Twisted Mercy (Red Team Book 4) (13 page)

* * *

Max sat in Pete’s favorite booth the next afternoon as he waited for the club’s president to emerge from his heroin haze long enough to let him know what King thought of his new role as sergeant-at-arms. If King had contacted Pete last night, he’d done so before Max had installed the new app on his phone—otherwise, Greer would have checked in with an update.

Some of Pete’s groupies tried to join Max, but he glared them away. He sipped his bottled beer, the only thing safe to consume in the clubhouse. His mind drifted to Hope, who was over at the garage, fixing any bike the guys brought her. At least one thing about her was true: she was a helluva mechanic.
 

Every guy who brought her a bike was asked to do some work on her house. Pike had fixed her electricity, but other guys had tuned up the plumbing, replaced her water heater, brought her a fresh mattress, provided furniture or linens, or cleaned a room. In a very short time, she’d be able to move in there.
 

Once she moved from her campsite on his front yard to the wrench’s house, he’d be spared her grating morning cheerfulness when she came in to make breakfast. But he’d also miss the sweet scent that lingered in his small cabin after her showers. And she’d be alone and unsupervised on the WKB compound—an exposure he wasn’t happy with, since he still didn’t know what she was up to.

Max sipped his beer, turning his mind to Pete. The club president’s nights were getting longer and days shorter as his addiction consumed ever more of him. Almost an hour passed before Pete came down the backstairs and entered the clubhouse. A few conversations stopped as the boss entered, but most of the guys knew to not stare or cause him discomfort—at least, not if they wanted to continue pulling air.
 

Pete looked like hell. He’d been losing weight since Max had first been on this assignment. Max watched how the others responded to their leader when Pete wasn’t looking; it wasn’t good.
 

If the president couldn’t pull his shit together, there’d be another power play. Soon. While the prez had an extensive ring of hang-arounds and prospects who protected him here on the compound, if he went offsite in his current condition, any number of unfortunate accidents could befall him—all of which would appear to be natural causes.

Maybe that was what King was going for.

“Just keep your fucking mouth shut,” Pete snarled as he slumped into the opposite seat. Max was leaning against the booth back, his arms spread across the top. He lifted a hand, palm out, offering the silent signal as confirmation he’d heard the command.
 

A guy came out from behind the bar with a plate of something that looked as if it had been scraped off the clubhouse kitchen floor. Smelled like it, too. Eggs, bacon, and home fries. Yum. At least the coffee smelled like coffee. Max sat silently while Pete consumed half his plate and all of his coffee. Pete finally looked up, giving him permission to speak.

“I just want to know one thing,” Max said. “Is the club fucked?”

Pete stared at him for a long minute. “Outside.”
 

He got up from the table and went straight through the back door the hang-around opened for them. Max followed him out into the bright light and sweltering day. The sun heated his vest and the cotton of his tee.
 

If it’d been up to him, he would have spread his arms wide and lifted his face and let the sun’s rays burn off the stink of the work he did there.
In the world where humans lived, the sky was blue, the clouds were white, and the sun was yellow. And warm.
He’d taken the simplest things for granted before Callum. Before the Red Team.

“King approved your new position.” They walked in a direction they hadn’t taken before on their chats. Toward the big warehouse at the corner of the compound.

“Great. Where are we going?”

“Get you processed. You’ve got a W-2 to sign, and we need to add you to the security protocols.”

“What’s my percentage?”

Pete didn’t break stride. “One and a half percent. Non-negotiable. Paid annually in December.”

“It’ll do for a start.” He gripped Pete’s arm before they neared the warehouse. “So what about my question? Is the club fucked?”

Pete sighed. He looked tired. Or better yet, haunted. “I may be. Hatchet could be. You too, maybe. But the club? It’s like a cockroach. A nuclear war couldn’t end the WKB. Not now, anyway.” He continued on to the warehouse, leaving Max to ponder his cryptic statement.
 

Pete opened the steel door to the warehouse. Inside, the cavernous building was dark. Lights popped on as they entered, illuminating rows and rows of goods—foodstuffs, tools, medical supplies.
 

