by Chuck Dixon
“You have anything newer than Iwo Jima?”
“Fuck you, Slick. I got whatever the hell you need to get you out of whatever corner you’re in. What are you looking for?”
“A long gun. Something for range and a good scope that’s not fiddly. A rifle, an M4, without all the aftermarket bullshit. And two handguns. One for serious work and the other for hideout.”
“Let’s go shopping.” Gunny grinned and ran his fingers along the racked rifles and shotguns.
Levon picked out a cut-down M-4 with a heavy rubberized forestock. Gunny told him it had a reinforced action and worked as smooth as a duck’s ass. For the long gun he stayed with the classics: a Winchester model 70 in a Rynex stock. The handgun choices were a Sig Sauer nine and a hammerless Colt snubbie in .38 special, both in stainless.
“These are all off the books?” Levon said.
“Hell, not only are they not here now, they never was anywhere,” Gunny said, pulling down fresh boxes of ammo and magazines for the Mike and Sig.
Before they were done Gunny insisted Levon take a shotgun, a cut-down Mossberg Mariner with a pistol grip.
“Nobody was ever sorry they brought one of these along,” Gunny said.
“You know you’re not getting any of these back, Gunny,” Levon said.
“I’m countin’ on it. You use ’em and lose ’em. Just bring your ass back here to your little one.”
“I think I have what I need here.”
“How about a few bricks of C-4, Slick?”
“I wouldn’t say no.”
They made four trips from the arsenal to the gravel lot in front of the cabin. Levon dropped the tailgate of the Avalanche.
“You can’t take the truck you came here in. You drove it up from Tampa. They’ll have the plates,” Gunny said.
“I’ll switch plates somewhere on the road.” Levon lifted two plastic ammo cases up onto the gate. Gunny put his hand on Levon’s wrist.
“You’ll take our Ranger Rover. She’s old but she runs good. You switch plates on her and you’re in stealth mode again.”
“Can’t do that.”
“You will or you ain’t leaving here.”
“You were never able to keep me any place I didn’t want to be, Gunny.”
“That hurts. That’s cold, Slick.”
Gunny’s smile broadened as his grip on Levon’s wrist tightened.
“All right. I’ll take the Rover. Joyce won’t mind?”
“She won’t.”
A final squeeze and Gunny released Levon’s wrist.
They loaded the Rover and went inside the cabin for breakfast.
41
* * *
“The girl. It has to be the girl,” Dimi said to the phone held before him.
“What girl? Who is this girl?” Uncle Symon’s face filled the screen.
“A girl. I was in Skip’s. College girl.”
“All of this for some bitch? What is this bullshit?”
“The police came looking for her. They came to Skip’s. They learned nothing.”
The image on the screen shifted then settled. Uncle Symon’s dark eyes studied Dimi’s face across the space that separated them. The secret to Dimi’s entire future was in those eyes.
“What do the police know, Dimi?”
“Nothing! No one told them anything. Not a fucking word, uncle.”
“Who was this bitch? Who would come looking for her?”
“I have all of that. I mean, I can get it. I sold her driver’s license and credit cards. I can tell you who.”
Dimi gave the name and location. Symon wrote them down then broke the connection, cutting off his nephew as the man began to plead to be released.
Symon selected a cell phone from the row on his desk and called Karp and Nestor.
42
* * *
There was something liberating about it all.
Dr. Roth rode back home in the back seat with Marcia’s body in the trunk. The two men removed him from the car, the smaller man holding his elbow to help him into the house. The larger man hefted Marcia from the trunk and carried her up to the porch and inside.
It was all so unreal. He was naked in broad daylight. His wife was being brought home with half her skull missing. Over the border hedge in the front yard he could hear a neighbor’s leafblower whining. Children shouted at play somewhere down the street. High overhead the contrail of a commercial jet cut the sky in half. All around life went on even as Jordan Roth’s world teetered at the edge of oblivion.
The smaller man kept watch on Jordan while he pulled on clothing and packed three more changes into an overnight bag with no attention to coordination.
“Your pad?” the smaller man asked holding out a hand for the zippered bag.
“In my office.”
The smaller man gestured and Jordan led the way downstairs. There was a sharp chemical smell in the air. Gasoline. Coming from the cellar.
The larger man rejoined them as they were leaving the office. He had three dark bottles cradled in one arm. He’d been in the cellar. Jordan was curious as to what vintages the man chose to take. They exited the house together. Jordan was allowed to sit in the back seat. His bag went in the trunk.
He looked from the rear window of the car as they backed down the driveway to the street. A fog of smoke was rising from the basement window wells. A fire.
A pyre for Marcia.
They left the Roths’ now-former address, and the tony neighborhood they’d called home for thirty years, for a golden strip lined with shopping marts, car dealerships and standalone stores.
The car made its way east in fits and starts, stopping at every Walgreens, CVS, Target and Walmart. The car would park in the fire lane while the doctor would write a prescription for various Schedule Three drugs. Tylox, Oxycontin, Empirin, Fiorinal, Ativan, Halcion, Librium, Valium, Xanax, Amytal, Nembutal and others in generic and brand names. His captors were knowledgeable of doses and legal prescription amounts.
