“I found who killed my family.”
He cocked an eyebrow in my direction for a split second before shifting back to watching the square. “I wasn’t aware you were looking. Last I heard, you were off playing mountain man.”
There was no way of telling if my plan had any effect on him at all, hardly the response I was hoping for.
“I wasn’t. They found me.”
“Aw, hell,” he muttered beside me, a trace of a groan present in his voice.
Seizing on it as the opening I needed, I jumped ahead to the opposite end of the story, hoping the two would be enough to make him care about the middle. “What do you know about Krokodil?”
“Aw, hell,” X repeated, shaking his head. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, a sour expression on his face. “The simplest way of putting it is the evil, ugly younger sibling of meth. Truly vile stuff, the kind of thing you wish could be un-invented.”
My eyebrows rose a bit on my forehead. I had never encountered Krokodil, but had seen enough encounters with meth in the States and abroad to know it was pretty abhorrent, the low class form of crack. Saying this stuff was even worse than that took things to an entirely new level.
“Why? What have you got?” X pressed.
“The last case I was working was on the Juarez cartel out of Mexico,” I said. I left out the part about my leaving, and why, all information he already knew.
He had sent flowers to the funeral. I don’t remember much from that time, but I remember they were nice.
“Couple years back a crew out of Vladivostok, the Blok’s, came in, said to be looking for a North American partner.”
“And they then took them over, kept the distribution network for themselves,” X finished.
“You know them?” I asked, focusing in on a young couple walking hand-in-hand across the concrete, both wearing knee-high black leather boots. I watched them a moment before moving on, shaking my head.
“Naw,” X said, “Vlad is four thousand miles from here. This isn’t like the States, where giant networks have fingers throughout the whole country. Here, everybody has their square they snatched up after the Cold War when things were going to shit. For the most part they keep to it, operating within their own territory.”
“But I’m guessing by the way you put that together, if they have a chance to expand, they move in and take over,” I added.
“Like parasites,” X said. “They keep to themselves, but they’re always on the watch for opportunities, always have their guard up on their own situation.”
It made sense. Everything from looking to expand across the ocean to the way they’d muscled out the Juarez’s tracked with what X was saying. Nothing about their actions was malicious or personal, that’s just how business was done.
“How big you talking?” X asked.
I lifted my palms to the sky and let them fall back to my thighs, letting him know I wasn’t exactly sure. Another gust of wind blew in from the west, goose pimples rising along my arms, sending a shiver down my spine.
“Enough to feed California,” I said. “And all signs seem to indicate they’re ready to move now.”
“Aw, hell,” he repeated once more, running a hand back over his head, his close-cropped hair sounding rough against his palm. “What’s your next move?”
“Heading across right after this,” I said.
I didn’t bother to say that I would need some help. I didn’t have to. The fact that I had called and asked for a meeting four thousand miles from my final destination should have made that obvious.
In my periphery I could see X’s head bob a few inches, a rapid-fire movement up and down. His lips pursed out as if tasting something bitter, his expression matching it.
“You know you’re alone on this, right?” he asked. “If you find the mother lode, you call us and we’ll send the cavalry, but until then we can’t be involved. That’s not how things work here.”
I nodded in agreement. I had known that since getting on a plane the day before, since deciding to come to Russia a few hours before that. They had an international agency to run, one that was predicated on respecting the host countries we visited. If ex-agents began running rogue operations under the official banner, DEA access would be cut off completely, something that could ill afford to happen.
“That being said,” he continued, “there is a bay of lockers on the second level of the rail station eighteen blocks from here. Automated pass keys. Little care package inside that might help you on your journey.”
My first reaction was to smile, or to reach over and shake his hand, but I managed to keep both in check. I nudged my chin downward an inch in thanks, already mapping out the eighteen blocks from here to there in my head.
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
“I know,” he replied. “But if you really want to thank me, be right. And remember this conversation when you confirm it.”
Once more I nodded in affirmation, his point clear. This was the kind of thing that could submarine his career, or it could fast-track him out of the country. There was no way I would I do the former, but if I could help bring about the latter I would.
“I’ll see you soon,” I said, rising from the bench and walking back the way I’d came, not once looking back as I went.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
As far as secret pass codes go, X’s choice left a little something to be desired. While our history together wasn’t terribly deep or nuanced, he could have managed something better than H-A-W-K-T-A-T-E. If anybody had been watching on his end, that would have effectively ended things for me right there.
As good fortune would have it, nobody was.
The care package that was stowed away was a simple black briefcase, leather, the combination lock on either side reset to triple-zero. Without bothering to open it I pulled it from the locker and made my way downstairs, purchasing an express ticket on the Trans-Siberian line to Vladivostok. I paid in cash, using most of my remaining rubles, without giving a name or anything that could be tracked.
