War Lord

by David Rollins

  ‘Oh, that’s okay.’ I leaned across the counter and, with a vaguely conspiratorial smile, said, ‘I was hoping we wouldn’t be watching too much TV . . .’

  Gracia returned the smile with one of her own, a cheeky curl on one side of her red lips. ‘With taxes, the room is thirteen hundred dollars US per night. But perhaps I can give you a small discount because it has no TV. Is one thousand one hundred dollars okay?’

  Eleven hundred bucks times two nights, maybe more. Arlen would pop his cork. ‘Great,’ I told her. ‘We’ll take it.’ I filled in the forms and left an imprint of my Visa.

  ‘Boa sorte – good luck,’ Gracia said with a wink, handing me two plastic card keys.

  Petinski and I followed a short hairy guy in a pillbox hat up to our room on the fifth floor, a generous space done up like an English cottage with printed curtains, framed paintings of birds and plants, polished wood and gold taps. It was the kind of place where the other half lived, the half with money. The guy gave us a quick tour, which concluded with a set of double doors opening onto a balcony overlooking the pool and restaurant in the courtyard. I tipped our guide and he left, closing the door quietly behind him.

  ‘This looks expensive,’ said Petinski, hands on hips.

  ‘I got a discount.’

  ‘Half price is still going to blow my budget.’ Petinski gazed around the room. ‘The bed’s mine. Couch is yours.’

  ‘Better than the doghouse.’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Cooper. And what did you tell the woman on the front desk? Why was she smiling at me?’

  ‘I told her that, as I was about to ask you to marry me, they should just leave a stack of clean sheets at our door.’

  ‘Jesus, Cooper . . .’

  ‘It’s called thinking on your feet, Petinski. Let’s move on. Speaking of which, what’s our next move, workwise?’

  ‘We’ve got a meeting.’

  Shortly thereafter we were walking out through the hotel lobby. I glanced at the reception desk and my confidante there gave me a wave. I put my arm around Petinski’s shoulder.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Petinski asked with a hiss.

  ‘Playing the part. We’ve got an audience,’ I told her.

  ‘You got the room, Cooper. Don’t think you’re getting anything else.’ Petinski shrugged off my arm the instant we walked through the door into the afternoon sunshine. After letting a number of cabs pass, she waved one down and gave the driver an address read off her iPhone. The driver took us through a long tunnel cut through solid rock, into another part of the city. Checking out the surroundings, I caught a glimpse of the famous statue of Christ up on one of the many hills overlooking the city. From this angle, the way his arms were outstretched reminded me of Petinski’s description of Josef Mengele with his arms out wide like an angel with its wings open, saying, ‘Death to the left, life to the right . . .’

  *

  The shopfront said we were in a place specializing in tailor-made suits, an assertion confirmed inside by several well-dressed gents with a combined age of around a thousand years, slicked-back silver hair, pencil moustaches, and measuring tapes around their necks. But then one of them scanned a barcode off Petinski’s iPhone, led us to a clothing rack in a back room and parted the half-made suits hanging on it, and a panel opened to reveal an elevator. We thanked the old guy and stepped in, and a few jolts later the doors opened on a trim black woman framed by an über-cool reception area of stainless steel, glass and chocolate wood, a large seal of the CIA on the frosted glass wall behind her.

  ‘Mr Delaney is expecting you,’ she said in an internationalized American accent I couldn’t place. ‘Please follow me.’

  I was happy to oblige, a large part of the reason being her ass, a round and firm ass that moved beneath her loose black skirt like any second it was gonna break into a samba. We arrived at a plain wood-grain door with no name or title on it. Behind it was a small room with a simple black Formica table, bottles of water clustered in its center. A political map of the world hung on one wall, while the other three were bare.

  ‘Take a seat, please,’ said the woman. ‘Mr Delaney will be with you in a minute.’ She and her ass turned and left.

  Pretty much exactly a minute later, Delaney strolled in – a guy of average height and weight, medium brown hair, small brown eyes, no distinguishing marks or features, wearing Levi’s and a white shirt. He was so average even his own kids might have had trouble picking him out of a line-up.

  ‘Jeb Delaney,’ he said with a Jonny Hayseed drawl. ‘Assistant Deputy Director.’

