by John Etzil
His thoughts turned to John Anthony, and he wondered if the kid would come through under pressure. Other than handing out a few street beatings, which he did well, Vargas had never seen the kid in action. He’d have to watch him close.
He eyed the old white guy in the rearview mirror. He was sitting in the second row and typing away on his laptop. “Yo, Lar, where’s she now?”
“The last signal is still in Eminence. I’m trying to ping the unit to get an updated location, but this is an older model, and I’m having trouble reaching it. Once I do, I should be able upgrade the firmware, and it will autosend every couple of hours. Cosmo will be able to follow her on his laptop as well.”
Larry’s work with the CIA was legendary. He’d led a team of engineers that created the latest in implanted tracking devices, also known as ITDs. Various models of ITDs were implanted inside every prisoner released from Guantanamo Bay and all the other secretive CIA prisons. Most of the devices were surgically implanted deep in the buttock muscle. A small slit was made in the crease where the butt meets the back of the evildoer’s leg using an arthroscopic surgery instrument, and the ITD was placed under the muscle.
Larry had six hundred and fifty-seven ITDs all over the Middle East, and his success rate for tracking individuals was one hundred percent, leading to his nickname of LoJack Larry. While he felt pride in his nickname, he’d often stated to his few friends in the Agency that his greatest accomplishment was developing a battery that was trickle-charged by body heat, which gave the module a lifespan of eighteen years.
Larry’s career with the Agency had come to an abrupt end when he’d been forced to resign in disgrace after being caught in an intimate relationship with an Asian woman who’d turned out to be a North Korean spy. His only saving grace was that he had never spoken to her about work, so he was cleared of every charge that the Agency brought against him. Except of being gullible, towards which the Agency had a zero-tolerance policy. Was it that hard to believe that a woman twenty years his junior could find him interesting and fall in love with him? He could, after all, complete the New York Times crossword puzzle in under thirty minutes…
Larry had no idea that his lover had deceived him on every level, and in addition to being booted from the Agency after twenty-nine years of otherwise excellent service and having his heart broken, he’d had his pension taken away.
After wallowing in alcohol-fueled self-pity for a few months, he had run out of money and decided to get his act together. He’d started his own business manufacturing tracking modules for pet owners. The only problem was that pet owners didn’t want to pay for the high cost of his modules just to track down a runaway pet.
But possessive husbands did. That discovery had led him to develop a breast implant module to go along with the butt version, and the two became a huge hit amongst the insecure husbands with cash to spare. And there were plenty of them. They loved Larry and his team of corrupt docs. Not only did they get bigger tits to salivate over, they got to keep track of them too.
His initial introduction to Cosmo had raised a few red flags, but that was early in his new career, when he was broke. And desperate. And desperate men do desperate things, so he’d caved in and offered his services to Cosmo.
He’d found out later that Cosmo was worse than he’d imagined. He wasn’t just a stone-cold killer. He’d executed one of his street dealers right in front of him and seven other men who were meeting with him inside one of his crack houses. He’d sent the body down to the basement to be hacked up and fed to his twin Rottweilers. He loved commenting that you “can’t get reliable DNA from dog shit.” Cosmo liked sending messages, and this message was clear. “I kill people, and feed ’em to my dogs.”
The earlier version of Larry’s GPS tracking module—the one hidden in Catherine’s and two other girls’ implants—required a complicated computer program that only Larry could run on his laptop. The newer versions had a much simpler program that any hood, or husband, could use, but try as he might, he couldn’t get Cosmo to “upgrade” the implant and free himself from his in-person duties. “What are you, fucking crazy? How am I gonna convince my girls that they need a breast implant upgrade? They’re dumb bitches, but not that stupid.”
