part0093

T here was too much to easily process what had happened that evening. It had still been reasonably early when Anja had shared the news that there was no sign of the police even trying to come after him, and no indication that they might have tried to track an electric Audi that had driven away from the scene of the crime. There had been a couple of videos caught of it, mostly on the nearby security systems, but she was quick to scrub the evidence. The houses in the neighborhood might have fitted some of the best security on the market, but when it came down to it, she had hacked government security systems since her early teenage years. Access to the nanny-cam level systems these homes ran was something she could do in her sleep.

That wasn’t simply an assumption on his part. Those were Anja’s own words as she gave him a play by play update on what she was working on while he headed back into the city and away from most of the sirens that still screamed loudly enough to be heard a good distance away. From what he caught on the radio, there was a fair amount of news coverage of the incident as well.

“We have live reports coming in from just outside the city of Seattle,” declared a young, attractive woman who had recently bleached her hair blonde. “These shocking reports are from the charming suburb of King County, where the inhabitants of a quiet neighborhood of family homes have been exposed to shocking images of violence.”

The image cut to shaky cam footage of the police surrounding the Devers’ driveway with tape as curious onlookers gathered. The three bodies were covered in tarps and footage included them being examined by paramedics.

“From the firsthand witness accounts of the neighbors, the shooting occurred sometime between 6:45 and 7 in the evening, just as the sun was setting,” the reporter continued as the cameras focused on her once again. “Three gunmen invaded the home of Andrew Devers while he and his wife and daughter were preparing dinner and attempted to kidnap them, according to police reports.”

“Other reports suggest that a van that crashed into the mailbox of a neighboring home might have been involved. As the family was dragged out into the driveway, another group of gunmen, whose numbers are still unknown, assassinated all three with a weapon the investigating officers still haven’t been able to identify.”

The image cut to a tall, well-built man in a police uniform with only a hint of male pattern baldness in his greying hair. “We have our detectives looking into the details of what might have happened, but initial reports point toward the rising surge of gang violence spreading into the city.”

“Called it.” He grinned and Anja cackled into her comms. He supposed joking about the death of three men by his own hand probably wasn’t in good form despite the fact that they had aimed to harm Jules, Abby, and Andy. But when someone had been involved in the life as long as he had and faced death as often as he did, they needed ways to see the humor in it, even if the dark variety was all they could find.

The camera returned to the attractive reporter. “The officers in charge of the investigation have taken the Devers family into custody for their own protection, as well as to provide more detailed statements on their attackers and the mysterious group that saved them from being kidnapped. As yet, there is still no indication as to whether Andrew Devers was involved in any criminal organization that might have made him a target for such an attack.”

“Is that the story they’re running with?” Savage asked and scowled. “Seriously, you could not find a more vanilla guy. I’m absolutely certain he comes to a full stop at every stop sign.”

“Well, they have to do something to keep the ratings up,” the hacker commented. “The truth is very rarely as dramatic as we’d like it to be, and sometimes, they need to come up with some random and crazy prediction based on the facts available to persuade people to tune in next week.”

“Honestly, you should know by now that the truth is often a lot crazier than people give it credit for.” His chuckle was dark. “Seriously. You’re a Russian hacker living, from what I can tell, a hop and a skip away from an alien-spawned jungle that’s out to kill everything even remotely human that enters it. For myself, I’m a former black-ops operative who has had his death faked by the government. But when you tell the American people any of that, they’re quick to write you off as a crackpot conspiracy theorist living in the mountains while wearing a wide assortment of aluminum foil hats.”

“Hats of many assorted foil types,” he grumbled. “Either way, these people ignore the real stories as being too crazy and out there, and when they’re presented with the truth of the matter, they scoff and write you off as crazy. That is some bullshit right there.”

