It took a while for Clare to lay her hands on Zebadiah ‘Zeb’ Carter’s files. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the security clearances for them or that anyone refused her. Some of his files were redacted and to get to the original version meant she had to get through several layers of military bureaucracy. General Klouse intervened and she finally got the digitized as well as the paper files.
She took them on a Friday night hoping to finish reading by bedtime; it was two am and she had a couple of glasses of wine inside her when she turned the last page. She lay on her bed staring at the ceiling fan, watching it turn, wondering what made a man like Carter tick. What made him recover from the killing of his family? Many operatives would have gone to pieces after such a horrific experience. He had not only come back, but he came back stronger. Where had he been those two years? Had he hunted down the terrorists? She flipped the pages again. Nope. He hadn’t. Or at least, there was no record of his doing so.
He had a strong moral code and believed in doing what was right; that had resulted in his going against his superior’s wishes, several times. He hadn’t been disciplined however, and his file was blemish-free. His awards and medals? Her breath had caught when she had gone through them and all the commendations he had received.
I want him in the Agency was her last waking thought.
He’s running his own business in New York. Why would he get back into the game? She debated with herself the next day. No harm in asking. But first, I want to get a feel for him.
Cass made it easy for her to check out Carter. He goes running in Central Park every day. That’s the best place to meet him. Clare thanked her in reply, shaking her head. Cass. She knows me too well.
She was in New York for the next two days, in Central Park at five am each morning, wearing a track suit and a hoodie, to cover her face. She spotted Carter the first day, on the route that Cass had texted her. She made no attempt to approach him that day. On the second, she ran well behind him and after her five miles, broke off and was cooling down when she spotted Carter on a nearby flat green. A gaggle of people were watching him even that early in the morning.
Carter’s routine seemed to be a combination of various martial arts moves, improvised heavily. It was his speed that struck her. He too was cooling down, judging by the soaked Tee he wore, yet his intensity and ferocity had her agape. There was fluidity to his motion and a school kid clapped at one point.
She observed him the next day from her car and followed him during the rest of the day. Breakfast at a diner. Meeting with a suit, who seemed to be a client. Lunch at a food truck. A stroll in the city in the evening. No dates. No female companions. Or male, for that matter. His routine was unchanged the third and the fourth day.
In the evening of the fourth day she came back to her car to find a note folded under her windshield wiper. If you are wishing to kill me, you are taking too long. If you’re a friend, there are better ways to meet.
She visited his office the next day, in a building on the fourteenth story of a tall, mirrored-glass building on Columbus Avenue. She hung around the building for some time, going through what she would say, perfecting her pitch. She worked with the most powerful man in the world, she had met several world leaders, she interacted with four-star generals, and with none of those had she spent as much time in preparation.
The security staff in the lobby tried to stop her from going up the elevators, something about not having a prior appointment. She shut their protests with a White House badge and warned them not to call Carter. The walnut paneled elevator was soundless as it sped up and opened its doors with a near soundless whoosh. She crossed a narrow hallway and entered Carter’s office, stopping for a moment to read the ZC Consulting sign on the open door.
‘Saved me going to a branding consultant who would have charged me a bundle and come up with the same name,’ Carter’s voice came from her right.
So he’s got a sense of humor. Cass said he rarely smiled. She swiveled her head and took her first close look at the man who was rising from his chair and walking towards her. Languid, calm, were her first impressions. Carter’s face was unmarked but for fine lines around his eyes. He was wearing a grey Tee this time, tucked into blue jeans, the same leather belt around him.
‘Zeb Carter, ma’am,’ he shook her hand firmly and let it go. His dark eyes didn’t stray from her face. ‘I reckon you know my name.’
‘Clare,’ she offered and took the seat he indicated.
‘Just Clare?’
‘Yeah. Those who know me don’t need–‘
‘Got it. So why have you been following me around?’
‘I head a deep black agency. I want you to join it,’ she told him baldly, discarding her carefully constructed opening pitch.
He didn’t react for a second and kept staring at her. He rose from behind his desk when she didn’t look away and closed the door to his office. ‘You could make that up, but it wouldn’t be hard to verify. Not for me. I presume you know something about me.’
