by Glenn Trust
Target
Down
Glenn Trust
Sole Justice
Book 3
Copyright © 2020
Target Down
By Glenn S. Trust
All rights reserved
Target Down is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Products and services mentioned in Target Down were used to give realism and authenticity to the story. Their use in no way implies that the manufacturers or producers of those products or services agree with, or endorse, the author’s opinions on any subject.
This publication, in electronic and/or printed version, is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The publication may not be resold, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Dedication
For the readers
Table of Contents
Target Down
Part One - Cat and Mouse
1.The Drill
2.Find John Sole
3.An Unfriendly Sort
4.Things Were Working Out
5.The Key
6.Normal
7.Fearsome Man
8.Make a Happy Life
9.The Right Neighborhood
10.The Moment was Perfect
11.The Hunter - Closing In
12.Find the Rat
Part Two - War and Peace
13.Latest News
14.Knockout
15.Sidetracked
16.When Was He Going to Learn?
17.I’ll Stay
18.Blooded
19.A Good Start
20.News
21.See How It Is?
22.The Man in the Alley
23.The Hunter - The More Things Change
24.All In All, Things Went Well
25.Moving in That Direction
26.The Problem
27.No More Pretendin’
28.To Pissing on Fences
29.Thoughts of Home
30.Little Man
31.Something Big Happened
32.Pick Your Brothers Carefully
33.This Ain’t Over
34.War
35.Peace
36.The Hunter - No Ghosts
37.Bogey Man
Part Three - Life
38.The Hunter - A Place for Ghosts
39.Moments
40.Still Here
41.Death Row
42.The Hunter - Rotten Son of A Bitch
43.Wedding Gowns and Robo-Calls
44.Safe Words
45.One Little Smile
46.The Hunter - An Unfaltering Eye
47.To Snare a Wolf
48.Stranger From the Past
49.Son of a Bitch
50.Prisoners
51.Very Good
52.Let Them Be Happy
53.Stakeouts
54.I Ran Away
55.Arrangements
56.Troublesome Old Man
57.Understood
58.Savages
59.Rules of Engagement
60.Always
61.Blood and Fresh Meat
62.Getting Started
63.Reinforcements
64.Purgatory
65.All Our Asses
66.Preparations
67.This Ends
68.A Chance to Survive
69.It was Enough
70.It was Over
71.Life
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Part One - Cat and Mouse
The Drill
He knew the drill. Actually, he invented it, part of it at least—the important part.
Dressed in a worn Army battle dress jacket from the Desert Storm Conflict era, he wandered aimlessly along city streets, muttering to himself or giving harsh looks to passersby. Sometimes he would stumble into a wall and lean there for support, appearing to rest and catch his breath.
***
It was all an act and the first part of the drill. That wasn’t the part he invented, but he had learned to play the role of the homeless vet to perfection. That was the setup.
***
The aimless wandering came to an end when he rounded a corner, and his target was in sight. He had selected it earlier in the day, driving the neighborhood. Sometimes he drove for hours to find just the right spot. Today he had found it just minutes after arriving in the city.
It was a place along a curb across the street from a Detroit bar. The dealers worked as a team. One stood near the corner, taking cash from buyers. His partner stood at the other end of the block, near a public trash can. The theory was that if the cash-man got stopped and frisked by police, it was no big deal. There was no law about having a wad of money in his pockets, and he never had more than a thousand or so on him. When business was heavy, he would step inside a nearby door and hand off some of the cash to a third man working with them. Business was light today, and there was no third man.
After handing over the money, the customer made his or her way down the block where the second dealer would make a standard street pass, their hands touching briefly in the exchange. The buyer moved on to get high somewhere. The dealers set up for the next customer.
If the police approached the drug man, he tossed the drugs in the trash can and played innocent. Sometimes they caught on. Sometimes they didn’t.
John Sole caught on. He had seen the technique operate before in Atlanta and spotted immediately what was going down on this seedy block, in a rundown Detroit neighborhood.
He approached the cash-man and stood swaying before him as he reached into his pocket.
“Hurry the fuck up, man. What you tryin’ to do, bring heat on us?” The dealer put a hand under his shirt resting it on the butt of a nine-millimeter pistol tucked inside his Stone Island designer jeans. “And when you bring that hand outta your pocket, it better have cash in it and nothing else, or you one dead motherfucker.”
“Naw, man,” Sole swayed and slurred his words, looking up at the dealer as he pulled a wad of bills from the jacket pocket. “Naw … just cash … I’m good. Just wanna get high.”
