The Nowhere Man

6 Struck Oil

Evan noticed everything when he drove. Especially gray Ford Transit Connect vans with no side windows and dealer plates. Like the one that had been hovering in his rearview mirror for the past few blocks.

He threw on his right-hand turn signal. The van did not. Either it wasn’t following him or it was driven by a pro unwilling to take the bait. Evan drove straight past the entrance of the Norwalk FedEx office, and the van kept right on behind him. Evan muted the signal, keeping his head down but his eyes nailed to the rearview. He waited a few beats and then abruptly veered off onto a side street. The van coasted by, not even slowing.

He could never be too careful.

He’d spent the morning completing a circuit of the safe houses he kept in the Greater Los Angeles Area, testing his load-out gear, checking the oil on his alternate vehicles, changing up the automated lighting. At his Westchester place, a crappy single-story beneath LAX’s flight path, he’d switched out his usual rig for a mud-spattered 4Runner with a scuba flag sticker in the back window.

On the side street now, Evan sat behind the wheel and watched the road for a while. Finally he dropped the transmission back into drive. Backtracking to the FedEx office, he entered, signed a series of customs forms, and left with an elongated cardboard box.

His new katana. This blade had been forged relatively recently, in 1653, by Heike Norihisa, last smith of the five-layered smelt. The katana was decorative, as Evan had intended the last one to be, and he was eager to mount it on the empty hooks in his hall.

But he had another location to check first. He’d spent hour after excruciating hour parsing the data from Contrell’s GPS, checking the man’s frequent stops, searching for the location where he stored the girls before shipping them out. With every passing day, more sand trickled through the hourglass.

Evan drove to Fullerton. A sheaf of papers rested in his lap, much of the data on them already crossed out with red pen.

The next place on the list proved to be a humble residence, semi-isolated behind a stretch of soccer fields gone to dirt. Detached garage, new shingles, fresh paint, curtains drawn. A security gate guarded a concrete front walk hemmed in by flower beds. A Stepford house writ small.

Evan parked several blocks away and doubled back. He vaulted the fence, put his ear to the door, heard nothing. The lock gleamed, a shiny Medeco. He raked it with a triple mountain pick, feeling for the rhythm of the wafers inside as they lifted to different heights. At last he felt the pleasing click of the release.

The well-greased door swung in on silent hinges. He drew his Wilson from his Kydex high-guard hip holster and eased inside. The interior, dim from the drawn curtains, stank of cleaning solution and unventilated air. Though he sensed that the place was empty, he moved silently from room to room. It was cheaply constructed and surprisingly clean. Dishes neatly stacked on a spotless counter. Sparkling linoleum floors. IKEA-looking slipcovered couch and chairs, calming taupes, distressed blues. In the living room, he parted the curtains with a hand.

The windows were nailed shut.

He ran his fingers over the heads of the nails, the metal cool against his prints. His heart rate ticked up with anticipation.

He moved on.

The master bedroom featured two double beds, sheets neatly made. Men’s clothes in the wardrobe. Big men’s clothes. One of the jackets looked like it could cover a deck chair.

Evan stopped, breathed, listened.

Then he started down the tiny hall to the rear room. Three door bolts. On the outside.

Pistol drawn, Evan stood perfectly still outside the room for a full ten minutes. No sounds of breathing within, no creaking of the floorboards.

Finally he threw one bolt. The muted clank of metal against metal might as well have been a clap of thunder.

Standing to the side of the door, he waited.

Nothing happened, and then more nothing.

The next two locks he unbolted in rapid succession. He bladed his body. Let the door creak inward. Leading with the 1911, he nosed around the jamb. A nicely made bed, lavender comforter, brand-new TV on a stand.

A lovely room, aside from the plate of sheet metal drilled over the window. When Evan shouldered the door to step inside, he felt it to be heavier than the others. Solid core.

The holding pen.

No one inside. The room — bare, pristine, equipped with only the basics — seemed like a diorama. In fact, the whole place had a dollhouse feel.

It had been designed with one purpose in mind: comfortable functionality.

Hector Contrell had to ensure that the merchandise wasn’t damaged before delivery.