‘Correct.’
‘Cassandra. No other way you would have known about me.’
‘Correct, again,’ she agreed. ‘She and I go a long way back.’
He rose again and in that panther like walk of his, disappeared round a corner and came back with two mugs of coffee, a pot of milk and sugar cubes. He poured for her when she indicated no milk or sugar and went behind the desk.
‘Tell me,’ he told her when they took the first sips. He didn’t cross his arms and didn’t display any defensive gesture. She felt the first stirring of hope but cautioned herself, he might still turn me down.
She told him everything. Who she was. How she had joined the Agency. Why it was formed. Who its current operatives were. She saw his eyes narrow when she mentioned a few names and she stopped, expecting some questions. She resumed when he didn’t utter a word and continued for another couple of hours.
Neither of them spoke for a while when she had finished. Motes of dust danced in the fading rays of sunlight that came through a window. A cruiser wailed as it raced through the street outside, its sound muted by layers of concrete and thick glass. There was no other sound in the office. No clock ticked. No refrigerator hummed. The office was bare of any personal effects, no happy, smiling photographs. No commendations or certificates. Just the desk. A few chairs. Whitewashed walls. A computer. A printer in the corner. A water fountain. His phone. A file.
And him, watching her. Something going through his mind that she wished she was privy to.
‘How would it work?’
‘You would come to work for me. We would recruit the rest of the crew.’
‘How’s that different from any other covert agency?’
That stumped her. She had toyed with just that problem for months and had no answer.
‘What would you suggest?’
‘That you leave, ma’am. This conversation never happened. You get back to DC. I get back to my business.’
‘This is what satisfies you?’ she gestured at the empty office. ‘You quit Special Forces for this? To advise over-paid execs on protecting themselves and their business?’
‘It pays my bills, ma’am. Handsomely. I work with whom I choose. I drop clients I don’t like. There is no one to give me orders. No one to tell me who to kill.’ His lips quirked sardonically, a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You’ve read my file. You know I’ve a problem with blind obedience. I won’t go back to that life again.’
‘I don’t want blind obedience. I want to be challenged. You will choose the missions.’
He didn’t reply, his closed expression didn’t change. She didn’t give up and cast her mind back to his files, seeking some hook to interest him. She knew all about his consulting work and his clients. She had gotten powerful computers to go through his movements for the last few years.
Something came to her mind randomly. A visit of his to New Mexico to advise an oil company, a year ago. The death of a woman trafficker in the city he was visiting, during his stay. The release of several captive girls. The law enforcement authorities had no clue who killed the gangster or released the girls. Her near-eidetic memory brought back unexplained killings of gangsters in cities he had visited. Batman syndrome was a phrase used often in his file.
‘You killed him, didn’t you?’ she hazarded a wild guess. ‘That trafficker in Albuquerque. You rescued those teen girls. The FBI is still looking for that gangster’s killer.’
‘I consult for companies, ma’am. Nothing more.’
Another snippet of news flashed in her mind. The kidnapping of a retail magnate’s sole child, his teenage daughter while vacationing in their house in Mexico. A drug cartel had demanded an enormous ransom. The Federales and the FBI, individually and jointly, had raided several of the gang’s known hideouts but the girl hadn’t been found. The billionaire had caved in to the ransom demands when his daughter’s finger had been couriered to him. Negotiations were currently underway for the exchange.
‘Hollenbrook,’ she breathed softly when the she recalled the latest news article. ‘I know they are your clients. The father hired you to rescue his daughter, Lauren, didn’t he?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say who my clients are, ma’am. I can confirm this. I’m not involved in any negotiations with any criminal gang.’ Carter escorted her to the door and held it open for her. ‘I wish you luck with your agency, ma’am. I am sure you’ll find your operatives.’
Lauren Hollenbrook was held in a remote ranch in the Sonoran state of Mexico. The ranch was at an elevation of four thousand feet and had barbed wire running all around its three thousand acres. Only a determined observer could tell that the fence was electrified and that the ranch house had exotic security not seen in any other ranch in the neighborhood.
