Dead or Alive: A heart-pounding assassination thriller with a shocking twist (Eliot Locke Thrillers Book 1)

by Dean Carson

  DEAD OR ALIVE

  Eliot Locke Thrillers

  Book One

  Dean Carson

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  ALSO BY DEAN CARSON

  ONE

  Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina

  The stone glistened in the pale sunlight like little diamonds. Microscopic shards of schist caught the light and sprinkled it back at me. The rain a few minutes earlier had brought out the beauty of the stones, though stones have a beauty of their own even when dry. About one in fifteen of the rocks were schist; the rest were tenelija, a local limestone. Every time my hammer struck one on the wall surrounding the small park it rang with a strange hollow sound. This intrigued me. The rocks were not hollow. My hammer was not hollow. Where did the sound come from? Just one more mystery of the mason’s art.

  When I hit the concrete between the rocks it sounded dull but right. That was the sound I expected. And that was where I was striking most of the time. I was pointing the wall. Pointing is what we stonemasons call the fiddly bits between the stones. Do it right, and the wall looks great. Do it wrong, and it’s an untidy mess.

  Actually, I am not a stonemason. I am more of a bounty hunter. Not the regular bail bond chaser — more of an old-fashioned bag ’em and tag ’em bounty hunter. My job is to track down people who don’t want to be tracked down and kill them for a price.

  So I wasn’t really pointing the wall. I was staking out the warehouse across the river Neretva, in the old town of Mostar. I was about two hundred metres up river from the famous Stari Most, or Old Bridge, one of the gems of Islamic architecture in Central Europe. The bridge was bombed into the middle of next year during the war in the nineties — I can’t remember when or exactly why. But the new bridge, with its high stone arch, was a worthy replacement.

  I had been working on the wall for four days and, even though I am no stonemason, I was happy with my progress. And no one had questioned what I was doing there. Dusty face and hair, old clothes bought in a second-hand shop in Sarajevo and a grumpy attitude had been the perfect cover.

  I don’t speak Serbian, but I do speak drunk and homeless. Anyone who looked like striking up a conversation with me got the same reaction: a crazed stare, incoherent muttering and a spit-speckled curse. It was enough. They quickly got the message and left me in peace.

  Four days of hammering, tapping and pointing.

  Four days of watching the warehouse, thirty metres from me, but separated by the deep gorge of the river.

  My target wasn’t due until today. I knew that, but if I had arrived today I would have been spotted. Four days were needed to build my cover. Now I was just some old man doing a menial job. I was invisible. I kept tapping away.

  Jarko Radoslav was my target. He had been one of the leaders of the Croat faction during the conflict in the nineties, charged in his absence with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He wasn’t one of the big guys and there was no political pressure to bring him to justice. But someone in the Justice Department, or the Pentagon, had decided he was going to be another casualty in the war on terror. I had picked up the contract. There was a price tag of $40,000 on his head and I was going to collect.

  I have rules. The world has to be a better place without my target. I have no problem killing women, but they have to deserve it. Kids are not on the menu. No kid is ever so bad that they need to suffer the ultimate sanction. And no collateral damage, ever. That’s the golden rule, the one I have never broken. So I couldn’t just put a bomb in the warehouse and let nature take its course. I had to do this job myself.

  It was three o’clock when the dark Merc with the blacked-out windows pulled up at the gate of the warehouse. A man as big as a garden shed got out and came into the yard. He looked all around. He even looked directly at me. Then I saw his head bend as he spoke into a small microphone dangling from the earpiece he wore. Whatever he said, it must have been all right because the car slowly advanced down the side of the warehouse and pulled to a stop at the low wall facing the river.

  A second man got out, almost as big as the first. He was the driver. He opened the rear door of the car and a dapper figure in his early fifties emerged. He was small and slim, and even from my vantage point I could see the suit was expensive.

  Now? Perhaps. Then the side door of the warehouse opened and two men stepped out. The men he had come to meet; the guys with the heroin. Radoslav stepped forward and shook hands with one of the men. Then they turned to walk into the warehouse. It had to be now — I might not get the chance again.

  I glanced into my rough wooden toolbox. The long-barrelled sports pistol was inside, the silencer securely screwed into place. A thin wire led from the trigger of the pistol to a small black box. It was a remote control switch and vital to the plan. Quickly but calmly I took the gun and raised it to shoulder height, extending my arm out straight. None of them were looking in my direction.

  Thirty-five metres — an easy shot. The pistol only shot a .22, but I had a clear bead on his temple. One shot should do it. If I was off a fraction and he survived, his brain would be so fucked up it wouldn’t make much difference. I could still collect my fee.

  He was at the door now. I stilled my breath, then slowly squeezed the trigger. Two things happened at once. There was a gentle “phut” from my gun but no flash, no tell-tale expulsion of smoke or gas. The suppressor dealt with that. And there was a deafening explosion from the other side of the river. The remote control had guaranteed that. The explosion was accompanied by a puff of smoke from the explosive charge, a standard disco flash pot.

