Dead Six

Chapter 15:

Pancakes

LORENZO

May 4

For some reason, despite massive setbacks, Dead Six boning me at every turn, being half a million dollars poorer, getting shot the day before, and still unable to get Adar’s box, I felt better today than I had in quite a while. I had gone out onto the balcony and was staring at the sun just beginning to light the morning fog. Carl joined me a few minutes later, leaned on the balcony, and regarded me suspiciously. As usual, we were the first up. “You kids get that out of the way finally? Been sniffing around each other like horny teenagers since she got here.”

The call to prayer began to resonate across the city. “Why, Carl, my good man. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He grunted. “Sure. So, what now, genius?”

I had been thinking about that. “You’ve seen the e-mails to Al Falah. The big meeting is on for June eighteenth. So we’ve got just over a month to get ready for the Phase Three.”

“So we go in, but without Adar’s box, we just die? Good plan.”

“I might be able to pick it.”

Carl nodded. “It’s like a thousand years old and has something like two hundred tumblers, and if Reaper’s numbers are right, you’ve got ten minutes maybe to get through before a couple hundred pissed off Saudis start shooting at you.”

We had been through all this before, but it never hurt to go over the options again. “Explosives.”

Carl knew his bombs better than I did. “That much reinforced material.” He held up a stubby finger. “First, too loud. Pissed Saudis, remember?” Then another. “Second, you won’t be able to smuggle enough in to make a shaped charge that can punch through.”

“What if I were to find explosives inside the palace?”

“Ten minutes,” Carl said. “Good luck. It’s true what they say.” He took a swig of his beer, breakfast of champions. “Getting laid makes you dumb.”

“There are four other keys in existence. Adar only had one. We’ve got a month. We could steal one of the others,” I suggested. Carl started to count on his fingers again. “I know, I know. One’s been missing since the Third Crusade. The others are well guarded, and any attempt to take them would cause the vault’s security to triple and probably get the meeting canceled.” Adar, the exiled heir, had been our only hope.

“Maybe we try something different,” Carl said.

“Find Big Eddie and kill him before he kills us? I’d love to. Since nobody knows who he really is, if he’s really even one man at all, and he works through layer after of layer of anonymous intermediaries, how do you suggest we do that?” I had been Big Eddie’s single most effective thief for years, and I had never met the man. The intermediaries I had worked for had never met the man, either, and the second I started looking, he’d somehow know. “It’d be like catching the devil.”

“I was just sayin’. I suppose I could just lay around in my underwear, get drunk, and watch TV until we run out of time.”

“That’s always an option. I’ll keep working the streets. Dead Six will screw up. They’re only human,” I said. My phone buzzed. “Unknown number,” I said suspiciously as I opened it. “Yeah?”

“Hello, Mr. Lorenzo.” It was the Fat Man, sounding as ominously vacant as usual. “Our employer was wondering if you had made any progress in retrieving his box.”

Oh, now it was his box. “Not yet. Dead Six is slippery.”

“I understand. Disappointing, but I do understand. Big Eddie believes in fully supporting his employees with all of our organization’s resources. His eyes are everywhere. Be ready on the eleventh. I will be in contact at exactly seven-fifteen in the morning, Zubaran time. I will give you the exact location of Dead Six. You will need to act quickly. There will be no second chance.”

I was so shocked that I almost said thank-you.

“And as your immediate supervisor, I need to warn you. Big Eddie is concerned that you are not showing proper motivation. Motivation is very important, Mr. Lorenzo.” His voice was urgent. “Fear and pain, these are good motivators, but loss . . . loss is the finest of them all. Please don’t make me have to motivate you further. If I do not get a favorable report from you on the eleventh, I will be forced to use extreme motivation. Do you understand me, Mr. Lorenzo?”

“I hear you.” Psycho. “Just get me the location and I’ll handle the rest.”

“I like pancakes.” Then he hung up.

