by Peter Nealen
“All right,” Tom said finally, after making eye contact with all three of the team leaders. None of us were happy, but Stahl and Renton had made a pretty strong case. “We’re in.”
Stahl nodded. “Good. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry we had to play hardball, but Renton’s not kidding. There’s too much at stake here for us to be able to afford to take ‘no’ for an answer.” He shifted the cigar around to the other side of his mouth. “Take a few days, rest up, and get ready to move. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
We had more work than I think General Stahl had imagined. Our home base was in shambles, and, regardless of Renton’s assurances that the Cicero Group was going to be looking for Little Bob, I had a few other contacts outside of the Group’s network. After making sure Old Man Harrick’s militia were on standby but no longer out in the woods, and that Ventner’s boys were heading down to Cody to backstop Brett and his deputies, I headed to my little cabin and fired up my laptop. My internet connection was through several proxies that Derek had set up; nobody who might have been snooping was going to find exactly where I was or what I was looking at.
I had just emailed an old buddy of mine, from before the Praetorian days, a former Marine who had gone into the investigator business, specializing in missing persons, when I heard someone enter the room behind me.
I spun around in my chair, to see Mia had come in behind me.
I wasn’t sure what to make of her presence. I was still pretty strung out, and after Renton’s and Stahl’s little railroad job, I was acutely aware of our history, and how it had started. What was she doing there?
I stood up as she came closer. “Why are you still up?” she asked. She touched my arm. “You should get some rest,” she said.
If I’d been a little less punch-drunk I might have considered my words more carefully. But I’d been up for a long time, through two hard fights, and I wasn’t exactly at my clearest.
“Why?” I asked, a faint edge of bitterness in the word that even surprised me as I said it. “Has Renton moved up the timetable? Need me at my best to do his dirty work?”
She slapped me. I hadn’t seen it coming and it kinda rocked me. Before I could react, she grabbed my face between her hands and pulled me down to look her in the eyes.
“I know you’re tired,” she said tightly, “which is why I’m going to let it go at that, when by rights I should make you wish you were never born for saying that. You have been doing this too long. Not everything is part of the game, not everything is part of someone’s agenda, not everyone is trying to get you or get something from you. The fact that you can’t see that anymore worries me.” She looked down for a second. “I went down that road a few years back,” she said, her voice haunted. “I lost a lot; I almost lost myself. It was why I got out of the game, and when Renton pulled me back in, I swore I wasn’t going to let it happen again.” Her voice got thick for a second. “Don’t you dare let it happen to you, too.”
Then she kissed me, hard. I’d never really thought of the word “fiercely” as describing kissing, but that’s the only way I can describe that one.
She broke the kiss and let me go suddenly, turning so quickly that her ponytail almost hit me in the face. She stalked away without looking back. I couldn’t be sure, since I couldn’t see her face, but I had the sudden impression that she was fighting back tears.
Even as I watched her go, I caught myself wondering if it wasn’t still all an act, and I suddenly felt like an asshole for thinking it. Was she right? Was I getting lost in this crapsack of intrigue, lies, and betrayal?
I heard the door slam behind her, and I slumped back down into my chair. I thought of getting up and going after her, but my stubborn streak won out.
She was right about one thing. I needed sleep. Maybe I’d apologize in the morning.
I was yanked out of a deep, hard sleep by the radio blaring. “Hillbilly, Geek!” Eddie was calling. It didn’t sound like it was the first time he’d called, either.
I grabbed for the radio and my rifle at the same time, succeeding in knocking the radio off the nightstand, though I managed to snag the rifle before it slid down to hit the floor. I groggily searched the floor for the radio and got my fingers around it.
“Geek, Hillbilly,” I croaked. My mouth felt like a small animal had died in it. It was still dark outside. Something was wrong.
“Get to the main house, pronto,” he said. “Come loaded for bear.”
