Dead Six

Chapter 24:

Welcome Back,

Mr. Nightcrawler

LORENZO

June 18

I was certain we had lost them after we had crossed the border. A gentle breeze had calmed the raging temperature. The sun was setting over the desert, and if it hadn’t been such a terrible day, I would have thought it was beautiful. I cradled the rifle in my arms and scanned the horizon.

Part of me was secretly praying for cars to appear on the road. Carl had been my best friend.

The village was small, consisting of a few small compounds and some outlying buildings. The van was well hidden. I sat in the shade beneath an awning, gun in hand, black and gold scarab in a pouch I’d tied around my neck. In the distance dogs barked and children laughed.

It had been my fault. I should have seen it coming. I should have done something.

There was movement in the doorway behind me. “Your friend will live. He was struck twice, but the wounds were superficial. Given time to heal, he should have no permanent disability.”

“Thank you, doctor,” I replied, never taking my eyes off the horizon.

“I’m afraid I’m no Doctor,” the Qatari answered. “I failed from an American veterinary school.”

“Good enough.” I lifted the rubber-banded stack of money above my head. He took it. This particular establishment had a reputation within the criminal element of the region. “When can I move him?”

“I would not move him until morning. You may sleep in the guest room. I shall have my servants prepare it.” He turned to leave.

“We were never here,” I stated.

“But of course.”

Carl’s duffel bag was open on the bed. I found the manila folder with the mission details and dialed the Fat Man’s number on my untraceable cell phone.

I had checked on Reaper before retiring to the guest room. He had been asleep, and had looked terrible, even paler than normal, with bandages all over his skinny chest, and buried beneath IV bags. A heart monitor kept a steady pace. He would be fine, but the sight of what was left of my crew filled me with rage.

“Yes,” the Fat Man answered on the other end of the line.

“I want to talk to Eddie.”

There was a pause. “Mr. Lorenzo, Big Eddie does not speak with the help. I am his intermediary and—”

“Put him on or I toss the scarab in the ocean,” I stated calmly.

“Think of your family before you make any rash decisions.”

Part of my family had been shot in the throat this afternoon. I was not in the mood to play games. “Do it.”

There was a moment’s hesitation. “Please hold.”

I rummaged through Carl’s bag while I waited. We had worked together for so long that it still hadn’t sunk in that he was really gone, corpse burned to ashes on a Saudi dune. Death was always a possibility in this business, but you never really got used to it. I found another folder in the bag. It had Carlo Gomes written on it in black marker. It was the information about his family that the Fat Man had originally given us in Thailand.

I opened Carl’s folder. The man had never talked about his people. There were a handful of photographs. They were marked Island of Terceira. The pictures were all very old. Beneath each person’s photo had been handwritten the word deceased.

Carl had no family left. Eddie had never held leverage on him . . .

Carl had done it for us.

“Ah, Mr. Lorenzo. Good to hear from you.” The oily sound of Eddie’s voice uncorked a clot of rage in my soul.

“Why did you do it, Eddie? Why’d you try to kill us?” I hissed.

“Just business. I’m sorry about that. I saw the opportunity at the meeting. I realized what you had done. Brilliant move, I must say, but with the cameras around the cars disabled, I sent one of my men to accompany you. I thought I would tie up some loose ends.”

I was a loose end. He did not even sound defensive. That was just what our lives were worth to him.

“I was going to give it to you.”

“It was a calculated risk.”

“I should just destroy this thing and walk away,” I said, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.

“Do so and you will have a much shorter Christmas card list. The original deal is still in place.” He laughed. This was amusing him. “See, Lorenzo, you’re a pawn.”

“I guess that makes you the queen.”

“Fair enough. But you will bring me that phylactery, or I give the order and your loved ones get fed to the sharks. Listen to me carefully, chap. You do not have any idea what you have. The contents of that thing are more important than you can even imagine. I’ve strangled children for far less, and I sleep very well at night. You will give it to me or you will have—”

I cut him off. “Now you listen to me. You harm any of my relatives and I’ll give this thing back to the prince and tell him who hired me to steal it.”

