Radioactive (The Rayna Tan Action Thriller Series Book 4)

by Wes Lowe

  Julio said, “I looked at some initial police reports. Management at the Conquistador said that they were a new hotel and this was its first major event. Security protocols weren’t properly put in place yet. Staff didn’t know all the suppliers that might be coming through.”

  Rayna blew out, “How stupid can that be? They are having a major event for a guy that wants to become governor and probably has his sights on the presidency. Do well on this and everybody would spread the word that the Conquistador was the place to host a special occasion. Best advertising is always word of mouth, and you’d think that they’d go to the ends of the earth to make sure that everything was perfect.”

  Rayna grimaced. “The shooter was a true pro. What he did was conducted like a precision military op, but there were also elements of a bank robbery you might see in the movies. One guy waves a gun, while the other guy collects the loot, but if you look at him, you’d see that his hands were a little shaky. Maybe he was inexperienced? Maybe he had the shakes from quitting alcohol? Maybe he was nervous? Maybe he needed a fix? Doesn’t matter. You’ve got someone who’s a pro mixed with a guy who has some kind of baggage that needs to be dealt with. So either the pro had no choice, or isn’t as smart or professional as he seems.”

  Barry and Julio nodded. They had picked that up.

  A puzzled look came over Rayna. “But what I really can’t figure out is this. If Carter was the target, it makes no sense that the guy who shot at him didn’t kill him. Give me the laptop.”

  Barry handed her the portable computer. Rayna used the track-pad to roll back to a certain shot. “Look at this.”

  She hit play. It was the moment when the shooter opened fire on those trying to escape. While much of it was random fire, she saw him pause briefly to aim—that shot hit the target in the middle of the back of his head.

  She paused the video. “How does someone who can pinpoint that shot miss Carter when he’s draped over his wife. He was completely exposed. I’m pretty certain that it was not luck or good fortune that Carter was not killed.”

  Rayna replayed the portion of the video where Marlena was killed. “Carter’s head is more than a foot and a half away from Marlena’s; he should have easily made that kill. Hell, I could do that ten times out of ten. How the hell did he miss?”

  Henry, who had been quiet, suddenly spoke up. “I don’t know if this is important or not, but I thought I saw something that only a father would have seen.”

  That was a statement that got everyone’s attention.

  “What are you talking about, Dad?” asked Rayna.

  “I’ll show you. Barry, please play a video from the time you and Rayna stepped off the chopper. But not the versions that focus on the two of you. There was one take that had Carter in it as well. That’s the one I want.”

  Barry searched for the appropriate clip and hit PLAY.

  As the clip replayed, Henry asked, “Notice anything?”

  As the video played back, Barry, Julio, and Rayna saw what Henry had noticed. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible involuntary shudder when Carter first laid eyes on Rayna. The potential political candidate then quickly looked away, opened his mouth a little, and emitted a small gasp.

  Henry said with the concern of a father who saw a predator in close view, “Rayna, every person in the room, especially the men, had their eyes glued on you. That’s totally normal. But not for someone who’s going to be making a special announcement. He’s not focused on the reason he’s there. What that means I don’t know, but I figure it might mean something… or maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all.”

  While Henry was talking, a light went on in Rayna’s head. What her father said might be the clue as to what was needed to connect the dots. “Dad, you’re smarter than I give you credit for.”

  Henry raised a surprised eyebrow. “I think that might have been a compliment but I’m not sure.”

  “Remember it. That’ll be the last time,” grinned Rayna. Then she got serious. “Dad’s right. That look that Carter gave me has happened so often since I was a kid that I stopped noticing it. But let’s put that into context with my earlier question of ‘how the hell did the gunman miss Carter and kill Marlena instead?’”

  The puzzled faces told Rayna she needed to explain more. “You could come to a very disturbing conclusion that Marlena was the target all along. Carter covered her, pretending to shield her because he knew the shooter was so good that he couldn’t possibly miss hitting her instead of himself if that’s what he wanted to do.”

