Superhero (2 page)

“Wait,” the bartender said, “I’ll check.”

He went to the back room, leaving Jack standing among the tables. Jack glanced around. Jose nursed a beer in the corner. Three other men were spread out along the walls. Drunk, with several empty cans and bottles on their tables.

The bartender came back and whistled to get Jack’s attention. He motioned with his head, and Jack walked around the bar and followed him into the back room. Stairs led down to a dark basement, and as they began to descend, Jack wished he had his firearm with him. He would be searched before the meeting and couldn’t risk bringing one.

The basement was one large room with a steel door on the far end. The bartender walked to the steel door and opened it, motioning for Jack to go through.

Past the door was another room. It was carpeted, unlike the rest of the bar, and filled with leather couches and sofas, mirrors, bear-skin rugs, and flatscreens. Behind an oak desk sat Emilio Cortaban. He wore a gray suit with a black V-neck shirt underneath, his Italian loafers on the floor and his sockless feet up on the desk. On a sofa in the corner, a woman in a G-string and nothing else smoked methamphetamine out of a glass pipe.

“Mr. Daniels,” Emilio said, his English with only the slightest hint of his Hispanic origins, “I’m glad you came.”

“Didn’t sound like I had much of a choice,” Jack said. “You bid double everyone else.”

“I know what I want. Why play around when you don’t have to?” He paused for a moment. “So, you have all the product?”

“We’re not talking product until I see the money.”

Emilio held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Easy, we’re all friends here,” he said with a big smile. He looked to the woman on the couch, and she stood and walked into an adjacent room through a door that had soft, black padding on it. She came back out with a suitcase and laid it on the desk. Emilio opened it, revealing one million in unmarked, small bills. “See, I am a man of my word, Mr. Daniels.”

Jack ran his hand over the cash and then placed the gym bag down next to it. The woman opened it and went through the entire bag, weighing each wrapped brick of cocaine in her hand before moving on to the next one. When she was through she nodded to Emilio and sat back down on the couch.

“Thirty kilos,” he said, “in one day. How did you say you were able to do that again?”

“It wasn’t one day,” Jack said. “I had the product already.”

“Really? Because the men I had following you said that you left your house this morning and met someone who gave you this gym bag.”

Jack froze. They’d been careful. They doubled back twice to avoid any tails. They met in a location at the mouth of a canyon up a trail. No one could’ve followed him.

“That’s impossible,” Jack said.

“That I had men following you? What other possibility could there be? And by the way, the name Jack Daniels was not a very good cover. We have such whiskey here as well.”

Jack froze.
Jose
, he thought. No one had been on their tail. He would have noticed.

There were footsteps behind him and he turned to see his partner standing there, his gun in his hand.

“Oh, yes,” Emilio said, “your partner. Yes, that was one other possibility.”

Jack stared at Jose. “Why would you do this?”

“Why?” Emilio said. “Because the DEA pays shit. How much did you tell me you make, Jose?” Jose didn’t respond. “Forty-three thousand per year I think.” Emilio shook his head. “Such a shame. It is an important job you know.”

“I’m a senior agent,” Jack said, “if you kill me they will never stop until they hunt you down.”

“That’s probably true. Maybe. Perhaps you place too much faith in how much government values their employees. Regardless, that won’t be an issue. Will it, Jose?”

Jose said, “It was such a tragedy. My partner was drinking a lot. I tried to stop him but he said he’d been doing it for years and was fine. Then he drove home one night from a bar and crashed into the canyon. There wasn’t much left of the body, and you know Mexico, they didn’t preserve it. There’s an unmarked grave somewhere in Juarez, though. I’m sure we can check with the officials and eventually get it back in the States for a burial.”

Emilio smirked. “Sorry, amigo. Your ride ends here.” He looked to the bartender standing by the door.

The bartender walked behind Jack and pushed a handgun into his ribs. “Follow me.”

Jack didn’t move and didn’t take his eyes off Emilio. “You’re making a mistake.”

He chuckled. “Take him outside and shoot him in the balls.”

