident and they had already drawn their guns. They were ready for action and the idea of withdrawing was not the path they wanted to take. It was tentative, and these guys were all about aggression and power.

  The man on Tallon’s right moved first. He was shorter than the blond but matched his partner in terms of width. A short, squat weightlifter, Tallon figured. He’d probably worked as a bouncer before trying to move up into private security. He clearly was not the leader, which is why he glanced over at the blond.

  The blond man nodded his head forward almost imperceptibly and that’s when Tallon knew they weren’t going to verify they had the right man. Instead, both of them raised their weapons.

  Tallon was already firing. He’d kept his gun low but had already raised the muzzle during the pair’s moment of hesitation. In a situation like this, it didn’t pay to be the one reacting.

  He shot the blond first, a double tap that resulted in the back of the man’s head being blown off in a shower of blood and brains. He toppled over backwards and his pistol fired harmlessly into the air.

  Tallon dove to the side as bullets ripped into the door and he swung it shut, rolled to his side, and raced along the interior wall. He heard more popping sounds, and knew the man was firing into the windows, not realizing they were bulletproof glass.

  Finally, Tallon reached the end of his interior hall, ducked through the back door, and came around the side of the house.

  The advantage was all his and he used it to maximum effect. He guessed the man was racing toward the same corner, not realizing that the grounds were all under video surveillance. Tallon simply took cover behind the low stucco wall that tapered down from the corner of the house and took out his phone. He tapped an icon on the screen and he saw the feeds from his security cameras. He took a quick look at the frame in the lower right, which pointed back at the front of the house from the front of the property.

  He saw the man was standing with his back to the wall, not yet moving around the corner of the house. He stood with his gun pointed at the corner of the property, waiting for Tallon to appear.

  Instead, Tallon waited, too. He had his gun trained on the corner, but he kept one eye on the video stream. Tallon watched as the man’s head bobbed in a rhythm and Tallon could only imagine him counting in his head, one, two, three…

  The man pushed off from the wall.

  Tallon let go of his phone, saw the man come into view around the corner and Tallon shot him twice in the face.

  The man pitched forward, landing on his dark sunglasses, his feet twitching as the last vestiges of life poured from the bullet holes in his face onto the sandy soil of Tallon’s yard.

  He hadn’t even gotten off a single shot.

  The house was remote enough that Tallon had no need to worry about gunfire alerting his neighbors. Plus, the dead man in front of him couldn’t be seen from the street.

  It was the dead blond man in the driveway he had to take care of immediately.

  As he raced forward, he realized that his instincts had been right.

  The email with Jessica Halbert’s photo?

  It had only been the beginning.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As hardened as the three men were who collectively met under the banner of G & E Diversified Holdings, Inc., they nonetheless were disgusted with what they saw. On the table in the conference room were images of the crime scene from the Doug Franzen murder, and his girlfriend Dawn Fitzgerald.

  “A goddamned animal,” Edgar said. His dark face was a shade more sinister than usual as he pondered the images.

  “He’s getting worse,” Silvestri said. “His disease is progressing. He’s killing faster and faster, and more violently than ever. If that’s possible.”

  Jacobs said nothing. The lean man uncoiled his greyhound-like body from the conference room chair and stood, pacing back and forth. “This simply can’t go on. We’ve got to consider the option that none of us have wanted to discuss.”

  “No,” Edgar said. “We have to stay the course. We’ve got Pauling working now, and she’ll be joined by Tallon. Together, they make a much better team than Wainwright.”

  “Speaking of Wainwright, where the hell is he?” Silvestri said. “If he’s dead, where’s the body? He gets snatched from the hospital and then what? You’d think our friend would have put it on full display as a message to us.”

  “Maybe he wanted to keep us guessing,” Edgar said.

  “Well, I’m tired of this son of a bitch,” Jacob said. The regularly bulging veins in his face and forehead were sticking out even more. They were throbbing as the blood was rushing to his face. “And I’m tired of us dicking around like this. Look at us! We’re three of the most decorated soldiers and commanders the American military has ever seen. Yet here we are, sitting in this shithole office in a strip mall for chrissakes, carrying on like a bunch of nervous housewives. Screw the help. Screw the plans. Let’s all three of us go out there and do what we should have done a long time ago. Take matters into our own hands and put a bullet in this sick dog once and for all.”

  Edgar and Silvestri said nothing. Jacob’s words echoed throughout the room.

  Finally, Edgar sighed and said, “Feel better?”

  Jacobs glared at him.

  “I’ll offer a compromise,” Edgar said at last. “Let’s give Pauling and Tallon 48 hours. If they haven’t found him, we activate the plan you mentioned, which, I might add, puts us at considerable risk of being exposed, and go after him ourselves.”

