Together, Ling and I made our way across the cluttered, crowded mess that was Crossroads City. Shops and stores of every sort lined the winding street, and where there weren’t shops there were ramshackle carts or people selling goods out of the backs of trucks. The air stunk of diesel and burning trash.
At the heart of the town was the literal crossroads from which the settlement had gotten its name. The east-west road from Kazakhstan to Mongolia intersected with a north-south road that ran from Russia into North China. Railroad tracks ran parallel to the north-south road. A bustling train station sat just south of the intersection and seemed to be the center of activity. Scores of people crowded the platform as more boarded and disembarked a stopped train. The station itself had once been very ornate, decorated in old Soviet art-deco style. Much of it had been vandalized, stolen, shot up, or crumbled from decades of neglect.
Twin statues of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong flanked the main entrance to the station. Each had their arms uplifted in the air, like something off of an old propaganda poster. Only, Stalin’s arm had been missing for many years and Mao had been spray painted with graffiti. His arm was being used to hold up a line of Christmas lights strung up over a noodle stand.
Ling and I had volunteered to go looking for Lorenzo. Even though the picture I’d been shown was blurry, there was no mistaking Anders. I had a score to settle with that son of a bitch and was eager to put a .44 slug through him. I didn’t tell Ling this, of course. Revenge might seem unprofessional, and I really didn’t want to get left at the safe house. I was sick of being cooped up. I’d been locked in a dingy old building for a long time, and I’d had my fill of it.
We didn’t bother going to the Arena. It was public and we knew he’d been carried away. That left us with only one place that was worth checking: the Glorious Cloud Hotel. That was where Lorenzo, Jill, and Reaper were staying under their assumed identities. An Exodus informant worked the desk there and Ling wanted to question her. A pair of Exodus operatives, from a different safe house, were supposed to meet us there.
The Glorious Cloud didn’t look glorious from the outside, but given the surroundings it was actually pretty nice. It was very quiet inside, decorated sort of like a P.F. Chang’s restaurant. Ling told me to wait by the door and stand watch as she approached the desk clerk, an elderly Chinese woman with a hard gleam in her eye.
People, mostly Westerners, came and went as if The Crossroads was just another tourist destination. Just by looking at the folks inside the Glorious Cloud, one might not get the impression that The Crossroads was as nasty a place as it actually was. I could only wonder what criminal business brought most of the guests to this godforsaken corner of the globe.
“Jill and Reaper were taken from here late last night,” Ling said, speaking very softly. “Four armed men, Europeans, came into the hotel, went up to the top floor, where Mr. Lorenzo was staying, and returned a few minutes later, leading them out the door.”
“No one said anything?”
“This is The Crossroads, Michael. She also told me that if other Exodus members are here, they didn’t identify themselves to her.”
“We should check Lorenzo’s room.”
“Yes. She gave me the key. Come on.”
The top floor of the hotel was quiet. There were only a few rooms on the fifth floor, and they were the most expensive ones available. The entire level was designed to minimize noise and dampen sound. Our footsteps barely made any noise on the carpet. An ornate fountain babbled quietly along one wall. The walls were made of red wood and had beautiful tapestries hung on them.
Ling unzipped her jacket. “That’s the room up ahead.” I nodded and unzipped my own jacket so I could get to my .44. Upon reaching the door, she tried the handle. The room was unlocked. The Exodus operative looked back at me as she pulled an engraved Browning Hi-Power pistol from a holster on her belt and swiped the safety off. I nodded again and drew my .44, holding it close to my chest, muzzle-down.
Ling quietly opened the door. Somebody was talking inside. We entered the suite as quietly as we could. Ling moved like a cat, graceful and silent. Lorenzo had himself a nice setup there, a multi-room suite. The entrance room was a small foyer that led to a central common room. The voices were coming from there.