The gun pressed harder into his ribs. Jack held up his hands in surrender and then pivoted like he was turning to walk out the door. Instead, he spun with his forearm behind him, knocking the gun away from his body. He grabbed it and twisted over, the gun resting on his shoulder as he used the bartender’s finger to pull the trigger and put a round in Emilio’s head.

Pushing the arm over his head, Jack brought the elbow down over his shoulder with such force it snapped and the back of the bartender’s hand was touching Jack’s chest. The woman jumped off the couch and ran at Jack, clawing at his face. She kicked and slammed her heel into his nose. She came at him again and he spun and blocked the kick with the bartender’s face and ducked low as Jose fired a round and missed, grazing his shoulder.

Jack held the bartender in front of him as a shield and Jose fired again, the round going into the bartender’s chest as Jack blocked and parried the woman’s blows. She was screaming with each blow, her form perfect as she thrust lightning fast kick after kick.

Jack let go of the bartender and brushed aside a kick as he spun heel first into the woman’s leg, a bit of bone forcing its way out of the back of her knee.

She crumpled to the ground, and Jack lifted the bartender and pushed him into Jose as he sprinted behind him and got ahold of Jose’s firing arm. He twisted the gun upward while Jose’s finger was still in the trigger guard. The finger broke, nearly tearing away from the hand. Jose screamed and Jack thrust his palm into his chin, causing him to fly back into the wall as the woman was on her feet.

She went to the desk and pulled out a machete. She screamed like a banshee as she hobbled toward him, dragging her useless leg behind her, swinging wildly with the blade, missing him by inches. He brushed the blade aside and punched her throat before hooking into her jaw and thrusting the fingers of his other hand into her eye. Her head snapped back and he stomped on the instep of her foot, breaking it and holding her in place. Jack punched her again and again with short, quick rabbit punches until her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed. He turned and looked at his partner, who had pulled out the revolver he kept in a holster on his ankle. The gun he had walked in with had flown out of his hand and lay on the floor between them.

“Money?” Jack said. “You did this for money?”

“You’re rich, Jack. Money doesn’t mean to you what it does to the rest of us. I wasn’t born into wealth so I gotta scrape and fight for every penny. How much you worth, Jack? A hundred million? Two? Three? Do you even know how much money you have?”

“You’ve betrayed everything we’ve ever done. Everything we bled for.”

“What have we bled for?” Jose said, his voice rising. “Getting some meth and pot off the streets? Who gives a shit, Jack? Every junkie in every city in America knows where to score. We bust one distributor and ten more come up to take his place. What we do doesn’t matter. I can’t believe you’ve never seen that.”

“You’re coming back with me,” Jack said. “You’re coming back with me and you’re turning yourself in. I’m not looking courts and jail, Jose. But you can’t carry a badge anymore.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, lifting the revolver.

“It doesn’t need to end like this.”

“We’re useless, Jack. We’re cogs in a system that’s trying to outlaw something that people want. It’s never worked. It can’t work. One day all the drugs anybody wants are going to be legal and they’ll look back and laugh at us, Jack. They’ll look at us like they look at Prohibition agents. They’ll laugh.”

“Who cares if they laugh? It’s our job.”

“Not anymore it’s not.” He aimed the revolver at Jack’s head.

“No, please. Don’t do this.”

“Goodbye, Jack.”

“Jose, no. No!”

The revolver fired but Jack wasn’t in front of it anymore. He was rolling on the ground toward the 9mm lying five feet away from him. He rolled over the weapon, picking it up with his right hand and fired before he had even straightened out. He came up on one knee, the weapon in front of him aimed at Jose’s heart.

Jose didn’t move. He looked at Jack, a slight smile on his lips as the small trail of blood flowed out of the hole in his forehead and down his nose, dripping onto the floor. He fell to his knees and then forward onto his face.

Jack checked the man’s pulse though he already knew it was too late. He tucked the gun away and stood, looking at the drugs and cash piled on the desk. With the gold lighter on the desk next to a package of imported cigarettes Jack lit the bills on fire. The flames quickly devoured the money and the gym bag and spread to the wooden desk and carpet.

