Northern Sun: Book Four in The Mad Mick Series

by Franklin Horton

  “The other women are cleaning the bathrooms. You can dry dishes for me or you can help one of them.”

  “I’ll help with bathroom,” Shani said, hurrying off. If her goal was to collect information, she wouldn’t collect much if she stayed in the kitchen.

  The woman at the sink looked relieved, going back to her dishes before Shani was even out of the room. Shani could understand that. The conditions of working in the house seemed weird enough that it was probably uncomfortable. The only thing that made it bearable was the routine. Something unexpected coming up, like Shani’s arrival, probably wasn’t welcome.

  The house was quiet. It didn’t sound like the families were up, or else their quarters were isolated from the main living area. Low recessed lights, apparently solar, helped her find her way through the home. She took everything in. It looked very much like the interior of any other house, except for the fact that there were no windows beyond those in the doors. That detail gave the interior the feel of a movie set. There was a sense of artificiality, of the place trying to be something it was not.

  Nor was there anything personal about this part of the dwelling. It was decorated much like a hotel, with generic landscape paintings and impersonal decor. There were no family photos, no books on end tables, and no toys on the floor. She wondered if this building had previously been presented as the dormitory for the retreat facility. Maybe it was designed with this impersonal approach to intentionally appear as if it were not intended to be the hide-out for a single-family.

  The living room led to a long tiled hallway. There were tan walls with no pictures and white floor tile. A wide wooden molding about three feet off the floor was all that broke up the expanse of the long hallway. Somewhere down the hall, Shani could hear the clatter of cleaning supplies in a plastic bucket. She headed in that direction, taking note of each door she passed. Some were open, others were not. Several were outfitted as simple dormitory-style rooms with a pair of twin beds and a nightstand.

  Furthering the dormitory appearance, Shani found that there were two bathrooms directly across the hall from each other. Both doors were propped open and sounds were coming from each. A sign on the wall by the door jamb pointed out which belonged to the men and which to the women. About twenty feet beyond where she stood, a matching sign marked a door at the end of the hallway: Private.

  Shani chose the door to the right, the men’s restroom, and went inside. The room was large, like a gym locker room. There were toilet stalls and a wing with shower stalls. A long mirror stood above a wide countertop with several sinks. A woman dressed exactly like her was backing out of a stall with a bucket of cleaning supplies.

  The woman paused and regarded her much in the same way as the woman in the kitchen had. She was trying to figure out if she knew Shani or not. Shani saved her the trouble.

  “My name is Saffi. I am new. Supposed to learn...clean here. Supposed to help.”

  The woman shrugged. She wasn’t here to solve problems and figure things out. If the new girl said she was there to clean, she would put her to work. “You know how to scrub a toilet?”

  Shani nodded. “Toilet. Yes.”

  The woman held out the bucket in one hand and a toilet brush in the other. “Good, you take the toilets and I’ll clean the sinks.”

  Shani took the items and nodded. She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I go to wrong place first. I see woman sweeping. She tell me not go there for bad men.”

  The woman nodded and said to Shani in a low voice, “She’s right. When we first got hired, one of us went in there by mistake. We didn’t notice she was missing until the end of our shift, when we were leaving. When they found her, she was messed up bad. They took the rest of us home. Said they’d take care of her and get her home safe after they fixed her up. We never saw her again. Her family told us she left the reservation and not to speak her name again, but I don’t believe she left.”

  “Why?”

  The woman waved her arms around her. “You know what it’s like out there. The world has gone crazy with no power and no food. Who’s going to run off all by themselves in this mess when they have family who will help them?”

  “What you think happened?” Shani asked.

  The woman leaned close and lowered her voice. “I think they killed her and buried her in the swamp.”

  “Then why you...come back?”

  The woman shrugged. “They pay us in food. Who else is getting food right now? Nobody. I come here for my family. I stay away from that building and I do exactly what they tell me. You need to do the same.”

  “Thank you,” Shani offered, bowing slightly. She headed into a toilet stall and picked up where the other woman left off. “What’s your name?”

  “Agnes,” the woman replied. “So, how did you end up here? You don’t sound like you’re from the rez.”

  “The rez?”

  “The reservation,” Agnes clarified.

  “No,” Shani replied. “I not from here. Have no family. I work for man who own this. He offer me job to help me.”

  “How long have you been here?” Agnes asked.

  Her tone was suspicious. Shani could imagine she was trying to put things together in her head. Where had Shani been up until this point? How had she gotten out to the compound? How come no one had told them about her? Things weren’t adding up.

  “They have me work other place,” Shani replied. “Not know where. Was there for while, now here.”

  “Alright,” Agnes replied, stretching the word out in a way that implied disbelief.

  “Where is family that live here? You ever see today?”

  “Oh no,” Agnes said. “We have no contact with the family. They stay upstairs while we’re here. They must clean that part themselves because we never go up there.”

  That piece of information confirmed that Mumin did indeed live upstairs. Completing their mission might be as simple as breaching the door at the end of the hall and tracking down Mumin. It would suck to kill him with his family in the same quarters but sometimes that was unavoidable. She would do her best not to make them have to witness that, though not at the risk of compromising the mission. Business was business. Work was work.

