by Chad Zunker
Sam peered behind her, noticed two imposing men standing at the corner looking his way. Both wore black leather jackets and had angry faces. The muscle. Her protection.
“Where is Natalie?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“She’s safe. For now.”
“What do you want?”
She reached inside her trench coat, pulled out a manila envelope, stepped forward, and handed it over to him. Inside, he found a single eight-by-ten-inch color photograph of a fiftysomething man with brown-gray hair, combed neatly to the side, wearing a black suit and tie. The photograph looked like it was taken while the man was standing on a city sidewalk. There was nothing else in the envelope. Just the photograph.
Sam looked up. “Who is he?”
“His name is Rich Hebbard. He’s very important to my client.”
Sam immediately connected the name back to Tom Hawkins. Hebbard was Hawkins’s law partner, the man Hawkins instructed Sam to find because Hebbard also held critical information in whatever conspiracy was going on. Hebbard was the man Hawkins implied was already on the run from Zapata’s crew. And last but certainly not least, Hebbard was the same man Hawkins had claimed was Sam’s real father. Sam stared at the photograph, studied the eyes and the other facial features. Were they the same as his? He had to admit there were some vague similarities. He shook his head. Ridiculous.
“What did he do?” Sam asked, as if he didn’t know anything.
She gave him a fleeting smile. “You know I’m not going to answer that.”
“Fine,” Sam huffed, irritated. “Why me? You seem quite capable. Go find him yourself.”
“We have reasons to believe that Hebbard will not hide from you like he will from us.”
“What reasons?”
Another fleeting smile. She ignored his question. “Twenty-four hours, Sam. Find him and turn him in to us, Natalie walks away clean. Simple as that. If you don’t, well, I know my client. It won’t be pretty, I can promise you that. So I wouldn’t waste any more time.”
He again clenched his fist. “Where do I start?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Look, lady, I don’t have a wallet or ID or any other resources.”
“You’ve already proven to be very resourceful.”
“Assuming I somehow find this guy, how will I then find you?”
“We’ll find you. One more thing, Sam. If you contact the police or any other agency, Natalie dies. Like I said, my client is a bit unstable. So please don’t waste your time trying to figure out who I am or the identity of my client. That won’t save Natalie. Just do your thing, find Rich Hebbard for us, and then you can go back to your normal life. Don’t complicate this by being reckless or stupid. Every second you’re not searching for Hebbard is a second Natalie is closer to dying.”
EIGHTEEN
Sam knew the first person he needed to contact: Tommy Kucher.
The brilliant twenty-one-year-old computer hacker had been invaluable in helping him survive the McCallister-Redrock ordeal last year. Without Tommy and his underground band of misfit hacker friends, Sam would’ve been toast. Tommy kept him one step ahead of assassins and two steps ahead of the FBI. The guy was a magician with a computer. Sam badly needed Tommy to pull a rabbit out of his top hat right now. Although they were good friends, Sam couldn’t just pick up the phone and call Tommy out of the blue. No direct text messages or e-mails, either, if at all possible. Tommy operated completely off the grid inside his own dark world of conspiracies—a world where no government agency could ever be trusted. Sam knew Tommy had stopped trusting anyone as a teenager when his father, a longtime government employee, had died under suspicious circumstances. That had been the main catalyst for his future hacker crusade.
Big Brother was always watching. If Sam wanted to communicate with Tommy, even about insignificant matters, he was required to log in to the most secure of websites and pass through a maze of security clearances. The long list of passwords and ID confirmations that Sam had to use to reach Tommy felt ridiculous and seemed to multiply with each passing month. Sam knew the global hacking movement had brought on a new kind of crazy to an already paranoid world. Tommy constantly beat the same drum with him. No phone calls were ever safe. No e-mails were ever safe. No text messages were ever safe. No social media was ever safe.
No one was ever safe, according to Tommy.
As if Sam needed more things to be paranoid about.