He had thought of killing the three women, which would put an end to Cosmo’s need to have him track them, but he’d decided the risk wasn’t worth it. He’d gamble and hope that none of the three would run off before he upgraded them with new software, but his new software was overrun with bugs and it had taken longer to fix then he thought. And he couldn’t rush it. It had to be perfect before he upgraded, because if it crashed and he lost a girl, holy crap, he’d have hell to pay.
His extensive testing was why the upgraded software was still in beta version and hadn’t been used in real life. Until now. He logged in, said a quick prayer, and hit the firmware upgrade button.
Vargas turned down the hip-hop on the radio. “Where she at, LoJack? Still in Eminent?”
“Eminence. No, I logged in and upgraded the software. I just received a ping from Peru.”
“Peru? I ain’t going to fuckin Europe. Hey, JA, you ever been to Europe?”
“Nah, man, never been outside a’ Jersey. You?”
“Hell yeah, bro, been to Philly many times.” He stuck his chest out.
Larry looked up from his laptop and shook his head. “The signal came from Peru, New York, a little town up near Canada. I’ll give you directions in a minute.”
37
Debbie’s mouth dropped open in shock. “What? What do you mean you forgot the key? Like, ‘we can’t get in the house’ forgot your key?”
“Yeah.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe I let you sleep with me.”
“I was in a rush.”
“So, what now? We can’t break into this fort, and if we can’t get in, our whole plan is shot to hell.”
“I could find one of the old tunnels and crawl my way into the basement.”
“Would they still be there after all these years? I mean, wouldn’t they collapse over time?”
“Maybe, but I’ll never know unless I find one and crawl down it.”
I shivered at the thought of that. On my last journey into one of the tunnels when I was a kid, my friends had jumped up and down on the ground above me to scare me. The dirt had started falling on me, and I’d thought the whole thing was going to cave in and bury me alive. I’d panicked and freaked out, started yelling and screaming for them to stop, but they hadn’t. I’d hauled ass out of that tunnel like I was on fire and hadn’t been back since.
“You remember where the entrances are?”
“I could probably find one.” I could never forget, even if I wanted to.
“What about the basement door? Won’t it be locked?”
“Yeah.” I patted my Glock. “But those locks are old and flimsy. I can blast my way through them.”
“What about blasting your way through the front door?”
“I could, but then we wouldn’t be able to lock it behind us. I’d feel much better being able to secure it.”
“I guess you’re right. Let’s go, then. We don’t have any time to waste. As far as we know, Cosmo could be on his way right now.”
I led Debbie to the backyard and into the tree line. It took me about thirty seconds to find the tunnel entrance, which was an old wooden door that was rotten and caved in, leaving a big hole to the tunnel entrance. I grabbed what was left of the door, swung it open, and laid it on the forest floor.
The smell of damp dirt brought flashbacks of my friends doing the elephant dance over my head. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry. Crap. I shook my head and scoffed at the ridiculousness of my nerves. Hell, I’m a bad-ass who kills people. I’m not scared of a freaking tunnel. I took a deep breath and looked at my house to measure the distance. It couldn’t have been more than sixty or seventy feet. Not even a stone’s throw. Piece of cake.
“Wow, that door hasn�
�t done much good keeping the critters out.” Debbie leaned forward, peered into the dark tunnel, and grimaced. “Good luck in there. I can’t imagine what kind of creepy beings fell in there. Spiders and snakes and rats, oh my!” She patted me on the back and smiled. “Don’t worry, honey, if the tunnel caves in on you, I’ll be sure to give Frankie the news in person. And I’m taking the dogs.” She laughed. “Just sayin’…”
I got down on my hands and knees and crawled in. Once I was a few feet from the entrance, I lost the outside light, and the tunnel was pitch black. And silent. My iPhone and its flashlight were still in my lead-shielded bag in my truck, so I was on my own. I closed my eyes and moved through the tunnel a foot at a time.
