Noble Warrior

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  Yet the bad news outweighed the good by miles. Each pass by the house caused McCutcheon to grip the bike’s throttle tighter and tighter. There was no activity inside. No lights. No silhouettes moving past windows. Nothing. From just after sunset to just before midnight not a soul stirred.

  On a school night.

  Finally, at 11:45 p.m., McCutcheon parked the bike three streets away, jumped over a series of backyard fences, and circled to the rear of his garage. Under a potted pot he’d hidden a key. He used it to open the back door and discovered the thing he most dreaded finding.

  Emptiness. There was no one home.

  During one of their many meals together Stanzer and M.D. once talked about what life would have been like for the two of them if they were lawmen battling bad guys in the Wild West.

  “No doubt,” Stanzer said. “I’d shoot my enemy’s horse.”

  The idea irked McCutcheon.

  “Shooting the horse is out of bounds. You can’t kill an innocent animal.”

  “The horse is part of the theater of battle.”

  “It didn’t sign up for it,” McCutcheon argued. “The animal got dragged in. I’d never shoot the horse.”

  “In is in,” Stanzer replied. “War is chess and if you are going to survive, if you’re gonna win, you have to manipulate every piece on the board to your best advantage. No compassion, no sympathy, no mercy.”

  “That go for civilians, too?” M.D. asked.

  “Depends,” Stanzer said. “In war, the overriding question is, ‘What’s my best play?’ If I am battling a bunch of bank robbers in a Wild West shootout, taking down their horses makes good strategic sense. My enemy is demobilized. ll. At the very least I disconcert and destabilize them, creating new opportunities for me as well as new hardships for them. After you take out the horse your odds are improved significantly. Most definitely,” Stanzer reiterated. “I shoot the bastard’s horse.”

  “What about morals?”

  “In fact,” Stanzer continued disregarding M.D.’s question. “I probably shoot it first before I even bother to aim for the guy riding it, now that I think about it. It’s a much fatter target.”

  “You are a cold man,” M.D. said.

  “Don’t worry,” Stanzer replied. “One day you will be, too.”

  McCutcheon didn’t like Stanzer’s answer. Not at all. But it told him a lot about the colonel’s character. He was a man who’d shoot the horse.

  Which meant he was a man who would go after Gemma.

  Fuck! M.D. thought to himself. I went for food and rest when I should have pushed the pace. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  McCutcheon knew the colonel’s best strategic play was to go after his sister. It made the most sense because it was a move that, as Stanzer would put it, would disconcert and destabilize his opponent. Gemma, Stanzer knew, was McCutcheon’s greatest weakness, and taking her to God-knows-where completely threw M.D. into a tailspin.

  McCutcheon had no idea of her location. Had no idea if she was safe. Had no idea the lengths to which Stanzer would go to use her as a pawn to get McCutcheon to come to him.

  On Stanzer’s own terms and in Stanzer’s own way.

  Just like that, the situation had flipped. The predator was once again the prey.

  Fuck! McCutcheon thought again.

  M.D. took a deep breath and tried to clear his head before rage and fear consumed his mind and stole his ability to reason.

  Okay, what does the evidence prove? Don’t sulk, don’t get emotional or distraught. Find out what the evidence proves.

  M.D. crossed to the refrigerator. Milk still fresh, three days more until the expiration date. He opened the bottom drawer of the crisper. Lettuce still firm, nothing wilted or soggy.

  He felt the fruit. All still edible.

  He closed the refrigerator and searched around for signs of a hasty departure. Nothing in the town house seemed ransacked. No signs of struggle.

  He surveyed the entirety of the room. Nothing seemed even the slightest bit out of place.

  He checked the bedrooms. Looked through clothes and closets. Gemma’s purple travel bag was gone. He went into the bathroom. Her toothbrush was missing, too.

  Evidence proved they went somewhere. Evidence proved they packed. Evidence also proved that the home wasn’t invaded. The whole atmosphere was too serene and organized.

  This wasn’t a kidnapping; this was voluntary departure. But to where? And with whom?

  McCutcheon pulled out Jeffrey’s phone and dialed Sarah’s number. It went straight to voice mail without even ringing, which told M.D. that her cell had been powered off.

