We had done it. We had pulled it off. The palace was shrinking in the distance. All three of us began to whoop and cheer wildly. Carl screamed out happy profanities. Reaper punched the ceiling. We had done the impossible. Phase Three was done. This suicide mission was done. Screw you, Eddie. We got your stupid treasure.
Then the adrenaline began to subside, and my hands began to shake. That is when I noticed the blood and felt a burning sensation in my back. I stuck one quivering hand under my thobe and probed around. It came back slick and red.
Nothing ever goes according to plan.
“Ow! Carl, careful!” I snapped. “That hurts.”
“Quit your crying. Here you go.” He waved a bloody Leatherman multitool in front of my head with something held in the pliers. I opened my hand and he dropped a bullet fragment onto my palm. Carl poured something stinging on my back then started to tape down a bandage. “That’s it. Must have bounced off the elevator wall and got you. I thought the way you were whining you might actually have gotten hurt or something.”
The limo was still cruising across the bleak desert. Reaper was driving now, so Carl could play medic, and had taken us off the main road and deeper into the dunes. The car kicked up a massive sand plume behind us. “We’re almost there,” he shouted into the back compartment.
“Good,” I answered as I threw the waterlogged and bloodstained man-dress on the floor. Carl handed me a T-shirt. “As soon as we stop, you guys grab Al Falah out of the trunk, shove him back here, and we’ll light this sucker. I’ll get the van ready.”
“What, you get one little hole in you and you think you don’t have to lift the fat guy?” Carl asked with a grin. Even a bitter and angry fellow like Carl had to be in a jovial mood after pulling off a heist like this. He started to undo his tie. “At least he’ll be thawed. When he wouldn’t bend, it was a hell of a time getting him in the trunk.”
They’d identify the burned corpse as Al Falah, probably assumed murdered by his co-conspirators, which would totally point the investigation in the wrong direction at first. Eventually an autopsy would show that he’d been dead for a long time, but by then we’d be well out of the country.
I tried to turn serious for a minute. “Guys, I’ve just got to say. You were amazing back there. The EMP was awesome. You took down security in record time, everything. That was damn near perfect . . . except for the sprinklers.”
“Yeah, what the fuck was that?” Carl shouted before he called Reaper something unpronounceable in Portuguese and threw his tie at the driver.
“Hey, I had to improvise,” our techie answered defensively. “Next time, you do the computer stuff and I’ll do the kung-fu ninja stuff. How hard could it be?”
“Well, either way, we’re done.” I pulled the scarab from my pocket. It still made me uncomfortable. “We got his damn . . . whatever.”
“Rub it and see if it grants three wishes,” Reaper suggested.
“Whatever, Aladdin, Big Eddie will be in contact and we can arrange a handoff. And I didn’t get the chance to tell you—I met Eddie. He was there at the meeting.”
“No way,” Carl said. “Was he there because of us?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. But he felt the need to talk to me in person, which can’t be good.”
“Do you think our families are off the hook?” Reaper asked quietly.
“I think I’ve got an idea to guarantee Eddie sticks to his word. I’ll fill you guys in on the way to the border.”
An ancient oil rig appeared ahead of us. It had long since fallen into disuse and was slowly decaying back into the desert. There was a wooden shack behind it where we had stashed our van. A few minutes to destroy the evidence, and we’d be on our way toward the border. We parked near the dilapidated shed. Old canvas tarps whipped in the wind.
I stepped into the searing heat, savoring the freedom of it, and went to unlock the padlock we had left on the shed. Carl pulled out a pair of binoculars and scanned the desert we’d just traveled. “Lorenzo, we’ve got dust behind us. We’re being followed.”
I shouted back as I unlocked the door. “How far?”
“We’ve got maybe five minutes,” he responded. “How’d they find us?”
