by James Kent
Swann nodded and thought about it. That would be very useful to the Feds, no question about that. Then he called the waitress over to ask for a few sheets of paper and a pencil. She thought he was going to ask for more coffee so she came over with the half-full pot. But it was probably stewed by now. Who would want it? Then he asked for paper instead and she looked at him quizzically. ‘Eh?’ she said. She looked a bit confused, wondering who the hell this big guy was and what the deal was with his completely weird friend who looked like he’d been through someone’s idea of a human blender, a blender that didn’t quite blend, but had a decent attempt at it before spitting out the resultant disaster. And here he was, some nervous little rat-looking guy. Her mind was working overtime again, but she said nothing and went off to fetch the items. A few sheets of paper and a pencil. No coffee. Easy. How come she doesn’t need to write that down in her notepad, wondered Swann. Another mystery.
17
Swann left another tip for the waitress who thought too much. Eighteen percent seemed the going rate most places, but she didn’t deserve even that if he were honest about it. If she hadn’t been chewing gum while serving him, he might have made it more like twenty. Or not.
Eddie had written down his own phone number on the back of the map he’d drawn for Swann. He passed it across the table, along with the floor plan and the list of vehicles, plate numbers, cell phone numbers that he could recall off the top of his head. He also listed weapons that Silva’s guys used. Then he said, ‘So, I guess I’ll be seein’ ya boss.’ Swann nodded at him, and told him not to go anywhere, not to leave Boulder City without letting him know, otherwise the deal’s off and Eddie could take his chances. He’d already decided that he could use this little twerp so he told him he would ring in a day or two, after he’d done some background planning. ‘Keep your phone charged!’ he finished. And after that? Well he would figure that out later; either arrest him and hand him over to the Feds or give him some kind of amnesty and employ him. It could be useful having someone around with his skills, someone who could do clever computer work in the background. Legal or not, Swann didn’t care, provided it was useful to him tracking down assholes like Diablo.
Eddie nodded, said he would wait for instructions before heading back to Caliente to grab the rest of his gear, then he got up from the table and left the diner looking pleased with himself, looking like he had some hope, maybe an opportunity to turn his life around. He was tired of having to look over his shoulder all the time, always hiding from the law and now hiding from the outlaws as well. That was never going to end well. He nodded and smiled at the waitress as he passed the counter and she smiled back, looked at him intently. Maybe she liked him for some weird reason. He still looked a mess. Swann pocketed Eddie’s notes and left the tip on the table. He ignored the waitress as he walked to the door, like she didn’t exist. The plant with the large green leaves waved more intently as he passed it, disturbing the air flow from the ceiling fan.
At the Desert Ranch motel, Swann did a quiet recon of the place on foot, keeping to the shadows. It was more out of habit than anything else since he now knew that Diablo and his guys weren’t there, and probably never had been. Good, he thought. If the Ferret was right, Silva would still be ensconced at his ranch outside Kingman and was likely to stay put for the foreseeable future. That simplified things because Swann didn’t like moving targets, didn’t like tracking someone down who was constantly changing their address; you’d inevitably waste a lot of time in catch-up mode. So he would head to Kingman. Maybe on his own, or maybe with Eddie in case some of Diablo’s boys were wandering the streets looking for him, looking for the Ferret. He might need Eddie to identify them positively. Or he could use him as bait.
Back in his room, Swann got the topographical map out of his pack and studied the surrounding countryside, the open desert to the south and east, and the rocky mountain range to the west of Diablo’s property. Eddie had drawn the exact location of the ranch on the note paper. He’d drawn in the main north-south Stockton Hill Road and the long side roads further north that came off it and that lead on to Silva’s place, out in the middle of nowhere. Perfect sniper country. They all thought they were safe because they could see for miles in every direction. But that fact also made them vulnerable to someone with a long barrel because there were no obstacles to worry about.
*
At six in the morning, Swann got up and showered, then he made some strong coffee from the meager supplies provided by the motel. It was cheap crap. After downing the coffee, he pulled the satellite phone out of his other day-pack and rang Sally on the secure link, Or maybe not so secure anymore, he thought. Sally answered on the first ring, like she was expecting it.