I acknowledged curtly, my grogginess momentarily forgotten as I switched on. I grabbed my chest rig off the chair next to the bedroom door as I slammed out into the predawn darkness, swung a leg over my four-wheeler, fired it up, and went tearing toward the main house.
The lights were all on, and everyone who had been close enough was up, with security set and guns out. “What the hell happened?” I demanded, as I swung down off my ATV. A few rifle muzzles lowered as I called.
“Lee’s dead,” Eddie said grimly as he came to the back door. “Come and see.”
Lee had been on Eddie’s team for years. His callsign had been “Booters” because he’d gotten all kinds of butt-hurt over the prospect of being treated as the new guy when he’d first joined up; he’d retired from the Marine Corps as a Master Sergeant. He’d adapted, lost the stick up his ass, and been a top-notch shooter since.
He’d been garroted from behind, his neck black and blue from what looked like it must have been a boot lace or a length of 550 parachute cord.
“He was on security, watching the back for Baumgartner or any of his hunters,” Eddie said.
“How the hell did somebody get behind him?” I asked.
Before anyone could venture a guess, though, the landline phone rang. Everyone stopped and stared at it for a second, then I took two steps over and picked it up.
“You boys must be tired,” a familiar voice said. “You’re slipping. Your sweep missed the attic.”
“Baumgartner,” I said. Every eye in the room seemed to focus a little tighter on me at the sound of that name.
“The same,” he replied easily. “I considered doing some more damage on my way out, but the odds were long, even for me. You guys are good. Not in my league, but good.” His bantering tone vanished. “You didn’t really think this was over, did you?”
“No, I can’t say that we did,” I answered. “Though I could ask you the same question.”
He laughed. It was a dry, dead, humorless sound. “You should see what I’m getting paid for this job,” he said. “You guys are barking up the wrong tree. You’re fucked. The people I work for have bottomless pockets. If you try to pull off that plan you were talking about in the living room, they’ll just crush you. If you’re smart, you’ll forget that bullshit. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and they’ll offer you a job if you surrender when they send the next wave after you.”
“You know, I thought you were king shit back in the day, Baumgartner,” I told him. “But now, I’m going to put a bullet in your brain when I get a chance. Get fucked.” I hung up.
I looked at the rest, trying to hide how shaken that exchange had left me. I’d fought jihadis, narcos, Chinese commandos, and rogue American special operations soldiers. But Baumgartner fucking scared me.
“We’ve got to find that son of a bitch,” Eddie snarled.
“I think he’ll come to us,” I said, “eventually. But that call was a taunt. He’s waiting, up there somewhere, for us to come after him. He wouldn’t have called otherwise. He wants us to go looking, and then he’s going to whittle us down, one at a time.” I shook my head. “Double security for the time being, and we’ll have to be on the alert at all times. When the time comes, I want to ambush him.”
I just hoped that we were able to kill him quick when that time came. Otherwise more of us were going to be joining Lee.
Chapter 20
We patrolled, cautiously, for the next two days, pushing a little farther into the Beartooths to look for Baumgartner. By the end of the second day, t
hough, no one had found any sign of him, and he hadn’t sprung any ambushes. He had vanished into the mountains like a ghost.
“I suspect he was trying to draw us out just so he could bag a couple of us if we offered him the opportunity,” Tom said. “Good call, Jeff, on holding back. My guess is that he only killed Lee on the way out, instead of trying to wreak more havoc, because he figured he was too outnumbered. Even someone like Baumgartner can calculate odds, and whatever kind of Delta superman he might have been, he’s still a survivor.”
I just nodded. I was glad that nobody else had gotten killed, but I wanted to see Baumgartner’s cold corpse, and sooner rather than later. After that little display the other night, I would be sleeping with one eye open until he was in the dirt.
