by Ty Patterson
They’ll release him soon. And he might bring the woman back to the apartment. I want to be there when they arrive.
He spotted their vehicle arriving. Got out of his Nissan and went to the bus stop to check the schedule. And caught a glimpse of Susan Thompson being hurried inside the house by Carter.
Unaware that he himself had been spotted.
Chapter 22
‘You are sure?’ Junior asked the assassin.
‘Yes. Attacking them in the apartment will be a disaster. They will be expecting us. I suggest we lay off. For a long time.’
Junior rubbed his chin, rose from behind his desk and poured himself and Senior a drink. Senior took it silently, brooding, and downed it in one gulp.
‘I told you—’
‘Save it,’ Junior sighed. ‘Papa is expecting us. Let’s go.’
* * *
The patriarch listened with his usual impassive face, only the tightening of his eyes an indicator of what he was feeling.
‘What went wrong?’ he asked quietly. Senior snuck a glance at Junior, uneasily. That quiet tone wasn’t good.
‘That man, Carter. He was the difference. If he hadn’t been there, the kill would have gone off exactly as planned.’
‘Why didn’t you plan for his presence?’
Neither Junior nor Senior had an answer to that. They had planned extensively. The first two kills had gone down like a dream. It was just this one that had failed.
‘We are safe, Papa,’ Junior reassured his father. ‘No one is left alive. They will find nothing on the bodies. No identification.’
‘There’s one obvious one,’ the patriarch rebutted swiftly.
Junior and Senior knew what he was referring to.
‘Shira Levin was also killed by similar people, Papa,’ Junior said, bringing out the charm and confidence. ‘They have no clue there. They’ll have no clue here.’
‘We can take her out again,’ he bragged.
‘No. Leave her alone. For now. You need to prepare for the next one.’
He told them who it was, and then it dawned on them. The next one would be big. It would restore honor, but there was more at stake.
It would prevent their destruction.
* * *
The patriarch called Junior for a second meeting and nodded absently when his son bowed. ‘How’s Senior?’
‘Nervous,’ Junior said promptly. ‘This London fiasco has made him jumpy, Papa. We were talking about it when you called. He doesn’t think we should go ahead.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘We don’t have a choice, do we, Papa? What will happen in the worst case? Bad headlines? We have survived that. Nothing will link us to whatever happens. Nothing ever has.’
‘What if Senior refuses to work with you?’
‘I will convince him, Papa. Though I can handle everything myself. Senior isn’t required,’ Junior said boldly.
The patriarch’s eyes grew hooded and his face shuttered immediately. ‘It’s still a contest. I’m still assessing both of you. Don’t get ahead of yourself.’
‘I know, Papa. That’s not what I meant,’ Junior apologized, knowing his father knew exactly what he had meant. But he let it lie there. It was in the open now. He had made his chess move. It was up to his father now.
‘This Carter…’ the patriarch said, changing the subject.
‘Will be taken care of.’
* * *
Zeb had slapped himself on the forehead when he had spotted the CCTV cameras on the outside of the building and at its entrance. He had seen them only when they had returned with Paul as the fake Susan.
‘Where do those feeds go?’
‘To our command center.’ Liam squinted his eyes and followed what Zeb was pointing at. ‘You need them?’
‘Like yesterday.’
Zeb forwarded the feeds to Meghan, knowing she would get Werner to process them, and they settled in for the night. Spelling one another. Bwana and Roger cracking jokes quietly. The British operatives telling raucous stories. Their senses on high alert despite the humor.
It turned midnight. Then two a.m. Traffic dried out, but in the far distance, they heard police sirens continually. Patrolling the city after the most savage attack London had known in recent times.
A couple of times, headlights turned inside the approach street to the building, and cars joined the line outside. A few residents trooped in, their faces captured by the cameras. None of them were a threat.
When a pale sun threatened the clouds obscuring it, Zeb retired to a bedroom to catch a few winks.
They won’t attack now. Probably figured out the odds were against them.
* * *
Meghan had an update for him when he woke up to the sound of Roger singing off-key. Nine a.m. All else was quiet.
Check your email, she messaged.
He showered, freshened up, and turned on his laptop, with Bwana and Roger looking over his shoulder.
She had isolated two video segments. One showed a blurry face in a silver vehicle, a Vauxhall Corsa, she said. The car drove into a space, but the driver never emerged. This was the night before the attack.
Another clip had a man at the bus stop opposite. Wearing a hat and shades, looking at a timetable.
Ran through the videos several days back. This dude was never seen before. He isn’t a regular. The Corsa’s plates are fake. Such a car was never registered.
She saved the best for the last.
Corsa’s occupant and trilby dude seem to be the same. Faces are not clear, but shapes and sizes of heads match.
She went into more technical detail. Werner had extrapolated the Corsa man’s height from the way his face was angled inside the vehicle. That height matched that of the man at the bus stop.
Bwana whooped silently and fist-bumped Roger. ‘Finally!’
