Dead Six (4 page)

I lived under an assumed name. We all did. In this world, anything that was precious to you became a liability, potential leverage against you. How had Eddie found them? Where had I screwed up? I knew that if I tried to warn them, even if they believed me, there was no way I could protect them all. I slowly sat back down. My crew followed my example.

“That’s better. Here is your mission packet. There are three phases. As you can see from the deadline, time is of the essence.”

I opened the proffered folder, read a few lines, then laughed out loud. “You’ve got to be kidding. This is impossible.”

“The clock is ticking, Mr. Lorenzo. Complete this mission or we will kill everyone you have ever loved.” He gestured at the mushroom dish. “Are you going to finish that?”

“Shoulda just shot him,” Carl muttered before downing the last of his beer. He crushed the can in his fist and tossed it out the fourth-floor window of our seedy Bangkok hotel room. Odds were that the can hit a tourist or a prostitute. “Suicide, this job, I tell you that. Better to run.”

Train rubbed one callused hand across his face. Haggard, he looked like he’d aged ten years in the last hour. “And then what? Hide? Where are we gonna go?”

“
We
aren’t the problem,” I stated. Each of us was fully capable of going to ground and totally disappearing. The four of us exchanged knowing glances. If we thwarted Big Eddie, we were going to be knee-deep in dead babies. I hadn’t even spoken to my family in years. They thought I was some sort of international businessman. I sent them a Christmas card once in a while, that kind of thing, but it wasn’t like we were close. I’d checked out of the normal world. But I couldn’t let my brothers and sisters pay for my sins. They weren’t like me. They were
good
people. They were the only people who had ever shown me any kindness in my miserable youth.

We were quiet for a long time as my crew mulled over our predicament. Finally, I broke the silence. “Eddie’s men will be randomly watching these people. As soon as any one of them is contacted, they’ll kill all the others. We could maybe save some, but I don’t want to take that chance. I’m in. If any of you want out, I understand. Take your share and go. If Eddie sees that I’m on my way to the Mideast, he’ll know I’m working the job. It might buy you some time to get to your people.”

Reaper immediately raised one bony hand. “I’m with you, boss.” He was the youngest member of my crew. I had hired him in Singapore, where he’d been avoiding extradition to the US for a host of felony charges, and put him to work as our technical geek. I was the closest thing he had to a father figure, and that was just sad.

“This is going to be the toughest thing we’ve ever done,” I warned. “There’s no shame in backing out. We’re probably going to get killed if we’re lucky or thrown into the worst kind of prison you can imagine if we’re not.”

“I’m in,” Reaper repeated with a lot more force than you would expect from looking at him. I had known that whatever I had voted for, Reaper would have my back.

I nodded. “Carl?”

My oldest friend grunted as he leaned forward in his chair. We had worked together for a very long time. When we had first met, Carl had been a Portuguese mercenary helping to overthrow an African government. Between the two of us we’d killed piles of people in dire need of killing, and a quite a few who had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. We’d robbed, conned, stolen, and murdered our way across four continents. The contents of Carl’s folder were a mystery. He was like my brother, but I didn’t know what he had left behind in the Azores all those years ago. He wasn’t exactly the conversational sort.

Carl shrugged. “Whatever . . . I’m in.”

The last member of my crew hesitated. I knew that Train’s folder contained pictures of his estranged wife and little girl. Omaha, Nebraska wasn’t out of Eddie’s reach. Train’s ex had divorced him while he had been serving time. She didn’t like being married to a criminal, but she apparently had no moral problems cashing the checks he mailed to her after every single one of our jobs, either. Train loved his young daughter more than life itself, and I could see that fact roiling around behind his eyes as he made up his mind.

“I can’t,” he said simply. “Sorry, Lorenzo.”

I nodded.

“Ah, Train, come on,” Reaper whined. “We need you, big guy.”

“I don’t trust Eddie,” Train spat. “And you’d be an idiot to trust him. He knows about my kid, man. I’ve got to go get her.”