At any rate, while I was certain we hadn’t heard or seen the last of Baumgartner, we had work to do. Our rest and recovery time, as brief as it had been, was coming to an end. We’d spent a good bit of it refitting and cleaning up after the Task Force, as well as lending what help and advice we could to the militia, Ventner’s contractors, and Brett and his deputies, but we’d gotten a bit of rest in there, as well.
Mia had avoided speaking to me or looking at me for the first day, which I didn’t have too much of a problem with, since I still didn’t know what to make of our little encounter in my cabin the other night. She’d warmed back up as time had gone on, though the confrontation was never brought up.
But the chaos tearing the country apart wasn’t getting any better, and we had missions to plan. So, while it didn’t feel like we’d gotten much rest and recuperation at all, we sat down with Renton’s target packages and got to work.
I’d never been a fan of Northern Virginia.
I’d been there off and on a few times, though not nearly as often as some guys I knew who worked the contract business, mostly doing guard work or close protection for various government agencies that were either based in DC or various surrounding areas in Northern Virginia itself. Overall, it always struck me as too built up, too pretentious, and too full of its own importance, being so close to the center of government. This was where the bureaucracy lived, and you could smell it on the too-humid air.
In keeping with my warning to Renton after the Mexican fiasco, we’d kept our use of Cicero Group assets to a minimum, and arranged our own flights out to Virginia. A lot of the gear had been purchased with cash at various hole-in-the-wall stores nearby, and we’d brought the weapons in ourselves. We weren’t getting burned inadvertently because we’d locally purchased weapons used in a hit. Politicians’ frothing bullshit about “ghost guns” aside, you’ve got to present ID and get a background check to buy a gun anywhere but the black market, and given the assholes who run the black market Stateside, that was a non-starter.
We had taken Renton’s advice and prioritized the guy on the top of the target deck he’d given us. If his information was right, this was the guy to start with.
“This asshole has eaten out for every fucking meal for the last three days,” Eric grumbled. “You’d think he never learned how to cook.”
“You’ve seen him,” I replied. “Does he look to you like somebody who ever bothered to learn any real-life skills that don’t involve a computer?”
He snorted. Eric prided himself on his skill in the kitchen, a fact that the rest of the team had taken advantage of at one time or another. He might have made a decent living as a chef somewhere, if he hadn’t been doing this, instead. But with the economy in the shape it had been for years, killing people and breaking their shit paid a hell of a lot better than feeding them.
I turned my attention back across the street. “At any rate, it’s one more indicator that Renton’s info’s good. If he’s throwing that kind of money around, he’s too loaded to just be a tech consultant.”
Damien Chu was presently sitting in the Majestic Café, presumably enjoying a very pricey dinner in a restaurant that catered to presidents. Obviously, POTUS was nowhere near the place at the moment; otherwise Eric and I could not have been sitting in a rental sedan across the street. But it said something about Damien’s tastes, and, as I’d said, it suggested that we were on the right track.
Chu was a pudgy, baby-faced young man with glasses and a shitty haircut, who dressed like a slob, but drove a very expensive car and patronized expensive restaurants and entertainments. Not only was he always eating out or going to “important people” bars, but we’d seen a different escort show up to his apartment every night so far. The dude had money to burn, and no problem letting everyone around him know it.
When you’re supposed to be a lowly tech consultant living in a very expensive part of the country, however, that’s not necessarily a good idea.
Renton’s target package said that Chu’s sideline—or, perhaps more accurately, his primary source of income, judging by what I’d seen—was that of facilitator. He was the guy who discreetly connected very important and high-profile people with very seedy, illegal, and immoral services.
He wasn’t thought to be a part of “Marius,” “Sulla,” or any other faction, but what Renton and his people wanted was what he knew. And if their suspicions were correct, he knew a lot.
So, there we were, sitting in a sedan in an upscale part of Alexandria, Virginia, that didn’t look like it had suffered from the Greater Depression at all, watching well-dressed young professionals walking along the sidewalks, staring at their smartphones and chatting, as if there was nothing whatsoever wrong with the world, aside from whatever petty little problems they were blowing out of proportion that day.