The two men took turns entering the drug stores and returning to the car after fifteen and twenty minute waits. The big man did not want to talk but Jordan found the smaller of the two a willing conversationalist.
The smaller man, the pretty boy with the predator eyes, explained that they were using a collection of credit cards under various names to make the purchases. So, the pick-ups were essentially free to them. A fortune in forbidden prescriptive narcotics and depressants worth many times their market value in the right places. This was all a bonus above what they were being paid for their current assignment.
The doctor wasn’t certain if they meant to keep him alive for his surgical skills or merely until his prescription pad was empty. This couldn’t go on for long. Even now the fire would have been discovered. Jordan and Marcia Roth would be feared dead in the fire. Was there an apparatus to shut down his status as a qualified scrip writer once it was determined that he was either missing or deceased?
He took some comfort from them allowing him to pack a bag with a few days’ worth of clothes. Of course, they might have done this to give him a false sense of his own security; to make him compliant. These were heartless men, ruthless men. But they were professionals. Their every action branded them as such. In that way he felt a kinship with them: men skilled at an unpleasant task that required certain skills and a high level of expert detachment to perform. Like killing a fellow human being or sawing into the skull of a living subject.
They were parked before a Target. Jordan sat quiet in the back seat with the bigger man munching a protein bar behind the wheel. The smaller man exited hurriedly and took the passenger seat. He spoke to the driver in Russian. A brief exchange followed. The big man nodded his head toward the doctor.
Jordan held his breath.
“Find a motel,” the smaller man said.
Jordan exhaled.
They were keeping him for now.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Get all the intel you can. Intel is good. Even bad intel
has some worth. Every lie has some truth in it. You need to learn the difference.”
43
* * *
Tobias Garrett shanked his ball into the trees. He muttered a curse as he started to hike after it.
“Rotten luck,” a member of his party called after him in accented English.
He was handicapping himself so as to not show up his guests. They were piss-poor golfers but he dearly wanted their business. No trouble falling on his ass a few times to give them the win if it meant getting the fat contract they offered.
His cell tingled in his pocket as he was using his driver to part the ferns in search of his little white Titleist. It wasn’t a number he recognized.
“Garrett. Lone Star Solutions. How can I make your world a safer place?”
“That shrapnel still giving you a hitch in your getalong?”
Levon Cade. Holy shit. Cade was identifying himself using a reference from a shared adventure in Manila. An RPG brought down their chopper. Garrett remembered little after that except that Cade was always there, always by him, until they were safe back aboard the Stennis.
“Only in the cold weather, brother.”
“Can we talk, Tobey?”
“This is a business line. I can call you back in two hours. The number on my display good for you?”
“Yeah. For a few days. Talk to you then.”
The call ended.
Tobias hacked away at the ball to free it from the rough, taking four swings, and still came to the green one point behind the best player in his foursome. Arabs were shit at golf. Tobias sank the putt to take the hole.
44
* * *
Levon pulled in at truck stops along the way back to Tampa. He collected throwaway cell phones paying cash every time for the phones and calling cards.
The parting from Merry had been hard. It might have been better if she’d cried. She held it back, not letting him see how his leaving was tearing her up. He looked back once in the rearview. Merry turned to bury her head in Joyce’s shoulder. Gunny stood by waving.
A cell buzzed and lit up on the console by him. It was the phone he’d assigned to Tobey Garrett. He touched the tab on his earbud cord.
“Thanks for getting back to me. We’re secure.”
“Am I going to have to throw this phone in the lake after I hang up?”
“You might have to find a volcano to drop it into.”
“Shit,” Tobey hissed in his ear.
“I need intel. You’re private sector now. Is that going to be a problem?”
“I still have my resources. It’s what I trade on. What do you need?”
“A gang in Tampa. Family name Kolisnyk. K-O-L-I-S-N-Y-K. They go by Collins too. Not sure if that’s a legal name change.”
“Shit fuck, Cade. These are Russians?”
“Ukrainian. Same difference.”
“Mafiya or Vor?”
“They’re Vor.”
“You caught a small break, brother. They might wait to cut your balls off until after you’re dead. How can I help you?”
“The usual. A way in. A profile. Holdings. History. Organization, Associations. Broad strokes.”
“You working private sector yourself? Is this freelance?”
“One time thing. I’m not printing business cards.”
“Where have I heard that before? I don’t need to know anything else to know that you’re in over your head.”
“Can you do it, Tobey?”
“Give me until ten tonight. I’m in Austin. I’ll call you at this number.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Think of it as a portion of the down payment on all I owe you, brother.”
The call ended. Levon continued south on US 65.
Levon was pulled in to refuel the Rover an hour north of Tallahassee when Tobey called back with the goods. The traffic on US 10 was a river of light in the dark beyond the blinking glow of the fluorescents over the pump stations. Levon sat in the front seat and took notes on a pad as Tobey spoke. He filled five pages before they were done.
