A Dangerous Breed

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  He angled his head at Eastlake. “There.”

  I looked. A Mercedes G-class utility vehicle in glossy lunar blue idled at a fire hydrant. The rear door opened and Bilal Nath stepped out. Aura, a white winter cap covering her azure-tipped hair, joined him. Another man I couldn’t see clearly through the tinted windows sat in the driver’s seat.

  “We can walk from here,” Bilal said, as if he was looking forward to the exercise.

  “Walk where?” I said. No one bothered to answer.

  Aura took Bilal’s arm and they crossed the street, headed down the slope toward Lake Union. Saleem didn’t move until I did. I followed Bilal and Aura, Saleem followed me, and after a moment the rumbling Mercedes made a caboose to our little train.

  “You were born here. In this city,” Bilal said. “Is it still home, after all of the travels serving your nation?”

  An unsubtle flex. Bilal had done some homework on me, maybe by asking Ondine Long. Between tracking my location and this, it was clear that my new acquaintance liked to show off.

  “Where’s home to you?” I said. My own background check on Bilal Nath could remain my secret.

  “Karachi, originally. I, too, am a city person. But so much larger a place. Seattle seems a small town to me.”

  Aura squeezed his arm. “It’s your way. You want everything available, every hour of the day or night.”

  “Yes, I do. Here.”

  We reached the end of the block. There had once been a small marina here, one of a handful on this side of the lake, along with the community of houseboats just a hundred yards south. In place of the former docks, a swath of water had been filled with tons of rock and sand to extend the land and construct a building. A new enough project that the sign of the architectural firm was still planted proudly outside, above shrubs that retained their unnatural geometric squareness straight from the nursery. The building’s exterior cladding carried the look of brushed steel. With most of its lights on inside, the whole structure gleamed like a pale opal in a dim room.

  ceres biotechnologies, the angled silver letters above the fourth story read, over a symbol that was a combination DNA helix and sheaf of wheat.

  Aura and Bilal looked at the building. Their expressions took me a moment to place. Hostile, certainly, and tinged with something close to loathing. The temperature on the street dipped another ten degrees each time a breeze whipped off the water. Neither of them took any notice.

  Bilal pointed to the building’s upper stories.

  “Ceres holds something which I require. You will take it from them, and then I will consider your debt paid,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “That is not your concern right now. Your task is to gain access to the building. And to disable any protective countermeasures.”

  Countermeasures? Like booby traps? What could a biotech firm have that a gangster might find valuable?

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  “This is your answer? I can send Saleem and Juwad to discuss better terms with your friend Addy, perhaps.”

  “I’m not bargaining. I’m telling you that this whole idea is dead on the starting line. Look.” I nodded at the building. “There’s a guard at the front desk at this hour, and another man just walked past that window on the third floor. So we can assume twenty-four-seven security. There are cameras and keycard entry. That’s what we can see from here. There are bound to be other barriers inside, especially in restricted areas. Fingerprint access. Voice recognition.”

  I was laying it on thick. Angling for whatever advantage that might give.

  Aura looked at me with the same antipathy she’d given the shining offices of Ceres. “You’re supposed to be good.”

  “Good enough to know a bad thing. If Ceres handles government contracts, they could have a direct patch to the FBI. Any vaccines and viruses, they’ll have extra precautions.”

  “We do not want viruses,” Bilal said. “I am not a terrorist.”

  “It’s not a disease we’re after. Or a weapon,” said Aura.

  I glanced at the Ceres building and back at them, my doubt readily apparent.

  Not a disease, but perhaps a cure. Bilal was sick and going downhill fast. Was Ceres working on a vaccine for ALS?

  “How valuable is this thing?” I said. “Why is Ceres so worried about theft?”

  “The safeguards are to prevent accidents, not theft,” Aura said.

  “Wife,” Bilal said to her.

  “He’ll know eventually, Bilal,” she replied. “Better to tell him now, so he can be ready.”

