Full Ratchet: A Silas Cade Thriller Hardcover (9 page)

The pistol itself I held down at seat level.

Two minutes went by. The sun reflected sharply off one of the windows in Brendt’s shack, and I shifted my head away from the glare.

A door slammed, and Dave came running out.

H
e opened the door, slid in and pulled it shut—not loudly—in about two seconds.

“His girlfriend took it.” Dave rumbled the Charger’s engine into life and stamped the accelerator. We squealed through a U-turn and roared back toward town center.

“The Saturn?”

“She works at the Super Duper, went in this morning at seven. He says.”

“You believe him?”

“I think so.” Dave looked over at me, checked all three mirrors automatically and thought for a moment. “He was just waking up. Brendt is kind of slow, like I said. He looked way too hung over to be making up stories. Elsie’s moved in, and he’s sharing the car with her.”

“Elsie?”

“She’s from Fairville,” he said. “Next county over. No one I know.”

A setup seemed impossible. “How long’s she been with him?”

“Brendt said a few months.”

“You didn’t know about her?”

“He never mentioned.”

“Hard to believe you never even
saw
her before.”

“I ain’t seen much of Brendt either lately—now I know why.”

“Okay.” The social mores seemed odd, but it wasn’t my town.

Dave slowed behind an RV—some retiree out to see America, his home on his metaphorical back. The thing must have been forty feet long and fifteen wide.

“Maybe . . .” Dave hesitated. “Brendt and I have some history. You know, with women.”

Ah. “Let me guess.”

“Yeah.” He grimaced. “I don’t know how, he always seems to find the good ones first.”

“And you’re like, what, share and share alike? All’s fair in love and war?”

“I can’t help it.” He shrugged without taking his hands from the wheel. “Some of them, they decide they’d rather step out with me.”

“Jesus. And he’s still friends with you?”

“Mostly.” Dave abruptly accelerated. The Charger bounded forward, barely missing the corner of the RV. The oncoming lane was empty for a few hundred yards, but a trailer truck was approaching fast. We roared past the RV, engine screaming in high gear. Dave yanked the wheel, and we slipped back across the solid line—about ten feet in front of certain death on the truck’s bumper.

“Oh. My. God.” I tried to breathe again.

“Anyway, Brendt was real worried, thought this might fuck up the relationship or something.”

Worried about Dave, or worried about his girlfriend handing his car over to a squad of terrorists? Maybe it didn’t matter. “I could see that.”

A mile down we slowed, entering a turn lane at a blinker. At the intersection Dave turned into the jammed parking lot, the Charger rumbling as he nosed slowly among the rows, looking for a space. Women pushed loaded shopping carts to their SUVs; men ambled along carrying 24-packs and sacks of charcoal. Sunday was Clabbton’s big shopping day, apparently.

The Super Duper occupied one end of the strip mall. A Chinese restaurant, a gun shop and dollar store filled out the rest. Dave parked around the side, on top of the yellow zebra stripes. He pointed at the
NO PARKING YOU WILL BE TOWED
! sign.

“Better stay here,” he said. “In case they’re serious.”

Again? “Now, wait a min–”

He raised his hands. “No, no, don’t worry, I’ll find Elsie and bring her out. You’re right, we should both talk to her.”

“All right.” I gave in. “Fine.”

He disappeared into the supermarket. I took a minute to study the lot, including the service drive that continued behind the car and around the back. The cab of an eighteen-wheeler was just visible in the rear, probably where it had backed up to the loading dock. Out front, the parking lot was a hive of cars coming and going.

The sun came out again, stronger this time.

Nothing looked out of place.

The attack had to be connected to Clayco. The other work I’d had lately was nothing—some collection work, sorting out a low-level abstraction of funds, and even a few tax returns, mostly as favors to friends. Glamorous, huh? Nothing that would draw a Call of Duty strike force.

Anyway, the timing made it certain: run my little audit one day, assault forces are parachuting in forty hours later.

The problem was, they
knew
me.