Eddie let out a long breath. “You bloody fool.”

“No, you’re the fool. You screwed up. I know who you are now,” I snapped. “Mr. Montalban.”

“I suppose that was a mistake. You know what they say about hubris,” Eddie said slowly. Whatever stupid bit of arrogance had caused Eddie to reveal himself to me at the meeting was going to be his downfall. “Let’s be reasonable, Lorenzo.”

“Reason went out the window when your boy crawled out the trunk. You’d better pray that none of my nieces falls down and scrapes a knee, because I’ll assume you were behind it.” I seized the moment. I was tired of being pushed around, and now it was time to push back. “We trade. You get your bug right after you transfer twenty million dollars into my Swiss accounts. Then you walk the fuck away. You ever contact me again, I call the prince. If I die of anything other than old age, I’ll have somebody else contact the prince. You ever look at my family cross-eyed again, I call the prince. If one of my brothers gets prostate cancer, I’m going to hold you responsible.”

“And call the prince, yes, yes, I get it. . . . You know, Lorenzo, I never took you for a tattletale. But that’s why you were always my favorite. You’ll do anything to get the job done. Very well, I can deal. Fair enough.” I could tell that he didn’t think it was fair at all. Fair was not a concept a man like Big Eddie understood. Someway, somehow, he would find a way to kill me. There was no turning back from this point. For this to end, one of us had to die. “When can I have it?”

“I’ll be in touch.” I hung up.

I awoke with a start. It was dark, and I lay there for a second, heart pounding. The house was quiet, but I snatched up my rifle and went to the window anyway. There was no movement outside. No dogs barking. All clear.

But I stayed there, watching, waiting, too wired to return to bed. I was letting this get to me, letting it affect my judgment. There was a cough from next door. Reaper. That’s what had startled me awake. I put down my rifle and went to check on him. Surprisingly enough, he was awake too. Sitting up in bed and looking out the window, white bandages reflecting the moonlight.

“How you feeling?” I asked.

“Carl’s gone, man,” Reaper said as he wiped one hand under his nose. “Holy shit, I didn’t think Carl could die. He was too angry to die. It’s dumb, but like if he got shot, he’d just get more pissed off . . . Shit . . . That sounds stupid. He wasn’t the Hulk.”

I pulled up a seat. “I know how you feel.”

He got really quiet for a while. This was hitting him worse than me. “Man, it’s been so long. . . . Carl was always there for me. I don’t know if I ever told you, but when I met you guys . . . I was really scared.” He said that as if it were some kind of revelation, and maybe to him it was. “I was all alone. I didn’t know where to go, and you gave me a job, gave me a mission. You know, I never fit in back home.”

I nodded, as if that were a surprise. “Me, either.”

“Okay, this might come as a shock, but I wasn’t as tough when I was a kid. I was kind of a nerd,” he said, like he was admitting something shocking. “I got picked on a lot. I was always the smartest kid, but I was so much younger than everybody else, so I was like a weirdo.”

“You were like Doogie Howser.”

“Except straight. Totally straight,” he corrected me. “Then my mom got remarried, and my stepdad was like this super tough-guy fucking lumberjack or something, and my step-brother was Johnny Football Hero, and he got all the chicks, and there I was, this little scared dork weakling. . . . I could never live up to their standards. I hated them.”

I wondered if this was how some of the genius super-villains from the comic books started out. I just kept nodding.

“So I showed them. I’d be way more bad-ass than they could ever be. It was time to Fear the Reaper, you know what I’m saying? I had skills, man.”

“Two hundred felony counts is pretty damn impressive for a teenager.”

