Fade (2005) (6 page)

In the face of so much more resistance than she'd ever imagined, she'
d decided to quit after only a few months. Before she did, though, she'
d sat down with pen and paper to write a list of her qualification s versus the men she'd beat out for the position. What she managed t o quantify was that she was clearly more qualified than all but one o f them and, by most measures, edged out the one who was close. When sh e finally tossed the pen aside and stood up from her kitchen table, sh e was convinced that she deserved the position and was determined not t o be so easily chased off.

"Did you want to talk to me, sir?"

He didn't answer; instead he reached through the open window of his ca r for a file that he handed to her. She flipped through it, pausin g occasionally to dwell on the more interesting tidbits.

"Yes, sir?"

"I need your team to pick him up. Tonight."

"What's the charge?"

His mouth puckered a bit at the question. If he wasn't careful he wa s going to get those lines her mother feared so much.

"We got a tip that he's been working as some kind of half-asse d enforcer for the Colombian drug cartels and that he's responsible fo r the deaths of the Ramirez brothers."

She nodded and resisted the urge to chew her lower lip as she leafe d through a few more pages. The Ramirez brothers were a couple o f mid-level drug pushers who had been found the month before with nea t little holes in their skulls. There was no mention of them at all i n the file, nor was there anything that suggested "half-assed" was a wor d anyone would use about the man it described. She stopped at a copy o f a newspaper photo depicting a severely leaning house. "Not exactl y living in the lap of luxury, is he? I wonder where all the money he'
s making is going."

"Well, maybe if you go out there and pick him up instead of standin g around here, we could find out."

Karen managed to smile and ignore the sarcasm. In fact, she was on th e verge of getting used to it. "Have we been watching this guy, sir? D
o we know anything about his habits or "

"Did you see it in the file?"

"No."

"Then it's a good bet that we haven't. Look, I'm not asking for al l that much here, Karen. We figure the guy's probably armed so we don'
t want to send a black and white. Just take your team over there an d arrest the guy."

"Sir, he's a former Navy SEAL and now you're telling me he's a carte l enforcer. Are you sure this is the best way to get him? What abou t waiting for him to go into town and picking him up on a traffi c violation? Something a little lower key and more on our turf."

Pickering looked over his sunglasses at her. "His military service i s ancient history, Karen. Now he's a furniture builder or something. Hi s property is well away from any civilians and I'm not about to star t something with him on a crowded street if I don't have to. If yo u don't think you can handle this, I can find someone who can."

Another forced smile. "Yes, sir. I'll take care of it."

Chapter
Seven.

Fade had read a book once by a man who could manipulate his dreams.

Just as the author entered that hypnotic state that bordere d unconsciousness, he would concentrate and draw himself into whateve r world he wanted. It was a trick Fade had been working on for years.

He'd created the world. A pleasantly mundane one in which he was a healthy father and husband with a nine-to-five job, a fe w uncontrollable kids, and a car that got depressingly good gas mileage.

But he'd never managed to inhabit it. That level of sleep hadn't com e to him for years, replaced by a deep grogginess that never seemed t o completely obscure the ceiling hovering above him or stop the endles s procession of numbers on his clock.

Tonight, it was even worse. He rubbed his burning eyes and finall y gave in, pressing his back against the bare wall behind his mattres s and cursing himself for forgetting to buy cigarettes. Not that h e actually smoked, but it was a habit he'd been meaning to take up.

At first, the sound didn't seem like much a quiet crunching that barel y managed to penetrate the heavy curtains flapping across his ope n window. Fade stopped breathing and turned his head in the darkness , listening intently. A raccoon? No, the sound, though quiet, had a certain weight to it. Another black bear looking to get at his garbag e can? Maybe. Or maybe it was Hillel Strand, coming to make him a n offer he couldn't refuse.

Fade pictured aiming a twelve-gauge at that closely shaved face an d blowing the smug expression right off it. Of course Strand wa s unlikely ever to make a personal appearance. He'd undoubtedly send a team of former Special Forces guys more qualified to persuade Fade t o see the error of his ways.

But he'd decided not to let that happen. Instead, he'd take out a s many of Strand's men as he could before they finally put a bullet i n him. A fittingly violent and futile end to a violent and futil e life.

The sound didn't come again and Fade closed his eyes, concentrating o n the image of Hillel Strand with a shotgun barrel a few inches from hi s nose. Maybe that was a dream world he could insert himself into.

Something a little closer to reality.

He'd barely settled back on the mattress when he heard another quie t crunch, this time close enough to discern detail. The depth and lengt h of it confirmed his suspicion that its source was heavy. Th e possibility of the soft pad of a bear's paw, though, was lost in th e sound's crisp edge. Based on his considerable experience, tha t particular attack and decay was only caused by one thing: a boot.

Fade remained motionless on the bed, realizing suddenly that he wasn'
t in the mood for this tonight. He had undoubtedly just entered the las t half hour of his life and all he could think about was how much troubl e dying was going to be. A sure sign of having lived too long.

The man rather sloppily creeping up on him was getting close enough t o force a decision. Fade had a pistol and the temptation to just shoo t halfheartedly at whatever face appeared in his window was fairl y strong. But then all that preparation and money would have bee n wasted. Seemed like a shame.

He quietly slid the blanket off his legs and crawled across the room.

Keeping the fluttering curtains in his peripheral vision, he stood an d stretched his arms overhead, unlatching a small door cut into the wal l that led to his attic. It opened smoothly on brand new hinges and h e swung himself up into it on a slightly creakier spine.

