Full Ratchet: A Silas Cade Thriller Hardcover

by Mike Cooper

  “That’s how it seems to play.”

  “Okay, makes sense. You’ve cleaned it up for them now?”

  “Uh, yeah, right.” The breeze coming up the bluff was cold. I could see a silver glint of the river below, nothing but dark forest everywhere else. “Except my last discussion with Brinker was interrupted by, well, I don’t know, but they were carrying assault weapons and speaking Russian.”

  Clara laughed. “Why does that always happen to you?”

  Good question. “Just follow up, will you? Maybe the seismographic stuff is dual use or something, like they use it to monitor nuclear tests. If it’s sensitive and export-controlled, that might explain a few things. In any event, if the business gets all geopolitical, I seriously need to bail.”

  “I’ll see, but if it’s private, that’s tough. You don’t need me, you need a contract in, I dunno, the Carlyle Group.”

  “I wouldn’t trust anyone but you, Clara.”

  “If there’s one buyer interested, there might be more.” She was thinking aloud. “Which maybe means a competitive situation. And if the lead bidder is knocked out for some reason—like, say, they’re working for Gazprom or some Russian oligarch—then the others might start scrambling.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “If no one’s aware of these circumstances until I publish them . . . that’s a hell of a scoop.”

  “Hold off a bit, will you? It’s all guesswork. You go dropping bombs now, I might never solve it.”

  An animal screeched in the woods, loud and close. Bird? Wildcat? Russian paramilitary? I crouched and twisted around and drew the Sig without even thinking, aiming it across the trees one-handed.

  Nothing happened.

  “Silas? You still there?” Clara’s voice was tinny, the phone in my left hand, down at my side. After a long moment, I raised it back to my ear.

  “Sorry. Got distracted.”

  “If I find anything out, I’ll call you.” She paused before adding, not too grudgingly, “Before I publish.”

  “I think you might want to steer clear of this one,” I said. “Any business deal where the participants are this eager to kill each other seems like, you know, a red flag.”

  “How serious are they?”

  “Live fire and lots of it. Check the newswires.”

  “And they’re shooting at you?”

  “Some of them. The Russians are. The other one, I’m not sure about—their leader, she’s hard to read.”

  “She?”

  “Harmony. Zeke couldn’t find out a last name. I’ve only seen her firing a sidearm, but she was certainly good with it, and she apparently intimidates everyone she meets.”

  “Perfect name for her, then.”

  “She rides horses, too.” I had an image of her, bareback and upright on the chestnut, galloping through the forest like a video-game warrior queen.

  Clara paused, then laughed. “Uh-huh.”

  “What?”

  “You’re sweet on her, aren’t you?”

  “Get out. She tried to kill me.”

  “Are you sure? I can hear it in your voice.”

  “She’s on the other team,” I said. “And that’s the entire story.”

  “Oka-a-y.”

  “Why don’t we ever talk about your love life?”

  “I don’t have time for one.”

  I pocketed my phone, then moved into cover behind a fallen tree, twenty or thirty meters from the cabin. Dave’s car reflected a bit of moonlight, but otherwise everything was just different degrees of blackness.

  I waited thirty minutes. All was quiet. We were at the end of a few miles of dirt road, the river bluff to one side and tens of thousands of acres of national forest to the other. No one could sneak up here.

  Eventually I went back inside, wrapped up in the blankets again, and wondered how long I really wanted to keep doing this kind of work.

  —

  “I want to help.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Why not?”

  It was morning, eight or nine o’clock, the sun bright in a clear sky, dew still on shaded areas of the ground. Dave sat on the cabin’s small porch, eating the last of the jerky. I studied the forest on the far side of the bluff through some binoculars that had been sitting on the cabin’s mantelpiece. Dave had the shower curtain pulled around his shoulders. I wore a jacket, a fleece-lined nylon shell.

  Despite the sun it must have been ten degrees cooler up in the mountains.