I’d hoped that Starfish would have bought us more time. “Eddie probably had a bug stuck on our car during the meeting,” I shouted. Well, it was either Eddie’s goons or the prince’s men. Eddie must have decided he couldn’t trust us to hand off the goods, that double-crossing bastard, and heaven help us if it was Hassan. I shoved the door open. The white van was a welcome sight. “Hurry up and move that body! We’ve got to roll.”
I was getting into the van, looking for the ignition key, as Carl was unlocking the limousine’s trunk. Reaper was getting out of the driver’s seat.
“They won’t be able to catch us, Lorenzo. Nobody can catch me,” Carl said as the trunk lid opened.
CRACK!
I jerked my head in surprise, jolted by the unexpected noise, dropping the keys to the van’s floorboards.
Carl’s beady eyes narrowed in momentary confusion, bushy brows scrunching together as he looked into the trunk. The first bullet had struck him square in the chest, leaving a red hole on his white dress shirt. The second concussion came a split second later. Blood spurted from Carl’s neck, his hands flying reflexively to his throat as he fell sprawling into the sand.
Time jerked to a screeching halt.
“Carl!” Reaper screamed. Someone was crawling out of the trunk.
I was moving, the FNP coming out of my waistband.
The man twisted to the side, one foot hitting the ground, the other still bent in the trunk. He extended a small B&T machine pistol in one hand, seeking Reaper.
“Down! “Down!” I pushed around the van door, punching the FN out, the front sight moving into my field of vision, finger already pulling the trigger back.
Too late.
The submachine gun bucked, brass flashing in the sunlight. Reaper jerked violently to the side, spinning, crashing into the limousine’s hood as the window beside him shattered. I fired, the 9mm in my hand recoiling, the front sight coming back on target, firing again.
The man dove from the trunk, rolling in the sand on the other side of the limo. I moved laterally, gun up, tracking, searching, looking for another shot. He opened up from under the car. Bullets stitched across the shack behind me, flinging splinters into the air. Metal screeched as something struck the van. I was running now, not even thinking about it, trying to flank around the side of the car.
He rose, looking for me, glaring over the top of the limo, stubby black muzzle swinging wide. He was a tiny, dark-skinned man, drenched in sweat. Still moving, I saw him first, centered the front sight and fired. His head snapped back violently, visible matter flying as I shot him in the face. I hammered him twice more before he disappeared.
I lowered the gun. Multiple dust plumes were closing in the distance. Reaper was dragging himself up the car hood. He screamed as the pain hit him. I grabbed him as he started to fall again. “Can you move?” I shouted.
He grimaced, biting his lip, tears running down his cheeks. “Yes.”
“Get in the van. Hurry!” Reaper lurched away. I ran for Carl.
My friend was gasping, shaking, blood streaming between his fingers as he kept pressure on his neck. He focused on me as I knelt beside him. “Get him?” he wheezed. There was a massive quantity of blood already spilled on the sand.
“Yeah, I got him. Hang on, man, I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Carl closed his eyes. He grabbed my hand and squeezed.
Then he was gone.
“Carl?”
The cars were closer now. I knelt by the body of my friend, pistol dangling from my numb fingertips. I wanted nothing more than to stay here and wait for them to arrive.
Then all of this would have been for nothing.
I stood, dragged Carl’s body to the limo, gently set him in the driver’s seat, then went to the trun
k. Falah’s body was still cold. It was probably the only thing that had kept the assassin alive in the heat, lying on that ice block, waiting for his chance. He must have gotten in while we were at the palace. I retrieved the white phosphorus grenade from under Falah, pulled the pin, and tossed it into the Mercedes. It ignited behind me in a billowing wall of chemical flame.
Carl would have liked the Viking funeral.
Reaper was sobbing when I got into the van. “Dude, the fuckers killed him.” He was cringing from the pain, holding his hands tightly to his wounded side. “Eddie did this. Bastard’s gonna pay.”
I found the keys on the floorboard. The goons were inbound. It was going to be a race to the border now.