“That enough?” Tobey said.
“It’s all I needed.”
“You’re fucking with the wrong guys. Whatever you’re into, they’re not going to forget about you.”
“I know how to hide.”
“That’s harder when you’re alone. It’s expensive too. You have a kid, right? You thought of her?”
“It’s gone too far along for that.”
“Shit, brother.”
“It is what it is, Tobey.”
“If you need money you let me know. Hell, you live through this and need a job you let me know.”
“I’ll be in contact about some fresh paper. The works.”
“It’s yours. Good luck.”
The line went dead.
Levon pulled to the back of the lot where the semis were parked. He lay down in the back seat as best he could and slept until just before dawn.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“You have to know more about your enemy than he knows about you. That means keeping your ass hid while you study his. That means limiting your encounters with him. The more times you fight the more he learns about your moves. Make the first fight the last fight whenever you can. Find him. Fuck him. And forget him.”
45
* * *
The dog was barking.
Delia Wiley elbowed her husband.
“Your dog’s barking.”
Joe Bob awakened. It was his dog when it barked or shit on the rug. He grunted and fell back to sleep.
“Still barking.” She nudged him again.
“Damn it,” he huffed, sitting up.
Joe Bob sat up in the king-size bed listening. Mojo was sure barking at something. Deer crossing the property. The neighbor on the next lot coming home late. Maybe someone poaching firewood off the sixty acre conservation area that ringed the subdivision. Hoopies from the trailer park over by the county road started doing that every year when the weather turned cold.
Out in his fenced-in run Mojo went silent.
“He stopped. Deer probably,” Joe Bob said.
His wife moaned in the affirmative. They were back to sleep in moments.
Something nudged Joe Bob. Something hard pressed down into his shoulder. He grunted. It pressed again. Wrong side of the bed for Delia.
Joe Bob opened his eyes to see a big man standing over him. The man wore a black mask that covered his face. The man was pulling back the black pistol he’d used to prod Joe Bob awake. The man motioned for Joe Bob to sit up. Joe Bob saw that a smaller man, also in a mask, was on the bed straddling Delia and holding a pistol to her head. The smaller man nodded in greeting to Joe Bob.
The big man helped Joe Bob to his feet then shoved him into a padded chair in a corner of the room. The smaller man had Delia out of the bed. She was mewling wordlessly. Joe Bob thought she was praying. The smaller man shoved her to the floor at Joe Bob’s feet. She was whispering his name over and over again.
“Joe Bob? Joe Bob? Joe Bob?”
The smaller man took a seat on the corner of the bed. The gun in his gloved fist at rest on his leg.
“You know this man Levon Cade?” Nestor said.
Joe Bob nodded. “He used to work for me.”
The smaller man shook his head lazily.
“He still works for you. You gave him a new job,” Nestor said.
“Okay,” Joe Bob said.
“You will tell him to stop this job you gave him. You will tell him to come home. When he has come home you will call us,” Nestor said. He plucked a strip of paper from the pocket of his leather jacket. He held it out for Joe Bob.
Joe Bob took the paper. It had a ten digit number hand printed on it.
“You understand? You tell him to stop working and come back home. You changed your mind. Okay? You understand what will happen unless you do this.”
Joe Bob nodded.
“Good,” Nestor said patting his knees befo
re standing up. The two men walked for the door of the master bedroom.
“Sorry for the dog,” Karp said before stepping into the dark hallway.
Joe Bob fell to his knees on the carpet. He drew his wife to him and held her close, whispering assurances in her ear.
“Are they the men who took Jenna?” she said, breaking from his grasp.
Joe Bob stared at her, features drained of blood.
Jenna. In the face of his own death he’d forgotten Jenna.
46
* * *
Merry leaned on the table and waved her hand before Gunny’s eyes. He was teaching her to play chess at the kitchen table.
“What are you doing?” Gunny said.
“Nothing,” she said and sat down.
“You don’t believe I’m really blind?”
“I believe you.”
“Then why were you waving your little hand in front of my face?”
“How do you know that if you can’t see?” she said.
“Why do you think I can see?” he said fingering the crenulations atop the rook to his right.
“You beat me three games without being able to see.”
“Maybe you’re so bad at this game even a blind man can beat you.”
“Unh uh!”
“I know what a chess board looks like. I know how the pieces move. You let me know which piece you moved and I can see it in my head.”
“You ’member it?” she said in open awe.
“It’s not hard. Memory is a muscle. The more you work it the stronger it gets. Your move, little girl.”
“Did you teach my daddy chess? He told me you were his teacher,” she said and slid a pawn forward with his hand atop hers.
“I taught him all kinds of things. Chess was not one of them. He’s a good player though. Surprised he hasn’t taught you already,” he said, moving a pawn forward to block her path while freeing his bishop to move.
“What kind of school was it?”
“A very special school. A very hard school. My job was to teach men how to be smart even when they were hurt or scared or tired.”