I extended my hand. He hesitated only briefly before crushing it in his big mitt. He was one of only a handful of people in this world that I actually trusted. I had worked with Train for nearly a decade and his decision didn’t surprise me at all. For a man who could snap a neck with one hand, he had a remarkably soft heart. “Watch your back,” I ordered.

He gave me a sad smile. We both knew that this was the end of a long run. “No problem, chief.”

Train took his share of the money and slipped out that night. At the time, none of us had realized that our hotel room had been bugged even though we had swept the room.

The next morning I had awoken to a knock on our door. When I answered, gun in hand, the messenger was gone, but there had been a cardboard box left there addressed to me. The size and weight told me what it was even before I opened it. Train’s severed head had been neatly wrapped in newspaper. The only other contents were a note.

I AM WATCHING YOU
.

Chapter 1:
Job Security

VALENTINE

ATC Research & Development Facility

North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

January 18

0330

I made my way around Building 21, rattling door handles as I went. It was the second time I’d checked this building during my shift, and I didn’t expect to find it unsecured. Still, the night-shift maintenance guys had a habit of leaving doors unlocked as they did their rounds, so I often had to relock them during
my
rounds.

Finding nothing out of place, I returned to the front of the building. Mounted on the wall next to the front door was a small metal button, resembling a watch battery. I retrieved from my pocket an electronic wand, and touched the tip of it to the metal button on the wall.

Nothing happened. “Goddamn it,” I grumbled, wiping both the button and the end of the wand with my finger. The wand was my electronic leash. As I hit the buttons across the facility, the wand recorded the time that I was there, thus proving to my employers that I was actually doing my job. However, if there was any moisture at all on either the button or the wand, it wouldn’t register.

I tried the button again. Still, nothing happened. Swearing some more, I pulled a small cloth out of my pocket and wiped down the button and the tip of the wand. Yet again, nothing happened. A pulse of anger shot through me, and I threw the wand against the steel door of Building 21. It bounced off, leaving not so much as a dent, and clattered to the concrete sidewalk below.

I took a deep breath and looked around. The sprawling ATC facility was dark, lit only by the amber lights around the buildings and along the roads. To the south, the omnipresent glow of the Strip lit up the sky. The night air was cool but had the familiar dusty stink of Las Vegas.

I looked down at the wand and frowned. Everywhere I’d been, everything I’d done, and
this
was what I was reduced to. I had seen combat on four continents and had survived it all, only to be utterly defeated by badly designed electronics. I sighed loudly, though there was no one around to hear.

I picked up my wand and made one last attempt. Touching it to the button, the wand beeped loudly and registered the hit. Muttering to myself, I stuffed the wand back into my pocket and returned to my patrol truck. Building 21 was last on my scheduled rounds; I had nothing else to do but drive around for the remaining three and a half hours of my shift.

As I drove, I listened to a late-night radio program called
From Sea to Shining Sea.
It was basically four hours of people talking about conspiracy theories, aliens, ghosts, and stuff like that. Most of it was a bunch of hooey, in my opinion, but it was often entertaining. Listening to the conspiracy theories regarding Mexico, the United Nations, and Vanguard Strategic Services always gave me a chuckle. They had
no idea.
The host, Roger Geonoy, was talking about secret government black helicopters or something with a guest. The guest was a frequent visitor to the show and only called himself “Prometheus.” He never gave his real name. Because, you know,
they
are listening. I barely paid attention as they went on about the supposed shadow government and its stealth helicopters. I did get another chuckle when Prometheus insisted that these choppers are sound-suppressed and can fly in what he called “whisper mode.” I’d ridden in enough helicopters to know just how freaking loud they are.

As Roger Geonoy listened to Prometheus blather on about black helicopters and cattle mutilations, I remembered my last helicopter ride in detail. The noise of the engines, the roar of gunfire. The sickening sound of bullets hitting the hull. The shrieking of the alarm as we dropped into a drained swimming pool. The ragged, bloody hole in Ramirez’ head. Doc’s guts spilled out onto the floor of the chopper.

“Sierra-Eleven, Dispatch,” my radio squawked, startling me. I realized that I’d been sitting at a stop sign for minutes on end.
From Sea to Shining Sea
had gone to commercial break. My heart was pounding.