“Well, I wasn’t as clever as I thought I was back then.” Reaper smiled sadly. “I scared the shit out of the government, though! I crashed a bank and turned off all the lights in Boston, just because I could. They wanted to make an example out of kids like me. Mom was heartbroken, and you know what the weirdest thing was? My stepdad, the asshole, he’s the one that helped me the most. He gave me a plane ticket to a place with no extradition and told me it was ‘time to be a man’ . . . that was the nicest thing anybody had ever done for me.”

Shit. If Reaper started crying, I wouldn’t know what to do.

He started crying. “You guys took me in after that. You were my family. Family . . . But now? First Train, now Carl. They were my brothers. We’re all that’s left, and look at me. They almost got me. I’ve never been shot before.” He blinked the tears away. “This shit just got real. Eddie’s going down. Eddie and that fat fucker in the white suit, both. I’m gonna kill them, Lorenzo, I swear to God, I’m gonna kill that fat bastard if it’s the last thing I do. I’m gonna wipe that smile off his fucking face.”

I patted him on the arm. I had a hard time with emotions, but revenge, that I could understand. “That’s the spirit.”

“They’re gonna fear the Reaper,” he vowed.

VALENTINE

Quagmire, Nevada

June 21

1500

The Nevada sun blazed overhead as I hiked up the road from the Greyhound bus station. Quagmire’s bus station wasn’t really a bus station. It was a tobacco shop and party store that the Greyhound bus occasionally stopped at. Hawk knew I was coming, but he didn’t know what time I was getting in. No one was waiting for me.

I thought about calling him. I had a prepaid phone that I’d purchased after I landed in the States. I decided I’d just walk. I was probably being paranoid, but I was very leery about using a cell phone still. It was a good hike to Hawk’s ranch, but I knew the way. I shouldered my duffel bag and started down the road.

I was walking up Main Street in Quagmire when a big Ford pickup, adorned with an NRA and a US Marine Corps window sticker, slowed to a stop next to me. The driver, a crusty old guy wearing a NASCAR hat, rolled down his passenger-side window and got my attention. I immediately tensed up. I was unarmed, save a pocket knife I’d bought at a Wal-Mart. My left hand slid down to my pants pocket, where the knife was tucked away.

“You need a lift, son?” he asked. I had a big green military duffel bag, and my hair was still buzzed short. He probably thought I was a vet coming home. Close enough.

I relaxed some and moved my hand away from my pocket. “If it’s no trouble,” I said, stepping closer to the pickup.

“Where ya headed?”

“You know the Hawkins place? It’s on the north end of town.”

“Oh hell,” the man said, grinning. “I know Hawk. C’mon, get in. Toss your bag in the back. I’ll give you a lift. It’s no trouble.” I thanked the man, threw my heavy bag into the back of his truck, and jumped in.

We rolled past the limits of the town, following a well-worn dirt road. About half a mile down it, we passed through a gate that had been left open, ignoring the NO TRESPASSING signs that were fading in the desert sun. The truck left a cloud of fine dust in its wake as we neared the house at the end of the road.

It was a modest-looking two-story ranch house, very unassuming and unremarkable in appearance, just like its owner. There was more than immediately met the eye.

The old man stopped his truck by a well-used, dusty Dodge turbo diesel pickup. I thanked him and got out. As soon as I grabbed my bag, the old man turned around and headed up the road again, leaving me standing in his dusty wake.

The sun was intense overhead. I squinted even through my sunglasses. I slowly walked toward the house, bag in hand. On the porch, in the shade, Hawk sat in a rocking chair, reading a newspaper and sipping ice water.

“Hawk,” I said, stepping onto the porch. He didn’t get up, but I knew he recognized me. If he hadn’t, I’d have been staring down the barrel of a .44 Magnum before I even got close.

Hawk folded his newspaper and set it aside. “Good to see you, kid,” he said simply. “I was glad to hear from you. I kind of figured you were dead.”

“You were almost right,” I said levelly.

