Dead Six (63 page)

Vehicles at the border.
Damn it, Guillermo
. Staying low, I moved off to the side. Thousands of people walk across this border every day, and I have to blunder into a section that was actually covered by
La Migra
. We were in a natural gully with rocky hills surrounding us. It looked like it would be one heck of a climb. I sighed. Apparently I would be taking the high road.

Twenty minutes of hard scrambling later, I was on the top of the rocky hillside. The terrain up here was horrible, but I was certain that I wouldn’t run into any more inconveniences. Only a crazy person or somebody who really wanted to avoid getting spotted was going to take this path into Arizona.

Somebody was coming.

Give me a break.
I settled myself into a depression in the rock beneath some prickly pear and scanned through my monocular. Three men were on the steep hillside above, moving through the shadows. They were dressed similar to me, each carrying a heavy pack, and were having a tough time moving through the thick brush and cacti. Probably drug runners. I stayed hidden. Most mules were unarmed, just regular Josés roped into carrying the packages in exchange for passage, but in every group there was usually one actual bad dude with a gun.

I watched them pass. Two of them had long tubes strapped to their packs. They paused just past me at the lip of the hill and examined the trucks parked below. One of them pointed and spoke. It wasn’t in Spanish. My ears perked up. I recognized the language.
No way.
I crawled forward slightly, careful to not shift any of the rocks. Scorpions crawled under my body. The man said something else before turning toward the border and continuing on.

What the hell were Chechens doing crossing the American border?

Guillermo hadn’t been kidding. It was getting crazy around here. I refocused the monocular and took a closer look. Those tubes looked suspicious.

Oh, wow.

I pulled my STI 9mm from my holster, the Silencerco suppressor from my pocket, and began screwing them together.
Not in my country, assholes
.

A few hours later, I stood inside a gas-station phone booth in a town north of Nogales, Arizona. It was close to three in the morning and the little desert town was utterly silent. A stray dog watched me from under the gas station’s neon sign. Loud insects buzzed around the glass.

“Sheriff’s Department.”

“Listen to me very carefully,” I said, adding a Mexican accent to my voice. “There are three dead men on the American side of the border, just north of Santa Vasquez.”

“Okay, and who is this?” The deputy sounded almost bored. Apparently multiple dead bodies were not that strange of an occurrence on the border.

“I’m the man that killed them.”

“Wait, what?”
That
got his attention.

“The men were crossing the border. They were Chechen terrorists.” I was careful not to touch anything in the booth in a way that would leave fingerprints. My rough clothes were splattered with dried blood.

“Chechens, like from Chechnya?”

“Yes. Write this down.” I rattled off the GPS coordinates. “That’s where you’ll find the bodies. There’s a missile hidden under some rocks ten meters east of the bodies.”

“A missile?”

“Look, I’m just a coyote,” I lied, “but I don’t want guys like that shooting down airliners, you know what I mean. I’m calling because one of them talked before he died. There will be a second group crossing the border in the same area just before dawn.”

“Sir, I need—” I hung up the phone and quickly walked to the still running Ford Explorer. The last Chechen had talked all right, encouraged by some expedient use of my Greco knife. There had been a vehicle waiting for them, but I didn’t feel the need to tell the deputy about where I had left the driver’s body. Besides, I had needed a ride.

I had dealt with people like them before, bloodthirsty fanatics who just plain liked to kill innocent people. The average American had no idea what was waiting for them out in the world, and there was some serious badness crawling across the country’s soft white underbelly. At first I had assumed that it was just random chance that had allowed me to bump into those men, but I had a sneaky suspicion that Guillermo might have put me on that particular path for a reason, and probably saved him some work, the sneaky bastard.

Warning the cops about the second group of Chechens would count as my good deed for the day. Never hurts to put a check in the positive-karma box. I wiped some of the dried gore from my hands with a rag as I drove north. That third terrorist had been pretty tough, but everybody talks eventually. In the back seat was the second portable Russian surface-to-air missile launcher. I figured it might come in handy.

