Dead Six

Chapter 8:

The Intern

LORENZO

April 16

The house was too quiet.

I should have known something was wrong as soon as I saw the compound’s front gate left open. After doing a quick pass by, we had modified the plan. Carl had parked a klick down the road, and I had snuck up on the isolated compound, consisting of a single large house surrounded by a ten-foot brick wall, on foot. It had been purchased by Al Falah as a safe house for his associates.

Approaching as quietly as possible, I had paused and scanned the gate repeatedly. The plan had been for both of us to sneak in, kill Adar and anybody else there as quickly as possible, grab the box, and get the hell out, but now that situation looked fishy. So I’d snuck in to take a quick peek. I was wearing body armor, covered with ammo and explosives, and had a short AR-15 carbine, and even weighed down that much I was far stealthier than most. Not trying to brag, but I would have made a damn good ninja.

The compound had appeared utterly dead, so I had sprinted right up to the door. Lights were on but nobody was home. Sweeping inside, I paused as I saw the first perforated corpse. “Somebody beat us to it,” I said into the radio as I surveyed the destruction in the living room. Brass casings rolled underfoot and the room stank of the recently dead.

“What do you mean?” Carl’s voice said in my ear.

“I mean that the guards are dead and the place is shot to hell. Somebody’s been here already.”

“Did they get the box? If those no-good thieves got the box, I swear I’m gonna—“

“Dude, we are no-good thieves. Chill.” I moved quickly through the room, careful not to step in any of the spreading puddles. Empty extended Glock magazines were on the carpet. Could this be the work of the same hitters that had screwed up Phase One?

I kept my rifle up as I moved through the house. It was dead silent, but there could still be somebody here.

“I bet it was those guys that almost botched the Falah job.” There was a single body half in the bathroom with a cloverleaf of bullet holes in his chest. I approached the bedroom door quietly, my suppressed 5.56 carbine at the ready, the red dot of the Aimpoint sight floating just under my vision, though I had a sneaky feeling that Adar wasn’t going to be a problem. The bedroom door slowly swung open. Adar was obviously dead. There was a second form under a blood-drenched sheet. I lifted it slowly.

I must have made some sort of strange noise into the radio.

“Lorenzo? What is it? Are you okay?”

“Better than the residents. It’s a bloodbath in here.” I hadn’t seen anything like this since Chechnya. That girl had been mutilated, dissected. Somebody had shot the hell out of Adar, too. I did a quick once over of the room, discovering that the stories about the Butcher of Zubara hadn’t been exaggerated. “Carl, Adar cut this girl . . . like . . . I don’t know what.”

“No time for that. Find that box. Hurry before somebody else shows up.”

Blood was everywhere. Adar hadn’t just been dropped, he’d been methodically taken apart. There was a blood-stained Ace of Spades playing card left on the perforated corpse. What the hell? Then I noticed a discarded revolver speed loader, five spent cases, and a single live .44 magnum cartridge. I picked up the round and examined it.

“Clint Eastwood was here.”

“Huh?” Carl responded. “Quit screwing around.”

Shoving the cartridge into my pocket, I kept searching. The safe had been cleaned out, Adar’s belongings had been rifled through, and I felt a sinking feeling in my gut that what we had come for was already gone.

The shooters had missed something.

“One second.” Having years of experience looking for bugs and planting them, I knew that most people would have missed Adar’s hidden camera. Apparently he liked to record his torture sessions. I followed the wire back behind the bed and found the recorder. It was still running. Maybe this would tell me who our mystery shooters were. I took the DVD out of the machine and hurried back down the stairs.

“I can’t find the damn box.”

Carl swore over the radio again. “Someone took it already, you think?”

“I think so. I’m leaving the duplicate anyway. Odds are whoever took it doesn’t know what it’s for, but the prince’s people have to think it’s been destroyed.” I took a small box from a pouch in my armor. It had been carved to very exacting specifications from some very specific pieces of wood. Pressure on some hidden indentations caused the intricate box to slide open, revealing the delicate key inside. I pulled the duplicate out and held it up to the light. This part had been trickier, since there were no recorded measurements for the actual device, but I was about to melt it into slag anyway, so it didn’t really matter. I twisted the base of the key, and dozens of tiny pins moved freely down the sides of the shaft. I placed it in the safe and started setting the bomb.

The incendiary device would immolate the entire room, burning a hole through the floor in seconds. This whole house would be nothing but ash and bones in a matter of minutes, and it was all so Adar’s extended family would think his box was toast. I set the timer for five minutes. Plenty of time to be down the road.

“Hurry up,” Carl said. “I’m getting nervous.”

“I know,” I answered, already heading for the exit, knowing with dread certainty that the box had probably been taken from the upstairs safe by the shooters. I made sure the DVD was still in place. Those shooters had my box, and I had to get it back, no matter what.

“Lorenzo, you better hurry.”

“What?”

“Two cars full of bad guys pulling into the compound. Run!”

I ran downstairs and crouched near the rear exit. The door was open, and the arriving headlights illuminated the back wall of the compound. The cars pulled to a stop and doors opened. Someone began to sing, drunken and off key. Adar must have been planning a homecoming party, and more guests had just arrived.

Not wanting to find out what kind of people a terrorist invited to a torture party, I tried to think of a way out, something, anything. If I made it to the back wall, I would surely be spotted before I could scale it. I could try to Rambo my way out, but from the noises coming from the yard, there were several bad guys.

“Carl, how many we got?”

“Couldn’t tell. It was too dark when they pulled in. Want me to come in shooting?”

“Hold on that. I’ve got an idea.” I moved quickly back into the home. The doorbell rang, long and raspy, and someone on the other side laughed. I had seen the fuse box in my search. The bell continued, the user obviously becoming frustrated. I pulled my pack off, removed my night-vision monocular, and strapped it onto my head. In another pouch was a small Semtex charge, and I squished it against the circuit breakers.

