The fix

5

When you're Sam Axe, certain things come easy.

Women.

Free drinks.

Trouble.

Before he called me asking for help, Sam had spent the afternoon doing two things: One: getting Cricket O'Connor out of her house and into a safe temporary location, which, in this case, meant Veronica's place for a few hours, so he could… Two: learn as much as possible about Dixon Woods in hopes it would lead him to the man scamming Cricket.

He figured a trip down to Longstreet's offices would be as good a place as any to search for a man who, according to the government, didn't exist. Well, that's not entirely true: The FBI told Sam that Dixon existed from 1966 through 1984. Then existed in a number of different authorized government capacities. And then, upon discharge, some unauthorized capacities before latching on with Longstreet. But none of these roles had managed to require a valid passport, credit history or permanent address.

"Born in Portland, Oregon. Moved to Fort Lauderdale with his parents during high school. Entered the Army at age eighteen," one of Sam's sources told him, and then ran down the same information Sam already had. Strictly HR stuff. Sam's source was a guy named Kyle. Sam had never met Kyle in real life, thought that if he ever did meet him that he'd be about five foot one and ninety-seven pounds but would drive a Corvette. Sam had him pegged as a "nice-car-sorry-about-your-penis" type-a real compensator. That's why he'd always been such a great source for Sam over the years, even before the FBI made Sam my de facto watchdog, because Sam would regale Kyle with stories about hot missions and hot women and other hot lies, and Kyle would get all hopped up over them. He'd ask for minute details, which gave Sam the impression Kyle was using the stories for some other purpose in his after-work life. Whatever. None of it was true, but if the kid liked it, who was Sam to pass judgment? Kyle was a computer jockey who liked to give Sam information in exchange for stories, and Sam was happy to comply. He hadn't even needed to actually tell a true story yet.

"You got a photo of him there, Philly?" Sam always called him Philly, because Kyle once told Sam he was originally from Philadelphia, so Sam figured the kid might like a nickname, and there was no way to make Kyle sound cool.

"His file has been wiped. All I can get you is his first driver's license photo."

That was a start. Better than anything else, Sam supposed, but not better than whatever Longstreet probably had. Sam tossed out one other thought. "There any Interpol reports on him?"

Sam could hear Kyle breathing hard on the other end of the line. Freaky kid. Getting off on this stuff probably, but whatever. Doing fine American service. "No, but there's a police report out of Jupiter, Florida, from two years ago. Misdemeanor disturbing the peace and assault. Charges were dropped. That's the only official line that's not sealed."

Jupiter was a hundred miles up the coast, but a very long way from Afghanistan. Odds were, if Dixon Woods got in trouble in Jupiter for something, it was the same guy Cricket O'Connor was married to, or was somehow connected to her. Guy like Dixon Woods, if he got caught doing something really severe, odds were fair he had enough government chits that he could call in a few favors. Sam knew something about that, for sure, which made him think of something else.

"What about a marriage license? To a Cricket O'Connor?"

There was nothing. Sam thanked Kyle, gave him a brief story about taking down a terrorist cell in Montreal-a little-known group of French-Canadian separatists, Sam told him-and when even Sam realized how absurd this was all getting, hung up and headed to the offices of Longstreet.

Longstreet was hardly an anomaly in Miami. Since Iran-Contra, the war on drugs, the first Gulf War, and then up through the second war on drugs and the war on terror, private paramilitary firms have popped up all over the world, essentially offering the same service everywhere: military expertise on an a la carte basis. But since the destabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan, groups like Longstreet have also become multimillion-dollar corporations willing to drop trained personnel into a hot zone for an appropriate fee. Diamond mines, opium fields, small cities and anywhere private security was needed. In Iraq, the United States actually subcontracted out firms to do the dirty work the military couldn't, by rule of international law.

Miami was home to a half dozen such firms. The reasoning was both natural and mundane: Florida works like a vortex for the international criminal trade, which is one of the chief employers of these firms, but it is also an easy access point into and out of the country to the unstable countries of the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East, where most business is conducted. A flight from Miami to Dubai is just fifteen hours. An ambien away. Simple. Guyana, eight. Haiti, two.

And, in the realm of the mundane, there's no state income tax in Florida. Which means more money.