‘Hey you! Long time, no hear!’ she said cheerfully.
Hardly. It had only been two days since she’d last spoken to him. But Swann could sense the smile on her face. He wasted no time on niceties.
‘Sally, before I fill you in on where I’m at, there’s something very important you need to pass on to Poirot and the crew there, especially Gifford.’
‘Why, what’s happened?’ she asked, a hint of tension in her voice.
‘Nothing’s happened, but you need to let them know that all their emails, the servers and the encryption routines they’ve been using for the last few years are shit. They’ve all been hacked and compromised, multiple times by lots of hackers. They need to be changed . . . URGENTLY!’ he emphasized. ‘I’ll fill you in on the details later, but tell Simms he has to bang some heads, especially Gifford’s. TODAY! I know for certain that all of their emails, whether encrypted or not, are being read in real time by the very people they’re hunting; the very people they’ve been hunting for years; they’ve been pretty much “open source” shit for the past two or three years where every asshole can help themselves!’
There was silence on the other end as Sally digested what he had just said. ‘Goodness!’ she said after a pause. ‘Ok, I’ll let him know immediately.’
‘This satellite phone is about the only thing I can trust right now,’ added Swann; ‘Famous last words!’ he muttered to himself under his breath.
‘What was that?’ Sally asked, ‘I didn’t quite catch that.’
‘Nothing.’
There was silence again for a few seconds, as he thought. He could hear Sally doing something, probably writing it all down. ‘Right, I’ve got all that,’ she said. ‘What’s next?’
‘Tell him I know who this so-called “stinking thief” guy is . . . He’ll know what you mean. Just tell him that. Write it down. Tell him I bumped into him yesterday in Boulder City . . . I bought him a coffee.’ That’ll keep them guessing, he thought with a wry smile.
Swann then asked Sally to tell Simms that he also knew the exact location of the target; that he was heading there in the next day or two to have a look from a discreet distance and that he would be out of touch for a few days until the job was done.
‘Goodness, you have been busy Nick!’
‘No, it all just fell into my lap. I didn’t need to do anything.’ Which was partly true, considering the Ferret guy just turned up out of the blue and started spilling his guts after some gentle persuasion, like a knee to the groin and the barrel of a nine-mil stuck in his eye.
But she laughed, thinking Swann was joking. ‘Sure!’ she said, then she added one last thought, ‘Oh and Nick, I did some quiet digging on your new girlfriend, Lavinia . . .’
That caught him off-guard. He hadn’t thought about her since he left L.A. two days ago. Well hardly at all. Been too busy. ‘She’s not my girlfriend Sally. She’s . . .’
‘Sure Nick. Whatever you say!’ she laughed again. Despite himself, he also grinned. Or perhaps it was more of a smirk. He knew Sally was just teasing him, but still.
‘And?’ he asked.
‘Well it got interesting. I couldn’t find a thing about her! Nothing. It’s been pretty weird around here ever since you left. Anyway, I’ll ask around, on the q
uiet, in case I missed something. Oh, and yes, she’s been asking about you . . . well not about you specifically, by name or anything, but about someone exactly like you. She knows something’s going on, that you’re up to something, because she is definitely here to investigate people just like you. I had a weird meeting with her and she asked me point-blank if I knew of a guy like you who worked here. She also asked about Reaper. How she knows about that is anybody’s guess. Probably just heard rumors because she didn’t seem to know what it was. Anyway, she had tea and sandwiches out, of all things, like straight out of some creepy English novel! Very weird. I didn’t tell her anything, but I think she knows, and she knows I know! She’s very sharp! What’s going on Nick? It’s a bit . . . I don’t know, but it’s making me nervous. Is something wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong Sally. Don’t worry about it. But thanks. Be as quiet and discreet as you can. I don’t want you ruffling feathers or getting into trouble. If anyone asks what you’re up to, just tell them I told you to do it.’
‘Ok Nick! I’ll see what I can do.’