Fifteen men were in the main ranch house when the first grenade arced through the night and reduced the guest house to rubble. A second grenade took out the generator room and brought darkness to the inside of the house. The fifteen men were well trained, deserters from the Mexican special forces. They tried their radios to contact the cartels boss who was in Hermosillo. They found their radios were jammed. They tried their phones. Those too didn’t have a signal.
They did not know how large the attacking force was since they hadn’t seen anyone. Two men guarded the girl’s room which had one bathroom window overlooking the rear of the ranch. Eight men crawled outside the house, careful not to show their bodies to any watcher, and mounted an outside perimeter. The remaining five remained inside, watchful and alert. They had automatic weapons, two RPGs, enough ammo, food, and water to withstand a siege from any large force.
They weren’t prepared for a loner attack, especially from an operative of Zeb’s caliber.
Zeb had spent three months in the country following Clare’s visit, disguised as a farm worker, working on remote ranches, as he moved across the vast country. The Feds knew that Lauren was not in any major city in the country, the only concrete intel they had. They had tracked the ransom demands to the west of Mexico, but hadn’t been able to narrow it down any further.
Zeb had got his first clue in Guadalajara, when working with a rancher who was looking to have a sophisticated security set-up for his dude ranch. The rancher’s preferred contractor in Durango had disappeared. ‘He’s the only one who can install what I want,’ the rancher had spat and scratched his head. ‘Way I heard he’s got some secret commission. Maybe cartel work,’ he had said darkly.
It might be nothing, Zeb thought, but had investigated, and that slim, almost-nonexistent lead had taken him north, following the coast, when he had come to Hermosillo. There he got talking to a trucker who had said he had driven a lot to Bavispe, to a stock up a store. ‘What’s unusual about that?’ Zeb asked him as he helped the trucker load his vehicle.
‘Taking a lot of medicines up there. Never done that before.’
‘All of us need medicines,’ Zeb told him. ‘The Good Lord can do only so much.’
‘Not these kind,’ the trucker replied. ‘These are for some kind of allergy I haven’t heard of.’
Zeb’s ears pricked up. Lauren Hollenbrook suffered from a rare allergy that could be dangerous if untreated for long. Bavispe had less than fifteen hundred people and in such a small municipality anyone inquiring about medicines would stand out. Zeb didn’t ask questions.
He rented a tired-looking Toyota, advertised himself as a farm laborer and worked on several farms and ranchers, spreading out wider and wider, going to remote parts of the state. And then he came across the cartel’s ranch, and once he got there, days of surveillance confirmed that the men in the ranch belonged to the gang. Further observation showed that the specific drug from Bavispe’s store, ended up at the ranch.
Zeb made no attempt to get close to the ranch. The initial grenades from his launcher had decimated the outer buildings around the main house. More explosives had destroyed the single track road to the ranch. He wasn’t worried about an aerial attack. The cartel wouldn’t take to the air, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be looking for a single person. No one would believe Hollenbrook would employ just one man to bring back his daughter. In any case he was camo-ed up, and had gear on him to evade thermal and radar surveillance. If they got to him, maybe he would die. He didn’t fear death. He used to, once, when he had a…he pushed the thought out of his mind and focused on rescuing Lauren Hollenbrook.
Zeb took out two men in the night, from long distance, and imagined the panic growing amongst the surviving men. He had rigged several rifles around the ranch and timed each of them to fire intermittently, giving the impression that the attackers were many. Similarly, he had flashlights go on and off throughout the night. Voice recorders, taped to low shrubs, whispered commands and instructions. At four am, when the body’s metabolism was at its lowest ebb, he started his long, slow crawl.
At six am, as the sun painted the sky in gold and orange, he killed three more on the perimeter. He got the layout from one man who spewed out answers quickly. The gangster had a knife jammed deep in his thigh and a grenade thrust in his mouth; he had no reason to lie. Another man confirmed the layout, the positions, and the armaments of the remaining hostiles.
Zeb donned the clothing of one of the dead men and entered the ranch house at seven am. He didn’t indulge in lengthy firefights or stealthy stalking. He lobbed fire and smoke grenades and let them do their work, staying in a corner, covered by sacks of grain from the kitchen’s store. He tossed flashbangs for good effect and by eight am, only the two guards outside Lauren’s room remained.
