by Brandt Legg
Chase tackled him into the wall while screaming, “Call the police, call the police!”
“You fight like a little girl!” the man barked.
Chase thought of Wen and wished he could fight like her. The big man was like wrestling a bear.
The two of them slid to the ground while Chase tried to keep the man from aiming the gun at him. Finally, he jammed his knee into the Russian’s wrist. On the third pump, the man released the gun, but his other thick arm snared Chase’s neck and squeezed.
Thirty-Five
Andros, Bahamas - Brigadier’s Restaurant
Mumford Grimes squinted out toward the ocean, wondering if the small craft between the sandy beach and the horizon was packed with killers, or explosives, and if it was coming for them.
His career had been made by always making the right choice and avoiding mistakes. But then Chase Malone and Wen Sung had come along, the assignment of a lifetime, the one everyone dreams of—that last big score and then retirement on a beautiful tropical island. He’d known in the beginning that the pay was a little too much, the client a bit too mysterious, but he’d gone forward and ignored the things about it that didn’t make sense. He wanted to be done. Take the money and run.
Turns out he had been hired to kill the only two immortal people on earth. Chase and Wen simply refused to die.
“Probably nothing,” he mumbled to himself. He recalled more carefree days when he’d operated from Aruba. If not there, then from some other tropical island or at least a warm water beach. There was a place in North Carolina on the Outer Banks . . .
“We can’t just stay here,” Shelby said, not meaning the extended pier where the restaurant was housed, but the Bahamas as a whole.
“I know.” If there was one thing he had learned in all his years in the trade, it was don’t stay in one place too long, move as much as possible. But in this case he was stumped, not used to being hunted, particularly when someone so powerful wanted him dead.
He turned to Shelby, trying not to scowl. Grimes wasn’t really mad at her, even though some of the blame certainly belonged with her. He loved her too much, and besides, anger was never healthy or profitable. Love and avoiding anger were two of the three things he considered most important—strange principles for a hitman. The third was even more surprising, but Grimes always lived on the edge of death—his or someone he was sending to the grave. If pressed, the thing that kept him tied to the good part of life were those amber flecked brown eyes staring back at him.
“I guess I’ve sort of known for a long time that, one way or another, Chase and Wen were going to be the death of me,” he said, holding her gaze for a moment, then looking back at the boat.
“Don’t say that.”
“One way or another,” he repeated. “I mean, it’s hard to believe Wen hasn’t already gotten a bullet into me. It might be better money betting on one of Belfort’s goons to finish me off.” He turned back to her. “You might be able to get away Lena,” he said, calling Shelby by her first name, something he only did when they were alone.
“He’s got a contract out on me, too,” Shelby said, touched by his attempt at chivalry.
“Yeah . . . but . . . we both know it’s me he really wants. Maybe if I’m gone, they’ll let you go.” He sipped his drink as another diner squeezed past their table. Grimes appeared casual, but he was ready to go for his gun. Always ready.
“Nonsense, Grimes.” She rarely used his first name, didn’t like it much. “Fake identities, an island somewhere. We’ve got enough to live on for quite a while. Maybe we’ll open a little seaside bar, a real cool joint. I know a couple tiny towns in Mexico where we could just be invisible.”
“We’ll always be looking over our shoulder,” he said, loving her ideas, but too practical to ever believe they could get away with it—at least as long as Belfort was alive.
“Then we should go talk to Chase and Wen.”
“Ha!” He took a swig of beer. “That’s what got us into this mess.”
“And it can get us out.”
“You really think they’ll talk to us after what happened on Grand Cayman? I wouldn’t.”
“We weren’t there.”
“They think we set them up. No other way someone could interpret it.”
“We’ll just explain.”
“Yeah? Would you believe anything that we said under the circumstances?”
She frowned back at him. “It’s the truth.”
“What’s that?” Grimes laughed. “Do you think they even understand the truth anymore?”
“Chase is a tech wizard. I’ll explain that Belfort had us under digital hard-tap basket surveillance. He’ll know better than me what that means. Then, of course, Belfort found out about the meeting . . . ”
“You’re assuming that Chase and Wen survived the Caymans.”
“Aren’t you?”
Grimes stared out to sea, as if their ghosts might be there. “Probably still alive. More than two years, we’ve never been able to nail them. You think Belfort found someone better than us?”
“There’s no one better than us, but he sent numbers. I’m sure at least twenty or thirty. Chase and Wen were expecting to meet friendlies—you and me. Instead, they walked into a trap, a full-on military operation . . . war waiting for them.”
Grimes nodded. “Sure he paid off local law enforcement to ignore or delay response.”
“Standard procedure for Belfort. But Chase and Wen don’t go quietly. Those cops wouldn’t’ve been expecting the kind of fury they unleashed,” Shelby said.
His face turned to an expression that somehow conveyed both pain and awe. “Yeah. Remember Cyprus? That time in Colorado? What about Barcelona? Every time they got away and left a trail of bodies.” He let the lapping waves relax him for a moment.