He found a metro station a few blocks from El Ángel. It was busy in the main lobby. With twenty million people in the city, a lot of citizens traveled by train day and night. Almost everyone was glued to smartphones and tablets, just like the rest of the world. Zombies bumping around with their faces aglow. Sam searched for a new target. He needed a way to connect with Tommy. Within minutes, he found an older man with gray hair, a thick mustache, and a large belly sitting on a metal bench against the wall of the lobby. The man wore tan slacks and a short-sleeve white button-down. He looked like a college professor. A worn brown leather briefcase sat on the bench right beside him. More important, the old man held a computer tablet in his hands, resting on top of his robust belly, and he was intent on reading something—when he wasn’t dozing off. Sam noted that the man was having a hard time keeping his tired eyes open. His head kept bobbing up and down every thirty seconds, before he’d attempt to reengage with the reading.
Sam casually sat beside the man on the bench, pretending to fiddle with the burner phone he held in his hands, as if he were texting back and forth with someone. He noticed the old man give him a quick once-over and then return to his reading—and his slumber. When his eyes fluttered shut again, his square head bobbed, and the tablet rested loosely on his broad chest, Sam took a swift glance around for wandering eyes. When he felt safe, he reached over and carefully plucked the computer tablet right out of the man’s thick fingers. He watched the old man’s eyes closely. No stirring. No recognition. For Sam, this exercise had always been like a game of Operation—work smoothly and quickly, and if you don’t touch the sides, you won’t get buzzed. Sam had steady hands. He’d been buzzed only once, when he was fifteen, and was fortunate to run very fast.
Sam eased off the bench, slipped into the crowd.
He found a door down an isolated hallway with a sign that displayed a male stick figure and the words El Baño. The door was locked. He waited impatiently for two minutes before a young guy in a soccer jersey finally exited. Sam stepped into the restroom, locked the door behind him. It was a one-toilet, one-sink room, and it smelled like vomit. He put the toilet-seat lid down and sat with no intention of going to the bathroom, then opened up the old man’s tablet. He’d noticed each time the professor had woken from his brief nap, he had to reenter his security password, so Sam had taken a mental snapshot.
He typed in the numbers, gained access, and then found the icon for the Internet. As he’d expected, the metro station had Wi-Fi. From memory, Sam logged in to an obscure website called Leia’s Lounge, where he always went to find Tommy. He then typed in a half dozen passwords, answered a few more identity questions, including providing a quick voice sample when prompted. Once inside, he pinged a user named Maverick for a secure video chat.
Come on, Tommy, be available. Now is not the time to be at the movies.
Seconds later, a video-chat box suddenly appeared on the tablet’s screen—and there sat Tommy Kucher, sitting inside his dark and private computer lair, as usual wearing a plain white T-shirt and blue jeans, and looking as skinny as ever. The guy needed a protein shake. Sam had never been to Tommy’s place. He wasn’t sure anyone had—Tommy wasn’t much for a social life. Through pieced-together conversations over the years, Sam knew it was on the second floor of a crumbling building in a seedy DC neighborhood and sat right above an arcade and a liquor store. Sam noted that since they’d last spoken, maybe a month ago, Tommy had shaved the sides of his head and now had a new purple streak running through the middle of the dark
mop of hair he still had on top. Tommy had also added a new silver hoop ring through his right eyebrow. There were rings and tattoos everywhere. Sam could hear heavy-metal music pumping in the background. Tommy used to play in a metal band he called Tommy Cool.
“Dude, what’s with the shaved head?” Tommy said.
Sam leaned in close to the tablet screen, spoke quietly but in a tone that let Tommy know this was serious. “I’m in real trouble, Tommy. I need help, like right now.”
“Again?” Tommy asked, perking up.
“Yes. I don’t have time to explain it all.”
Tommy squinted, like he was looking beyond Sam. “Where are you, Duke?”
Duke was the nickname Tommy had given him long ago, named after the late Hollywood actor John Wayne, since Tommy loved classic Westerns. Usually the only time Sam saw Tommy out in the city was because an old movie house was showing one of his favorite flicks on the big screen. Sam got the invite every time and had joined Tommy on several occasions.