The ringing quit, and loud knocking started. The laughter was gone, and now voices called out with some concern. The radio initiator blinked green in my hand, we had contact. The charge would only kill the lights in the house, but hopefully this would be enough of an edge. I moved back toward the side entrance.

Now they were pounding on the front door. I pulled a frag from one of the MOLLE pouches on my armor and, staying low so as to not blot out the light coming through the peep hole, slid up to the door. I pulled the pin but carefully kept the spoon down until it was wedged tightly against the door’s base plate. The grenade had a five-second fuse, and it would be one heck of a surprise for our party guests. It’s those little touches that show you care.

Back toward the side door now. The pounding turned to kicking. I kept moving, wanting to get some space between me and that frag. The side door was in view, the rear wall of the compound visible through the portal, still illuminated in the headlights. A shadow moved on the back porch: a man with a gun. They were coming. I flipped down the monocular, and the view for one eye turned a pixilated green.

“Adar!” one of the men on the back porch shouted. The front door cracked and splintered on its hinges.

“Hide-and-seek time.” I took a deep breath and mashed the initiator.

There was a bang as the house plunged into darkness. My world was now a super illuminated green. I raised the AR to my shoulder, realized that I had not turned down the Aimpoint for night vision use as the dot appeared blindingly fuzzy, cursed under my breath, turned the knob to dial it down, and moved my hand back to the grip. Behind me the front door crashed open.

Five.

A man in a suit and headdress moved through the rear entrance into my sight, blinking stupidly, pistol held before him like a talisman to ward off evil.

Four.

I flipped the selector to semi and pulled the trigger twice, the dot of the Aimpoint barely moving as it bounced across his torso. The suppressor was deadly silent, but each bullet still made a very audible chuff noise as it violated the speed of sound.

Three.

I moved forward, sidestepping, gun still at the ready, slicing the pie, more of the back porch swinging into view. The first man was falling, a second man was behind him, looking surprised in my pixilated world, lifting his Tokarev sideways, gangster style. The dot sight covered his face. Chuff.

Two.

There was movement behind me, the rest of Adar’s guests piling into the entryway, surprised by the darkness. A few random gunshots rang out as they attacked the shadows.

One.

The concussion of the grenade was sharp inside the structure. Even with a few walls between us I could feel the impact in my eyeballs. Gliding over the bodies of the men that I had just shot, I took the corner slowly, watching for movement. Somebody started screaming.

There were two figures standing in front of the fancy fountain, easy targets. The carbine met my shoulder, but I stopped. Only one of the targets was a man, the other was female. The man had a subgun in one hand, and a rope leading to the bound wrists of the young woman. Her head was hung down, hair covering her face. He was staring, slack jawed, at the smoking front door of Adar’s home and his dying and injured companions.

Having seen that poor girl upstairs, I just reacted. I flipped the selector to full auto. The man never knew what hit him as I stitched him from groin to neck in one burst. The bullets were tiny, but they were fast, and at this range they fragmented violently, ripping through flesh and leaving softball-sized exit wounds. He stumbled back, falling into the fountain with a crimson splash, jerking the rope and sending the girl sprawling. I dropped the mag and reloaded as I scanned for threats, trying to break the tunnel vision. Clear.

Instead of heading for the back wall, I sprinted toward the captive. She appeared to be in a state of shock, probably a young Filipina worker. I’m a killer, and a thief, and a con man, and a hired gun, but I was not a monster, and in Zubara, girls like this were treated like slaves or worse.

“Come with me,” I said in Arabic, helping the girl to her feet, then quickly switching to Tagalog. “Come with me now or these men will kill you.” She looked at me, stunned or bewildered, probably drugged and incoherent.

“Lorenzo, what’s happening?” Carl’s voice was tense.

“Pick me up at the front gate,” I replied tersely. “We need to go, lady.” I gestured with my gun in the direction to move. “Now!”

“You’re an American!” she shouted in English. “Oh, thank God!”

“Uh . . .” That was unexpected. “Yes! I’m here to rescue you . . . or something. Let’s go.”

The van barely slowed as I shoved the still-bound girl into the back and climbed in after her. The incendiary bomb detonated with a brilliant flash that crackled from every window. I slammed the door as Adar’s burning compound shrank in the distance.

VALENTINE

Fort Saradia National Historical Site

April 16

0400

Alone in my room, I sat on the floor, my back to the wall. I was still wearing my cammies. My body armor was lying on the floor next to me. The door to the balcony was open; a cool breeze drifted into the room.

On the floor next to me was Adar’s strange little box. I’d given it a half-hearted examination; it was some kind of puzzle box, made of wood, ornately carved. It looked very old. I tried for a minute to open it but quickly gave up.

I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there when I heard someone knocking on my door. I didn’t answer it. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. After a few moments, the knocking stopped, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Our trip back from Adar’s compound had been long, but I barely remembered it. We’d been debriefed by Gordon as soon as we’d returned to the compound. He, of course, had been overjoyed, especially at the intelligence we’d gathered. Tailor neglected to mention the fifty thousand dollars he’d stuffed into his backpack. I’d forgotten to turn over the puzzle box.

I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see that dead girl hanging from Adar’s ceiling. I wondered what her name had been, where she’d come from, how she’d ended up there. It reminded me so much of what happened to my mom, it hurt. My stomach was still twisted into knots, hours later.

I took another swig from the large plastic bottle in my hand. I’d managed to bum some booze from one of the other guys. I didn’t know what in the hell it was. It tasted terrible, but it was alcohol, and it was potent. It’d do. As I took another drink, my bathroom door suddenly opened. Sarah walked into my room.

“Hey,” I said, not looking up at her.

“Mike? Are you okay?” she asked, standing over me.

