The Autumn War

by Ani Fox

  The Autumn War

  Ani Fox

  © 2016

  Cover Design by Shawn T. King

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Worldwide Rights

  Created in the United States of America

  Published by Ragnarok Publications | www.ragnarokpub.com

  Publisher: Tim Marquitz | Creative Director: J.M. Martin

  Thank you for purchasing this Ragnarok Publications eBook.

  Subscribe to our newsletter to get up-to-date information about future releases, special offers, upcoming Kickstarter campaigns, and to be informed of all that’s happening with Ragnarok.

  Or visit our sign-up page for our newsletter.

  For my parents:

  Dr. Robert Springer who gave me a lifelong love of science and technology

  Dr. Carla Springer who demonstrated how a brilliant powerful woman lives

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About the Author

  The Autumn War

  Chapter 1

  A Good Ambushwhacking

  I’ll be dead by the end of day, one way or the other.

  The thought came to me as I watched them put a fourth sniper’s nest in place, this one with rifles large enough to qualify as siege weaponry. Someone inside that building knew what happened to my family and I was about to turn the tables on them in most spectacular fashion. Done right, a proper op requires just one man, albeit a special one. It demands control, patience, a good bit of play acting. You lure your enemies closer than could possibly be imagined, and then, without warning, obliterate them. Even if those enemies are the most powerful, well equipped, and universally dangerous operatives alive. Maybe especially if they are.

  Still, with Arkady and Olga lately dead and now buried, I had to know. The timing had been too perfect, the accident textbook. I reviewed my plan: get in, get answers, and then get even. In the trade we have a term for what was about to happen: ambushwhack. As portmanteaus go, I have always liked that it implies a surprise attack, well executed asymmetric warfare and, for some, sanctioned assassination. It can also mean death by lead poisoning—often your own. I lowered my head and reminded myself to look broken, killing the hunter in my eyes.

  At T minus twenty, I let myself out the back door, walked six blocks down 5th Avenue and gave myself to the crowd eyes down, hands in my pockets, lost to the outside world. As I passed the security stations I kept my face flat and eyes fixed on the ground before me. It’s a rookie mistake to try and get eyeballs on your opposites. Some make it an unfortunate professional habit. But any time I see you, you by definition might see me. I had them spotted or I didn’t. Counting their nose hair wasn’t going to give me one iota more threat assessment. Nervous men don’t live long in my line of work. Or calm ones for that matter.

  They frisked me expertly. Some operatives will tell you they bring a gun, something heavy and sinister, and walk it in on the small of their back. Fills expectations, a kind of loss leader. If I’m pretending to be that guy, then sure, out comes the Glock. But it’s a mistake to ever stoke a details’ interest. Bring a threat and they will think threat. I’d been watching candidates screw up that simple rule all day long. The limping lady interviewing before me almost got her cane through but they x-rayed it. I knew it when I saw the machine and cane resting against it. Dumb. She might have brought three feet of perfectly useful mayhem with her. Instead she’d pissed them off by putting something inside. They scanned me, put my stuff in an X-ray, nearly ripped out the binding on my copy of Master and Margarita (and kept it) and then, after a second frisk, escorted me under guard to the elevators. Between the four of them the internal detail had enough hardware to take out the Bolivian army. Why bring weapons when others will carry them for you?

  They exchanged hand signals, called me The Package, and generally strutted around like ex-Special Forces. None of them noticed me towering over them. Free tip for the infiltrators at home, disguise is entirely about managing expectations. At six four 275 lbs. I’m a wall of olive skin and sharp features. My cheekbones could plane wood. But dress me in a rumpled suit and have me slouch and comply, looking like the defeated sap you expect me to be and voila, I’m two seconds away from disarming a kill team that would eat the SAS for breakfast. Three checks and two hand offs later, I was ushered into the room carrying eight ounces of plastic explosive, two detonators, a pack of strike anywhere matches, three ceramic knives, various poisons, a night’s supply of interrogation drugs, some first aid essentials, and a phone loaded with enough cyberwarfare software to obliterate the CIA mainframe. I travel light when the occasion merits.

