Lex Talionis

by Peter Nealen

  Fortunately, we didn’t have long to wait, since Sam had been getting the bird ready from the moment he’d touched down. We just had to load up, get final fueling finished, and get clearance. So, after a flurry of activity, I found myself in the back of the DC-3, sitting on a jump seat with nothing more to do, staring down at the tarp-wrapped form of my friend; another one I’d outlived, another one I hadn’t been able to save.

  Mia sat down beside me. I didn’t look at her. I just kept staring down at the body. I wasn’t even thinking of what I might have done better, or how I could have prevented what had happened. I didn’t feel like I could think at all. My mind was a fog of grief, along with some guilt that I was so glad the woman presently sitting next to me hadn’t been the one we’d lost.

  She didn’t say anything, though I could feel her eyes on me. Then she slid her hand across my back, before reaching over to cup my cheek with the other and pulling me close.

  She buried her face in my shoulder as I wrapped my arms around her, and we wept together, wept for Little Bob and Jim and Ben and Jack and all the rest. I held her tight, silently thanking God that she was still safe, and still feeling more than a bit guilty about the thought.

  We hadn’t trusted her when Renton had first sent her to join us in Mexico. I’d been one of the most paranoid of the bunch. Even after everything she’d done for us, and the risks she’d taken alongside us, I’d still suspected her of ulterior motives, and I knew that it had hurt her. Now I was more than a little ashamed of that.

  There was no manipulation here, no ulterior motives. Her grief was real, and I could feel that there was some of the trauma of having been Baumgartner’s hostage involved in the way she clung to me even as the bird started to taxi.

  Finally, the storm subsided somewhat. She pulled away, just a little, though she still sat close, leaning against my side. She wiped her eyes with one hand, while she reached up to hold the hand I still had wrapped around her shoulders with the other.

  She looked into my eyes. She looked like hell; her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and still a little haunted from the ordeal of the last couple of days. Her hair was dirty and disheveled, pulled back in a tight ponytail just to get it out of the way. Her face was drawn and tired. I expected I looked worse.

  She was still beautiful.

  A slight, hesitant smile curled her lips as she sniffled a bit. “I couldn’t help but notice,” she said quietly, “that, just for a moment, when I was on the floor, you seemed…rather intensely glad to see that I was all right.” She searched my face, as if unsure of how I was going to react.

  As for me, I didn’t know what to say. There was a growing tightness in my chest as I looked in her eyes. With all the rest of the emotional turmoil roiling in my brain, I was at a loss. Her teasing I could usually grumble and growl about, to her never-ending amusement. But she wasn’t teasing, now, and I was stuck.

  But she must have read what I was feeling in my face, because she just smiled a little more widely, and sighed, blinking more tears out of her eyes. “If we’re being honest,” she said, “I’ve wanted you to look at me like that since Veracruz.” I suddenly remembered just how convincing she’d been about being my paramour when we’d been in the public eye in that fancy, luxury hotel, along with all the flirting she’d done since, and it got me wondering. Then there wasn’t anything to wonder about anymore.

  She leaned in, and we kissed. I knew the rest were watching, but after everything that had happened, there wasn’t any catcalling or jeering. I expected that Alek and Eddie were glowering at anyone who was looking tempted.

  Once we came up for air, she reached up and touched my cheek with gentle fingertips. “If we live to see the end of this,” she murmured, “you and I are going away together for a long, long time. I think we’ve got a lot to figure out about this relationship.”

  I held her close as the bird climbed into the sky. That was the shadow hanging over us. Half the team was dead or crippled at this point. Would any of us live to see the end of this nightmare?

  Stahl was waiting for us at The Ranch, along with Renton and Bates. Renton looked a bit impatient as we escorted Little Bob’s remains to the burial site that Tom had already picked out on the shoulder of the mountain above the house, but Stahl was grimly respectful, and I got the impression that he had laid down the law to Renton in no uncertain terms that Little Bob’s funeral would not be interrupted nor rushed. Stahl had been a combat leader, and to him, respect for the fallen was a sacred duty.

