But Dirk was always in demand. The best of the best usually were. Soraces hoped he’d be able to get him. That way, when the time came, Dirk would crush Wolf like a bug underfoot.
He continued to scroll, thinking about who else he might need to round things out. Dirk would be the muscle, but he also needed a bit of finesse. But who?
“How you enjoying that Havana?” Fallotti asked, walking up to the gazebo.
Soraces set his cell phone down, surreptitiously activated the recording device on the spy pen, and picked up the smoldering cigar. It had gone out. He reached for the packet of matches but the lawyer stepped forward with a silver-colored lighter.
“Allow me,” he said and flicked the wheel, igniting it.
Soraces leaned forward to guide the tip of the cigar into the flame. He squinted as he drew some of the smoke into his mouth.
“You know,” he said. “I don’t even like cigars. Don’t know why I’m bothering with this one.”
Fallotti laughed and held the lighter to the end of his own cigar.
“Perhaps, as you said, it has to do with the accompanying satisfaction of defying the U.S. trade embargo,” he said. “Sort of symbolically giving the finger to the government, or something.”
“Yeah,” Soraces said. “Or something.”
He sat back and placed the phone on the wire table.
“Come to check on my progress?” he asked. “Or just to check up on me?”
Fallotti smirked as he pulled out the chair across from him and sat down.
“I would like to get an idea of how you plan on proceeding,” he said. “Mr. Von Dien’s getting a bit anxious. He is a man who likes results.”
Soraces purposely took two long drags before he answered, pausing to blow out a smoke ring with the second.
“Is he all right?” Soraces asked. “That coughing fit seemed a bit disconcerting.”
Fallotti frowned and waved his hand dismissively.
“He’s all right,” he said. “Just petrified of the virus. He’ll probably outlive us all.”
“Well,” Soraces said. “I will need your expertise and connections in resetting the game a bit in the Phoenix area.”
Fallotti’s brow furrowed. “Resetting the game? You mean with the law firm? Do you think that’s wise?”
Soraces puffed on the cigar. “The plan was a good one. I’ll just need to tweak it a little bit,” he said. “But first, I’m going to need to assemble some reliable back-up. To keep an eye on things, and for when we take Wolf and company out for good.”
“Okay, but how do you plan on getting the item?”
The item, Soraces thought. Euphemism for the bandito, or more particularly, for the stolen Iraqi artifact—The Lion Attacking the Nubian.
“Much like I intended to handle it before,” Soraces said. “Everything was set in place and going well, until your man, Cummins, threw a monkey wrench into the works.”
“He was hardly my man,” Fallotti said. “I told you, he’d gone rogue. Now what exactly is your plan? Mr. Von Dien will want to know.”
Soraces toyed with the cigar. “Simple. Approach Wolf and offer him a deal he can’t refuse.”
Fallotti looked contemplative. He took a couple of puffs and then said, “What makes you think he’ll go for it?”
“He’ll deal,” Soraces said. “Everybody always does. We have what he wants.”
Fallotti raised an eyebrow and edged forward slightly.
“You think he’ll trust you again? After what happened?”
Soraces smiled and let some of the smoke leak out between his teeth. The taste was too hot, too bitter. He wasn’t enjoying it at all.
“Like I said, he’ll deal. It’s all in the setup. We just have to tweak our approach a bit.” He crushed the half-smoked cigar into the glass ashtray. “And I know just how to do it.”
Dirk for the heavy lifting, he thought. My rook, so to speak, but who else?
Then it came to him as the words to the old Sinatra-Sammy Davis tune echoed in his mind.
Just me and my shadows.
Chapter Three
CARACAS, VENEZUELA
Darkness was his friend, and it merged with the black fatigues he was wearing to allow him to melt into the shadows. But in a few more hours it would be light. It was time to get moving on this.