  A note on my phone. Everyone has one these days, so we’ve come to see smartphones as something like dress shoes or a tie: sharp men have expensive ones; all men wear one to the office. People are also noticeably arrogant about the strength of the anti-intrusion software and firewalls. I’m not a cracker but I keep my hand in, dabbling a little as I try to stay current. Electronic warfare has been an issue ever since the Stone Gang shut down the pacemaker of the Bonanno Capo dei Capi in `03.

  I set my phone to hacking their network, having already cracked their frequencies while I scoped the interview site. Later, I could review what I had stolen and make sense of the data. For now, I surveyed the room, taking in my kill zones. They had set up in a hotel I knew The Syndicate owned and made it look like they were squatters. Again, kudos to the Sous Chef. They had done the room in baroque excess with lots of blue and brown velvet accented with brass. Distracting and full of shadows. You could see cameras but most would assume that the hotel and not the team owned them. Smart. There were hidden cameras that no one would spot. Just assume they are there and act accordingly. The days of hiding your face are over. They had my face anyway, it’s how they knew who to invite. They had my file and probably spoke to my last employer or two. They’d have called my cousins and checked with the Corsicans for good measure.

  A word on The Syndicate: it likes hotel analogies and it refers to the various families, agencies and political bodies it hosts as Guests. It has a General Manager who’d be the boss of bosses in any mafiya. Day Manager, Night Manager, Concierge, and the Sous Chef who backs the Chef de Cuisine, the Security Chief who serves the Chief of Staff or Underboss. Two months ago, the Syndicate had promoted a new Concierge after a car bomb retired the old one. The new one, Pina Karthago, resembled her name-sake, Agrippina the Younger: ruthless, ambitious and amoral. She had sent me the invitation.

  Ahead of me they had the suite opened up with a couch to the right, several chairs set before a large secretary style desk, and a few stools to left rear housing some gunsels. On the couch, a woman sat with a steno pad and beside her a well-dressed specimen of Eurotrash with blond slicked hair and pale eyes. Behind the desk sat my interviewer, a man who claimed to be Giuseppe Abruscato, caporegime, and whom I knew to be one Ron Sclafani from the dock-working family out of Jersey City. The steno girl would be the shooter and the Eurotrash some kind of analyst, maybe Karthago’s real man in the room. Given the way the Sous had set this up, I was betting it was all through cameras and everyone here just window dressing. I counted no less than fifteen guns, excluding my security details’.

 
; Giuseppe/Ron gestured me to a chair. “Have a seat.” I sat where he indicated and slouched enough to emphasize my current story and waited. He smiled. I smiled briefly. He consulted some papers. People generally hate silence. I both like it and find it useful. Sooner or later Ron would need to ask me questions, look like he was conducting an interview, and so on. But right now, at the beginning, he faltered. I’d thrown him off script by sticking to mine. You can learn the damnedest things if you pay attention and keep your mouth shut.

  The Eurotrash guy shifted and his suit glittered between green and silver. He also made signal with his hand, not to Ron, but to a camera. So. He was the one. Good to know.

  When he could stand it no more, Ron asked me if I’d like coffee. I shrugged and didn’t answer. That threw him. He had a script, one it would appear my peers had been keen to follow. Euroguy rose, made two espressos on a little Krups in the corner, then sauntered back to me, offering me one. I tossed it back, no sugar. If they meant to kill me, why bother with the pleasantries? Either they planned to do me, in which case poison wasn’t a half bad way to go, or they didn’t. Euroguy nodded and tossed his back too. He made a solid cup of coffee. Could he be the Sous himself? Maybe just the Commis: the top line officer. We eyed one another for a good few seconds, then he nodded to Ron.

  “Why do you want the job, mister uh…?”