  She turned to me. “What we need is on the fourth floor. In cryobank storage. Extreme cold. Ceres does keep some materials on-site that might be infectious. So each individual storage tank has a safeguard. A controlled burn that will destroy the contents in the event that the tank is ruptured, before its contents can thaw.”

  “If you know all this, why do you need me?”

  “Knowing is different than being able to do something,” she said. “I promise you: what we want will not hurt anyone.”

  “Then there shouldn’t be any problem telling me what it is.”

  “No.” Bilal put his hands in his pockets. He looked drawn. Either the nighttime walk or our argument was pushing the limits of his energy.

  I wanted to tell them to fuck off. That if they were foolish enough to come after Addy or Hollis or anyone near me, I’d dump their carcasses into the trunk of their hundred-K Mercedes along with Saleem or whoever else got in my way and bury them all in concrete.

  But that would be the wrong play. Something in Bilal’s and Aura’s shared attitude resonated that they didn’t just want whatever was locked away in Ceres, they needed it. An edge of desperation. They might not flinch if I forced their hand.

  And that urgency was a crack in their armor. A place to start prying, if I could find enough time.

  “It’ll take research,” I said. “I’ll need the building blueprints, and make my own version of the external alarm, for practice. See if I can reverse-engineer it to figure out what might be waiting inside. I’ll have to watch the building to learn the guards’ patterns.”

  “Wednesday night,” Bilal said.

  Forty-eight hours. New Year’s Eve. “Impossible.”

  “I do not care,” he said. “This is as much time as you have. If you require a team, I will provide them. Take it by force if you must. But do not fail. Do not try to evade this. I will avenge any disobedience on you and every person in your life. Do you understand?”

  Saleem was behind me. I didn’t have to look to know he had a hand hovering near his Steyr machine pistol. The driver of the idling Mercedes might be aiming a second gun at my head right this second.

  And despite the odds, I was still angry enough to be half a tick from making a move.

  “We’re clear,” I said through my teeth.

  Bilal nodded. “There is a number programmed into the phone I gave you. Call that when you are ready.”

  “Don’t wait,” Aura said. “Find out what you can tonight, while you’re here.”

  The driver, Juwad, rolled down the driver’s window. He had a phone to his ear. “Sir. The restaurant valet has called.”

  “Our table.” Bilal shrugged. “I suppose everyone is short on patience tonight. Tell them two minutes.”

  He stepped to the Mercedes and held the rear door open for Aura—a damn gentleman—and went around the other side to board himself. Saleem stayed where he was.

  “I do not trust you,” he said to me when the doors of the big car had closed.

  “Likewise,” I said.

  “Bilal and his wife”—Saleem bit off the word like a piece of rot from an apple—“believe they require you, as if you have magic. They are wrong. I can take what he wants from this building without you. And I will be ready to kill you. I will enjoy it.”

  He might have meant he would enjoy it, if I stepped out of line and Bilal gave the order.

  Then again, mayb
e the gunman’s vision of the future was clearer than mine.

  Twelve

  The big Mercedes pulled away. I waited until it was out of sight around the curve of the road before taking out my phone.

  Aura had one thing right: I should learn whatever I could, right away.

  Faregame was a rideshare company I’d used before. Local and a little more flexible than the bigger providers. I requested a car. Within ten minutes, a baby-food-green Chevy Volt covered the last block on Eastlake doing forty and stopped within an inch of the curb.

  “Hey,” I said, leaning into the back. The driver was a young dude, with a wall of curled hair and a mustache bushy enough to outstretch the tip of his nose in profile. “I got a problem. My friend left her phone and I have to stay here.” I held out Bilal’s phone with a fifty-dollar bill and a scrap paper receipt from Analog Coffee I’d found in my pocket wrapped around it. “Take this to the destination I wrote down and keep the fifty.”

  “I don’t know, man.”

  “Same as dropping me off. Only instead of a person, it’s the phone. Read the note.”

  He looked at the piece of scrap paper. I’d written: Addy: Call me on your phone to let me know this arrived safe. Thanks. V.