You want to find rich assholes with guns, find a state with no income tax, lax laws on personal firearms and easy access to one of the worst-secured ports in the country. That's Miami.

Plus, when people (or nations or warlords) want to hire you, appearances matter. A Miami address? That says sun, splash, Don Johnson and superfit hired killers.

What Sam found, however, was a warehouse in an industrial park adjacent to the airport district. Surrounding the warehouse was a barbed-wire fence and a front entrance that looked particularly fortified.

Gaining entrance to a secure facility is about understanding how security consultants and the people who've hired them to design their alarm systems think. The first issue is that they are most concerned about keeping you out. So they make the front door look imposing.

Sam saw a keypad.

An infrared camera.

Titanium bars over blast-safe glass.

A sign that warned unwanted visitors that an armed response was already on the way.

Average crooks see these things, the first thing they are going to do is decide it's not worth the effort. Average sales person cold-calling cold-calls someone else.

The second issue is that like any other profession, security consultants are sloppy and human and prone to doing things in a half-assed way if they think appearances will be enough to stop inspection.

And that means, if you're lucky, all of the above will be proctored by a man with a clipboard sitting on his ass next to a plywood arm letting cars into and out of the facility, which is precisely what Sam found.

Fortunately, Sam hadn't bothered to change his clothes from the morning's activities, nor had he bothered to dip into a sports bar for a few hours. So he looked and smelled fresh, which worked to his advantage when he pulled up to the gate.

"Chazz Finley," he said to the guard. Sam stared straight ahead, trained his eyes on the cars in the parking lot, noted that it looked like a giant had crapped out the same ten brown Hummers right in a row.

The guard flipped through the papers on his clipboard. "Don't have you down here, sir," he said.

"Of course you don't," Sam said. He faced the guard now. Trying some of that Jedi shit. Confident. Stern. Not taking no for an answer. Official. After about twenty seconds of that, he said, "Are you going to wait here all day or do I have to drive through this gate?"

"Sir, I'm afraid you're not on the list." The guard put his hand on his gun, a real gun, not a toy like most security have, a little snub. 22 or something. No, this guy was holding a. 357. "Which means you're not getting in."

This was harder than Sam had anticipated. Usually, a guy working a gate is susceptible to double-talk, since at nine bucks an hour double-talk was too much trouble to fight with for most people. But this guy, he was some sort of monk with his mind-control abilities. He hadn't been trained. He'd been conditioned, and Sam actually appreciated that.

Nevertheless, Sam tried lobbing a grenade at him just to see the look on his face, hope for an inch of collateral, take a centimeter of recognition. A rat can get into a building if there's enough space under a wall for light to shine through. Sam figured Dixon Woods might be that light.

"I'm here about Dixon Woods." Sam spit out the name, figuring, Hey, it's true. Let's see what happens?

"Oh, yes," the guard said. He moved his hand from his gun like it was suddenly electric. "Very sorry." And like that, the plywood arm rose, and the guard went back to his post. Didn't even bother to get on the phone. Just went back to imagining it was five o'clock somewhere. A sentiment Sam could get behind, for sure.

Sam parked next to one of the Hummers, his Cadillac suddenly a dwarf. He never understood the desire people have to drive Hummers, particularly ex-military types. They always reminded him of the back pain he felt for the entire Cold War period he was involved in, hunched as he was in HumVees in places a helluva lot worse than an industrial park in Miami. You felt every bump in a HumVee. A Cadillac, well, that was like driving a Long Island iced tea. Power, grace earned through years of performance and, ultimately, comfort.

At the employee entrance to Longstreet was, predictably, another guy with a clipboard. At least this guy wasn't armed. He didn't even look of drinking age. Sam took a look at the guy's uniform and saw it was from Action Response Security.

Longstreet, one of the most powerful security firms in the world, with operatives in every conflict known and unknown, used rent-a-cops. But then, there was the natural question of just what they were keeping under cover. If there was anything with an outsized importance-ten thousand pounds of cocaine, maybe an actual poppy field grown hydroponically, things like that-they'd have their own guys at all points of entrance.

"Chazz Finley," Sam said to the man with the iron-on badge. His name tag said his name was Harvey. Harvey. Who named their kid Harvey anymore?

Harvey handed Sam a visitor's pass to clip to his shirt. "Keep this on you," he said. "It's my ass if you're walking around without it."

