Hellfire- The Series, Volumes 1-3

by Leigh Barker

  Ethan stepped out of the elevator and glanced back. “You be alright?”

  The old guy shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be? Nobody even noticed I was there.”

  “Copy that.”

  The old guy put out his hand and stopped the doors closing. “Semper fi.”

  “You’re a marine?” Ethan said.

  “Was. I was twenty and full of shit. Khe Sanh kicked that out of me.”

  “You guys did good,” Ethan said.

  “Yeah, maybe. Haven’t slept a whole night since.” The old guy let go of the doors.

  “Yeah, I hear you,” Ethan said to the closed doors.

  The twentieth floor was deserted. Computer screens blank or bouncing the corporate logo back and forth. What was that? A dove and a hand. It looked like some religious cult thing. An arms dealer thinking he’s fucking Jesus Christ. The world was going to druggies and crazies. Which one of those fitted Orpheus, he was about to find out. There was the door to the stairs.

  Detroit felt his phone buzz in his jacket pocket and ignored it. What was it with these Washington assholes and their phones? He’d taken the assignment at the offered price. Who wouldn’t? It was way over the going rate. He would’ve told them to shove it if he’d known they’d keep calling him with more information and advice. Jesus, advice. Like he was some hoodlum out of the South Side. And Christ, they’d told him why they wanted the three guys whacked. Why the hell would he need to know that?

  He got out of the car and straightened his suit jacket. Silk. He used to wear wool, but that was then, before. This charcoal grey was made by the finest tailor in Chinatown. Cut just right to conceal his Ruger carry revolver under his left arm. He wouldn’t need it on this gig, but it was good to have. The short zip case in his left hand held his MP5, and that was the tool of his trade. The submachine gun had an integral suppressor that made no more noise than a loud cough.

  He called it Merv. As good a name as any if he had to call it anything, and Heckler and Koch MP5SD was a mouthful.

  Senator Thurman’s house was a modest four-bed on Channing. His real home being a horse ranch down south. It had a gate opening on to a path that led to a stone porch looking over a neat lawn. Great place for kids. Thurman was old and fat, so no chance of that.

  Movies show the hit man doing detailed research and surveillance. Detroit had seen a few of them. For a laugh, or at least a smile, laughter being the first casualty of his life choice.

  He pushed open the gate and ignored the squeak, strode along the short path and up the three steps to the front door. He unzipped his bag and took out Merv and rang the doorbell. He held the MP5 against his leg just in case it was the maid who answered.

  It was Thurman and he was pissed at having his dinner disturbed by what looked like a Mormon or a book salesman or some such fucking thing. He was going to give the thin, tired-looking guy a piece of his mind. Until he saw the gun. Then he just stepped back and swore.

  Detroit put two in his chest, and the senator went down on his fat ass. He stepped up to the threshold and put another in the man’s forehead, just to keep things tidy. It was just the way it was.

  He put Merv back into its case, closed the door and strolled back to his car. One down, two to go.

  He checked his mirrors before he pulled away from the curb and drove away slowly. Getting into a fender bender right then would be just dumb.

  He glanced at his watch. Eight thirty. Things went as planned, he’d have it wrapped up in time to watch the Duke in Rio Bravo at ten thirty. Be a shame to miss it for the sake of these greasy-palmed politicians. They’d pissed off his contractor by mouthing off in public about the President’s hard line with the Chinese. Some soft-spoken guy had told him that. On the phone. Like he gave a fuck what they’d done.

  Senator Pinkerton was having dinner in a chic Italian place over at Union Market. He probably was related to the Pinkerton family; shit, everybody in Washington who was anybody got there because of their family connections. Same everywhere. He’d stopped thinking about it years ago, but when he did, it pressed his button. No room on the ladder for Mr and Mrs Nobody, the rungs all taken up by inbred daddy’s boys.