  Little Bob didn’t have any family left. He’d been an only child, and his parents were long gone. We had been his family. So, aside from Stahl, Renton, and Bates, there were only Praetorians gathered around the grave. Mia stood close by my side, but she was essentially part of the family, now, too.

  Mia had relayed to us what Little Bob had told her had happened. It seemed that ‘Sulla’ had sent a couple of minders to observe the MS-13 attack and report back. When it had gone badly, they’d gone to ground. Then, when the Task Force had shown up, one of them had listened to the Good Idea Fairy, and they’d snatched Little Bob out of the hospital and split.

  Once they had him, though, they hadn’t known what to do with him. Apparently, neither one of them had had the guts to just kill him; they were managers, not trigger pullers. And their handler had apparently told them to hold tight and keep him secure until they could find a use for him. Presumably, they had been waiting to see what happened between us and the Task Force.

  Well, their handler had gone silent, probably a victim of one or another kill- or snatch-squad. For all anyone knew, we might have killed or captured whoever it was. They hadn’t known what to do without instructions, so they’d gone on with their last orders received, keeping Little Bob alive in that farmhouse and wondering what the hell they were going to do. For months.

  Little Bob had bided his time, regaining some of his strength while feigning continued incapacitation, until the day he’d gotten the drop on them and killed both of them. Then he’d sent the message. Without secure comms, it had been intercepted. Baumgartner had waited until someone had showed up for him, then sprung his trap.

  The funeral was short and to the point. Those of us of the praying persuasion prayed. The rest bowed their heads in silence, as we took turns shoveling the earth over what was left of another teammate.

  Only after we’d trooped back down to the ranch house did Stahl and Renton approach Tom, Alek, Eddie, and me.

  “It looks like we’ve got a target, gents,” Stahl said. “Over the last twenty-four hours, no less than ten of the major ‘Marius’ players have flown into SeaTac. It looks like there’s a major meeting going down, and we suspect that Sokolov is going to be the center of it.”

  “Have we gotten eyes on Sokolov himself?” I asked. “Because it was Baumgartner who took him, and he can’t have had long to stash him somewhere before he flew out to Rapid City to take Mia and Little Bob hostage.”

  “We haven’t gotten any confirmation on Sokolov’s whereabouts, no,” Renton put in. “But under the circumstances, nothing else makes sense. Both factions have taken huge hits to their operational resources lately; we think that ‘Marius’ is actually hurting worse than ‘Sulla,’ despite the damage the latter faction took with the Hawaii raid. ‘Marius’ is somewhat more centralized, and has generally relied more on direct action rather than crowdsourced violence for their immediate goals, and you guys have taken a hell of a bite out of their DA capability. ‘Sulla’ has been gutted, at least until the next tier steps up to take the reins of their mentors’ operations, but we think that ‘Marius’ really isn’t in a position to take advantage of the current power vacuum.”

  “Which would lead them right into Sokolov’s arms,” Tom finished.

  Renton nodded. “This meet might be a chance to take the wind out of this entire shit-show,” he said. “If the major players of both factions are out of the picture, we might be able to calm things down somewhat.”

  Eddi
e and I shared a look. Where have we heard that before? We’d seen the networked nature of this kind of irregular warfare in Mexico and Central America, and knew first-hand how hard it was to shut that sort of thing down. Furthermore, we’d seen just how decentralized the factions were. They weren’t organizations; they were loose networks based on nepotism, backroom business deals, and political opportunism. Hell, I was sure there were probably going to be people at that ‘Marius’ meeting who were in mourning for Stavros and several others who’d gotten scragged in Hawaii.

  “We’ve got a list of possible meeting sites,” Renton continued. “Including a couple in Seattle; the riots have kind of died down for the moment, and these people tend to think they’re untouchable, anyway, especially since it was their hit squad that went into Hawaii. They’re going to have significant security, so they might feel safe enough to meet in the city. There are a few other possible sites, though, so we’re going to have to do some advance reconnaissance.”

