Cold Blooded Assassin Book 8: Rule of Nightmare (Nick McCarty Assassin)

by Bernard Lee DeLeo

  “Of course,” Cala replied.

  Jian arrived five minutes later. Neil guided his Toyota Rav 4 next to Nick, Cala, and the wounded man. Jian opened the back of his Toyota, where he had already lined the interior with black plastic bags. He and Nick loaded the wounded man, with his grotesque groin protrusion, onto the black bag covering.

  “Do you have a towel or something, Dragon?”

  Jian hurried to the front glove compartment. He brought around a yellow cotton polishing towel, handing it to Nick, who stuffed it around the knife handle. He then jammed the man’s hands around it and shut the Toyota hatch. Lastly, he handed the man’s personal belongings and weapons in the evidence bag to Cala.

  “I will be along, shortly.” Without waiting for acknowledgement, Nick rejoined his group, while Jian and Cala sped away from the scene.

  Neil met him there. “If anyone asks?”

  “Transferred into federal custody and flown to Washington DC. I will bring the documents into your office later.”

  “Good enough. Would you all like a ride to school?”

  “No. We’ll be fine. Thank you. I will tell you what I can later.”

  “Understood. See you then.” Neil moved back as the Unholy Trio, Marshal Deke, and the minions of Zorro continued down the sidewalk.

  “How are you going to explain this to Mom?” Jean knew Nick had a long ago decided on course of action in revealing violent situations to Rachel. He told her everything.

  “I have no idea. The old crap about ‘honesty is the best policy’ sounds nice, but has many drawbacks in this instance. I know you and Sonny will give me a chance to get around to it.”

  “We will, Dad. Mom sometimes reads me like I’m a little kid. I’m working on improving my withholding evidence under interrogation though.”

  That statement garnered some amusement. Nick put his arm around Jean. “Don’t bother. I should have it handled by the time you get home from school. If not, I’ll let you know. You’ll be continuing to stay at our house, Sonny. Do you have enough clothes there?”

  “Yes, Sir. Is something wrong at my folks’ house?”

  “I’m not sure yet. We have an unexpected complication from their previous adventure. It could be a thread from something of mine though. I’ll be investigating that venue within the next couple hours. Call your folks now. Tell them their past may be haunting them. Today would be a good day for your dad to go into his San Francisco office. Your mom can go with him and do some shopping with the money I transferred to them.”

  “Right away,” Sonny acknowledged. He called his parents on speaker for Nick’s hearing. Phil Salvatore answered.

  “Are you okay, Sonny?”

  “I’m fine, Dad. Nick says you and mom better go to San Francisco right away.”

  “What has he done now?”

  Sonny’s mouth tightened. “Saved your lives many times over. It has to do with something from yours and mom’s recent screw-up he’s investigating.”

  “Oh, good Lord… does he think Tark Ruban is involved?”

  “No more talk on an open line, Phil,” Nick ordered. “Take Clarice with you to the passport office. Pack a bag. Stay somewhere nice with a lot of lights and keep your eyes open. I’ll let you know when to return. Your actual job is the last place anyone would look for you. Get moving! We’ll take care of Sonny.”

  “Please do what Nick says, Dad.”

  “We will. After… after this gets over with… come home with us.”

  “I will, Dad. Go on now. Take care of Mom. Goodbye.”

  “What did you find, Muerto,” Gus asked as they resumed their walk.

  “The guy in the front has a security ID from Tark Ruban Enterprises. Bringing the ID with him on this faceoff plot may be the dumbest move ever. It could also mean he planned to formally go to the Salvatore’s home directly after waylaying us on the streets. We’ll find out soon enough. He may prove to be an asset making everything easier in the North.”

  Gus smacked palm to forehead. “You’re thinking of putting him in the vest.”

  “Astute observation, Payaso.”

  “I thought maybe you were coming to your senses about the plan.”

  “It may not be a perfect plan, but this new ingredient could improve my chances of selling it to the Dark Lord.”

  “I hope not. I can envision so many things going wrong, it freezes my mind.”

  “Negative vibes are not helpful, Payaso,” Johnny said. “Muerto needs our enthusiastic support for this ridiculously dangerous plot.”

  “Kabong! I thought you approved of the plan completely,” Nick replied, listening to Jean and Sonny’s suppressed humor.

