End Game (Jack Noble #12)

by L. T. Ryan

  The sun had been down for a few hours now, temperatures had plummeted. I’d stopped on the way over and purchased thermals, gloves, a hat and handwarmers, figuring the gear provided a three- to four-hour window to stakeout the residence. But all of it did no good if I couldn’t see anything.

  It was time to test how secure Thanos’s property was.

  I backtracked a few houses, crossed the street, entered pine forest on a neighbor’s property. There I waited for a few minutes for any signs of activity. After a while, nothing happened, so I moved to the property line. A long row of high hedges separated the two lots. The driveway stood twenty feet away. The front door another thirty or so past that. I had a decent view of the entryway and front yard. This was where I’d settle in. I dropped to the ground and did my best to blend into my surroundings by piling up leaves in front of me.

  The first hour passed with minimal action. Motion sensors mounted to the corners of the house lit up a couple of times, revealing a masked furball scavenging for a meal. Random cars passed by, each time a different vehicle. Likely driven by a stuffed suit on the way home from a twelve- to fourteen-hour day of power-brokering in a high-rise in the city.

  What a life.

  A strong gust of wind came out of nowhere, blowing leaves and debris in my face and infiltrating every single chink in my thermal armor. For a second I considered that the suits in the high-rises might’ve had the right idea. Who would last longer in the other’s position? I doubted many could stay alive for a week, let alone a day, in my line of work. But how long could I stand being a CEO or a lawyer or any other white collar job before I shoved my Beretta down someone’s throat because their incompetence was screwing what I wanted done.

  It’d been a long time since someone had given me an ass chewing. I couldn’t imagine getting one from some neck-tie wearing middle manager.

  Headlights swept over my position, lingering far too long. I buried my head in my arms for a moment. A black Escalade swung wide in front of Thanos’s house, pulled into the driveway. The windows were tinted so dark I couldn’t tell how many people were in the vehicle. It slowed to a stop ten feet from the garage and idled there with the headlights reflecting off the garage door windows. Why were they waiting there? Finishing up a phone call? Waiting on someone to come outside?

  What I wouldn’t give for a mobile bug to pick up on their cell phones at that moment. I pulled out a pen and notebook and took note of the license plate number. There were a few contacts I could reach out to who could get me registration information on the vehicle if I chose to go that route. I still wasn’t keen on bringing anyone from the outside in on this job. I had too little information on Thanos.

  The front door opened and Ginger from the office building stepped out wearing a brown leather bomber. He pulled a wool cap over his head, scanned the area, turned back toward the door while motioning for someone to join him. A moment later Thanos appeared wearing a long black wool jacket, black gloves, no hat. They slid into the back seat of the Escalade on the driver’s side. The SUV continued to idle after the headlights cut off.

  The front passenger door opened. A man hopped out, slammed the door shut, ran around the front of the vehicle. I watched as he went inside the house. A few seconds later, the front windows darkened, the guy remained inside. The Escalade’s reverse lights illuminated a swath of driveway in white. The SUV backed out onto the street, whipping the tail end away from me. For a few moments, the ground around me lit up like downtown Chicago. Then it all went black.

  Dammit.

  I should’ve parked the Civic closer, then I could tail them. That would’ve been a bad idea. That car would’ve stuck out like a streaker in the ritzy neighborhood.

  With Thanos and his main bodyguard gone, I decided to get a closer look at the house despite not knowing how many people were inside. I elected to cut through the hedges, mindful of the motion sensors. Halfway down the side of the house was a six-foot privacy fence. Was it to keep people out, or keep something in? I rapped on the gate a couple times and waited. The lack of response didn’t leave me feeling good that there wasn’t a dog back there. A well-trained canine wouldn’t make a sound. He’d wait for the intruder to show himself, then pounce with the element of surprise at its back.

  Was Thanos the kind of man to have such a dog? Considering he had dealings with the Old Man and a ton of security, I had to assume so. I straddled the fence long enough to get a view of the yard. I could see everything except for immediately behind the house. I hopped down and peered in through a side window. The main level was open with very few walls, allowing me to see clear to the other side of the house. If I planned the hit right, I’d be able to take out every guy on the floor before they knew what had happened.

