part0046

“I can’t have that.” The operative grunted his displeasure and proceeded to kick the MP-5 out of the man’s hands. It slid free of his fingers but, still attached to the loop around his neck, it didn’t travel far. He dropped to a knee, yanked the loop off, and tossed the submachine gun away.

“Hey, how’s it going man?” he asked and searched quickly for any more weapons. He found a revolver shoved into his belt and a knife tucked into an ankle sheath. “That looks painful. You’ll want to have a doctor look at it.”

The assassin glared at him as his last chance to fight back was thrown away as casually as one might a candy wrapper.

“The strong and silent type, eh?” Savage asked and smiled as he brought the stock of his MP-5 down on the goon’s chest. He screamed in pain and tried instinctively to roll away from the pressure but was dragged back by the collar of his now-ruined vest.

“Well, only the strong type now, eh? Yeah, these babies are effective, which is why they’re still in production, and they leave one hell of a mark when they’re put to good use. Which is how you can tell whether your bosses actually care much about your well-being. See, if they did, they would have sprung for something a little more expensive but a lot more effective, like ceramic plate weaves. They still hurt, but not the broken-ribs and shattered-sternum hurt.”

He twisted the stock into the man’s bruised torso again and dragged another cry of agony from him.

“So, I understand that you people are loyal to the man who signs the paychecks, but here’s the deal.” The operative looked around hastily to make sure Anderson wasn’t watching. He really didn’t want his boss to have nightmares about this later. “I have…issues I need to get out. Anger, abandonment—a wild concoction of shit that rich kids sit around in therapy for. My parents weren’t rich, though, so I learned to take my issues out in more creative ways than screaming into a pillow. I know you don’t like me, so if you want me to walk away from this feeling unfulfilled and dissatisfied, make like the world’s worst prom date and spill all the goods prematurely. Do you understand me?”

The man stared at him and the defiance bled slowly away to be replaced by a trace of existential horror. As Savage pressed the stock in again, he screamed.

“Okay, okay. I’ll tell you everything I know!” he shouted and writhed as he struggled to escape the pressure.

“Awesome,” the operative said with an annoyingly bright smile. “Keep your words simple and in English. Who the fuck is Edward Smith?”

“I am,” the man gasped. “I’m Edward Smith.”

“Well, if my luck isn’t simply the best today.” He chuckled and for a moment, actually looked amused. “I come to a place looking for Smith, kill guys who come to kill me, and the one man left alive is the guy I’m looking for.”

“It’s true, I swear to God,” Smith gasped. “We’re all Edward Smith. We run a small chop operation around here, and we were going out of business after some Colombians moved in across town. Then, these bigwigs appeared out of nowhere a couple of months ago and said they were willing to pay in cash to move stuff out of inventory from a couple of local warehouses. They needed us to move the merch and keep it until some trucks came by to collect. We were supposed to mail them from a PO box in Chinatown to let them know when there was stuff to pick up. They would always leave the cash in there for us. After the first meeting, there wasn’t any contact. Okay, there were the truck drivers, but I got the impression they were in the same boat as we were. Especially when one of them showed up with one of our stolen plates. Here, I have the address on my phone.”

“You have to believe me, man,” the wounded man pleaded and hauled his phone out of his pocket to display the address. Savage memorized it quickly.

“I have to do no such thing, amigo,” he corrected him. “But I might actually believe what you’ve told me is the truth because you want me to leave you alive. And, of course, not come after you when you lie in a hospital bed recovering. Because you know that I’ll look into your claims, right?”

“Right,” Smith quickly agreed.

“Okay, now that we agree on that, I have a couple more questions.” He glanced around at the dead men, his expression speculative.

“Come on, I told you everything I know.”

“I doubt that,” he responded cheerfully. “For instance, I happen to know that small-timers like you don’t have access to weapons and equipment like this, so there had to have been some face-to-face contact for that to happen. And I also know that the motherfuckers who sicced you on us didn’t only send a group of amateurs to deal with the situation. Which meant they tracked us and then realized they needed to make it a hit and decided to call in local talent.”

“Come on, man, we’re not…amateurs,” Smith grumbled.