Max repositioned his sunglasses, hooking them on the collar of his tee.
 

Pete reached behind a row of cardboard boxes on a large steel shelf stocked with household cleaning supplies. He pressed his hand to a biometric panel. The shelf, and the wall behind it, moved out a few inches, then slid to the right, revealing a freight elevator large enough for a forklift to navigate comfortably.

“What’s this?” Max asked, though of course he knew—it was the very thing he’d been searching for.

“The WKB compound sits on top of a converted missile silo.”

“You’re kidding me. Did the club move here because of this place?”

Pete shook his head. “No idea. It was before my time. But this doesn’t belong to the club. It’s King’s.”
 

“So it’s not the WKB who hired me, but King?”

“Bingo.” He punched the button for the second floor. When the doors opened, Max was surprised at the orderliness of the space. Half a dozen gray cubicles divided the open space. At the far end, a wall separated an office and meeting room from the cubbies. The floor, walls, and ceilings were white. And clean. None of the filth and chaos of the WKB world above showed in the space down here. No one would ever expect to find this pristine environment inside the WKB compound.

The workers wore blue polo shirts with their logo and company name, Syadne Tech, embroidered on them. They had Max sign the standard set of employment papers, then took his finger and palm prints for the company’s biometric systems. Having been a member of the Red Team, and now an employee of Owen’s Tremaine Industries, Max knew his biometrics only showed up in the system owned by the bogus company he’d supposedly worked for in Alaska. If his fingerprints or alias were used in a search of government systems, nothing unexpected would be found. But Greer would be notified that such a search had been made.
 

After Max was added to the systems, Pete led him back to the waiting elevator.
 

“I want the full tour. What’s on the other floors?”

The president stood frozen in place, his hand hovering over the call buttons. “You don’t need to know.”

“Yeah, I need to know. They just gave me access to those areas.”

Pete shook his head. “Seriously. It ain’t worth it. You can do what you need to do all above ground. The less you’re in King’s world, the better.”

“Cut the drama queen act, Pete. You made me sergeant-at-arms. There isn’t a thing that happens here that I shouldn’t know about.”

Pete scrunched his face up and shook his head. He pounded the button for the ninth floor down. “It’s your neck. You want the keys to paradise? You can have ’em. King’s going to kill me anyway. Or maybe I’ll do it for him one night.” He shrugged. “Maybe he’ll send you to do it.”

“Do what?”

“Kill me.”

Max laughed. “I’m beginning to believe King’s a mass hallucination. No one’s seen him. No one would even know if they had seen him. Maybe
I’m
King.”

Pete went pale. “You’re our sergeant-at-arms. We’ll go with that if King ever asks.”

“Sure. Let’s go with that.” The elevator was descending.

“If it is you, just promise to do it fast.”

Max didn’t take his eyes off the changing floor indicator. “No one’s coming for you. King’s not going to risk further destabilizing his sweet setup here.”

Pete moved fast, drawing his 9mm from his waist holster and aiming it at Max. Max sighed, then caught Pete’s hand and twisted, taking the pistol from him. He pressed the barrel up under the soft flesh of the prez’s chin. “Don’t ever pull your gun on me.”

“I said promise me,” Pete hissed between his clenched teeth. “Promise, if it’s you, you’ll do it fast. I want to be dead before…before anything else happens to me.” Max held him pinned against the elevator wall. Pete wasn’t afraid of him, but of the threat that rode his heels.

“Jesus. I fucking promise. Chill, okay?”
 

The door opened, revealing a wide foyer. It was brightly lit and glossy white, like the administrative suite above. Three doors led out of the space, one was marked with an “Exit” sign above the door and had a sign on the door that said “Staircase.”
 

“Okay. So what’s behind doors number one and two?” Max asked. Both had biometric panels.
 

“That one”—Pete nodded toward the heavy steel door in front of them—“leads to unrenovated areas of the silo. Your access won’t get you through there. It’s strictly off limits. The other goes to a…warehouse of sorts.”

“You mean there’s more to this silo than this tower?”

Pete looked at him. “A lot more, but like I said, the less you’re in King’s world the better for you, if you want to survive this sergeant-at-arms gig.”