Cameron Dirk, or just plain Dirk, as he liked to be called, flattened his body against the wall and moved with silent efficiency to the corner of the building. The structure across the way, a seedy-looking hotel, was on the fringes of the slums that merged with the concrete mountains of the once prosperous and thriving downtown area. In recent years the area had seen a vast depreciation, as had most of Venezuela. Shimmering skyscrapers, some of the tallest in Latin America, now stood like lonely vestiges of a more prosperous time. The side of one building was adorned with a large, brightly painted mural depicting former president Hugo Chavez, his red beret cocked defiantly on his head, his right fist elevated, and the words SIRVAN LA REVOLUCION.
Good to see that they have their priorities on straight, Dirk thought with amusement. Making sure there was money to maintain a painting of a dead dictator while the people starved.
Bags of uncollected trash had been piled next to the curbs and those rodents that had escaped the dwindling meal plates scurried about with a desperation that seemed to mirror the vanished middle class. A series of anemic streetlights, half of them broken or inoperative, cast a shadowy pall over the front of the building across the wide avenue. Three bored-looking National Guard members who were supposed to be on guard stood next to their antiquated army Jeep and the black Cadillac limousine. One leaned over and lit the cigarettes of his two companions and then his own.
Sloppy work, Dirk thought, thinking that if he were in a sniper’s position, he would have been able to zero in on all three of them after a move like that.
But he much preferred to work up close and personal anyway, just as he preferred to work alone, when he could manage it. Being on foreign soil made that somewhat problematic, especially in a country as tumultuous and crestfallen as this one had become. So, he had to do the next best thing: assemble some locals whose loyalty he could buy with a few thousand bolivars and use them to run interference. The main thing he had to be sure of was a solid exit plan to get out of this shit-heel country.
He turned to Carlos, the local pimp who had led him to the site of the general’s liaison and reconfirmed the location.
“Sí,” Carlos said. “Está ahí”
“Bueno,” Dirk said. And soon it’ll be time to pay the piper.
He’d only been here three days and already he was sick of it. It had taken him that long to tag up with the other Agency contact who had laid the groundwork for what was to come: a termination request, with extreme prejudice.
The target was a Venezuelan army general whom they wanted to be replaced by another, allegedly more pro-American, general. It was deck-stacking at the highest level, hoping that the US would draw the ace on the next deal. Dirk couldn’t care less. To him, one sanction was pretty much the same as another. He’d done so many over the years that he’d come to realize that loyalties and presumed fidelity were as vacillating as the wind and, more often than not, ended up being wrong.
Not that any of that mattered to him as long as he got paid.
Although any record of his fingerprints had long since been flagged and suppressed, he didn’t believe in being careless about even the tiniest of details. He pulled out a pair of black latex gloves and slipped them on. He estimated this would take seven and a half minutes to complete. Ten at the far side, should any unexpected problems arise.
The three guards laughed and one of them pointed to the building behind them.
Obviously, they were alluding to the general’s clandestine activity. Dirk had no doubt that it would remain a veiled secret even afterwards. Maduro’s goons were very adept at sweeping things under the rug, especially those things that might tend to tarnish the dic
tator’s strongman image.
Latinos, Dirk thought. Even the most privileged of the current ruling class were prisoners of their own cultural machismo.
He removed the silencer from his pocket and began screwing it into the end of the barrel of his Caracal Enhanced F model 9mm semi-auto pistol. He hadn’t used this particular pistol before but found the removable barrel thread protector, which allowed the silencer to be attached to the threaded end, efficacious. It certainly lived up to its reputation as being “suppressor ready.”
Carlos’s eyes widened at the sight of the gun.
“Señor Dirk,” Carlos said. “Pagame ahora, por favor. Tengo que salir antes algunas fuscilamientos.”
So he wants to be paid before the fireworks start, Dirk thought.
It made sense but something else was evident. Payment would have to be quick, expedient, and most of all, silent.
“Por supreso,” Dirk said, then added in English, “I don’t blame you.”
He smiled and watched as the pimp smiled back reflexively. Dirk finished screwing the silencer onto the barrel of the pistol and then secured the weapon temporarily under his left armpit. Cocking his left forearm, Dirk pressed one of the two buttons on his wristwatch that started the stopwatch.