  At the moment, only one person was visible inside. The guy who’d exited the Escalade after Thanos and Ginger had got in. There was no wife or children present, and no sign they even existed. The walls were bare except for a couple paintings. No family pictures. No toys on the floor. Just a couple of white leather chairs that looked expensive. The carpet was also white. Definitely not a family house. I spotted a pair of chrome bowls on the kitchen floor. That presented a problem. I needed a plan to deal with the dog.

  I moved down the fence to the rear corner where I climbed up again and peered over. A German Shepherd sat on the back deck, looking right at me. His ears were perked. I whistled to him. He cocked his head. I banged on the fence. He rose up, rear legs bent, ready to lunge.

  The hit couldn’t take place tonight if Thanos returned, not without killing the dog. And that wasn’t happening. Wasn’t the pooch’s fault he’d been adopted by an asshole who knew a bunch of other assholes and that led to the biggest asshole of all showing up at his door with a couple pistols and a rifle.

  But I wasn’t asshole enough to kill a dog.

  I set off for the Civic with a plan half-formulated in my head.

  12

  I arrived in Thanos’s neighborhood just after nine the next morning, figuring everyone would be gone by then. At most there’d be one guard inside who could be dealt with easily. For the dog, I picked up a box of dog treats and prayed they’d do the trick. If they didn’t I had a bottle of sleeping pills. Not ideal, but he’d be fine after suffering through a bit of a hangover.

  I parked one street over, behind the house, in front of a large stretch of empty land. Through the trees I could see Thanos’s rear fence. I secured the VP70 and Springfield .45 in their holsters. The .308 was in a bag strapped to my back. I pulled a ball cap down over my forehead and got out of the car carrying a bag of tools which I dropped after I’d cleared the tree line.

  At the back gate I hopped up, my eyes just above level with the fence, and scanned the yard. There was no sign of the dog. I whistled. Still nothing. I climbed the rest of the way over and dropped to a crouch in Thanos’s back yard. I pulled the VP70 out and aimed it toward the house. The French doors in front of the deck didn’t whip open. No one moved behind the thin reflections in the windows of the clouds and trees.

  I rose and sprinted toward the back deck. I was hesitant to be out in the open in broad daylight. Not my best idea ever, but I was left with little choice without a team to assist. If I had one, we’d go about this differently. We could take on the security detail, kidnap Thanos, and deal with him in a remote location. Solo, there was no chance of that happening. I had to hit hard and fast, taking out everyone in my path to Thanos, at great risk of losing the man.

  I’d barely made it to the deck when I heard it. That deep growl of a dog warning me. The one that told me I had five seconds until he was gonna tear me apart. I froze in place, reached into my pocket, pulled out a treat. The German Shepherd stood off to the side. He took two steps toward me, hackles up, baring his teeth. I snapped the treat in two, tossed one half at him. He whipped his head to the side and snagged it out of the air. I tossed another, to the other side, and watched him lurch and catch it. Probably could have won another state champions
hip if I had a receiver like that in school.

  “Good boy,” I said, low and soft. I dropped to a knee, facing him. “Want another?”

  He made a slight whimper, cocked his head.

  I lowered my pistol to the side as I reached for another biscuit, leaving myself completely defenseless for a moment. Pulling my hand from my pocket, I said, “C’mere, buddy. C’mon,” and held the treat out in front of me.

  He bared his teeth at me for a second. His ears dropped back flat against his head. A dog his size, I had no doubt he could leap from that spot and land close enough to sink his teeth into my neck. I braced for the impact. He took another few steps forward. I tossed the treat a foot above his head and immediately grabbed another. The dog had no trouble snagging it out of the air.

  Again I held the biscuit out. “You’re gonna have to come take this one from me, pal. Not gonna throw it.” The feeling that someone was watching from the French doors nagged at me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the dog. It’d smash any trust I’d gained, and he’d likely attack without warning.