Or they knew Ryan, and they got my name from him. Actually, that was more likely. But either way, it was an inside job. Only someone in the loop would be able to run the pingback so quickly.

So the job had either been a setup from the start—or there were some very big, very fast sharks swimming in the same pool.

Dave came back around the corner, a woman gesturing beside him, and I stopped worrying about Soap MacTavish.

Stunning. Drop-dead. Heartstopping. She should have been on a Brazilian runway, not schlumping frozen pizzas across a scanner. Willowy tall—too tall for the baggy yellow employee smock—hair flowing with streaks of gold and silver, eyes green and knowing. She was knocking a cigarette out of a box, Dave hastily checking his pockets.

I’ll bet her checkout line was twenty deep. Guys buying one or two items—“Honey, can
I
do the grocery shopping today?”

I got out, closed the door, and met them in front of the hood.

“Silas? Elsie.” Dave made the introduction, kind of grudging, getting his lighter into play.

“Hi, Silas.” Her voice husky and low and tuned to that frequency that switches off men’s cortexes. She got the cigarette going and looked me in the face. “Damn! What’re you, twins?”

“Brothers.”

“I
guess
.”

“I known Brendt since grade school,” Dave said. “He must be doing all right in the world.”

“He’s really
nice
to me.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Lends you his car and all.”

“Yeah, I had a little fender bumper last week.” She exhaled smoke to the side like a forties movie queen. “I think Brendt mentioned your name, Dave. Thought you could fix it up for me.”

“Sure, no problem!” He paused, his brain catching up. “Or, well, actually. Maybe I should swing by instead. Sometimes you can just knock the dents out with a mallet.”

The attack, the destruction of his garage, our screaming high-speed drive through the county—Elsie seemed to have driven everything out of Dave’s head.

Some teenagers walking from their car passed us, the boys’ mouths hanging open as they stared. One of the girls elbowed her boyfriend, sharp, and he yelped. Aggrieved complaints and laughter from the others took them into the store.

Elsie didn’t take any more notice than she would have a bumblebee.

“You parked here?” I tried to keep the conversation on point.

“Out at the edge.” She lifted one finger, gracefully indicating the far side of the lot. “They don’t like us to take spaces
closer
than that.”

“Uh-huh. Is it still there?”

We all peered across the pavement.

“Sure.” And indeed, I thought I recognized the same dull-colored car the gunmen had driven off in, not forty minutes earlier.

“Is it where you left it? In the same parking place, I mean?”

Elsie’s gaze turned to me. “That’s a funny question.”

I shrugged.

“Maybe we should take a look.”

We walked across the lot, zigzagging around parked cars. Shoppers watched us openly, sideways, subtle, blatant. I realized that Elsie was perhaps the most effective camouflage I’d ever used. No one had a microsecond glance for me.

Good thing I hate the smell of cigarettes—one thing about the city, the air’s lousy but hardly anyone smokes in public anymore. Elsie might have distracted me utterly, otherwise.

Like Dave, who walked straight into the bed of a pickup, his head turned around to talk to her instead of watching where he was going.

“Fuck!” He picked himself up from the ground, rubbing his knee.

“Ouch,” said Elsie.

“No, I’m fine. Fine!”

“It came out of
nowhere
, didn’t it?”

I glanced over quickly, but her face was clear.

The Saturn’s hood was warm. Dave nodded, already stooping to look closely at the driver’s-side lock.

“Maybe scratched, maybe not,” he said. “They could of just slim-jimmed it.”

“I think I parked here,” said Elsie. “This same spot. I usually do.” She crossed her arms, the cigarette still held in perfect equipoise. “But you boys seem to be saying someone took it for a
ride
this morning. While I was working.”

“Can you let me in?” I asked. She nodded. The keys were in a pocket deep in the smock’s waist, and yes, I watched their extraction quite closely. Just like Dave.

“Here you go.” Elsie swung the door open and made a slight, perfectly timed voilà gesture.

Almost ironic. There seemed to be some deep currents running under that Elite Models façade.