Flagstaff was my next stop. If my attempt on Eddie failed, then I knew he would kill my family purely out of spite. They deserved a warning. And there was only one person I could think of who might be clever enough to reach them all without Eddie’s goons finding out.

Too bad he was an FBI agent. I bet you thought
your
family reunions were awkward.

LORENZO

Flagstaff, Arizona

June 25, 2008

My brother’s house was in the suburbs. It had been easy enough to find with the address written in Eddie’s folder. The sun had been coming up by the time I found the place, so I had just done a quick drive-by. I had no way of knowing if or how Eddie was monitoring them, so I didn’t want to risk a visit during the daytime. Plus, I looked like I was here to pick fruit, smelled horrible, and was still splattered with at least a pint of Chechen.

I checked into a cheap motel, cleaned up, shaved, and slept until sundown. My dreams were strange and featured those dancing hippos from the old Disney movie until they were violently torn apart by an alligator with an effeminate English accent. I woke in a foul mood. Jill still hadn’t called back, and frankly that was really beginning to gnaw at me. I called in an update to Reaper before leaving for Bob’s place. At least he was sounding healthier, eager for revenge, and was ready to fly out as soon as I needed him.

There was another Ford Explorer in the motel parking lot. Using my Leatherman, I swapped license plates then headed back to the suburbs.

Bob had a great security system. It took me almost three whole minutes to figure out how to circumvent it after I’d climbed over the back fence. Luckily he didn’t have a dog. He was allergic to them.

It didn’t seem right to break into my own brother’s house, and it certainly wasn’t the best way to make an impression, especially considering that I hadn’t seen him for years and he had no idea what I actually did for a living. But I couldn’t risk just knocking on the door in case Eddie was watching the place. The last thing I wanted to do was contact him at work while he was surrounded by other Feds. I’ve got an aversion to cops. Nothing personal, mind you, just that our philosophies on life tended to diverge rather abruptly.

It was nearing midnight as I crept through the house. There were kids’ toys scattered across the carpet and dozens of pictures on the wall. The kitchen was empty, and there were crayon drawings held onto the fridge with magnets. It was a really nice house. Clean, organized, but with that little bit of chaos that healthy kids always managed to bring. It reminded me a bit of Gideon’s house, and that thought brought back memories. Gideon Lorenzo had been a good man to take me in. Compared to how I’d grown up, their house had seemed so warm, and I never had to worry about being hit with randomly thrown beer bottles.

Suddenly the room was bathed in scalding light, blinding me. It had to be one of those eyeball-melting police flashlights. “Don’t move!” a deep voice bellowed. It was a command voice that was used to being obeyed. I slowly raised my hands to the surrender position.

“It’s me, Bob.” Hands open, I turned toward the giant in the doorway. “Shoot me, and Mom will be pissed.”

The brilliant light moved to the side, leaving white ghosts floating in my eyeballs. “Hector?”

It had been a long time since anybody had called me that.

Robert Lorenzo was big man, six and a half feet tall, broad and barrel-chested. He looked nothing like me at all, which wasn’t a surprise, considering that I was a foster kid.

The Lorenzos were good people. I’d never really felt like I had fit in, no matter how hard I’d tried, but they had loved me as if I were one of them regardless. They were hard-working, honestly religious, salt-of-the-Earth decent folks. My real father had been a petty criminal, crackhead, piece of filth, and Gideon Lorenzo was the judge who had finally sent him away for murder.

Gideon had never confided in me the logic behind taking me in. I just remember him staring down at me from that tall judge’s seat while I had been giving my eyewitness testimony against my real father. His kind eyes had filled with involuntary tears as I’d talked about how I’d watched my mother get her head kicked in, even after I had tried to defend her by stabbing my father with a fork. I had been twelve.

Four years.
For four years I had lived with the Lorenzo family. Then something terrible had happened, popping the happy bubble where I’d briefly gotten to live like a normal person. I had violated Gideon’s deathbed final wish, but my services had been needed to make things right, and I did what I had to do.

While in their care, I had never officially taken their last name. After I dropped off the grid, I’d lived under many different names, changing identities like clothing. Eventually I’d started going by Lorenzo. It had seemed like the thing to do at the time. It had seemed
right
. If only I had realized that it would eventually come back to haunt me.