Pete opened the door to the warehouse. Lights flickered on in the sterile white space, illuminating a dozen steel tables with wide drawers. Each table had a few rolling stools. Sitting at one end of each table were large plastic containers of white powder.

Max looked at Pete. “This is a cutting room. I thought we were sending the hell dust out pure.”

“We are—to some distributors. We’re both a retailer and a wholesaler.” Pete went over to a thermostat panel and pressed a few buttons. A wall retracted and shifted to the side, exposing a vault of shelves packed with plastic wrapped bars of white. Heroin. Pure and unprocessed. Max looked around the room, seeing a thermostat on each wall.
 

Fuck. Me.
If all the panels held a similar quantity, there could be a billion dollars in dope here in the silo.

“The floors above this are dedicated to black tar heroin, cocaine, and lastly to various pharmaceuticals and candy-ass party drugs like Molly and other ecstasy derivatives. You have access to these storage rooms, but not to the vaults themselves. We have a shipment out every few weeks. Protocols for that are tight, as you saw last night. We receive shipments at more random intervals, but you’ll be involved with those as well. As sergeant-at-arms, you’re responsible for making sure our carriers are able to load and unload safely.”

“What’s on the other floors?”

“Dorms. Kitchen and lunchroom. Offices, which you saw. Meeting rooms. The tenth floor down is the engine room.”

“How are people getting in and out? I don’t see workers going across the compound.”

“There aren’t many. Maybe ten in all. They take the drive from Holbrook’s old house, accessing the compound from the west. They park behind the warehouse.”

Max had Pete show him each of the other floors on their way back to the surface. The silo made an impressive subterranean keep, its power usage camouflaged by the compound above.

* * *

“Greer, read me?” Max radioed in after his tour. He was taking a ride on his bike, using the comm unit in his helmet.

“Go ahead.”

“I just finished the tour.” He told Greer what he’d seen and that he’d been processed into King’s company. “I need to work with you to get me into the contraband vaults. I want to tag everything while I can. The sooner the better.”

“You got enough tags?”

“Plenty. I’m only putting them on the pallets.”

“Then let’s do it tonight. I’m already intercepting their security protocols. Any access request comes to me first. I can get you in and erase your access before they notice. If they have a staffer on guard duty doing a walkabout, I’ll ring the extension for the room you’re in. Our comm won’t work down there.”

“Sounds good. I’ll call you when I’m ready to hit it.” Max thought of something else. “There’s a door on the ninth level that leads out to the rest of the missile complex. Take a look at the logs and let me know who’s been going through there.”

“Will do.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Hatchet climbed halfway up the rock face, heading for the narrow trail that led to the old mine tunnels abutting the silo complex. The forests in the Medicine Bow Mountains didn’t have a lot of underbrush. Instead they were filled with rocky ridges and sheer surfaces that made hiking difficult. He looked back to see if the two bikers from the eastern region were behind him. JT and Mort sent him a baleful glare. They’d trekked a mile in from where they’d left their vehicles down at the end of the Forest Service road. The guys’ faces showed their diminishing belief in him.
 

“We’re almost there,” he reassured them, hoping they didn’t shoot him before they reached the entrance to the tunnels below. He was taking them the long way around. He didn’t want it to be easy for them to find their way back without him. The mineshaft entrance was only about a half mile from the Forest Service road, but Hatchet was guiding them in over a circuitous three-mile trek.

Mort paused to catch his breath. They were at an altitude of over eight thousand feet. The air was thin, which made breathing difficult for the flatlanders. “JT, this damn well better be worth it,” Mort grumbled.

JT looked at Hatchet. “If it isn’t, there’s certainly plenty of land to hide a body.”
 

“We’re almost halfway. Believe me, it’s worth it. What I’m going to show you in the tunnel is going to change your world,” Hatchet assured them.

“Well, if it doesn’t, it’s certainly going to change yours,” JT said.

They hiked across the rough terrain for another hour. When they were practically standing on top of the hidden entry, Hatchet suggested they stop and rest. JT took a long draw from his bottle of water. He nodded almost imperceptibly to Mort, who pulled a GLOCK from his back holster.