  “That’s kind of a backward way of looking at it, don’t you think?” wondered Julio.

  Rayna shrugged. “Maybe. But ask yourself ‘would a man whose entire future depends on what he will say in less than ten minutes be so easily distracted by the sight of a piece of tail in a red dress?’ I say no. He would be single-mindedly focused on his speech. That he wasn’t leads me to this conclusion-Carter didn’t love his wife and allowed her to be sacrificed. What I can’t answer is, ‘who’ or ‘why’.”

  “You mean like a conspiracy theory?” asked Henry.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” replied Rayna.

  It was an entirely plausible explanation. What’s more, it was the only one that anyone could think of. Barry nodded admiration at Rayna, then ordered, “Julio, go deeper into everything associated with Carter Johnson; friends, business associates, mistresses, drug problems, his entire family, plus the Conquistador Hotel. Rayna’s right. Some things are just not adding up. Turn over every damn rock you can find. Especially check out any past or present interest in Asian women.”

  Before anyone could respond, Vanessa, one of the Geek Freaks blurted bad news. “I watched his press conference and tried to follow up on where Carter went. He’s disappeared. Gone completely off the radar.”

  “We’re going to have to try and flush him out,” said Barry.

  “Yeah? How?” asked Julio.

  Barry stared directly at Rayna. “We’re going fishing and you are the bait.”

  37

  Omigod!

  Davy exhaled a huge exhilarated sigh. The mission had gone off like clockwork. Yes, there were tiny hiccups, but what undertaking of this complexity didn’t have minor challenges?

  None; so all in all, the operation was a success.

  All the activity in the past three days had wasted him, and there was more to come in the next three. As his flight was not for another hour and a half, he decided to treat himself and paid for a pass so he could have access to the business class lounge at LAX.

  He wasn’t hungry—he rarely was, but he thought it better to eat something than not. Loading his food tray with an eclectic combo of Asian dishes, he picked up two cans of Coke from the bar service, then chose an isolated table for four that had a large television monitor where he could watch the news from.

  He was glad for the chance to unwind. First of all, he had had to put up with Willie’s incessant nattering on the drive from Kansas City to Joshua Tree Park to pick up Diego. Driving from Palm Springs to Los Angeles with a deadly assassin did nothing for his blood pressure either.

  Davy hid his disappointment when Diego denied his pleasure by demanding at the last moment for Davy to give him the detonator for the bombs at the cartel drug house. He wanted to be the one to press the button. Childish? Perhaps. But he had worked so long and so hard that he really looked forward to being the one who triggered the explosion.

  At least Mateo was easy to deal with. Unaware of what plans were in the offing, Mateo was entirely cooperative when Carter told him that he had asked a few friends to bring in some “surprise treats” for the guests. When he, Diego, and Willie arrived at the Conquistador, Mateo went out of his way to ensure that there were no issues about getting them all in with their boxes of “treats.” After all, any friend of Carter’s was a friend of his.

  One of the first things Davy did when they arrived was to discreetly slip some Thallium powder into a glass of water that he saw Mateo dri
nking from. Because the kitchen was warm, Mateo gulped the liquid almost immediately and refilled his glass. That gave Davy a chance to tap a second dose of the poison powder into Mateo’s glass as insurance. By the time the thallium took effect, he would have made his getaway.

  Because the trio were not registered either as guests or staff, they were accountable to no one. Diego and Willie hid in a storage room, while he dressed as a waiter.

  He stationed himself close to the MC, picking up empty glasses and bottles and returning them to the empty beverage cart. This allowed him to stay unnoticed and let him keep a careful eye on the proceedings.

  Unaware that Harold was waiting for special guests to arrive, his agitation grew as Carter’s announcement was continually delayed. But when he heard and saw the helicopter approaching, and saw the Senator giving the MC the signal to get ready to announce the new guests, he quickly stepped to the kitchen storage room and alerted Willie and Diego that it was show time.