Sam winked, because that's what a guy like Chazz Finley would do, and Harvey opened the door for him. Before Sam walked in, but after seeing how empty and unsecure the corridors looked, he had a thought. "My associates will be joining me shortly," he told Harvey.

"Names?"

"Hard to say," Sam said and winked again, because when you're a guy like Harvey, a guy winking at you means you're part of a secret. And if you work at Longstreet, that's probably pretty cool, even if you just work the door. "And let Front-Door Freddie know about it, too. No screw-ups, Harvey."

"Understood, Mr. Finley," Harvey said. And then he gave Sam a salute. Christ, Sam thought. Poor sucker was going to lose his job.

When you think about the office space belonging to an elite security force, you'd probably imagine lots of blinking lights, massive computer screens on every wall detailing troop movements, satellite positions and the standing heart rate of every person currently in Longstreet's employ. You might think that the halls would be filled with people staring intently into files, shaking their heads, muttering about the military-industrial complex, maybe even holograms of Eisenhower and Patton that constantly spout motivational speeches if anyone with a body fat percentage under 25 percent walks by.

You'd be wrong.

Just like any other business where most of the sales are done outside the office, a successful multinational security firm is a pretty quiet place, the top guns more likely perched on a berm somewhere than in a cubicle; thus what's left behind is office staff. File clerks. Accountants. People in charge of ordering flak jackets and body armor and TEC-9s, but who were unlikely to need flak jackets, body armor and TEC-9s during the course of their own life.

Guys like Kyle versus guys like me and Sam.

All of which is good, because Sam wasn't looking for an armed conflict. He was just looking for records. Insight. A lead. A last known address. Anything to get us around Cricket's problem. And, it turned out, to see about my problem with Natalya as well.

In the lobby-which looked to be decorated with an eye toward reviving Communism as a design aesthetic and then combining it with some of the nicer floors of the Pentagon-Sam found an office map bolted to the wall. The bulk of the warehouse was taken up by a storage facility-Sam didn't need access to know what was in there, and why at least the front of the store was guarded by a man with a gun: assault rifles by the dozen, maybe a decommissioned Black Hawk or two, even more Hummers, a few rocket launchers, hell, maybe even a small nuclear sub if these guys were really pulling the bank in- while the administrative offices occupied a perimeter around the goods in a U.

Sam found what he was looking for. Across from the ladies' restroom and just adjacent to an emergency exit-a good thing to note-was the employee-relations office. A quick scan showed that the men's room was on the other side of the building, next to the office of the president.

You want to find the one woman working in a building likely filled with men, find the ladies' room and then count twenty paces, which, naturally, is precisely where the employee-relations office was.

Sam checked his reflection in his sunglasses-it wasn't going to get much better-and made his way down the hall.

The employee-relations office, like every other door Sam passed, was closed. The difference was that every other office was placard free, as if maybe all that was there was a door that opened into a brick wall. But right on the door was a sign that said employee relations and then, beneath it, a name: BRENDA HOLCOMB.

Sam gave the door a pound. It opened a few seconds later and revealed a woman in her midfifties. Her hair was straight and black and came down to her shoulders, though it looked like it had been cut using a rock. She wore a white buttoned-down shirt that she'd opened to the middle of her chest (where Sam saw a few red freckles and the outline of her sports bra) and a black skirt of, sadly, an appropriate length. Thick clunky sandals with heels probably two inches too tall. Painted toenails. Calves that showed about two dozen years of regular workouts. If pressed, Sam would guess she'd been an MP somewhere. She had that cop stance-one leg forward, one leg back, a hand on the hip reflexively, as if still looking for a gun, but instead holding a venti Starbucks cup.

More interesting, however, was that she had a lightning-bolt tattoo that started at her clavicle and shot up the right side of her neck, dying into her jaw line. It covered a jagged scar. That must have hurt, Sam thought.

"Who are you?" she said, all business.

"Finley," Sam said. There was always a Finley on the books.

"What do you need?"

"I'm here about that OSHA thing," Sam said. When Brenda just stared at him blankly in response-not mad, not confused, not suspicious, just not getting it-Sam added, "Iraq?"