What the hell? Carl was looking at me strangely. My face must have betrayed my confusion. “The Fat Man’s going to give us Dead Six next week.”

My burly companion was actually shocked. “That’s like a miracle.”

“And he said he likes pancakes.”

“Huh?”

My phone buzzed again a moment later. I had received a video message. There was no sound. It was the Fat Man, the bloated monstrosity, wearing a giant white suit, almost filling my phone’s screen. His bulk was squeezed impossibly into a restaurant booth, plate after empty plate stacked before him. He was shoveling pancakes into his mouth like some sort of industrial harvesting machine, barely pausing to breathe. He made a show of seeing the camera, stopped mid-mouthful, and made a big fake smile. His dark, empty eyes didn’t smile with his mouth. His face was stained with whipped cream and syrup. The lettering on the window behind him was backward, but read IHOP.

The camera angle changed, moving over his shoulder, and sitting at the table directly behind him were my mother and my younger sister, Jenny, still in her uniform, probably taking a break from work, having an animated conversation, oblivious to the sociopath stuffing himself a few feet away. The camera panned back to the Fat Man, and he waved at me.

The son of a bitch was in Texas, personally keeping tabs on my mom.

Is it still considered a miracle if it comes from the devil?

VALENTINE

Fort Saradia National Historical Site

May 4

1205

Sarah was anxiously waiting for me in her room when I returned. My trip outside the compound had taken longer than I’d expected. The real trick had been convincing the guys at the motor pool to not log that Tailor and I took one of the vehicles for two hours. That hadn’t been a problem, either. Things were getting bad enough that few of us that were still alive gave a crap about the rules anymore.

Sarah opened the door quickly when I knocked, and kissed me as I stepped inside. “I was worried,” she said. The situation in the Zoob had been steadily deteriorating, and our shootout with that Lorenzo guy at the Hasa Market hadn’t helped. It was getting difficult for us to move around the city quickly, as we had to spend a lot of time going around checkpoints.

“Sorry it took so long,” I said. “Traffic. We had to go way the hell out of our way to avoid being stopped.”

“I know,” Sarah replied. “I’m just glad you’re back. How did it go?”

“We’re on,” I said. I retrieved a piece of paper from my pocket. “She’ll be here soon. She wants us to meet her in person. If she’s satisfied that we’re legit, she’ll arrange to pick us up shortly after that.”

“Wow,” Sarah said. “Wait, she wants to meet all four of us? In person?”

“I’m afraid so. We’re going to have to find a way to get you, me, Hudson, and Tailor out in town, together, without raising any suspicions.”

“Shit,” Sarah said. “I could talk to the other controllers. They could cover for us.”

“Can you trust them?”

Sarah’s expression sank. “I don’t know. I can’t believe we’re just going to leave them. I mean, Anita is my friend.”

I put my arms on Sarah’s shoulders and looked down into her eyes. “Listen to me. I know this is hard. I don’t like the idea of leaving Byrne, Frank, Cromwell, or Holbrook behind, either. I’ve been through a lot of shit with those guys. But it took a lot of doing just to get the four of us out. The more people I try to bring in, the greater the risk of compromise.”

“I know, I know,” Sarah said, sounding exasperated. “I get it. We need to be secretive about this, otherwise your friends will get pissed and leave us.”

“I’m not worried about that,” I said. “Sarah, if Ling thinks I’m screwing with her she’ll have us all killed. These are dangerous people.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it, either,” I said honestly. “But it’s the best I could do. Look . . . if you’re having second thoughts, we don’t have to go. Tailor and Hudson can go by themselves.”

“Mike, you don’t have—”

I interrupted her. “Yes I do, damn it. If you stay I’m staying. I’m not leaving without you.”

Sarah’s eyes widened slightly as what I’d just said sunk in. She shook her head slightly and gently put a hand on my cheek. “You’re so stupid,” she said. She then leaned in and kissed me, deeply and for a long time.

“What do you mean, ‘stupid’?” I asked. We leaned in close together, so that my forehead was touching hers. I looked down into her eyes.