I raised my eyes up to hers. “Not really,” I said. I took another sip.

“What happened?” she asked, sitting on the floor next to me. She saw the bottle in my hand. “Are you drinking?”

“Yes, I am!” I said, loudly slurring my speech and saluting her with the bottle. Sarah grabbed it out of my hand. “Hey!” I protested, but she ignored me. She lifted it to her nose and made a face when she sniffed it.

“What is this stuff?”

“I was drinking that,” I said testily.

“I think you’ve had enough, Mike,” she said firmly.

“Just leave me alone, okay?” I snatched the bottle back from her.

“Mike, please, just tell me what happened. I’m here for you. Talk to me.”

“No, goddamn it, I don’t want to talk about it!” I snapped. “I just want some peace and quiet! You think all because you screwed me it gives you the right to march in here whenever the hell you want?”

Sarah huffed loudly and quickly stood up. “Look, I read the report, okay? I know what you found in there.”

I let out an obnoxious drunken snort. “Oh, do you? So you know that he cut her open, cut out her organs, and put them on his shelf like bowling trophies?”

“Oh my God,” Sarah said. We’d kind of left that part out of our report.

“So don’t barge in here and tell me I can’t have a goddamned drink!”

“I’m just trying to help you.”

“I don’t need your help!” I shouted, slamming the plastic bottle down on the concrete floor. “You’re not my damned mother! She’s been dead since I was a kid. You know what? I get by just fine.”

Sarah’s expression softened a little. “How did she die?”

“She was murdered. I came home one day and found her cut to pieces, just like that girl. My dad’s dead too. So are half my friends. You know what? I don’t care. I kill people for money. Shooting people is my job. I can handle it. I always handle it. I don’t need your help. I don’t need your pity. And I don’t need you. So just march your little ass the hell out of here and leave me alone!”

Sarah’s eyes flashed with anger. “I don’t need this. Go ahead, drink it all! Drink yourself to death if you want. I hope you choke on it!” She turned on a heel and stormed out of my room, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

A pulse of anger surged through me. I picked up the ancient puzzle box and threw it against the door as hard as I could. It crunched loudly as it hit, and fell to the floor, broken. I stared at the bathroom door, breathing heavily. I just wanted to be left alone. I just wanted Sarah to come back. I wanted another drink. I didn’t want to drink anymore.

A sickening pit formed in my stomach as I realized what I’d done. Good job, Ace, I thought. You managed to drive her away, too.

“Shut up,” I said aloud. It’s not my fault. I had a bad night. There was comfort in self-pity. I lifted the plastic bottle to my lips and began to gulp down the rest of the pungent mystery alcohol. It burned on the way down, and I thought I was going to throw up. I let the empty bottle clatter to the floor.

I slumped back against the wall and closed my eyes. The room was spinning, and it wouldn’t stop. My thoughts became even more sluggish than they were before, and it was difficult to concentrate on anything. I had a hard time remembering what I was so upset about. I drifted off to sleep.

LORENZO

The van slalomed around the corner as we headed back toward town. I bounced painfully against the wall. The girl I had rescued was sitting next to me, head flopped back on the seat, totally out. Apparently she’d been drugged by the bad guys.

“Easy, Carl, don’t get us killed.”

“Don’t you tell me easy! Plan, Lorenzo, we had a plan. Who the hell is this broad?” He swung us around a truck full of sheep, and when I say full of sheep, I mean that literally, like it was piled full with legs sticking out the top. “She was not part of the plan. I would have remembered that.”

“They were going to torture her. I couldn’t just leave her. She sounded like an American before she passed out. We can just drop her at the embassy gates and take off.”

“Is that what you think now?” He gestured out the window at the Zubaran police vehicles streaking in the direction we had come from. “Cops crawling everywhere. And you forgot, because of the mobs of angry assholes, they evacuated the embassy.”

To accentuate his point, I saw a man on the sidewalk getting the hell kicked out of him by some of the Zubaran secret police. “Okay, our place is closer. Get us off the streets.” The whole city had gone nuts.

“I’m not taking her to our place. With what we’re working on, nobody can see that.”

“Do it, Carl.” I ordered. My crew was loyal, and I seldom had to pull rank, but this was my crew, and it wasn’t a democracy. The driver swore, his beady eyes glaring at me in the rearview mirror. We reached the compound in minutes. We entered through the attached garage so no one would see us carry the girl in.

Reaper met us at the door. He had a Glock shoved in the front of his pants. “What happened out there? Police bands are screaming about some massacre. Did you get the box? Hey . . . who’s the babe?”

“Lorenzo decided he’s Batman, sneaking around at night and rescuing people,” Carl spat. I ignored him and carried the girl up the stairs and into the apartment. I laid her gently on the couch. She was still out.

“Where’s the box?” Reaper asked.

“Somebody beat us to it and whacked Adar.” I put the DVD in his hand. “The shooters are hopefully on this, and we need to figure out who they are. We need that damn box.”

“On it, chief.” He ran for his computer.

I flopped onto the couch next to the girl. My hands were starting to do the post-action shake. No matter how many times I did something like this, that part never changed. Carl sighed, folded the stock of his stubby Galil, and set it on the coffee table.

“Pretty bad in there, I guess?” he asked slowly, sitting down. We had been working together for over fifteen years now. We’d met in Africa, where he had been working as a mercenary, and we had both gotten screwed over by our respective employers. Working with me had proven more lucrative, and we’d been together ever since, through all sorts of craziness, and it still took me a moment to realize that Carl was trying to be comforting. He just wasn’t very good at it.

“I shot three of them. Took out some more with a grenade.” I shrugged. “The guys before me made a real mess.”

Carl regarded me suspiciously, wheels turning, probably wondering if I was going soft on him. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.” He gestured at the girl. “And what do we do with her now?”