‘It could be anyone,’ Zeb cautioned, but he too couldn’t suppress a smile. He had hoped to capture one or more of the attackers. However, this was the next best outcome.
* * *
‘No such car exists,’ Alex confirmed, and Zeb had to frown when Bwana started rolling his eyes.
They were in his office later in the day, Susan secure in the safe house. She would work from that location until Alex gave her the clear.
‘I’ve shared the details with Scotland Yard. We’re tracking every silver Corsa in London. That man’s details. We haven’t gone public with those. Every policeman you see on the street is on the lookout for him.’
He tossed a file onto a stack behind him and shrugged ruefully. ‘I’m not confident of tracing that guy. Those photographs aren’t the best.’
‘No identities on the killers. Those photographs we have released. You know they’re all—’
‘Southeast Asian—Chinese or Japanese. Yes.’
‘Not many such gangs operate in Britain. The Chinese Triads are the largest. We’re working on the gang angle. We’ve also sent those photographs to every friendly police force. Maybe someone will have them on their files. They could be mercenaries. Like those Vietnamese killers who did Shira.’ He didn’t sound confident.
‘As you know, quite a few of the TKWC acquiring companies were from that region.’ The MI6 head picked up a squeeze ball and exercised his fingers. ‘We cleared all those companies. However, Scotland Yard is having a second look. No, a third look.
‘I had a call early morning’—he stifled a yawn with one hand—‘with the heads of other intelligence agencies. We’re all on the same page. This is increasingly looking like attacks on intelligence agencies. We’re looking at all operations where we pooled resources. Who those operations were against. The Triads are an obvious suspect since they are large, and are active on several continents.’
Zeb didn’t comment. It was the most obvious possibility, but he couldn’t shake the feeling there was more to it. Patterns. He had been racking his brains, but that thing nagging away at him hadn’t revealed itself.
Alex�
��s face turned grave as he hesitated.
‘What?’
‘They want you out of here,’ Alex confessed. ‘I’m getting a lot of heat. Americans operating on our soil. Protecting Susan, which my men and the cops should’ve have been doing.’
‘I understand.’ And Zeb did. He had been wondering when the politics of the situation would kick in. It would have been the same, back home, if the situation had been reversed.
‘Susan?’ he questioned.
‘She’ll have more men around her than ever before. What’s your take?’
‘They won’t attack now. It’s too high-risk.’
‘What I figured.’
* * *
They left for Heathrow in the evening, by which time no progress had been made in identifying either the Corsa or the man. There was no emotional farewell. Paul, still posing as Susan in the Marylebone apartment, hugged them tight. Liam slapped them on the back. Their paths would cross again. It was how their world worked.
Zeb peered out the window as the Gulfstream took to the sky and circled lazily over the city. The giant Ferris wheel that was the London Eye came into view, as did the top of the palace, and then London disappeared as the plane shot straight as an arrow to the Atlantic.
He didn’t know it, but the assassin was on a commercial flight ahead of him.
Junior had given him a simple task.
‘Get Carter.’
Chapter 23
On his return, Zeb discovered that Holly Nicholson and Mulan Yao had moved out of their Columbus Avenue office. They had rented rooms in the hotel where Levin was staying and were using its business center for work.
The twins had arranged a private security firm to protect the TKWC women. That firm, in addition to Levin’s kidon, ensured they were secure. It looked like Levin had taken them under his wing, had developed a fondness for them.
The move relieved Zeb, though he didn’t show it. The longer they were with us, the more they’d know of the Agency. Not an outcome I would have wanted. Levin will keep them safe. And it’s good for him too. It’ll help deal with his loss.
The twins and Broker ran the image of the London watcher through all their databases and drew blanks. Calls to international police forces and law enforcement agencies were equally fruitless.
Alex Thompson called on the third day after their return from London. ‘Heathrow and the other airports have a good camera network. Unfortunately the image we have of him is so blurred…no luck.’
Zeb had been expecting that. In any case, chances are the killer would be disguised when passing through airports.
‘Those six bikes. All stolen. The Corsa too. Four months back. The attempt was a long time in the planning.’
‘Makes sense.’ Zeb caught a paper ball that Beth threw at him. No particular reason for the throw. The twins were like that. Zeb was a source of amusement for them. ‘Mandel’s people didn’t find any vehicles in Paris. I’m sure they were stolen too. That too was planned a long time.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Alex agreed. ‘How’s Levin?’
‘Quietly raging. But he’s got Holly and Mulan to protect now. That’s distracted him.’
* * *
The assassin made arrangements to get his best kill team. He had to go through Junior for that, since those men were in the younger offspring’s part of the business. Junior assented readily. Carter was going to be a different proposition than the women. On top of that, there was less planning. Way less planning.
The four-person team arrived separately. Not at JFK, but at various airports around the country. One landed in LAX. Another in Chicago. A third in Florida and the last one in Seattle.
They gathered in the assassin’s apartment in Brooklyn the same day Sir Alex Thompson was briefing Zeb. They listened as they shoveled rice into their mouths. Lunch. Prepared by the assassin.
