Risk

by Raquel Belle

  “Okay.” I get up and…surprisingly…I’m not nauseous. There isn’t even a headache. I’m really hungry though. “What are you doing?”

  “Thinking about who owes me favors, who might have a lead on a job. Anton’s not the only game around.”

  “That’s good.”

  “He was our best shot though. I’ll think about it on the drive. Get moving, I’m starving.”

  “Me too.”

  “Shower, change, then we’ll have breakfast downstairs before we head out.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  He laughs, “I tried, you were dead.”

  “Oops, sorry.”

  I quickly shower and get dressed. My stuff is mostly all packed from yesterday, but there’s some clothes on the floor in the living room. I’m picking them up when I spot the smashed egg across the room.

  “Hey,” I call to Jack, “what happened to the egg?”

  “You played baseball with it last night,” he calls back.

  “Aww, damn! I thought we’d keep it for a souvenir.” I go to the pieces to see if it can be salvaged and then— “Hey Jack.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Come here.”

  “What is it?” Jack pokes his head in the room.

  I pick out a flash drive from the debris and hold it up to him.

  “Fuck me,” he takes the USB stick, turning it to check all angles.

  “What do you suppose is on it?”

  “That’s a damn good question. The bratva knew the egg was going to the Sheik, so whatever’s on this was obviously meant for him. It’s got to be something big. Where’s your computer.”

  “It won’t work on it, the new Macbooks don’t have that port.”

  “Damnit.”

  “We can look at it downstairs at reception maybe?”

  “Hell no,” he says, “there could be anything from plans for a nuclear terror attack to a ledger for human cargo on this thing. State secrets…who knows?”

  “Damn, I didn’t think of that. Internet café?”

  “They still have those?”

  “Shit, no.”

  “We’ll have to buy a computer,” he says.

  “Seriously? What if it’s just a gag and it’s porn or something?”

  “No. Nobody would go through all the trouble. There’s got to be something important on this if it had to be handed off physically instead of just sending it over the internet.”

  “Rich people are eccentric.”

  “Not this eccentric. Anyway, we don’t have to solve this puzzle in the next thirty seconds, let’s get some food in us.”

  “Right,” I say.

  We gather all our things, say goodbye to our room and take the elevator to the lobby, then another to the garage. After loading the Escalade with our stuff, we go up to Little Havana to have breakfast. I can see the wheels in Jack’s head turning.

  He orders his usual feast absentmindedly and I get a breakfast burrito. While we wait, Jack doesn’t talk at all, he stares into space holding the drive in his hand.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask him.

  “Nothing,” he shakes his head, “everything is speculation till we know what’s on this.”

  “Do you think we should call Anton?”

  “And tell him what? All we know is we might have some data, we can call once we know what we’ve got definitively.”

  Our food arrives and Jack eats like a zombie. He doesn’t even look at his food, he stares straight ahead. He shovels food into his mouth with the fork in his right hand, and in his left hand he holds the drive.

  “Hey,” I try to snap him out of it.

  “Yeah?” he turns to me.

  “Take it easy.”

  “Sorry, I’m just thinking. Do we still have the files on the Sheik?”

  “No, Anton took everything back.”

  “Damn.” Jack resumes staring off into nothingness.

  “Give me that,” I snatch the drive from him and stand.

  “Hey!”

  “Come on,” I say, and start walking over to reception. Jack follows.

  “Deanna, don’t—”

  “We can just look at the file names, we don’t have to open anything,” I say over my shoulder.

  I get to the receptionist and spin a quick yarn.

  “Hi there,” I say. She smiles at me. “I seem to have misplaced the adaptor for my Macbook and my assistant put some files on this that I need to reference before my meeting, do you mind if I plug in quick to check something?”

  “Uh, sure, go right ahead.”

  “Thanks so much,” I step around the counter with Jack, reach behind the screen of her iMac and slot in the drive. The icon shows up on the desktop, I double click it and a window opens—it’s blank.

  “Huh, that’s strange,” I say.

  The receptionist says, “Maybe it’s in Microsoft format?”

  “No, it would still show up,” I tell her. I do a Get Info on the drive. It’s in the FAT32 file system—that’s universally readable. Available space 2gigs. Used space 6gigs. Weird. “She must’ve made a mistake. Thanks anyway, I’m so going to fire her,” I laugh, then pull the stick out and go back to the other side. Jack follows me and we head toward to the restaurant.

  “Well?” he asks.

  “There’s something there but it’s hidden. We’re going to need someone a lot savvier than me to find out what though.”

  “Know anybody?”

  “Uh, not really,” we get to our booth and sit down, “Maybe Anton knows someone.”

  “Considering Anton’s boss was the one who put us on to the egg and then fucked us over, I’m not really inclined to involve him until I know what we’ve got.”

  “Well, do you know anyone else who could help?

  “Yeah I do, he’s the best at all this tech stuff but he’s not close.”

  “Where?”

  “All the way in New Mexico.”

  “Damn that’s far, way too far,” I look on my phone, “that’s like nine hundred miles.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What if we go to back to Charlotte’s? She can fly us there,” I say.