I studied her for the first time. She was young. Probably in her twenties. I had thought that she was from the Philippines when I had first seen her, as most of the servant girls in Zubara were imported from there or Indonesia. They were literally a slave class. Now I wasn’t so sure. She would have been unusually tall for a Filipina and didn’t look quite like most of the servant girls I had seen here. She was snoring peacefully in a drug-addled haze. One eye was badly bruised, and it made me glad that I had shot those men.

“I couldn’t leave her. You should have seen the girl upstairs,” I said. Carl didn’t respond. Acts of mercy were few and far between in his life. I patted her down: no documents, no passport. Something caught my eye. “Check this out.” I held up her wrist. She had a gold ring on one finger.

“What’s that say?” he asked, squinting his beady eyes.

“California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo.”

“Think she stole it off a tourist, I hope?”

“I’m thinking that we’re going to need to come up with a pretty good cover story for when she wakes up.” I gestured around the room. Hundreds of pictures were tacked on the walls. Posters of Al Falah, Adar, building schematics, road maps, and miscellaneous paper littered every corner of the room. A scale model of the Phase Three target was on the coffee table, and there were at least ten visible guns, and that wasn’t counting the RPG in the corner.

Carl took his time responding. He would have just left her there. Hell, I don’t know why I hadn’t just left her behind. We were thieves, not heroes. “You’re the one with the imagination. I just drive good and shoot people.”

“Guys, come check this out,” Reaper called excitedly from the other room. “I’ve got your shooters.”

We entered the makeshift computer room and hovered over Reaper’s shoulder. He was playing some Finnish goth-metal over the speakers. “I’m skipping past the torture porn. This Adar guy was one screwed up son of a bitch . . . and here is where your shooters come in.”

“Why isn’t there any sound?”

“Audio’s all screwed up, chief. It’s all static. The DVR probably didn’t burn the disk properly.”

“Slow it down.” There were two men, dressed in camo, faces smeared with black greasepaint. They were armed with blocky submachine guns. One was just over six feet, kind of stocky, and left handed. The other was thin, a lot shorter, probably about my size. Both were Caucasians. “They’re Americans.”

“How can you tell already?” Reaper asked.

“That’s Remington A-TACS camo. Not that common. They’re either Americans or Canadian airsofters. Look how they move, too. Pretty typical Western CQB doctrine.”

The two had entered the room at the same time, weapons shouldered. The shorter one covered the room to his front, while the taller one peeled off to the right. They’ve done this before.

Their professionalism seemed to fall apart a second later as the bigger one froze when he saw the girl hanging from the ceiling. Adar turned toward the shooter with a strange look, almost a smile, on his face.

The shorter of the two shooters kept his weapon pointed at Adar. The other one just flipped out. First he said something to Adar, but the Butcher didn’t seem to respond. He just stood there, smiling. It was creepy. The shooter then dropped his subgun, leaving it to hang on a single-point sling, reached down to his left thigh, and drew his handgun.

“What the hell is that?” Reaper asked.

“That’s a .44 magnum,” I said as the shooter put a round into Adar’s left knee. The kneecap exploded into blood and pulp, and the Butcher of Zubara dropped to the floor. The other infiltrator flinched and covered his ears as the powerful weapon discharged.

From there, the shooter proceeded to take Adar apart piece by piece, systematically. Adar tried to say something, holding up his right hand, only to get it blown off. The next round went into Adar’s left bicep, mangling his arm in a spray of blood.

The shooter’s accuracy was impressive. The fourth slug went into Adar’s gut. The fifth went into his neck, nearly taking his head off. The shooter then reloaded automatically, mechanically, without thought. Damn, he’s fast. He had the gun reloaded and the cylinder closed before the emptied speed loader hit the floor. I absentmindedly pulled the .44 shell out of my pocket. I flipped it end over end between my fingers as I watched.

After the execution, the two shooters seemed to argue for a moment, then cut the mutilated girl down.

The pair then quickly ransacked the bedroom. Before they left, the tall one dropped the Ace of Spades onto Adar’s bleeding corpse. A grotesque grin remained on the Butcher of Zubara’s face.

“Who are these fodas?” Carl asked.

“Who the hell carries a revolver anymore?” Reaper asked.

Somebody who’s really good with one and knows it, I thought. “Like I said, Dirty Harry.”

“Look at these guys!” Carl was pissed. “What’s with the camouflage? Kids these days all want to wear camouflage and gear and play dress up! How are they going to explain that if they got picked up by the cops?”

“They’d just shoot the cops.” A professional should never be this brazen when there were more subtle ways available to pop somebody. “Play back when they’re arguing.” The taller shooter was young. He didn’t have a killer’s face, but there was no hesitation when he’d stitched those massive slugs through Adar. “He’s definitely American. Looks pretty corn-fed. He’s a pasty northern Midwesterner, probably has a cheese-wedge hat at home.”

“How can you tell when you can’t hear what he’s saying?” Carl asked suspiciously.

“It’s in the way he moves. I do this for a living, remember? His mannerisms, his gear, his clothing, all point to the USA. He might as well be wearing an Uncle Sam hat.”

“I guess. Well, when you play an Arab, I don’t recognize you, down to the dress and the perfume. You say he’s American, I believe you,” Reaper said.

“Go back a bit.” Carl frowned. “These guys have to stick out. How many Americans are in Zubara?”

“Officially? A couple thousand,” Reaper replied automatically. “And thousands more assorted Europeans. Mostly in Al Khor. If these guys have been operating in the poor side of town, they’d totally stick out.”

“Reaper, grab my notepad from the living room. We’ve got contacts in every district. I’m going to give a few of them a call.”

Reaper nodded, adjusted his Glock, and left the room.

“Kid’s gonna shoot his balls off, carrying his gun like that.” Carl said. Reaper flipped him the bird on his way out.