“Chase and Wen got away again in the Caymans, and you know it.” A cruel reminder.
“Yeah, I do,” he admitted. “The question really isn’t are they going to trust us again, the question is can we trust them.”
Thirty-Six
Washington, DC
Wen raced across the street, barely avoiding being flattened by a Metro bus. Crowds of people were moving in all directions, some going toward Skyenor’s fallen body, others fleeing from it, afraid they could be the next victim of a mass shooting. Still more seemed oblivious that the event had even occurred as they stared into smart phones or listened to their air-pods.
In her rapid movements, Wen surveyed the area. Even before, while walking to meet Skyenor, prior to the fatal shot, her training had forced her to check every angle, always looking for threats and escapes. Silently furious at herself for not having seen, or at least anticipating the DARPA director’s assassination, Wen knew there would be time later to assess her failings. Right now there was a killer to catch.
She considered scaling the old marble edifice; its many ornamental accents could easily be used as handholds. However, he would be on the ground any second, and she’d be waiting.
The problem is, he’s a professional. He won’t leave the building carrying a sniper’s rifle or anything else that says ‘hitman,’ she thought. Fortunately, most of the workers were going into the building, with only a few exiting. I’ll have to get close enough to assess the snipers face.
Still on the other side of the street when the man emerged from the building, Wen was sure it was him because he looked both ways upon stepping on the sidewalk. He had obviously left the rifle on the roof. The disposable asset would be free from fingerprints or any other identifiable marks.
She sprinted across the street. There was no time for a stealthy approach. Bolting in front of yet another metro bus, she wondered how many chances she had left, and told herself to avoid the big diesel monsters in the future.
Where is Chase? She hadn’t seen him since the shooting.
The bus driver hit the horn. The blaring sound caught the sniper’s attention, and led his eyes straight to Wen. He took off, weaving i
n and out of the streams of pedestrians. Wen assessed him as she followed.
He is fit, his legs are longer than mine, makes catching him unlikely. In an open field I’d never get him, but in an open field I’d be able to shoot him down.
She plowed into a business man stepping up onto the curb. He fell backwards, stunned by the force that had hit him.
I want him alive, Wen thought, gripping her Glock 19, concealed in a light jacket carried in her hand. I need him alive.
Jammed between the hard, shiny floor and the polished brick wall, Chase could feel the battle lost. His lungs burned, desperate for oxygen, as he clawed at the big man’s arm. Chase’s legs kicked, struggling for any advantage, but it was wasted energy.
His eyes began to blur. In a fleeting thought, he wondered where Wen was. Could it be possible that she’ll save me? The flash of hope spurred him to twist and contort his body in a final effort at escape. The Russian maintained his stranglehold. Wen’s rescued me so many times before.
The next instant consumed everything he knew when he realized she’d run off to pursue the others and did not even know where he had gone. Chase summoned what remained of his strength, released his clawing grip from the killer’s arm, then with all his might, pushed both elbows into his attacker’s body. But what he imagined to be the herculean movements and power of a heavyweight boxer, was little more than a limp whimper of a dying man. His actions had no effect.
In the malaise of that defeated moment, he thought he heard cheers and then a loud clap of thunder. Nothing that happened afterwards made much sense until, after an impossible to define amount of time, he discovered new strength, and threw the man from him.
“Calm down,” a man’s voice said.
Chase’s eyes darted. His arms flailed. He could breathe again.
The man he’d pushed away wasn’t the Russian, it was someone younger, thinner. In a fuzzy second he realized the person had been trying to give him CPR.
Chase gulped in breath. In still-grainy focus, he saw the Russian lying next to him, blood puddling under his dead body.
“He shot him,” a woman said, pointing to another man, a pistol still in his hand.
“The guy was going to kill you,” the man said. “For a second, I thought he had.”
“Thanks,” Chase managed to say, trying to understand it all.
“I’m a Special Agent with the EPA.”
“I wasn’t aware the Environmental Protection Agency employed armed personnel.”
“Well, now you are,” the man said. “Why was he trying to kill you?”
“He just murdered a man on the street,” Chase said. “I was trying to catch him.”
“You’re just a citizen?” the man asked.
“Something like that,” Chase said, getting to his wobbly feet.
“What’s your name?”
“Federgreen,” Chase said. “Tim Federgreen.”
The man holstered his weapon, gave him one more piercing look.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, really, thanks man.” Chase smiled and dusted off his clothes. A crowd had now gathered and several people had called 9-1-1. Chase slipped into the knot of onlookers and a second later was back out onto the street.
Where’s Wen? he wondered as he ran back toward the coffee shop, patting his pocket to make sure he still had Skyenor’s phone.
Thirty-Seven
New York City
Belfort loved his job. He stood in front of the breathtaking glass walls of a hundred million dollar Madison Avenue penthouse. Spread across the top five floors of a gleaming tower next to the Empire State Building, the gloriously stunning twenty-thousand square-foot space featured eleven bedrooms and fourteen baths, a private rooftop pool, and three thousand square feet of outdoor terraces.
