"Let's go make the world a safer place," I said. "Guz, can you handle this? There's naked women in there."
Guz grinned. "My strength is that of ten because my heart is pure."
"I'm glad someone's is," Deon said.
It was going to be an interesting night.
Lance T
"I don't want any more of your people down here," Lance said. "I want you to collect Tony and get him out of here."
The man on the other end of the phone, Lance's silent investor, said soothingly, "My friend, I have people on the way. Extra security..."
"You're not hearing me. I don't need your extra security, I need Tony out of here. They, whoever they are, know he's here and they just got their people killed. So if they want him bad enough to come down here looking for him, they're going to come back again and come back a lot harder." Lance was steamed. "Every time this happens, I take a loss, do you understand? That's money out of my pocket and out of yours. This is a business, not a B-movie. You understand?"
"Lance," the other man said. "This is not a negotiable. I will get him moved as soon as I am able. I cannot take him out right now."
"Have your gun men take him to a hotel. They can hide him there."
"I will have my men move him from there when we have another place. That will not be immediately. As soon as I can."
"Look...."
"This discussion is over."
The phone went dead.
Lance looked at his phone, set it down too carefully on his desk, stood. Took a deep breath and pushed it down through his feet, grounding himself out.
Then he picked up his chair and threw it at the wall.
Jimmy John Wylde
I had two of the most dangerous men in Lake City with me. I wonder if this is how Attila the Hun felt amongst his Mongoldai. Deon is a known player among the shooters, and he was popular with Lance's girls, as he was a regular with a generous nature. It helped that Lizzy loved him, and made sure the girls took good care of him. Guz? Well, Guz just had The Look. He worked hard to hide it, and to the less discerning, he just looked like a young guy not long out of college who worked out and liked the outdoors. But The Look was like a big bright stamp across his forehead to anyone with more than a little bit of experience with violence of the professional kind.
We went up to the DJ stand, where DJ/VJ Nate was bopping to the tunes in his head as he set up for the rest of the night. He looked up. "You guys with the band?"
"Too right, Nate," Deon said, holding out his free hand, and went through the elaborate handshake ritual Nate favored.
"I don't even want to know what you're gonna play," Nate said, eyeing the soft guitar cases.
"Heavy metal," I said. "Thrasher, AC/DC, you know, classic death metal."
"Dude, you are so old school," Nate said.
"It's because I *am* old," I said.
"Any requests?" Nate said.
"Not from me," I said. "You guys?"
"Do you have Simon and Garfunkel, "The Boxer"?" Guz said.
Nate stared at him. Not a known player. "Bro, this is, uh, a *dance* club. We don't play elevator music in here."
"I like that song," Guz said.
Deon gave Nate the eye. Nate shrugged. "I'll see what I can do, bro."
I slapped Guz on the shoulder. "You're one of a kind, Guz. Let's get set up."
Guz grinned. "How about Stuart Davis? The acoustic version of 'Psycho Killer.' You got that one?"
Nate tilted his head. "I got some Stuart Davis, bro. You're fucking with me, right?"
"Uh, no," Guz said. "I'm heterosexual."
Nate tilted his head the other way. "Uh, okay. Sure. Whatever you want, man. Friend of Deon and Jimmy, friend of mine. I'll play Psycho Killer, The Boxer, you want The Star Spangled Banner, I'll play that, too."
"Do you know The Frogman Song?"
"Uh, no."
"Never mind," Guz said. "Psycho Killer would be good. Thanks."
"I'll get one of the girls to dedicate it to you."
"Thank you!" Guz said. "So. How we gonna do this thing?"
Deon looked at him. "Psycho Killer?"
"Classic song," Guz said. "This guy Stuart Davis does an acoustic version, it's great."
Deon and I looked at each other.
"Guz," I said. "You are a man of deep and abiding mystery."
"What?" Guz said.