“Shit. You already high,” cash-man said as Sole counted out three hundred dollars from a roll that contained several thousand.
Sole fumbled with the bills, slowly counting them out, giving cas
h-man plenty of time to salivate. Then he handed the money over.
“I need three.”
“Three what?” The dealer snatched the bills from Sole’s hand before he could answer.
“Grams … three grams.”
“Shit, motherfucker, you light then. You tryin’ to rip me off?”
“No … no.” Sole shook his head. “No, I thought three hundred would cover it.”
“Naw, man. Not tonight.” The dealer grinned. “Tonight that gonna be a grand.”
“But …” Sole started then closed his mouth, playing the needy user who craved a hit. “Fuck.”
He reached into his pocket for the wad of bills again and counted out another seven hundred.
“Fuck, man. Where you get that money? Must be ten thousand there.” The dealer was transfixed by the crumpled wad of cash. “Who you rob?” He grinned. “That’s it, ain’t it. You robbed someone.”
“Ain’t sayin’.” Sole shook his head and handed over the money.
“I bet you ain’t.” The dealer laughed and nodded down the street. “See the man at the end of the block.” Then he pocketed the cash, lifted his hand to the flat-brimmed ball cap he wore, holding out three fingers.
It was the signal that the buyer wanted three grams. His partner made no signal in reply but turned to walk toward the trash can where they concealed the drugs.
Sole wobbled up the street. As he walked by, the dealer turned from the trash can and passed the three plastic bags. It was a clumsy pass because Sole made it clumsy, stumbling and bumping into the dealer.
“Shit, man. What the fuck’s your problem. You fuckin’ get me busted, and I’ll find you and put a cap in your ass.”
The dealer gave him a shove, and Sole moved away. He stood on the curb swaying as if he might fall over, looked across the street, and headed for the bar.
Inside, he found a single high-top table in a corner and sat. The bartender called out to him, “No sittin’ unless you’re drinkin’.”
Sole looked up, his brow furrowed as if he was confused by the bartender’s directive.
“I said, drink, or get the fuck out!” The bartender picked up a bat from behind the counter and moved to the end of the bar, ready to run the vagrant out.
Sole nodded. “Okay, okay. Gimme a Jack.”
The bartender put the bat back in its hiding place and poured a shot of Jack Daniels. He called out, “No table service. Come get your drink.”
Sole nodded and wobbled over to the bar. When he reached for the drink, the bartender put a beefy hand over the glass. “That’ll be six-fifty … cash … now.”
“Oh, right.” Sole nodded. And fumble in his pocket for the roll of bills. He made the same show with it as he thumbed through the bills and pulled out a ten. “Here, keep it.”
“I will.” The bartender took the ten from his hand and turned away.
Sole returned to his table with the drink. He walked carefully, each step deliberate as if he were trying very hard not to fall over.
When he was seated again, he put the drink in front of him, and hunched over the tabletop, throwing a furtive glance around the bar. A few patrons noticed, said something to each other, and then returned to their drinks, pretending to ignore him, but nobody was ignoring him. The cash had everyone’s attention.
When the eyes turned away from him, he pulled a plastic bag from his jacket pocket, looked around to make sure no one was watching, and poured some of the contents on the table, taking care to seal the bag again and stuff it back in his pocket. Then he pulled the roll of bills out once more and peeled off a twenty.
With the edge of the bill, he cut the white powder into two good-sized lines. Then he rolled the bill into a tight cylinder, hunched over, and snorted the powder, like a man desperate for it.
When he sat up straight, he shook his head as if to clear it and noticed a couple of patrons eying him. “What the fuck you looking at?”
The patrons looked away.
***
He didn’t invent that either, snorting fake cocaine. Hollywood invented that. The white powder was actually Inositol, a B-complex vitamin, available at any health food store. Snorting it was harmless enough—at least as harmless as inhaling any powder into your lungs could be. Actors had been doing it for years to give the appearance of taking drugs on a movie set. It provided no high, although some claimed the vitamin B did give them an energy boost. Sole never noticed any boost.
***
Not long after he snorted the fake cocaine and returned the baggie to his pocket, the two dealers made their way across the street and entered the bar. They gave a surreptitious nod to the bartender who returned the gesture, unaware that the worn-out vet in the corner watched everything.
The dealers sat at the bar and ordered drinks. They spoke in low tones to the bartender. After a few minutes, they came over to Sole’s table.
