White Lines

by Tom Fowler

  If he weren’t so woozy, he could have capitalized, but when Tyler struggled to sit up, he only got back to his feet with the support of a nearby workbench. His massive adversary bumped into one of the poles supporting the Mustang. The man’s jacket hung open, and from his angle, Tyler spotted a grenade strapped inside. What kind of a masochist was he facing?

  “Still have some fight in you?” the giant wondered and flashed a grim smile. “They usually do, but it never matters. Tell you what . . . one soldier to another, I’ll kill you quick. I won’t prolong the beatdown.”

  “Get on with it, then,” Tyler said. He needed to be strategic. Trading punches with this behemoth would be a recipe for failure. Despite his bulk, Tyler’s adversary moved pretty well. Strength and speed were out. Tyler would need to prevail with experience and treachery. When his foe advanced, Tyler ducked under a jab and kicked him in the leg. Before he could back away, Tyler did it again.

  The principle was simple: a man needed to stand to fight. Take out his legs, and the rest is a lot easier. If he could get the giant down, Tyler could choke him out, beat him to death with a tool, or fetch his M11 and pump a few rounds into him. The big man was no dummy, though. He stayed out of Tyler’s kicking range as he brought his fists back up.

  Then, a shrill alarm pierced the quiet of the shop.

  His brief moment of distraction at the noise cost Tyler another wallop in the face. He tumbled to the floor. His massive opponent stood over him, took out a cell phone, and snapped a picture with the annoying fake camera sound. “Let’s go, Orlan” one of the others said as they rushed toward the exit. The colossus followed them.

  “I’ll see you again,” he called to Tyler, patting the grenade as he moved toward their SUV.

  Tyler believed him.

  13

  At his house, Tyler dumped a couple handfuls of ice into a Ziploc bag. He held it to his aching face and sank onto the sofa. Since he first enlisted in the army thirty-two years ago, Tyler suffered several concussions. This didn’t feel like one. His vision wasn’t blurry. Turning his head didn’t nauseate him. No, he’d undeniably taken a beating, and it had been a while since he found himself in this position.

  Orlan. One of the other guys gave the giant a name. Tyler would need to get more information on him. Lots of men his size didn’t know how to fight. They didn’t need to. No sane person would pick on them. Orlan said he’d been a soldier for a time. The training showed. He knew how to throw a punch or a kick. His massive legs provided all the power he would need. Tyler felt a rematch would be coming regardless of whether he kept pursuing Héctor and his crew.

  “Dad, what the hell?” Lexi said from somewhere behind him. She rushed to him and sat.

  “Didn’t hear you come down,” Tyler said, talking around the improvised cold compress.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. Only hurts when I talk. Or breathe. Or think.”

  “Not funny.” Lexi’s brows furrowed as she stared at him. “What happened?”

  “Three guys rolled up to the shop,” Tyler said. “Two of them took Smitty into the office. The last looked like Andre the Giant.” Tyler paused. “He was a wrestler and—”

  “I’ve heard of him,” she said, spreading her hands.

  “This giant got the better of the encounter. Smitty pulled the fire alarm, and it chased them off.” Tyler blew out a painful breath. “It’s been a while since I’ve fought someone his size.”

  “How long?”

  “Almost fifty and a half years,” Tyler said.

  Lexi punched him in the shoulder. “You shouldn’t joke about this.”

  Tyler laughed, and his ribs protested. He would need to ice them, too. “You’re probably right.”

  “I know you feel bad about what happened to the girl with the Porsche, but it’s time you dropped this. These guys are serious.”

  “I don’t think I can.” Tyler put up a hand to cut off Lexi’s objection. “This isn’t me being unable to let something go. Well . . . not entirely. Before they left, the guy who kicked my ass took my picture.”

  “So?” Lexi said. “They knew where you worked already.”

  “Sure, but they might not have known my name. I was the guy at Smitty’s who didn’t want to give the Boxster back to Rodolfo. Pretty soon, I think they’ll know all about me.”

  “And me,” Lexi added.