  He parked the rental across the street and sat and watched the man holding court at the table in the window. Another fat old guy. Sure, they all were. Raising his glass and making a toast. Fully expensed by the good old taxpayer. He could see four other men at the senator’s table, and it was hard to tell them apart. Fat, grey-haired old men who’d never done a real day’s work in their pampered lives.

  Fuck it.

  He got out of the car and waited patiently for a gap in the evening traffic, strode across the street, and stopped on the sidewalk outside the restaurant and watched Pinkerton through the ornate railings.

  A casual look around. No people. People don’t walk anymore. Couple of cars. Okay.

  He unzipped the case and took out Merv. And put fifteen nine-mil rounds into Pinkerton’s back and head in under one point five seconds before putting the MP5 back into its case and walking back across the street as if he had all the time in the world.

  Nobody in the restaurant saw him; all they saw was Pinkerton’s head blown all over the white linen tablecloth.

  Nine twenty. Rio Bravo was still looking good. Last one was a woman. Miss Lesley Antonio—no, De Antonio. Latino or something like. She’d been easy to find, he’d just phoned her office, told them he was Fox News, and they’d pointed him at her. Some fundraising thing in the National Gallery of Art.

  It took a little over fifteen minutes to get to Madison Drive, and one look told him he wouldn’t be doing her the way he’d done Pinkerton, right out in the open. There were people and press out in force, soaking up the free gravy. Shit.

  He’d thought it was going to be a low-key thing being held in this concrete Roman lookalike parking garage. He made it a habit not to overthink a hit, since shooting somebody in the head in the middle of a crowd was as tough as it got, and that wasn’t tough at all. Couple of times he’d got up close and personal, he’d worn a big white Stetson and gold lace tie. That was all anybody remembered. But this one was going to be a pain in the ass. TV and camera phones everywhere. He could do it with his sniper rifle easy, but that kinda hit did take planning. Find a roost, make sure nobody was going to stroll in and say hi, and after the shot, have a safe exfil mapped out.

  A car left a parking space opposite the gallery, and he pulled into it and turned off the engine. Think. How many times had he done this? Dozens, hundreds maybe. But get sloppy and get caught. Never going to happen.

  Another time he’d let her have her night and pop her in the morning when she opened the door for the paperboy, but this one was time-critical. That was why it paid enough he was thinking it might be his last job. Retire to Hawaii, he’d been thinking about it. Why not? Okay, maybe do a couple of local jobs over on the islands, just to keep his hand in and stop going nuts. Yeah, sounded good.

  All he had to do was whack this flashy broad and he could tear up his timecard.

  He couldn’t stay in the car, somebody would see him sitting when everybody else was heading in or out or some fucking place else. Christ, it shouldn’t be this hard.

  And now he needed to pee. Jesus, he was getting too fucking old for this—everybody needs to pee, especially when she’s guzzling expensive wine.

  He looked at the zip case in the passenger footwell. No way he was going to get a submachine gun into a high-profile event with Washington’s finest on the hoof. He reached under his jacket and pushed his Ruger under the seat. They’d have scanners at the entrance, bound to. No gun. No knife. He took the stiletto out of its ankle sheath and put it with the handgun. Okay then, the old-fashioned way.

  At just about the moment Senator Pinkerton’s brains joined his guests’ pasta, Ethan pushed open the stairwell door with his foot and checked the landing for grey suits with guns.

  It was clear. If his unit performed as badly as this, he’d demote them to Girl Scou
ts. Even a raw recruit knows not to expect the first move to be the last move. Except these overstuffed suits weren’t marines and never would be.

  He moved up the stairs towards the next landing, keeping close to the wall and watching the rails for any movement. Nothing. The complete lack of guards was unnerving. He shouldn’t be able to just walk up to the boss’s office and say hello. The thing about thinking something like that was—

  The first round hit the wall a good yard from his head, and the second one near enough the same place. Somebody was in a hurry or nervous.