  “You lost the shop and your house already. Whoever these people are, they’re shooting to kill.”

  “What happened out at that farm last night?”

  “Nothing you want to be a part of.”

  “You have no idea.” Dave shook his head. “You really don’t.”

  The light breeze carried smells of foliage and earth. I wished we’d remembered to buy water, not just beer, last night.

  Dave stood up and tossed the shower curtain in through the door. He stretched, scratched, rubbed the stubble on his face.

  “Those guys come after you in a car,” he said, “you ought to have me there. To drive.”

  Some truth in that. “I’ll manage.”

  “You know, when they were pounding the hell out of the garage, and I realized the only thing I could do was take the Charger right out, right toward them, that might have been the scariest thing I ever done.” Dave looked at me.

  “I believe that.”

  “But I wasn’t frightened, exactly. More like, hot damn, let’s go! You know what I mean? It was . . .” His voice trailed off. “I’d say it was the greatest feeling in the world.”

  Great. My brother, adrenaline junkie. “I get you.”

  “On the track, sometimes there’s an act, the guy who jumps over speeding cars.” Dave was off on another tangent. “You ever seen that?”

  “Internet video, yeah.”

  “Like there’s two or four or five cars driving straight toward him at ninety miles an hour, all lined up, and he has to jump straight up in the air at exactly the right moment, so they go right under him.”

  “The one I saw, he mistimed it. Landed in front of the last car.”

  “Well, that hardly ever happens.”

  I put the binoculars back into their case. “Look, when this is over and I have some free time, we can do some adventure stuff. A HALO parachute jump, maybe. Ski down an avalanche zone. Scuba dive with sharks.”

  “All I’m saying is, maybe the garage getting blown up, it’s like a message. God’s telling me I shouldn’t be sitting around fixing barbecue grills.”

  “Instead you should be, what, engaging in personal warfare with overarmed Russian mercenaries?” I sighed. “Isn’t the racing enough?”

  “Plus you haven’t told me a damn thing about why you’re here, but I figure there’s money involved.”

  “No—”

  He cut me off. His mood had suddenly turned. “Has to be. You think you’re gonna keep that all to yourself?”

  “It’s not about money.”

  “Oh, fuck it.” Dave punched the post at the end of the porch, hard enough to shake the entire cabin. “And fuck you.”

  He stomped off around the corner.

  I sat for a few minutes, then stood up and followed.

  A rhododendron bush was in early bloom at the edge of the cabin’s field, pink flowers against glossy, dark green foliage. The Charger sat beside them, at the end of parallel ruts leading through the muddy track from the road where we’d driven in last night. The driver’s door was open, and Dave sat sideways on the seat, feet outside the car.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “You been talking down to me since you got here.” His voice was flat, the usual exuberance gone.

  “No, I—”

  “You’re the big-city guy. Where do you really live?”

  Not a question I’d answer, normally, but here we were. “New York.”

  “Right. Park Avenue, whatever. Come out here like you�
�re slumming. Visit the rednecks, see how they live.”

  “You think that’s what I’m doing?”

  “Brendt and Dink and them all? They’re my friends.”

  Well, he had a point. I wasn’t particularly happy to be here, and maybe I’d been taking it out on him.

  Real America doesn’t need irony.

  I stood for a while, looking off over the bluff, where it fell away at the end of the field.

  “Car looks good,” I said. He’d finally buffed the wax, sometime late yesterday.

  “Shit.”

  “Hey, it was the other guys flattened your house, not me.”

  “But—” He let it drop. “Fuck all.”

  “Look,” I said. “I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

  And the thing was, I did have to explain the situation to him. Not only did I owe him—for the ride, for the shop, for basically keeping me alive recently—but he was probably a target, too, now. I couldn’t walk away and let him be killed.

  “Naw, forget it.” He pulled himself out of the car. “I’m just cranky for missing breakfast.”