“Where’s Tailor?”

“I don’t know,” I replied truthfully. “He was alive last time I saw him. It’s a long story.”

Hawk nodded and stood up. “C’mon in.” He led the way into his house. It was air-conditioned and mercifully cool inside. I was immediately greeted by a pair of big mutt dogs that wanted to be petted. Their tails wagged back and forth as they sniffed me. I smiled and set my duffel bag down.

Hawk shooed the dogs away and led me to his kitchen. He motioned for me to sit down and went to the refrigerator.

“Want a beer?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I said quietly.

“Ah,” he said thoughtfully. “Didn’t think you would. Here.” Hawk turned around and placed a ice-cold can of Dr. Pepper in front of me. The man knew me well. He then pulled out another chair and sat down, popping open a can of beer. “So, where ya been?”

I didn’t answer at first. I took off my baseball cap and sunglasses. Hawk got a good look at the scars on my face for the first time. He just nodded.

“Start talking, kid.”

I sat in Hawk’s kitchen and told my story for more than half an hour. Where I’d only told Ling a little bit about what had happened, I poured my guts out to Hawk. I knew I could trust this man. I told him everything. Gordon Willis. Project Heartbreaker. Zubara. The fighting, the killing, the loss, all of it.

My voice wavered a little as I recounted the night Sarah died. He sat back in his chair, rubbing his chin when I told him about the man called Lorenzo that had showed up in my room. He raised an eyebrow when I told him about how I’d first encountered him, and nearly captured a woman named Jillian Del Toro, but he didn’t say anything.

Hawk’s eyes narrowed a little when I described Sarah’s death and explained that I didn’t know who pulled me to safety. He would just nod and sip his beer, not saying anything, until I finished.

Hawk looked thoughtful for a moment. “Bad way, kid,” he said simply. “So you haven’t heard from Tailor?”

“No. He has no way to contact me.”

“He hasn’t called here,” Hawk said. “Eh. No worries. Tailor can take care of himself.”

“Did you get the package I sent?”

“I got it,” Hawk said. Ling had helped me ship my revolver and my knife to Hawk. They were both disassembled and placed in a box full of random machine parts I found. They apparently made it through customs. “Your .44 is all cleaned up and put back together. They’re up in the room I made up for you. I put your other guns up there, too. Figured you’d wanna go shooting while you were here.”

“Thank you,” I said, looking down at the table. I didn’t know what else to say.

“No sweat, kid,” Hawk said after a moment. “You know you always got a place here. Now listen. I need to go water the horses. You can come help if you want, but you’re probably tired.”

“If it’s okay, I’d like to go upstairs and lie down. It’s been a long day.”

“No problem,” Hawk said, standing up. “Your room is first one on the right upstairs.” I thanked Hawk again and made my way up to the room he’d prepared for me. I opened my duffel bag, found some comfortable clothes to sleep in, and crawled into bed. I was asleep in minutes.

It was dark when I awoke. I sat up in bed, sweat beading on my face. My heart was racing. I fumbled with the lamp next to the bed until I got it turned on. My eyes darted around the room. I was breathing hard. There was nothing there. I was safe in bed. Exhaling slowly, I rubbed my face with my hands. The clock said it was just after midnight. My mouth was so dry it felt like my tongue had swollen up. I climbed out of bed and headed down to the kitchen.

It was cool in Hawk’s house as I padded down the stairs. I was only wearing a pair of shorts. It was quiet. Hawk was undoubtedly in bed already. I made my way into the kitchen but didn’t turn on the light. I grabbed a cup and opened the fridge, pouring myself some water from the filtration pitcher.

I stood upright as a key hit the lock on the front door. I could hear the door swing open, then close again. It was then locked. I relaxed a bit. Hawk must’ve gone out late or something. No one breaking in for nefarious purposes would have a key and not even try to be quiet. I stepped away from the refrigerator, cup of water in hand, and stepped toward the door to the front room.