  “From the moment you inserted the infamous pairing of Amin Jutoh and Ebi Zarin, my enthusiasm faded. Those two characters should be retired completely after their last adventure together.”

  “We succeeded on mission with only slight problems. Remember, it wasn’t us ringing the alarm bells. Our passports held through inspection. They didn’t want to take the chance we were playing them. We know Tark’s number. I’ll have Denny make our new terrorist friend, Amir Mohammed Kostler, make a call to Tark telling him he has two killer operatives in the area. Tark will ask him how he knows his location. Kostler can laugh and say he knows Tark’s every move. If Tark accepts Kostler’s line, he’ll want two more top notch hired guns. If he doesn’t, I may need to wing it.”

  “You can wing a line in the high school play. This, you can’t wing, Muerto. Think it through after you talk with the guy at Johnny’s place.”

  “Agreed.”

  “One good thing… you guys won’t all be getting blitzed down at the ‘Point’ this morning,” Jean said, jetting ahead with Sonny close behind.

  “What’s that old Rodney Dangerfield line… ‘now I know why tigers eat their young’?”

  * * *

  “Hajar Kassis,” Nick slapped the man’s face with subtle wake up slaps.

  Kassis groaned as if coming out of a deep sleep. “Stop! Why… are you slapping me?”

  Reality seeped into Hajar’s consciousness, along with pain so intense he screamed until hoarse. Strapped to a gurney, Hajar found while gasping in distress he could move his head enough to see the handle of a knife still protruding from his groin area with a bloody towel around it. He found his screaming voice once again before he began to beg in Arabic.

  “Please! I…I need a doctor! The pain… Allah be merciful! Help me!”

  “Doctor Muerto is here, my friend, ready to help. I need a couple of things from you first. I saw your security ID from Tark Ruban Enterprises. Did he personally send you here?”

  “You! You are no doctor! Take me to the hospital! Oh… pain… give me something for the pain!”

  “Not yet.” Nick moved to Hajar’s middle with his hand hovering over the knife handle. “Let Doctor Muerto adjust this nasty knife slightly.”

  Kassis screamed when Nick touched the knife handle. “Wait… wait! Yes… Mr. Ruban sent me along with… some others from his San Francisco office. He wanted you involved in a police matter. Mr. Ruban knew your address and all… about you, McCarty!”

  Jian, Cala, and Nick all enjoyed a brief moment of amusement. “Sending you means he knows nothing about me. Did you have a secondary plan after this police involvement ploy?”

  “The… Salvatores… your friends… he… please! The pain… I cannot think!”

  “Here,” Nick said. “Let me adjust the knife a bit more.”

  “No! Wait! Ruban wanted to know… what happened to the two Senators. He knew men were with Senators Danders and Barren. They have disappeared. He believed the Salvatores… would know what happened to them all.”

  “Does Tark know Amir Mohammed Kostler?”

  “Yes. They meet regularly. Amir… wanted the hellish City of Hope destroyed. He needed Ruban’s help.”

  “I will give you something for the pain, so you may speak freely with me,” Nick said. “Do not disappoint me.”

  �
�I will tell you anything you want to know! Make… make the pain stop!”

  Nick injected him with a morphine derivative, mixed with sodium pentothal and oxycodone. He only gave him a dosage to relieve enough of the pain for Hajar’s communicative skills to improve.

  “Tell me what you think these people like Tark, Amir, and the Senators want besides their usual criminal enterprises.”

  “I…I…” Kassis thought hard. He wanted to please this man. “Chaos first… then order through Sharia within the caliphate of world domination. Soon, they will have enough of the Antifa and BLM gangsters to cause the people in America… to demand anything that will stop the violence. With our people in key positions, we… can establish Sharia, immediately putting down and controlling the thug factions.”

  “You have thought long about this, have you not, Hajar,” Nick asked, continuing in Arabic.

  “I have. All true believers wonder at why our people are invited into countries where the citizens want nothing to do with us. They know… we never assimilate. It is an incredible plan. I see… our numbers growing into dominance. We soon will be in control of all nations.”

  “If we continue as we have so far, I believe you are right,” Nick admitted.