All right, he thought. The clock’s ticking.
When his right hand was free, he lowered it downward, toward his pants pocket, as if he were reaching for the wad of cash that he’d kept there. But instead, his ring finger caught the end of the clip securing the butterfly knife inside. In one fluid motion, honed by continuous practice to the point of making the movement one fluid gesture, he disengaged the knife from his pocket, gripped the handle as his thumb flicked the clasp on the base. Gripping the inside handle, he flicked his wrist sending the outer handle and the blade swinging outward. The top edge of the blade straightened in a flashing moment and then his fingers wrapped around the outer handle securing it and leaving the four-inch steel erect and ready for action.
Dirk’s arm shot upward driving the point of the poniard into the pimp’s throat. He waggled it to make sure he hit the carotids as well as the spinal cord. Carlos’s jaw drooped and a cascade of blood came pouring out as he made a slight gurgling sound, collapsing to the ground. It would have been more enjoyable to have used a knife-hand chop to the windpipe. Dirk meticulously conditioned his hands striking them one thousand times on the makawari board almost every day, causing a calloused thickness on both his knuckles and hardened ridge along the outside edge of the palm. But enjoyment was always superseded by efficiency when he was working.
The blade was surer and quicker and the clock was ticking. He watched Carlos’s final body spasms in the narrow expanse as the dark puddle spread on the ground beneath his neck.
Another tally for the high homicide rate of Caracas, Dirk thought as he wiped the tapered steel on the dead man’s pant leg, snapped the knife closed, and replaced it in his pocket. Flipping the blade open had caused a slight tear on the thumb of his latex glove—an error.
Number one, he thought. How many more?
He always kept an ongoing tally of the mistakes and mechanical failures on each mission. Then, in retrospect, he’d assess his overall performance by providing a numerical rating and subtract each mistake or setback. Now he was already one in the hole even though this was more like equipment failure.
One of the guardsmen was leaning over now, saying something in a hushed tone as the other two laughed.
A dirty joke perhaps?
Or maybe another snide comment about their comandante’s fractious proclivity.
It didn’t really matter. They were about to become three more in the latest statistics in Caracas’s rising unsolved homicide rate.
Dirk held the Caracel down by his leg as he walked across the street without looking. There were hardly any cars to worry about during the day and one of the city buses sat in a state of broken, dilapidated neglect, missing all six tires and all of its windows.
“Quién es el cófer?” Dirk said as he approached them, gesturing conspicuously with his left hand toward the limo.
All three of the guards glanced at him questioningly their eyes widening in surprise.
It was the typical reaction of most people. Although he was relatively tall at six-three and impressively built with wide shoulders and a narrow waist, it was his eyes that people tended to notice above all else. They had an uncertain aberrance to them. If the lighting conditions had been better, or if the guards would have had a chance to study his visage more closely, perhaps they would have noticed that this stranger who approached them in the wee hours of the morning with such alacrity, in the same uniform as that of the Policía Nacional, had one brown eye and one blue one.
But timing was everything. Dirk raised the Caracal and squeezed off three perfectly timed shots to each man’s center mass. The sound suppressor made a plinking sound each time, accompanied by the three consecutive grunts.
No body armor, he thought.
Dirk then stepped over and delivered three more shots, one to the back of each fallen man’s head.
Ten shots left, he thought, as he slipped the Caracal back into the bellyband holster and fastened the Velcro flap across it. He hated to waste the time but decided it was prudent to resurrect the three guardians a bit. Placing each one in a sitting position against the side of the limo, he frisked each man’s pockets for car keys. None had any. Dirk assumed the old-style Jeep didn’t require a key but merely had an ignition switch lever. That meant that the general either had kept the keys to the limo himself, or there was a driver waiting inside the building.
Either way, it was time to find out.
Rating thus far: plus three, minus one.
Dirk turned and walked to the door of the hotel. As he pushed open the door. A musty smell assailed his nostrils. A weasel-like clerk was perched behind a Plexiglas barrier paging through a magazine. A glass of amber liquid sat beside him. His eyes widened as he saw the gun.