The penthouse wasn’t his, but he lived and worked there many months out of the year. And it wasn’t even his favorite, nor the largest of the many mansions where he spent his time. The cartel spared no expense to achieve its goals.
Belfort’s official title was “Coordinator,” which was a way of saying he kept track of all the people the cartel and their members wanted dead.
This line of work didn’t bother him, mostly because it paid so well, but also because he believed in what they were doing. “People need to die,” he told his director.
The director, a lanky man with a metal mechanical hand, had heard this before, but he let his boss continue. This kind of reflection usually occurred after a failed job, and always after a Chase and Wen miss.
“Seven and half billion people . . . that’s a lot,” Belfort said. “Obviously there are going to be quite a few in the global overpopulation who are bad, in the way, causing trouble of some sort, an obstacle to human progress . . . ” He looked at the director, waiting for an agreeable nod, maybe even a verbal confirmation.
“Child molesters,” the director added. “People who are mean to animals . . . ”
Belfort shot him an icy glare. They didn’t kill those types of people—at least knowingly. “How many bad people who need to be removed? What’s that number?” Belfort asked.
“One percent?” the director said rhetorically. “Something like seven million.”
“Perhaps. Either way, it’s a lot,” Belfort repeated. “And we do our part.”
“Yes, we do,” the director agreed, looking at a screen with a list of hundreds of targets on it, knowing he could click on any name, and it would tell him everything there was to know about the person who would soon be dead.
Chase and Wen were far from the only targets of the “shadow people.” True, they had been on the list longer than all but a few, and they were the only ones who had escaped more than four attempts. However, there were a handful who had never been found for even a first attempt, and at least seventy who had escaped a hit and were never found again. Killing people wasn’t as easy as it sounded, even for an organization with such vast resources. Still, thousands had been successfully terminated. Belfort ran a tight ship, and Chase and Wen were constant thorns in his side.
The director didn’t much care one way or the other except for how the Chase/Wen failures affected his boss’s mood and, more importantly, took the focus and resources from other targets, making those hits more difficult.
Chase and Wen had certainly reduced the available talent pool. Somewhere on Belfort’s computer was another list—the lost list—containing the names and profiles of all the people Chase and Wen had killed. But this meeting wasn’t about the hit list, the lost list, or even about Chase and Wen—at least not directly. Today, Belfort wanted to talk about his latest obsession.
“Grimes and Shelby are bad people,” Belfort said in a way that made it sound as if he were discussing child Nazis. “I don’t just want them to die, I want them to suffer.”
Washington, DC
Wen ran as fast as she could, but the distance between her and the sniper kept increasing. There were too many people on the sidewalk for her to safely get a good clear shot at his lower body. “I need him alive,” she repeated to herself.
Inflicting injuries that would drop a target but not kill them was a particular talent of hers, but with these already panicked pedestrians between her and him, she would need more than talent.
I don’t have the luxury of not taking the shot. The stakes of losing an American city and a million of its inhabitants are high enough, she thought. Unfortunately, any collateral damage is a price I have to pay. Injuring a few innocents is too bad . . .
Wen raised her gun, still hidden under the jacket. Calculating the odds on the fly, she realized more than likely the people would be human shields, and the sniper would get away.
I have to get closer.
Then she realized the solution. Wen fired two shots into the air. As expected, about half of the people between her and the sniper hit the ground. The rest scattered, providing her with a clear shot. She took it, and the fleeing man crashed to the ground.
He turned his head and stared into her eyes. “You have no idea what you’ve done,” he said through gritted teeth. That’s when she saw the explosive vest. Wen dove for cover, knowing it was already too late.
Thirty-Eight
Andros, Bahamas
The warm salt air relaxed Grimes like nothing else (other than Shelby) could. He wanted to close his eyes and lay on one of the plush double chaise lounges down on the beach with her at his side. It wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway . . . maybe never . . .
“I don’t know that we have much of a choice,” Shelby said, continuing their conversation. “Chase and Wen may be our only chance against the cartel. They’re the only ones that have proven they know how to beat them.”
“Or at least survive.”
“Same thing.”
“Not really.”
“No,” she agreed. “Not really, but a damn good start.”
“Yeah.”
A woman jogging on the beach in a bikini caught Grimes’ attention. Some women might’ve been jealous of the bikini-clad beauty, but Shelby knew Grimes had no interest in the young woman.
Grimes’ eyes tracked the bikini woman’s movements, scanning the beach, making sure she wasn’t being followed. She disappeared somewhere on the beach below them. A few minutes later, the woman reappeared up on the wooden planks of the pier, and headed to their table.
She sat down and took a sip of Grimes’ beer. “Belfort sent twenty-eight to George Town,” the bikini woman said. “None came back.”
Shelby smiled. “Told you.”
“How many dead?” Grimes asked quietly.
“They don’t know for sure . . . somewhere around twenty. The others were arrested.”
“They’ll be out soon,” Shelby said.