Sarah smiled. “I mean you say ridiculously sweet things like that and you’re not being ironic. You’re completely sincere, and you have no clue how rare that is. You’re like a character in a bad romance novel.”

“Well, it’s your own fault, you know. You jumped me, remember?”

“I know,” Sarah said. “Crazytown, remember? I warned you.”

“You did. But listen,” I said, seriousness edging back into my voice, “I’m asking you. Please, leave with me. This whole thing is going to hell in a ham sandwich. We have to get out while the getting’s good. So let’s go! Run away together.”

“Go where?” Sarah asked. “I mean, really, Mike, where can we go?”

“Anywhere we want,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I really was. “We can travel the world for a while until this whole thing blows over. I don’t think Project Heartbreaker is going to be around much longer. This country is falling apart. After things calm down, we can go home.”

“Can I at least leave a note for my friends, warning them to get out?”

“Why not? They’ll assume we bugged out on them anyway. It’s not like I was planning to fake our deaths or anything. Tailor will be pissed, though.”

“Fuck him,” Sarah said dismissively. “He’s the one that got you into this mess, isn’t he? If he gives you any shit, I’ll break his stupid face.” She smiled again, and a surge of triumphant relief washed over me. I knew she was hesitant to just disappear and leave the others behind. I’d been terrified that she’d want to stay behind.

“I have something for you,” Sarah said. She handed me a brown envelope. It contained all of my personal identification documents, including my passport, that had been taken from me before we left the States.

“How did you get these?” I asked.

“I have access to the safe,” she said, eyes twinkling mischievously. “It’s not like anyone goes in and checks to make sure your papers are still there.”

I shook my head slightly. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

“So tell me,” Sarah said after a moment. “Who is this Ling woman? You haven’t exactly been forthcoming about your history with her. Is she like an ex-girlfriend or something? You need to tell me the whole story.”

Sarah was right. I owed her that much. I had avoided talking about Mexico the entire time I’d been in Zubara. As time went on, the parallels between our doomed mission in Mexico and Project Heartbreaker had made me increasingly uncomfortable.

“No, nothing like that,” I said honestly. “I met Ling in Mexico last year when the situation had already gone to shit for Vanguard. We’d been contracted by the Mexican Nationalist Government to help secure some trouble areas in the southern part of the country. Some drug lords turned warlords had cut out little empires, so the government hired Vanguard to do a lot of high-risk operations.”

“High-risk operations?” Sarah asked suspiciously.

“VIP protection, search-and-destroy missions, things like that. It was our biggest contract ever. Decker, my old boss, hired a ton of extra guys and brought in every team in the company.”

“Including yours,” Sarah said.

“Switchblade Four. We got the most critical assignments, raids on the bad guys, ambushing militia convoys, stuff like that. We were making progress until the UN moved in. Thirty thousand peacekeepers came in and unilaterally cut a cease-fire with the warlord in Cancun.”

“Where does Ling come in?”

“We’d been sitting on our asses for days when she approached Decker with a business proposal. She said that there was a Cuban-flagged freighter docked in Cancun that was full of weapons going to the warlords, but she doesn’t give a crap about the weapons. She says there’s something else on the freighter, something her group, real secretive bunch, really wants. A girl.”

“A girl?”

“Fourteen years old. A prisoner. Ling told Decker, that her organization was willing to pay a crazy sum of money if we’d provide airlift and help get this girl back.”

“Why did they bring you guys in?”

“I’m not sure. I never really asked her, and she didn’t volunteer a lot of information. Anyway, Decker asks for volunteers, says there’ll be a huge operational bonus to the team that goes. We volunteered.”

“What happened?”

“Well, we got the girl,” I said, my voice softening just a bit. “Stirred up a hornet’s nest. Our chopper got hit on the way out. We went down at this abandoned resort hotel, landed right in an empty pool. Then the UN showed up and started shooting at us. Once the government collapsed, Vanguard was declared war criminals.”