"Oh, workers' comp," she said, her voice not unpleasant. Brenda opened the door and Sam got the full measure of her office. There were three file cabinets along the right wall, a garbage can overflowing with shredded paper, a desk that held two laptops and stacks of paperwork that didn't seem to have any order whatsoever. Two more venti Starbucks cups. On the left wall, there was a huge map of the world with white thumbtacks shoved into different regions. The Middle East was filled. Africa had scattered clumps. Afghanistan was covered corner to corner. The weird thing was the number of thumbtacks in Wyoming, Texas and Georgia. Who the hell needed paramilitary units in Wyoming? Maybe it was to keep the people in, stop them from infecting the rest of the country. There was a separate blown-up map just of Miami, with thumbtacks along different streets. "Have a seat," Brenda said, pointing to a white plastic chair covered in newspapers. "Just toss that crap onto the floor."

Sam did as he was told. It gave him time to look at the file cabinets. No one had file cabinets anymore. It was all digital. But Brenda, apart from her tattoo, seemed old school. That was a good thing.

"Where'd you get shot?" Brenda asked. She was yanking paper out of a drawer in her desk, compiling them into a stack.

Sam did a quick catalog of his body. He'd taken some bullets. "Back of the right thigh," Sam said. He doubted she'd ask him to strip down to see the scar.

"No," she said, "I meant where in the country?"

Sam took a look at the map. "See all the tacks? Right there in the middle."

Brenda laughed. She seemed like a nice lady. Apart from that, Sam sensed that she actually wasn't a very nice lady. "We'll put down Sunni Triangle and let them figure it out," she said. She'd compiled about twenty pages of documents and was now going through them with a yellow highlighter and marking places where, presumably, he'd need to fill things out.

That wasn't going to happen.

"Nice ink," Sam said.

That did it.

"You think so?" Brenda said. She was staring at Sam now, trying to see if he was mocking her or if he meant it. Sam liked that. That little bit of unease on her part. Opened up some avenues of charm.

"Know so," he said. "How'd you get cut?"

"A knife, soldier," she said. Smart, like of course he was soldier. Now he was getting somewhere, could feel things changing in the room.

"That carotid is a bleeder," Sam said. "One time, in Caracas, I saw a guy milk out completely in under a minute. And that was with a Norelco Electric during a shaving accident." He had Brenda laughing again. "I like that you're not afraid of the scar. Highlight it. Own it. Pretty cool, you ask me. Gives you a real element of intrigue."

"Guys around here," she said, motioning around the building, "they call me Bolts now. Brenda Bolts. I guess I'm like a sister to them, mother to half of them, all of thirty, you know? But still, I'm not a robot."

No. No, you aren't, Sam thought. "How did it happen?" Sam used his quiet voice, let her know that he wasn't trying to get some sort of glee out of it, but that he was deeply, deeply concerned. Brenda (who he could only think of now as Bolts, thought, in fact, that it was a much more alluring name) told him a long and rather circumspect story about helping out on a mission in San Salvador two years ago-some on-the-ground work, paying off people, that sort of thing, when shit got tight and, well, next thing she knew, there was a knife to her throat and demands for her money or her life.

"I'm glad you gave your money," Sam said. He reached across the table and touched her lightly on the hand. Nothing sexual. Nothing overt. Just letting her know she had a friend who understood. He was surprised to find her hand shaking.

"Whew," she said, "it's like it's happening all over again. It does feel good to talk about it."

"They say talking about trauma splits it in half," Sam said. He didn't know where he heard that. Oprah? Maybe Dr. Phil.

"Isn't that true?" Brenda said and then she was uncomfortably silent.

The rat saw a space to squeeze through again. "You keep any beer here?" Sam said.

"It's a little early for that, don't you think?"

Sam didn't really consider it a question. More like a coconspirator making sure they were on the same job. Plus it was clear she wanted one, too, so he said, "I'm still on Iraq time," though not really sure he even knew what time it was in Iraq.

Brenda pushed back from her desk. "We could have one, right?"

"Of course," Sam said.

"Didn't you earn it, soldier?"

"Didn't you, soldier?" Sam felt his own skin crawling. But this Brenda, good old Bolts, seemed to fall for every line. You don't get any sympathy, even false sympathy probably felt pretty swell.