Jack lifted his partner as flames engulfed the room. He walked him out and up the stairs leading outside.

The bar’s patrons stayed where they were but looked at him and the body he was carrying. “This place is going to burn down,” he said. “Este lugar se va a quemar.” The men snapped out of their stupors and collected their beers before running outside. Jack followed when they were all out.

He found a spot a few dozen feet away from the bar and dug a hole with his hands in the soft dirt. It was only a foot or so deep but he got it wide and placed Jose’s body inside. He covered him with dirt as he looked over and saw the flames licking the walls of the bar, sliding up to the roof. The bureau would never learn of his betrayal. He’d be given the honors of a fallen hero and his family wouldn’t know any different. Jack owed him at least that.

He got into his car, and drove off, glancing only once in his rearview to see the bar was now nothing more than a pillar of smoke and fire.

CHAPTER 2

Jack Kane sat in the waiting room just outside the Administrator for Special Operations’ Office at the Drug Enforcement Agency’s bureau in Washington, DC. The office was plush but the furniture’s imitation leather had been marked up by a pen or pencil; something a child might do. The secretary was an older woman who spoke to Jack like he was her employee. Every time he was here, she would make him wait longer that was actually necessary. He thought it was because he once knocked over a wand she had on her desk. Some memento from a Harry Potter convention.

After a half hour she told him the administrator was ready for him.

Behind his desk, Mathew Kolburg laughed on the phone. Jack sat down across from him and waited patiently until he finished speaking.

“Yeah,” Kolburg laughed, “yeah I knew she was good to go. No she came over once when I threw that pool party. Katherine nearly shit herself when she found out. Yeah…” He looked up at Jack like he was just noticing him. “I got someone here. Lemme call you back in a minute…uh huh…uh huh…okay, just gimme five. All right, bye.” Kolburg hung up and leaned back in his seat.

“Special Agent Kane, it’s good to see you back. That was some fine work south of the border.”

Jack couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “Are you being serious, Matt?”

“Hell yes I’m being serious. That sonofabitch Emilio was smuggling anything he could get his hands on and his network was growing. Taking him out saved us some serious headache.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Yeah,” he said unconvincingly.

“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t come here to discuss that. I came to tell you I quit.”

Kolburg leaned forward now, the grin gone from him face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m not going to be doing this anymore. I quit, Matt.”

“You can’t quit. You know how much training and expense goes into a covert operative? We need you here. Besides, you’ve been doing this too long. You wouldn’t know what to do in polite society anymore.”

“So I hang with gangsters and now I’m a gangster, is that it?”

“You’re twisting my words.”

“No, I don’t think so. But like I said, it doesn’t matter. I’ve made up my mind.”

Panic gripped Kolburg’s face. “Jack, we’re making progress.”

“Progress? Progress for what? Busting cancer patients at medicinal marijuana clinics? Arresting drug dealers that the Mexican government lets free the next day? If this is a war, Matt, we’re losing. We may have already lost.”

Kolburg slammed his fist into the desk. “You sonofabitch, you can’t quit! You’ll never work here again, you hear me? You think ‘cause you’re rich, the world owes you something, Kane? The world don’t owe you anything.”

Jack stood up. “Take care of yourself.”

As he walked out of the office, he heard a string of profanities behind him. The secretary looked at him but didn’t say anything as he walked up to her desk. He stared down at her and she swallowed hard, seeing the malicious grin he had on his face.

Jack reached down and took the wand off her desk. He snapped it in half and then calmly placed it back on the desk before walking out of the building.

CHAPTER 3

William Yates pulled up in his Lincoln and parked just outside the yellow police tape. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror and noticed the gray on his temples. He was old enough now that he was feeling the tug of the way things used to be.

The bank appeared normal from the outside and it always struck him how routine a place could look after going through something evil. He thought that somehow its appearance should change too.

He stepped out of the cruiser and walked over. A uniformed officer stood there, keeping the crowd of onlookers at bay, and he nodded to William as he ducked under the tape.

“Morning, Detective,” the officer said.

“Morning.”