  I pointed at the driver. “Once she calls I’ll tip another fifty. Right?”

  “Shit. Okay, I guess.”

  “Thanks. You’re saving my life.”

  The Volt sped off, and the phone with it. Bilal could track my movements all he damn well wanted tonight.

  I backtracked to the Barracuda to retrieve some tools. My car was known to Bilal and way too noticeable. I needed another ride.

  Within a month after the Barracuda had come into my possession, I had constructed flat hidden compartments between the trunk space and the backseat. One compartment held my kit of various electronics, including a cigarette-pack-sized transponder that could get me arrested just for owning it in the United States.

  It wasn’t by chance that I’d modified the car, or that I owned the illegal gadget. Over the past few weeks I’d been investing a lot of time and money in building the kind of tool collection that Dono might have once used, with me working right alongside him. Call it preparedness. Since I’d returned to Seattle from the Army, I’d been in situations where the right gear might have made a difference. If I wasn’t going to change my life, I could at least update my methods.

  Halfway up the block, a dusty white Camry was reversing, the driver having spotted an open space at the curb. He began to parallel park.

  I preset the transponder for the low frequency common to that generation of Camry sedans as I walked toward him. The device started by mimicking the car. It sent a signal, and the smart key in the driver’s pocket dutifully replied with its unique ID, which the transponder captured. Reverse the process, and the transponder would act as the key itself. All before the driver had set the parking brake.

  Once he’d hustled away, burdened with his briefcase and what looked like groceries for dinner, I pressed the transmit button. The car unlocked and its engine started.

  I had to admit using the transponder wasn’t as much fun as boosting older cars by hotwiring their ignitions, but you couldn’t beat it for expediency.

  While waiting for the Faregame driver, I’d searched online for restaurants. Specifically eateries with valet parking, within only a couple of minutes’ drive of Ceres Biotech. I was counting on Bilal’s penchant for precision and his demonstrated taste for the finer things.

  There weren’t many top-end dining options this far from downtown. Two at the south tip of the lake were closest. I drove the Camry one mile down Fairview and pulled into the parking lot shared by the restaurants.

  Luck was on my side tonight. The big Mercedes GLE was easy to spot in the reserved parking section of a steakhouse. I waved no thanks to the approaching valet and U-turned to find a spot in the self-park lot that allowed a view of the restaurant entrance.

  My phone rang. Addy.

  “You have a strange version of sending flowers,” she said.

  “I would have if there had been time. Thanks.”

  “The young man delivering your phone seemed very perplexed. I take it you’re not coming home soon.”

  “No,” I confessed. “At least one more errand to run. If that phone I sent rings, don’t answer it.”

  “I wouldn’t dream,” Addy said.

  I sat in the white Camry, its engine running, watching the restaurant. Now I knew why Bilal had been talking to Ondine Long, and how my name had come up: he’d needed a thief.

  A fractional part of me, a shadier part, felt some pride that the criminal broker with all her connections had placed me in the top echelon. But, then, I didn’t know the criteria. Maybe I was only in the top tier of guys with professional burglary skills whom she also considered disposable. She sure as hell wouldn’t shed any tears if Bilal had me aced.

  Bilal and Aura kept dinner short. Within an hour, the valet pulled the Mercedes out of its parking spot. I kept the Camry’s headlights off as I slowly drifted toward the exit to the street.

  Saleem and Juwad were the first out the door of the steakhouse. Juwad was an inch taller and much heavier than his slender partner, with the blocky build of a powerlifter and hair gelled so liberally I could see its shine from forty yards away. Saleem tipped the valet and let the man open the door for Bilal and Aura when they joined the party. He and Juwad kept watch on the surroundings. I was glad the Camry was partly concealed behind the Chandler’s Cove sign and its ornamental bushes, and that the engine’s purr was soft. Only when their master and mistress were safely within the car did the two bodyguards climb in.

  A careful team. I would have to be equally cautious. I waited until the Mercedes was half a block away before following.