The bathroom door remained closed. Evan tried the doorknob, but it didn’t budge. Seating the pistol in his holster, he took out his tension wrench again. The cheaper lock required only a hook pick and a few jiggles.

As the door swung inward, the smell hit him first.

A smooth leg, mottled blue-purple, hooked over the brim of the bathtub. A mass of tangled black hair covered the face, leaving only a delicate ivory chin exposed. He put the body as older than most of Contrell’s “eligibles.” Late teens, early twenties. Probably designated for a buyer looking for variety.

Until Contrell’s operation had been blown and his middlemen decided to liquidate the inventory.

She’d been alive when he killed Contrell. She’d been alive when he went home and poured himself a glass of vodka and drank to a job well done.

Evan lowered the pick set.

That was when he heard the footsteps behind him.

Two men, no doubt the inhabitants of the roomy clothes in the wardrobe of the master bedroom. The one nearest Evan gripped a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special and gripped it well. Firmed wrists, locked elbows. A second pistol hung in a cheap nylon holster under his left armpit, semiauto backup in case five bullets weren’t sufficient.

The man behind him carried a healthy gut and a SIG Sauer. His gun was also raised, but he could afford to be less on point given that his buddy had Evan pinned down. Evan couldn’t get a clear look around the front man’s barrel chest. The man seemed to block everything out. It wasn’t just his girth but the way he canted in aerodynamically at Evan. Thrusting chin, ledged brow, chest and biceps tugging him forward on his frame so it seemed that only the balls of his feet were holding him back — a bullet train made incarnate.

“Who’s been sleeping in our beds?” he said.

Evan lowered his hands slightly. The S&W followed the motion, stopped level with his heart.

“Goldilocks?” Evan said. “Really?”

“I gotta agree, Claude,” the man by the door said. “Not your finest work.”

Claude’s features rearranged themselves. His cheeks looked shiny, as if he’d recently shaved, but stubble was already pushing its way through again. His face, the target demographic for five-blade razors.

“I just thought, you know, the whole breaking-and-entering thing,” Claude said. “Us coming home, catching you. Plus the Goldilocks reference, it’s demeaning.”

“Because she’s a girl,” Evan said.

Claude nodded.

Evan held his hands in place. “You know what they say. If you have to explain the joke…”

The man in the back flicked his SIG at Evan. “Gun on the ground.”

Evan complied.

As he squatted, he gauged the distance to the tips of Claude’s shoes. Maybe five feet. Evan could close the space in a single lunge. Easy enough, if he didn’t have two guns aimed at his critical mass.

Rising, he eyed the barrel of the Chief’s Special. Since Claude was muscle-bound and right-handed, Evan’s first move would be to juke left, make him swing the gun inward across that barrel chest. The compression of delt and pec might slow his arm, buy Evan a half second.

That would be all he’d need.

His stare dropped to Claude’s second gun, the one slung in the loose-fitting underarm holster. A Browning Hi-Power. It was cocked and locked — hammer back, safety engaged. The safety lever peeked out beneath the retention strap of the nylon holster. Good presentation.

The odor wafted from the bathroom over Evan’s shoulder, precipitating on the taste buds at the back of his tongue. Just past the threshold in the hall, he saw the bright red of a few plastic gasoline jugs; the men had set them down quietly. “You guys cleaning up the operation?”

“Contrell was the CEO,” Claude said. “We’re just workaday guys. Glorified babysitters, really. Sit around, eat pizza, watch the tube. Beats digging ditches.”

Evan flipped the tiny hook pick around his thumb, pinched it again. “Those were the only options, huh? Sell girls or dig ditches?”

Claude smiled with sudden awareness, his magnificent jaw jutting out all the more. “You’re the guy who put us out of work.”

With a flick of his wrist, Evan flipped the hook pick at Claude’s eyes, lunging left just before the gunshot. The bullet cracked past his ear. He dove not so much at Claude as into him, using him as a shield, getting inside the range of the revolver. Evan’s right hand flew at that Browning in the underarm holster, and then he smacked into the big man, pressing chest to chest, a dance move gone wrong.

It happened very fast.

Evan’s thumb shoved the safety lever off as his forefinger curled around the trigger. He rode the gun back in the sling and fired straight through the holster from beneath Claude’s armpit. The man behind them took the shot through the cheek, blood welling like struck oil. The pistol in his fist barked twice as he flew back. Evan felt both impacts ripple Claude’s flesh, friendly-fire smacks to the spine.