  He administered a full dose of morphine, taking away all feeling. Nick then injected a local anesthetic to numb Hajar’s groin region before removing the knife. After stripping Hajar from the waist down, while applying pressure on the wound with a fresh peroxide soaked towel, Nick did some minor repairs with a liquid surgical sealant.

  “We will be on a time limit to use Hajar,” Nick said. “I’ll contact John. We’ll hook our suicide bomber to an IV until we can fly him North for his date with destiny. This will be a tough sell to Kabong and Payaso. I don’t think they care much for my daring plan.”

  “If the two teams are to avoid connection with the deaths of these very public people, your plan may be a gamble, but it is the only one I can think of to keep from being tied in with the killings,” Jian said.

  “I agree with Dragon. My husband knows it will be the only solution,” Cala added.

  “This places a new ingredient in the mix which can eliminate a little of the danger. We’ll stow away Hajar with an IV and I will start a conference call with the Dark Lord on a secure line. All of our talking it out won’t mean anything if John’s crew can shoot it full of holes.”

  * * *

  I listened with the Monsters at Pain Central to details of Nick’s new plan for hitting Ruban and company. It amazed me how Muerto creates intricate plots to wipe out a bunch of people, and yet finds ways to avoid being linked with the deed. We’d probably all laugh at his past plots, along with this one, if he hadn’t made the ones in the past work. I leaned forward after glancing around at the smiling faces of my cohorts waiting for my official reaction.

  “Let me blurt this out briefly so we’re all on the same page. We get Denny to have Amir Mohammed Kostler call Ruban, letting him know two of his operatives, Muerto and Kabong, using their Amin Jutoh and Ebi Zarin identities, helped Hajar Kassis escape police custody. Kostler asks Ruban if he would like Kassis brought to him by his two agents. Hajar Kassis, according to Kostler, has learned information he must deliver to Ruban in person. The reason Jutoh and Zarin were in a position to help Kassis is because Kostler hired them to kill the infamous Nick McCarty. That’s the key to the gamble, right?”

  “Exactly,” Nick answered. “If Ruban believes he and Kostler want the same man dead, Kostler could get Ruban to use Jutoh and Zarin to get the Salvators. Hajar carried a .32 caliber ACP. That will be the tricky part. I will need to down the Syrian guards before they know what hit them with the ACP once we’re inside. That can be Hajar’s doing before he exploded his bomb vest. Johnny gets the drop on Ruban and his guests easily. We give them my sleepy-time syringe treatment, set the scene, and blow Hajar to kingdom come along with the others.”

  “That’s a lot of guys to kill with a .32,” Casey said.

  “Did you just insult me, Case?”

  After some amusement, I turned to our conferenced call participant. “What do you think about the viability of getting Kostler to sell this gambit to Ruban?”

  “He will say anything to stay away from Dr. Deville. The plan will work if Ruban wants Kostler’s two supposed hired guns to bring Hajar to him. I like all aspects of it. If the ploy works, very bad people die without our being caught in the mix. As Nick said, it’s a good gamble. Nick and Johnny will be in the most danger. Being able to shoot any of the Syrian bodyguards with Hajar’s ACP takes some pressure off.” Denny paused for a moment. “This needs done. If it goes wrong, move in, kill them all, and make the bodies disappear.”

  “If Muerto and Kabong believe in the plan despite the possible danger, I vote we back them, and correct any errors old school,” Lynn said.

  Lynn’s vote drew affirmation from everyone.

  “Okay… we’re in, Nick,” I told him. “I imagine you need to get your potential suicide bomber North as soon as possible.”

  “I’d like to fly him there today. I can’t predict there won’t be problems from his wound. We’ll leave this afternoon.”

  “See you then.”

  * * *

  “I told you John would love the plan,” Nick said

  “John didn’t say he loved this plan,” Gus retorted. “I don’t think he realized you were already at our hangar at the airport, or that we loaded Hajar into the helicopter before the call.”

  “I didn’t want to worry him with minutiae. Ready, Cala? Off we go into the wild blue yonder!” Nick skipped toward the helicopter.

  “Coming, Muerto.” Cala smiled at Gus, Johnny, and Jian. “Has Muerto gone over the edge.”

  “No,” Gus answered. “He gets this way when on a kill mission.”