He knew they would be jittery, trigger happy. He didn’t approach them. He tossed something through the corridor that led to the room and heard the sound of one man retching when he recognized what the object was. It was the head of one the hostiles.
‘You don’t have to end like that,’ he told them in Spanish. ‘Release the girl and surrender and you will live.’
The men didn’t move. They fired a volley in Zeb’s direction. All the rounds went wide.
Zeb turned on a voice recorder and a man shrieked loudly and started sobbing. A louder scream sounded and the voice prayed and begged. A shot sounded, followed by a thump, and a body fell in the corridor from around a corner.
‘He was your friend, wasn’t he?’ Zeb asked them. The two men didn’t reply. He selected another recording, and this time the agonized shout was longer and louder.
‘STOP,’ one man yelled. ‘I’m coming out.’
‘No,’ the other man yelled at him and the two argued furiously.
‘Take your time. I’m in no hurry. ’ Zeb told them. ‘I’m going to kill another buddy of yours.’
They fell silent on hearing him, whispered among themselves and the second man asked, ‘you promise we will live?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How can we believe you?’ the other questioned.
Zeb sighed. ‘You can’t. But I can guarantee I’ll kill you if you don’t surrender.’
More whispers. More argument. The two men seemed to be getting nowhere when Lauren Hollenbrook made their decision for them.
‘HELP. CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?’ she screamed from her room, her voice audible in the quiet ranch house.
‘I’ll count to three,’ Zeb told the two men once Lauren had fallen silent.
‘One,’ he lay down and brought his rifle to his shoulder.
‘Two,’ he centered on the corner to the corridor.
An Uzi flew through the air and crashed into a wall. Another automatic rifle followed. Two handguns came next and the first hood appeared around the corner. The second gangster stood behind him and the two men eyed the enormous lounge nervously. It was empty but for those sacks in the corner. Where were the soldiers? The Federales?
Zeb shot the first man and finished the second man with a one-two. He threw another flashbang and emerged cautiously from his hide. The corridor was clear, no other hostiles remained. He stepped over the two bodies, feeling no remorse over killing them. I promised them they’d live. Didn’t tell them for how long.
He rapped once on the captor’s door. ‘Lauren Hollenbrook?’
‘YES. GOD, YES. WHO ARE YOU?’
‘Ma’am, I’m here to take you to your dad.’
‘THANK YOU. OH MY GOD, THANK YOU,’ she shrieked and then started sobbing. Zeb masked his face with a bandana and opened the door and got his first look at the kidnapped woman. She lay huddled in a corner, her face tear streaked and blackened. One hand was damaged and when she raised it to wipe here face, Zeb’s face tightened. She stared with wide eyes at him and rose shakily to her feet. ‘Are you American?’ she asked him.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he helped her to her feet and blocked her view with his body. ‘Ma’am, you’ll have to trust me for a few more hours. I’m going to blindfold you and lead you out. In a few hours you’ll be back home.’
Home. Lauren’s lips trembled at the world and her eyes started tearing up. She nodded jerkily and sniffled when he tied the black strip across her eyes. He led her out of the house, steering her clear of the bodies.
‘What’s your name? Why’re you hiding your face?’ she asked an hour later after they had trekked through open country and had reached his Toyota. She had asked several questions on the way and had received no answer.
‘I don’t have one, ma’am,’ he replied as he drove them to a private airstrip where a Cessna would be waiting for them. His vehicle looked battered, but underneath its hood was a souped-up engine. He concentrated on driving as fast as he could on narrow roads, keeping an eye out for any pursuers.
‘Are you FBI?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘My dad sent you?’
‘Yes, ma’am. You can talk to him.’ He pulled out a cell phone, dialed a number, and gave her the handset.
‘Dad?’ she asked, the hope in her voice dissolving to deep sobbing at the sound of her father’s voice. She spoke to him at length and thrust the handset in Zeb’s direction when she had finished. ‘He wants to talk to you.’
‘Mr. Carter?’ the billionaire’s voice was choked when Zeb greeted him.
‘Anything I have is yours, Mr. Carter. You just have to ask. Everything. Even my life.’