  “Let’s find a diner or something.” I held out my hand, and after a moment he took it. “And I’ll explain exactly how little I know about who’s trying to kill us.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The first task was to get another damn car.

  “I don’t mind driving,” Dave said.

  “Yes, I know.” We were rattling down the mountain, jouncing along the dirt-and-chert fire road. For once Dave took it slow and easy, steering around the bigger rocks, trying to stay out of the deeper, muddier ruts. “But, and I mean no disrespect, your car is kind of . . . memorable. I need something anonymous and forgettable.”

  “So, what, a rental?”

  “Maybe.” But I didn’t want to go back to the airport—the cameras were unavoidable, and eventually, too many appearances, someone would notice. “I was thinking Craigslist. Seems like every other house around here has a cleaned-up car in their front yard with a FOR SALE sign on it.”

  “Uh-huh. Plenty more than usual, too, these last couple of years. So you want to buy one?”

  “Yes, but not from some old lady or laid-off millworker.”

  “Why not?”

  The truth was an old lady would remember far too many details about me, but I didn’t want to say that. “They’re amateurs. Anyone selling their own vehicle has no idea of its value, so you have to bargain them down, which pisses them off. But I don’t want to deal with a used-car lot, either. The best way to do this is find some guy who does it as a sideline, off the books. Buys a car every month or two from one of the old ladies, fixes it up, and then sells it himself for a little profit.”

  “Sure. I know what you mean.”

  “Of course they’re like rug merchants in the bazaar—try every trick in the book. Worse than a used-car salesman.”

  “Oh, please.” Dave shook his head. “You think they could put something over on me?”

  Exactly. “So . . . you know anyone?”

  “I might.”

  “Thought so.” I shifted the harness enough to pull out my wallet and checked inside. “We need to stop at some cash machines first. I’m about out of money.”

  We finally reached a paved road, some state blacktop through the forest. Dave picked up speed. Wind whistled through the windows, engine noise waxed and waned, the wheels screeched and skidded through the turns.

  “How is it you still have a license?” I asked.

  “License?”

  Super.

  We made it to the interstate and had the eggs-pancakes-sausage-biscuits-and-grits special at a truck stop outside Morgantown. Dave filled the tank while I tried to clean up in the bathroom. They had shower stalls, but I didn’t want to put bare feet on the floor in there.

  Another twenty minutes took us back to Clabbton. We drove past the town green, back out the east road. When the Super Duper came into view, I realized where Dave was going.

  I didn’t say a word, but he must have realized what I was thinking.

  “She’s off today,” he said. “Told me last night.”

  “Really?”

  “You said you wanted an ATM that wasn’t in a bank, right? There’s one in front. And I think we can find another at the Lukoil.”

  “Okay.”

  Cash is another of those persistently annoying problems for the privacy conscious. Usually I carry a few hundred dollars, sometimes more—enough for a day’s work. I can always replenish from my legitimate, Silas-owned bank account, especially in the city, where bank machines are everywhere.

  But not on the job.

  I had two more false-identity credit cards left, but I didn’t want to burn them. Not that a guy illegally selling cars out of his driveway would take one anyway.

  Prepaid debit cards are the way to go. I buy them at check-cashing stores. Jesus would kick their ass over the fees, which are truly extortionate, but you can lie all you want on the application form and they don’t care. I put nine thousand dollars on each one, to stay under the CTR reporting limit—and then I can draw what I need, anywhere in the country.

  For more than that, you need to use the big-dog money-laundering channels. The people who set those up wear nicer suits, and usually draw $400-per-hour fees in their downtown tax-law offices, but the rake-off is pretty much the same.

  Anyway, I had Dave park on the other side of the lot—“Look, we want to minimize people seeing me get in and out of your car, okay?”—and walked over to the ATM next to the takeout Chinese place. First thing, I stuck a Post-it note over the camera window. When I got the default opening screen, the suggested withdrawals topped out at fifty dollars, in ten-dollar increments.