  “I’m sure Dawn Fitzgerald’s family would say we waited a tad too long already,” Jacobs added.

  “Take it easy, Jacobs,” Silvestri said. “Emotions have no place on the battlefield. And make no mistake, we’re at war with this son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah,” Jacobs said. “And he’s winning.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Pauling left the office and walked to a French restaurant less than three blocks from her building.

  She’d been poring over the Jessica Halbert case files and needed a break, some fresh air, and some nourishment. The restaurant was rarely crowded, a hole-in-the-wall really, but the food was excellent.

  Pauling ordered a mixed salad and a cup of garbure, which was a thick soup made with vegetables and ham. She chose a bottled water to drink.

  Her table was next to the window and while she waited for her food, she watched the pedestrians hurry by and thought about the Halbert case.

  It was obvious, after she’d dug through the incredible amount of information she’d appropriated from the military’s own files, that a severe amount of redacting had gone on. Not so much with regard to Jessica Halbert’s murder, although there had been some pretty heavy editing there, too, but the operations she may or may not have been involved in.

  Army stuff that
qualified as beyond the ordinary daily grind that represents most of what goes on in a military base.

  Specifically, censorship was employed on missions like the one that had included Tallon.

  Pauling had found it in the files that concerned activities that took place several months before the murder. From what she could tell, Halbert was involved in nothing out of the ordinary, other than the mission that Tallon was a part of. Coincidence?

  Pauling didn’t believe in those. Part of what had attracted her to working for the FBI was her analytical personality. While she did believe that sometimes truth was stranger than fiction she also believed that chalking things up to fate was usually a mistake.

  In this case, she considered being chosen as the recipient of the mystery files that also included a link to Michael Tallon was not mere happenstance.

  There had to be a reason.

  The waiter, a crisply dressed man with a pencil-thin mustache and perfect posture, brought Pauling her salad and soup along with a small basket of bread.

  The soup smelled fantastic, but Pauling started with the salad. Everything about the restaurant’s dishes spoke to freshness. The lettuce and vegetables had a pleasant crunch and the right amount of tenderness.

  As she ate, she continued to operate under the presumption that she was chosen for a reason. While admitting that it wasn’t an absolute certainty, the obvious conclusion was that Tallon’s mission which also involved Jessica Halbert might just have been the catalyst for her murder.

  Or, if nothing else, the reason for Pauling receiving the case files.

  Perhaps it was both.

  Pauling knew Tallon frequently worked “off the books” for both the government and private companies. She also knew him as a man with honor and integrity. So Pauling also made the assumption that the military operation he and Halbert had taken part in was probably legitimate.

  Up to a point.

  Or at least a gray area between absolute right and wrong.

  Yet the odds favored a connection.

  Pauling glanced at her phone, saw there was still no word from Tallon.

  She finished her lunch and wished she’d ordered the bowl of soup as opposed to the cup, but knew she’d feel she made the right choice when she was working out tonight.

  Pauling left the restaurant but didn’t go straight back to the office. Instead, she walked briskly in a roundabout way, occasionally using the reflections in store windows to see if anyone was following her.

  She saw no one.

  Back at the office, she dug into the files once again.

  Pauling needed names.

  The first problem was that any and all commanding officers’ names for the mission were completely censored. Even the name of the operation was blacked out. The only way Pauling could track the exercise in question was by a series of numbers and letters representing a shorthand code for certain army “projects.”

  What she could deduce were the intermediate players, thanks to Michael Tallon. If his name was visible, then that meant he wasn’t a commanding officer, but rather, an operative.

  Which also meant the names associated with Tallon, and there were only three, were also operatives.

  The names grouped with Halbert’s were clearly support staff, like her. Pauling couldn’t eliminate them from being involved, but for now, she would focus on the three names equal in rank to Tallon.

  Peter Maitling.

  Christopher Zenz.

  Doug Franzen.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Tallon found the keys to the black SUV still sitting in his driveway.

  The keys were in the front pants pocket of the dead blond-haired man sprawled a few feet from the vehicle’s front bumper. Tallon saw the button sporting the icon of the SUV’s rear hatch door and he pressed it.

  The door automatically began to rise.

  Grabbing the dead man by the ankles, Tallon dragged him around to the rear of the vehicle. He gripped the dead man’s belt and the front of his shirt, and dead lifted the corpse into the rear cargo area of the SUV. No easy feat, as the man easily weighed well over two hundred pounds.

  Once Tallon had the body inside the vehicle, and clear from view, Tallon dug out the man’s wallet and cell phone. He took a quick glance at the driver’s license and noticed it was issued by the state of Maryland.

