The Disavowed Book 3 - Threat Level: Red

by David Leadbeater

  “Davic,” Curran tried again, quieter this time. “Please tell me how I can end this madness.”

  He received an immediate reply. “I want the team known as the Razor’s Edge. Aaron Trent. Adam Silk. Dan Radford. Then Special Agent Collins and the rest of the, ah, Fucking Bunch of Ingrates. Oh, and my entire business back.”

  “I can’t help you with that.”

  Davic poured water onto the woman’s face, all the while meeting Curran’s eyes. “Now that’s a real bad attitude. What can you help me with, Henry? How about Maisie Miller? The hot bitch I loved like a daughter.” Several of his men laughed. “Can you get her back for me?”

  Curran started to shake his head, then paused. “I can try.”

  The woman stopped struggling. Davic paused and put his head close to her chest. “Whoops. This happens sometimes, Curran. They just die.”

  Curran reared up. Blood flew from his bonds as he fought the rope. His teeth mashed and spittle splashed from between his lips. “Bastard! She did nothing to you!”

  “Calm down. Sheesh.” Davic motioned to the woman’s guard. “Bring her back. She’ll be okay, Henry. That’s the beauty of waterboarding. They die—nine times out of ten you can bring ‘em back and start all over again. Perfect. And hey, you think this is bad wait until I start on your daughter.”

  Curran’s face crumpled, any pretense at bravery gone. Tears fell from his eyes. “Please, Mr. Davic. Please let me help you.”

  The Serb hesitated. Perhaps now was the right time. But he was having so much fun. Didn’t seem right to just stop when everything felt so right. Maybe they should take a breather.

  Then he smiled, looking at Curran’s wife. Yeah, she could do with a breather.

  “All right. We’ll pause for tea and biscuits. My men do need their sustenance, Henry, being the big boys they are. And they will need their strength for later.” He made a strangling motion. “Ha ha, only joking. Or am I? Can you tell?”

  Curran’s eyes were glazed. “You’re mad. Totally mad.”

  Davic pulled the towel away from Chloe Curran’s face and watched as his guard revived her. When she came around; panting, disoriented and terrified, vomiting water, he pointed to the kitchen.

  “How about some food, Mrs. Curran? Better scare us up something good, now. Something red-blooded.” He winked sidelong at Henry. “Fast as you like.”

  He jerked the woman from the chair, gave her a kick, and watched her struggle toward the kitchen door. He nodded his head at one of the guards. “Go with her. If she tries anything chop something off.”

  He turned back to Curran. “Okay. Don’t worry, I have a plan to deal with the Edge and the FBI. Even the CIA and this whole fucked-up city. Believe me, Henry, they’re about to get a taste of the Hell I can serve up. But you do have a very important part to play in my plan. Yes you do. In fact—” Davic flicked the wet towel at Curran, catching him across the face with a painful slap. “You are the linchpin, Henry. The hub and cornerstone of the entire fuckin’ plot. How’s that sound?”

  Davic leaned in until their noses were almost touching.

  “I want to rebuild my business. And you hold the key.”

  “The key?”

  “Yes, the key. Only you call it DR579. Such an innocuous name for the reviver of my domain. The new and improved deliverer of my evil.”

  Curran looked to be thinking hard, then he said, “I know DR579, of course. But it’s just a trial drug.”

  “No, Henners. No. It’s much more than that.” He opened his mouth to continue, but then saw Chloe returning from the kitchen. “Ah, the wife. How nice. And what do you have for us, dearest?”

  “Cold cuts,” she managed through a rasping throat. The plates in her hand wobbled as she staggered a little but the nearby guards made no move to help her. Davic strolled over and took a thick slice of meat.

  “Take her to the liquor cabinet,” he said around a mouthful of ham. “This party needs alcohol to really get it kicking. I mean, Henry—why so dour? And Chloe. Yvette. Shake it off, girls. Whaddya think? Some vodka would loosen everyone up? Am I right?”