‘I need to recharge this battery. I’ll ring you again in a few days,’ he finished.
‘Ok, take care Nick!’
Swann switched off and connected the charger to the sat phone. He would have to look into Lavinia’s background himself when he got back. Maybe her records were highly classified, like his own, and so no amount of investigating by Sally would find a thing. And then a mischievous thought occurred to him. Where’s the damn Ferret when you need him?
18
Diablo’s ranch. Near Kingman, Arizona.
Silva was in another foul mood. He was thoroughly annoyed that no one had yet managed to bring Eddie back from Kingman so that he could vent his pent-up rage on him. Silva despised loose ends. He needed closure and he couldn’t get it while the goddam Ferret was running around on the loose telling his lies to anyone who would listen. He also wanted to punish him for slashing the tires on his Cadillac. That bit hurt his feelings. Disrespecting his Cadillac was like spitting in his face. He took it personally. Who wouldn’t? Silva therefore ordered Pedro and Randall to ‘go chase Eddie’s ass down in his hometown in New Mexico.’ A small town called Alamogordo, he explained. Atom bomb country. ‘Maybe he’s slunk off there like a dirty rat!’ But it was a ten-hour drive and little more than a hunch that Eddie might have taken off to what he thinks is safer territory because that’s what any normal person would do. ‘Familiarity!’ shouted Silva. You always feel safe at home. ‘So that’s where the little bastard rat probably is even now while you two dumb freaks sit around here wasting my time! Go fetch his ass back here!’ he shouted at Pedro and Randall together.
It had been well over a week since the Ferret had taken off with half of his computer gear after stabbing poor Buck Dolan in the neck. Over a week after their wasted trip down to Kingman late at night in the unbalanced Cherokee like the Keystone Cops looking for him. So yes, New Mexico was worth a shot since no one had any better ideas. Randall already knew, more or less, where Eddie’s home was. He knew the street at least, which was a start. He would find the number online. All he needed to do was look up all the “Reids” living in Alamogordo.
*
After things had settled down, and the mess left by Dolan had been cleaned up, it had become clear that some crucial hard drives and other items were missing. Cricket, the new hacker who seemed to know everything that was needed could immediately tell he would have to rebuild the system’s main elements, besides dealing with whatever surprises Eddie had left behind. He knew that Eddie would have spiked the remaining hard drives with some venomous version of BleachBit, maybe his own digital concoction, so he was reluctant to fire anything up until he was able to carry out forensics of his own. He told Silva what the situation was and not to expect anything, at least not until he was sure that Eddie hadn’t boobytrapped the whole setup. Silva stared back at him like he was speaking a foreign language. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he asked. So, Cricket told him. ‘That’s what any self-respecting hacker does,’ he explained. ‘They don’t leave unnecessary breadcrumbs for others to follow. The only safe thing to do when you’re in “flight mode” is to set fire to everything, or failing that, leave nasty self-destruct routines behind.’ But Silva didn’t like the sound of that at all.
Cricket told him not to worry about it. He told him he just needed some space and uninterrupted peace and quiet so that he could approach the problem with controlled precision, like a surgeon with a scalpel. He wasn’t sure if Silva got it because he stood there staring blankly back at him with his two beady little black eyes. But the last thing Cricket needed was this fat little bastard breathing down his neck, bossing him around, pointing at this and pointing at that, offering advice like he was trying to do . . . ‘That’s not how Eddie did it!’ he kept saying to Cricket when he started setting up his gear and sorting things out. It was clear he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. ‘Leave me to get on with it!’ snapped Cricket. Silva looked taken aback that this new kid would speak to him like that. ‘What the hell is the world coming to? No respect!’ he muttered to himself as he walked away and shut the door to the computer room, leaving Cricket in there to do his thing. Computers kind of scared Silva anyway because he didn’t understand them, and what he couldn’t understand, he tended to be suspicious of and preferred to keep his distance. Or to kill it if he couldn’t.