Mr. Smith, aka Hank
Stared at the walls of his motel room. The interview at the police station had gone surprisingly well. He'd never done one before. His "attorney" on the other end of the speaker-phone had done a bang up job of getting straight to it: he was a passerby, retired law enforcement, drove into the middle of the fight, felt himself (based on 30 years of honorable service) in danger of his life and intervened utilizing an appropriate level of force with a lawfully possessed weapon. End of story. Give him his gun and a medal and send him on his way.
What was so surprising was that the cops pretty much saw it the same way, which gave him some inkling into the level of juice Jimmy John (or Jimmy John's friends) had in this town. He'd given his account, his attorney listened, a stenographer took the notes, he deferred signature until his attorney had reviewed it formally and returned it to the PD, was told he could pick up his gun in a week, after they had run the tests to confirm what they needed to go, thank you very much, Mr. Smith, don't let the door hit you in the ass, and Officer Rice will give you a ride to your hotel. Please don't leave town without telling us, or having your attorney inform us if you prefer.
And on his way.
Rice dropped him off and said, as Smith got out of the car, "Hey, Smith...there's a bunch of vets, cops mostly, we get together down at Murphy's Pub most nights for a beer, they got great burgers, cheap, good beer, cute college girl waitresses. While you're in town, come on down, buy you a beer or three."
"Can't drink anymore."
"Come anyway, we'll buy you some water and blow the odor of beer all over you."
"Lemme see how things go. Thanks for the ride."
So inside, drops for his eyes, blotting red against the white towel he held up to his face. Stare at the wall. Think about the debrief he had to record and transmit. A ping from his phone: text message. Embedded in that was a link. Hit the link, took him to a secure web-page. On the page, only one thing: the large numeral 2.
Phase 2.
Time to step it up.
Oh, man.
How strange it was. First that cop, Nico, and the tough one, Nina. Being cool with them; Jimmy John in the stand and fight mode; an offer of drinks.
How long had it been since he'd had that? Simple companionship? He had to be honest, go deep, and think of how he'd isolated himself, hidden that scar away...the scar of his life and what it had become.
The steel in him shifted then, just for a moment.
Time to work.
Guess that meant that he'd passed initial muster with the bosses; maybe the statement (and the voice stress analysis going on the controller's side) convinced them there wasn't much else. Though he had to rein in his hopes for that. Until they told him otherwise, that was his story and he was sticking to it.
Phase 2. He went over and rested his hands on the stacked Pelican boxes. Four of them. He'd have to get another Cherokee; he'd planned on them fitting perfectly into the back with the rear seats folded down. Precision was everything. He drummed his fingers on the plastic, went and sat down at the desk, took out a local city map. Down in the Lake District, on a side street right off the main drag of J Street, a plain looking three story brick building, signed on front as Votron Electronic Games. Parking meters in front with a two-hour limit, so he'd have to rotate some cars in there. Park the Cherokee out front, with the dampening material on the street side, walk off, set it off.
Good bye Votron Electronics, the actual operating base for an off the shelf operation that just couldn't take a hint, fully endorsed by the Administration and the National Command Authority, which was just a fancy wor
d for the President and his cronies. Time to clean up, an election is coming...
Then it was bye bye, and off to a different corner of the weird world, to do the things he did best.
Or not.
His bank accounts brimmed with unspent money. His, rightfully earned, and a significant pile he'd skimmed out of operational funds, like any good field man would, put away against That Day. Maybe it was That Day right now.
He had his network for his medical needs, he had money enough, places to go. Maybe he should head south, find some gentle senorita who, for enough dollars, would tend to him and his needs till the day he decided to punch out, or that got decided for him. The bosses would come looking, but every field man plans for That Day -- he'd be more difficult than you might imagine, even with his unmistakable face. That would be the first step on the plan, get the surgeries...but that wouldn't do much besides cosmetics, the damage inside the European docs kept medicated with their experimental treatments, that was pretty much undoable and gave him a line, somewhere in the future, months, weeks, years, days, who the fuck knew, where it would all just collapse, a systemic failure from within, the long deferred consequences of a long day in the Fire --
-- and what felt like a lifetime outside of it.