“We don’t have very good health insurance in this business, either,” I muttered, studying the faces of my new adversaries. These men were standing in the way of me completing Phase Three. Until I had that box, all of our work was worthless. Without that box, our families belonged to Big Eddie. I did not know who these mystery shooters were, but my new mission in life was to find them and kill them if I had to. I blew up the picture until it became grainy, zooming in on the tall one. These men knew their business. This was going to be a challenge.

There was a sudden crash and a surprised yelp from the living room. Carl and I both drew our guns and moved apart. I disengaged the safety on my STI and pointed it at the doorway. Carl took up position behind the desk, CZ extended in front of him.

“Reaper?” I shouted. “You okay?”

Our guest had awoken. Reaper stumbled into the doorway, his arms raised in a surrender position. The girl stood behind him with his Glock 19 pressed into the base of his neck. I didn’t have a shot.

“Sorry, chief,” he said slowly.

The girl glared over Reaper’s shoulder. The drugs must have worn off enough for her to come to, and she was obviously angry and confused. Her eyes darted about between us. “Nobody move! I’ll shoot this guy right in the head,” she ordered. I had been right. She was an American, and she apparently knew how to use that Glock. “Who are you people? What am I doing here?”

“That’s kind of complicated.”

She tightened her grip on the Glock. I could imagine a 9mm exploding through Reaper’s head. “Give me the short version, asshole!”

“Okay. So there I was, minding my own business . . . and I ran into some very bad men who had you tied up and were taking you into a house where you were going to be tortured to death on video. I, uh, rescued you.” The girl looked kind of out of it, disoriented and scared. She was still under the influence of whatever drug they had given her. And her finger was resting on the trigger that decided whether one of my crew lived or died. “We’re friends.”

“You expect me to believe that?” she shouted, blinking rapidly. Reaper cringed as she banged the Glock into the base of his skull.

“Look, we’re not your enemies. See?” I slowly placed my 9mm on the table and stepped away. “Carl, put your gun down.”

“But—”

“Do it!” I ordered. Even worse than her killing Reaper would be the noise. Our complex was crowded with rental villas, and I had no doubt that Zubaran fuzz would be crawling all over a gunshot call within minutes. Carl grudgingly responded and placed his CZ on the floor. “My name is Lorenzo. I saw that you were in danger, and I helped. I brought you back here, because the streets are covered in cops, and all hell has broken loose out there. Let me help you.” Why had I brought her to our hideout? Damn needless complications.

“Okay, I don’t think you’re with those men that grabbed me, but who are you, really?” She was scared, but she was hard, and her grip on the gun didn’t loosen. “You’re an American, at least.”

“You first,” I suggested soothingly. Plus it gave me a moment to try to think of some sort of plausible cover story.

“I’m with the US government,” she snapped.

You have got to be fucking kidding me. “Good,” I said as calmly as possible. If I had brought a fed or a spy back to our hideout, it was either screw the mission or kill her. Neither one sounded like a good option. I caught Carl casting me a look, letting me know how stupid he thought I was. “We’re on the same side. We’re on a top-secret mission. And if you blow Special Agent Wheaton’s brains all over the walls, you’re going to have some explaining to do to your superiors, and I probably won’t be able to get the security deposit back on this apartment.”

When you have to lie, you might as well reach for the stars.

“Are you Dead Six?” she asked unsteadily. Her eyes had narrowed to dangerous slits, and her teeth were a hard white line on her darkly tanned face. I paused, not sure how to answer. “Are you with Dead Six?” she repeated.

Fifty-fifty chance on this one. “Yes.”

“I knew it!” she shouted as she stepped back from Reaper. The muzzle of the Glock was swinging toward me. The 9mm hole looked unnaturally large as the contents of my stomach turned to ice. I threw myself to the side, but I already knew it wouldn’t be fast enough.

Click.

Reaper disdained holsters, and since he tended to just shove the gun in his pants, he usually carried chamber-empty. Carl and I called him a sissy for doing that, but as I hit the floor, I was mighty glad Reaper was a sissy.

The girl apparently knew guns, and she instinctively reached up with her left hand and began to rack the slide. The world seemed to dial down into slow motion as Reaper spun and charged her, his stringy black hair rising like a halo. He hit her hard, and they both disappeared into the living room.

I was up in a flash, moving toward the scuffle. In the corner of my vision, I saw Carl scooping up his gun. Reaper and the girl were wrestling for the Glock, the muzzle pointed upward between their faces. He was much taller, but she was stronger than she looked.

Beginning to lose the struggle, she let go of the gun and threw her elbow into Reaper’s temple. His head snapped back like his neck was a spring. Our techie went to the ground in a heap, but at least he took the Glock with him.

Carl had drawn down on her. “Don’t shoot!” I shouted as I leapt over Reaper. “Too loud!” The girl had gone into a crouch, hands open in front of her face. Carl turned and disappeared from the room. Thanks for the help there, buddy. The girl circled, waiting for me. Apparently this chick knew how to fight, and I didn’t like hitting girls.

“Just calm dow—” She cut me off with a snap kick at my groin. I swept one hand down to block, but it had just been a feint. She hit me with a back fist on my cheek hard enough to rattle my teeth. That hurt. I stepped back, eyes watering, and cracked my knuckles one-handed. “Oh, it’s gonna be like that, huh?”

“I’m not going to let you kill me, too,” she spat. She charged with a scream, throwing wild punches. She was desperate, but I was a professional. I dodged and swept them aside, waiting for a clean shot. She fought surprisingly well for a girl, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I was going to have to knock her the hell out, I could almost admire the ferocity.

