Five more days passed and Recker’s anxiety might have been at an all-time high. They’d just eaten dinner, and the whole team had been in the hotel room the entire day, not having any other leads to go on now. They were just waiting on Batton’s call.
“What’s taking so long?” Recker said, pacing around the room.
“He didn’t say it would be today,” Jones replied. “It could still be a few more days after this one.”
“Don’t even say that. It’s gotta be soon. It’s gotta be.”
“I’m sure the hotel staff hopes so too. They’ll have to replace the carpet after we leave.”
Jones’ joke went right over Recker’s head, who didn’t pay any attention to it. “It’s gotta be soon.”
“Mike, repeating that it has to be soon isn’t going to actually make it so. You’re not a witch doctor or anything.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if I was?”
“Why don’t you go find someone on our list and threaten them or something? It will make you feel better.”
“We’ve already talked to everyone on the list,” Recker said. “Talking to them again won’t do any good.”
Jones continued throwing ideas into the air for another twenty minutes, trying anything to get Recker out of the room, for the sake of them both. Luckily, Recker’s phone went off, giving Jones some hope that whatever it was, would get his friend out and about.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got him,” Batton said.
Recker could hardly believe it. “What?”
“I’ve got a deal lined up with him.”
“For when?”
“Three hours from now.”
“What? That’s too soon.”
“It’s the best I could do,” Batton replied. “He said he was leaving the country tomorrow. Said it was today or it would have to wait until he came back. He said that might be a couple months. Had to be today, so I took it.”
Recker put his hand on his head as he tried to think. “OK, OK, you made the right call. It’s gotta be today. What’s the deal?”
“I give him three million pounds, he gives me a bunch of weapons. Grenades, rocket launchers, rifles, a bunch of that stuff.”
“You have that much on you?”
“No, I figured you would have it. Thought maybe you had some money on hand in case something like this happened.”
“I can’t get that much in a couple hours,” Recker said. “I’d need a few days at least.”
“We don’t have that kind of time.”
“I know. We’ll have to make it work as it is.”
“Where’s the deal going down?”
“Some little farmhouse outside the city.”
“Not at his warehouse?”
“No. I don’t think he makes deals there. At least not with people he hasn’t done business with.”
“All right, we’ll just have to go with it.”
“So, what do you wanna do?”
“Start getting your boys ready,” Recker answered. “I’ll talk it over and come up with a plan.”
“Sounds good.”
“Text me the address of the place too, huh?”
“You got it.”
Jones saw a look of hope on Recker’s face he hadn’t seen since the first week they got there. He could tell the phone call was something important.
“Mark’s got him,” Recker said. Almost immediately his text ringer went off, Batton giving him the address of the exchange.
“What?” Haley asked, almost jumping out of his seat.
“He’s got a deal going down… today.”
“Today?” Jones asked, surprised at the time.
“Said it was today or nothing. Cloutier said he’s leaving the country for tomorrow and won’t be back for a few months. It’s today or we wait for months. Or we gotta follow him somewhere else.”
“Well, that’s not an intriguing notion.”
“I agree. We can’t just keep following this guy all over,” Recker said. “We gotta end it. Now.” Recker gave them the details, then gave Jones the address so he could map it out.
“What are we gonna do about the money?” Haley asked. “As soon as Cloutier sees we don’t have it, the gig is up.”
“We’re just gonna have to pretend we do.”
“That’s gonna be dangerous.”
“I know. And it means there’s gonna be shooting… and a lot of it. But it’s all we can do.”
Jones brought up pictures of the farmhouse, and the three of them looked it over. There was the main house, which was two floors, along with a big barn that was only a few feet away from it.
“You can bet they’ll have people in there,” Recker said, pointing at the barn.
“Probably the main house too,” Haley said.
“Figure at least ten to fifteen people in total, probably.”
“If not more.”
They studied the pictures a few more minutes, trying to come up with the best plan possible.
“Not a lot of places for cover either,” Recker said.
“It’s gonna be tough,” Haley replied.
“If this goes down in the middle of the yard there, we’re going to be exposed. We won’t have many places to go.”
“I don’t see any other way. Unless we can get it to go down inside the house. That’d at least give us some protection.”
They took another twenty minutes to come up with some sort of plan, determining what they would do in advance, coming up with several different scenarios of how things would play out. It was easier to fall back on a plan once the wheels fell off than it was trying to figure out something on the go as bullets are flying over your head. Once they were done, Recker called Batton to let him know what was going on.
“Whatcha got, my friend?” Batton asked.
“First off, how many boys can you bring in on this?”
“About twelve, maybe fifteen.”
“That’d be good. Including us, that should be enough.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“We’re gonna make the drop,” Recker replied. “We don’t have the money, so we’re gonna have to make out like we do.”
“That’s gonna be dangerous. Once Cloutier sees we don’t have it…”
“I know. Bullets are gonna be flying fast and furious. Without more time, though, we don’t have any other choice. If you wanna back out, I won’t blame you. Your deal will still go through.”
“I don’t send my friends into dangerous situations without backing them up.”
“I don’t know how this is going to go.”
“This is what we signed up for, right? We’ll do it right.”
“OK. Come pick us up at my hotel in an hour. Me, you, and Chris will go to the farmhouse together from there. We’ll be the muscle.”
“Sounds good. I’ll be there.”
After getting off the phone, Recker went into a closet, removing a black duffel bag. He put it down on the bed and stared at it for a second.
“What are you thinking?” Jones asked.
“I’m thinking we need to make this look good.” Recker then looked at Haley. “You think you can go find some stuff to put in this?”
“I’ll find something,” Haley answered.
“We got an hour until Mark gets here.”
“I should be able to find something.”
“OK. It’ll take about an hour to get to the farmhouse, so that’ll leave us about an hour before the meeting’s supposed to go down.”
Haley quickly grabbed the bag and left the room. “I’ll be back.”
“This is going to get dicey,” Jones said.
“I know,” Recker replied. “What other choice do we have?”
“None as far as I can tell. There are several other points to consider here.”
“Which are?”
“It’s possible Cloutier might not even be at this meeting. He could send one of his top guys to do it instead.”
“Possible,” Recker said, knowing it was true, though he didn’t want to believe it.
“And if Cloutier is there, and he somehow gets killed in all of this, that will make finding his warehouse all the more difficult.”
“Well, if that happens, the job will still be accomplished. We were brought here to get Cloutier. The warehouse was a bonus.”
“It’s still unfinished business as far as I’m concerned. It would be nice to wrap everything up together.”
“In this business, sometimes you lose even in the victories,” Recker said. “Sometimes you just gotta take what you can get. If we get Cloutier, it’s a win. Maybe not the total victory we were hoping for, but still a win.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“And at this point, after being here for a couple months, I’ll take whatever win we can get.”