“I killed seven people, most of them with their own weapons,” Savage pointed out. “And I disarmed you and kept you alive for questioning by shooting you in the chest. You’re so far out of your league that you’re playing the wrong sport, champ. Now shut the fuck up. And then un-shut the fuck up and tell me which of these dumbasses are the ones who brought you in on the kill? I know it’s not the two dumb fucks I killed by the gate.”

“It’s…that guy,” Smith pointed at the first man to die. “And that one. There were only two of them, I swear to Christ.”

“I appreciate your help, buddy boy,” Savage said. “That concludes the Q and A section of this night’s show.”

He added a definitive full stop by cracking the stock across the poor man’s temple.

“You’ll want to talk to a neurologist about that,” he mentioned casually to the unconscious man as he stood and approached the men who had been pointed out as the professionals in this operation. He assumed they wouldn’t be the actual people who called a hit on the likes of Anderson and Monroe, considering how woefully unprepared they were to handle this situation. No, they were likely tails who were suddenly given a green light for a hit with the promise of a substantial reward delivered to the man who killed them.

He paused while he rummaged through the pockets of the second man. The fact that he’d tackled Carlson on his own and left the executive alive afterward meant that his cover as merely another random man walking around was possibly blown. Anja had made sure that any footage of him was erased, but the chances were good that his picture was out there by now. People knew to look out for him, especially since they saw him with Anderson.

“Hey, Anja?” he said, retrieved a wallet and a burner phone from the first man, and moved on to the second. “I think these guys followed Anderson and I from the airport. They’re probably local muscle, but I’m not sure if they have connections. It makes sense that they do to get this amount of weaponry on such a short timeline. Is there any chance you could figure out where these weapons came from and who owns them? It might give us an idea as to who is funding them.”

“Send me a picture of the serial numbers,” Anja said briskly.

He shook his head. “No luck there. They’ve been shaved off already.”

“Not on the weapons, dummy,” she snapped. “From the vests. Kevlar isn’t issued randomly. They’d have to have it registered, and you need the pins for that. Just—”

The operative was already working to remove the vest from the man he was examining. Sure enough, on the inside beside the label with instructions on how to wash it, there was a rigid tag with a serial number on it.

“I’ll be damned,” he grunted and used his phone to take a picture. “Can you track who bought these things?”

“Nope, but I can track who sells them,” the hacker said. “While you don’t need a permit to own body armor, you do need a permit to buy the vests in bulk and the people who sell them do need to keep a registry of the sales to make sure none were sold to convicted felons.”

“Okay, fair enough.” He tried not to sound too disappointed. Having been in the army for so long, he’d assumed there were gaps in his knowledge regarding civilian use of combat equipment, and he’d actually hoped that there was more to buying body armor as a civilian than met the eye. He was a sucker for a conspiracy theory.

“This could take me a while,” Anja grumbled. “You might want to locate Anderson, and the two of you should probably bug out quickly. That may be an abandoned section of the city, but people heard the gunfire and cops are on the way. I assume that is still a no-no for you, being dead and all?”

“Correct,” Savage said. The second man’s wallet contained a wad of cash, a driver’s license, and no credit cards, along with another burner. He stood and scowled at the burning pain in his back. In the heat and adrenaline rush, he’d totally forgotten that one of the assholes had scored a flesh wound. It didn’t seem to be bleeding, but he still wanted to make sure there wasn’t any potential for infection.

He stepped inside the building where his boss rummaged noisily through some file cabinets. The operative gave the three rooms a quick sweep before he entered the office where his companion now searched. He had his phone pressed to his ear as he worked.

“That’s right,” he said as Savage stepped inside. “It looks like some gang war style violence going on in the area. A shit-load of shooting and bodies near a chop shop outside Hyde Park.” He glanced at the other man as he stepped in and noted that he still carried the submachine gun he’d taken from one of the men outside.

“Are you finished out there?” he asked.

It took the operative a couple of seconds to realize that the question was addressed to him. “Oh, yeah. I wrapped things up and have a couple of new leads too.”

“Great,” Anderson replied and returned his attention to the phone. “Oh, yeah, absolutely, it’s a fucking warzone around here… I hear you, absolutely. All over the place…yeah, I appreciate it, Bob. Say hi to Becky for me, would you? Okay, bye.”