  “Payaso is right,” Johnny agreed. “Remember when he was in Chicago blowing the gangs into another dimension? He acted like he was a kid going to Disneyland.”

  “Yes. I am told Muerto smiled when he shot me,” Jian added.

  “He smiled when he tortured me,” Johnny admitted. “It is not personal… just business.”

  * * *

  “I must say this is perfect.”

  “I told you I had this, Kabong.” Nick, dressed in black slacks, t-shirt, black Giants baseball cap, darkened skin, and sporting four days of beard, pushed a wheel chair with Hajar slumped in it, along the sidewalk to Diane Cameron’s ex-husband’s estate entrance. “The bomb vest is hidden under the wheelchair seat. Your MP5 fit perfectly in the seat’s rear storage area. Here come the Syrians.”

  Two tall men in dark suits approached them from the door. One pointed at Hajar. “What happened to Kassis?”

  “He was wounded in the protest,” Nick answered in Arabic. He handed the man their passports. “Amir told me I should show these to you.”

  The Syrian looked over the Saudi passports carefully before nodding his acceptance and handing them back. “Thank you. Will Kassis be able to speak?”

  “Yes. He is merely sedated because of the pain,” Johnny answered. “We will bring Hajar out of it so he may tell Mr. Ruban what he refuses to tell anyone else since we rescued him.”

  “Mr. Ruban wants what the Salvatores stole and them tortured to death.”

  “We have been ordered by Amir to complete any mission Mr. Ruban wants done,” Nick said, “including the man Amir wants dead - Nick McCarty.”

  “Follow us.”

  Johnny took over the wheelchair. Nick stepped in front of him, following the Syrian guards closely. As Nick crossed the threshold, he saw the other four Syrians sitting at a table near the entrance to a huge living room with domed, ornate ceiling. Without pause, Nick executed the two guards in front of him with hollow point rounds for the .32 caliber ACP. Before the other four could react, Nick was amongst them firing from point blank range into heads and faces. Completing his rapid fire assault with extra kill shots, he followed Johnny at a dead run into the living room where screams fr
om Diane Cameron and Fuma Sabedin mixed with shocked demands from the men.

  “On the floor, face down or I open fire,” Johnny shouted, MP5 aimed at Tark Ruban’s groin. “Do it quickly or I begin shooting pieces off you.”

  “McCarty!”

  Nick waved comically at Diane Cameron. “Hi there, Diane, you traitorous bitch. You and your pals better hit the floor. Tell them. You know me.”

  “He will torture us without hesitation! McCarty is a murderous demon! Do as he says!”

  “Yes, do as he commands! I will clear this up once we are safe,” Tark told the others while getting on the floor face down.

  Abu El-Tayed followed Ruban’s lead as did Cameron and Sabedin. Nick administered the syringes to render the prisoners unconscious, except for Ruban. Nick restrained each one. Johnny and Nick then lifted Tark Ruban into a chair. Nick fired an arc from his stun-gun nightstick next to Ruban’s groin. Ruban yelped, trying to throw himself backwards. Johnny held him steady.

  “We’re in with all down,” Nick said. “Are you on, Achmed?”

  “Yes, Muerto. Loud and clear.”

  “Okay, Tark… here’s the deal. Give me all your account numbers for a funds transfer, and I won’t barbecue your balls off. Want a demo?”

  Silence.

  Nick gave him five seconds of hell with Tark screaming until he passed out. Johnny slapped him awake, sobbing and crying. “Give me the account numbers or a device I can find them on.”

  “Please… the pain… oh God… the-”

  Nick gave him another five seconds. When Ruban became coherent enough to speak, he rattled off three account numbers.

  “The numbers are good, Muerto,” Jafar told him. “This was a very profitable mission if you can keep us out of it.”

  “Working on it.” Nick injected Ruban rendering him unconscious.

  Johnny and Nick seated Ruban, Cameron, and Fuma Sabedin on the couch. They positioned Abu El-Tayed in a chair near the couch. Nick adjusted their poses for the blast to hit them with the most force. They wheeled Hajar into the room. Nick and Johnny hurriedly put the bomb vest on him before positioning Hajar sitting on the floor amidst the soon to be deceased. They copied as much electronic data as they could from both the computers and the smart phones before Nick set the timer for five minutes.