  “That’s a plan. Yeah, let’s do that. It’s the same direction anyway.”

  We quickly finish what’s left on our plates and go down to the Escalade. “I’ll drive,” I say to Jack.

  “Why?”

  “Just,” I shrug, “you always drive, plus the way you’ve been all morning you’ll probably crash us into a tree because you’re not paying attention.”

  Jack huffs and tosses me the keys.

  ***

  Jack

  She’s right, I’ve been preoccupied ever since she showed me the drive. What the hell could be on this thing that would necessitate placing hidden files inside a fake Fabergé egg that was being auctioned off for anywhere north of $40million.

  What have we landed ourselves into?

  Should we even bother to find out? In all likelihood it’s information, so the best thing to do would probably be to turn it in to the Feds.

  What if get to New Mexico and it’s all a wild goose chase—just like the egg was?

  We drive up the exit ramp. Deanna makes a right, we’re not even halfway down the block when she points ahead and says, “Hey, those are the security guys from the auction.”

  What the fuck are they doing here?

  There’re three SUVs are parked haphazardly at the curb, they’re jumping out with urgency and running for the entrance of the hotel. Are they looking for us? How could they possibly have found us here? I see them running in our direction, P90s at the ready, but they don’t look at the Escalade, they’re going for the hotel. Leading the charge is…no…it’s not possible. Oh my God.

  Bees.

  Millions of bees swarming.

  I fight it, but it’s no use. I can’t shut it out. It’s too much. I put my hand to my head.

  Please, no, not again…

  “Deanna…”

  T
hen I go under.

  ***

  Deanna

  “Jack!”

  Cars are screeching and honking their horns at me, I’ve moved into oncoming traffic. He’s slumped over, I don’t know if he’s breathing. I’m pulling at him with one hand and trying to aim the car with the other.

  “JACK!”

  Stop Deana! Take control of the car or you’ll both die!

  I let go of Jack and put both hands on the wheel, cars are still honking at me, I put my hazards on and see the entrance to the Hope Street Parking Garage. I make the right and pull in to the first spot I can find.

  “Jack,” I shake him, “please don’t do this to me! Wake up!” He’s so heavy, I can’t pull him up. I slap him hard in the face, “JACK!” I do it again, “WAKE UP!”

  He jerks up with his hands out in front him, like he’s expecting to be attacked. He’s taking rapid breaths with his eyes wide.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him, and rub his arm, “you’re safe, it’s safe. I’m here. Are you okay? Are you alright?”

  He looks at me with an expression of disbelief and shock. He sluggishly yanks the door handle and gets out, shaking.

  “Where are you—” I get out on my side and go around in to time to see him on his hands and knees…puking. I go back to the car and grab a bottle of water and some tissues. When I get to him again, he’s sitting with back against the wheel, his head in his hands. “Are you alright,” I ask.

  “I am so far from fucking alright, I don’t even know what that means.”

  “What is it, Jack?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Jack, talk to me.”

  “I thought not knowing was fucked up, but this…this is so much worse.”

  I crouch down next to him, “Hey, hey,” I pull his hands away from his face, he looks distraught. “It’s going to be okay, Jack. It’s going to be okay,” I rub his arm.

  “No, no it’s not. Not until I make him pay for what he did, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Jack, what are you talking about?”

  “It’s all connected.”

  “What’s all connected?”

  “I remember everything, Deanna. Everything.”

  He has his memory back?

  He looks at me and I see vengeance in his eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know what happened. I know what happened that night on the yacht two years ago,” he says. “The guy I saw running up to the hotel? The one who’s leading DPS? It’s Brenner.”

  Chapter Forty

  Jack

  I gargled with the water that Deanna gave me, spat it out, then drank the rest. I can’t even remember the last time I vomited, but the revelation that came when the memories hit me was so overwhelming, it made me feel sick. It felt like I’d been poisoned and there was only one way to get it out.

  I have to decide right now if I should go back to the hotel, find him and settle this once and for all…or we should stick to the plan and get to Charlotte’s.

  Will I ever get this chance again?

  Yes, I will.

  I’m not going to do much damage going against all his men if I attack head-on and unarmed. I need to strategize.

  Brenner wasn’t there by accident. Somehow, they tracked the flash drive when we plugged it in. I’ve waited two years, I can wait a little longer…and I’ve got something he wants. For the first time in a long time—I’m the one in control. And, what’s even better is that he doesn’t know I’m onto him.

  If he knew that I’d survived two years ago, why didn’t he try to take me out?

  I have questions, yes, but now I also have the truth.

  I motion for Deanna to get back in the driver’s seat, “We stick to the plan,” I tell her, “head for the Barracks.”

  She starts up, pulls out of the garage and heads for the 10.

  I close my eyes and see the images flicker through my mind. We ride in silence for a long time as I process the unlocked memories. They play back in my head like dreams.

  They’re hard pills to swallow—terrible, bitter and vile. If someone else had told me the story I’d never have believed them, but I was there, I lived it.

  Deanna pulls me out of my thoughts.