He wondered what Jimmy John would say.
He wondered what would happen when he saw Phase 3 on his secure web page.
He wondered if he would actually do it.
If he didn't, they'd send somebody else. They were going to have to. He'd already decided that. Somebody else wouldn't have the compunction or the hesitation.
What to do, what to do.
"When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout," Smith said. "Or take more drugs."
He popped a couple of pills to smooth his mellow, ease things out, help him focus on the mechanical. Like they said in AA -- One Day At A Time. In his case, One Minute At A Time.
Deep thinking is dangerous for a killer.
Dee Dee Kozak
She had some thinking to do.
"So let me see if I understand this," Dee said to Kiki. "You can see on their IP connection that someone went on a shared computer and uploaded this. How do you know it was Lizzy?"
"Oh, I hacked the computer camera. It's in the back where the girls get dressed."
"Baby, there's a million men that would pay for that. Okay. So this upload goes to a server..."
"Romanian. Lots of pirate servers out there, totally encrypted and locked down through VPN. Porn companies, money laundries, all the good stuff. I've been out there, not in this one, but others. Good place for a physical server. Cash and carry, no questions asked."
Dee brushed the hair back from Kiki's face with great affection. "Okay, Wonder Girl. So what is that program doing?"
"What's it done? 'cause it's over, now."
"Yeah, honey," Dee said patiently. "What's it done."
"It activated a hidden web-page. Hidden in that it was on the server, but locked out, I mean physically. Someone got a signal, turned on that sub-server, and then the software cranked it up. It's locked down, but this is what's cool: there's a timer on it. Like a count-down clock on the splash page, just ticking away, counting off 12 hours. Down to 9 and change right now. So something's on that page, but unless we hack it, it's going live in nine hours or so. That was the first thing.
"The second thing is that a 'bot was activated. The bot has been scouring offshore banks, mostly in Asia, but a couple in Europe, and in each one it's been sending money -- big money -- to an account in Aruba. Protected by the Dutch privacy laws, and pretty well locked up for security, but we could get in there if we worked on it."
"How much money is big money?" Irina said.
"Big money is approximately $478 million dollars, US," Kiki said. "They run it through currency exchange to play the rates, make a little, lose a little, but it washes pretty good. But as far as I can tell, the final allotment comes in as dollars and is converted to Aruban florins, rate exchange is like 1 to 1.75, and they can take it out as dollars or have it wired to US accounts from there. It's sitting there right now, and there's more coming in from all over."
"Who does it belong to?"
Kiki smiled so wide it looked as though her face might slide right off. "Belongs to whoever can claim it...or send it where they want it to go."
"Can you do that now?" Dee and Irina said simultaneously.
"Yes," she said. "But not right now. And I need some equipment I don't have. I need a Wacom Tablet, the latest version, because I need to digitize and send a signature, replace the ones on file. They'll have the original cards archived, but if we change them in their database, they won't have any reason to go search them out...until whoever owns it comes looking for it."
"I bet those somebodys include an old man who likes pussy and Chinese food," Dee Dee said.
"Who is this?" Irina said.
"This old Chinese guy down at the club," Dee said. "That's who tried to get our hacker genius to take that flash drive."
"You told me not to," Kiki said.
"Yes, I did," Dee said. "Turned out I was wrong, so lesson there for you. Just 'cause I'm older don't mean I'm right all the time. But you've got a line on something a whole hell of a lot bigger and juicier than the one million we were just chasing around, yes? So what do you say, Irina? Wouldn't you rather have a piece of this instead of chasing around those heavily armed cowboys? Honey, we could leave your million right where it is and take off for this. Aruba is a great place for shopping, and you can get anywhere from there. What do you say?"
"If we get the money..." Irina said. "Can you kill the African?"