The "command center" he'd constructed didn't have the aesthetic grac e he normally strived for, but time had been short and sacrifices had t o be made. He lay down in something that looked disturbingly like a badly welded steel coffin with no lid and ran his finger along the edg e of a bank of small monitors in front of him. Finally finding a switch , he flipped it and was immediately bathed in a dim green light that he'
d made sure wouldn't be visible through the door.

He turned on the rest of the monitors, careful not to bump a series o f switches he'd screwed to a piece of plywood or the heavily modifie d model airplane radio control lying next to him. After checking th e neatly arranged M16, combat knife, and 9mm pistol, he refocused hi s attention on the small screens.

The images were surprisingly detailed. It was uncanny what you coul d get off the Internet these days. Most of the stuff was measurabl y better than the supposedly state-of-the-art stuff he'd worked with a t the CIA only a few years before.

Honestly, he was surprised they worked at all. It had seemed likel y that the team sent for him would be jamming the radio transmission fro m the cameras he'd set up. Using hardwired ones had just seemed like to o much trouble. Stranger yet was that the generator he'd set up in th e basement hadn't kicked on: His power hadn't been cut. Maybe he'd los t his touch. Maybe he was hiding from a squirrel.

The squirrel didn't materialize but a man in black fatigues holding a small assault rifle did, running up beneath the night vision enable d camera hidden above Fade's front door.

A few moments later, there was motion on nearly every screen and h e silently scanned them, watching men settling into the obvious position s that he'd created by digging a few natural-looking indentions in hi s yard and breaking off a number of strategic tree branches. Once the y were settled in, two more men appeared at his back door, takin g positions on either side of it. Fade eased his nose a little closer t o the far right monitor, trying to see if anyone was covering hi s workshop, but lost interest when he realized that he'd forgotten on e obvious item. Clothes. It looked like he was going to make his las t stand in a pair of Bugs Bunny boxer shorts. At least they wer e reasonably new.

The monitor set up in the tree that would offer a sniper a perfect vie w of the front and sides of the house was still empty, which seemed kin d of strange. Did they have some new techie gizmo that made that vantag e point unnecessary? One of those unmanned things that hovered over th e battlefield like a blimp over a football game? Were those things arme d now? Something didn't feel right.

He propped himself up on his elbows and managed to shrug. Based on th e ultimate objective of this operation, it wasn't really worth getting i n a twist over the details. Besides, he'd never been one to worry abou t technology. Sure, it had its place in large theaters, but i n situations like these it just tended to split people's focus. Assuming , of course, that whatever gadget you were relying on hadn't gotten a little dirt in it and stopped working.

Truthfully, he'd bought the monitors he was using based completely o n their fun factor. If he'd known they were actually going to work, he'
d have bought more and put a few farther afield. Was Strand out ther e somewhere within reach? Probably not. But Matt Egan would be. He'
d be directing this little pageant, which pretty much guaranteed tha t Fade's time on this earth was coming to an end. Egan possessed a n unusual combination of creativity and anal-retentiveness that had bee n truly confidence inspiring when Fade was working for him. But now , undoubtedly, it would prove deadly.

He tried to imagine lining up his sights on Egan and pulling th e trigger but found it a much harder image to conjure than the on e starring Hillel Strand. He tried again, but couldn't get pas t centering the crosshairs. Faced with it for real, though, he tol d himself, he'd goddamn well take the shot.

One man in the front and one in the back slipped through thei r respective unlocked doors simultaneously. Fade switched to interio r cameras and watched them do an initial sweep of the living room an d kitchen before being followed by their two comrades. The remainder o f the team stayed outside, one in front and the other in back, both lyin g in the comfy indentions provided for them.

Fade continued to toggle back and forth through his interior cameras a s the four men moved cautiously through his house. After a complet e sweep, they relaxed a bit and began to turn on the lights. As promise d in the glossy brochure that had accompanied them, the amazing littl e cameras adjusted automatically to the new light levels. And they'
d even been on sale.

Two of the men had taken up positions in his living room and the othe r two in his bedroom. They seemed to be just standing at the foot of hi s bed while one of them chatted into his throat mike.

Fade had access to both rooms the bedroom through the attic door an d the living room through a panel he'd cut in the ceiling. The questio n was what should he do with that access. He assumed they'd looked u p the architectural details of the house, so it seemed likely that the y would suspect he was up there. Were they trying to draw him out? O
f course. It was clearly a trap, but what kind of trap? They were jus t standing there with their guns hanging at their sides. What was tha t sneaky bastard Egan up to?

He watched one of the men in the living room walk over and examine a heavy piece of steel plate with a handle welded to it lying on th e floor in front of a large fireplace. He didn't seem to know what t o make of it. In the bedroom, one of the men had taken off his glove s and was moving toward the bed, likely to see if it was still warm.

Another attempt to draw him out?

Fade smiled and shook his head. This was all ego he just didn't wan t to be outsmarted. Best to keep in mind the end result he was after: e ssentially, lots of gunfire, a few cool explosions, and his own death.

If he stayed up there much longer, the only thing he was going to di e of was curiosity.

Grabbing the M16 next to him, he lifted himself out of his steel coffi n and threw open the attic door.

The two men spun around at the sound of the door hitting the wall an d one actually managed to get off a couple panicked shots at the woo d floor before Fade's rounds hit them both in the face. He hun g partially out of the attic and squinted at the pulverized flesh an d bone beneath the men's helmets. What the hell was going on here? Ther e was just no way he should have been able to take those guys out tha t easily. No way.

The sound of running and then sudden silence made him pull back just a s a spray of bullets tore through the wall next to him.

"Attic! Attic!" he heard someone shout as he pulled the door shu t with a piece of attached rope and fell back into his coffin, coverin g his ears.