The air was damp and stale, and I wondered if the lack of fresh air would asphyxiate me. What if there were a long, slow methane leak that filled up the tunnel? Methane gas has no odor and is deadly. Miners used to use canaries in a cage as a methane detector. When the canary died, time to get the hell out. I envisioned a smiling Debbie breaking the news to Frankie that I’d been suffocated or buried alive, and “Oh, by the way, the garage door code had been changed.”
Focus!
I shook away the negativity and took a deep breath.
I could feel my back scraping across the top of the tunnel, and I felt little clumps of dirt falling from it as I made progress. The tunnel was too narrow to turn around in, so if I came across a cave-in or other obstruction, like tree roots that had grown through it over the years, I’d have to back my way out.
My vivid imagination got the best of me, and I envisioned bumping my forehead against the butt of a hibernating black bear. All thoughts of the cave-in were replaced by wondering how cranky a disturbed bear would be. That was a childish distraction, though, just to take my mind off my real fears, because hibernation season was over.
It was now… oh crap…
Cub season.
I envisioned plowing into a bear cub, scaring the bejesus out of it and making it squeal in fright. The mother bear, who was out foraging for food, hears the cry of help from its little angel. She comes barreling into the tunnel to rescue her baby.
Now my exit’s blocked, and even if I shot her to save myself from her attack, I still wouldn’t be able to get out of the tunnel because there was no way that I could push a four-hundred-pound bear out of the tunnel.
Every time I felt my anxiety rise, I focused on my breathing, and that helped keep my demons at bay. Until a vision of a nest of copperheads or timber rattlesnakes fought its way into my head, biting me thousands of times before I could back out.
I should cut down on my caffeine intake.
I must have been subconsciously counting out my baby steps, because I felt the roof of the tunnel rise just as I was thinking that I should be getting close to the basement door.
I reached a small open area where I could kneel up straight, which felt good on my back. There was a tiny sliver of light coming in along the door frame, which must be coming in the basement through the screened-in air vents on the basement wall just above the ground. As the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, it wasn’t much, but I was relieved to see it.
I touched the wooden door and fumbled around for the doorknob. I found it, the cool metal returning normalcy to my dirt-overloaded brain. I turned it, but it wouldn’t budge. I sighed and took out my Glock. I fumbled around for the silencer, found it, and after four attempts, I managed to start the thread correctly and screw it on.
I leaned it against the doorknob, closed my eyes, and fired. Even with the silencer the Glock was loud, and I could see a flash of bright light through my closed eyelids.
I inhaled the cordite and smiled at the instant relaxation provided by the comforting familiarity of it. I pushed open the door and crawled into the basement, and into the biggest spiderweb I’d ever seen…
38
The enormous spiderweb covered the top half of the doorway and was stretched tight by the door opening. When I stood up into it, it felt like I was stretching a gigantic Ace bandage. It was so strong that it stopped my forward progress for a split second before I forced myself through it and fell into the basement.
There’s only one type of spider in upstate New York that can make a web like this.
A black widow.
The female black widow spider loves seclusion, and rarely leaves its web. It prefers to stand guard over its eggs, and although bites from the black widow are rarely fatal to a healthy adult, they hurt like hell. When I plowed into the web, I took it down, egg sac and all.
I hoped that the momma spider would run for the hills, but I knew better. She’d be mad as heck at my demolition of her hard work, not to mention taking her eggs away from her. I had no idea where she was. I brushed off as much of the sticky web as I could and stripped down to my birthday suit just in case the black widow was in my clothes. I ran up the stairs to the first floor. With all the windows shuttered, it was dark, but there was enough light leaking in to find the front door. I opened it and let Debbie in.
She looked me up and down and made a face. “You’re disgusting. Grow up.”
She elbowed her way past me and I closed the door. “I ran into a black widow web, and I wanted to make sure that she didn’t bite me.”
“Where’s your clothes?”
“Basement, but watch out for the spider.”