Inside we found french fry bags, empty cups, a dirty towel, loose shotgun shells, a videogame cartridge, three T-shirts—all dirty and one torn—and another armful or two of similar junk. It smelled of Elsie’s cigarettes. If the attackers had left any clues behind, they were impossible to find in the heaps of Brendt’s trash.

No blood on the seats.

But as I looked more closely at the stained cushions, I noticed something stuck in the gap between the seat and the hand brake. I worked it out from the crack.

“I got to get back,” Elsie said when we emerged. “Manager’s strict about breaks.”

“You’re smoking Virgina Slims?” I asked.

She paused. “Super Slims.”

I looked at the cigarette in my hand. “Not this kind?”

Elsie leaned over to look and shook her head. “That one doesn’t even have a
filter
. And what’s that writing? Not English.”

“Cyrillic, I think.” I found a dollar bill in my pocket, the only paper I had on me, and carefully folded it around the cigarette. “A clue.”

“Congratulations, Mr. Holmes.” She nodded. “I really got to go.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Dave scratched his head. “Thanks.”

“You want to tell me what’s going on? Since I have to drive this home tonight?”

I looked at Dave and shook my head a little.

“Not rightly sure,” Dave said. “Some visitors out to the shop, thought they might have been in this car.”

“Why would they do
that
?”

Because they needed another car. It was clear enough. The three men couldn’t have been local—Pittsburgh, just maybe, but the skills they demonstrated tended not to live in slow, rustic parts of the country. So they drove here, either direct or from the airport, almost certainly in one car. But for the assault they needed another. A backup. In case something went wrong—you know, like a ton of bricks falling onto your getaway vehicle.

Say you want a car for a quick in-and-out. Borrowing from someone on an eight-hour shift, from what was probably the busiest parking lot in the county?—that’s how
I’d
do it. They might even have staked out the lot, waiting until an obvious employee arrived.

Just coincidence they picked a vehicle Dave knew? Believable enough, I suppose, considering Clabbton’s small size—Dave probably had some connection to nine tenths of the people here.

Still.

“If the police come calling, don’t bother hiding anything,” I said. “Go ahead and tell them we were here.”

“Why
wouldn’t
I?” Elsie’s wide gaze stayed on mine, this time.

“Uh, just, you know.”

When she’d gone back into the Super Duper, the sunshine went with her. Literally—clouds closed over the sky again, the light dimmed, and a rising breeze blew some paper trash through weeds in the drainage ditch by the road.

“Brendt’s a
loser
.” Dave seemed in pain. “In high school, I seen the guy eat his own boogers.”

“What, you didn’t?”

“Not where anyone could watch me.”

“How would you know?”

“He works in a fucking
muffler
shop.” Apparently in the auto-repair world, you couldn’t go much lower. “I’m not sure he knows how to open a bar of soap.”

The drift wasn’t hard to catch. “Just because
you
don’t want to sleep with him doesn’t mean she can’t.”

“Yeah, but . . .
why
?” His question plaintive, almost keening. “What could she possibly see in Brendt?”

“Don’t go there.” I looked across the lot. “Come on, I need to get something.”

But as we walked to the row of stores, Dave stopped abruptly. “Hey, wait a minute.”

“What?”

“The bad guys. They borrowed the Saturn, along with the blue car. Right? But they drove back here in just the Saturn.”

“Right.” I nodded. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“How did they
leave
?”

“They probably had another car waiting. The one they drove here in originally. One big shell game.”

“Oh.” He started walking again. “I thought they might still be here.”

“Unlikely.” I looked at the teeming lot. “But who knows? Keep your eye out.”

T
he gun shop was typical: metal plates bolted over the windows, reinforced door, linoleum and exposed concrete inside. The interior was smaller than expected, because a heavy wall had been built crossways, to add an ammunition bunker in the rear. Only the psychotically fearless keep their crates of black powder out in the open.

“No blue laws?” I asked as we entered.