  Bilal was only in Seattle for a while, he’d said. That implied a hotel. I hoped it would be one of the larger chains downtown, where I might have a better chance of following his team on foot without being spotted, at least far enough to determine which floor their room was on.

  But instead the Mercedes jogged left onto Boren Ave, cruising through the easy late evening traffic. I stayed three blocks back, confident in the Toyota’s smaller size and my knowledge of the city to allow me to catch up if I became trapped at a stoplight or they made an unexpected turn. Boren took us both over the interstate and diagonally up the west side of my home turf of Capitol Hill.

  I nearly lost them, anyway. Juwad turned right on Madison. When I followed fifteen seconds later there was no sight of the big car, even though I had a clear view down three full blocks of the wide street. I craned my neck from side to side, slowing to a crawl even as cars angrily revved to drive around me.

  There. In the tight turnaround in front of the Hotel Neapolitan, their Mercedes partly hidden behind hedges that shielded the hotel entrance from the busy intersection.

  I kept rolling down Madison and left the Toyota in an alley just behind the hotel, then ran back toward the entrance. Bilal and Aura and the rest were already inside.

  It had been a long time since I’d seen the small lobby of the Neapolitan. At least one full remodel ago. If I strolled in unprepared I might run smack into any one of Bilal’s crew.

  This would have to do for now. I knew their car and their hotel and at least two of their soldiers. More intel would follow soon.

  Very soon. I’d just burned two of my allotted forty-eight hours. I could almost hear the tick of that clock over the stolen Camry’s purr.

  Bilal had suggested hiring a team to knock over Ceres Biotech. I liked that idea. I could make good use of the right people. Even if their goal wasn’t quite what the venomous Mr. Bilal Nath had in mind.

  Thirteen

  I was too amped up after my confrontation with Bilal to consider rest. Bitter Lake, and the home owned by Sean Burke, was only a few short miles up the freeway. And the night was overcast and dark. Ideal for reconnaissance.

  The Camry had served its purpose. I drove it b
ack to Roanoke and marveled at the small miracle of the same spot at the curb being available as I parallel-parked and turned the wheels to touch the curb on the incline, just as they’d been when I first saw them. If the owner was especially observant, he might puzzle over how the odometer had gone up and the gas gauge had gone down overnight. But the placement of his car would offer no clues.

  After driving the boosted Camry so gingerly, it was a pleasure to make the Barracuda growl as it merged onto the freeway. I supposed I would get habituated to the muscle car before long, but for now it had that new toy feel. Its former owner, for all his sins, had kept the engine in fighting trim.

  Burke’s address was walking distance from the lake itself, midway along a short street called Amsbury that ended in a cul-de-sac of homes. Each eighth of an acre allowed for a swath of front lawn beside a two-car driveway and an unassuming strip of backyard behind each house. Almost aggressive in its normalcy.

  The residential street meant I could cruise at a slow pace without drawing attention. I drifted by the Burke home—what Dono would have called a ranch house, one story, low-slung, and shaped like a shallow L—and followed the curve of the cul-de-sac at the end of Amsbury to return for another pass.

  No cars in the driveway. One light on behind curtains at the far tip of the L, probably a bedroom. No security company sign. Standard deadbolt on the door, maybe a Schlage. The lawn was so well groomed I suspected weekly landscaping rather than an owner’s touch.

  I drove away from the street, in case anyone had been tracking the Barracuda’s progress from their living-room window, and parked to examine my toolkits in the trunk for the second time that night.

  The houses on Amsbury Street had no mailboxes. USPS had consolidated delivery for its own convenience into a stand of metal postboxes emblazoned with the familiar blue-and-white eagle logo at the end of the road. A Douglas fir, its drooping branches still holding zealously to its needles in winter, sheltered the mail stand from view of the houses. From the truck I removed a lockpick gun and traded the transponder I’d used on the Camry for a larger wireless scanner. I pocketed the scanner. The pick gun I could make use of immediately.