We swept into the room, guns raised. There were two men in the room. They were armed too, and startled. I had one, a thin man with a brown complexion and dark hair, in my sights. Ling held up her left hand, “Hold on,” so I didn’t fire. His eyes were big and white as he stared at my revolver. The Glock 19 in his hands was shaking. He must be new at this.
“Diamond,” Ling said cryptically.
“Sapphire,” the other man responded. Ling lowered her pistol, and so did they. I let my .44 linger on my target for just a moment before pulling the big gun back to my chest.
“Michael, this is the other team that was sent to the hotel,” Ling said. “They are from Ibrahim’s sword.”
“Michael?” the other Exodus operative asked. He was a short man, dressed in dark clothes, his face hidden under a watch cap, Oakley sunglasses, and a scarf. His voice sounded familiar. “Val?” Very familiar. He pulled down the scarf.
I blinked hard. “Skunky?”
“Hey bro,” he said sheepishly, holstering the two-tone Beretta 9mm he carried. “Long time no see.”
“Jesus tapdancing Christ,” I blasphemed. “What the fuck are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since . . .”
He smiled. “Since Mexico? Yeah. I know. Sorry about that.” He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me in an awkward man-hug, slapping me on the back as he did so.
“Friend of yours?” the other Exodus man asked Skunky.
“We were in Vanguard together.”
Skunky’s real name was Jeff Long. He’d grown up in California, the son of Chinese immigrants. About a year before Vanguard had landed the Mexico contract, he was assigned to my team, Switchblade 4. He had been there on our last mission, acting as our team’s designated marksman, when our chopper was shot down. The last I’d heard, Tailor had tried to recruit Skunky, just like he had for me, for Project Heartbreaker. Now I knew why he’d declined. “You’re working for Exodus? How? Why?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” He grinned.
“I recruited him the same time I tried to recruit you,” Ling said. “You were both instrumental in saving Ariel.”
Me, Skunky, and Tailor had been the only survivors of Switchblade 4’s disastrous operation in Mexico. “Hell, did you try to recruit Tailor too?”
“He wasn’t Exodus material.” She didn’t explain what Exodus material meant, but Tailor was a lunatic.
Skunky laughed. “Tailor was one cigarette being put out on his skin as a kid away from being a serial killer.”
“He had my back in Zubara.”
“Yeah, I heard that went south . . .”
Ling turned her attention back to Skunky. “You two can catch up later. What have you found here?”
“There is some sign of a struggle,” he said, indicating for us to follow him into one of the rooms. “The door wasn’t kicked in, but there was definitely a struggle.”
A laptop sat on the desk in one of the rooms, a screen saver displayed on its monitor. It was connected to a pair of external hard drives. Another cable ran from a USB port to what looked like a modem of some kind. A cable from that ran out onto the balcony, where a compact satellite dish was set up. A pair of headphones was plugged into the machine, still playing heavy metal. The chair was knocked over. Half a dozen empty cans of Monster energy drink were scattered across the room. Reaper struck me as messy. What gave it away was that a half-full can of Monster had spilled on the desk, around the laptop, and hadn’t been wiped up. Messy or not, that boy would never let anything like that happen to his equipment.
“This is Reaper’s room alright,” I told Ling. “So Anders has got Lorenzo, Jill, and Reaper.”
Ling cursed in Chinese. “This is not good. Th
ey know too much about our operation.”
“Do you know the people we’re looking for, Val?” Skunky asked.
I nodded. “You have no idea.”
LORENZO
The Montalban Exchange
Crossroads City
March 15th
There was a large balcony that circled the top level of the Montalban exchange. The red tile roof was suspended over our heads by giant wooden beams, and the only thing that separated us from a good plunge to the ground was an intricately wrought iron railing, complete with dragons and swans. The breeze carried the rough civilization smells of The Crossroads up to us. Jill and Reaper had been escorted back to the guest quarters. Anders and I walked the perimeter while one of the guards shadowed us, far enough back to not hear anything.