  Davic turned away, hiding his true face. No one really knew him, not anyone in this room, not one person in the entire world. His men—he laughed and joked and pretended to involve them in his malicious games, but every single one of them knew where they stood in the food chain. They were expendable. Replaceable. Mere grunts for the hiring. He would order their deaths or kill them himself in an instant if they failed him. So he stood alone, frozen of heart, and surrounded himself with the things that pleased him to help maintain the charade of contentment. And the battle would never end. There was no room in his life for weakness or true happiness—all that only bred complacency. His father—Davor—had been a hard man and had taught Blanka well. The only true victories in this life came from totally crushing your enemies.

  He took a drink now: vodka—weak piss-water compared to what he was used to. “What is this? You have no Southern Cross?”

  “Th . . . they stopped producing it,” Curran stammered. “When—”

  “Yes, yes, I heard. Dmitry is no more. A sad loss but not a totally unproductive one.” Davic was barely listening. Almost unconsciously his gaze slipped down to the battered old watch adorning his wrist—a product of his past, a memory of the events that made him more than just Davor Davic’s son. Man-made events. American-made events. It was the only thing he’d kept. The single reminder that made him want to continue with his quest.

  Especially this one.

  “Henry,” he said, reverting to the more predictable type. “It’s almost time to pay the piper. ‘Fess up, as they say. But first, we have time and we have women. Pour a proper fucking measure of that piss in my glass, Mrs. Curran, and stick some Black Eyed Peas on the jukebox. You like Black Eyed Peas, Henry?”

  The CEO stared blankly. The trauma of the night was already weighing on his mind, along with the certainty of what would surely happen.

  “No? I bet young Yvette here knows all about them.” He grinned when she nodded and started singing, “I got a feeling . . .” He licked his lips. “Know what I mean?”

  More of his men sniggered, but it was all for show. Not a single one of them lost focus. That was good. The men had prepared well for this. The three he had left outside reported in to his second-in-command and that man gave Davic a thumbs up. All was good. He watched as one of his men urged Chloe Curran over to the wall-mounted stereo, prodding at her spine with a gun.

  Almost immediately a heavy beat filled the room. Davic motioned with his hands. “Turn it up. Up!” He drained the glass. “Now we have a party. You know something, Henry? It’s time. Now I want what we came here for. They call this place the city of dreams so this is mine. Here in the US they have all these fancy torture techniques, yes? Drugs. Truth serums. Sleep deprivation. Intimidation. Humiliation. But me? I prefer the old-fashioned methods. Give me a kitchen—your kitchen—and I’ll find you an effective torture technique in about ten seconds. You don’t believe me? Here—let me prove it to you.”

  Davic strode past Curran, oblivious to his loud remonstrations. He passed through a swing door and found himself staring at a central breakfast bar. Above it hung a number of implements, all shiny and sharp. Perfect. But not for tonight. Tonight required something special. After all, it wasn’t every day of the week a lowly Serb started a terrorist campaign on American soil.

  So many choices . . . He settled for an old classic—the meat cleaver. So simple. So menacing. So full of promise. An implement for all occasions. In addition, some of his men carried Tasers. He motioned to one of them now.

  “The girl.”

  Davic crouched in front of Henry Curran, making eye contact. “So this is how it goes. I ask—you answer. One single deviation from that instruction gives young Yvette a nasty shock, two makes ole Henners lose something precious to Mr. Cleaver here. Three—a bigger shock. Four—well, you get the idea. This is it, Mr. SolDyn. Mr. Bigshot CEO. Are you re
ady?”

  “I’ll tell you anything. Just don’t hurt her.”

  “All right. Back to DR579. What is it?”

  Curran didn’t hesitate. “An experimental drug we were developing toward the treatment of Alzheimer’s. Everything started out well but, as these things often do, we ended up no further forward and shelved it.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes. It’s—”

  Davic made a fist in the air. Yvette screamed as the guard stuck his Taser against her bicep and squeezed the trigger. Her pain made Henry cry out, “What? I told you—”

  “I repeat. Is that it?”

  Davic bent down and carefully positioned Curran’s bare right foot so that it lay underneath the cleaver’s bright blade. He grinned.