“Hawk?” I asked, squinting into the darkness. A moment later, someone appeared in the kitchen doorway and switched on the light. A woman stood not five feet from me with a blank look on her pretty face. She wore a short pink jumper, like a waitress uniform, and tennis shoes. She carried a purse under her arm.

Her eyes went wide when she saw me standing there in my shorts. It hit me then. I recognized her. It was Jillian Del Toro. Jesus Christ. It can’t be.

I think she recognized me, too. Dropping her purse, her hand flew behind her back. Before I could say anything, she’d produced a Smith & Wesson M&P compact pistol and leveled it at my face. Her nametag said Peaches.

She sure as hell didn’t look like a Peaches. She had an intense gaze; it was a mix of obvious fear and anger. I looked back down at the pistol in her hands. It was shaking slightly, but it was close enough that I could see the rifling in the barrel. It was a 9mm.

I dropped my water cup on the floor and slowly raised my hands. “Please,” I said. I was very calm. “Put the gun down. I’m just as confused as you are. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You shut up!” she said fiercely. “I know why you’re here!” Her grip on the pistol tightened.

“I’m getting a cup of water,” I said, nodding to the puddle on the floor. “I’m standing here in my shorts for Christ sakes.” The Calm was wavering as I became agitated.

“Shut up!” Jill shouted. “You’re Dead Six! You’re here to kill me!” I visibly halted when she said the words “Dead Six.”

“Dead Six is done now. I barely got out alive.”

“I know that! But what are you doing here?”

“I was getting a God damned cup of water!” I said, almost shouting now. “What do you think, I came to Nevada and infiltrated Hawk’s house in my fucking underwear so I could kill you?”

“Just shut up!” Jill snarled. She shifted her weight forward slightly. Her pistol was in arm’s reach. Close enough.

Moving quickly and following through, just like I’d been trained, my hand shot up and grabbed the pistol. I forced it upward, yanking both of her arms up with it. I was taller than Jill, and stronger. I twisted the pistol in her hands and slammed my other arm into her sternum. There was a chance she’d pull the trigger, but it wouldn’t hit anything but the ceiling. The blow knocked her off balance. She stumbled backward and lost her grip on her gun.

I have to give her credit. She didn’t stay down. She immediately got back up and came at me. In one smooth motion I shifted the pistol to my right hand, grasped the slide with my left, and racked it as I extended my arm. An unfired cartridge ejected and bounced off the floor. Jill froze as I pointed the S&W at the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were wide with terror, but she didn’t blink and didn’t cringe. Ballsy.

“Now that’s enough,” I said firmly but calmly. I sidestepped to the left, shifting the pistol to my left hand then gripping it with both hands. “Just calm down, okay?”

“What the hell are you doing, boy?” Hawk’s gravelly voice boomed. I froze, and my head snapped around. Hawk was standing in the other doorway to the kitchen with a Remington 870 shotgun in his hands.

“Hawk!” Jill cried. “He’s from Dead Six! They found me!”

“Hawk,” I said. “This is the girl I told you about! She was over in the Zoob! She shot me in the back!”

“You pointed a gun at my face and took me hostage!” Jill snapped back.

I was pissed off now. “Well, what the hell—”

“Both of you shut up!” Hawk said, lowering the shotgun. “Damn it, Val, you give that girl her gun back. Jill, you holster that gun and calm down.” Giving Jill a dirty look, I dropped the magazine out of her gun, locked the slide back, and handed it to her. She snatched it out of my hand. I gave her the magazine a second later. She didn’t reload it.

Hawk sighed. “Both of you relax. This is my fault. I guess I should’ve told you about each other. Val, I was gonna say something to you when you got up. You’re both guests in my house, though. I expect you to behave yourselves. Now you damn kids go to bed. We’ll straighten this all out in the morning.” Hawk turned and left the kitchen, leaving Jill Del Toro and me alone. She folded her arms across her chest and looked at the floor. I shuffled my feet. Neither of us spoke until we heard the door to Hawkroom close.