Using the train was much slower than returning to Sheremetyevo and catching a one-way to Vladivostok, though it was worth it to maintain the anonymity. By this point the Blok’s, if not a host of other people, were bound to know I was in country. On paper, I had only been in Moscow for a couple of hours, meaning the odds of me headed elsewhere yet weren’t good. Their guard would be down for the time being, loosely monitoring the airports, waiting for me to catch a plane back.
Halfway across Russia I contacted Pally and asked him to book my alias a flight from Moscow to Kiev, set to board later in the day. I deliberately chose a city that was close enough to be believable, hoping that they might be lulled into thinking I caught a phony trail, was following it up in neighboring Ukraine.
With any luck, by that point I would be on the ground in Vladivostok, moving into position, the cover of night fast approaching.
I waited six hours into my journey, long after the city lights of Moscow had faded, the snow covered Urals whipping by outside my window, before finding a private sleeper stall. Until that time I remained in a public coach, watching every person that came and went, monitoring anybody whose gaze lingered, anyone that passed through more than once. Just twice did my radar pick up even the slightest hint of suspicion, each time the target being passed over with relative certainty.
Tucked away in my own space, I flipped each of the numbered combination codes to 4-5-1, the numerical correspondence to the acronym DEA. While not the most sophisticated system in the world, it worked efficiently for purposes such as this, when there was no call for passing along a combination, for putting anything into writing.
The silver clasps both flew open, the top lifting back with the slight cracking sound of new leather prying upward. The matching scent came with it, the familiar smell of premium cowhide mixed with cold metal.
One look inside and I instinctively lowered the lid back into place, checking the door fo
r a long moment, making sure nobody was about to enter. I sat waiting, my breath held, feeling a bit less apprehensive now knowing what was inside the case, just a few inches from my hand.
Outside the world continued to move past, the foreground whipping by in fast succession, the peaks in the distance remaining stationary. The terrain reminded me of the Park in wintertime, everything shrouded in white, pine trees weighed down with large tufts of snow.
Raising the lid once more I assessed what lay inside, a veritable cornucopia of needed items. If somehow the next twenty-four hours passed and I was still breathing, I would make it a point to repay X in any way I could, over and above helping him get free of his Russian exile.
Framing the top and bottom of the case were a pair of Heckler & Koch Mark 23 handguns, noise suppressors screwed into the ends of them. One at a time I raised them and checked the slide and the feed, noting by their weight that they were already loaded.
An extra pair of magazines sat beside both of them, twelve rounds each, giving me a total of forty-eight bullets. There was no way of knowing how many I might need, but it was a reasonably safe assurance that I would be lucky to even get that many shots off before meeting my end.
Besides, trying to carry more than one spare magazine each would just be cumbersome.
Beside the guns was a Garra II folding knife, a nod from X to our previous life together, a joke going back to our first days in training. With one hand I snapped the weapon open and examined the curved blade, a serrated edge on the inside, a razor sharp hone on the outside. While I had often preferred the straight ahead style of the Marine K-Bar, many in my class had assumed I preferred the Garra for its hawksbill blade.
At the moment, I was just happy to have anything at all.
I placed the knife down and picked up the boxy grey satellite phone beside it. I thumbed it on and scrolled through the directory, a single number programmed in. Assuming it to be his I closed out of the phone book and rested the phone in my lap, pulling out the last item in the case.
Lining the bottom of the package were two items of clothing, both double knit for warmth. The first was a simple black watch cap, a half-arc affair meant to cover the head and ears without coming down over the eyes. In my case it would also serve well in holding back my hair, keeping everything tucked away.
The second was a long-sleeve polypropylene shirt, also in black, tightly knit for warmth from the biting cold wind. It would serve me much better on the move than the dress shirt and jacket I’d been wearing for two days, offering me better mobility and decreased visibility.
“X, I owe you, friend,” I muttered, taking the phone up from my lap.
The main line to the southwest headquarters was the same as it had been when I worked there five years before. Hutch had insisted that every field agent know it by memory, wanting it to be stored as few places as possible, despite the fact that it could be found using something as simple as a Google search. One at a time I punched out the numbers, a small beeping sound resonating with each one, before bracing my back against the wall, my gaze aimed at the sliding door before me.
If anybody was coming inside, there was no way they were coming through the window. With my left leg propped on the bench seat I was sitting on and the briefcase open on my lap, I kept my right hand wrapped around the handle of one of the Mark 23’s, the other keeping the phone pressed to my face.
Best guess, the local time was around two in the afternoon, making it somewhere between two and four in the morning in California depending on my exact location. Just two weeks before I would have never dreamed of making a call any later than ten p.m., but now I dialed without thinking twice.
Something told me the person I was looking to contact would be awake anyway.
“Diaz,” she snapped, not a single trace of sleepiness in her tone. She sounded annoyed, her official voice on. The fact that she was at her desk and answering the phone explained both.