  The man gaped, his mouth working silently. Could it be that he didn’t really know? Davic turned the pressure up a notch. “Think carefully now or the rest of your life’s gonna be a little lopsided.”

  At that moment Chloe Curran screamed and made a break for her daughter. “Leave her alone! You bastards! She’s just a child.”

  Davic sat back to watch, amusement on his face. As she ran, a guard caught up and clubbed her over the head with the butt of his rifle. Mrs. Curran went sprawling, hitting the floor face first and sliding cross the polished wood, leaving a little smear of blood in her wake. When she looked up, weeping, Davic saw that her nose was broken.

  “Leave us alone.” The woman wept. “We’ve done nothing to you. Nothing.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Davic said quietly. “You’ve heard of Maisie Miller, yes? On your CNN. Your Fox News. Henry here helped me kill her family. Wipe them out. Stop them testifying at a trial a few years ago. Henry here helped deliver Maisie to me at my home where I could corrupt her at my leisure, usually in the same room where I made her watch the death of her mother and father. Isn’t that right, Henry?”

  Curran stared straight ahead, eyes blank and totally hopeless. He didn’t meet the gaze of Davic, not even the questioning gaze of his wife. He was done.

  “DR579,” he said emptily, “developed several side effects. It has hallucinogenic properties. If given in the right dosage through the correct delivery system it could become a powerful designer pill. A party drug. It would make a person get higher, faster. The effect could last longer and . . . it would be more addictive than other, similar, drugs.”

  “Goodbye, Ecstasy,” Davic whispered happily. “Hello, Rapture.”

  “So that’s your way of rebuilding your empire?” Curran spat the last word. “Mass-producing a highly addictive party drug? Making it available to the masses?”

  Davic grinned. “Can you think of a better way?”

  “Look, Mr. Davic. There’s a reason we kept DR579 under wraps. There’s a reason it was never produced. I mean, Christ, it’s locked away.”

  Now Davic tapped the man’s foot with the edge of the cleaver. “And there you have it. Nail on the head. I want the entry codes, Henry, all the way from the front fucking door to the secret lab and this pill’s inner sanctum. I want it all.”

  “There are only a few pills in there,” Curran said frankly, still trying in some way to ward Davic off. “Not enough for what you want.”

  Thud!

  The cleaver came down hard. Blood spurted. Curran stared stupidly at where two small toes had been, then started screaming.

  “You were warned.” Davic said. “I ask, you answer. And in any case, hasn’t a man like you, the leader of possibly the biggest multinational company in the world, ever heard of reverse engineering? Ah, yes. Even through your pain I see your sudden fear. I can see that you have.”

  Curran said nothing further. Davic nodded. The man had learned his lesson.

  “So,” he said, studying the bloody cleaver and feeling a little happier. “Whilst you still retain the majority of your toes, give me the codes.”

  4

  Dan Radford stared hard at the clock. This was worse than any Razor’s Edge mission he’d ever been involved with. The tension. The pure undetermined expectancy. How would it all turn out?

  He’d been waiting all day. His nerves were shot. Amanda, his wife, wandered and slouched around, put her feet up on the couch, changed her jeans in front of him, showed him several snaps of her latest lover that she’d captured secretly on her cell-phone—a celebrity—and generally behaved like normal, everyday Amanda. It was Radford himself who had the problem.

  Years ago, after they were happily married, Dan Radford had found his eye straying. He couldn’t help it. Then other things began to stray too, mostly the dominant brain between his legs. He didn’t hide his imperfections. He went to Amanda, told her, and eventually made a deal. They would have an open marriage, sleep with whomever they felt like, whenever they wanted to and, because they were so good at home—their friendship was the best either of them had ever had—they would stay together. Meeting like ships and souls in the night. Sharing their conquests.

  Soul mates forever.

  Years later, recently in fact, Radford had found his outlook changing; but not only that, the entire emotional attitude of his heart had shifted. No way could he ask her to change for him again, he sure as hell didn’t have the right, but he fell in love with her. Utterly, totally in love. And, quicker than he would have believed possible, his range of options diminished. From being a man with a girl in every state, every country, he became a man desperate to gain the love of just one.