  Not a good sign.

  Then again, it was late. Maybe she’d already gone to sleep?

  There was only one way to ascertain the final piece of evidence, the proof that would either confirm or deny M.D.’s greatest fear. McCutcheon didn’t want to tip his hand and play this card unless he absolutely had to. But he truly had no choice. He’d made the calculated decision to stay in northern Michigan and complete his business with Krewls before zipping home to shore up the safety of his sister. He knew it was a risk, but the odds seemed exceptionally low that he’d be able to have a clean go at Krewls if he’d gone back to Bellevue first. Krewls, he knew, would show up at work, discover M.D.’s absence, and then alert Puwolsky and Stanzer to the situation, thus eliminating the best weapon M.D. had at his disposal.

  The element of surprise.

  McCutcheon felt that if he exacted his revenge on Krewls swiftly and efficiently, he’d be able to get home in time to lock down Gemma before anyone yet discovered he’d broken free from the D.T.

  He was wrong. He’d gambled and lost.

  How could I be so stupid?

  Rage began to burn. Self-loathing. Every time love factored into his decision making, Stanzer had taken advantage of McCutcheon. With Kaitlyn. With Gemma. Even with the affection he felt for the colonel. M.D. practically looked to Stanzer like the positive father figure he never had. Loyal. Honorable. Righteous. Worthy. For months they’d trained together side by side, and now it was all a lie. A scheme and a betrayal. All proof that the student had not yet become the master.

  McCutcheon logged into TOR. He and Stanzer always communicated through the DarkNet to relay messages to each other. That’s how they’d remained in contact while hunting Al-Shabaab soldiers in New Jersey, it’s how Stanzer had trained all his field agents to transmit confidential data, and it would also be how Stanzer would relay any message to M.D. should he now be seeking to communicate with him.

  The upside to logging into TOR would be that McCutcheon would soon know the answer as to whether the colonel had taken his sister. The downside would be that by pinging in, the colonel would know M.D. had access to the Internet, which meant that if Stanzer did not already know that M.D. had escaped from the D.T. he would now. In a best-case scenario, Gemma and Sarah had simply gone to a friend’s house and M.D. would merely be tipping his hand. In a worst case scenario…

  McCutcheon didn’t want to think about that.

  It took a moment for Jeffrey’s phone to pick up the satellite relays. Once it did, M.D. stared at the screen and found his answer waiting in his secret inbox. It arrived in the form of two words.

  RENDEZVOUS POINT.

  McCutcheon’s heart dropped. He’d just received an encrypted message from the guy who shot horses.

  Red numbers glowed from the face of the black digital clock hanging on the wall. 3:15 a.m. A time for sleep. Unless, of course, a trap was being set.

  Stanzer and Puwolsky, alone in a soundproof room, readied their attack.

  “Think he’ll show?” Puwolsky asked, a Glock 9mm in his right hand.

  Stanzer, his weapon holstered, crossed to pick up a bar stool.

  “Yep,” he answered.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “’Cause I have the only thing he cares about.”

  “The girl?” Puwolsky asked, sliding his finger from the barrel of the Glock down
to the gun’s trigger.

  “Naw,” Stanzer replied as he moved the stool into the center of the room and calculated the optimal spacing between the seat and some folding chairs off to the left. “My guess is he already slayed that dragon.”

  Puwolsky considered Stanzer’s words and then moved his finger off the Glock’s trigger.

  “Good answer,” Puwolsky said. “You pass.”

  “Didn’t know there was a test.”

  “Indeed there was,” Puwolsky said. “’Cause there ain’t no way you grabbed his girl.”

  “Yeah, why’s that?”

  “Because I did.”

  A surge of adrenaline rushed through Stanzer’s veins, but he long ago mastered the art of not reacting outwardly to disturbing news. Calm, poised, and patient he moved a small table from the center of the room to the far wall without missing a beat.

  “As an insurance policy,” Puwolsky continued. “And if you would have lied to me just now, it would have told me you were in cahoots with the kid.”

  “Cahoots, huh?”

  “With you fuckin’ military guys a fella never knows who’s lying, who’s telling the truth, and who’s setting the stage for a double cross.” Puwolsky raised his weapon. “A wrong answer and you woulda had to meet the Double T?”