Sarah was suspicious. “This group that Ling works for, who are they?”

“Exodus.” The look on Sarah’s face told me she’d heard of them.

“Are you sure?” Sarah asked.

“That’s what she told me.”

“I thought they were a myth. Wow.”

“I know, right? The whole thing was crazy. But it was so much money.”

“Mike, tell me what happened,” Sarah said, looking into my eyes.

I took a deep breath, glanced away for a second, then met Sarah’s gaze again. I hadn’t told anyone aside from Hawk the full story of what happened in Mexico. “Exodus thinks I’m some kind of hero.”

VALENTINE

Umm Shamal District

May 5

0200

It took us over two hours to get to Ling’s designated meeting spot. As was the usual case now, we had to go way out of our way to avoid downtown areas, major intersections, and other places where there were likely to be military or police checkpoints. The tiny Emirate of Zubara was holding its breath, waiting for the civil war to start.

It had taken some doing, but Tailor had managed to talk the motorpool into letting him sign out a Land Cruiser without it going in the books. I don’t know who he begged, threatened, or bribed, but whatever he did, it worked. He, Sarah, Hudson, and I rolled out of the gate at Fort Zubara without so much as a second look from the guys standing watch.

The location Ling had given me was a construction site. The project, a shopping complex funded by a European firm, had been suspended indefinitely due to “security concerns,” so we’d probably have the place to ourselves.

Hudson was driving as we pulled off of the street and into the site. The whole project was just a big hole in the ground surrounded by stacks of supplies and materials, much of which appeared to have been vandalized and looted. The gate at the front truck entrance had been left open, just as Ling said it would be.

No one said anything as we followed the road deep into the hole that was to be the foundation of the shopping center’s underground parking lot. I was nervous. The last time I’d worked with Exodus it had cost several of my teammates their lives. They were a bunch of trigger-happy fanatics. If anything went wrong, the four of us would probably end up dead.

We stopped about fifty feet from an abandoned crane in the very center of the site. At least we wouldn’t be visible from the road. It was about as secluded as you could get in the middle of a city. As per Ling’s instructions, Hudson blinked the headlights three times, then turned them off.

Several floodlights snapped on. Startled, I squinted into the blinding light. I looked over at Hudson, nodded, and opened my door.

“Be careful,” Sarah said from the backseat.

I tried to give her a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine.”

Stepping onto the ground, I closed the door behind me and moved slowly to the front of the Land Cruiser. I took off my overshirt, revealing both my holstered revolver and my body armor. Holding my right hand up in the air, I slowly drew my gun with my left hand and laid it on the hood of the truck. I then stepped forward, both hands in the air over my head.

For a few tense moments, I walked toward the crane, almost holding my breath. I was following Ling’s very specific instructions to the letter, and they hadn’t shot me yet, but I couldn’t shake the sense of unease. I was vulnerable, helpless, and hated it. A bead of sweat trickled down my head, and it wasn’t just from the warm night air.

Ling appeared from behind the crane, alone. She confidently strode toward me, closing the distance in a matter of seconds.

“You can put your hands down now, Mr. Valentine. It’s fine,” she said, not quite smiling.

Feeling silly, I slowly lowered my hands. “You’re alone?” I asked, looking around.

“Of course not,” she said. “My men are observing you and your friends. Just a precaution. Please do not take offense.”

“None taken,” I said, looking down into her dark eyes. “Thank you for coming. I need your help.”

“So you insist.” She looked past me at the Land Cruiser. “You can tell your friends to come out. I won’t have them shot.” The corner of her mouth turned up in half a wry smile.

I nodded and squeezed my throat mic. “It’s clear. C’mon up.” I looked back at Ling. “You want them to leave their weapons?”

“No, it’s fine,” she said dismissively. “I’m not worried.”

“You don’t have to drop your weapons,” I said into my microphone. “Bring my gun up.” I heard doors slamming behind me as my friends climbed out of the truck.