Suddenly Reaper’s terrible music began to blare, painfully loud. The speakers on the computer probably near overload. What the hell? Carl came storming back into the room. He had my pistol and was screwing my sound suppressor onto the end of the threaded muzzle. It was difficult to hear him over the noise. “I’m too old for this hand-to-hand crap.” He raised the 9mm and fired. The Zubara phone book sitting on the couch exploded into confetti. The thump of the silenced gun was barely discernible over the wailing guitars. He turned the gun on the girl. “Cool down, missy, or your head gets the next one.”

Eyes wide, she slowly raised her hands in surrender. I slugged her hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out her and sending her to the floor. Violence against women doesn’t count when they start it, and I wasn’t going to trust her as far as I could throw her. Somebody banged on the other side of the living-room wall. Our neighbors were probably cursing us.

“You got her, chief?” Carl asked with a grin. “I’m gonna turn this garbage down. Kids today, Reaper, how can you listen to such noise?” Our techie moaned on the floor in response.

“Reaper, you okay?” I asked. The girl had gotten to her hands and knees, gasping. Flicking open my Benchmade, I placed the knife against her neck. She felt the steel there and froze, knowing that this fight was over. Reaper grunted, indicating that he would live. “Good. Grab some rope.”

The three of us and our captive were in the living room. The music was turned off, and everyone was a whole lot calmer. The girl was sitting on the loveseat, hands tied behind her back and, just to be safe, ankles tied together, too. I had my suppressed pistol in my hand, Carl had a beer, and Reaper was holding an ice pack against his head. “No wonder they drugged her,” he muttered.

“Okay, let’s try this again, without all the hitting and shooting and stuff. Who are you, and why were you being held by Adar’s men?”

“What’s an Adar?” she asked.

“Evil, crazy guy, planned on doing really bad things to you and then selling the video to demented freaks to masturbate to, but sadly he’s on an express train to hell right now. That’s an Adar,” I said patiently. “And your name?”

She answered sullenly, realizing that she might as well cooperate. “My name’s Jill . . . Jill Del Toro. I used to work at the American embassy.”

“Used to? Who were you with? State Department? CIA? NSA?”

“Um . . . the Department of Agriculture.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Okay, then. Please tell me that was some sort of cover, and you’re some sort of super spy or something?” I didn’t want to think that somebody from the Department of Cows and Plows had almost been the death of my team of professional killers.

“No, that’s Rob Clancy stuff. I was temporarily on loan to the State Department, but I was basically a receptionist . . . well . . . I was an intern.”

“Tom Clancy,” Reaper corrected. “Wait . . . intern? What the hell?”

“You got beat up by an intern,” Carl laughed. “Oh, man. That’s good.”

“I’m working on my master’s degree, political science, and was doing a tour of US aid programs around the Middle East. Did you know they actually have dairy farms in Saudi Arabia?”

“Fascinating. Stick to the subject,” I ordered, gesturing with my 9mm for emphasis.

“I found out about something that I wasn’t supposed to. I saw them kill the assistant-ambassador. The Dead Six guys tried to shoot me, but I ran. I got lost in town, and that’s when those crazy guys grabbed me and stuck a needle in my arm. I woke up here.” She sighed. “I swear, I don’t know much about Dead Six, but I know you plan to kill me, so let’s get this over with. I’m not going to beg.”

“Tell me what you do know about Dead Six first.”

“I know you’re some sort of secret death squad. The ambassador was told not to talk about it by your boss, that Gordon guy. You guys killed Jim Fiore for asking too many questions, and I was just in the wrong place. I don’t know anything!” The girl looked like she could cry, but was too mad. “Screw it. So let’s do this, you pinche pendejo cowards.”

“Did she just call us what I think she called us?” Reaper asked.

“I think so.” Carl chuckled approvingly.

The girl was tough, and pretty, too. Even tired, dirty, with one blackened eye, and being generally disheveled, I could tell that she was probably normally very attractive in an athletic kind of way. Her hair was long and extremely dark. On the other hand, I was probably old enough to be her dad, or at least her dad’s younger brother. “Calm down. We’re not Black Flag, or Dead Six, or Ninja Force Alpha, or whatever, and we’re not going to kill you,” I said.

“Really? Who are you then?” There was a sudden hope in her voice. She studied the pictures and maps on the walls, the piles of weapons and equipment, and the model building on the table. “Wait a second . . . What the hell are you?”

“Well, we aren’t the good guys,” Carl grunted, “if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

“We’re criminals,” I stated. “You got a problem with that?”

“But . . . you’re not going to kill me?”

“Only if you give me a pressing reason,” I responded, deep in thought. This Dead Six, whatever the hell that meant, was who had Adar’s box, and, if this Jill was telling the truth, which my gut told me she was, then I now held something that they wanted.

I had a witness to their black op. I wasn’t adverse to the idea of arranging a trade. Worst case scenario, I could use her as bait. Sucked for her, but that wasn’t my problem. I jerked my head at Reaper. “Check her out.” He looked at me in confusion. I sighed. He really didn’t get to spend much time around women that weren’t being paid to pole dance. “On the computer.”

“Oh, gotcha,” Reaper replied as he left the room, returning a moment later with his laptop. He started doing his thing while Jill glanced between us suspiciously. It only took him a few seconds. “You’re dead,” he said without looking up. “Officially at least.”

“That was quick.” I said.

“It wasn’t like I had to look hard.” He flipped the screen around so I could see it.

It was on the Drudge Report. The headline said Four US Embassy Staff Killed in Zubara. It took me a second to scan the article. Apparently during the evacuation, an embassy car had been struck by gunfire then firebombed. It was a terrible tragedy, killing the assistant to the ambassador, two US Marines, and an intern. This was sure to cause even more strain in the already tense relations, blah blah blah. I turned the screen so Jill could see it. “That’s a nice picture they got of you,” I said.

“Oh my God.” Jill turned almost as white as Reaper. “I can’t believe this.”