“So, who are you? And what is all this Fourth Operative bullshit?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Anders picked a spot with a good view of the mountains, and leaned against the railing. It creaked against his weight. As big as he was, Anders was probably a solid two-seventy of muscle. “Let me tell you a story first.”
This man had shadowed me for days without being spotted. I already knew he was dangerous. I wasn’t in a story mood, but no need to push him. Anders took his time finding words. I got the impression that he wasn’t much of a talker. “I assume you know something about my former organization.”
I nodded. “Just what Bob said in his notes.”
“I doubt he knew much.”
“Enough to throw his life away in some vain attempt to stop Majestic for launching Project Blue.”
Anders smiled briefly, still staring out over the distance. “Majestic . . . The name started out as a joke. Our organization had lots of names, none of them official, most of those names were just line items on a budget that went into a big black hole. It was the conspiracy theorists that started calling it Majestic. We laughed at them, but it had a nice ring to it, so it stuck. But that was long before I was recruited.”
“From where?”
The big man shrugged, not wanting to say any more about himself. “What I was doesn’t matter now. Those days are gone. There is only now.”
“That’s very Zen of you, Leif Erikson.”
Anders looked over at me, raising one eyebrow, as if internally debating whether he should just kill me on the spot, but he continued. “There’s a secret war being fought. It’s a cold war, but both sides have spilt a lot of blood.”
“Between who?”
Anders looked at me like I was stupid. “Between my guys and the Illuminati.”
“Another joke name, I take it.”
“Of course. I don’t know what they call themselves. It’ll do though. You of all people should know all about them. You’ve served the Illuminati interests most of your life.”
“My brother’s the conspiracy theorist. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Just another pawn then.” Anders went back to looking at the view, his unkempt beard fluttered in the breeze. “Majestic was founded to fight commies, but they were bound to butt heads with these other assholes. The Illuminati is made up of thirteen powerful families. They’re all old, powerful, and rich. They’ve been pulling the strings for a long time. Their base is mostly European, but they’re involved in everything, same as us. Business, crime, politics, currency manipulation, terrorism, you name it, they’ve got a piece.”
“I’ve never heard of them before Bob’s notes, let alone worked for them.”
“One of the thirteen families is Montalban. Ring any bells, jackass?”
“Heard of them . . .” I muttered.
“Rafael Montalban was the head of the family. It was supposed to be hands off, but Gordon had him offed in Zubara. Next in line was his brother Eduard. You killed him. Now their family is in shambles, but the other twelve go about their business, still having their secret war, like nothing ever happened. Whichever side wins steers the destiny of the world.”
I could honestly say that I didn’t want to root for either side in this one.
“Project Blue was our doomsday contingency plan to destroy the Illuminati once and for all. If the war ever went from cold to hot, my team’s job was to cut their heads off in a preemptive strike.” Anders cleared his throat and spit over the edge, watching it fall all the way to the bottom. “Majestic is so layered in secrets that nobody ever knows what’s going on. The highest levels come up with plans, but they don’t want to know how we get the job done. They just want it done. The first operative, his name was Barrington, was given the mission parameters and told to set the contingency plans in place.”
“The senator?”
“Former senator. He was the idea man. Gordon Willis was number two, operations, he made it happen. Gordon was my immediate boss in black ops. He picked me and another guy named Hunter to be the boots on the ground.”
“Big Boss in Zubara?”
Anders was surprised. “You’re better informed than you let on. You met?”
“Nice guy. Had his boys break a couple of my fingers.”
“Lucky that’s all they did. He was old school, learned his trade fighting Soviets. Me and Hunter did the work for Blue, set everything up, put all the assets in place. It was top secret. So secret that nobody had a fucking clue what they were unleashing. They just gave Barrington a mission and turned him loose.”
“So what went wrong?”
“Plan was in place. I never thought we would have to use it. It was too extreme, even for us. When the higher-ups realized just how nuts Barrington was, they freaked. Then Barrington died.”
“Killed by the Illuminati?”