“Hawk,” I said, a simple one-word statement. If she was surrounded by anybody, she could cut me off, say I had the wrong number, or just hang up the phone. If not, we could talk.
There was a pause and a long sigh, followed by the moan of a door swinging closed, the latch catching and sealing it shut. The distinct sound of a lock being thrown also rang out, followed by her falling back into her chair.
“Where the hell have you been?” she asked, suddenly sounding much more worn down, exhausted even.
“I take it the raid didn’t yield a damn thing?” I asked.
“Not really,” she replied. “By the time our guys figured out a location and we got there, they had cleared out. We found a couple of safes standing empty, a few trash can fires still smoldering with ashes, but not a hell of a lot we could use.”
I processed the information, which was much the same as I had expected. “So enough to indicate you had the right spot, not enough to implicate anybody that might have been there.”
“Exactly,” Diaz said. “We had two SEAL teams, a half dozen agents from the office here, me, Hutch, all standing around looking at a bunch of nothing.”
That too seemed to coincide exactly with what I had expected.
“So where are you now?” I asked.
“We seized the house and sent a tech crew through it. They’ve been there all day, that’s actually why I’m still on now, I’m expecting a call from them at any time.”
I adjusted my weight and settled in against the wall, keeping the case leveled on my lap, my fingers resting atop the trigger guard. “They finding anything?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “Traces of cocaine, drug residue everywhere. DNA evidence coming out the ass. Looks like the place could be anything from a brothel to a drug runner’s den, we just don’t know yet.”
“Shit,” I muttered, shaking my head, the cold steel of the outer wall starting to pass through the suit coat and button down I was wearing.
“We went back and shook Juarez down again today,” Diaz said, “managed to get a couple of more names out of him of distributors he didn’t give up in the initial case. We’re going to go after them first thing in the morning, but I have to be honest, at this point we don’t have a lot. The Russians seemed to have vanished.”
My eyes went glassy as I stared at the door in front of me, for a moment almost wishing it would open and one of the Blok’s would be foolish enough to step inside. The tips of my fingers went white as I pressed down on the handle of the gun, aching to slide it free and unload the magazine inside it.
“So, where are you?” she asked again.
Every part of me wanted to tell her. She had earned the right to know, and more importantly she had earned my trust. At the same time, there was no way to be certain the line we were speaking on was clear. More than once our plans had been leaked to the opposition, last night’s fruitless raid just one more example of that.
I was too close to allow something so foolish to derail me.
“I was in Russia this morning,” I said, “but didn’t find what I was looking for. I’m headed back to the airport now to catch a flight to Kiev.”
Lying to her wasn’t something I was fond of, or even proud of, but it was a necessary evil. It coincided with the fake ticket Pally had purchased for me just a short time before, should provide continuity if anybody was listening.
“Kiev?” she asked, obviously confused. “What the hell is in Kiev?”
“I’m told that’s where the Krokodil is coming from,” I said. “I’m almost to the airport now, I’ll contact you whenever I know something more. Apologies for calling so late.”
I could tell by the tone of her voice there were more questions she wanted to ask, but she picked up by my tone and my statement that the conversation was over. Very soon it would all make sense to her, but for the time being that was as much as I could divulge.
“No apologies,” she said. “Keep me posted, and get your ass out of there if anything gets ugly. This isn’t your fight anymore.”
He
r choice of words brought an ironic smile to my face. Despite the fact that I was no longer an active agent, this was more my fight than anybody else’s on the planet. The Blok’s and the Juarez’s and whoever else might be affiliated had ensured that long ago. The fact that they sought me out years after the fact only served to reinforce it.
“Right,” I said, my gaze hardening, my grip growing tighter on the phone in my hand. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The guard watching over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in America’s Arlington National Cemetery was trained to act on a very precise schedule. He began by taking twenty one paces across the front of the tomb, a rubber mat laid out on the ground, replaced twice a year, to keep the continual foot traffic from wearing a trench in the polished white marble. There was a twenty one second pause before he would turn, take the same number of paces in the opposite direction, and pause again.
Years before, Sergey Blok had heard about this practice while watching a documentary on the Cold War. The program had been shot and edited by Americans so the entire thing was little more than self-serving propaganda, but that lone piece of trivia had stuck with him.
It surfaced now as he paced back and forth in front of his desk, waiting for Pavel and Viktor to arrive. Almost a full day had passed since their midnight retreat from the compound in Baja, twenty four long hours of him waiting, assuming the worst, hoping it wasn’t as bad as feared.
Twenty four hours for the animosity, the resentment, of his nephew to stew and grow.
At twenty minutes after the hour he spotted the 1938 Buick Town Car pull to a stop on the curb. His pacing ended halfway across the room, drawing him towards the window to watch from the second floor as both men piled out onto the sidewalk. The moment they were out of the car his driver sped away, his profile never once turning to face them, indicating the drive had been less than pleasant for all parties.
Krokodil Page 21