“Policía,” Dirk said, figuring the clerk wouldn’t notice the absence of a police badge. Apparently he didn’t because his eyes remained fixated on the gun.
“Cual cuarto está el general?” Dirk said.
The clerk didn’t answer.
Is my accent that bad? Dirk thought with a grin and raised the Caracal.
He repeated his question.
This time the clerk’s head elevated, and he looked Dirk right in the eyes.
“Dos ciento y tres,” the clerk said. “Numero dos ciento y tres.”
“Y cuantos de mis amigos están arriba?” Dirk asked.
The weasel’s brow furrowed, and he didn’t answer. Had he grown suspicious? Why would this “police official” be asking how many men were upstairs? Wouldn’t he already know?
The jig’s up, Dirk thought, and he fired two rounds through the Plexiglas. One struck the clerk in the forehead and the other hit the man’s throat.
Eight rounds left.
Rating: Plus four, minus two.
Glancing around and assuring himself that he was alone, he moved to the adjacent stairway. He longed to check his watch to see how much time had elapsed but he resisted the temptation. An elevator was next to the stairway. Dirk assumed that any of the general’s guards who were competent would have it disabled on the second floor to prevent being surprised.
But the guards in front had been lax and they paid for it. Perhaps these guys were so used to no one confronting them, or having the numerical superiority to administer a beat-down with overwhelming force, that they didn’t keep their drawers up. He crept up the stairs with the grace of a big jungle cat. At the half-way point he caught sight of the first door on the second- floor landing.
Number 205.
The clerk had said the target was in room 203.
Glancing to the right, he saw the next consecutive room was numbered 206.
Pausing at the top of the stairs, Dirk gripped the Caracal with both hands and did a quick peek. Two men stood in the
hallway smoking and talking. Both had rifles, M-16’s from the looks of them, slung over their shoulders.
The weapons had probably been supplied by everybody’s favorite uncle once upon a time when the U.S. and Venezuela had gotten along.
Before Chavez, before Maduro.
But back to the hall guards …
Dirk edged partially around the corner to squeeze off two head shots.
As both men slumped down onto the dingy, threadbare carpeting, Dirk covered the space between them
Six rounds left now.
Rating: plus six, minus two.
Stepping over both bodies, Dirk positioned himself in front of the door, trying the knob.
It was locked.
Naturally, he thought, then brought his leg up and delivered a hard kick to the section just below the doorknob.
The door burst open, hitting the wall, and then swinging back toward Dirk as he entered.
Two naked, sweating bodies were busy in the tangle of sheets on the bed. One of them, a dark-haired slender youth, was perched on his side, his face near the other man’s groin. The supine man, dark-haired, middle-aged, and with a flaring mustache and an air of authority, immediately sat up in outrage, his brows knitting in a mixture of surprise, anger, and, suddenly, fear.
“Buenos dias,” Dirk said and shot the older man first.
His eyes widened in shock as the neat, round hole appeared in the center of his forehead. Twin streams of blood gushed from each flaring nostril coloring the bushy black mustache crimson. The other one, who looked barely pubescent, twisted his face in an agonized scream that was truncated by Dirk’s second shot. The boy’s right eye disappeared inside of a dollop of blood. His body jerked once, then collapsed onto the general’s legs.
Four rounds left.
Dirk stepped over to the bed and delivered two more shots to the general’s temple and one to his unlucky lover’s head.
Rating: plus eight, minus two.
The slide on the Caracal locked back and Dirk dropped the magazine and inserted a fully loaded one. He went to the general’s folded uniform, which had been draped over a chair, and checked the pockets. There was a set of car keys inside. Dirk retrieved them and went back to the bed, He gazed down at the dead man’s face. The startled expression was frozen on it. He used his cell phone to capture the image, and then snapped a few more to show the nature of the assignation, just in case the Agency would want to leak a few photos to discredit the regime.
Devil's Advocate (Trackdown Book 4) Page 5