  “We should presume they’re smart and resourceful,” Tyler said. “The military underestimated the Taliban years ago. I’ve tried to avoid making the same mistake since.”

  Lexi tucked her knees under her. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to figure it out. It starts with more intel, though. I’ll need your help.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Get the laptop. We might as well not waste any time.”

  “All right, Dad.” Lexi sat with the computer on her lap. “How are we doing this?”

  Tyler took the bag of ice from his face and flexed his jaw. It felt a little better. He’d want soup for dinner at this rate, but there wouldn’t be any lasting damage. “It was two guys I’d never seen before plus the massive fellow who came in with Rodolfo.” Tyler played the end of the encounter in his mind. The alarm went off. He got battered to the floor. The massive man took his picture. One of the guys called him by a name . . . Orlan. “See if you can find anything about the name Orlan in relation to Rodolfo or Héctor.”

  She tapped the keys and worked the trackpad. Tyler smiled as he watched her. He’d first asked for her help on something a few months ago. Lexi never used any program on the laptop before then, and she took to it almost right away. She’d gotten a lot better in the intervening time. “I have a hit on an Orlan Osorio.” She frowned at the screen and pivoted the device toward Tyler. “Tell me you weren’t fighting this guy.”

  The face of Tyler’s adversary stared back at him, and a picture showing the man’s fearsome size displayed alongside it. “Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill,” Tyler said.

  “Not when youth and skill is twice as big!”

  “I’m alive, aren’t I?”

  “Because Smitty pulled the fire alarm,” Lexi said. A deep frown marred her face. “I can’t lose you, Dad. Even if Mom weren’t in jail, I couldn’t, but I definitely can’t right now.”

  “This asshole isn’t going to kill me, Lexi.” Tyler flexed his jaw again and rubbed the right side of his face. “He might give me some bruises, but I’ve been through worse. What does the computer say about him?”

  Her eyes scanned the screen. “He’s committed just about every crime there is. He went into the Mexican Army when he was twenty-one. It doesn’t say, but based on what he did in the years before, it probably wasn’t his choice.”

  “Not surprising if it’s true,” Tyler said. “He mentioned he wasn’t in for long.”

  She shook her head. “Two years. All it says here is he was discharged early. It shows he went back to doing the same stuff as before. Robbery, assault, attempted murder. In and out of jail. During all this, he got hired by Héctor Espinoza as a bodyguard. From then on, he never spent a day in jail again even though the charges didn’t stop.”

  “He enjoyed the protection of the cartel,” Tyler said, “and the threat of its lawyers and guns.”

  “Both Orlan and Héctor were in Mexico until about eighteen months ago,” Lexi continued. “Héctor invested in some fancy development in Harford County.”

  “Talbot Lakes.”

  “There’s no job listed for Orlan once he comes to the States.”

  “He’s still Héctor’s goon,” Tyler said.

  “So now what?” Lexi asked.

  “These guys still killed a young woman for no reason,” Tyler said. “We’re still going to make them pay. Only we’re going to be smarter about it.”

  Héctor glared at the face of the mystery man on his computer monitor. He grimaced as if in pain, which made sense after even a brief confrontation with
Orlan. Héctor had to give the guy credit for still being conscious. “What do we know about him?”

  “He’s the one who didn’t want to give me the car,” Rodolfo said. “Cabrón.”

  Leave it to Rodolfo to point out the obvious. Héctor rolled his eyes. “This is what started his interest in us,” he said as diplomatically as he could. “I’m looking for more.”

  “He’s a mechanic,” Rodolfo said. “Looks kind of old, too. At least fifty.”

  “He said he was a soldier,” Orlan added in a quiet voice. He didn’t speak often—and even more rarely at significant volume—but he usually provided good insight. He was a giant thug when Héctor first met him. Now, he could contribute more than mere muscle to the cartel’s operation.

  “This is what I’m talking about.” Héctor pointed at the image on the large monitor. “You can see it in the hair. A lot of American soldiers keep their hair short.” He looked at the eyes and almost flinched. In his years in the cartel, Héctor came across a lot of killers. This man had the same look in his eyes even when losing a fight to Orlan as he did in the first photo Héctor saw of him. “Who is he?”