  “Can you tell me or is it one of those ones that you can’t?” she asks.

  “The guy selling the egg is the same guy that we were chasing for three years,” I say. I don’t even hesitate, there’s nothing I won’t tell Deanna now. I need to make sense of it myself, maybe talking it out will help.

  “Mockingbird was giving us missions that he knew all led to one man. The first was a human trafficking operation. Russian guys were kidnapping girls, some of them as young as thirteen years old, and the targets were orders placed by the sick fucks who were their clients.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Like the regular customers in a certain brothel would say they wanted a blonde, blue-eyed sixteen-year-old with a certain look. They’d be presented with a bunch of pictures, then the customer chooses and that girl is kidnapped. They’d ship them over here, or kidnap them here and ship them to Russia, that kind of thing. He had operations everywhere, we took out every one of them we found. Hundreds of girls go missing every year because of operations like that. Anyway, we dismantled it, over here and in Russia. And when we did…one of his guys talked.”

  “After that we took down his arms businesses, we took down his drug distribution networks, his car theft ring…they would steal high-end luxury vehicles and export them all over the world. There was even a cybercrimes outfit that he ran—programmers created sites that highjacked people’s computers and used their processors for crypto mining.”

  “Bitcoin and stuff?”

  “Yeah exactly. He also had a mining farm in Iceland, they do cheap crypto mining there because of the geothermal energy.”

  “How does that work?”

  “Crypto mining is essentially turning electricity into money, so if the electricity is close to free, your profit margin skyrockets. Anyway, that one was actually legal but we took it down to fuck with him. We wanted to find out who he was but the guy was like a ghost. No one who worked for him knew who he was and no one had ever seen him or spoken to him personally. Even Anton doesn’t know from what he told us the other day.”

  “Yeah, this guy sounds like Specter from James Bond,” she says.

  “Probably worse, but with every operation it felt like we were getting closer and closer to finding out who he was. We figured if we could get him angry enough then he’d eventually make a mistake, and we’d nab him. This guy had his hands in everything. After bird-dogging him successfully for a long while, it started to get that every new location we hit, he was wise to it and the place was cleaned out. That went on for six months…and now I know why.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that traitor fucking son of whore Brenner was working for him. A guy who was as close to me as a brother had been working for him for that long and I had no idea. I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

  “What happened?

  “Every time Mockingbird got wind of a new operation we were always too late. Brenner was tipping him off,” I accidentally lose my cool and start punching the dash with every word, “FUCKING CUNT MOTHERFUCKER!”

  “HEY!” Deanna yells, and puts her hand on my shoulder, “It’s not our car, remember?”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I breathe and try to compose myself.

  “And then?” she asks.

  “Mockingbird gets information that our prime objective is so hard to find because he’s always in motion. He runs all his operations from a superyacht, he’s never on dry land. We get the name of the boat—Stribog. Our mission is extraction, not termination. He’s a high-value target because if we could get him to sing we’d learn about global criminal networks on a scale we could never even dream of. The boat is sitting just off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. We go
in at a zero one hundred hours. Our intel says there’s not going to be more than a few guards onboard. It’s supposed to be a cakewalk. And for a while it seems like it is. We take a small stealth vehicle in—a zodiac.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a little boat. An F470 CRRC. It’s not important, it’s just a little, black inflatable boat. A combat rubber reconnaissance craft.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, we get to the yacht. We board it, we encounter no resistance whatsoever, and that’s strange because there should have been at least four or five guards on deck. We figure maybe we got lucky and the guards are asleep or something—I knew from that moment that something wasn’t right. I wanted to abort, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. After three years searching, we might finally get our hands on him. Just because something didn’t smell right wasn’t enough reason to pull the plug. I was confident in my team so we pressed on.”

  “Brenner has the layout of the yacht so he’s leading us. The thing is massive. It’s like a hotel at sea. It can comfortably hold staff and guests totaling seventy-five. We didn’t encounter anyone, it’s like the place was deserted.”

  “We go below decks, navigating a maze of corridors and then we come to a locked door. Lester works on it and opens it up, this is supposed to be his office or bedroom or whatever the fuck. It’s dark, night-vision goggles don’t see anything. It’s empty, we go in.”

  “And then?”

  I take a deep breath, this is the one that made me throw up.

  Deanna tries to comfort me and puts her hand on my leg for a moment, then returns it to the steering wheel.

  “They were waiting for us. It was a set-up…and Brenner walked us right into it…into a kill box. As soon as we were inside they hit the lights—fried our eyes because we had our night-vision on—then someone pulled the door shut and the shouting started for us to drop our weapons. We don’t surrender, ever, so it’s more like a standoff but…not really. We had no chance and we all knew it. We’re standing in a pit, our backs to a wall with no cover whatsoever and the Russian fuckers are on three sides of a ten-foot elevation behind armor plating. For them it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. We’re surrounded. We’ve got six muzzles trained on us and we’re out in the open with no chance of hitting anything even if we wanted to return fire, but we didn’t put our weapons down…we didn’t…no one except Brenner.”