by Ty Patterson
In the bathroom he found a packet of white powder behind the toilet. He left it untouched.
Let them explain that to the cops.
He changed plates yet again on his SUV, backed it up, and unloaded Domingo. The killer lashed out with his legs, and fell back groaning behind duct tape when Zeb squeezed a pressure point.
It was evening by the time Zeb drove to the local Walmart, searched for a parking spot, and settled down for a nap. His replacement ride was an hour away.
His ride turned up forty-five minutes later, parked next to him. The driver stepped out, a squat, bald man who walked easily, looked him straight in the eyes. He tossed the keys at Zeb, stood silently while Zeb inspected the vehicle, looked through the various compartments and hideaways inside and nodded in return when Zeb nodded at him.
Zeb liked that. He had a lot of respect for a man who didn’t waste time, who didn’t waste breath making idle talk.
They spoke just once, when Zeb told him his SUV could be hot.
‘I’m outta here, friend. It’s a three-hour drive back for me.’
Zeb settled in the new ride with satisfaction. It was identical in specs to the one he had, except that this one was a Ford Explorer and was white.
Anonymous, and with enough spare plates.
He planned to find a motel to stay the night in and probably stay the next day as well; till his team came up with intel.
He went through Domingo’s confession, ran it over and over in his mind as he drove through the city, checking out motels on auto pilot.
Change the face of the world.
Studelander had paled when he said that. He had left abruptly.
Change the face….
He wheeled abruptly, stopped illegally near the curb, ignored the blare of annoyed horns.
He punched in numbers, controlled his impatience while the call got routed through security protocols in the vehicle and at the receiving end.
The call got picked up after two rings.
‘Is the president in Texas next week?’
Clare didn’t question him. She heard the tautness in his voice and just replied, ‘Hold.’
He heard her dial another phone and ask someone. ‘Jim, don’t ask me questions. Is the president anywhere near Texas next week?’
Her voice lightened at the reply, they exchanged small talk and she hung up.
She came back on Zeb’s line. ‘He isn’t, neither is the Veep or any other member of the Cabinet. Tell me everything.’
She listened without interruption and when he had finished, she asked, ‘Your crew is working on possibilities?’
‘Yes.’
She mulled it over. ‘Nothing’s crossed my radar or that of any other agency. What about Broker’s network?’
‘The usual stuff has come up. Islamic terrorists, Russian posturing, Chinese submarine movements, North Korean military gestures.’
‘All those have been around for some time.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Get onto this.’ She ordered. She didn’t have to ask him to report back. He would. Broker’s reports would go to her too.
‘I might become hot. There’s a trail of injured and maybe a couple of dead by now. Shots fired in a residential area. I’m surprised Cheyenne and Casper P.D. haven’t yet got me.’
‘They won’t.’ She replied unequivocally. She didn’t ask him if innocents were involved; she knew how Zeb worked.
Juice. The Agency has delivered on every mission. That’s one huge goodwill bank and IOUs that Clare has amassed.
He checked into a motel, chose a room that overlooked the rear, had a window through which he could exit, and then called his team.
‘We’re a go,’ his voice came muffled as he washed and wiped himself with a surprisingly clean towel.
‘Werner’s already pumping out stuff. A list of all events and big ticket attendees in Texas is in your email,’ Beth replied briskly.
‘Anything tickled Werner?’
The software had highly sophisticated algorithms that tracked disparate events and came up with what-if scenarios. When Broker’s human intel from his agents across the globe was layered on top, Werner’s analyses became a potent tool.
‘Nope,’ she confessed. ‘Have a look at the list and see where it gets you. There’s more.’ She was struggling to contain her excitement.
‘We nailed down where Elena’s folks lived. They were in Lander, where they owned a general store and home. They passed away three years back. Her mom had a previous marriage and when she re-married, Elena took on her mother’s maiden name.’
‘She had a falling out with her dad?’
Meghan made an impatient sound. ‘That’s not always the reason, Zeb. We made a few calls and got the story. When she got her first big story all those years back, she got several threats. She changed her name to protect her folks.’
‘Tell him,’ Broker’s voice came impatiently over the speaker.
‘She visited Lander.’ Beth broke over Meghan.
‘Several times last year,’ her sister butted in and explained briefly.
The general store had wound down once Petrova’s dad had passed away. Once her mother was no more, Elena inherited both the properties; she lived briefly in the family home once she left New York, but she was seldom there. She traveled a lot and didn’t have any close friends in the town. She sold the house last year and bought a two bedroom apartment in Cheyenne and moved there. She kept the general store, but since it wasn’t operating, she never visited Lander.
‘Bwana, Rog, why don’t you check the place out?’
‘We’ll take the jet and leave tonight.’
‘Be careful. Wasserman’s crew might be there.’
Bwana’s voice was expectant. ‘I hope so. All this inactivity is bad for my health.’
‘Don’t take them lightly, Bwana. This guy, Domingo, was good,’ Zeb warned him. He didn’t have to assign tasks to Bear, Chloe or Broker; the three had the twins’ backs.