“Long story. I’m in a bathroom stall at a metro station in Mexico City.”
“No way!”
“Like I said, long story. But I’m stuck here and need a new set of IDs to get out of the country. Do you have any contacts in Mexico City?”
“Hold on,” Tommy said, began pecking away on his computer.
Even though it seemed out of reach, Sam knew better than to presume Tommy couldn’t make something happen in this city. He would never underestimate him again. The guy was connected to a global underground network. Sam heard a knock on the restroom door. He cursed, ignored it. Could they hear his conversation outside? It didn’t matter. He had to keep pressing forward. He did not have the luxury of taking extra precautions here. The clock was literally ticking.
“Okay, I got someone,” Tommy announced. “I’ll put it together and message you the details right now. Check your account.”
“Thanks. As always, you’re a lifesaver.”
“What’s going on? Why’re you in Mexico?”
“Just bad luck, I think. Can you find out everything you can about a man named Rich Hebbard? He’s a lawyer out of New Orleans.”
“Sure, man. Shouldn’t be too hard.”
“I need everything you can find on this guy, both personally and professionally, as well as his clients.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, this is a long shot, but see what you can also find on the name Zapata in connection with Hebbard.”
“Zapata? That a first name or last?”
“I don’t know. That’s all I’ve got. But there’s some kind of connection between this Zapata, Rich Hebbard, and a man named Tom Hawkins, who was Hebbard’s law partner. Hawkins was the guy I came down here to meet today.”
“Was?”
“He’s dead now.” Sam didn’t explain further. Instead, he held up the burner phone so Tommy could see it inside the video-chat box. “One final thing. There’s a video on here that I need to get off. Pretty sure it’s a burner phone. Can you do that?”
Tommy smirked. “Give me the phone number.”
Sam told him the number he’d found in the phone’s settings. He waited. Tommy was pecking away and staring at another computer screen. He had the video downloaded within sixty seconds, as Sam could hear Natalie scream out his name on Tommy’s end. Tommy turned back to Sam with wide eyes.
“Dude! What the hell?”
“I told you this was serious. Can you see if there is any way to track that video’s location or maybe to analyze any of the markings you see around Natalie?”
“Did she go down there with you?”
“No. She could be anywhere.”
“All right, I’ll see what I can find. Who did this?”
“I don’t know yet. But I need all of this ASAP,” Sam reiterated. “I don’t have a single second to spare. Her life depends on it. I gotta run now.”
“I’m on it, man. Peace out.”
Sam logged off the website. More impatient knocking on the door.
“Hold up!” Sam yelled.
He stood, turned around, dropped the burner phone into the toilet water, and then flushed it. He watched as the phone disappeared with the flow of dirty water, launched into the bowels of the sewer system of Mexico City. There was no way he’d allow them to use the phone to continue to track him. If he was doing this, he was going his own way.
He didn’t care for any more surprises or cryptic text messages.
And he didn’t want a shadow.
NINETEEN
Agent Lloyd had just walked through the front door of his tiny condo, eager to soak his throbbing shoulder in a hot shower for an hour and collapse into bed, when his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his jacket and saw that it was the office. Never failed. He had a job where he was on the clock 24-7. Before answering it, he took a quick peek around the small living room. An old war movie was on the TV, but his pop was nowhere to be found. He thought he could hear snoring from a bedroom down the hallway. At least the old man had found his way back to his bed tonight. Lloyd usually discovered him asleep in the recliner with a can of beer spilled in his lap. Lloyd punched a button, stuck his phone to his ear.
“This better be good, Mike.”
“Sorry, Chief. But I think you need to get back here.”
“Seriously?”
“Krieger has something. He says he’s been playing a serious battle of chess online—at least that’s what Krieger called it. I’ve never understood the hacker thing. He’s been going at it for a few hours, and he claims he finally has something significant for us on the Gray Wolf.”
“No kidding. All right, give me fifteen minutes.”