  Both bodyguards immediately turned towards the noise, drawing their guns and crouching low, as their boss stumbled and fell clumsily to the ground. They had their backs to me. I had plenty of time. It would have been a matter of two seconds to put a slug in the backs of both their heads. But that wasn’t the brief. The slime who was selling the heroin wasn’t part of the brief either.

  No collateral damage.

  I casually lowered my hand, dropped the gun into my toolbox, closed it, then began to walk slowly away.

  Job done. Another forty big ones in the bank.

  TWO

  I ditched the gun on the other side of the bridge, a couple of hundred metres from the warehouse. It was easy. Lots of people were milling around, but I went down to the water
’s edge and began throwing scraps of bread to the ducks. In the feathered flurry it was easy to toss the gun into a dark and deep spot. One duck dove for it, but came up disappointed.

  The remote control (which came from a child’s toy car) ended up in a bin near the main bus station, about five minutes’ walk from the old quarter. I ended up in the toilet of the station. When I emerged ten minutes later I was in jeans and a leather jacket. I had a heavy rucksack on my back and I looked like any other hippie, except I was a few years older, and a bit more respectable. I was wearing thick old-fashioned glasses to give me a professorial air. The glasses were genius. From the outside they bulged my eyes, giving me the look of a myopic owl. But from my side they were just plain glass. My eyesight is perfect, twenty-twenty.

  There was lots of dust in my hair from the masonry work, which added a decade to my age. If I was a vain man, that would have been a problem. But it was a good look for a man trying to get away with murder.

  I ambled slowly back to the historic quarter. Sirens blared in the distance, but there was no noticeable stirring in the air. I suppose the people of this blighted city are used to mayhem, and one more man in a suit biting the dust was not news. I took my time, because tourists walk slowly. I looked in every shop window and stopped and admired a gallery display. Partly this was to check reflections to see I wasn’t being followed. Partly it was to blend in. And partly it was because this was my first — and probably last — time in Mostar, and now that I was finished working I wanted to enjoy it.

  The damage from the war in the nineties has been cleaned up beautifully, and the place was full of medieval stone buildings and narrow streets and lanes. I was tempted to stop for a coffee, but sense prevailed and I turned towards the Hostel Anya, where I was loosely based. Casually I scanned the faces I passed. A mix of old Europe and modern tourist. Then I spotted her — a flash of auburn curls in the mid-distance. Being a bit of an expert in surveillance, I was able to scope her out without spinning my head like a horny teenager. I liked what I saw.

  She was in her late twenties, maybe touching thirty, slim and athletic. Her eyes were the soft brown of autumnal leaves and her hair continued the autumnal theme, auburn flecked with copper. She was tall — or maybe that was the long legs — and carrying a backpack, so she was a tourist like me. Was she on her own? I wasn’t interested. Being a bounty hunter plays havoc with relationships. But I am a man, and men play the odds. She was hot. Not in an obvious way, but in the sort of way that on second glance might make a bishop rethink his vows. So I smiled as I passed and chanced a Hello.

  She frowned at me, then snapped: “Not interested. I don’t have daddy issues.”

  Ouch. I grinned and moved on. Once again, the odds had let me down.

  When I reached the hostel Zloti, the concierge (and owner, I guess) grinned and stood.

  “Mr Wilson, welcome back to my hostel of humbleness.”

  Wilson — that was my name for this mission. Mark Wilson, in tribute to an American magician.

  Zloti spoke English like a native, but a native of no country I was familiar with.

  “Thanks — my stuff still safe?” I asked.

  I had left the humble hostel a week ago, ostensibly to hike in the surrounding mountains, and he was holding on to a big suitcase for me. He took it out of a back room and I signed for a room for the night.

  “I’ll be checking out in the morning,” I told him.

  “Is no problemo,” he assured me.

  Reassured, I went up to my second floor room and had a shower. Ten years came off with the dust. Daddy issues, I thought. You don’t know what you’re missing.

  As I towelled off, I clicked on the kettle. I threw the window open as wide as it would go, letting the warm breeze waft through. Outside, the birds twittered. From upstairs, I could hear the tinny strains of Beyoncé. Kids these days — no taste in music.

  It took a minute for the laptop to fire up, then I connected it to my smartphone. The smartphone is actually a satellite phone and rather smarter than the average. It provides a very secure and fast internet hook-up that doesn’t reveal my location. That can be important in my line of work. Sipping an instant coffee, I logged on.

  The first site I went to was (try to forget this …) The Magic Bistro. It’s great — full of geeks discussing magic. But, unknown to them, there is a secret side to the Bistro. It’s called the dark internet. A dedicated community of bounty hunters, professional hit men and mercenaries mingle there with the sort of shady characters who use our services. We log on and we are invisible to the magicians. But if someone disturbs us or tries to trace our online history, they find discussions of new card tricks and how to take care of your rabbit.