Jill glared at me. “It’s your fault.”

Hawk roused me out of bed at six in the morning and told me to go feed the horses, reminding me that he wasn’t running a bed-and-breakfast. Half an hour later I was in the barn, carrying big bales of hay from the loft out into the field. The horses were already happily munching on their grain in their stalls. I was going to spread the hay around outside to keep them busy while I got to cleaning. See, I had to shovel the horse shit after I fed the horses. Living on a ranch is a lot of fun, let me tell you.

I hauled another hay bale through the barn, this one for Hawk’s ill-tempered stallion. I was wearing leather gloves. My .44 was holstered on my left hip, out of habit more than anything else. After everything that happened, I really didn’t like going around unarmed.

Jill Del Toro was standing in the barn, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and work gloves when I came back in. She carried a pitchfork and a shovel in her hands.

“Hey,” she said, sounding much more amicable than the night before.

“Mornin’,” I said, nodding at her. “Hawk drag you out of bed too?”

“What? No, I worked swing shift last night. He lets me sleep in on my days off.”

“Must be nice,” I grumbled.

“Look,” Jill said awkwardly, “I’m sorry about last night. You know, for trying to shoot you.”

“Well . . . I’m sorry I hit you,” I said.

“It’s just that I saw you, and I remembered from before, when you grabbed me, you know, and I kind of freaked, and—”

I held up my hand. “Hey, it’s cool. I know what it’s like to be twitchy.” We both fell silent for a few uncomfortable seconds.

Jill looked me in the eye. “Can I ask you something? How . . . whoa. Your eyes are different colors!”

I rolled my mismatched eyes and sighed.

“I’m sorry!” Jill insisted, embarrassed. “I’ve just never seen anyone like that before. I can’t believe I didn’t notice last night.”

“What were you going to ask me?”

“Oh, right. How did you end up here? Where do you know Hawk from?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said. “I know Hawk from way back. I used to work for him. Hell, my stuff is stored here. My Mustang is still in his garage. Unless he sold it. The question is, what the hell are you doing here?”

“We were in Zubara after that night. You know, when the fighting started. Lorenzo got hurt pretty bad dragging you out of there. He—”

I interrupted her. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop. Hang on. Back up the truck. What the hell do you mean, Lorenzo dragged me out of there?”

“Oh . . . you don’t know?”

“No, I don’t know! The motherfucker showed up in my room, pulled a knife on me, gave me this,” I snapped, pointing to the scar on my face, “and this,” I added, indicating the scar on my arm, “and I still don’t know what he was after. Now you’re telling me he rescued me?”

“Hey!” Jill said. “Your friends broke his fingers. They were torturing him!”

“What the hell was he doing in our compound in the first place?”

Jill deflated a little. “That’s, uh, that’s a long story,” she said.

“We’ve got a lot of shit to shovel,” I suggested.

“Fair enough,” Jill replied. We spent the next two hours doing various farm chores as Jill told me her story. She’d been an intern at the US Embassy when she had a run-in with Gordon Willis. Gordon had some embassy staff murdered. She went on the run, was kidnapped, and was eventually rescued by Lorenzo, in the very house where I’d blown Adar’s head off. The whole thing made my head spin.

I told her parts of my own tale as well. She laughed nervously when I explained that Gordon had described her as a dangerous traitor.

“I’m sorry about Sarah,” Jill said eventually.

“How did you know?”

“We had one of your radios for a while. and I was watching on camera when she . . .when it happened. Lorenzo has this little drone airplane.”

I exhaled. “Thank you. I’m doing okay, all things considered. So . . . where is Lorenzo now?”

“Honestly?” Jill said. “I have no idea. I haven’t tried to contact him. He could be anywhere.”