  “I’m running a reverse image search,” Fernando Mora said. Héctor recruited him after relocating to Maryland. He wasn’t much in a gunfight, but the young man earned his keep behind the keyboard. A smaller image replaced the larger one on the screen, and some text stood beside it. “His name is John Tyler, retired warrant officer. Twenty-four years in, and a bunch of them were in US Special Forces. He’s been retired about eight and a half years now.” Fernando’s fingers flew over the keys. “He’s been at the car shop for four months. Before then, he worked for a private security company.”

  “Now, we know about him,” Rodolfo said. “Let’s get him.”

  Héctor closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “One of these years, you’ll learn to control your impulses, cousin. Maybe it will even be this year. Have you been listening? This man is dangerous. We can’t take him lightly.”

  “Give me another shot at him,” Orlan said.

  “In time, maybe,” Héctor said. “Fernando, what else can you tell me?”

  “His mother is deceased. Father lives in some kind of . . . retirement community, I guess. He has a daughter in her first year at Maryland.” The image of a pretty young woman replaced Tyler’s. She had brown hair pulled into a ponytail, deep brown eyes, and a classically beautiful face.

  “She doesn’t get her looks from her father,” Héctor said.

  Rodolfo now stood next to his cousin. “Let’s kidnap her.” He slapped an invisible butt in front of himself and moved his hips back and forth. “Have some fun with her before the old man comes looking for her.”

  “Get out.” Héctor thrust his finger toward the door. “You can wait for us in the kitchen. Do the dishes while you’re in there.”

  “But—“

  “Out!”

  Rodolfo looked to everyone else in the room. He must have seen no support coming, because he frowned and exited the office, slamming the door as he left. “We’re all adults now,” Héctor said. “Fernando, continue.”

  “Not much else to tell,” he said, “at least not with information I can easily find. You want me to break into the army’s network?”

  Héctor shook his head. “It’s attention we don’t want or need.”

  “Let me beat him to death,” Orlan said. “He won’t have a fire alarm to save him.”

  “In time, you may get your wish.” Héctor held up a hand to placate his large friend. “This is not just any enemy, however. We can’t go after him with just any plan.”

  14

  Tyler waited well past nightfall. He left Lexi in the house with a bunch of weapons and got to work. In one of his more paranoid episodes a few years ago, Tyler bought a bunch of security cameras. He’d never used them—the painting therapy took the edge off the worst of his PTSD—but he’d also never gotten rid of them. Now, he planned to use them to keep an eye on the cartel if they sent anyone to his house.

  At the first streetlight near his home, Tyler set up a short ladder. He climbed, drilled into the metal a couple feet below the bulb, and mounted the camera. It would capture any vehicles approaching. This was the easy part of the operation. The next part would be more delicate and challenging. The cameras normally ran on USB power. Tyler spliced a USB cable onto a more traditional power wire for each device he planned to install.

  He stepped down from the ladder and unscrewed a panel at the bottom of the pole. Simple wiring. The city wouldn’t use anything complicated. They’d want the installation and maintenance to be as easy and budget-friendly as possible. Tyler appropriated a couple of the wires and tied his own into them. He finished the connection with a couple of wire nuts and replaced the panel. In theory, this should work. The street light looked a little dimmer.

  Tyler got back up on the ladder. A tiny red light glowed on his camera. He called Lexi, who did the wireless setup back in the house before he came out. “We on the air?”

  “Ask whoever’s on camera to get down,” Lexi said. “Maybe someone better looking is nearby.”

  “You’re stuck with this guy, I’m afraid. Glad it works. Thanks, kiddo.”

  “Sure, Dad,” she said. Tyler hung up and carried his equipment about two hundred feet farther down the street. This would be just before the lone bend, and a device here would capture anyone who recently turned onto the road. Tyler mounted this camera just like the first one. When he’d taken the panel at the bottom off, he heard someone approaching behind him. Tyler’s hand went around the grip of his Sig.