  When Willie and Diego began making their way to the outdoor terrace, Davy picked up a plain shopping bag, then slowly strolled to the hotel’s entrance. By the time he arrived, the hotel was in mass hysteria. The doorman and parking valets fled—no job was worth getting killed for - and it was easy for Davy to grab a car fob from the valet stand. He picked out a BMW 330. Not the most expensive, not the cheapest car, its black exterior was neutral enough that it would not draw attention.

  He stepped to the Beamer in the valet parking area, turned on the engine, and smiled when he heard the sound of the cultivated, powerful purr.

  Davy pulled out a remote detonator from his jacket pocket and cradled the small device in his hand as he turned his head to the back entrance of the kitchen.

  He waited for less than a minute before he spotted the masked figures of Willie and Diego rocketing out the door. Immediately and without looking back at his cohorts, Davy slowly piloted away in the opposite direction that he knew the Explorer would be going.

  He began counting out loud. When he hit the number twenty, he looked in his rear view mirror and saw that the Explorer was not out of the hotel’s driveway. He pressed the button on the detonator. He was a quarter of a mile away from the black SUV, but still the sound of an explosion was clearly audible.

  Echoing the lethal cacophony, Davy released all his pent-up anxiety with a loud shout of, “Ka-boom!”

  It’s done! Now basking in the afterglow of success, Davy turned onto I-405 drove for an hour until he hit a huge Asian mall in Orange County that was jammed full of people and cars. He parked the car and took a packet of hand sanitizing wipes out of the shopping bag. After making sure no one was watching, he quickly used the wipes to obliterate any of his prints that were on the steering wheel, car seat, and driver’s door.

  He put the remaining wipes back in the shopping bag, loosened his tie, and put his jacket into the shopping bag. Carrying the bag, he entered the mall and made his way to the food court.

  He stepped into the men’s room and pulled a pair of jeans, a short-sleeved shirt, and sunglasses out of the bag. Three minutes later he returned to the food court, no longer as a waiter who had finished his shift but just another casual tourist in a land of millions of tourists. He dumped the shopping bag into one of the trash cans. With so many people coming in and out, the garbage was emptied every fifteen minutes. And then, any vestige of his tenure as a waiter would forever be lost to the world.

  Because he had seen none of the last five minutes of activity at the Conquistador, he was anxious to see what he had missed. He didn’t have to wait long. He walked through the mall and found an electronics store that had a bank of televisions. On every single screen was the news story of the massacre at the Conquistador.

  When California’s Attorney General came on the screen to hold a news conference, Davy stepped inside the store so he could hear what was being said. For two minutes he spouted vague inanities about “getting to the bottom of this terrorist action.” It was clear from Dumbo’s speech that the AG didn’t have a clue as to what really happened.

  The station switched images from the conference to the outdoor scene where the disguised Diego was firing at the guests. The sight was tastier than Mateo’s delicious Mexican tapas that he managed to sample while waiting for Harold to make the announcement, and Davy devoured every delicious angle of the finale of Operation Governor that was covered.

  And then his jaw fell to the ground.

  There was a glimpse of an Asian goddess chasing after the Ford Explorer. Racing in her bare feet, the slit in her red gown flew up and Davy saw a fierce colorful dragon emblazoned on her left thigh. Davy’s libido shot up like a rocket. He wanted to rip off her strapless gown, worship in full spectrum the exotic Venus’s breasts, work his way down to her toned, lithe legs, and then annihilate the dragon.

  He was rudely disturbed by a Vietnamese store clerk who told him that if he wanted to buy the TV, he would give him a “special special,” especially if he paid cash.

  That was Davy’s cue to leave. He told the clerk that he’d think about it and left the store.

  Back to reality, he took public transportation to get to LAX. While it would have taken him a third of the time if he used the Beamer, this time-consuming method would further lessen the chance that anybody would connect him to the Conquistador.

  It killed Davy not to look at his phone while the bus slowly made its way to Los Angeles International. He wasn’t worried about anyone finding him watching the news about the Conquistador—everybody was doing that. He just didn’t want to risk them seeing him acting on his perverse fantasies.