  I took out a thousand dollars, which was the limit. We’d be making several stops today.

  When I emerged, Dave was nowhere to be seen.

  I muttered and looked around. The Charger sat where we’d parked it, empty as far as I could tell from a distance. Elsie’s spot was unoccupied. Midmorning, not much business—only the supermarket and the dollar store were open.

  Dave finally wandered around from back, along the same truck alley we’d parked in yesterday.

  “What?” he said, catching my look. “I had to piss.”

  “If Chief Gator catches you publicly urinating, it’s a criminal offense.” I shook my head. “You go on the sex offender registry. Can’t step within half a mile of a school or a church ever again your whole life.”

  “School or church? That’s no hardship.”

  “Come on, I need to buy a toothbrush.” And some underwear. It looked like I might be on the lam for a few days yet.

  —

  “Ninety-five hundred,” the guy said. “I tuned this engine like a motherfucker. I used to work a NASCAR pit. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Uh-huh.” Dave was in the driver’s seat. He started the engine, listened for a moment, turned it off. A moment later he switched it on again. “You hear that tapping?” he said. “Sounds like the valve lifters.”

  “I cleaned ’em.”

  “Could still be worn out.” Dave looked up at him. “Like if whoever owned it before wasn’t changing the oil regular.”

  “Not what I saw.” The guy wasn’t giving ground.

  We were in the indeterminate exurbia between Clabbton and Pittsburgh—steady traffic on the four-lane state highway nearby, seed dealers and self-storage businesses, a few old farmhouses amid the sprawl. Pootie—that was how he’d introduced himself, honest to God—had one of these houses, along with a falling-down wooden garage. We stood in the shade of a grand elm, on the cracked drive, watching Dave’s inspection.

  He got out and started checking the outside of the car, studying the wheel wells, looking at the underside, peering down each side from the rear corner.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “Looks like the frame’s bent.” He switched to the other side. “Yup. Got a little curve on the right, and you can see how the left is crooked t
he other way.”

  “Naw, that’s bullshit.”

  It was a Chevy Aveo and looked fine to me, dumpy but clean, twenty-three thousand miles, six years old. No rust that I could see and decent tires. The engine compartment was spotless.

  Dave shook his head at me. “It might be okay for driving down to the video store. Keep it under forty, forty-five, probably won’t be too bad when the engine seizes up and you crash.”

  “Hey, fuck off. This ain’t no shit heap.”

  “Look, Pootie. You know and I know you bought this car at the impound auction. Probably a repo, right? A fleet rental, the mileage would be two or three times as high. You did a good job, fixed it up as reasonable as anyone could. But the car’s got problems, man.”

  Pootie shrugged.

  “So here’s the question,” Dave said. “My brother and I, we do need a ride, and we’d be happy to pay a fair price. Three grand seems about right to me.” He held up one hand as Pootie frowned and started to object. “That’s cash, and we hand it over to you right here.”

  I pulled out the thick wad of twenties we’d accumulated that morning—six more ATMs after leaving the Super Duper—and riffled the stack.

  “But you don’t have to take it.” Dave echoed Pootie’s shrug back at him. “Some dumbass will pay your price. Someday. I mean, not your price, unless he’s a total moron. But you might get a little more. Right?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “So the question is, how long you want to wait around and hope that happens? Hoping to get lucky?” Dave lowered his voice. “Or do you want to take the money we’re offering, right here, right now?”

  Pootie grimaced, and scratched his forearm, and looked at the Charger where Dave had parked it on the street.

  “That yours?” he asked.

  “Yup.”

  “It’s totally murdered out.” He said it like a compliment. “Do the work yourself?”

  “Sure.” Dave grinned. “You come up to Lernerville sometime, you can see me race.”

  “I ain’t bullshitting you. I worked hard on this car.”

  “I know you did. I can see it. Engine’s running as smooth as anyone could get it without a new block and a total rebuild. Brakes are good. Could use a new tire, left rear, but we can afford that.”