“I hate to break it to you, but some very powerful people have decided that you being alive is inconvenient,” I replied, wheels turning. Dead Six had marked her for death. I could use her. Which meant that she needed to trust me. “Believe it. You’ve got nowhere to run.” I pulled out my knife and flicked it open. “If you promise to quit hitting us and taking my people hostage, I’ll let you loose. But if you try to run off, I’m going to have to shoot you, okay?”

“I promise.”

“What are you doing?” Reaper asked, suddenly wary at the idea of turning this particular firecracker loose. “You sure this is . . . ?” He trailed off as I glared at him. “Never mind.”

“Jill, is it?” She nodded. I proceeded to cut the rope around her wrists. “The way I see it, you have a problem. You’ve been declared dead by some sort of black operations guys. Official channels will only hurt you, not help you. This country has gone crazy. There’s a war going on, and you’re now in the middle of it. If the government finds you, then you’re dead. If the secret police find you, then you’re dead. And if you get picked up by the kind of people I saved you from tonight, you’re worse than dead. You will need the assistance of, shall we say, a criminal element to get out of this country alive. Preferably honest, and dare I say, charming criminals, versus the standard underachievers who gravitate toward that career field.”

She rubbed her wrists. “And you know where I can find some people like this, I assume?”

“Perhaps. We have a very difficult job to do, and I think that you might be helpful. You don’t have any moral qualms about helping us out, in exchange for us getting you out of the country, do you? Considering that the kind of people I rob are the kind of people who want you dead.”

“Okay,” Jill answered after a long pause. “This . . . this is a lot to process. Can you really help me?”

“I can, but you have to help us first.”

“You can’t be serious, chief,” Reaper stated. The side of his head was turning a nasty shade of purple.

Jill nervously looked around the room, obviously unsure of what to do. “Well, you saved my life. What is it you need from me? How can I possibly help you guys?”

“We’ll worry about that later,” I said, sounding as reassuring as I could. I’m really good at sounding reassuring when I need to. “For now, welcome aboard.”

Carl began to laugh, a deep, rumbling belly laugh. The mercenary did not laugh much.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“We got us an intern. Haw!”

While Carl was busy changing the license plates on the van and Reaper was tending to his bruised face and ego, I showed the video of the two shooters to Jill. I made sure to back it up far enough for her to see what I had saved her from. She visibly cringed and had to look away when she saw the mutilated girl.

“That would have been you,” I said patiently. “Now I need you to keep watching.” If anything should make her thankful for me coming along, that had to be it. Watching Adar get blasted seemed to cheer her up. Unfortunately she didn’t recognize either of the Dead Six operatives.

“The only ones I ever saw was a really normal-looking white guy, probably forty-five or so, named Gordon. The other two I didn’t get as good a look at, well . . . because they were trying to kill me. One had real short hair, looked like a former soldier, the other I didn’t see hardly at all, but he was this really big, muscled blond guy. All of them wore suits. Gordon did all the talking,” she explained. “Sorry. I don’t even know if Gordon was his first name or last.”

“Won’t be his real name anyway,” I responded. “Start from the beginning.”

She sighed as she pulled up a seat. I could tell that she was exhausted and emotionally fried. “Originally I was working out of the embassy in Doha, Qatar. It’s a lot bigger. But they were short clerical staff here, so I got volunteered. At the time everybody told me how boring Zubara was supposed to be. I had never even heard of the place before. It wasn’t supposed to be anything big, just catching up on basic paperwork so the ambassador could go around shaking hands. This was supposed to have been my last week, then I was going home.”

“Bummer,” I said, shoving her a bottle of water and a couple of pills. She looked at the pills suspiciously. “Ibuprofen,” I explained. “Sorry about punching you, but you brought it on yourself. Then what happened?”

“Well, there really aren’t that many Americans here, and those that do live here are pretty self-contained, oil or natural-gas guys, with their own compounds, so it wasn’t like they ever needed us. There really wasn’t much for us to do. It isn’t like this is an important assignment. The ambassador’s this old guy, used to be the mayor of some town in Kentucky, got the job because he worked on the president’s political campaign. He just drank and slept all day.” She actually smiled at the thought. “That’s your tax dollars at work.”

I just nodded. I hadn’t paid taxes in, well, ever.

“Then it started getting crazy.”

“I was here for that part.” I didn’t add that I had probably contributed to that state of affairs.

“Some men had been killed while trying to murder some of the locals. They appeared to be Americans. The Zubaran security forces freaked out at us, but the ambassador assured them that it wasn’t us. Then more and more bad things started happening, and we got the word to pack. It was the assistant to the ambassador, a guy named Jim Fiore, real nice guy, who took care of all the day-to-day stuff. He kept calling people in Washington, trying to figure out what was going on.”

“Like who?” I asked. If I could narrow down what kind of operation Dead Six was, it might help me track them down.

She shrugged. “It wasn’t like I got to hear the calls. That’s way over my piddly clearance. I just know that he was in his office on the phone non-stop for two days. He used to talk to this old army buddy of his all the time, I think he’s an FBI agent now, but other than that, I don’t know. There were three of us left to help Jim at that point. We were mostly just shredding papers, and it wasn’t like there was anything important in there, it was just standard procedure. There was a mob outside the gates, protesting, burning flags, and it was pretty scary, but they hadn’t turned violent yet other than throwing some rocks at the gate.”

“When did this Gordon show up?”

“It was the last day of the evacuation. Everybody else had left except for us and some of the Marines, but they were all manning the gate. I had been assigned to be Mr. Fiore’s secretary. His regular one had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last month and had to fly home . . . uh, never mind, doesn’t matter. So I was working for Jim, and he was still making phone calls. I was in back shredding papers when Gordon came barging in.” Jill’s voice grew quieter. “He started yelling, telling Jim that he needed to shut up, and quit asking questions, that none of this was his business. Jim got all angry and said that Dead Six was destroying the country. That was the first time I had heard the name.”