Silva, of course, had given Cricket a sanitized version of Eddie’s dramatic departure, leading him to believe that Eddie had just lost his nerve and had wanted to screw them all over for reasons known only to himself, ‘something to do with his girlfriend,’ Silva had told him, which was partly true. He merely neglected to mention the fact that his girlfriend, Angela, or whatever her name was, had ended up stewing in a barrel of oil for dilly-dallying with cops, and that Eddie’s days were also numbered as a result because he could no longer be trusted, and that Eddie’s motivation for attempting to wreck his enterprise was nothing more than cold-hearted revenge. Ok, significant omissions in the story fed to Cricket perhaps, Silva readily admitted. But it was a “need to know” thing wasn’t it? And Cricket didn’t need to know. His job ‘right as of now,’ said Silva, was to track Eddie’s movements on-line when he stopped messing about and got the damn computer gear up and running again. Or use his own cheap crap to track him if he must. After all, he had laptops galore and whatever else didn’t he? Just use that! But that was not as simple as it seemed to Silva who thought everything was simple and could be boiled to down to base ingredients. All you need is motivation, or an inducement and you can accomplish anything . . . ‘Here, have a ten-grand bonus.’ Or, ‘Here, have a nine-mil slug in the brain. Your choice!
Cricket tried to explain it as delicately as possible. He tried to explain why you needed to approach such things with patience, but it was like trying to explain the mysteries of the universe to a bonehead with a huge gun in his hand . . . he’d better understand it or you’ll end up with an undesirable extra hole above your right eyebrow and then slung in a back-alley dumpster like a dead dog.
However, Silva did eventually suggest something sensible for once. The thought suddenly occurred to him that Eddie may actually have kept his, Silva’s, old cell phone after all instead of throwing it in the garbage like he’d been told. He remembered Eddie messing around with it after he’d found it and that he had put it in his pocket before being told to break it in half and sling it. Silva wouldn’t have put it past the little rat to do something like that because that’s precisely what he himself would have done. He would have kept it, on the sly, just in case he needed to use it against him some time in the future; an insurance policy, a “hook”. To the Feds it would count as evidence if it ever turned up again because it had all his contacts listed. It was just a hunch, a long shot, but worth looking into. He also realized that Eddie would no longer be using his own personal cell number and that he had probably changed it. Silva therefore asked Cricke
t that, when he got the computers up and running, ‘could you, pretty please, with sugar on top, see your way clear to locating Eddie by tracking my old cell number if it’s still active? Thanks so much!’ he’d added with acerbic sarcasm, and just a hint of a threat.
Silva had also suggested to Cricket that if Eddie was planning some kind of revenge using his old mobile phone to mess things up, he would probably stick around the area to see what happened, despite the slight risk that it could possibly be traced by Cricket. And he’d also probably hang around so that he could sneak back and set the place on fire as well because there were scores to settle. And besides, everyone likes a bonfire, especially when it’s your enemy’s house! Better than reality TV! Silva therefore supposed that Eddie might not be quite as far away as he’d originally thought. He may even still be hiding out in Kingman, which would be very handy for nabbing him! In that case, it was worth starting off closer to home, looking for signs of him using the phone, and then branching out from there if he got no hits.
And then he suddenly remembered that he’d told Pedro and Randall to go find Eddie in New Mexico! That thought made him laugh. Oh well, too bad. At least both possibilities are covered, he thought.
The next day, Cricket went to tell Silva, who was pacing in the lounge, that his hunch had been correct. Eddie was indeed using his old cell phone and that he, Cricket, had managed to locate its current whereabouts and recent activity using a neat little program of his own, plus an illegal device called a “StingRay” cell catcher. Something he’d done before. The device had originally been designed for the military and the CIA, but Cricket had managed to find one on the second-hand black market a year or so ago through “someone who knows someone who knows where to steal one”; highly illegal unless you’re a Fed on a case, which Cricket wasn’t. The StingRay mimicked a cell site and allowed all cell phones in the vicinity to latch onto it as well as the local towers before switching back out of the loop, thereby giving away their locations. Then he could pinpoint very accurately where a targeted cell phone was to within a few yards.