“Not for selling guns,” Dave said. “But you can’t
use
them—no hunting on Sunday in Pennsylvania.”

A man stood behind the counter, catalog open on the glass case, marking annotations on the page. He looked up when we entered, then twitched a smile and slapped the pen down.

“Dave, bro.” He came around to shake hands, rural-America style—a plain hearty grip, no fist bump or shoulder clasp or high punch. “How’ya?”

“Aw, you know.”

The man looked at me. “Who’s this, separated at birth?”

“My brother.”

“
Brother?!
”

Would we have to endure this every single encounter? I nodded, let Dave run through the introductions. He still sounded a little amped, talking a bit too fast, laughing a half second too long, but the owner didn’t seem to notice.

Meanwhile, I glanced over the stock. Hunting rifles, shotguns, a wide range of handguns, a few assault-style weapons locked to rings on the pegboard. Ammunition boxes lined one shelf. Cleaning kits, eye and ear protection, a rack of DVDs. Belts and camo.

I felt more secure already. Whoever had come gunning, if they returned, guns blazing, I’d be able to fire back more than just thirteen times.

“Heard you were up with Van,” the owner said to Dave.

“Been talking to him, yeah.” Dave shook his head. “Van, shit, I swear he’s got a piece of every man, woman and child in Clabbton.”

“I’m paying him.”

“He’s a good guy, but, you know.”

“Yeah.”

They caught up on other acquaintances. I remembered what it was like in New Hampshire growing up—small-town life, everyone in everyone else’s business all the time.

It was one reason I’d been so ready to leave.

“Four boxes of nine millimeter,” I said, when we finally got around to business. “Overpressure rounds.”

“What weight?”

“One twenty-four, one twenty-seven. Whatever you have.”

“Remington hollow point? That’s one forty-seven.”

“My experience, the heavier weights underperform.”

“The Federal, then. One twenty-four.”

“Sounds fine.”

“That all for you?” He snapped open a brown paper sack from under the counter and placed the boxes inside.

I’d been eyeing the armament on the wall, but this guy was clearly a legitimate dealer. I didn’t have the ID to pass a background check, and Dave was an ex-convict. Neither of us could buy anything more dangerous than bullets.

“I think so,” I said. “But let me ask you, when’s the next gun show around here?”

“Gun show?”

“Within, oh, a hundred miles?” No response. “Two hundred?”

He studied me, then looked at Dave. “What do you need?”

Dave raised his hands in a wide shrug. “You know me, I just do a little quail shooting in the fall.”

“That’s a real nice-looking bullpup,” I said. “Is it really a TAR-21?”

A pause.

“Were you in the service?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Didn’t think the Pentagon was buying Tavors.”

“Standard issue was M4, that’s right. But once we were in the field, we kind of got to choose.”

“That right?”

“A lot of the guys, they liked the carbine. Reliability, though—I heard too many stories about sand jamming them up. I got to know this Polish commando on some joint patrols, and he swore by the Tavor. After he let me try it out, I had to agree.”

“Army doesn’t let you choose your own weapon.” His face was unreadable.

“Not the Marines, either. You’re right.”

“Special Forces, now . . . I heard the rules was looser for them.”

“Could be.”

“How long were you in?”

“Eight years. U.S. military the whole time.” I’d noticed the tattoo on his forearm, long faded. “No two hundred grand a year for me, contractor bullshit, driving politicians around. Low pay and lieutenants yelling at me, all the way through.”

“I hear that.” Another pause, then back to Dave. “He’s your brother, you say?”

“Yup.”

“How come you never mentioned him before?”

“Just found each other. You knew I was a foster kid, right? Finally went through the records, and here we are.” Dave grinned. “Just look at him. Of
course
we’re related.”

What I’d forgotten was, Dave had served only eleven months—which was the full sentence; nobody gets parole anymore. The Brady law rules you out if you’ve got a one-year record. Dave scraped in just under the wire, and his background check was already on file here.

