Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

17

The shite holes that accepted cash were the same the world over. It was a truth Waddy Dwyer had learned long ago, after the military when he was in intelligence, and then in his life as a private military contractor and all ’round useful bloke: they were thin, through and through. Thin sheets, thin blankets, thin pillows on the beds. Wafer-thin slivers of soap and paper-thin towels in the bathroom. Cracker-thin walls with worn-thin industrial carpet on the floor. The places often liked to include the word “quality” in their names, as did the one he was at currently, though there was rarely much of it in evidence. But after what seemed like a lifetime of shite, it didn’t bother Dwyer much. He’d always been stoic, ever since he was a rude boy on the streets, and the hardships he endured while plying his trade had made him a regular mean fucker. Though, it occurred to him, there were few things meaner than a pissed off Welshman in the first place.

He had left off his things-his labelless clothing and generic toiletries-at the Shite-Quality Inn, kept the hardware with him, and had driven north out of the city. He’d entered a different world, he realized, as he reached Kolodnik’s office. The city was glass and steel shooting up out of a plain, but everything was marble and money out in this bloody suburb.

Dwyer grimaced as he slowed at Kolodnik’s office building but did not stop the car. Anyone with a quarter of his field experience would’ve clocked the pair of yobs at the door for what they were: security for hire. He kept right on going, around the back, spotting two more, when another, a fifth man, big as a dray horse, came lumbering out the door. But this one didn’t stay with his fellows. Instead, he moved on toward his car.

“Bollocks,” Dwyer said, and tooled on out toward Kolodnik’s home address.

“Well, aren’t you the big-time Charlie Potato?” Waddy Dwyer said to himself as he crouched in the woods a good distance away from Kolodnik’s home. Hidden in a stand of old growth oak, he glassed the lavish dwelling with Swarovski 10?42 binoculars. The house was a heavy-beamed Tudor, with decorative leaded glass windows along the ground floor, a peaked slate roof, and landscaped grounds, including pool and tennis court, surrounded by a tall, wrought iron fence. The place was more English manor than regular house.

He had parked several streets away, and had gone through the woods for a good stretch to get a look. With the binoculars, along with having seen the security at the office, it was fairly easy for him to deduce that Kolodnik wasn’t at home. But the home security team certainly was. Another four men, at least, Dwyer determined, based on the two outside and the movement inside. He saw the telltale lumps under their jackets beneath the left shoulders. Probably Uzis or MP5s on slings, like the bleeding Secret Service carried.

He considered his options. A high-powered rifle from a quarter mile away while the man was at the kitchen sink. It was doable. He recalled a similar operation on a diplomat in South Africa more than a decade back. There were two on security there, who were put down after the shot, with the door kicked in and the target finished up close. But that was quasi-military, with plenty of support. There had been choppers for extraction. Here, a deer rifle with a telescopic sight was easily gettable, but night vision optics was not. It’d also be a cold bore shot, the barrel not warmed up. Then there was that leaded window glass to consider. It could cause a deflection, which might in turn cause a wound, not a kill-or, worse yet, a miss, with no chance of follow-up.

There was more poor news along with all this, Dwyer saw. Besides a pair of black Range Rovers outside in the driveway, and a Mercedes convertible in the open garage, there was a heavy-looking blacked-out Chevrolet Suburban that appeared modified with armor to his eye. There was also a moving truck being loaded with boxes and luggage. A team of darkie moving men was doing the hauling, and the security wasn’t even helping, which was another sign of their professionalism. So it seemed Kolodnik was soon to be on the move, and there wasn’t going to be much time for proper setup. There could be even more men inside, Dwyer realized, his mood blackening further. Four, six, eight, ten, or a hundred, it didn’t matter. Kolodnik was covered tighter than a pair of balls in shrunken wool shorts. This thing was a walkaway. The operation was rogered. Right up the arse.

Back in his car, sucking on a Coca-Cola and a hamburger from some barf-hole drive-through window, Dwyer considered where he was at, and it wasn’t a pretty place. He’d spent his life applying force for profit. He’d worked his plums off for three decades to create a skill set and a name, a name only whispered in certain circles, but one that was nonetheless the gold standard in the field. He’d built a business, starting at the end of the ’80s, when the Berlin Wall came down and six million other soldiers were downsized and looking to go private. In the face of this competition he’d dealt with all stripe of unsavory bastard, demanding to be paid up front, cash on the nail, and making his fortune. So a failure was one thing, and it was bad, but having things unwind and lead to arrests would be a disaster for his reputation and his business, and he hadn’t hit his walk-away number yet. To come this far, to get this close, only to have it come apart during stoppage time was unacceptable.

Another five hundred thousand pounds would get him there, to the amount that would ensure security for the rest of his days. Living in Wales, unbothered. Diving in the Maldives twice a year. Two, two and a half years’ work to get that last five hundred thousand quid, he projected. But it might as well be five hundred million he was looking for. The reason people hired private was to get their jobs done faster and better than doing it themselves and to transfer the risk of harm or arrest to someone else. So there was no room for error. Reputation was everything in his field. It was binary. Zero-sum. One either got it done every time, or one was to be avoided like botulism. Waddy Dwyer could either be the hero or the asshole. So here it was, decision time, and one last chance to get paid. Things had shifted from a finish to a cleanup. With the original objective now unreachable, that left Waddy Dwyer a single choice: containment. But first he was going to talk to that cunt Gantcher, because he goddamn sure wasn’t heading home without his money.