Shaking it off, I answered my radio. “This is Sierra-Eleven.”

“Electrical Maintenance needs you to let them into Building Fourteen,” the Dispatcher said.

“Uh, ten-four,” I replied. “Ten-seventeen.” I took a deep breath and returned my attention to doing my stupid job.

Hours later, I pulled my patrol truck into a parking space behind the Security Office. Putting the truck in park, I finished the paperwork on my clipboard, recorded the mileage, and cut the engine. My breath steamed in the cool January air as I stepped out of the truck and made my way into the office.

“Mornin’, Val,” my supervisor, Mr. Norton, said as I passed his office en route to the ready room. “Anything happen last night?”

Pausing, I leaned into the doorway for a moment. “It was quiet, Boss.” Leaning in farther, I handed him my paperwork. “Is McDonald here yet?”

“Yeah, he’s on time today,” Mr. Norton said. “Have a good weekend, Val.”

“You, too, boss,” I said, leaving the doorway and making my way down the hall. I pushed open the door to the ready room. My relief, McDonald, was standing by the gun lockers, seemingly half awake. He was
always
seemingly half awake and had a perpetual five o’clock shadow on top of it. I found him tiresome.

He had the muzzle of his pistol in the clearing barrel as he chambered a round. Stepping past him, I opened my own gun locker, drew the .357 Magnum revolver from the holster on my left hip, and placed it inside.

“Why do you still carry that thing? We’ve got the new nine-mils, you know,” he said, holstering the pistol he’d just loaded.

“I shoot revolvers better,” I answered, not looking at him. “Not much to pass on. It was quiet last night. Some contractors are working by the old warehouse on the south side, so make sure Gate Ten is closed and locked after they leave.” I slung my gun belt over my shoulder and made my way out of the office and into the parking lot.

I found my Mustang and cranked it up. My radio was playing the morning news as I drove home, but I found it hard to pay attention. I’d lived outside of the United States for years; domestic news was something I was used to just ignoring. Frowning, I changed radio stations and listened to music for the rest of my commute home.

My apartment building was halfway across town. It didn’t look like much, but it was cheap for Vegas and wasn’t in a really bad neighborhood. It was an old motel that had been converted to apartments. The rooms were small, but there weren’t a lot of gangbangers and hookers hanging around all the time, and the cops weren’t there every night.

I made my way upstairs to the second floor. As I approached my door, I saw my next-door neighbor leaning against the railing. She smiled. “Hey,” she said, sounding tired. She removed a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket.

“Mornin’, Liz,” I said, leaning against the railing next to her. She was wearing a blue uniform, like me, but she wasn’t a security guard. Liz was a paramedic, and like me she also worked the night shift. She usually got home about the same time I did. Her curly red hair was pulled into a bun under her cap.

“Long night last night?” I asked as she dug for her lighter.

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “Goddamn tweakers.” Liz had been a medic for ten years and had seen just about everything.

“Here,” I said, handing her my Zippo lighter. “You okay?”

“Thank you. I’m fine—my partner just had to fight with this one asshole.” I’d never met Liz’s partner, but apparently he was a big dude. That was probably for the best, as Liz herself stood barely five foot three. She paused while she lit her cigarette. She then snapped the lighter closed but didn’t hand it back to me.

“That’s an interesting logo on there,” she said, holding my lighter up. It was matte black and engraved with a skull with a switchblade knife clutched in its teeth. I’d had the lighter a long time, and it was pretty scratched up. “Were you in the military?”

I didn’t say anything. Looking over at Liz, I saw that she was studying me intently. “I was,” I said at last. “Air Force. A long time ago.”

“You’re too young to have done anything a long time ago.”

I chuckled. “I enlisted when I turned eighteen.”

“I figured,” she said, handing me the lighter. “You seem like the type. Was that your unit logo or something?

“This? No. I was in the Security Forces. I did one stint in Afghanistan before I got out.”

“What’d you do after that?” she asked.

“I went to work,” I said awkwardly. I didn’t know Liz all that well, and I wasn’t used to talking about myself with people. “I was a security consultant for a few years.”

“Consultant? What kind of work did you do?” she asked.