  I clicked on to the buy and sell forum. This is the heart of the Bistro, a marketplace for people with a very peculiar set of skills. People like me. Scrolling down, I found what I was looking for: an auction for a second-hand arm chop illusion. The seller was based in Bosnia. Reading between the lines, that meant someone was looking to put out a contract on some geezer in Bosnia. I had expressed my interest in owning the arm chopper. The deal had been done for forty dollars.

  That might seem to be a low price for a man’s life and an unsustainable economic proposition. But every number on the Bistro is a multiple of 1000. So I was going to be paid $40,000 for that afternoon’s work. Obscene money, until you think about premiership footballers. And remember, I can only do so many of these jobs a year. It is not like sweeping chimneys.

  I posted a breezy message on the forum: “Chopper arrived safely this afternoon. I am delighted with it.” In case you are having difficulty translating: I had just told the man who had hired me — a CIA operative who liaises with the UN Security Council — that the target, Radoslav, was dead. That was his cue to wire the money to my Swiss bank account. Happy days.

  I drained the coffee and turned my chair towards the window. The view was breathtaking. Beautiful cliffs of verdant foliage swept up from the gleaming sandstone of the ancient buildings. It was warm outside and the window faced away from the street, giving a measure of silence. I was at peace. Time to meditate. I find mindfulness keeps me focused, especially when the action gets hot. I took a deep breath and let my eyes close.

  Then the phone pinged. I opened my eyes again and looked at the text. It was from my brother. The annoying brother. Actually, that is not true. I have only one brother. But he is still the annoying one.

  The text read: Your sister has decided to do a porn movie. What are you going to do about it?

  That raised an eyebrow. My sister, who is a good deal less annoying than my brother, is a classically trained dancer and last I heard had been working as a first artist in the corps de ballet on a major West End production of Swan Lake. I know the tutus can be short, but it was a long stretch to call this porn, even for my brother. He is a teacher, and the most virtuous man he knows. He sees everything we do as an affront to his dignity. I laughed inwardly at the “your sister” bit. Lester has always felt that Jane and I have a special relationship that he is excluded from. He is right; we like each other.

  The text could wait. I was in the wind-down phase after a big job, and I was going to wind down, come hell or high water.

  I took a deep breath and let my eyes close again. I began to focus on my breathing, following the breath in and out, letting it slow naturally. Thoughts came and went like butterflies fluttering in the summer air. I let them come and go, not following them, just observing them dispassionately. There were sounds from the outside, distant traffic. Some kid in a neighbouring room playing his music too loud. A girl screeching joyfully the way only girls can. A gentle vibration, repeated.

  A gentle vibration…

  That thought stuck. I am good at this mindfulness. Thoughts drift by like twigs on a river. But this twig didn’t drift by. It snagged on something. I didn’t consciously register the thought. It all happened below the surface of my awareness. But suddenly I was on my feet. Before I had even s
tarted to reignite the mental processes, I was halfway across the room. From memory, I knew where the window was and I launched myself in a spectacular dive at the empty space.

  A gentle vibration — someone’s phone was ringing in my room. And it wasn’t mine. I had put my phone in my pocket after disconnecting it from the laptop.

  As I sailed through the window, a second thought came crashing through my serene mindfulness: thank God it’s open. And then a third thought pushed out the second: it’s only a bloody phone. Why am I overreacting?

  Next thing I knew I was in the air, my eyes open and assessing my situation. It was not good. I had reacted instinctively. Had I put some thought into it, I might have recalled that I was staying on the second floor. I might have looked in the room and found the phone that the previous guest had obviously left behind. I might have stepped out the door and walked down the stairs. Too late now. I looked down and could see the ground — a concrete patio — ten metres below me. I have a high opinion of myself, but I’m no Superman. Gravity is one of the few laws you can’t break and this was not going to end well. But fortune favours the brave and chance favours the prepared mind, and … there was a tree.

  I hit the tree and began to fall through the branches, crashing towards the ground. I managed to straighten my body so that I hit the concrete feet first, crumpling like a paratrooper and rolling. I came to rest with my back against the tree and tucked my head into my chest. I brought my arms up over my head, closed my eyes and tried to press my shoulders into my ears.

  All the time I was cursing my training. What sort of moron jumps out a window when a phone rings?

  The sort of moron who has been over-trained to such an extent that he reacts instinctively without thinking, his reflexes honed to such a fine edge that he begins to move before his brain kicks in, or even before his eyes open.

  I had punched out at civilians who bumped into me on the underground and hidden under a counter in a perfume store when someone clicked a lighter. But never had I jumped out a window when a phone rang. Maybe I would have to rethink this mindfulness.