  It left him with a problem. These security guards were Americans—okay, without much sense, but Americans just the same—and like the Secret Service guys, he wasn’t going to kill his countrymen, not for just being stupid. But that left him with the problem, and it made itself known again with another round smacking into the wall a whole lot closer.

  He crouched down against the handrail and looked up through the ironwork. There he was, next floor, leaning over the rail and firing one-handed like a cowboy in a gunfight.

  Ethan sat on the stairs for a while and let the guy fire a couple more rounds, just so he’d feel good about himself. But the noise and the delay were starting to piss him off. Fools irritated him more these days. Age thing probably.

  He looked up again, closed his eyes for a moment, and gave a short sigh. Life can get tedious. He poked his Colt through the railings and put a round in the man’s shin.

  He flinched as the man screamed and dropped his weapon down the stairwell. The suit was going to limp, but he’d be alive to bitch about it.

  The man was a clone of the ones in the lobby, big, grey suited and over-muscled. And he was squirming around on the landing, holding his leg and screaming like a little girlie.

  The noise was even worse than the gunfire, and a hell of a lot more embarrassing. Ethan rapped him on the temple with his gun butt, and peace and quiet returned.

  He pulled the man’s belt out of his pants and wrapped it around his thigh right above the knee, then pulled it tight and tucked the end under for a neat job. No point letting the guy bleed to death, but if somebody didn’t fix him up in an hour or so, he’d need a peg leg and a parrot. He should be okay; with all that shooting, somebody was bound to come and look for the bodies. Bound to.

  There were no more stairs above the landing with the sleeping guard, so this was it. Orpheus was on the other side of the fire door and maybe some more of his smartly dressed shooters.

  He put his back against the wall and pushed the door with his foot. For some crazy reason he really expected it to just swing open and there to be nothing but stale office air to greet him. The first round through the open door dispelled that stupid idea, and he let it swing back, but the shooter kept right on firing. At a closed door. Where’d they get these guys, Idiots Are Us?

  The guy kept firing. Ethan counted the shots without even thinking about it. There was no way this clown was going to empty his mag into the door. That would be Olympic-gold stupid.

  Fifteen.

  Please, God, bring me up to the mother ship; this world has gone nuts.

  He pushed open the door with his foot. No shots. The guy was reloading, he could hear him grunting and swearing as he swapped mags.

  Ethan went through the door into the big office, took a long stride, and laid a short left on the guy’s jawline. Nighty-night. The guard went down with his Sig still clenched under his huge bicep and dropped the two mags he’d been juggling out of his pocket.

  Ethan stopped for a moment and looked down at him. Maybe he should shoot him. God knows it would be the decent thing to do. Nobody should have to go through life that fucking stupid. Okay, his mother would miss him. Who’d take out the garbage?

  “Would you like a drink?”

  Ethan turned to his right slowly, his Colt aiming where he was looking. And he was looking at a guy in his sixties, grey hair clippered right back. Ethan might have thought him distinguished looking if he hadn’t been Orpheus.

  “You got bourbon?”

  Hofmann stepped back and held the door open. “Of course. Join me.”

  “That was my intention.”

  “Really?” Hofmann waited for Ethan to step past him into his sitting room. “I was rather thinking you’d come for something a little more…violent.”

  “Thinking about it.”

  “Have that drink while you decide whether to shoot me or not. And I’ll explain why you have the wrong man.”

  “That should be good.”

  Ethan took the offered drink, sat back in the deep sofa and waited for the man to lie to him.

  Hofmann sat in a matching chair across the glass coffee table, took a sip of whatever it was he was drinking, and composed himself. He didn’t appear to be nervous despite Ethan sitting opposite with a Colt .45 on the glass tabletop.

  Orpheus had never got that, why people got nervous or scared when all that did was screw up your ability to respond effectively. His mind calmly folded back time and he could see the world through his childhood eyes as clearly as at the time. He hadn’t been afraid then, or lonely, or happy—whatever that meant. His mother had tried and he’d let her. He’d read about the emotions she was trying to find and faked them, not to make her happy—what was the point of that? To make her…compliant. He hadn’t really known the word, but he knew the action. As he got older, he became aware that a person who can stay focused when everyone else is rushing around trying to prove their manhood, intelligence, good looks, or whatever other nonsensical driver they were burdened with, could get away with anything. Murder. Yes, that too, when it was necessary.

