Surviving The Dead | Book 9 | War Without End

by Cook, James N.

Maru was good at detecting lies and bravado, but he sensed none coming from this man. His voice and body language held the ring of truth. He was not bragging, just stating the facts. Maru glanced around the warehouse at the others, counting six in all, and wondered exactly how bad of a situation he had landed in.

  “Come on,” Garrett said, pulling him forward by one arm and holding a flashlight overhead.

  When they were close to the crane, Maru nodded toward a stack of old crates, boxes, and cable spools. “Under there,” he said. “There’s a metal door underneath, lays flat with the floor.”

  Garrett looked at the man behind Maru, who he still had not seen. “Keep an eye on him. Thompson, Cole, give me a hand here.”

  Two more men walked over and began helping Garrett clear away the boxes. The man behind him gripped the collar of his coat with one hand and kept a pistol firmly against his lower spine with the other. Maru remained still and did not attempt to speak. He had a feeling anything he might say right now would only make things worse.

  In short order, the boxes and other rubbish were out of the way and Garrett stood staring at the hatch, along with the men he had called Thompson and Cole. Another man walked over, this one medium height and build. He had blue eyes and a short blond beard.

  “How many are there?” the blue-eyed man asked.

  “Six,” Maru replied.

  “Six.” The man stared angrily at the hatch and shook his head. “Motherfucker.”

  Garrett turned to Maru and shined a light in his face. “We need to talk, you and I.”

  The light moved away, and Maru met Garrett’s unflinching gaze. In that instant, he told himself several things. First, these men were keeping him alive for a reason, and he had a good idea what that reason was. If he was right, it meant he had leverage to buy himself some time. With enough time, he might just dream up a way out of this mess. Second, he told himself it had been foolish to think he could escape the tribe and there would be no price to pay. Of course there was a price. But whatever it was, he would pay it, no matter the cost.

  Last, he told himself that if he was to die here, then he should die well. Not begging, not trembling, not wishing he had done things differently. This was his bed, he had made it, and he could damn well lie in it. And if it killed him, he would face his end with calm and dignity and a sense of purpose. The ice in his stomach thawed as he thought this, and he felt strength flow back into his limbs. He nodded and took a deep breath.

  “Right,” Maru said. “If we’re going to put a stop to this, there’s a lot you need to know.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Gabriel,

  Old Industrial District, Outskirts of Bricktown

  “Let’s start with your name.”

  “Maru.”

  “Full name, dumb-shit.”

  “Tahaka. Maru Tahaka.”

  “Where’d you get the accent?”

  “New Zealand.”

  “Alright. We’re off to a good start.”

  I heard footsteps behind me as Eric approached with an empty crate. I sat down on it and studied the man in front of me. Between the scars and the tattoos and the arsenal of weapons we found on him, there was a lot to take in. The most striking thing about him, however, was his size. He was, quite simply, huge. Six foot seven or eight, no less than three hundred pounds, and none of it fat. Even sitting on a crate and restrained at the wrists and ankles, the sheer mass of him was impressive. Being as big as I am, it is a rare human who can make me feel small. Maru Tahaka was one of those humans. It was a good thing the explosives and flash bangs had rung his bell when we entered the warehouse. If he had put up a fight, I doubt my team would have walked away unscathed.

  “Tell me why you killed your own men.”

  Tahaka looked up, his expression impatient. “That’s a story we don’t have time for right now. I’m supposed to check in soon. What time is it?”

  I studied him a moment, then looked at my watch. “Just past four in the morning.”

  He ground his teeth. “Fuck. I’m already late.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Heinrich knows this site is compromised.”

  “Who the hell is Heinrich?”

  “He’s the chief of the Storm Road Tribe.”

  My heart began to beat faster. It took an effort of will to keep my hands steady as I removed the photo from a pocket, shined a light on it, and held it in front of Tahaka’s face.

  “Is this him?”

  He squinted at the photo, then nodded. “Yeah. That’s him.”

  “What’s his full name?”

  “I don’t know. No one does. Only name he’s ever given is Heinrich.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I drew my Bowie knife and tapped it against my palm. Tahaka’s eyes followed the blade like it had its own gravitational pull.

  “Mr. Tahaka, I am not fucking around with you. If you don’t think I will use this knife to cause you extreme pain and permanent injury, think again. Now, I’m going to ask you one last time. Where can I find him?”

  “I don’t know,” he said again.

  I stood up and motioned to Cole and Great Hawk. “Hold him.”

  The two men moved in, grabbed Tahaka by the arms, and started taking him to the ground.

  “Wait!” he shouted. “I don’t know where he is, not for sure. But I can tell you where his usual hideouts are. He doesn’t know I know about them. He only goes there alone, but I’ve followed him before. I know where they are.”

  I stopped Cole and the Hawk with an upraised hand. “Where?”

  “He might be in the Outer Boroughs at a restaurant near the East Gate Market, or at his place in the Garden District.”

  I stared at him and could not speak for a few seconds.

  “The Garden District?” I asked finally, feeling surprised and somehow violated. My house was in the Garden District. The notion I had been sharing a neighborhood with the SRT ringleader all this time made me feel nauseated. “The fucker lives there?”