  Interesting.

  He slipped both the wallet and the phone into his own pockets and then he thumbed the key fob’s button again to close the door.

  Back around the end of the house, he heaved the second dead man over his shoulder, knowing that the blood would smear onto his own clothes but also understanding it couldn’t be helped.

  It was a dirty job, and he had to do it.

  Tallon once again keyed the SUV’s rear door open and dumped in the second body. Repeating the process, Tallon retrieved the second dead man’s cell phone and wallet and added them to his pockets.

  Next, he retrieved the dead men’s guns from where they’d dropped them on the ground and carried them into the SUV as well. They were standard issue 9mm pistols, Brownings.

  A good, dependable gun in the right hands.

  Tallon left the guns loaded and dumped them into the big vehicle’s glove compartment. He also took a quick look around the interior and saw two small suitcases as well as a laptop case.

  It confirmed what he’d already known; these men weren’t law enforcement. They were private security. Hired contract killers and not exactly the cream of the crop. Clearly, they hadn’t been properly briefed on their target or maybe they’d just been overconfident. But relying on bluffing and a half-assed attempt to appear as cops was not a serious effort.

  Tallon wondered why.

  When things seemed too easy, it almost always meant difficulties would follow.

  Well, Tallon would be prepared for that.

  He went back into the house, collected the gear he knew he would need and that always stood ready for situations just like this. Most of it was already packed into a military-grade backpack which contained spare IDs, guns, ammunition, and five thousand dollars in cash. In the side pockets were an array of electronics, including at least two burner phones that hadn’t been used but were fully charged.

  A duffel bag was also packed and ready to go. It contained several days worth of clothes as well as the basics in toiletries.

  He retrieved his own keys, wallet and cell phone. When he was prepared to leave, he carefully armed the home’s extensive security system.

  Back outside, he clambered into the black SUV, set his bags in the passenger seat and drove away from his home, heading directly west toward Los Angeles.

  As he drove, he was careful not to exceed the speed limit, considering he had two murder victims in the back.

  His mind wandered and led him to ponder the timing of the email containing Jessica Halbert’s photo, his reading about her murder, his tech friend’s message that the email came mostly from within a government entity, and now, the two dead men in the back of the SUV.

  He glanced at his phone and saw that Lauren Pauling had called. Tallon debated about calling her back and decided against it for the time being. For one thing, he didn’t want his cell phone to ping a tower at the moment, at least not until he disposed of the bodies.

  The other reason was that when he did talk to her, he wanted to be able to focus on the conversation. It would be better to wait until he’d settled the matter at hand before he talked with her.

  For the disposal job, he chose a place he’d scouted from time to time. Tallon knew Death Valley and the surrounding area better than anyone. He ran here all the time, often driving to a new location to explore on foot. It kept him sharp, but also provided opportunities like this.

  In particular, he knew one side road on the southern end of the park that branched off into a little used track that was once a service road but had been abandoned years ago. The site was never visited by tourists, and it officially didn’t exist on maps, even digita
l versions with GPS.

  Now Tallon steered the SUV down the road, a cloud of dust behind him, and engaged the vehicle’s four-wheel drive. The terrain was steep and rocky, graduating to little more than desert terrain with no discernible road at all.

  Ahead, he saw the branch he was looking for and followed it several miles until a gulley appeared. He parked the SUV, unloaded the bodies, and rolled them down the embankment. The process was a twofer in that loose stones and gravel followed the bodies down and at least practically covered them.

  Tallon then used his feet to help gravity along, and soon, both of the wannabe killers were covered by rock, dirt and dust. He felt no guilt at leaving the dead men in unmarked graves. They’d made the choice to go after him and now they were suffering the consequences.

  Tallon went back to the SUV, turned it around and eventually reconnected to the road heading west.

  According to his calculations he would be in Los Angeles in less than three hours. There, he would wipe down everything to avoid leaving prints, ditch the vehicle along with his bloody clothes and lay low.

  And then he would call Pauling.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  There had been no nightmares.

  But even in times of quiet and calm, he remembered what had happened in southern Turkey when he’d almost been murdered by a mob of crazed locals. Yes, he’d certainly played a role in their anger.

  He could still see their enraged faces.

  It was easy to transport himself back to that moment.

  When all of those psychotic faces had been wiped away by a blinding flash that had penetrated his closed eyelids, it was like a sudden gust of hot steam blasting him in the face.

  All at once, he knew it wasn’t his tormenters inflicting a new kind of pain upon him. No, this was something else. Something bigger.

  Something far more wicked.