  Stanzer wrinkled his brow. “The Double T?”

  “That’s what I call her,” Puwolsky said, kissing his Glock. “The Terminal Terminator.”

  “What a coincidence,” Stanzer said. “That’s what I call my cock.” Puwolsky glared then cracked a grin. “Very funny, Colonel. But one call from me and the girl eats a bullet.”

  “Well, I hope you already made it, because I just jammed all the phone lines. Whole network is down. Wi-Fi. Cell towers. Everything.”

  Puwolsky looked down at his phone. No signal.

  “Gotta keep everything within a hundred yards offline for at least six hours,” Stanzer said.

  Puwolsky tapped a few icons on the phone’s screen. Nothing.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?” Stanzer said. “To a soldier like the one we are about to do battle with, a cell is a weapon. Probably more useful to him than a gun at this point. Can’t risk it. Who knows what he’s cooking up.”

  “Well, if Larson doesn’t hear from me in the next forty-five minutes,” Puwolsky said, “he’s gonna pop the little lady.”

  “Tough shit for her then, isn’t it?”

  Puwolsky stared. Was Stanzer serious?

  “You gotta open the phone lines,” Puwolsky said.

  “Nope, can’t risk it.”

  “Look, I ain’t above a little collateral damage when an operation goes sideways,” Puwolsky said. “But icing an innocent teenage girl for no good reason? We even took the precaution of having the Priests grab her so she doesn’t know who’s behind it all. My hope is, softy that I am, to get her back home safely when this is all said and done.”

  “That’s your problem, not mine.”

  “Open the phone lines.”

  “Nope.”

  “Open the goddamn phone lines, would ya?”

  “I told ya,” Stanzer said. “We need a wide circle of blackout coverage on the front end of this operation as well as on the back. No telling what crazy cyber-scheme he might have created. The kid could be out there stalking us right now for all we know.”

  Puwolsky tapped his phone again but to no avail.

  “You don’t understand. I gotta get in touch with Larson. He’s not like me, he’s a lunatic, he lives for breaking heads. Me, if I have to take a life, I do it with remorse. Him, he’s a stone-cold killer.”

  Stanzer thought about it.

  “I’ll give you sixty seconds,” he said. “Tell your boy we need a safety net after the scheduled rendezvous time because we have no idea what traps might be waiting. Just to be sure, tell him he might not hear from you again until noon.”

  “All the way till noon?”

  “If he’s that trigger-happy, let’s give ourselves some latitude,” Stanzer said. “And by the way, I am only doing this once. That’s nonnegotiable.”

  Puwolsky shook his head. “You spooks and your fucking tech. Me,” he said. “I just stick with regular old e-mail.”

  “Could be your downfall,” Stanzer replied.

  “Doubt it,” Puwolsky said. “I’m pretty good with computers and passwords and shit.”

  Stanzer reached into his pocket, pulled out a small black device, a militarized version of a mobile phone, and tapped in a code.

  “You’ve got one minute and then all wireless devices are back to being paperweights, so be efficient.”

  Puwolsky called a phone number. Larson answered.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” he began. “Look, change of plans.”

  As the two talked Stanzer stared down at his device’s screen. A phone number appeared. The number Puwolsky just dialed.

  He did a location search. A map popped up, GPS tracking. Larson’s exact coordinates.

  Stanzer waved at Puwolsky and gave him the signal to hurry up. He now had what he wanted.

  With the furniture properly situated and the space locked down, Stanzer and Puwolsky sat in beige folding chairs on opposite sides of the room laying in wait. A violent confrontation seemed inevitable, but with more than an hour to go before M.D.’s arrival there was little to do but remain patient.

  Puwolsky played a game on his phone, a silly little flying pig app where the point was to swim around dropping anvils, no Internet required.

  “Hey, Puwolsky,” Stanzer said. “Let’s you and me clear the air a minute. Man to man.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t like you very much,” Stanzer said. “In fact, I think you’re a prick.”

  Puwolsky lifted his eyes from the screen. “You ain’t the first,” he replied.

  “But we’re sort of partners now. Wouldn’t ya say?”