  Hmm. The assistant to the assistant. We’d been sent straight to the middle. He shook our hands and sat at the head of the table.

  ‘This place is a surprise,’ said Petinski, small talking. ‘Beneath a tailor’s. Who’d have thought?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Delaney, ‘except that everyone in the Brazilian, Brit, Ruskie, Frog and Chink secret services have their shirts made by the boys topside, so I think the word’s probably out about what’s in the basement. Still, we’re centrally located and it beats the crap outta workin’ from the attaché’s office in the embassy up in Brasilia.’ He smiled. ‘Rio’s a bunch more fun than the capital in every way that counts.’

  I had a sense that maybe ol’ Jeb here wasn’t talking entirely about the spy business. Petinski smiled back and flicked me a who-is-this-guy? glance. ‘Thanks for taking the time to see us, sir,’ she said.

  ‘The pleasure’s all mine,’ Delaney replied. ‘Fact is, ya’ll been given the highest clearance I ever seen for non-Company folk, endorsed by Langley and DoD. Makes me inquisitive what this is all about, but, ’course, that ain’t allowed.’

  Petinski gave him another smile.

  ‘Bottom line,’ he continued, ‘we’ve been ordered to provide you every assistance. You need anythin’, just let me know. We have a line into the local PD as well as Brazil’s security agency. And we drink with the folks over at MI6.’ He took two cards from his shirt pocket and gave one to each of us, nothing on it except a cell number. ‘When ya’ll get a pickup, the codeword is “Landlock”. Forget t’ say it, ya’ll get dial tone and the number’ll be useless thereafter.’

  ‘Got it,’ said Petinski.

  ‘Online coms can be routed to us through your agency in Washington.’

  Something about Jeb’s focused manner once the intros were done suggested the squeal-like-a-pig hillbilly shit he was going on with was an act. I hoped so. I wasn’t a fan of the Company, but I had a feeling we were going to be relying on it pretty heavily here.

  ‘Anythin’ you need right off the bat?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re interested in Benicio von Weiss,’ said Petinski.

  Jeb allowed himself a smirk that vanished almost as soon as it formed. ‘Vee Dubyah, eh. Who ain’t? We got more assets on that fella than flies on a corpse.’

  ‘You’ve got a tail on him?’

  ‘I hope so – yeah.’

  ‘What’s the Company’s interest in him?’

  ‘Whatever our Langley masters tell us to be interested in. But aside from that, Vee Dubyah’s also rich, influential and bent like a mountain road. Actually, I’m interested in why you’re interested in him. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t like it, but your clearance entitles y’all to a big chunk of our latest intel, assuming you want it.’

  ‘We’ll take whatever you can give us, sir,’ said Petinski.

  ‘You’ve just arrived, right? How ya’ll gettin’ around?’

  ‘Cabs.’

  ‘A tip: make sure those cabs are random. Don’t pick one out of a rank.’

  ‘Good advice, sir.’

  Duh, I thought.

  ‘I take it ya’ll came here first. So what’s next?’

  ‘Get our bearings. Perhaps take a look at von Weiss’s main registered address.’

  Jeb looked at me. ‘Ya’ll don’t say much, do you?’

  ‘Looks like they make a nice suit upstairs,’ I offered.

&nbs
p; *

  ‘What’s with you, Cooper?’ Petinski snapped as we watched the traffic zip by, waiting for a cab to appear. ‘You were pretty damn rude back there.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ I replied.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Look, Petinski, like it or not – and I don’t – someone’s decided I’m your trophy partner. As far as I can figure out I’m being paid to accompany you and look pretty.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’

  ‘Do you know how many residences von Weiss has?’ I asked, getting back on point.

  ‘He has six safe houses in Brazil alone. Unofficially, as you know, he also runs the gang that controls a major favela, which is a honeycomb of potential boltholes.’

  ‘That would be the guacamole dip the severed hand was mailed from?’

  Petinski sighed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do we know where von Weiss is now?’

  ‘Twelve hours ago, before we got on the plane, he was down the coast from Rio at a place called Angra dos Reis, a seaside vacation town. He keeps his boat there. Delaney’s going to update us when new information turns up.’ She raised her hand and signaled to a cab.