  He took a few more steps, unsure of me. He whimpered, growled, cocked his head, ears laid back and then shot forward. I was in, or I was dead. His face was less than two feet from mine now. He craned his head forward, sniffed the treat. He was massive at this distance.

  “Go ahead, buddy. Take it.”

  He opened his mouth, gripped it with his teeth and pulled it out of my hand. I reached in my pocket for another. There was nothing between this trained watchdog and me. He remained still as I pulled another one out.

  “Sit.”

  He didn’t move.

  I pulled the treat back a bit. “Sit, buddy.”

  He stomped his rear feet a couple times and lowered his butt to the ground.

  “Good boy.” I inched closer toward him, motioning my hand toward the ground. “Down.”

  He alternated his paws outward until his chest touched the ground. I continued moving closer, shifting the treat around the side of his body.

  “Over.”

  He complied. I palmed the treat and placed my hand in front of his mouth. He took it without issue. I made the bold move of scratching his stomach. It seemed I had won him over, so I hopped to my feet.

  He did the same, but this time he looked up to me, waiting for my next command.

  I reached into my pocket again and had him follow me to the deck. There I had him sit and stay while I checked the back windows. If there was a single bad vantage point for the house, it was here. The kitchen was huge, with a long, high island that spanned a good twenty feet. Though I could see the entire level, I only saw the top half of it. Waist down to the floor was blocked.

  The breeze blew in from the side. It felt thirty degrees warmer than when I got out of the Civic. I took a moment and breathed in the air. I assembled the .308, loaded it, and set it next to the back door. The dog paced behind me. I pulled the cover off the phone NID, cut the alarm, popped the lock on the French doors, and pushed them open. A heatwave greeted me. It was like stepping into a cafe, all I could smell was sugar and coffee.

  On the counter a half-full carafe waited, steam slipping through the top. The orange light on the coffee-maker indicated the warmer was still on. I was about to grab a cup when the front door burst open.

  13

  I swung the .308 toward the front door and aimed at the empty space. The cold breeze blew past me. It struck me again how little I knew about Thanos. What if it was his wife or kid, if he had one?

  “Thanos, are you in there?”

  The woman’s voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Who was she? Did she work for him? She called him by his last name, not something an employee would do.

  I took a step back and reached around for the French door’s handle. Before I managed to open it, the woman rushed through the front opening, her pistol drawn. She scanned the room, left to right and settled on me.

  “Lamb? The hell are you doing here?”

  Surprised at the sight of Shane’s cousin Lexi, I lowered the rifle a couple inches, took my finger off the trigger. “Visiting an old friend?”

  Perhaps as a courtesy, she shifted her sidearm’s barrel away from me. “I knew there was something about you I didn’t like.”

  “Look, I can explain this.” Not entirely, I thought. “First you gotta tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “I don’t have to tell you a goddamn thing. Got that?” She refocused her aim on me. “So hurry up and spill before I shoot you, then arrest you.”

  I set the rifle on the island and lifted my arms so I wouldn’t appear threatening to her. She was processing the scene, and as far as she knew, I either worked for or was there to meet Thanos. I hoped she wasn’t connecting the dots for my true reason there based on some intel she had been fed. This job reeked of a setup, and this would be the perfect way to take me down. Avoiding prosecution would be nearly impossible. But I hadn’t communicated with the Old Man or Charles since the day of the meeting in New York. Once the job had been accepted, they had no bearing or input on how I went about terminating Thanos, and I wasn’t required to keep them in the loop. Hell, if they asked as much, I’d refuse the work. I demanded complete and total autonomy. And I got it.

  “I want you to call this number.” I waited for her to pull out her cell phone. She kept her pistol aimed at me as she slipped her hand into her coat pocket. She punched the number in as I told it to her. “A man is gonna answer. You’re gonna give him this code: alpha-gamma-romeo-eight-five-five-yankee-alpha.”

  She shook her head. “What?”