He pulled into a nearby hotel she had identified as the kind he should stay in. By that she meant it had enough vacancies to allow him to get a room of his choice while it was full enough to make sure he didn’t draw too much attention. It was also the kind that was upscale enough to have decent enough service while it lacked the kind of security that would be dangerous for him. Most importantly, it was amenable to cash bribes to ensure they didn’t need to put a name into the registry.

But considering that Savage traveled under another fake ID anyway, that part wasn’t so important to him on this trip. He warned the bellboys away from his weapon-filled duffle bag for long enough to check into a quaint little room on the fifth floor.

“Okay,” the hacker said when he was in the elevator. “I’ll put my contacts through the griller to find out where this contract on your family is and see if I can’t have it reversed somehow.”

“Well, at the last place I confined myself to my room, but tonight, I think I need a little liquid therapy, so I’ll visit the bar I saw in the lobby.” He pressed the keycard to the room’s lock and entered. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but the queen-sized bed and the notification of free Wi-Fi above the TV were all he really needed. He tossed his duffel bag onto the bed and turned toward the door.

“Oh, and keep your earpiece in,” Anja said. “If I have to call and text you on your damn cellphone again, I’ll make sure the Internet is flooded with porn with your face and name attached.”

“Understood.” He didn’t believe she would, although he had a sinking feeling she could very easily deliver on the threat. Either way, it wasn’t really worth the risk. If she wanted to listen to him getting mildly sloshed, that was on her.

They’d told him that involvement with a professional team like this would be hard work but the pay was good, and he would be able to retire in a couple of years with more than enough money to pay off the loans he’d taken against the house. More than a few of his army buddies had recommended he enter the freelance business, even if it was part-time. He didn’t have a family to maintain, and he needed the money. It had been relatively easy to decide he might as well get into the business that, so far, had been populated mostly by criminals who couldn’t do the job right.

Charles Tells—once known as Charlie but since nicknamed Chucky due to the scars left on his face after a landmine had gone off a little too close to him—wasn’t the kind of man to scare easily. He’d been through tough spots before, including ops that had gone sideways and had shifted from a clear objective to a get out and survive kind of deal. All in all, he’d been through all kinds of hell.

But this was supposed to be the easy part. The promise was that he would cash in on all the training the government had given him while they forgot to deliver the kind of money he was owed for his particular skills.

Of course, most of their team was now gone and had burned themselves on the job. Reports already started to show up on the news about three bodies and a crashed van nearby. They didn’t appear to have any pictures of the van itself or the plates, but that would only delay the police for a limited period. When rich people like those living in that neighborhood were involved, the police had ways to make sure that virtually anything that was missing could be found.

But none of that really mattered anymore. They were finished. It had been a six-man team and they were down to two. Braken had been driving and had been shot two or three times by the man they had barely seen in time. The stranger was dressed in black, wore a mask, and carried a gun.

Chucky had been seated in the passenger seat. Grant was in the back, waiting to help them get the family inside. It had been a solid plan but someone had fucked them over. The man had waited for them, already in place to protect the family.

The merc grimaced. He had been hit in the shoulder too, although he couldn’t find any bullets in his wound. In fact, he wondered if his wound wasn’t actually caused by some of the broken glass. There was a lot of it inside the van, especially after it had crashed into that damn mailbox. Braken was killed on impact and he’d managed to get himself together, drag the man out of the way so he could take the driver’s seat, and get them the hell out of there. Grant, their man in the back, had walked away with a bump on the head and maybe a concussion, and he was the lucky one. Chucky had gotten them out of there, ditched the van at the drop-off spot, and driven away in the new one to take them the hell out of Dodge.

Only then had they had the time to check the news and their wounds. Chucky still couldn’t find any bullets in his shoulder, and while he’d initially assumed it was glass, when they tried to haul Bracken’s dead body out of the van, they didn’t find any slugs in him either. He had heard about weapons currently under development that didn’t leave much in the way of shrapnel or bullets behind, but those rumors had been around for decades, probably since the Kennedy assassination.

“What the fuck happened in there?” Grant asked while he pressed ice to the side of his head. “I thought we were in clean. Who was there to protect them?”