"You kill the African, his mean-as-a-snake buddy comes after you," Dee said reasonably. "That's how it goes. Kinda like you. But we're women, and we tend to think better than men do about these sort of things. The smart thing is take *this* money and walk, and if you're still mad in, I don't know, five years or so, *then* come back and kill his ass. I'll even help you. Then. But for me, this is a no-brainer. You want to go on your own, after Kiki and me take this fruit ripe for falling, you can go on. But since you're here, and in a way you funded this, you can come in for a slice and walk away much richer. Find you some of those Russian or Estonian cowboys you're so fond of. Shoot up the whole damn city. While I go spend this here money. What do you say, Kiki?"
"Uh, I can go for the money. But I have to stick around. My mom would miss me, and I want to get my diploma."
Dee laughed. "You want to get your high school diploma? Honey, you got a Ph.D in kick-ass bandit, what you want that for?"
Kiki blushed. "I want one. And I want to go to the prom."
Even Irina had to laugh at that.
"Well," Dee said. "You'll have the best damn prom dress there is, then."
"I know a very good designer," Irina said. "Here in the City. I will have it made for you."
"Then it's settled?" Dee said.
"Yes," Irina said. "The money."
Dee looked at Kiki. "And you?"
"Yes," Kiki said. "The money."
"Then get on the phone to the local computer, oh, wait, they're probably closed, can you order online and get it fedexed here tomorrow?" Dee said.
"Yes," Kiki said. "I have some good distributors, as long as I order before midnight."
"Well, it's getting close to the witching hour," Dee said. "Let's get it done."
Dee Dee grinned widely, stretched high and said, "Thank goodness for the perfidy of men, ladies. If it weren't for their love of pussy, we wouldn't be looking at a half a billion dollar score."
Even Kiki, blushing furiously, had to agree with that.
Nico and Nina
"You're a hell of a first date," Nico said.
He and Nina were on foot in the back alley behind the address on the North Side. He ran the M4, a go-bag slung over his shoulder, watching Nina's six as she lead the way.
"You want to run with the big dogs, you pee on the tall trees," Nina whispered back.
"There."
She pointed at the sagging back porch of the house they'd come for. No lights. Back yard overgrown with weeds. The wire fence at the back of the yard up against the alley had holes kicked in it. The gate that split the fence into two equal pieces hung open, held on by a single hinge.
Nina pulled out a Surefire light, held it in her left hand, her pistol in the right. Nico followed close behind, his support hand resting near the pressure switch that turned on the Surefire light mounted on the carbine front rail. She crouched down, hands crossed in a Harries position, off hand thumb resting on the button of her Surefire. Moved silently to the rear window of the house, peeked in. No lights in the back, but a dim light in the front room. Nico rolled to the corner of the house, pied around, saw the light in the front of the house, nodded to her. She came past him and he averted the muzzle, shifted shoulders in a sharp Cooley switch, followed her. She inched her head around to look in the window, held up two fingers. She ducked back past him around to the back again, then through the side yard to look in the windows on the other side of the house. Nico kept tracking, watching the other houses, but no one was looking out. It was dark, it was late, and around here, most people minded their business.
Nina went around to the back, stepped quietly and cautiously up the steps, staying to the sides where the joints were, avoiding a creak. Stepped up to the back door, tested it. Open.
Nico mouthed "What the fuck?"
She gave him a hard look, turned, and eased the door open and slipped through, a ghost in the darkness.
Oh, fucking great, Nico thought. Just what I want to do. Make a stealth entry on two subjects who might have just blown a fucking building up, all by my lonesome. Time to man up or go home. He took a deep breath, slipped through the open door.
Nina was silhouetted against the dim light from the front. The back door opened into a filthy kitchen, the sink overflowing with dishes and a faint stink of rot. A long straight hallway led to the front room. Nina moved so silently; it struck Nico that she could be so quiet. He heard the murmur of voices in the front room. She kept going, toe/heel, toe/heel, just like a hunter. She moved past two doors on the left, probably bedrooms, one on the right, bathroom, and then she button hooked smoothly into the front room.
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