I usually tried to avoid that kind of cynicism regarding my fellow man. There were too many veterans of the wars who puffed themselves up as loudly and publicly as possible with their own moral superiority, apparently believing that having been to horrible places, endured hardships, and maybe even having had to do and receive violence made them inherently better than anyone around them. I didn’t want to be one of those guys.
But there’s a certain unavoidable culture shock that comes from being thrown from a combat situation straight into affluent, comfortable surroundings. A week before, I’d been fighting for my home, dragging my ass over rocks and brush to either kill or be killed. Now here I was, showered, clean, sitting in a comfortable car, but still in combat mode, hunting a man while everyone around me acted like my world of spooks, criminals, mercenaries, and terrorists didn’t exist.
Because to them, it didn’t. None of them had ever been shot at. The riots threatening to spin out of control were distant things on the news, even if the nearest was only a half an hour’s drive away. Riots don’t move quickly, so these people really had nothing to worry about, not for a while, anyway. So, they could concentrate on the petty little inconveniences of their day, having no other real hardships or obstacles to compare them to.
At the very least, it lent a weird sense of unreality to running surveillance in that environment. Add in the fact that there’s always too much time to woolgather while on surveillance, and it makes it worse.
We had eyes on Chu’s apartment, which apparently doubled as his workplace. While he had a website for his public business, he seemed to do very little actual tech consulting. All the pieces were lining up to confirm that he was just what the Cicero Group suspected he was.
My phone buzzed. It was a new smartphone; Derek had been working on a set of them for secure comms for a while, fitted with text, voice, and video apps with solid end-to-end encryption and VPNs from hell. He’d assured us that nobody was going to be cracking them anytime soon. In a way, it was simpler and more convenient than juggling half a dozen burner phones.
It was from Derek, though the screen just said, “Hippy.” “Dude, I finished going over the dump for the last 24 and just…DAMN,” the message read.
Derek was presently sitting in the hospital in Powell, having come through the first of what promised to be several surgeries for his shattered femur all right, and was working remotely. Fortunately, his cyber-
war wizardry didn’t require him to be on the ground, though it did require somebody to be.
The night before, once we’d been confident enough that Chu would be occupied at his watering hole of the night, Eddie had broken into his apartment and installed a micro-USB keylogger on his computer. He had evidently not spotted it, probably because he hadn’t been looking. Eddie was very good at the clandestine entry game, and could come and go like a ghost, given enough time. Bryan and Jack had been poised to interrupt Chu’s evening in a particularly unpleasant way, to ensure he had that time, but such had not proven necessary. Chu liked the night life, and he had enough money to flash around that, as pathetic as he looked and dressed, he had enough female attention to keep him busy for a while.
Once Chu had gotten home, every keystroke he made on that computer had gotten dumped by wifi onto a little Raspberry Pi that Eddie had stashed in the bushes outside the apartment building. That was what Derek was accessing, from his terminal halfway across the country.
“He’s careful,” Derek continued. “He’s Tor’ed up like a mofo, every message is in code, and he scrubs everything after its been sent. Not all of his clients are that careful, though, and I’ve already hooked two of ‘em the easy way.” The “easy way” was a phishing attack via their email. Knowing Derek’s twisted sense of humor, I expected that he’d disguised his attacks as juicy opportunities from Chu himself.
“This guy’s dirty as hell, broheim,” he concluded.
“Roger,” I sent back. “We’ll pay him a visit tonight. Wish you could be here for it.”
“Me too, bro, me too,” he replied. “Give him an extra love-tap for me.”
“No problem,” I answered, before putting the phone away and turning my attention back toward the Café. I checked my watch.
“Taking his time, isn’t he?” I muttered.
“Relax, man,” Eric said. “The later he goes, the later we break in and take him, and the less likely we get spotted doing it. You know this.”