‘You know where he works?’ one killer asked the assassin in their native tongue.
‘Columbus Avenue.’ The killer cleared the dining table and spread out high-res photographs. The glass-fronted office from various angles. Carter caught in several shots. The black and blond men too. Others in Carter’s crew.
‘Cameras,’ another killer said, pointing with his spoon.
‘Lots of them.’ The assassin nodded. ‘All over the building. Not the best spot for the kill.’
He outlined Carter’s routine. A run early in the morning. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with the two women in his office. Return to the office. Emerge after a few hours for a drink. Lunch with the twins at a nearby diner. Another run in the evening.
The five men studied the pictures in silence. Of the diner. The street.
‘Too crowded,’ they concluded.
The assassin agreed. On principle, he didn’t like needless deaths. Killing innocents attracted extreme rage and heat. Those kinds of kills never ended well for the killers.
‘He has an apartment in Jackson Heights,’ the assassin said, revealing his trump card. ‘He returns to it once a week and spends a night there. He lives alone.’
The assassin had struck gold when he’d uncovered the apartment. It hadn’t been difficult. The fiefdom had corrupt civic officials on their rolls. One of them had come up with Carter’s tax records. Which had led to the apartment’s discovery.
The ease of it made the assassin pause. Why wouldn’t Carter hide his apartment?
He discussed it with Junior, who came back with, ‘Why would he? His name is in the Columbus Avenue office’s records. It’s on his company’s website. It’s not as if his home address is available to all.’
The assassin accepted Junior’s logic and began surveillance on the apartment before his team joined him.
Carter’s apartment was on the second floor of the building. A two-bedroom residence that had windows facing the street.
The assassin wore the colors of a well-known pizza delivery company and entered the building on the heels of another resident. He pulled his cap low over his face and didn’t look at Carter’s door as he climbed the stairs. The camera on his phone, sticking out of his shirt pocket, would capture everything.
Carter’s apartment had a discreet wall-mounted camera. There didn’t seem to be any other security.
‘We go in hard. Just behind him. Smash the door down. Fire. Exit. Getaway,’ the lead killer declared after mulling over various options.
‘Exactly what I thought,’ the assassin confirmed.
Zeb returned to his apartment on Thursdays. He spent the night, made sure all was in order at his home, and returned the next day to the office. Routine, when they were hot, on a mission.
He picked up a carton of milk, cereal, and other groceries from a convenience store as he walked from the subway to his building. The killings were on his mind. The initial elation at finding that watcher’s picture had faded. There had been a momentary surge of anticipation when a snitch in New York had come forward. He said he knew who had hired the Vietnamese killers.
That led to Zeb, Bwana, and Bear joining the NYPD on a raid on a gang house in the Bronx. There had been a shootout in which two hoods had been killed and one criminal injured.
The snitch had lied. He had wanted payback for the gang, who had thrown him out.
A reluctant smile crossed Zeb’s lips as he thought back to the days since Shira Levin and Theresa Leclair’s executions. Hollywood portrayed life of a special ops operative as one of continual action. Car chases. Heli drops. Crashing down doors. Throwing flash-bangs.
Reality was much more different. Reality was long investigations. Days in which not much movement happened. Frustrating days. Frustrating, if one was an inexperienced operative. The action happened in small, intense bursts. Like that London attack. Twenty minutes at the most.
He nodded at a couple who were entering his building. They lived opposite him, and while they had been neighbors for a long time, they didn’t know much about him. He knew everything about them, as he did about every other resident in the building.
; They went left at the hallway. He went right. Cursory check at the door. No tampering. Everything looked good.
Inside was quiet and dark. The way it should be.
He moved to the window to peer out at the street below, when the pressure pad outside the door pinged softly. The wall-mounted TV lit instantly to show four men at the door. Masked.
Zeb was moving even before his mind had caught up with his body’s instinctive reaction.
Diving to his right, as the milk jug and grocery bag dropped to the floor.
Right hand reaching beneath his jacket, drawing out his Glock in a draw smoother than silk, faster than most men could achieve.
Left arm swinging up and wide for counterbalance.
Despite his evasive action, he took the first round high on his left side.
The ballistic vest beneath his tee caught the round, deformed it, layers of fibers shaping the impact into a mushroom. The ceramic plates underneath stopped the round’s forward motion.
It felt like a mule kick and made his first couple of shots go wide. That round’s impact saved his life, however, with the hail of bullets from the intruders going over his head.
He landed on his right shoulder, correcting, some part of his brain working at the speed of thought.
Two intruders at the front. Two others behind. They were turning, lowering their barrels at him.
And then the concealed vents in the ceiling opened.
High pressure jets of ice-cold water caught the masked men on their faces and on their sides. A series of explosions sounded in the room, deafening its occupants.
Zeb was in the grey state in his mind. He registered the attackers staggering under the stream of water. He could imagine them freezing in shock. No one, absolutely no one, expected cold bursts of water during a takedown. They doubled over involuntarily when they heard the explosions.