“So, you want to tell me how you broke into my house?” Bob asked as he settled onto his couch. He put his bare feet up on the coffee table. His Remington 870 was leaning against the arm of the couch.

“Always right to the point with you, wasn’t it?” I dodged. “Where’s the wife and kids? How’s Gwen?”

“Visiting her mom. You’ll like her. She’s nice. Now back to the B and E.” Bob looked like Dad before he had died. The resemblance was almost eerie. The last few years had rendered him totally bald, but that wasn’t a surprise, as he’d starting losing his hair at sixteen. “You could have knocked. I almost plugged you back there. I’m a light sleeper.”

Real light, apparently. I had been in full ninja mode. “The door was open,” I lied.

“No, it wasn’t,” Bob said with finality. “It was locked, and the alarm was armed. It’s been forever since I’ve seen you, and you sneak into my house in the middle of the night. Why?”

I had to be careful here. He was my older brother, and he was damn smart. I had known him very well once, but we were almost strangers now. “I need your help.”

“What’s going on, man?” Just like his father, there was no way I was going to be able to lie to this man and get away with it. I just hoped that he wouldn’t try to arrest me. That could get messy.

“I had to sneak in because there are people watching your house. You’re in danger, the whole family is in danger, because of me, and I’m here to warn you.”

Bob laughed. “You always were a hoot. No, serious, what’s going on?” After a moment of studying my grim expression, he realized I was for real, and then there was a hint of anger in his voice. “What have you gotten into?”

The Lorenzos had always been a real law-and-order bunch, except for me, obviously. I leaned back on the comfortable couch and groaned. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Do you know what I do for a living?”

“You work for some international-relations firm. That was what the last Christmas card said, which, by the way, is the only reason any of us even realized you were still alive. You’ve only visited Mom, what, once since you ran off and joined the Peace Corps.” He said that with just a hint of disdain. Bob had joined the Army.

“About that . . .” We had been close once. He was only a couple of years older than me, and after Dad had died Bob had become the family rock, while I had run off. This was a lot more difficult than I had thought it would be. “I’m not a businessman. I was never in the Peace Corps. I think they’re a bunch of hippies. Look . . . I’m . . . I’m a crook.”

“Crook? Like a criminal?” The last little bit of a smile faded. His normally jovial face grew hard, and now he really reminded me of Dad. “What kind of crook?”

“A very good one. Ever hear of the Cape Town diamond-exchange robbery?” I asked. He slowly nodded. I was sure the FBI had passed around a memo about that one. It had been rather impressive. “That was me. Bangkok National.
Me
. Bahrain Museum of Antiquity.
Me
. Vladivostok gold-train heist, all me.” Bob’s eyes grew wide. Of course he had heard of those. They were some of the more infamous robberies of our generation. “After that, I decided I didn’t like robbing normal people and I started to rob from other bad guys. Those jobs you probably haven’t heard about, but I’m pretty good at this stuff.”

“You can’t be serious,” he stated.

“I worked for a man called Big Eddie for a long time, the crime lord who has a piece of everything in Asia. I’m assuming the FBI’s heard of him?”

“Of course. The organized-crime guys have a task force dedicated to just that group. Personally, I thought he was a fairy tale.”

“Oh, he’s real.” I tossed the manila folder from Thailand on the coffee table between us. Bob picked it up and started to leaf through the family pictures. “He had one last job for me, and he gave me this to assure that I’d do it. I know he’ll hurt every single person in there, and I need you to get to them first, as quiet as you can.”

My brother crumpled the edges of the folder as he read. I could see the realization that I was telling the truth dawning on his face. “I can’t believe this. This . . . this is nuts. Sure, you were always pushing the boundaries, petty theft, joyriding cars, stupid crap, but this?”

“Bob, I know this is a shock, but listen to me. You can’t be obvious. Big Eddie will find out. You can’t bring in the FBI. Eddie has men on the inside. He will find out. This man sits on Satan’s right hand. You have no idea what he’s capable of. I need you to help me stop him.”