  Ethan moved the Colt to point the muzzle at the tall man, not because he thought the aging billionaire might try something, but because he was getting impatient. Grey suits would be coming.

  “Forgive me,” Hofmann said, snapping back to the present. “My mind wanders at times. It comes with the grey hair, I’m afraid.”

  Ethan shrugged. Whatever. “You were going to explain why you’re not the scumbag who set his dogs on us.”

  Did people still say scumbag? Hofmann decided they must do, though it had been a long time since he’d heard it. A good word though. He would use it. Scumbag.

  “It was a misunderstanding.” Not even he believed that, but it was a place to start. “I was acting on information provided to me by my people.”

  “And your people told you me and my friends needed killing?”

  “Yes.”

  The flat response caught Ethan. He’d thought he’d at least lie a little.

  “And this information…” Ethan said, and took a drink of bourbon for effect. “What did it say to you?”

  The grey suits were coming.

  “That you and your team were rogue agents on a mission to disrupt my overseas business with the intention of extorting a large amount of money from my organization.”

  Not bad, but better not step in it. Ethan let him go on, even though he really wanted to shoot him in the head.

  “So I’m sure you can see my predicament.” He took another miniscule sip.

  Gin. Ethan caught the whiff of juniper.

  “Why don’t you help me see it?”

  Hofmann put the glass on the coffee table and sat back with his fingers folded as if in prayer. He’d get to speak to his god soon enough.

  “I was in a difficult position. On one hand I had what appeared to be a team of criminal ex-special forces sabotaging my business; while on the other I had no recourse to federal law enforcement agencies. For reasons I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on.”

  “Because your business is crooked,” Ethan said, elaborating.

  Hofmann unfolded his fingers and put them on his lap. “Some might say that. Small-minded people.”

  Ethan let that go. This time.

  “We live in a global economy where national borders and parochial vision serve only to bring about the downfall of those unwilling or unable to take the next big step. I reach out
beyond these limitations and embrace the future.”

  Ethan put his glass on the table opposite Hofmann’s gin. “And is the future selling spaceships to despots so they can drop nuclear weapons on our cities with impunity?”

  Hofmann sat up a little straighter, as if surprised. “You think that was my idea?” He shook his head. “That would be foolish.” He waited for a response that didn’t come. “A nuclear…incident would most certainly be bad for business.”

  “That hasn’t stopped you and the fool in the Whitehouse putting us at DEFCON one.”

  Hofmann waved his hand as if dismissing the idea. “Oh, it will never come to that. The Chinese aren’t fools, a little naïve perhaps, but not stupid enough to take on the United States and Russia.”

  “You sold North Korea a spaceship,” Ethan reminded him.

  “Actually I…my organization was simply responding to a request that would be difficult to deny.”

  He should just shoot him.

  “And who made this request?” Ethan didn’t care. “The president?”

  “Oh no. Certainly not. Dicky wouldn’t, couldn’t have thought of it. No, it was our friends at the CIA.”

  That stopped Ethan for a moment. “Why would the CIA want to give the North Koreans a spaceship capable of delivering nuclear warheads right into Times Square?”

  “For the oldest reason in the world.”

  “And that is?”

  “Money, of course.” The surprised look again. Faked.

  “Money’s not a lot of use in the apocalypse.”

  “Oh, it was never going to come to that. My technicians modified the X-37’s guidance systems. It was unable to find its way back to the United States.”

  Ethan let him have a moment. “We flew it back.”

  Hofmann looked away at the dark windows. “Yes, you did, didn’t you.”

  “Looks like the navy’s not the only ones who can organize a world-class snafu.”