  “Not all the time. Only when he needs to lie low for a while.”

  “And you think he might be there now?”

  “There or the Iron Kettle at the East Gate Market in the Boroughs, yeah.”

  “I want addresses, coordinates, directions, descriptions, whatever you have.”

  He gave them. I took out my satellite phone and motioned to Great Hawk. “Watch him. I need to call this in.”

  “He’s the least of your concerns right now,” Tahaka said, raising his voice.

  I stopped dialing. “Why? You trying to protect him?”

  To my surprise, the man’s face lit up and he started laughing. “Protect him? Fuck no. I want the bastard dead as much as you do.”

  I put the phone away and stood staring at him. “Why do you want him dead? What did he do to you?”

  Tahaka shook his head. “No time for that, mate. You need to know where the other monsters are being held. There might still be time to stop what’s about to happen.”

  “What is about to happen?”

  “Heinrich is planning to release the monsters over the next couple of days. But if he thinks he’s been exposed, there’s no telling what he’ll do. The man is an unhinged fucking lunatic. He might just turn the damn things loose and use to chaos to slip out of the city.”

  I felt the eyes of everyone in the room shift to me.

  “Bullshit. You’re stalling.”

  Tahaka looked confused. “What?”

  “There’s no way he would do that. He’d be burning down everything he’s spent years building. His empire would cease to exist. No way he gives that up.”

  Another bitter laugh. “You don’t know the man like I do. You don’t know how fucking twisted he is. You haven’t seen what he’ll do to save his own hide. He will burn this city to the ground, and he won’t blink. He’ll kill anyone, destroy anything, sacrifice whatever it takes to get what he wants.”
/>   I knelt in front of him and met his gaze. “And what, exactly, does he want? What is he after?”

  Tahaka looked aside for a moment, eyes distant, thinking how to answer. I stayed quiet and let him.

  Finally, he said, “He’s a complete narcissist. A fucking psychopath. He craves attention and adoration and fear. He’s addicted to feeling like the smartest man in the room and having people walking on eggshells around him. He lives in constant need of something to brag about, something to make himself feel superior. He thinks everyone else is just a tool to be exploited, and the people who oppose him are too stupid to be a real threat. Except, sometimes, his little bubble gets a crack in it, and he realizes he’s not the center of the universe, and there are people out there smarter than him, people who can hurt him, and he panics. When that happens, people die. Why do you think he released the monsters on the Refugee District? He was afraid. The feds were closing in and he panicked. And as bad as that was, it’s not the worst of it. He’s got over a dozen more of those things hidden around the city as we speak, and right now, he’s probably losing his fucking mind because I haven’t called in. You seem like a smart man, so do the math. What would you do in his place?”

  I did my best to keep the horror off my face, but I must have done a poor job. Tahaka leaned forward, pressing his advantage.

  “I killed my own men because I want out. I’m done with this shit. I’m done with Heinrich and his lunacy and his fucking ego. I want him dead. I want the Storm Road Tribe to cease to exist, and I don’t care what price I have to pay to make that happen. Do you understand? You need to let me help you. I can give you Heinrich’s whole operation on a fucking platter. I can help you find him, and all the others, and you can kill the Storm Road Tribe root and branch. We can put a stop to this.”

  My mind was spinning, the permutations and possibilities swirling. I needed time to think things through. But if Tahaka was telling the truth, time was a luxury I did not have.

  Standing up, I stepped away and took a breath. Then another one. After a few seconds, the tension drained out of me, my thoughts cleared, and I realized what was happening.

  He almost got me, I thought with amusement. The son of a bitch had me fooled for a minute there.

  But it was that last sentence that broke the spell. He had said we and not you. A pivot from ‘you’ and ‘I’ as opposing forces to a deliberate, manipulative gambit aimed at establishing rapport. And rapport was exactly what Tahaka needed in his situation. He had no leverage, so in order to keep us from killing him, he needed to convince us he had something we needed that only he could provide. If he could do that, it would mean I had to include him in any plans I made going forward. And once you get your interrogator to start thinking in terms of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’, you have gained a measure of control over the situation. Which, for Tahaka, meant staying alive a little while longer.

  I had to give credit where it was due. Tahaka was a lot smarter than he looked. In a few short minutes he had taken me from being the interrogator and holding all the cards to being off balance and hanging on his every word. Other people I had interrogated over the years had tried similar tactics and not come nearly as close to succeeding. It forced me to revise my opinion of the man.

  Behind me, I heard Eric step into the breach. “Yeah, cool story, buddy,” he said. “Problem is, you’re full of shit. Sounds to me like your balls are in a vice and you made up this nice, convenient fiction to save them from getting crushed. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re really selling it. But I’m not buying a word.”

  Tahaka turned a glare on him, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Eric take an involuntary step back.

  “It. Is. Not. Bullshit.” The words came out through clenched teeth. “I’m telling you the truth. Don’t believe me? Fine. In less than an hour, you’re going to hear sirens going off all over the city. You’ll see fires burning in the dark. Pretty soon you’ll hear the screams. When that happens, we can talk again about how full of shit I am. Or you can pull your head out of your ass and listen to me before it’s too late.”