Meghan quickly ran through other findings; there weren’t many more. They still hadn’t discovered any online storage service Petrova had used. They had called all newspapers and online media that Petrova had worked with; none of them knew what the journalist had been working on. Werner had not yet placed Wasserman’s voice print.
He’ll know what’s going down. If we find him!
The Lear touched down on a private airstrip fifteen miles away from Lander and when Bwana and Roger stepped out in the warm night, a man was awaiting them.
It was the same driver who had delivered the wheels to Zeb. They inspected the vehicle he had brought; he disappeared into the plane. He would await their return and drive the SUV back to Jackson.
‘Remember, we can’t kill anyone,’ Roger warned his partner when Bwana turned over the engine and set off.
‘Just one hood. It’ll be like a message you know, to this Wasserman dude.’ Bwana pleaded.
Roger sighed, pulled his hat over his face, pushed his seat far back and ignored his friend. Under the cover of the hat, he grinned. His friend played the blood-thirsty role well, but underneath the façade was a coldly efficient operative. The two had worked together for so long that they read one another’s thoughts, acted on each other’s eye and hand signals automatically.
Fifteen miles took half an hour to traverse, Bwana falling in the slipstream of one large truck that sped in the night as it moved stuff from one part of the country to another. The US-287 didn’t have much traffic that time of the night and Bwana was content to roll as slowly as the truck.
The city of Lander welcomed them with flashing billboards above an auto parts store and, further down, a motel advertising vacancies. The town was quiet; it would be, it had a population of less than ten thousand. As with many small towns in that part of the country, it had an old West feel to it.
Feed stores, Indian artifacts, Jewelry stores, wine shops, lined Main Street, along with bars and ATMs. The family general store stood dark on
the intersection of Main and a narrower street.
Bwana swung away from Main, drove past residential homes and eased on the narrow street. He let the SUV drift behind a parked RV; they got out silently and split up. Roger crossed the road and walked down the street, parallel to Bwana.
They drifted from shadow to shadow till they reached the rear of the general store and watched.
The store was a two-story building that had a gated entrance on the narrow street for deliveries. The gated entrance opened into a small yard, at one end of which was a smaller building.
Storage, Bwana surmised.
The upper story was the residence and shared a common entrance with the store.
The two waited, becoming one with the dark, letting the hours and the night flow over them. A pickup truck lurched to a stop at two a.m.; a man fell out of its cab and walked unsteadily to a lamp post. He hawked and spat once and a thin stream of liquid caught the light. He stumbled back when he had finished his business and when his truck roared back to life, Roger spoke in his bone phone. ‘Two men in a tan Ford, opposite the store. They’re slumped down, but are awake. Both in the front.’
The nearly invisible headsets used bone conduction technology and sat just in front of the ear, bypassing the eardrums. They delivered sound to the cheekbones and left the ears free to pick up ambient noise.
‘Gotcha. I’ve got at least two more bodies inside, in the residence. One of the dudes is smoking. He came out briefly, inspected the yard and went back in.’
‘Carrying?’
‘Too dark. We have to assume so.’
They looped back and crossed Main Street and came up to the general store from its front and surveyed it.
‘Front’s quiet. I flashed the thermal imager and two bodies are in the back of the upper story. Looks like the two bozos in the car have got the front, the two inside have got the rear.’ Bwana murmured.
The two men in the Ford had been casing the store for more than a week and were feeling bored. Studelander had warned them about Carter, and by now, they also knew of Domingo, Barrow, and the rest. However, Carter hadn’t shown up in Lander. The town remained in a permanent state of semi-somnolence, even in the daytime.
The townspeople had looked on curiously when the four hoods had turned up, but they had a good cover. They were sent by the executors of Petrova’s estate to value the property and survey it. The men wandered during the day, apparently taking measurements and photographs.
Bosworth ‘Bo’ Colley, the driver, strutted about carrying a pad and appeared to look important as he spoke several times in a phone, during the day. Frank Kelso, his partner, went to Realtors and got valuations from them for the property. They even arranged a viewing for all Realtors one day.
The men were top operatives and had fought in the Congo, Nigeria, and South America. A podunk town in the middle of nowhere didn’t challenge their skills and despite all their training, they had gotten slack. Bo stifled a yawn and turned to rummage through a brown bag of chips when a tap on the window drew their attention.
A man stood weaving and swaying talking unintelligibly. Bo checked the mirrors and saw nothing alarming. He wound the window down and opened his mouth to swear at the man.
The next moment, a gun barrel rammed into his teeth, broke the front two ones. Simultaneously Frank’s door opened and a black man the size of a barn door bent down and pleaded, ‘Please, please go for your guns.’
They didn’t take him up. They recognized the calmness in the men and decided whoever said discretion was the better part of valor, had it right.
The two men bound Bo and Frank, trussed them like chickens, taped their mouths and left them helpless. The lean man who had knocked Bo’s teeth came back a second later. His teeth flashed when he drawled, ‘You’ll thank me one day. You look better now without those ugly protrusions.’
He laughed when Bo swore impotently behind the tape.