Lloyd hung up, stepped into the living room. He turned off the TV. In the silence, he could definitely now hear his pop snoring up a storm from his bedroom. He began to clean up the room. A worn plaid couch was against the wall, his father’s beat-up brown recliner next to it, facing the small television. An open bag of Fritos sat on the cheap table beside the recliner. Lloyd walked over, grabbed the bag, and rolled it closed. He collected a stash of empty candy-bar wrappers that were stuffed into the cushions of the recliner. Mr. Goodbars were the old man’s favorites. At first Lloyd had tried to ration them out—otherwise, his pop could eat an entire carton of candy bars in one day. But Lloyd gave up on that a while back. The old man didn’t have much, so Lloyd decided the least he could do was let him have his candy.
Lloyd picked up his dad’s dirty socks from the carpet, along with a few other clothing items, tossed them into a laundry basket in the corner of the kitchen. The kitchen was an equal wreck. Dirty dishes covered the sink and counters. An opened jug of milk sat on the kitchen table. His father would simply forget to put it back in the fridge. It smelled something awful. Lloyd poured it out in the sink. He grabbed a two-day-old pitcher of coffee, filled a mug, and then stuck it in the microwave. It would have to do for now. As he waited for it to warm, he surveyed his surroundings.
Home sweet home.
There was a time in life when Lloyd had actually lived decently. But it had been years. He’d married straight out of the police academy. Clara was a beautiful, sophisticated Harvard student from a high-society New England family. They were an odd pairing from the beginning. He was never certain of her draw to him. Members of his gritty middle-class family were more likely to change the oil in her family’s fleet of BMWs or mow their estate’s lawn. But when an attractive girl with class found you appealing, you didn’t ask questions; you just enjoyed the ride. It was a disaster from nearly the beginning. They fought for a while to make it work. She was headed to law school. He was a third-generation cop. They were determined to be happy.
Their first place together was a tiny one-bedroom duplex four blocks from campus. It was small, but Clara turned it into an absolute work of art. They could have published pictures in a magazine. Life was good. But her parents never let up. They were constantly in her ear, telling her she could have done much better than Spence
r Lloyd. That it was still not too late. There were no kids yet. Two years into the marriage, Lloyd got clipped in the stomach by a bad guy’s stray bullet. Put him out a few months. Normal cop stuff. His family was used to it. It was their chosen way of life. Clara freaked. Her mom used it to manipulate. Finally, Clara broke. She said she couldn’t handle it anymore. She couldn’t be married to a cop. Lloyd knew she wasn’t asking him to change careers—there was no chance of that. She was asking for a husband change. It got ugly. He loved her but hated her parents. He thought many times about taking a swing at her father, but he knew it could be a career killer. He finally relented.
She remarried within a year. An investment banker. She got everything her family wanted. Three kids. Two pretty dogs. A shiny sedan. Big house. Nice yard.
Lloyd sighed, looked around him.
No wife. No kids. No dogs. No yard.
Just dad. And the FBI.
He grabbed his coffee, took a sip, nearly spit it out.
He moved to the hallway, cracked the door to the first bedroom. His pop lay on top of the covers, snoring loudly, shaking the walls. Lloyd was used to it by now. It had given him nightmares as a kid. His mom could sleep through anything. She was an amazingly tolerant woman. A saint. He knelt next to the bed. His pop was still wrapped in the brown robe he wore every single day of his life. Lloyd grinned, shook his head, and grabbed the open container of Oreo cookies from his father’s chest, set them on the nightstand. There were still black crumbs on his dad’s dry and cracked lips.
Lloyd kissed the man on the forehead, whispered, “Sleep well, Pop.”
His dad grunted, muttered, but stayed asleep.
The snoring grew even louder.
Lloyd headed for the door.
They met back at headquarters.
They were in the conference room. Agent Krieger was also in the room. He was in his late twenties, with blond hair and black square glasses, and he was a whiz with computers. The kid graduated near the top of his class from MIT and could have probably made millions already at a software start-up. Krieger was beyond brilliant. Lloyd respected that he’d chosen law enforcement instead of the corporate route. They definitely needed more agents like Krieger in this new age of cyberterrorism.