Chapter 24:
Welcome Back,
Mr. Nightcrawler
LORENZO
June 18
I was certain we had lost them after we had crossed the border. A gentle breeze had calmed the raging temperature. The sun was setting over the desert, and if it hadn’t been such a terrible day, I would have thought it was beautiful. I cradled the rifle in my arms and scanned the horizon.
Part of me was secretly praying for cars to appear on the road. Carl had been my best friend.
The village was small, consisting of a few small compounds and some outlying buildings. The van was well hidden. I sat in the shade beneath an awning, gun in hand, black and gold scarab in a pouch I’d tied around my neck. In the distance dogs barked and children laughed.
It had been my fault. I should have seen it coming. I should have done something.
There was movement in the doorway behind me. “Your friend will live. He was struck twice, but the wounds were superficial. Given time to heal, he should have no permanent disability.”
“Thank you, doctor,” I replied, never taking my eyes off the horizon.
“I’m afraid I’m no Doctor,” the Qatari answered. “I failed from an American veterinary school.”
“Good enough.” I lifted the rubber-banded stack of money above my head. He took it. This particular establishment had a reputation within the criminal element of the region. “When can I move him?”
“I would not move him until morning. You may sleep in the guest room. I shall have my servants prepare it.” He turned to leave.
“We were never here,” I stated.
“But of course.”
Carl’s duffel bag was open on the bed. I found the manila folder with the mission details and dialed the Fat Man’s number on my untraceable cell phone.
I had checked on Reaper before retiring to the guest room. He had been asleep, and had looked terrible, even paler than normal, with bandages all over his skinny chest, and buried beneath IV bags. A heart monitor kept a steady pace. He would be fine, but the sight of what was left of my crew filled me with rage.
“Yes,” the Fat Man answered on the other end of the line.
“I want to talk to Eddie.”
There was a pause. “Mr. Lorenzo, Big Eddie does not speak with the help. I am his intermediary and—”
“Put him on or I toss the scarab in the ocean,” I stated calmly.
“Think of your family before you make any rash decisions.”
Part of my family had been shot in the throat this afternoon. I was not in the mood to play games. “Do it.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “Please hold.”
I rummaged through Carl’s bag while I waited. We had worked together for so long that it still hadn’t sunk in that he was really gone, corpse burned to ashes on a Saudi dune. Death was always a possibility in this business, but you never really got used to it. I found another folder in the bag. It had Carlo Gomes written on it in black marker. It was the information about his family that the Fat Man had originally given us in Thailand.
I opened Carl’s folder. The man had never talked about his people. There were a handful of photographs. They were marked Island of Terceira. The pictures were all very old. Beneath each person’s photo had been handwritten the word deceased.
Carl had no family left. Eddie had never held leverage on him . . .
Carl had done it for us.
“Ah, Mr. Lorenzo. Good to hear from you.” The oily sound of Eddie’s voice uncorked a clot of rage in my soul.
“Why did you do it, Eddie? Why’d you try to kill us?” I hissed.
“Just business. I’m sorry about that. I saw the opportunity at the meeting. I realized what you had done. Brilliant move, I must say, but with the cameras around the cars disabled, I sent one of my men to accompany you. I thought I would tie up some loose ends.”
I was a loose end. He did not even sound defensive. That was just what our lives were worth to him.
“I was going to give it to you.”
“It was a calculated risk.”
“I should just destroy this thing and walk away,” I said, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.
“Do so and you will have a much shorter Christmas card list. The original deal is still in place.” He laughed. This was amusing him. “See, Lorenzo, you’re a pawn.”
“I guess that makes you the queen.”
“Fair enough. But you will bring me that phylactery, or I give the order and your loved ones get fed to the sharks. Listen to me carefully, chap. You do not have any idea what you have. The contents of that thing are more important than you can even imagine. I’ve strangled children for far less, and I sleep very well at night. You will give it to me or you will have—”
I cut him off. “Now you listen to me. You harm any of my relatives and I’ll give this thing back to the prince and tell him who hired me to steal it.”
Eddie let out a long breath. “You bloody fool.”