  When they arrived at the airport, he finally felt safe enough to see if there was anything more on the Asian seductress. He trolled the internet until he found a news feed, this time with something he hadn’t seen before.

  There she was.

  Excited. Breathless. Elated. Saliva drooled from Davy’s mouth when he saw her descending from a sleek black and gray helicopter. She was elegant. She was a tramp. She was sensuous. She was lovely. She was a sick piece of shit.

  Just the kind of girl he loved to hate.

  38

  Homecoming Guile

  From twenty car lengths away, Davy saw the look of consternation on Sonny’s face as he approached Davy at the curb of the airport terminal of Kansas City International. Knowing that this was likely going to happen, Davy had prepped himself and was going to be pro-active, rather than reactive.

  When Sonny pulled to the curb, Davy pulled the door open and snapped, “That stupid Willie. The greedy SOB screwed up and got himself and Diego killed.”

  As Davy got into the truck and sat in the passenger seat, Sonny got even more alarmed. “What happened? It’s all over the news.”

  Sonny began driving away.

  ”I’m only guessing here because I wasn’t inside the Explorer when it happened, but when we were driving to LA before we picked up Diego, he kept on saying that he wanted a bigger cut of the loot we were gonna get from the guests at the party. He wanted to cut Diego out and was going to kill him once they left. I told him that was a terrible idea but didn’t listen to me. You know he’s a gun freak, right?”

  “Yeah.” Sonny had seen Davy’s arsenal in the music room many times.

  “He showed me a pocket pistol when we were driving.” Davy sighed. “There was no point in my arguing. So everything went like clockwork when we got to the Conquistador until he and Diego took off in the Explorer. This is where I’m guessing he pulled out the gun and told Diego to pull over. Instead of doing like Willie wanted, Diego tried to snag the gun from him and Davy pulled the trigger. The bullet either killed him or seriously injured him. That’s why Diego crashed into the tree.”

  “I knew Willie was useless.” Sonny shot a quick glance at Davy before his eyes returned to the road. “I’m totally pissed. I was supposed to get a cut too. Spoils of war and all that.”

  “I’ll make it up to you. Not as much as we all would have got, but we’ll drop
you another 20k. How does that sound?”

  Sonny beamed; twenty thousand was a lot better than zero. “I’m good with that.”

  Davy was relieved. He had overheard Willie and Sonny fantasizing about the ‘millions’ that they hoped to get, but obviously Sonny knew that was a pipe dream. “So, did you finish everything?”

  “Of course. I was just waiting for Willie to help me start loading the truck, but I can do it myself. It’ll just take me a little longer.”

  “No worries; I’ll help,” said Davy as he slumped his aching back gingerly in the passenger seat. It had been decades since he had the kind of workout he’d suffered through in the last three days.

  “Yeah, right,” laughed Sonny, looking at Davy’s pained expression.

  By the time they drove the fifteen minutes to get back to the school, it was more than aching muscles that aggravated Davy. His head was pounding and it took every bit of self-control he could muster to hold back the poop that wanted to explode out of his butt.

  As soon as Sonny parked, Davy ran into the school and hit the washroom just inside the entrance. Within thirty seconds, the smell emanating from behind the closed door was like an outhouse that hadn’t been emptied in three months.

  And then it started coming out the other end too. Davy couldn’t figure out if he upchucked because of the smell of his own watery dung, or the nausea that overwhelmed him.

  He wobbled to the gym where he saw Sonny sitting at his work station. Sonny glanced at his boss. “You don’t look so good. I’ll do the loading by myself. It’ll just take me a couple extra hours.”

  Davy remembered that one reason Carter wanted Sonny onboard was that he was really strong. Watching him shlep stuff around for the last two months, he had to agree. Plus Davy knew it would be really stupid for him to try lifting anything heavier than a can of Diet Coke. “Sounds good. I need to finish something first.”