I think the guy might even have discounted us. When we left I had a large paper bag in each hand, and they were sagging from the weight of a Beretta M9, the ammunition boxes, cleaning supplies—and a well-used MP5, chambered for 9mm, so both weapons could take the same rounds. I’d paid cash, nearly emptying my wallet.

Not the Tavor, though. It was display only—the shop owner had gotten around import rules by swapping out just enough parts with domestic replacements—and even if he’d been willing to sell, I sure didn’t have another three thousand bucks for it.

“I was serious,” Dave said as we walked down the cracked pavement fronting the stores. “Skeet’s about all I done my whole life. I couldn’t handle that stuff you got there without a month of practice.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that.”

“Huh?”

I meant it. “Most people, they figure, how hard can it be? Then they shoot their best friend in the head by accident.”

“No, I—”

“These things—” I hefted the sacks—“they make it too easy. Anyone can pick one up and start putting rounds into a twenty-five-yard target. They’re probably the best engineered machines on the planet.” I considered. “Apart from Toyotas, of course.”

“
Toyotas?
”

“It’s good to recognize your limitations, that’s all.” I tipped my head. “Mine are cars, by the way.”

When we turned the corner, Dave stopped short with a grunt, and I almost ran into him.

A police cruiser was pulled alongside the Charger, and a tall officer stood in front of it, arms crossed, waiting for us.

—

“Dave.” The officer’s uniform was tucked and neat, the Sam Browne belt worn from use but polished clean. His sidearm—a 1911 maybe, the holster flap covered it over—draped a leather lanyard in a neat loop. “Been looking for you.”

“What’s up, Chief?” Dave didn’t sound the least bit surprised or nervous.

Had to say I was impressed.

“Who’s this?” Looking at me.

“My brother. Never knew I had one!—tracked him down through the registry, and he came to visit. Silas, this is Gator.”

Of course. Who else? I shifted the paper bags and we shook hands.

“Gator and I, we used to run into each other on the football field,” Dave said.

He seemed to know everyone. Memory lane lasted another minute, which was good, because it allowed me to study the chief of police—but not good, because it allowed him to study me.

Satisfying neither of us, naturally.

“Bad news,” the chief said. “You had an explosion out at your shop.”

“What? No way!” Dave’s act was actually convincing. “What happened?”

“Where have you been the last hour or so?”

“Around town. Silas came up this morning, we, you know, sat around a while, talking.” He hesitated. “I had a beer, but you know me—only one. Then I wanted to show him around, and we ended up here to pick up a few things.”

He indicated the paper bags in my hands with a slight wave of one hand. Incredible.

Gator looked at the Charger. “Seems like you stopped right in the middle of a waxing job.”

“Just letting it cure before buffing.” Dave made a face. “I won’t deny it looks like shit. But the coating stays on better.”

“Uh-huh.” He switched to me. “You help with that? Putting on the turtle wax?”

It felt like a trick question. “Uh, no. I just watched.”

He didn’t respond, just waited. We stood in silence long enough it started to feel uncomfortable.

“Someone called in a fire,” the chief said finally. “But that was the least of it. Looks like a truck crashed into two cars, and something blew up. I’m sorry, Dave—the place is a goner.”

“Blew
up
?”

I decided I’d better step in before Dave went for an Oscar. “I left my rental car there. Parked right out front. A Malibu. You said there was an accident?”

“I hope you bought the insurance.” He pronounced it with an accent on the first syllable:
in-
surance.

“Aw, shoot.”

“You mind if I look at your license, Silas?”

Another long moment.

As I mentioned, half my life is on the grid, perfectly normal, perfectly correct. The other half . . . not so much. “Silas” is the first half, and he’s got a whole legitimate paper trail: ID, bank account, tax returns, rent checks, you name it. Even a few credit cards. Hell, the government has my fingerprints and DNA—and the Pentagon, for all its wasteful incompetence in so many areas, might not have lost them yet.

But according to Zeke, the firewall had been compromised. Bad guys were at my apartment—
Silas
’s apartment. The dam was breached.