  “Those men sound scary,” Shani said. “Saw things like that at home.”

  “Where was home?”

  “Saudi Arabia.”

  “You’re a long way from home, honey.”

  “Long way but not so long way,” Shani said. “I in America but still have to dress like at home. Still work for men who can do what they want to woman and not pay price. Still afraid all time.”

  “Yeah, I don’t care much for this get-up either,” Agnes said. “I don’t know how you all wear them in that heat.”

  “How many men, Agnes? How many men over there?”

  “Now why do you want to know that?”

  Shani hesitated, feeling that indecision was in character for the scared woman she was pretending to be. “Need to know how scared to be.”

  That must have made sense to Agnes because she answered. “Maybe around fifteen, I think. Something like that.”

  “That plenty enough to scare me.”

  Agnes nodded. “Even one of them can be scary. Fifteen is really scary. They’re bad men. I can tell.”

  Shani wanted to ask more about the men but was afraid to push her luck. “You ever see man who own place?”

  Agnes finished rinsing the sinks and began wiping down the countertop. Shani finished the toilet she was working on, flushed it, and moved on to the next one.

  “A couple of times,” Agnes replied. “They say he’s rich. He owns some casinos or something.”

  “He is,” Shani replied. “And I hear he have two wives.”

  “I think it’s true. There’s two women and they each got kids. I’ve seen them outside with all those kids playing in the yard. I don’t know how them bitches don’t kill each other. My man better not try bringing home a second wife.”

  Shani gave a sm
all laugh. It was reserved but loud enough to show Agnes that she appreciated her joke. She continued cleaning in silence, afraid of appearing too inquisitive. When she finished the last of the toilets, Agnes directed her toward the showers and they worked on them together.

  The showers were further back in the restroom, separated from the bathroom entrance by several twists and turns. Shani felt like it was more private, though she had to be careful the way sound bounced off the hard surfaces in the room. Perhaps Agnes would be willing to answer more questions if she felt like no one would overhear them.

  “Besides those men and this family, others live here? Can’t tell from way buildings look outside.”

  Agnes was using a sponge mop to scrub the acrylic walls of the shower stalls. She didn’t give the question a second thought. “There’s a security guy on the road coming in. He has this camper by the gate he lives in. I guess it’s his job to run off the riff-raff. He’s also the guy who brings us back and forth to work.”

  “Yeah, I saw him,” Shani lied, “but I not know if he lives here all the time. Is he your people? From reservation?”

  “No, honey, he’s one of your people. He’s an A-rab.”

  “Ah, yes. Couldn’t tell when we drive by.”

  “Then there’s Joseph. He lives on the reservation but does some work around the place.”

  “I haven’t met him. This my first day.”

  “Where were you working before?” Agnes asked.

  Shani hesitated. “I not supposed to talk about it.”

  Agnes chuckled. “Yeah, I hear that. Same with us. We’re not supposed to talk about this place once we’re off the property. Not even to our families. We do what they say cause no one wants to lose the job. No one wants to give up the food.”

  That they could afford to pay employees in food made Shani wonder about the contents of some of the other buildings on the property. There had to be storage facilities for the food and supplies required to run a compound this size. They couldn’t exactly run out to the store when they needed something and they appeared to be living pretty comfortably.

  Agnes noticed that Shani was nearly done with cleaning the knobs and drains. “If you want, go next door to the other bathroom and help Debra finish up. I’ll mop my way out the door.”

  Shani nodded and gathered her supplies. She carried the bucket to the bathroom door and placed it on the floor. She could hear Debra in the other bathroom but, instead of joining her, Shani walked back through the living room and into the kitchen.

  At her appearance in the kitchen, the woman drying dishes looked up at her. “All done with the bathrooms?”

  “Almost. I have to go do something. See you tomorrow.”

  The woman’s body language made her appear puzzled but Shani didn’t stay around long enough for questions. She slipped out the back door and retraced the sidewalk around front. The woman who had been sweeping the porch at the building housing the “scary men” had moved on but there was a new figure there. Wanting to gather all the information she could before she returned to Conor, she continued in that direction, following a gravel footpath.

  She kept her head lowered, the submissive posture of a woman who would not look a man in the face, but her eyes were raised to see what was going on ahead of her. The closer she got to the building, she could make out a man in black pants and a red jacket smoking on the porch. His head was turned in her direction. She could see a swoop of jet black hair and a thick mustache. She couldn’t tell for certain but she figured him for Pakistani.

  Had the weather been warmer, the shirt beneath that jacket might have told her something. The product it advertised or the sports team it promoted might have given away his nationality. Then, as she neared the building, she noticed the distinctive red pack of cigarettes he was tapping against his thigh as he watched her.

  Cigarette packs were one of the things she was trained to watch for and trained to know. Smoking was a habit and people habitually defaulted to their preferred cigarette. Knowing a target’s preferred brand could help you spot them and confirm their identity. It certainly wasn’t definitive but it could help narrow down the selection.