“So, Mr. Valentine, to business,” Ling said, not wasting any time. “I apologize for dragging you out here like this, but I always prefer to deal face to face.”

“I remember,” I said flatly.

She didn’t bat an eye. “And frankly, I’m curious to just who it is you wish me to help smuggle out of this country.” Tailor tapped me on the shoulder and handed me my gun. I quickly holstered it. “Ah, Mr. Tailor,” Ling said, “it’s good to see you again.”

Tailor nodded but didn’t say anything. I then introduced Ling to Hudson and Sarah. Sarah seemed to pique Ling’s interest a bit.

“I think I understand now, Mr. Valentine,” Ling said, excessively polite as always. “Is this your girlfriend?”

“Uh . . .” I mumbled, surprised by the question.

“Yes,” Sarah said levelly. “I’m his girlfriend.” She gave Ling the evil eye, but the Exodus operative either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“This makes more sense now,” Ling said thoughtfully, looking at Sarah. She smiled. “Yes. Well, this is very unorthodox, but I see no reason I can’t help you while I’m here. Like you said, Mr. Valentine, my organization owes you a great deal, and we’ve never had a proper chance to repay you.”

“You’ll help us get out of Zubara?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ling replied. “Unfortunately, it won’t be right away. We have business in the region and aren’t ready to leave yet.”

“How long will it be?” I asked. “I’m not trying to look a gift horse in the mouth, but time is a factor. Things are rapidly going south here.”

“I’m aware,” Ling said. “However, I still have a job to do myself. Your transportation out of Zubara is a freighter that my organization owns and operates, and it’s still at sea.”

“You flew here, right?” Tailor asked. “Can’t we fly out on that plane?”

“No, you can’t,” Ling replied, almond eyes narrowing slightly. “I, too, have orders I must follow. The freighter is the only method of transport I’m to make available to you four. It will arrive when it arrives and leave when we’ve finished here. You can choose to be on it or not. It was the best I could do.”

“It’ll be fine,” I said.

“Mike, I don’t know about this,” Sarah said quietly.

“Yeah, man,” Hudson said. “Are you sure about this?”

“Guys, please,” I said. “This is our only shot. Remember what happened to Singer? I trust these guys more than I trust Gordon Willis and his cronies.”

“You’re right.” Hudson nodded.

“I trust you,” Sarah said, looking up into my eyes. I smiled at her, then looked over at Tailor.

His brow was furled unhappily. He didn’t say anything for a moment, then nodded. “Fuck it, we don’t have a choice.”

“Okay,” I said, looking back at Ling. “We’re in. How do you want to do this?”

Ling smiled as if oblivious to the near-argument we’d just had right in front of her. “Here,” she said, handing me something from her pocket. It was a cell phone. “This is secure. A number I can be reached at is programmed into it. Use it sparingly and keep it with you. I’ll contact you when we’re ready to leave. I’m afraid it might be short notice.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “We’ll make it work. Do you have an approximate time frame?”

“Possibly a week. I know that’s a long time, given your circumstances, but as I said, it was the best I can do.” She looked down at her watch. “I need to be going now. We’ve been here too long, and I have a lot of work to do myself. It was good to see you again, Mr. Valentine.” Ling smiled at me. “Please be careful. I’ll be in touch.”

VALENTINE

Fort Saradia National Historical Site

May 8

0800

It had been several days since our meeting with Ling, and there’d been no word from her since. This wasn’t unexpected, but it was nerve-wracking. The goal now was to stay alive long enough for Ling to get us out of the country. It would suck to get killed so close to being home free.

There was another problem, too. The longer we waited, the greater the chance one of us would get second thoughts. I knew Tailor wouldn’t change his mind. Once he made a decision, he always went through with it, even if it wasn’t really a good idea. I wasn’t so sure about the rest of us.