“That’s what we need to find out.” He probed his shoulder gently. Every time he moved, he could feel something dig in deeper and bite, much like a splinter that had gone way, way deeper than they tended to go.

“The contract was posted online.” He scowled as he thought things through. He remembered seeing Alfonso run through the details that had been sent to them. “If there were other teams looking into it who declined because they knew something we didn’t, I’d want the information out there, and so would all the other teams who work jobs like this. It’s a common and professional courtesy issue. No one wants to work for someone who doesn’t post the full operational details and uses that to underpay in the contracts.”

“Someone was covering the family,” Chucky said and stated the obvious. “Someone good enough and well equipped enough to knock us out of the running, and from the news, kill Alfonso, Eddie, and Murdock. The family’s safe in police custody, but I think we can put money on this person still covering them, so another attempt is pointless now. We need to make sure no one else tries the contract without knowing what they’re walking into. It’ll be a charnel house otherwise.”

“I’d want to know if I was walking into a trap.” He logged into the online auction site that doubled as their host site on which to find clients in need of their services. It was partly because he wanted to make sure their fellow illegal operatives didn’t come within a mile of this contract. But he also wanted to screw the contract initiator who had gotten his friends killed.

“I only had two drinks,” Savage protested cheerfully, thankful that he was alone in the elevator. “You of all people should know I have a higher tolerance than that.”

“Please, Anja, it’s like you don’t know me at all.” He grinned. “The hotel has a kitchen too. I had dinner before I went to the bar. Weren’t you keeping an eye on me?”

“I ran an Internet-wide search on any sites that might have issued the contract on your family,” she explained sharply. “I also kept an eye on the developing police case to make sure they haven’t realized that you’re involved in any way, all while also making sure your family is safe from attack. All things considered, I’m running two or three other operations at the same time. I don’t have time to keep an eye on you every second of every day. That, plus the fact that the cameras in the bar and restaurant area are down for repairs and you paid your tab in cash, so I couldn’t be sure what it was that you bought.”

“Huh.” He grunted to conceal his laughter. “So, you’re telling me you tried to keep an eye on me, and when you couldn’t, you decided to do all that other stuff?”

“Shut up,” the hacker retorted. “Stop talking to me while you’re out in the open like that. People might be listening from their rooms and think you’re crazy.”

“We wouldn’t want the truth about me to be out there, now would we?” He grinned but she was right. He kept his voice low when commenting as he headed into his room and locked the door behind him. “Now that it’s only you and me, is there anything you can update me on?”

“I’m a nasty kicker too, don’t forget about that.” He drew his pistol from the holster, removed a towel from the duffel bag and laid it out on the bed, then placed his weapons onto it one by one. “I simply thought that you have an innate need to talk while you work, being your own white noise machine like I am, and I wouldn’t mind having my mind eased by knowing what everyone else is up to.”

“Ugh, fine.” She sighed and the soft squeak from her side of the comm line told him she was rocking in her office chair again. “Well, the cops have your family in custody. They’re taking statements, but it doesn’t look like they’ve tried anything along the lines of tying the investigation to whatever ties Andy might or might not have to the mob. Despite the captain’s statement on the news, no one seriously thinks there are any actual gangs involved. I assume that’s mostly because they’ve identified the three men you killed through fingerprinting and have them listed as ex-military from Bosnia, South Africa, and Italy.”

“Yep. More importantly, mercenaries whose DNA and fingerprints have been found at a variety of crime scenes across the country, which means they have done considerable work in the US for about five years.”

“Stop summarizing my updates in one word,” she snapped. “You wanted me to be white noise so I’m being white noise. Do you want me to stop?”

“Nope, by all means, keep talking.” He inspected the pistol and cleaned it carefully. There wasn’t much residue left behind when the needles moved magnetically through the barrel, but this routine was what he’d learned way back when he was taught how to use weapons. There was a sense of ritual to it, he supposed, and found the idea calming.