"It is lunchtime," she said, convincing herself. Sam liked that. Liked that in just a little over fifteen minutes he'd actually convinced Bolts to have a liquid lunch with him. "Why don't I run down to the kitchen, get us both a taste, maybe a bag of chips? There's no harm in that, right?"

"Right," Sam said. He pulled the stack of papers from in front of Bolts and a pen. "And I'll get started on these forms."

Brenda got up then, straightened her skirt and gave Sam a look that he usually associated with nature programs where a wildebeest finally figures out that the stream is filled with crocodiles but figures, What the hell? Take a chance or two in life. "Why haven't I seen you before?"

"Bad luck," Sam said and then, when that didn't seem like enough, added, "For both of us."

When Brenda left her office a few moments later, she still looked a bit puzzled but aroused. Sam figured he had maybe five minutes to get what he needed and get out before puzzled and aroused turned into suspicious and angry. He could still hear her heels clomping down the hall, like she was a Clydesdale. Those calves. Man. He had to get to work before she got back and wanted to tussle. That might be a fight he'd lose.

His first thought was to jump onto the laptops, but he was for shit on a computer. Worst case, he'd take one of them and let Fiona work that. So he hit the file cabinets first, particularly since he could already see a drawer marked s-z and had a pretty good idea they'd contain at least something he could use.

He rifled through the files, finally finding Dixon Woods' toward the back. It was thick with work documents-close to an inch-so Sam took out his cell phone and just started clicking photos, figuring time spent examining the docs would be better done somewhere less.. armed.

Problem was, the things he was taking pictures of were fairly meaningless. And old. Nothing newer than 2003, probably when they took everything and put it on the computers. He found requisitions for desert clothing. A stack of rental-car receipts from Japan. A purchase order for a GPS system and night-vision goggles.

Sam didn't even really know what he wanted to find, except that he knew a detailed list of Woods' actions over the course of the past fifteen years would be a bonus. A phone number, a mailing address, an idea of how whoever was sleeping with Cricket O'Connor and taking her money happened to come across Dixon would be even better, which got Sam to actually pause and think.

He sifted to the very back of the file and found what he didn't know he was looking for: Dixon Woods' original application. Rather than take a photo, he just yanked it from the file and shoved it down his pants. Sam then went over to the map of Miami and clicked a few photos of that, too, particularly since he noticed several thumbtacks in South Beach and five on Fisher Island alone. A pretty high density.

It had taken him four minutes to do all of this, which Sam thought might be a personal record, but didn't feel like he had time to gloat. It was either get out or get trouble.

But that's the thing about Sam. Trouble finds him.

Just as he was about to walk out into the hallway, he heard Brenda Holcomb clomping back.

Plan A was that he could punch Brenda in the face and run out of the building. But he liked to avoid punching women in the face.

Plan B involved pistol-whipping Brenda and running out of the building. Again, he had a code about pistol-whipping women.

Plan C was a few drinks and maybe see where things went, though he really did like Veronica. And the Caddie. Why wreck a good thing?

Plan D was to just act like a dumb man.

He grabbed one of the Starbucks cups and dumped it across Brenda's desk and onto his pants. Sam popped his head out the door. "There you are," he said. Brenda had two bottles of Amstel in one hand- Sam could actually see the sweat coming off of them, like he was in some damned commercial and a bunch of sorority girls were about to pop out of a broom closet to get the party started-and a bag of tortilla chips in the other. Maybe, after all of this, after he retired, he'd look into a job at a place like Longstreet. Cold beers and chips in the company fridge had a certain appeal. "You think it would be okay if I used the ladies'? Seems I can't be trusted around a coffee cup."

"What kind of soldier are you?" Brenda said. He had to admit, this "soldier" stuff was pretty cute. He'd see about getting it worked into a fantasy or two down the line. Brenda got up close to Sam and examined his pants, took a gander inside her office, shook her head. Can't be the worse mess she's ever seen, Sam thought. "Better get some water on those before the coffee stains," she said. "Go ahead and use my bathroom, but don't tell anyone. They'll think I'm getting soft and think worse about you. Bad enough they've probably already seen you spilling the coffee on yourself."

Sam gave her one of his newfound winks and headed to the restroom, where, he realized, exactly what Brenda Holcomb had said, and realized, indeed, there was about to be a situation.