Debbie went downstairs and I heard her shaking out my clothes. She came up the stairs and threw them at me. “Put your clothes on and quit fooling around. You’ve wasted enough time.” Boy, was she cranky…
She started unpacking the go bags and laying out the weapons on a table in the kitchen. I threw on my clothes and opened the shuttered windows. The house had a stale, hadn’t-been-used-in-ten-years odor to it, and it felt good to let the fresh mountain air in.
I went into the kitchen and found one of the propane lanterns in the cupboard and lit it. One was enough to light up the kitchen, and I lit another for the living room.
I grabbed my portable motion detection system, went outside, and placed the sensors around the perimeter of the property. This would alert me to Cosmo and his men as soon as they broke the infrared beam.
When I got back inside the house, I opened my laptop and logged in to the motion detectors via Bluetooth to check the system. I was close enough so that the reception was strong, and I got green lights all around verifying the unbroken beams of infrared light.
I turned to Debbie. “Motion detection’s a go. We all set with weaponry?”
She nodded.
The basis of our plan was to make Cosmo believe that Catherine was in the house, in which case he would likely attack at night.
We, of course, would be ready for him. Our base of operations would be an old wooden shed to the side of the house. From that position, we could see the entire approach to the front of the house. We would stake out the house from there, taking turns, four hours at a time. When Cosmo arrived, we would kill the bastard.
I thought about using a deer stand for my end of the stakeout, but I hated being up in a tree and immobile. Things happened fast in a firefight, and I didn’t want to be stuck in a tree and locked in to one position, so I opted for the shed instead. Our plan was simple. We’d take turns keeping watch until we heard them approach or they set off one of the perimeter sensors. We’d kill them and drive them down to the Tahawus Quarry lakes, where we could dump them in over a thousand feet of water.
I’d flown over Tahawus some time ago, and as soon as I’d seen the two lakes, I’d had a good feeling they’d come in handy someday. A little bit of research on Google had proven my initial thoughts correct.
The Tahawus Quarry lakes weren’t like most lakes, where you could wade in and it gradually deepened. Those lakes were impossible to hide a car in. You’d be lucky to get it submerged a few feet before it stopped rolling, and even if you did manage to get it totally submerged, it was only a matter of time before some unfortunate swimmer broke their neck diving off of their
boat into what was supposed to be ten feet of water. Bingo, bodies found.
Not so with Tahawus. These were man-made lakes from the mining and quarry operation, and they had cliffs that went straight down into the water. Pull one of the rock barriers away, push their vehicle over the side, and bye-bye, Cosmo and his clowns. I was confident that there was no way that he was escaping his just fate this time.
I was wrong…
39
Frankie walked into the hospital and up to the front desk. “I’m here to see Catherine Macintyre. I’m her sister.”
The young girl behind the computer screen typed in a few lines, looked up at Frankie, and pointed to a sign-in book. “She’s out of post-op and in room 242.”
Frankie signed Debbie’s name and took the stairs two at a time until she reached the landing. Old habits die hard. She pulled the door open slowly, one hand on the pistol in her purse, and peered around the hallway before stepping out. It was empty. She saw the sign on the wall pointing her in the right direction, and she made her way down the hallway to Catherine’s room. She nearly ran into the doctor while he was leaving her room.
“Oh, pardon me,” he said.
“I’m Catherine’s sister. How’s she doing, Doc?”
He paused, a look of mild confusion on his face, and then smiled knowingly. “Oh, right. Her sister. She’s doing excellent. Better than I anticipated. She’s resting now, a little groggy from the pain meds we just gave her.”
“When will I be able to take her home?”
“Pretty soon. I have a few more test results that have to come back, and then she’s all yours. Before you leave, the nurse will go over her medication schedule with you.”
“Thanks, Doc. I’ll be waiting in here with her.”
She turned and sat down by Catherine’s bed. The other bed in the room, by the window, was empty and neatly made. The curtains were open and, wary of a sniper attack, she went over and closed them.