  His wife.

  Amanda was oblivious. Her days involved nine hours of arranging publicity tours for authors, travelling to book fairs and events throughout the country, and generally partying how and whenever she wanted. She had adapted to the life, and the life had enveloped her.

  But Radford had started to despair, making him distracted. This new feeling was never going away. Aaron Trent, the Edge’s team leader, told him to take the leap. Claire Collins of the FBI, their handler-in-forced-retirement and new mission accomplice, put it somewhat more bluntly, but then she was known as the hardest of ballbusters. And Radford had seen her hardness first hand. Nobody had impressed him more than she had at Monaco.

  But today was the day.

  Or rather, the day had passed them by and now tonight was the night.

  Radford steeled himself. He closed his eyes and thought through what he had to say. Now or never, man, now or never. If you don’t do it you’ll regret it for the rest of your life, never knowing what could have been. The speech was long-since learned and directly from the heart. Now was the time. He sat down at the kitchen table, laid his hands on the dark, polished oak and took a breath.

  “Amanda—”

  “Oh, look,” she said as if suddenly remembering something. “I forgot to show you this.” She leapt off the couch and ran toward him on bare feet, holding her cell at arms-length, scrolling through pictures of God only knew what. Eventually she landed on the right one and stuck it in front of Radford’s nose.

  He flinched. “That’s a penis. I’ve actually seen one before. But only one,” he added hastily.

  “It’s Alex’s,” she said knowingly. “It may seem a bit big, thick, maybe even a bit clumsy but believe me, the man can use it.”

  “Ah, thanks. It’d probably be best if you got it out of my face.”

  “Oh, come on.” Amanda brandished it like a weapon. “After all the private parts you’ve shown me. You’re not homophobic are you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Good, ‘cause I have a few more.”

  Radford cast his eyes toward the clock, wondering how he could get her off this particular topic. The next thing closest to Amanda’s heart after wild sex was food. Luckily for her, the former kept her slim enough to indulge just as enthusiastically in the latter.

  “It’s getting on for six. Shall we order that pizza?”

  “I guess.” She looked momentarily disappointed, full lips pouting and dark hair falling across her face, then perked up. “I want extra pineapple. And mushr
ooms. Oh, and sweet peppers too.”

  “You got it.” Radford moved thankfully over to the house phone and placed the call. By the time he was done, Amanda was back on the couch, smearing some kind of cream over her bare legs. Just watching her made him want to take her into the bedroom. Or the shower. Or the deck. Or the garden.

  Calm down, Dan ole boy. Anyone would think this was your first time.

  Maybe it was. When feelings shifted so far across their axis wasn’t it all brand new?

  They had an hour to wait for the pizza guy. An hour was long enough to make some inroads. He walked over to her, met her eyes, and thought about what he had to say.

  “Amanda,” he began, “I have something important to tell you. Crazy important. But crazy good. It’s about me. And . . . and you.”

  His wife looked a little scared. “What is it?”

  “What would you say to us becoming exclusive again? Trying out our marriage again? Being a couple.”

  Amanda’s face fell in confusion. “What? Why? I don’t—”

  “Because . . . because I love you.”

  The front door blew in. The explosion tore it off its hinges. The heavy panel careered across the hallway floor, striking and chipping the far wall. Radford rose fast but by the time he was upright two masked men were already in the room.

  Levelling semi-automatics at him.

  Four more followed, fanning out.

  Radford put his hands in the air. Amanda stood too, still in shock at his words and now facing the intruders in sheer disbelief.

  “What the hell do you want? You’re not the pizza guy.”

  “Dan Radford,” one of them growled as he sighted in his weapon. “That’s who we want.”

  Before anyone could move, he fired.

  5

  The Moose pondered the authoritative call he’d received from Blanka Davic and how quickly he’d then had to fly into LAX. Davic wasn’t a man to be kept waiting, not even by one of the best and most ruthless contract killers in the world. Even then, he’d balked when Davic had told him his part of the plan. The Moose hadn’t spoken aloud of course. Only inside his soul.