  I just nodded. I was exhausted. I felt dead. We’d already buried too many, and I was sure that even more of us weren’t going to come back from hitting ‘Marius’ where it hurt. Sure, we’d eliminated Baumgartner, but how many other good shooters were working for these motherfuckers? There certainly was no shortage of trained soldiers running around, after damned near twenty years of continuous, low-level warfare in the Middle East and elsewhere.

  But I’d do it. Because what else was I going to do?

  The potential of a future with Mia was there in the background, but I couldn’t let the team go after these assholes without me. Besides, these were the same fucks who had hired Baumgartner. In a strangely cold, abstract sort of way, I wanted them to pay for how they’d hurt us, never mind how they’d torn the country apart for the sake of their petty little agendas.

  “There’s more,” Bates put in. “Half a dozen of my contacts in the Russian underworld have gone silent in the last thirty-six hours. I don’t know why, though I’ve got my ear to the ground. But with Sokolov in play, I suspect it means something big is coming. The MGB has its claws deep in the Mafiya; hell, half the Mafiya is MGB. I’ll keep digging, but we may need to move quickly.”

  “Great,” I replied. I looked at Renton. “Any timeline for this meet?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet, but given some of the targets that have already popped up, I would expect within the next forty-eight hours.”

  “Fucking hell,” Eddie said tiredly. “No rest for the wicked, huh?”

  “We’re taking eight,” I said. “If we try to do this with less rest than that, we’re going to start making mistakes. We’re strung out as it is.”

  Stahl nodded. “We’ve got assets moving to start laying the groundwork already,” he said, still talking around that ever-present cigar. It had disappeared for the funeral, then reappeared between his teeth almost like magic. “The recon elements are already up there. If it comes to it, you gents will be the hitters, not the snoopers. Get some rest, and be ready to move.”

  On that cheerful note, we broke up and headed for the nearest place to crash.

  Chapter 31

  We’d had four days of watching and waiting to do before the meeting appeared to be finally coming together. These assholes were taking their time, most of them living larger than probably ninety-nine percent of the rest of the country could afford to at that point. The Cicero Group’s recon elements tracked them through Puget Sound cruises, fine dining, and expensive parties that lasted until three in the morning. They never seemed to actually set in to do any business, and we were starting to think that we were looking at another case of rabbits sent out for the hounds to chase when things started moving.

  My money had been on the venue being a coastal resort on the Sound, or a ski resort in the Cascades, but as it turned out, they converged on the Verdant Mount golf resort outside of Mount Vernon. Fucking rich people. Surrounded by mountains and woods and water, and they want manicured lawns and golf.

  Of course, with all the fucking around this bunch had been doing, we couldn’t be entirely certain that this was it; the initial reports had more and more of them checking into the lodge, but it could just be another party. It was immaterial to us; we had been staged at a small, private airfield outside of Arlington for the last three days, on fifteen-minute strip alert, ready to launch. While we didn’t have anything like the MH-Xs that Baumgartner’s strike force had used in Hawaii, the Cicero Group had managed to acquire, somehow, what appeared to be actual MH-6 Little Birds for us. Phil and Sam had been like kids in a candy store getting to know the new birds, which appeared to be brand new, as opposed to Nightstalker castoffs, which I didn’t think were ever available for civilian purchase, anyway. But then, the Cicero Group had its own backchannels and connections, not entirely unlike our factional adversaries.

  The phone buzzed again. We were gathered in the hangar, dressed and ready to roll, kit and weapons within arm’s reach at all times. Nobody was talking much; we were all still exhausted, and the pall of the losses we’d taken was still kind of hanging over the entire team. Eric and Bryan were tossing darts at the dartboard on the office wall in the back, just for something to do. I was studying the imagery of the resort, though I as much as I stared at it, I rarely seemed to really see it. I’d damned near memorized the layout already, and my mind was elsewhere, though my ears were cocked for any signal that it was time to move. I was in that weird mental no-man’s-land between woolgathering and switched-on.