  ‘This guy just lets himself be tailed?’

  ‘Look, Cooper, I know what you’re thinking, but as I told you already, we’ve got no firm proof of his connection to the theft of the nuke. We’ve got nothing other than suspicion. Von Weiss has a reputation – he doesn’t scare and he’s got enough money to buy whomever he wants.’

  ‘We’ve got nothing on him, but we’re sure he’s the guy?’ I asked as the cab pulled over. I opened the rear passenger door for her.

  ‘And I suppose you’ve never had a murder suspect with motive and opportunity who you’re absolutely positive committed the crime, only you don’t have any clues that’ll stand up in court?’

  For some reason I really didn’t like it when Petinski was right.

  Sixteen

  We let the cab go and walked the last klick. Benicio von Weiss’s three-story mansion was in a damp valley, buried in an overgrown jungle of fleshy palm fronds and tropical plants, set behind a wall fifteen feet high. The road snaked around in front of it and climbed the side of the valley, providing a view down into the place.

  ‘Von Weiss got kids?’ I asked Petinski.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Big house for a single guy.’

  ‘He’s rich. And he has staff.’

  Right, that other-half thing again. One wing of this place was longer than the street I lived on. I took a pair of compact binoculars from my pocket and trained them on the premises. It was set in a corner by itself, away from other dwellings, the nearest neighbor being fifty yards up the street. There were surveillance cameras on the wall with interlocking fields of view. Wire also ran around the top of the wall – electrified from the look of it. No doubt there were other sensors – motion, heat, Doberman and so forth. Von Weiss defended his privacy like Area Two defended its weapons.

  Conveniently, the gate set in the wall slid open just then and a glossy black Mercedes M-class drove slowly out, accompanied by outriders on KTM dirt bikes. The Mercedes windows were heavily tinted. Nothing to see there. I moved the binoculars back to focus on the gap in the wall provided by the open gate and saw two guys in some kind of uniform: tan shirt and black pants, combat boots and black ball cap.

  I ran the binoculars around the surrounding area. On the hill above the house was a jungle of trees, vines and fleshy plants that came to an abrupt end where a slum began, a trash heap of dwellings, hovels built on hovels, no rhyme or reason to their shape or location, no planning ordinances.

  ‘That a favela?’ I asked Petinski.

  ‘It’s the one controlled by von Weiss’s people. Céu Cidade – Sky City.’

  Céu Cidade, where the FedEx box sent to Alabama had been mailed from. ‘I’d like to check it out.’

  ‘We can’t go there, Cooper, not without your friends in the 82nd Airborne. Rio’s been cleaning up its favelas. At least trying to – getting ready for the Olympics and the World Cup – but there are still quite a few holdouts, Céu Cidade being one of them. It’s a distribution hot spot for much of Rio’s cocaine and weapons. Ask the wrong person the wrong question up there and you don’t get out alive. Perversely, the place also has one of the lowest murder rates in the whole country.’

  ‘Von Weiss runs a tight ship.’

  ‘And Hitler built the autobahns, but only so he could move his armies around easily.’

  ‘Okay, I get it – von Weiss is an evil prick. All the more reason to have a good snoop around. Randy could be up there somewhere.’

  Petinski chewed the inside of her cheek. ‘You’re right . . . But how to get it done, that’s the problem.’

  ‘First things first. What’s on the other side of that wall?’ I motioned at the house.

  ‘Breaking in will put von Weiss on his guard.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s already on it. We need to see what sort of guy we’re dealing with. I’m going to give Jeb a call.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the Company has toys.’

  ‘What are you going to do, Cooper?’

  ‘Don’t know, but that’s never stopped me before.’

  *

  The driver had just finished making his delivery. We only had to tail him a short distance because he obligingly pulled into a side street off Copacabana Beach, walked a block and ducked into a strip joint offering happy hour – a beer and lap dance for twenty bucks. Great value. I made a mental note of the address.

  Petinski and I doubled back to his truck, which was oily and smelled of baked engine grease. The vehicle was a virtual museum piece and therefore easy to steal. Best of all, behind the cabin was a bulk gasoline tank.