  For once, Eric did not have a witty comeback. He looked at me and pointed toward the other end of the warehouse. When we were far enough away, he said, “Okay, let’s pretend he’s telling the truth for a minute. What’s the play?”

  “We hear him out. Call it in. Investigate. What else can we do?”

  “You could activate the Blackthorns.”

  I thought about it. It had occurred to me to do exactly that, but on the chance Tahaka was lying, I did not want to bring attention to what we were up to.

  “If he can prove what he’s saying, I will. But for now, let’s keep him talking.”

  “Right.”

  We walked back over to the others. On the way, I told my mind to stop calculating possibilities and focus on the here and now. I needed to take back control of the interrogation, and I needed to do it quickly.

  “The big Grays,” I said without preamble. “You know where they are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I only know of three locations, but there could be more. Heinrich doesn’t share everything with anyone in the organization. He likes to be the only one with the whole plan.”

  “Tell me what you know, then.”

  “Got a pen and paper?”

  “Just tell me. I’ll remember.”

  He told me. When he was done, I took the satellite phone out of my pocket and called Stan. He answered on the first ring.

  “Kaminsky.”

  “I have a lead on the SRT ringleader and the locations of more big Grays.”

  “Christ, you work fast. Who’s the leader?”

  “His name is Heinrich. Not sure if it’s a first or a last name. Use the photo I gave you and cross-check the name against military records in the Archive. If it’s not an alias, you’ll probably find him there.”

  Another pause. “What’s your source?”

  “One of his men.”

  “He still alive?”

  “For the moment.”

  A relieved sigh. “Don’t kill him, Gabe. Bring him in alive.”

  “I’ll do my best. In the meantime, I need you to take down some information. Got a pen?”

  “Go.”

  I gave him Tahaka’s full name, the list of addresses for Heinrich’s hideouts, and the locations the Grays were hidden.

  “I’ll put some people on it right away.”

  “Send tactical teams. And be careful when you go after Heinrich. He’ll be armed. The informant says he’s alone, but we can’t take him at his word.”

  “Understood. What’s the status of the warehouse?”

  “Compromised. We had to move in and breach.”

  A pause. “You did what?”

  “You heard me.”

  Another pause. “Did you kill anyone?”

  “We don’t have time for this, Stan.”

  “Answer the question.”

  I let out a sigh. “What do you think?”

  Kaminsky banged a fist into something hard and explained, in detail, his estimation of my lack of caution, undue arrogance, impaired cognitive abilities, and questionable ancestry. I tapped my foot impatiently and let him get it out of his system. Finally, he took a big breath and said, “Goddammit, Gabe, what the hell happened?”

  “We’ll talk about it later. For now, we need to move on this intel.”

  “No, Gabe, we agreed-”

  “That’s out the window, Stan,” I said, feeling the last strands of my patience snap. “Plan A is a bust. So are plans B and C and all the others. We’re on plan FUBAR right now, and it’s only going to get worse. I don’t have time to listen to you complain anymore, so either find another gear and get with the program, or I’ll handle this myself and worry about the consequences later. What’s it gonna be?”

  I heard him breathing heavily through the receiver.

  “Fine,” he said angrily. “I’ll get my people on the addresses. W
hat are you going to do?”

  “Find a way to clean up this mess.”

  “What I mean,” Stan said, “is what are you going to do about the Grays at the warehouse?”

  “They’re locked up in a hole, and I have explosives.”

  “Right. Of course you do. What about the SRT guys there? What kind of a body count are we looking at?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  Several seconds passed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but not really.”

  “Then forget about this place. I’ll handle it.”

  “I’m not forgetting a damn thing. You got anything else for me?”

  “One of those addresses I gave you, the Red Barrel Tavern. We’ve got a team watching the place right now.”

  “Who?”

  “The kid from Homeland.”

  “Hicks?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is he going to shoot the place up, or can he be discreet?”

  “Depends on the situation, I guess.”

  “Jesus, Gabe.”

  “Like I said, Stan, you can either help me, or you can get out of my way. What do you want to do?”

  “What fucking choice do I have?”

  I did not answer that.

  “This Hicks kid,” he said after a moment, “do you trust him?”

  “I do. We go back a ways.”

  “You got a plan?”

  “I’m thinking we hit the tavern, take out the SRT guys, and kill any Grays we find. Your people can take care of the rest and find this Heinrich asshole.”

  A long moment passed before he replied. When he did, his voice was regretful, but resolute.

  “No. I’m sorry, Gabe, but no. Absolutely not. It’s too risky, and I’ve let this go too far already. You need to stand down. Go back to BSC and sit this one out. I’ll keep your name out of whatever happens next—I owe you that much. But that only applies if you let the Bureau handle things from here on. If you don’t, I can’t protect you anymore.”

  I let out a short laugh. “Stan, in case I didn’t make myself clear, I’m not asking for your permission. Or your protection.”

  There was a rasping sound, and I imagined Stan running a trembling hand over his unshaven face.