“Well, I’m facilitating the process of getting your family into protective custody,” Anja said. “Moving it to the top of the pile, as it were. They should have it finalized before the night is over, although they might have to spend the night in the police station to be safe.”

“In the police station is better than dead,” Savage said cheerfully. He hadn’t drunk that much. His steak and fries with a side of salad—none of which had been half bad but not fantastic either—were accompanied by a beer. He’d followed with a double of scotch as a digestif. That was the right word for it, wasn’t it? As a result, he was slightly buzzed, not enough to leave him impaired in any way but he definitely felt more relaxed. He would have growled and rolled his eyes excessively at her antics otherwise.

She paused and he frowned as he focused on the odd sound that came next and wondered what it was. It sounded like a chuckle but not quite like anything he’d heard from her before.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he replied and turned his attention to the shotgun. The routine to clean and oil it was soothing. “And you do remember how well that worked for me, right?”

“Well, let’s be honest.” The hacker paused, still chuckling uncontrollably. “You don’t have anything like my skills at uncovering people’s dirty secrets.”

“Ugh, fine.” She groaned. “You’re no fun today, you know that? Give me a few minutes and check your phone. I’m finishing this up. You’ll love it.”

Savage simply nodded. He knew she couldn’t see him but didn’t really feel too charitable toward her at the moment. For a minute or so, he continued to work on the shotgun, then switched to the rifle before his phone buzzed. He leaned over, picked it up gently, and peered at what Anja had texted to him.

“You’ll find the capture contract on your family if you put in Andy’s home address in the search bar,” she explained. He did so, his expression one of distaste.

“Nobody buys anything on this site that doesn’t have a picture on it, especially when they have a price that high,” she explained when his search brought up a piece of art that had no image and only the street address named. Mixed into the description, which was longer than it needed to be for that purpose, were the words Capture Alive. It was an interesting system and difficult to penetrate unless you knew what you were looking for.

“Under the description, you can see people asking about the delivery system which is code for the payments and details on the job mercs would be interested in,” she continued. “Look at the bottom—last comment, added less than an hour ago.”

“Huh.” He snorted. “Worried about delivery system. Who is running point on security? And there’s already an answer, but not from the person who posted the contract.”

“It’s a storage site that holds the resumes of most of the pros in the country,” Anja clarified. “Basically, it’s a way for people in the business of hiring professional criminals to be able to do so across the country with a marginal degree of certainty and verification.”

“And this is…a page for The Savage.” He scanned the variety of operations assigned to his name. “Houston, LA…yeah, I remember those. Rio, Lisboa…uh, I sort of remember those. I don’t think I was ever in Seoul, though. Or Bangkok. Or…most of these countries, actually.”

“In fairness, I managed to make up half the jobs in there based on ones you were actually involved in, either before or after your time in the government. But I felt I had to pad the numbers. I found old pictures of you and altered them slightly to help me with the verifications. It took considerable work, but I think I got the point across. A significant number of people have already checked the details about you and that made sure the whole contract turned radioactive overnight. No one will come forward to fulfill it, and that gives us time to deal with Banks the right way.”

“How sure are you that this will work?” Savage asked. “There have to be some people who can verify whether or not I was on certain jobs. Especially the people who actually did them.”

“Well, it’s a risk, I’ll admit, but I made sure none of the jobs I chose were claimed by anybody else,” she pointed out. “I’ve planned for something like this for a while, so I had a list ready. But worst case, it’s enough of a bluff to give us time to handle Banks and nullify the contract anyway.”

“Look, we’re staying in town for the night anyway,” she assured him. “I’ll make sure they’re safe come the morning, and if our cover is still solid, I’ll let Anderson know you’re ready to head back to New York to confront Banks. I have a feeling you want to exchange a few words with him.

“Words, yes,” he agreed, packed his weapons away, and pushed the duffel bag under his bed before he stretched out comfortably. “I’d like to exchange bullets with the man too.”