“Hey, man.” It was cash-man. “You know I shorted you out there.”
Sole looked up bleary-eyed. “Shorted me?”
“Yeah, I saw that roll of bills, and I got greedy … charged you a grand for that coke.”
“Shorted me?” Sole repeated, trying to focus his eyes on them.
“Yeah, shorted. You fuckin’ hard of hearin’?”
“No.” Sole shook his head. “No, I hear good.”
“Good, that’s good,” cash-man said. “Look here. I can see you a vet. You seen some shit, right?”
“Some shit.” Sole smirked and nodded. “Yeah, I seen some shit.” He reached for the empty shot glass and waved it at the bartender.
The bartender nodded, poured another shot of Jack. This time he brought it to the table and walked away without asking for payment.
“So, like I say,” cash-man continued. “We see you a vet. My uncle was a vet too. So, you see, we got that in common.”
Sole nodded and reached for the shot glass without speaking, focused on getting the whiskey to his mouth without spilling any.
“Anyway, man, it got me feelin’ guilty. We shouldn’t a done you that way. We want to make it up to you … you know bein’ a vet and all.”
“Make it up?” Sole turned his eyes from one to the other, as if trying to piece together a puzzle.
“Yeah, make it up. We got more shit … better shit than the cheap-ass stuff we sold you. We want to even things up.”
“Even things up?” Sole’s said.
“Yeah, that's what I said. We gonna give you the good shit to make up for tryin’ to rip you off.”
Sole sat and stared at the table for a few seconds as if trying to make sense of everything cash-man had said.
“You want to even things up … with some good shit?”
“That’s right.” The two dealers grinned, and cash-man nodded. “We gonna make it up to you.”
“How much?”
“Like I said, we feel bad about cheatin’ you. You already paid, so this is on the house. It’s yours.”
“Okay,” Sole said and held his hand out. “Let me have the good shit.”
The dealer laughed and looked around, pushing his hand back down on the table. “Not here, man. Never know who’s listening.” Cash-man nodded toward the bar. “Out back. We keep the good shit stashed behind a brick in the wall … out in the alley.
“Okay.” Sole stood and reached out for the table to steady himself. “Let’s get the good shit.”
“My man.” Cash-man grinned and slapped him on the back.
The dealers led him behind the bar, through the kitchen, and out the back door. The bartender followed.
“It’s just over here.” Cash-man led the way to a point on the wall where the mortar around the bricks had crumbled with age.
They stood in front of him and turned together, pulling their pistols from their waistbands. The grins on their faces faded as they tried to bring the barrels up to fire.
With a barrel length of less than three and a half inches, the Walther PPK was almost invisible in his hand. Before they cou
ld raise their arms, he squeezed the trigger rapidly four times, sending two rounds each into their heads. At a distance of three feet, he couldn’t miss. They dropped without ever knowing they were dead.
As they fell, he turned, the Walther held out in front. It happened so quickly that, at first, the bartender thought the dealers had done what they set out to do—shoot the coked-up vet so they could rob him.
The pistol pointed at his face, the bartender was outmatched, and he knew it. He held the bat up in front defensively, as if he could use it to swat away the bullets. He couldn’t.
The .380 caliber Walther had four rounds left. Sole sent two through the bartender’s forehead, then turned and walked from the alley.
***
The deaths of the dealers would send yet one more message to the Los Salvajes cartel. He was still out there. If they wanted to end his rampage, they would have to follow his trail, find him, and kill him if they could.
That was the part of the drill John Sole had invented. It was the part that kept him motivated. They would come for him and he would be ready.
Find John Sole
No one sat. This was a council of war, and everyone stood before Alejandro Garza, like soldiers before their general, intent on every word he spoke.
“What information do you have on his location?” Garza looked from face to face waiting for an answer.
No one wanted to speak first. There was no news to give, not good news at any rate. The man they had been seeking for months had eluded them at every turn. A few times, they came close to laying hands on him, but not close enough. They closed in only to find him already gone, sometimes not more than an hour before their arrival.
Garza nodded at one of his senior lieutenants. “Speak Andres. I only want to hear the truth.”
He was calm. Garza always remained calm. That was what worried his subordinates. They had no way to detect what might be boiling beneath the surface of his stone-like exterior. The one thing they all understood was that he did not tolerate failure, and the hunt to locate and capture John Sole had gone on for far too long.
Andres nodded. Appointed by Garza as the spokesman, he had no choice but to speak for the others.