Bwana and Roger ran on the balls of their feet, keeping to the shadows and went to the rear of store, the heavy backpack resting easily on the Bwana’s back. Bwana fired up the thermal imager and they watched the movements of the two men inside for a while.
The men had a loose patrol of walking the breadth of the house every twenty minutes. One man was stationary, horizontal, it looked like he was resting. The patrolling man came to a small balcony that overlooked the yard every third round. He stood there for ten minutes, puffed away, and then disappeared inside.
Bwana looked at his friend who read his thoughts and smiled. Lazy surveillance.
There were six windows that overlooked the yard, three at the bottom, three more on the top. The surveillance was at the top, the men figuring that the two men on the street would keep a watch on the ground.
Bwana and Roger scaled the gate, pulled black masks over their face and ran to the rear of the store. Bwana knelt against a window and examined it; it was a common garden variety, secured from the inside with a dead bolt. They would have to break the glass to make an entry. Roger checked out the door; it too was of a sturdy make with dead bolts inside. He turned to Bwana to find him rummaging inside his backpack. He drifted to the shadows in the yard to keep a watch on the upper story while his friend secured an entry.
Bwana pulled out a rubber suction cup and attached it to the glass. He used a diamond tipped cutter to make a neat hole, removed the glass, wrapped it in pop-free bubble packaging and placed it in his pack.
They split, Bwana taking the left, Roger going right, when Bwana opened the door and shut it behind them. The ground floor of the store had a large curved counter for serving customers and had rows of shelves nailed to the wall. A door to the right led to a storage room which had shelves, racks and bins. All were empty.
A hallway to the left had a discreet door behind which lay a bathroom, and further along were a flight of stairs to the residence above.
Bwana warned Roger with a look, stairs might creak, and got an acknowledging bob. He placed his weight carefully using the sides of the steps to climb, while Roger covered him from behind.
Bwana waited at the landing, counting down in his head and ten minutes later heard the first tread.
The patrolling man yawned lustily and cast an angry glance at the snoring man on the couch. They alternated the night watch, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
Why are we still here, in this shit hole of a town? He thought furiously. Studelander said this would be over in days. We’re still here after a week, watching old people walk their dogs.
He kicked the couch on his round, and his partner stopped snoring for a few seconds. He had resumed by the time the man reached the end of the hallway and he turned back in mounting irritation. The man would drown a freight train -.
He couldn’t complete the thought when something dark and massive loomed beside him suddenly, white teeth flashed in the dark, and the next moment he was falling.
Bwana tied the man and covered Roger who checked the rest of the house and returned to stand over the sleeping man. A loud snore was cut short when Roger shook his shoulder. His eyes shot wide when the round bore of a Kimber looked back at him.
When the two were trussed up, Bwana shook his head sadly at Roger. ‘Badasses aren’t what they used to be. I reckon we should plug them just for being so incompetent.’
Zeb had found a motel in Casper, one that took cash, whose manager didn’t look up from the ball game playing on a small TV. The manager grunted in rhythm to Zeb’s questions, turned a register over to Zeb and handed a key across without once looking up.
‘No whores, no shooting, no dogs,’ were his only words.
Zeb showered, had a cold take-out dinner, washed it down with black, strong tea, and went through the list of events. Half an hour later he gave up in frustration and paced the small room.
Rodeos, county fairs, corporate board meetings, ball games, industry association meetings, a Senator’s speech… there was nothing in that list that would radically alter geopolitics.
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Was Domingo bluffing? Was he saying what I wanted to hear?
Zeb idly fingered a Bible in the chest of drawers and rejected the thought. He had interrogated several captives over the years and could separate truth from lies.
He considered the senator. Left wing. Pain in the butt to his own party, let alone the opposition. Has got a fringe support that elects him every term. Broker would say we should step back and let whoever wants to take him out, do his job. The assassin would do the nation a favor.
He shook his head unconsciously. The senator wasn’t the target, though he was sure Broker and the twins would thoroughly examine him. No world leaders meeting in Texas, nothing noteworthy happening in fact.
He gave up after another hour, tossed away his phone and went to sleep.
His phone buzzed late at night rousing him instantly. It was from Roger. They had secured Petrova’s home, but the men there knew nothing. Their orders were to grab Zeb if he showed up. The house was clean.
More or less what I expected. They’re guarding the gates, but the gatekeepers don’t know why.
Sleep wouldn’t come and after a quick shower, he went for a run.
The pale glow of dawn hadn’t yet set in and the town lay deep in darkness and dreams. Zeb was alone with just the neon street lamps giving him company. A shape darted across the street ahead, paused and turned toward him. The coyote’s eyes flashed curiously at him and then it merged in the darkness. He found a park and went through his routine and this time he had a solitary jogger for company who slowed to watch Zeb’s intricate moves.
It was when Zeb was showering back at the motel that the thought struck him.
Oil industry meeting.
The second thought had him staring at white tiles till the water turned cold.
Prince Abdul’s brother was oil minister.
Chapter 15
He rechecked Broker’s email, went to the event’s website and checked out the program. It was not just an oil industry conference, it was also a meeting of senior leaders and policy makers in the world’s most widely used fossil fuel.