  “Didn’t know you worked for city maintenance now,” a kind voice said. Tyler turned to see Mister Thompson watching his handiwork. He was a retired black man in his seventies and a bit of a nosy neighbor but very nice. His hair had been white since Tyler moved in and probably years before.

  “Kind of late to be out, isn’t it?” Tyler said with a grin.

  “I ain’t the one climbing a light pole.”

  “I set up a camera.” Tyler pointed to the device, and the older man’s eyes followed. “One farther up, too, closer to my house. There could be some bad men rolling through here in the coming days.”

  “Who’d you piss off this time?” Thompson asked.

  “A bunch of drug runners. It’s a long story, but I’m pretty sure they know who I am now. Only a matter of time before they know the rest.”

  “What are you going to do if they show up?”

  “Kill them,” Tyler said.

  The elderly man frowned. “Won’t they send more?”

  “I have a lot more bullets than they have men,” Tyler said.

  “I don’t doubt you. Anything I can do?”

  “Nice of you to ask, but I don’t think so.” Tyler paused. “Maybe one thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “If I’m the one doing the shooting,” he said, “don’t call the cops. It’d be nice if you could spread the word while you’re gossiping with the neighbors.”

  “Who, me?” Thompson smiled and walked back toward his house.

  With Lexi’s help, Tyler set up alerts in the app the security cameras used. Any person or large object moving past the first camera would send an email to both of them. The same happening at the second camera would send two texts ten seconds apart. Tyler’s house was one of three near the end of the street. Someone driving past the second checkpoint wouldn’t necessarily be coming to his place, but he found the odds of a false positive acceptable.

  Between lingering soreness and wondering if the cartel would send a battalion to his home in the night, Tyler slept fitfully. He finally got out of bed just after 0500. The smell of coffee lured Lexi downstairs, too. She yawned as she poured herself a hot mug. “You’re up early,” she said as she stirred her java.

  “I’m not the only one.”

  “What are you going to do today?”

  “Not much point in sitting around here,” Tyler said. “They’re eith
er coming or not. I don’t want to leave you here alone, though.”

  Lexi pointed at Tyler and dropped her thumb as if shooting him. “I’m at least as good a shot as you.”

  “Maybe.” Tyler dropped two slices of bread in the toaster. “We don’t know how many guys they might send. You might be a heck of a shot, but you don’t have experience in these situations. I’d rather you not earn it this way.”

  Lexi frowned like Tyler knew she would. His daughter was smart and practical. She inherited the former from both her parents and the latter from her father. She would see he made sense. “All right,” she said after a few seconds. “The college has some satellite offices set up. I’ll go to one of them for the day.”

  “Good. I’ll let you know when I’m coming home.” They both ate breakfast and left soon after. Lexi drove the Tesla, and Tyler took her Accord coupe. He left the 442 parked conspicuously in the driveway. If the cartel came by, let them fire bullets into an empty house. Tyler arrived at Smitty’s before his usual time.

  “You’re early,” his boss said, peering into the parking lot, “and I didn’t hear you coming from a block away this time.”

  “Changing things up today,” Tyler said as he poured himself a cup of coffee. Smitty didn’t make it as well as Tyler did, but caffeine was caffeine. He debated how much to tell the older man. Recent events introduced some strain into their normally pleasant working relationship. “The big oaf who kicked me around yesterday took my picture before they all ran out. I’m pretty sure they know who I am now.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t think they’ll come back here,” Tyler said. “They can go after me at home. I’ve . . . taken some precautions there.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right.” Smitty stood and headed toward the service bays. “We have some work to catch up on.”

  Tyler finished his coffee and joined his boss. He quickly realized it would not be a good day. When Smitty dropped a wrench, Tyler nearly jumped out of his skin. A high-revving motorcycle speeding by produced a similar reaction. Tyler positioned himself with the bay doors to one side and the shop to the other. He could see all the exits. No one could come or go without him noticing. A short while later, another tool clanged off the floor, and Tyler bumped his head on the tire of the Mustang he’d never finished working on.