“No, you’re the fool. You screwed up. I know who you are now,” I snapped. “Mr. Montalban.”
“I suppose that was a mistake. You know what they say about hubris,” Eddie said slowly. Whatever stupid bit of arrogance had caused Eddie to reveal himself to me at the meeting was going to be his downfall. “Let’s be reasonable, Lorenzo.”
“Reason went out the window when your boy crawled out the trunk. You’d better pray that none of my nieces falls down and scrapes a knee, because I’ll assume you were behind it.” I seized the moment. I was tired of being pushed around, and now it was time to push back. “We trade. You get your bug right after you transfer twenty million dollars into my Swiss accounts. Then you walk the fuck away. You ever contact me again, I call the prince. If I die of anything other than old age, I’ll have somebody else contact the prince. You ever look at my family cross-eyed again, I call the prince. If one of my brothers gets prostate cancer, I’m going to hold you responsible.”
“And call the prince, yes, yes, I get it. . . . You know, Lorenzo, I never took you for a tattletale. But that’s why you were always my favorite. You’ll do anything to get the job done. Very well, I can deal. Fair enough.” I could tell that he didn’t think it was fair at all. Fair was not a concept a man like Big Eddie understood. Someway, somehow, he would find a way to kill me. There was no turning back from this point. For this to end, one of us had to die. “When can I have it?”
“I’ll be in touch.” I hung up.
I awoke with a start. It was dark, and I lay there for a second, heart pounding. The house was quiet, but I snatched up my rifle and went to the window anyway. There was no movement outside. No dogs barking. All clear.
But I stayed there, watching, waiting, too wired to return to bed. I was letting this get to me, letting it affect my judgment. There was a cough from next door. Reaper. That’s what had startled me awake. I put down my rifle and went to check on him. Surprisingly enough, he was awake too. Sitting up in bed and looking out the window, white bandages reflecting the moonlight.
“How you feeling?” I asked.
“Carl’s gone, man,” Reaper said as he wiped one hand under his nose. “Holy shit, I didn’t think Carl could die. He was too angry to die. It’s dumb, but like if he got shot, he’d just get more
pissed off . . . Shit . . . That sounds stupid. He wasn’t the Hulk.”
I pulled up a seat. “I know how you feel.”
He got really quiet for a while. This was hitting him worse than me. “Man, it’s been so long. . . . Carl was always there for me. I don’t know if I ever told you, but when I met you guys . . . I was really scared.” He said that as if it were some kind of revelation, and maybe to him it was. “I was all alone. I didn’t know where to go, and you gave me a job, gave me a mission. You know, I never fit in back home.”
I nodded, as if that were a surprise. “Me, either.”
“Okay, this might come as a shock, but I wasn’t as tough when I was a kid. I was kind of a nerd,” he said, like he was admitting something shocking. “I got picked on a lot. I was always the smartest kid, but I was so much younger than everybody else, so I was like a weirdo.”
“You were like Doogie Howser.”
“Except straight. Totally straight,” he corrected me. “Then my mom got remarried, and my stepdad was like this super tough-guy fucking lumberjack or something, and my step-brother was Johnny Football Hero, and he got all the chicks, and there I was, this little scared dork weakling. . . . I could never live up to their standards. I hated them.”
I wondered if this was how some of the genius super-villains from the comic books started out. I just kept nodding.
“So I showed them. I’d be way more bad-ass than they could ever be. It was time to Fear the Reaper, you know what I’m saying? I had skills, man.”
“Two hundred felony counts is pretty damn impressive for a teenager.”
“Well, I wasn’t as clever as I thought I was back then.” Reaper smiled sadly. “I scared the shit out of the government, though! I crashed a bank and turned off all the lights in Boston, just because I could. They wanted to make an example out of kids like me. Mom was heartbroken, and you know what the weirdest thing was? My stepdad, the asshole, he’s the one that helped me the most. He gave me a plane ticket to a place with no extradition and told me it was ‘time to be a man’ . . . that was the nicest thing anybody had ever done for me.”
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