  Using cigarettes to identify a target depended on being familiar with the packs used around the world and Shani was. Red and white was a common color. Marlboros, Chesterfields, Pall Malls, and Larks had red packages, as did several less common brands. The box this man was tapping against his leg—red on the top half, white on the bottom half—was particular to Gold Leaf cigarettes. Gold Leaf cigarettes just happened to be the most popular cigarette in Pakistan. This helped confirm her earlier assessment.

  Every country in Asia had a different tobacco preference. Saudi Arabians, better able to afford foreign cigarettes than some of the poorer nations, preferred their Marlboros. People in Turkey liked Camels or, if they couldn’t afford imports, the local Bahar Kirmizi. Russians were also Camel fans. The Chinese preferred their Kents or Huan Shans. In Jordan, where the average person smoked over 2300 cigarettes a year, those who could afford it preferred a Winston.

  Shani’s mind was racing. She was torn between the desire to gather more information and concern at blowing her cover. She didn’t feel physically threatened at this point. If the man became aggressive, she could definitely take him, but it would expose her as being something other than what she claimed to be. She needed to stick with the program.

  When she got close enough to speak, she continued to look at the ground but addressed the man. She could feel his eyes boring holes in her. Just the feel of it made her angry. “The woman who sweeps here. I look for her.”

  The man was further intrigued by her accent. He knew immediately that this wasn’t one of the Native Americans. This was a Middle Eastern woman, one who should understand the ways of men and know her role. He stood up from the post he was leaning against and faced her when she was still a dozen feet away. He gestured at the door, the cigarette smoldering between his fingers. “I think she’s inside. You should come. I show you.”

  Shani noted that his were not the hands of a man performing manual labor around the facility. Clean nails and soft fingers, which he apparently envisioned himself wrapping around her. The bastard was trying to lure her inside. She could only imagine what he had in mind. She wished for a moment that he could see inside her head. He might not be so eager to steer her through that door if he could see the dark plans she had for him. Sharp blade. Wide eyes. Blood running down his leg.

  Remaining in character, Shani didn’t reply to him. She turned away and hurried back toward the barn. She was concerned for a moment that the man might follow her. Part of her would experience great satisfaction at giving him what he deserved in the solitude of the barn, but a missing man would raise concerns. So far security on the facility was practically non-existent. It wouldn’t remain that way if the Pakistani disappeared.

  Halfway to the barn, she chanced a look behind her and saw that he hadn’t followed her. He was still watching though and even that was enough to make her feel anger. The crooked leer beneath the thick mustache was a look that promised there would be another opportunity.

  She smiled beneath her niqab. There definitely would be another time and it would not end in the manner he expected. It would be the blade, the look of shock, and the blood at her feet.

  9

  Shani verified the barn was empty and quickly removed the abaya and niqab. She returned them to the cabinet and slipped out the rolling door. Following her earlier steps, she checked that the coast was clear and disappeared over the embankment. It was slippery and in her haste she ended up sliding down most of it.

  At the base of the slope, she got her bearings and made her way through the piles of downed trees to the deeper forest. She was heading for her stashed pack when she heard a twig snap. In a single fluid movement, she extracted her boot knife and spun.

  Conor stood a short distance away, a hand raised toward her. He’d expected this reaction and intentionally stayed outside strik
ing range. “Easy there.”

  Without a word, Shani re-sheathed the knife and reached for the items Conor extended toward her. She slipped her web gear over her head, deftly fastened the various belts and buckles, then pulled the black watch cap onto her head. Conor handed her rifle to her and she put it through a quick check to verify its state. Barrel clear, full mag properly seated, and a round in the pipe.

  When she was done, she said to Conor, “We need to talk.”

  They hiked deeper into the woods, following the solid ground to a point where they were well-concealed from the elevated property with its people and buildings. They took seats on fallen trees, facing each other. Not only did it allow them to talk face-to-face, but they could watch each other’s backs.

  “I got inside Mumin’s house,” Shani said. “It’s set up like a dormitory downstairs. Big kitchen and generic common living area, some double bedrooms down a long hall, and big bathrooms with showers.”

  “What about the upstairs?”

  “I didn’t have access. There’s a door at the end of the long hallway downstairs that’s marked as private. I fell in with the cleaning crew and the woman I was working with told me they don’t clean the upstairs. The occupants do it themselves.”

  “Did they say how many residents there were?”

  “She talked like it was the owner and his two families. She found it quite amusing the man had two ‘wives’ and suggested her husband better not try anything like that.”

  “How did you manage to blend in and get her talking? The women had to know you weren’t one of their group.”

  “I passed myself off as someone new the owner brought in. Said I’d been working for him at another place and he wanted me to help out there.”

  “They bought that?”

  Shani shrugged. “They weren’t concerned enough to check out my story with anyone. They must have figured it was safer to keep their mouths shut and roll with it. I spoke like I was from Saudi Arabia and my English was poor. The woman I was working with was willing to talk a little when I got her warmed up.”