  “Everyone just calls me Spetz.” He smiled again and you could see his gratitude. My last name’s a handful even for fellow Ukrainians. Depending on whom you ask, my clan’s descended from marauding Turks, Siberian exiles, Vlad Tepesh, or the Sarmatians. Regardless, it tends to be murder on the tongue.

  “Right, Mister Spetz.” He hesitated, and then got on script. “Our line of work can be hard on families…” He let it trail off. Our line of work. Sure. He moved packages for the local Rackets.

  I slumped a little more. “I buried my cousin yesterday so family’s not really an issue. Anymore.”

  Ron tried to look sympathetic. “But you have some cousins left.”

  “A second cousin whose husband better be able to vouch for her safety.” Sveta had married someone in the Corsican outfit, a smuggler and local boss, but one who had ties to plutonium and diamonds as well as moving bodies with legends. Valuable. I didn’t tell them I despised Sveta and would not miss her. Instead, I let the very real grief I felt burying Arkady come through. Ever seen a man cry silently? If they felt any threat from me, it vanished. Except Mr. Euro. He had to stay on point.

  “Former SPETSNAZ.” He pronounced it like spit shnoz. “In both Alpha and Vega?”

  “Yes.” It would be more accurate to say, “Neither,” but that would confuse him. I’d been in a dozen other offshoots of Pennant and the Sixth Directorate. Then left the employ of my country and done some freelance work. Hence the nickname.

  “Some time in Africa, working what?”

  I smiled and let my sharp teeth make an impression on him. “You tell me.”

  That took Ron a moment. Again, not on his script. I wondered if they knew. The information wasn’t all that hard to obtain. I had done various military police and intelligence activities. A little spying, a fair bit of sabotage and agitprop. And a good year working forensics and homicide in Burkina Faso and the Cote d’Ivoire, of all places. That’s where I apprenticed with some very bored freelance hacktivists trying to build a data haven and picked up my handy phone software. Well, the ancestor of it anyway. One of my guys had uploaded a new version two days ago. Cost me a cool sixty Gs. Entirely worth it.

  My phone vibrated discreetly. It meant that they’d made me. My little hack had a set of priorities, a sort of primitive AI that goes looking in directories for certain activities. Facial recognition searches of video, for example. That meant that the Sous Chef and his Chef de Cuisine were likely looking at some chilling feeds of me watching their entire team as they set up hours ago. What happened next would be instructive.

  Ron frowned and carried on. “Intelligence. Some police work right?” You could see him getting frustrated. Guys like Ron don’t deal well with being pushed. It happened rarely and they were encouraged to deal with it. Lethally. I slouched a little more and put some more arrogant boredom into my voice.

  “Sure.”

  “And then you sorta retire and bake cookies.”

  “Bread. I retired to bake bread.” And spare Arkady and Olga from the consequences of my associations. Because Giuseppe/Ron was telling the truth: at the Syndicate level, killing your family tends to be a kindness. Kidnap, torture, interrogate, and brainwash. Wash, rinse, repeat. Once they had baby Sonia, I quit the business.

  “Whatever. You’re out of the game for a while and then, suddenly, it’s like you want back in.” I doubt Ron even knew he’d slipped back into his Jersey sing song. I wasn’t going to tell him, and I doubt Euro and the Steno Shooter knew how to stop him.

  “You called me. I figured I’d show up to hear you out.”

  That pissed him off. He’d let his ego get in the way. Ron knew Giuseppe considered himself a big deal and nobody but nobody pushes a real Capo around. Not in Ron’s little world. Not in Jersey. His face got red, he smacked the desk and the steno girl jumped a little. “No. You turned us down. And then you show up. Well, we’re gonna fix that right now. We don’t want you no more.”

  Nobody moved. The gunsels in the back looked nonplussed and the Euroguy had this anguished look of indecision. He couldn’t expose the operation but it was clear he wanted to bitch slap Ron into the next room. The Steno Shooter had given up trying to look like she was anything other than a hitter. The whole scene collapsed and nobody knew what to do. Ever watch a bomb tick down? People tend to panic, run about looking for an escape. Especially if they discover you are that bomb and they are ground zero. My face transformed, all the malice I felt inside washing out through my eyes. Time to lure my prey closer.