  Petinski drove, taking direction from her iPhone. It was just after ten p.m. when we arrived in the vicinity of Castle von Weiss. We parked with a hiss of air brakes on the street’s shoulder, in an area of deep shadow, the tires sloshing through mud. The first step or two in the plan was thought out. The rest was, well, loose.

  ‘Get plenty of cover before you light ’er up,’ I said.

  ‘See you back here at ten-forty,’ Petinski replied, adjusting the seat belt. ‘Don’t be late.’

  Our wristwatches were already synchronized. I had exactly thirty-one minutes to do whatever I was going to do before my partner drove off in another stolen vehicle and left me behind. I climbed out and coughed through a cloud of gritty diesel smoke blowing down from the exhaust pipe behind the cabin’s roof. Taking one of the small remote-detonated charges from the pouches on my chest webbing, I kneeled down and felt the magnet draw it onto the vehicle’s fuel tank, mating with a solid click. I flicked the switch from ‘standby’ mode to ‘armed’ and waited for the red light to flicker green, informing me that the device was receiving a signal from the remote in the cabin with Petinski. The second charge I placed on the steel chassis beneath the big gasoline tank and went through the same routine, waiting for the green light.

  The gears ground together and the truck moved off, shuddering with serious clutch trouble toward its date with the scrap heap. I jogged after it, keeping to the shadows, and watched the taillights disappear round a bend. A handful of seconds later, I caught up with those lights again when they flared briefly, a hundred yards down the road, Petinski having tapped the brake pedal. Then she jumped, at least that was the plan. The tail lights appeared to skip sideways a little, indicating that the vehicle had rammed something solid, as planned. Confirming this, the muffled sound of crumpling metal panels and breaking glass tinkling onto the ground came back to me on the night air. A couple of breaths later, a small bang ignited the vehicle’s fuel tank and around forty gallons of diesel fuel burst into flame. A heartbeat later, a second explosion dwarfed the first as the truck’s gasoline storage tank went off like a massive incendiary and a huge orange and yellow ball of burning fumes rolled up into the night like a smoke ring blown by hell itself. The soun
d arrived next, a deep clap that smacked into my chest like a two-by-four. Then the heat rushed past, impossibly hot against my face considering the distance from the source.

  The wreckage of the truck was alight and burning ferociously. The silence imposed on the immediate vicinity by the shock of a big explosion was giving way to cries of surprise as folks came to their senses, or at least to watch the show.

  Still keeping to the shadows, I ran hard toward the roaring orange flames. They licked at the base of a pall of black smoke that doused the light spilling down from the favela on the hill. Coming closer, I saw the gate in von Weiss’s fifteen-foot-high wall open and several uniformed men run out. They formed a semicircle around the vehicle, probably trying to deduce whether some unfortunate soul might be cooking behind the steering wheel. Or maybe to see if someone was going to break out a pack of marshmallows to roast. Residents from the favela swarmed down the hill and were joined by their neighbors in the valley, rich mingling with poor.

  I left the shadows and walked along the wall to the open gate as two guards rushed out, one carrying a bucket of water that he sloshed over himself, the other a fire extinguisher. The heat of the fire forced them back, along with the crowd, and the spectacle kept everyone entertained. I slipped inside the perimeter and flipped down the night vision goggles on my head.

  Half the house was dark with no electric lights on. In the other half, it was a different story. Probably where the live-in security force bunked, I figured. Aside from money and privacy, I wondered what else this von Weiss character was so keen to keep to himself with all the security; perhaps a milk can that packed a kiloton punch, or a former Air Force pilot kept against his will. I headed for the darkened wing I believed to be unoccupied, taking a suppressed Glock borrowed from the Company out of the holster on my chest webbing. There was no point wasting time trying to finesse my way in, picking door locks that I figured were going to be top of the line. I had maybe five minutes to snoop around before the guards realized there was no one to rescue, lost interest in the truck and got back to the job of patrolling. I cocked the Glock’s slide and fired three rounds into the door at the top hinge area, the solid hardwood splintering. The hinge at about waist height was next, followed by the one around eight inches above the marble stoop. A couple more shots sputtering from the suppressor into the wood around the lock did the trick and a slight push from my shoulder finished the job, the door giving way with a crack of seasoned timber.