He hung up and grinned smugly.

“So, Bob sounds like a really stand-up guy,” Savage said with a small smile.

“He is.” The ex-colonel chuckled. “I did my first tour with him. He got out before I did and took a job in the police force here. He’s actually part of the commissioner’s office, and they’re grooming him for the position come elections next year.”

“Hey, that’s some really great news.” He tried not to sound too sarcastic and failed miserably. “So, did he call to check up or what’s the deal?”

“Well, he owes me a favor, so I called it in. We can’t be caught here, and apparently, calls poured in about shots fired in the area, which meant we would be swimming in cops in five minutes. This way, they’ll mobilize their local SWAT teams, and that gives us about thirty minutes to bug out.”

“Well, now I feel like an asshole,” Savage admitted and looked more than a little sheepish.

“Only now?” Anderson pocketed a couple of papers he’d found in the mess and gestured toward the door.

“Well, yeah. Anyway, I have a couple of burners I took from the leaders of this attack. I assume Anja’s working on them now?” He phrased it as a question to include her.

“You would be correct in that assumption,” she said and sounded audibly upbeat about it.

“Fantastic.” He smirked, confident that she would turn something worthwhile up in her search. “Anyway, I have a lead on where all the missing merch went. It turns out the guys who ran this shop actually worked for someone and were paid what I would imagine was pennies on the dollar to move all the stuff out of the warehouses in the area and send them…fuck knows where. I have the address for the PO box they were paid from.”

“I doubt we’ll find anything useful there, but we might as well check it out,” Anderson said as they set off toward the exit. They took their time and ignored the fact that there were five bodies and one unconscious man on the ground out there in the baking sun—plus two at the gate who were still out of sight.

“Yeah, we’re here for the weekend so we might as well make sure that we follow up on every lead, right?” Savage agreed. “By the way, are you looking into the cars that are parked outside? I’m talking to you again, Anja.”

“Oh, right, yeah,” she said quickly. “I have the license plates and I’m already running them.”

His boss gave him a dirty look.

“Look, you’d be included in the conversation if you’d put the damn earpiece in.” He laughed as they reached the exit, skirted the two bodies and the SUVs, and continued to where they’d left their car.

Anderson didn’t answer.

Charles’ eyes snapped open as the phone on his desk rang. He scowled at it for a few seconds. He was tempted to let it go and continue with his nap. Then again, it was the private line—the one even his assistant of the past ten years didn’t have access to. It was a secure line, constantly cleaned of taps and wires. He only ever used it for emergencies, and the only people who had access to it were the people who handled his more…delicate concerns. The kind that law enforcement didn’t need to know about.

It continued to ring until he straightened in his chair again, yanked the handset out of the cradle, and pressed it to his ear. A click and buzz confirmed that the installed software quickly randomized the connection before a voice could be heard on the other side.

“What?” he snapped.

“Mr. Stafford, this is Addams, your head of security in Los Angeles.” the man on the other line said. “Is this line secure?”

“Yeah, it’s fucking secure, what is it?”

“This is concerning your orders regarding Mr. Anderson’s visit to Los Angeles, sir,” Addams continued, seemingly unaffected by his superior’s rude tone. “People were brought in to handle the situation personally, as it seemed the man was too close to one of our other operations. It would appear that not all went according to plan. There are police all over the site, so I’m not exactly sure what the situation is, but from all appearances, our assets and the local muscle they brought in are down. There is one survivor on the way to the hospital now. It would seem that Mr. Anderson had help of the professional variety.”

Well, that much was obvious, although the who of it was still unclear. He already knew Anderson and Monroe had brought in someone who specialized in this kind of work, and they were good enough to avoid any kind of detection so far.

“There aren’t any survivors, do you hear me, Addams?” Charles said and his voice approached a snarl. Rage had already started to build inside him, and he snatched something up and threw it across the room. It shattered against the wall and he scowled, mainly because it had done little to ease his fury. “And you owe me for a fucking Ming Vase. Twenty-eight grand for the vase. Now, get it fucking done. I don’t want to hear from you again until you’re ready to give me some good news, do you hear me?”