  I snatched the phone up as soon as it rattled against the tabletop. It was Carl, Renton’s recon TL, via the secure app. I answered it immediately. “Yeah.”

  “A motorcade just pulled up to the main lodge,” he reported. “And either a fireteam of meatheads just escorted Sokolov inside, or else he’s got a twin running around.”

  “Roger, you have eyes on Sokolov,” I replied, loudly enough that everyone else in the hangar could hear. Heads came up and eyes zeroed in on me.

  “Confirmed,” he replied. “This is it. The meeting is happening now.”

  “Understood. We’re wheel’s up,” I answered, and killed the connection. If there was more information he needed to relay, he’d send it via messages. We had to move.

  I spared the imagery one last glance, focusing on the lodge for a second. If I was being honest with myself, I didn’t like the mission profile. Not because it was tactically unsound. No, we’d planned it out carefully. Murphy’s inevitable malicious interference aside, the plan was solid.

  But I wanted to call in an Arc Light and flatten that place, along with everyone in it. Failing that, I wanted to seal the exits and go through, floor by floor, killing fucking everyone. Just systematically murder every single one of those arrogant fucksticks whose asinine power games had gotten so many people killed already.

  I turned away from the tablet, reaching up to throw my plate carrier over my head and Velcro the cummerbund around my ribs. My memory turned to the MS-13 thug I’d nearly beaten to death while he was zip-tied to a chair, and I forced the ravening, bloodthirsty beast trying to claw its way out of my chest back, shoving it back into its cave in the deepest recesses of my mind. If I gave in to that fury, I was damned, and I knew it. So, I’d keep the beast on its choke collar and do the mission as we’d planned. As I’d planned.

  There was no other way. Not if I wanted to live with myself afterwards. I’d killed Baumgartner, but I knew all too well how few steps away I was from being just like him.

  The rotors were already turning as we jogged out onto the tarmac, kitted up and with rifles in hand. We were all clad in identical, unmarked, plain OD green fatigues under plate carriers and wearing ATE helmets. At first glance, we’d hopefully be mistaken for a law enforcement task force. Hell, it had worked for ‘Marius’ for years.

  I was the last one to clamber onto the side bench of my Little Bird, having made sure the other helos were up and up first. We had three teams’ worth of shooters assembled, but I was the overall mission commander. Alek
had maintained that he was going to be my slack man, if nothing else. As whittled down as we had been, it was still my team. He didn’t want to head up another team, or take overall command of the company operations. He wanted to be with us, on the ground, and if that meant he was little more than a hired gun, that was fine with him.

  Finally, I was aboard, and we were pulling for the sky.

  We roared north at treetop height. I was sure local air traffic control was having an aneurism at the sudden appearance of six helicopters flying nap of the earth, without filed flight plan or airspace deconfliction. By the time they figured out what was happening, though, and were able to do anything about it, we’d be on target and going to work.

  The air roared, sucking the moisture out of my eyeballs and whipping my pantlegs against my shins as we sped over the green fields below, so close that if we’d dipped much lower, we might have clipped a power line. There was no way to talk, even if any of us had had anything to say.

  We climbed into the hills, and had to gain some altitude to avoid the firs and spruces that rose on the rocky flanks of the hillsides. A lake sped by beneath us. Phil’s voice crackled in my headphones, which were wired into my radio.

  “Two minutes, Hillbilly,” he said.

  I broke squelch twice, indicating that I’d heard. Game time.

  The lodge was a gigantic monstrosity of a Lincoln-Log mansion, surrounded on three sides by woods, facing the golf course and Mount Baker beyond. It had a peaked roof, which precluded a top-down entry and clear, and the woods meant we had to land on the golf greens. The cordon was going to have to move fast to seal off the back side.