  I repeated the code. “Do it, OK? You’ll find out who I am and maybe figure out what I’m doing here.”

  She pushed send and waited with the phone to her ear. I heard the muffled sound of a man’s voice. She repeated the code, slowly and deliberately. A long pause ensued. Her gaze remained fixed on me during the uncomfortable silence. Then she blinked a few times, glanced right, lowered her pistol. A few seconds later she ended the call and tucked her phone in her pocket.

  “Passcode?” she said.

  I nodded, cleared my throat. “Noble Man.”

  “SIS?”

  I nodded, said nothing.

  “That doesn’t exist, right? I’d heard rumors, inquired about them, but their existence was always shot down. Why would the country have an intelligence group so secretive that even the FBI wouldn’t know about it? I mean, that’s what they always said to me.”

  “Not really an intelligence agency,” I said.

  Her cheeks reddened and she clenched her fists. “Right, a group of commandos looking to shoot first, ask questions never, and fuck up every other agency’s ops.”

  I held up my hands. “Not quite like that.”

  “Yeah, then what is it like?” She took a few steps toward me, glancing around the kitchen. “Where’s Thanos?”

  “What’s your business with him?”

  “Me? Hell with that, Lamb. What are you doing here?”

  “Scouting. Thanos’s activities raised a few flags in D.C. I was asked to come check him out. Waited around here until everyone was gone.”

  “Everyone isn’t supposed to be gone. He’s supposed to be here, meeting with me.” She turned toward the door, stopped, looked back at me. “Wait a minute. Did you know I would be here, that he would be here? You’re not here to gather information, are you? You’re here to terminate him.”

  “Hold on now.” I placed my left hand on the counter near the rifle’s stock. “I’m not here to terminate anybody. I don’t know much about this guy, only that he’s been mixed up with some bad people. Maybe that’s a mistake, maybe he’s a piece of shit. Not my call what happens to him in the end. But I’m not here to kill anyone.”

  “He is a piece of shit.” She relaxed a moment. “And he’s my informant. The fact that he’s not here, and you are, concerns me. Makes me think that someone found out that he’s been working with me.”

  The ceiling above us creaked
. Could be the house settling, but I doubted it.

  “Did you go upstairs?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Only got in here a moment before you broke the door down.”

  “Make yourself useful.” She darted toward the staircase. “Cover me.”

  I followed her to the staircase, pistol drawn. We climbed up, stopped at the second-floor landing. She signaled for me to wait for her lead. She rounded the corner, cleared the hall. I moved around her and went to the first door. We went room by sterile room. Thanos clearly was not married and had no kids. The place was as boring as a coroner’s office when there were no stiffs present.

  “You good?” she asked.

  “Yeah, the place is empty.”

  “We oughta check the basement.”

  We descended the stairs, moved through the kitchen looking for the basement entrance.

  “I think this is—”

  A loud eruption disoriented me. The window exploded into a thousand shards of glass. The wall next to my head burst into a white cloud hovering in front of a gaping hole.

  I dove toward Lexi, tackled her to the ground.

  Another shotgun blast tore through the back door, shredding the wood and glass, and slammed into the ceiling. Plaster rained down. Automatic fire followed, hundreds of rounds in a matter of seconds laying waste to everything over waist high.

  “Friends of yours?” Lexi scrambled to her feet, crouched, and slid out of harm’s way.

  I followed her. “Was gonna ask you the same thing.”

  She held my gaze for a moment, shook her head. “How are we gonna get outta here?”

  “Shoot our way through the backyard. Got a car parked behind the house.”

  She racked her pistol’s slide. I did the same to the VP70 and the pistol I’d taken from the intruder at the motel.

  The assault subsided. They were reloading. I moved to the kitchen sink. The jagged hole where a window once existed overlooked the backyard. I rifled through a nearby cabinet, found a shiny metal pan that looked as though it had never been used. I held it in front of the window and it acted as a mirror, providing a view of the outside. A man dressed in head-to-toe black darted across the brown grass.