  I winked at the camera. “It’s not your choice, Ron. It’s hers.” The Euroguy jerked and he gave me a stricken look. The Commis for sure. He understood how few people knew who Ron was but he couldn’t act independently. It took the Sous under a minute to come down the hall and into the room.

  The Sous was small, thin and dangerous, with almost midnight skin. He had dark eyes, a bald shaved head and hawkish features. In his left hand he held a special issue nine shot PSS third edition. There were only eleven ever built; I owned two of them. He smiled and I smiled. The PSS uses a special piston to fire the bullet at subsonic speeds. At under ten meters it delivers a nearly silent kill.

  “His family?” He moved his chin towards Ron.

  “Please.” I met his eyes. “I plan to walk out of here, but not like that.”

  Behind him, a woman of lavish beauty watched the byplay. She stood nearly six feet in her red Italian heels, had a tumble of raven hair, and curious green eyes. She wore a tight black dress, sporting a gym blessed body of curves and that rare élan that a woman with unlimited power can bring to a room. I had my first glimpse of The Concierge.

  The Sous kept his distance and kept his charge behind him. Smart. By then, I was guessing he knew his team had missed a few things on me and had to be wondering whether I was here to make a run on her. “Because you think hostages won’t work on us?”

  I leaned back and stretched my legs. Enough slouching. It takes a toll, especially after hours of surveillance and a crappy plane ride from Wisconsin. “Because a guy who sets up a Triple A to stop an airborne snatch and grab would never let a bunch of Sclafani hostages become an issue.” At this point it finally dawned on poor Ron that I hadn’t called him Giuseppe and his face went sheet white. Behind me, I felt rather than saw, the shooter and Euro pull their pieces.

  “True. Ron’s family are in Sicily for a vacation. We figured it made good sense.”

  It did actually. I just nodded.

  The Sous Chef seemed utterly competent. Behind him walked in a taller man, well dressed and perhaps a little red in the cheek. He had brownish thinning hair, which he’d clearly
tried to keep full. His nasty darting eyes took in the room like a caged animal. It helped that I knew him. Roger Stenwaite, late of the National Intelligence Directorate, one of those alphabet agencies you never knew existed, which do stuff the CIA and FBI only dream about. The Chef de Cuisine and the man who held Pina’s life in his hands. I knew his work and had never been much of a fan. Roger had just gotten a taste of mine. He whispered something into The Concierge’s ear.

  She stepped forward, agitating the hell out of her men. “And if I ask if you want back in?”

  “Are you asking?”

  Her eyes were dark oceans of empty. “Yes.”

  “That depends on you. I really did come to hear you out.”

  She nodded and considered. Roger tried to lean over and whisper again and she batted him the way someone swats an annoying gnat. The Sous had moved around them both to have a clean shot. Still, Roger was screwing up his line of fire. I got up very slowly and sat on the desk, which put me back in his sights. He gave me a wry smile of thanks and I nodded just enough to let him know I’d seen it.

  Pina smiled and a thousand million watts blew across the room. “Coffee?”

  I smiled back. “I’d love some.”

  Chapter 2

  The Anarchists’ Sewing Circle

  Pina Karthago handed me a fresh latte in a china mug and leaned back on her settee. Beside her, a sourfaced Roger Stenwaite endured my presence and tried to look stylish drinking his American swill. The Sous pacing behind them was introduced briefly as Harv Littman, a South African ex-mercenary with a solid reputation he just proved out. I knew his work and was very much a fan. I could definitely learn from Littman.

  She smiled and let the incandescence of her beauty linger. I’m many things but none of them a sucker for beautiful women. Still, the Concierge was very easy on the eyes. “Would you actually consider the offer?” Her tone was concerned, almost maternal. I had no doubt she could sound the same way as she ordered my throat cut and my body fed to pigs.