Claude dropped fast and lay still.

The other man had wound up sitting next to the bed, slumped forward over his gut, one hand clutching the lavender comforter. A perfect stillness claimed the room.

The whole thing had gone down in about a second and a half.

Evan picked up his gun and started out. Though the neighboring houses were far, the noise of a firefight would carry.

As he stepped over Claude, he noticed a yellow slip peeking from the inner lapel pocket of the laid-open jacket. Instinct halted him there above the body, told him to crouch and reach for it. He teased it out.

A customer copy of a shipping bill, rendered on thin yellow carbonless copy paper.

All at once the air felt brittle, as if it might shatter if he moved wrong.

His eyes pulled to the bed. Queen-size.

Big enough for roommates.

He looked back at the form, taking in the data.

That was not the distance a package would travel by truck or plane. Not even close. That distance would be two thousand miles and change. This package was traveling down around the bottom of the continent and through the Panama Canal.

He scanned farther down the form.

Sure enough, a twenty-foot ISO-standard container had been secured on a midsize bulk carrier called the Horizon Express. An additional port fee of $120 was to be paid upon delivery to the Jacksonville Port Authority.

At the bottom of the form, something was written in pen, the blue ink distinct from the black dye pressed through from the other sheets. A name. And an age.

Seeing the casual scrawl fired something at Evan’s core.

He wondered about the seventeen-year-old girl locked inside Container 78653-B812.

It seemed that Claude and friends had managed to fulfill one last order this morning before shutting down the assembly belt. Which meant that Evan had one last head to sever from the hydra of Contrell’s operation to put it down for once and for all.

He had sixteen days until that container ship reached Jacksonville. He would meet the buyer there. But he didn’t plan on leaving Alison Siegler alone until then.

Folding the yellow form in his hand, he headed out, stepping past the trio of gasoline jugs in the hall and through the front door. Jogging up the front walk, he vaulted the security gate.

His boots had just hit the sidewalk when he heard the screech of tires.

Two Ford Transits flew in at him, one from either side, a narrowing V. Familiar gray, no side windows. As Evan reached for his hip holster, their doors rolled open, exposing a row of eyes peering out through balaclava masks. Inside each van a line of shotguns raised in concert, like a gun turret.

Neon orange spots floated within the dark vehicle interiors. The shotgun stocks, color-coded for less-lethal.

Evan had a moment to think, This is gonna hurt, and then the twelve-gauges let fly. The first beanbag round hit him square in the thigh, knocking him into a 180, a volley of follow-ups peppering his right side. A rib cracked. Another flexible baton round skimmed the side of his head, a glancing blow, but given the lead shot packed inside, it was enough. No pain, not yet, just pressure and the promise of swelling.

He spun with the blow, wheeling to round out the 360, somehow managing to draw his Wilson in the process. The black-clad men had already unassed from the vans in shooting-squad formation. These men were expert assaulters, leagues beyond Hector Contrell and his sorry assemblage of freelancers.

An enormous man in the middle held a bizarre gun, its conical barrel flaring to accommodate a balloonlike plug. It looked like a basketball stuck in a snake’s craw.

It discharged with a whoosh. Evan watched it unfurl at him with detached and helpless wonder. Durable nylon mesh, steel clamps weighting the four corners, the whole thing yawning open like the maw of some great beast.

A wildlife-capture net.

It cocooned him, his wrist smashed to his nose, one knee snapped up into his chest, his feet pointed down like an Olympic diver’s. This must have been what the Neanderthals felt like when the lava flow caught up, fossilizing them in all their awkward non-glory.

His gun hand, pinned to his left ear, was as useless as the rest of him.

The pavement smashed his cheek. For a split second, a dot of dancing yellow grabbed his focus — the shipping slip catching a gust of wind, riding an air current into the gutter. The last trace of Alison Siegler, whisked away.

Evan pegged his pupil to the corner of his eye, straining to look up. A massive dark form loomed, a needle held vertically in latex-gloved hands.

The form leaned in.

A prick of metal in the side of the neck.

Then searing darkness.