“So they shot him?”

“Oh, no, not then. The Marines would have torn them apart, I don’t care who they were. No, when Jim said Dead Six, Gordon got all quiet, like he was surprised at the name, and said that they were done here. Then he left. It wasn’t until later . . .” Jill paused to wipe under her eyes. It almost made me feel bad for using her. “About twenty minutes later we left for the airport with an escort, two Marines, both really cool guys that I knew. We were almost there when the Marines got a call that that there was another riot on the route that we were on, and we were supposed to take a different way. We pulled off onto this quiet street and there was another government car there waiting to meet us.”

I nodded. That’s probably how I would have done it.

“Two guys, the Marines acted like they recognized them, they walked right up to the windows like they were friendly as could be and just started . . . started shooting . . .” Jill paused for a really long time. “I’m sorry . . .”

Brutal. “How’d you get out?”

“They shot the guards in the front seat first, probably because they were more scared of them. They just shot forever. Mr. Fiore was hit, blood was going everywhere, but he opened the door and managed to get out while they were reloading.”

“Typical mistake. Bullets act weird when you’re shooting through window glass. You get a lot of deflection with handguns,” I explained. She looked at me with bloodshot eyes. She had been crying. It made me uncomfortable. “Sorry.”

“Mr. Fiore, Jim, was a tough dude. He grabbed the big blond one and I just ran. I ran while they shot him over and over and over. I didn’t look back, but I could hear him screaming. I felt the bullets go by me. I just ran between the houses until I couldn’t anymore.”

Jill had started weeping. This wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. What was I supposed to say? Sorry your life is ruined and your government wants you dead, but shit happens. I awkwardly reached over and patted her on the knee. It seemed like the human thing to do.

She continued. “I hid in an alley for hours. I didn’t speak the language. I was scared to death. When I finally saw a police officer, I ran over to him. He talked to me long enough to find out I was an American. He called someone on his radio. Then he had me sit in the back of his car while we drove across town. I thought he was taking me to the police station, but instead he took me to those assholes who drugged me.” She wiped her nose and sniffed, regaining her composure. “And after seeing that video, thanks for taking care of them.”

I smiled. She was actually kind of cute. A little while ago she had been trying to kill me, and now she needed a moment. “It was no problem.” I wasn’t the best at comforting people, but I was pretty good at killing people.

“Look, I’m about to pass out. I’ve had a hell of a day. Do you have a place I can sleep?”

I nodded. “Yeah, we’ve got a spare bedroom. Just . . . you know.”

“Don’t try to escape or you’ll shoot me,” she replied. “Where would I go? Who would I call? I’ve got no family. I can’t call my employers. I’m assuming that everybody I know has their phone tapped already. Don’t worry. I won’t do anything stupid.”

I showed her to the spare room. There was no window, no phone, and the way I slept, she would have to be a ghost to sneak out, but I would rig the door with a motion detector after she fell asleep. The apartment had an alarm, and I’d arm the perimeter, too, just in case. “You’ve got a bed, pillow, and a minimal number of roaches. Sorry I don’t have any spare girl clothes, but I can come up with something tomorrow. The bathroom’s that door there, complete with actual toilet or squatty hole and spray hose. Personal preference, I guess.”

Jill paused in the doorway. “I just realized. You saved my life, and I don’t even know your name.”

I gave her a weak smile. “I’m Lorenzo. The skinny one you beat up is Reaper. The hairy one is Carl. And if you’re wondering, yes, those are all made up and won’t do you a bit of good.”

“Good night, Lorenzo. And thanks.” She closed the door.

Carl was waiting for me around the corner. “You’re an idiot,” he whispered.

I nodded. “So what’s new?”

The short Portagee folded his burly arms and glared at me. “You’re jeopardizing the whole job to take in some broad. You forget the part where Big Eddie kills everybody if we screw up? How does this help us?”

“I take it you heard her story?”

“I listened in. She doesn’t know squat about these Dead Six fodas. She’s useless.”

“Helping her was the right thing to do,” I said.

Carl snorted. “And since when did you start caring about what’s right? I’ve known you a long time, Lorenzo. You don’t care about right and wrong. When you meet people, they go in one of two groups: Are they a threat, or can you use them somehow? I was surprised you cared so much about this family of yours, that I’ve never heard you talk about, to risk your neck.”

That was because the people in that folder were the only people who had ever been decent to me, but that went unsaid. “I like a few people.”

“I shouldn’t count,” Carl replied.

“Of course not. You’re unlikable,” I said. Carl nodded as if this was the wisest thing he’d heard. “Look, I’ve got other things in mind for the girl. Dead Six will be looking for her. She’s an in against them. And if they want her bad enough, they’ll trade us that damned box.”

Carl rubbed his stubbly face as he thought about that. “That’s cold, even for you. I don’t know. I’m gonna have to sleep on that. Whatever you do, don’t tell Reaper. The kid will never go for it.” He turned and walked away, shaking his head.

Sometimes it’s hard being the bad guy.

The Fat Man picked up on the first ring. “Hello, Mr. Lorenzo.”

Did he ever sleep? “We’ve completed Phase Two, but there’s been a complication.”

“Our employer does not like complications.”

“Adar is dead, but his box is missing.”

“My goodness. That certainly is bad news. I do hope that this will not unduly hinder you.”

“I need information. I need to know about an American operation being conducted in Zubara called Dead Six. At least, the operatives I saw were American. I believe they have the box. If any of Eddie’s people hear anything, I need to know.”

“But of course,” the Fat Man said. “Is that all?”

“That’s all. Is this the part where you randomly threaten children to keep me in line?”

“Good-bye, Mr. Lorenzo.” And he was gone.