Especially Sarah. The idea of just leaving her friends and running away from Project Heartbreaker bothered her, a lot. Hell, it bothered me. Aside from Tailor and Hudson, there were a quite a few guys that I was friends with, and I hated to think what would happen to them after we disappeared. But I didn’t know them that well. I wasn’t sure if I could trust them. If I told them we had a way out, what would they do? Would they report it to Hunter or Gordon Willis? Would they want to come along? If so, would Ling and her people agree to that, or would they call the whole thing off since we tried to change the deal?

My greatest fear was that Sarah would decide she didn’t want to go. There was no way I was leaving without her, either, so that meant I had to stay as well. That thought terrified me. Not because I was worried about myself; I was worried about what would happen to Sarah. I didn’t think I could bear it if anything happened to her.

Project Heartbreaker was falling apart around us. I didn’t know how Gordon and his people would handle doing damage control and cleanup. There was the possibility that it might involve Mr. Anders just murdering us. One way or the other, I really didn’t want to wait around to find out.

Despite all this, the missions didn’t stop coming, and they seemed to get more and more ridiculous as time went on. Our casualties had been severe. We were losing guys left and right, and yet they kept asking more and more of us.

We had just gotten briefed by Gordon on our next operation. Our chalk, plus Cromwell, Holbrook, Animal, and another new replacement named Fillmore, were all present. Our assignment was, to be blunt, fucking ridiculous.

Seems there was this Spanish billionaire-aristocrat-industrialist named Rafael Miguel Felipe Montalban who was the head of the Montalban Exchange, one of the largest and wealthiest corporations in the world. According to Gordon, this guy was using his money to fund General Al Sabah in Zubara and had his hands in other things as well. Conveniently, he was sailing up the Persian Gulf on his insanely luxurious yacht, the Santa Maria.

No problem, right? We’ll just blow up the yacht, take this guy out, and be home before beer-thirty. But no, Gordon says, that won’t work. Instead we were to be inserted onto the yacht via helicopter, storm the ship, and capture Rafael Montalban alive. We were then to retrieve him and his personal laptop computer and bring them back to base.

Basically, Gordon was asking us to risk our lives to capture a guy when it was completely unnecessary. They were tracking Montalban’s yacht by satellite. They had an armed UAV ready to drop a pair of guided bombs onto it at a moment’s notice. If they wanted this guy out of the picture, all they had to do was say the word and he’d be on the bottom of the Gulf.

Except Gordon wanted him alive. He wouldn’t even explain why. Eight of us were going to board two of Gordon’s stealth helicopters, fly out over the ocean, and board Montalban’s yacht in force. Just like last time, he was only sending in eight guys when dozens would be preferable. He assured us that Montalban’s security detail, though highly trained, would be caught completely off guard and that we’d have the initiative the entire time.

I thought Tailor was going to blow a gasket. Holbrook and Cromwell didn’t really get vocal until Gordon explained that Anders was coming along to provide support. Gordon probably very nearly avoided getting decked.

I explained that I’d never been trained on rappelling from a helicopter, much less onto the back of a moving ship at night. Gordon said rappelling wouldn’t be necessary. The yacht was big enough that it had not one but two helipads, one on top and one on the stern.

We’d been given a lot of information on the Santa Maria. Photos taken from the UAV stalking it. Plans from the builder, reports on Montalban’s security people. The plan was simple enough. Chalk 1 would touch down on the helipad at the top of the ship’s superstructure. They would then proceed in and take control of the bridge. Chalk 2 would land at the stern, enter the ship, disable the engines, then begin hunting for Rafael Montalban. Once we captured him, the choppers would pick us up. We’d fly off, and the UAV would prang the Santa Maria, sending it to the bottom and killing everyone still alive on board.

The two helicopters would orbit the area for as long as fuel permitted. One would have a machine gun to provide fire support. Anders would be riding in the other, armed with a sniper rifle, to pick off targets of opportunity on the deck. Anders was going to be riding in Holbrook and Cromwell’s chopper. I imagined what a fun ride that was going to be.