“Nah . . .” Anders shook his head. “Somebody above decided he was a liability. Barrington had certain hobbies that could lead to blackmail, and that could compromise Majestic. I was ordered to terminate him. He was into some weird, kinky things. Anonymous sick stuff in airport bathrooms, stuff like that. Then one day, when he opened a stall door, it wasn’t some messed-up little fag waiting, it was me and I stuck an icepick through his ear hole. We made sure the autopsy said he had a stroke.”
“I used that trick once. It doesn’t leave much blood.”
Anders nodded in appreciation, one professional to another. “Anyway, Blue just sat and waited, kind of forgotten by the higher-ups. Then Hunter died, betrayed to the Zubarans by Gordon. It turned out that my old buddy had cut a deal with Eddie Montalban. Gordon popped Rafael, Eddie got control of his family and deniability, everybody wins.”
I’d seen that alliance myself. What Anders was saying jibed with what I’d overheard in Quagmire.
“But then Gordon ‘committed suicide.’ And then they nab Valentine at the scene? Suicide, my ass. I could read the writing on the wall. Four men knew about Blue, and just like that three were dead, all at the hands of other Majestic operatives. Somebody had decided to make every one of us who knew about Project Blue go away . . . So that’s when I went rogue and bailed.”
I had to smirk at that. “One problem with your theory. I know Valentine. He wasn’t ordered to kill Gordon by anybody. He did that on his own. Gordon’s betrayal got his girlfriend killed. It was as simple as that. But yeah, Majestic is upset all right. Valentine doesn’t know shit about Project Blue. They tortured the hell out of him and he didn’t know a thing. They were torturing him because they’re scared of you. Now they’re panicking.”
Anders raised that one eyebrow again.
“Your bosses didn’t drop the hammer on you guys. You fell off the face of the earth for nothing.” I laughed. “But since you ran, now they think you’re a liability. Hell, dude, you could probably be back in America living it up with your fat government salary.”
His massive hand flew around faster than I could react. Anders’ fingers clamped around my throat, and he slammed me back into one of the beams. He glared at me, not saying a word, breathing hard through his nose.
“Valentine was working on his own, you stupid fuck,” I grunte
d as he threatened to crush my trachea. I could see the turmoil on his face as he realized that I was telling the truth. He had thrown away his life for nothing. His nostrils kept flaring, like the bellows on some giant furnace. I spotted something on his forearm, a little tattoo with a trident and the number four, and made a mental note of it for later. He let go. His fingers left indents in my flesh.
Anders slumped back against the rail with a sigh. The guard approached, seeing if he needed to pump some rounds into me. Anders waved him away, seemingly calm again. “Well, wish I had known that . . .” he muttered. “Too late now.”
“All those steroids make you dumb.” I rubbed my throat. If he tried that again, we were both going to take a dive off this roof.
“When a Dead Six operative got picked up at Gordon’s house I figured they’d ordered the hit.” He snap punched the railing hard enough to break most normal men’s hands. The metal let out a harsh clang. “I was in F—” He stopped himself. “I was on an operation at the time, when I heard about Gordon. I made it look like I’d been killed by Illuminati and took off. I figured they’d be sending their best after me, that son of a bitch Underhill.”
“Buddy of yours?”
“Underhill’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever met,” Anders stated flatly. “Old-school operative, came up through the ranks with Hunter. He’s killed more people than cancer.” Any man that put that kind of unease on a mutant like Anders was nobody I ever wanted to tangle with.
“What’s done is done. Tell me the rest of your story.”
“Gordon had a good thing going on the side with the Montalbans, so I hooked up with Katarina. We knew each other from a prior . . . business arrangement. I’ve been here ever since.”
“My brother knew to look for you here. Why?”
“My part in Blue required me to make a deal with Sala Jihan. I was the one who had the technical expertise necessary. Bob must have found out something about that. I’ve got to admit, I was surprised to find out he was here.”
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