  “For the next few hours at least,” he said. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Then tell me something,” Stanzer said. “I know why I need the kid to vanish. It’s his ass or mine. And I know why you now need the kid to vanish. ’Cause if you don’t hunt him down, he’s gonna hunt you.”

  “Pretty much,” Puwolsky said.

  “But why’d you even target him in the first place?”

  Puwolsky lowered his eyes and returned to playing his game. “I told ya,” he said dismissively. “To take out D’Marcus Rose, the High Priest.”

  “But you just snatched McCutcheon’s girl last night, and the High Priest bit the bullet five days ago,” Stanzer said. “To me, this means that the Priests were never really after his girl in the first place. Otherwise, they’d have taken her out right after D’Marcus Rose had his final chip cashed in as payback against M.D.”

  Stanzer raised his eyes again and smiled. “You’d make a good detective.”

  “Don’t flatter me, fuckwad,” Stanzer said leaning forward. “We’re about to conspire to kill an undercover operative together. This isn’t dating; this is marriage, and I need to know who I’m sharing a bed with. You know my story, now what’s yours?”

  Puwolsky closed out the flying pig game and put his phone back in his pocket.

  “D’Marcus thought I betrayed him in a drug deal gone bad between some Canadians and South Americans,” Puwolsky said. “My unit was greased to provide security, make sure no cops showed, but cops did show. The feds. My team had no idea. Whole thing turned into one big clusterfuck, and D’Marcus saw the bust all over the evening news.” Puwolsky spread his hands across the sky. “D-town nabs huge cocaine shipment!” he said. “Was on every channel, like a ‘score one for the good guys’ type of story. The High Priest thought I set his associates up.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not at all. I have no idea who tipped the feds off. But D’Marcus was crazy. He blamed me, and this whole ‘Priests always pay’ shit sent him over the edge. One of my partners died at the scene, they took out another, and they tried to ice both me
and Larson twice. We figured our only play was to find a way to whack his ass before he got to us, and then broker a new deal with the next in line to become the High Priest.”

  “So you picked McCutcheon to do the dirty work?” Stanzer asked.

  “First, I struck a deal with a thug named Puppet. We agreed to go back to the way things always were, cops playing nice with gangsters, and he agreed to call off the green light on me and Larson, if I could manage to get someone who could punch D’Marcus’s ticket in lockup for him.”

  “A coup d’état?” Stanzer said. “With this Puppet character lying in wait?”

  “Exactly,” Puwolsky said. “The way D’Marcus dined off the carcass of the people in the Detroit projects didn’t sit well with a lot of the Priests. I mean these were their cousins, sisters, and brothers that were having the screws turned on them. Of course, we knew there could be problems with future Priests if things didn’t break Puppet’s way, ’cause when a gang leader falls you never really know who is going to be the next in line, but hey, we were desperate. Worth a shot, right?”

  Stanzer considered the information. “But how’d McCutcheon even bubble up on your radar?” Stanzer said. “He’d vanished. Gone underground.”

  “The girl.”

  “The girl?” Stanzer said. “You mean Kaitlyn Cummings?”

  “Yep,” Puwolsky said. “This chick, I tell you, she became like the running joke of every detective on the DPD. First month your man was gone she showed up every hot-damn day wanting to file a missing persons report about her cage-fighting boyfriend, who mysteriously disappeared into a white van with some guys in suits. The second month she still showed up, five days a week barking the same fairy tale. Month three, too.” Puwolsky chuckled. “Hell, she still shows up every Wednesday at four forty-five p.m. like clockwork after all this time. I got no idea what your boy did to this little honey, but wow, she spiraled.”

  “What do you mean, spiraled?”

  “I mean she tanked,” Puwolsky said. “On her way to becoming a Rhodes scholar, bound for the Ivy League, then fears that the love of her life didn’t really dump her, but instead fell into some sort of grave danger, and she just loses her shit. Started to mope. May or may not go to college, decided to take a year off and shovel lattes at Starbucks while waiting for her knight in shining armor to return. Rich girl like that with the world at her feet gets doinked by Cupid and the princess entirely collapsed. I kid you not, she came in every single day for months.”