I didn’t want to give the chief a foothold. I was within my rights—you never
have
to tell the cops anything. But of course I couldn’t refuse.

He studied the license briefly, then pulled out his cellphone and took a picture of it.

“New York City, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Like it?” He smiled, sort of. “Too crowded and noisy for me.”

“No one’s ever blown up my car there.”

“Good point.”

The discussion ran aground. Obviously, the chief wasn’t telling us everything he must have seen, hoping for a slip. But it would be remarkably stupid for Dave to destroy his shop, his livelihood, and several other vehicles—and then go shopping at the Super Duper. So we weren’t exactly suspects, either. He just didn’t know what was going on, and he really didn’t like that.

“Call your insurance agent,” he said to Dave when we were done. “And you might have to find another place to stay.”

Driving away, I looked back and saw him still standing there, arms crossed again, watching us go. Dave demonstrated an uncharacteristic respect for traffic law, stopping to signal his turn at the parking lot exit, waiting for a long break in traffic, and turning slowly into the road before moving off at about twenty miles an hour.

“You’re going the wrong way,” I said.

“Huh?”

“What would a normal person do, if the police just told them their house was destroyed?”

“Go to a bar?”

“They’d head right over to see for themselves.”

“Oh. Sure. But do we really want to do that?”

I twisted around to look back—hard to see much, with the roll bars and the rather small rear-window glass. The Super Duper had already disappeared, sunk behind a Lukoil gas station and a bend in the road.

“Your pal Officer Friendly was surely paying attention. Now he’s curious why you’re
not
driving straight back to the shop.”

Dave gave the car some rein, picking up speed. “Maybe we’re taking Furnace Creek Road, around Bass Lake.”

I thought for a moment. “That doesn’t make sense. You’d end up in Connellsdale. It’s at least ten extra miles.”

He glanced over. “I thought you never been here before.”

“That’s right.”

“Then how—?”

“I’m good with maps.”

Because I have to be. In ten years GPS smartphones have basically obliterated the human race’s sense of direction. But I can’t use them, because it’s a two-way data flow—if Google tells me where I am, then Google knows too. And what Google knows, anyone can find out. Usually without a subpoena, or even a warrant.

Which means that I have to rely on paper maps and memory. Conveniently, Uncle Sam provided lots of training in that area—topos and artillery grids mostly, but it carries over.

Always study the terrain beforehand.

“Well, it’s too late now.”

“Yeah.” I found the license plate that had come from the attackers’ Nissan on the floor of the car and added it to one of the paper sacks, then started unpacking our Christmas presents. “Where
are
you going anyway?”

“What I was thinking was . . . I thought I’d circle around for ten minutes, give Gator time to clear out, and go back to the supermarket.”

“Oh, for—that’s stupid.” I pulled the Beretta out of its box, the cool comforting weight of metal in my hand. With a gun cloth spread on my lap I started to strip it down.

“What?”

“She’s Brendt’s girlfriend. She’s been living with him for months. Brendt’s your friend too, for that matter.”

“Naw. She’s just with him for his car.”

“What?”

“You saw her. Hell, a woman like that? And Brendt? There’s no way she’d—I mean, for her to voluntarily, like, it’d be motherfucking
end
times. The earth cracking open and flaming swords and hordes of angels cleansing the earth.”

I paused, putting down the brass rod and brush I’d been screwing together, and looked at him. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Her and Brendt—that’s just
wrong
.”

Okay, here’s what I was struggling with. On the one hand, it was clear that the attackers were after me—Dave was just a bystander, standing in the way when the Legion of Doom decided my time was up. So his shop, the police, God knows what other trouble down the road, it was all my fault. My responsibility. I couldn’t just toss him to the wolves.

On the other hand, Dave’s approach to the world was, well, “oblivious” comes to mind, and what was I supposed to do? Fix every broken-winged bird in the world? Anyway, he’d probably be safer once I was gone, trailing the hounds in some opposite direction.

The car bumped over a railroad crossing, Dave doing exactly what he was supposed to: stop, look both ways, continue.