by Nick Thacker
After thirty seconds of complete silence, he hung up the phone, threw it against the wall again with the hardest sidearm throw he’d ever mustered, and felt just an ounce of satisfaction as it shattered into a few pieces on the carpet.
18
VLADIVOSTOK WAS COLD. AND IT felt wetter, which made it feel even colder. Gareth didn’t like the place, and he’d been here all of five minutes.
After their long drive to Yakutsk, they took a small plane — again, one funded by Roderick’s employer — to Vladivostok. They’d landed and taxied directly to the private hangar, and no sooner had they stopped than Roderick was up and ready to disembark.
Gareth’s boots hit the snowy ground outside the hangar five minutes after they’d landed, and from that point, looking into the small airport’s commercial traffic and terminals, was when he’d made his first initial assessment of the city.
It wasn’t fair, sure, but first impressions were hard to ignore. The sky was pale, a ghostly gray that revealed nothing of what could be hidden inside it, and the tarmac, buildings, and even planes seemed to match.
A gray hell, he thought. And we haven’t even been here long enough to see another person.
“Red,” Roderick said, his accent causing the word to be hardly recognizable. “This way.”
Gareth turned and walked back into the hangar, then through a door that led to the outside once again, on the opposite side of the building. This time he was staring at a long, flat expanse of grass and weeds, a few bushes and trees dotting the periphery. The runways ran up and down to his right, while a large highway connecting the airport to the city in the south. The highway was full, traffic running quickly in both direction, and for the first time in nearly a week Gareth felt like he was back in civilization.
“There is a car waiting for us here,” Roderick said, motioning to a small lot situation behind the hangar. Gareth followed him and was surprised to find a Chrysler 300, black, waiting for them.
“Nice ride,” Gareth said, walking toward it while carrying his rucksack. “Bit of a step up from the truck.”
“This would have fared worse than that little truck on those roads,” Roderick said, “but I am not complaining.”
He walked toward the driver seat, so Gareth took the hint and made his way around to the passenger side, got in, and immediately began adjusting the seat. He was tall, an inch shorter than Roderick but still a large man. Thin, muscular, and athletic, Gareth was rarely physically intimidated by anyone he met. Roderick would have been no exception, except that the man was still an enigma to Gareth.
“You’re a weird guy, you know that?” Gareth asked. He’d never been one to shy away from confrontation, and he prided himself of his ability to be forthcoming. He liked to come right out and say it; social cues be damned. It wasn’t as successful a strategy in the military as he might have hoped, but it was still in his nature.
And this wasn’t a military mission.
Roderick flicked his gaze over to Gareth as he started the engine, the smooth luxury sedan purring with ease after a single crank. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Look at you, man,” Gareth said. “You’re a big guy — built well, tall. Hell, I’d even say good-looking. What are you doing hanging out with me in the middle of nowhere, traipsing around looking for a fight.”
Roderick shrugged. “My job.”
“Right — how did you come to get this job?”
“I am private security for the bank.”
“Well I figured that much out, genius,” Gareth said. “But why? You were special forces, weren’t you?”
Roderick didn’t answer, then he slowly nodded. “Yes. For some time. Not anymore.”
“Why?”
“I quit.”
“Again, I got that much. I’m looking for, you know, details. Care to share, my friend?”
“I do not.”
“Okay, fine. But considering we keep bumping into each other like this — you’re my flight attendant, then my chauffeur, then my sidekick, now my —”
“I am no man’s sidekick.”
“Okay, fair enough. My point is that we’d probably work a lot better together if we just got to know each other, you know?”
“We know what we need to know about you, Mr. Red.”
“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Roderick didn’t offer a response, and Gareth got the impression that he didn’t want any further questions.
Which only made Gareth want to ask further questions.
“You said you were from Uzbekistan.”
“Correct.”
“Great. That sounds…” Gareth wasn’t sure what to say. He was a history buff, loving every aspect of studying past civilizations and prying out their secrets and hard-won life lessons, but he wasn’t much of a geography guy. “That country’s land-locked, right?”
“Land-locked?”
“Surrounded by only other countries.”
“Ah, yes. It is.”
“And… is it… nice there?”
Roderick looked at him strangely. “Americans do not spend much time learning about the rest of the world, do they?”
Gareth shrugged. “Guess not. Sorry. So how long did you live there?”
“Until I was old enough to get out.”
“Okay… that’s… getting somewhere. And then you joined the military? Which one?”
“I was special forces, yes. But I am not head of security —”
“At the bank, yeah got it,” Gareth said. “You mentioned that one already.” He sighed. I’m getting nowhere with this guy.
He had no real interest in Roderick’s past, or really anything else about him, except from a professional standpoint. He — and just about everyone else he’d ever worked with — worked better when he knew his teammates. If he could understand them on their level, where they were coming from, what their life experience had been like, he figured it could only solidify their working relationship.
And this wasn’t just any working relationship. The bank, Roderick’s employer, had specifically chosen the two of them to seek out and destroy whomever it was killing their clients, and to find out why she was doing it. He had no doubt it was about money — all those assets dumped into an account that no one was touching at the moment — but for Gareth it was all much simpler than that.
He needed to know what made Roderick tick, and he needed to at least understand what sorts of things set the man off. Was he a fast-and-loose kind of guy? More of a James Bond, preferring to work solo? Or was he a great partner, ready to back him up in any situation?
Gareth wanted to discover just a little about the man he’d shared rides with for five days, but the man wasn’t offering much help.
Oh well, Gareth thought. I’m tired of the silence anyway. I’ll just make small talk until he tells me to shut up.
“So Vladivostok. Seems like a dingy, tired, waste of —”
“I have a favorite uncle who lives here.”
“An amazing city,” Gareth finished. “Great place, I’m sure. Where are we going first? The in-flight meals never do fill me up.”
“We are going to the client’s office.”
“Now?” Gareth asked. Roderick had pulled into the far lane and sped up, and thanks to the far larger and stronger engine in the Chrysler, they were traveling dangerously fast. Gareth wondered about Russian traffic cops.
And Russian prisons.
As fast as he liked to drive, however, Roderick was a great driver. He was never surprised by another vehicle on the road, and he kept the car in full control the entire time, changing lanes using his blinker and giving himself plenty of time to pass other cars and trucks on the road. He seemed to be a steady, practiced hand behind the wheel, and thanks to the handling of the sedan, the ride had so far progressed smoothly. Gareth couldn’t hear any of the road noise, either, even though they were whizzing by the rest of the traffic at over 100 MPH.
“Yes, now,” Roderick said. “You sai
d it yourself: we could have caught up with the shooter and possibly prevented her attack. Now we have the ability to do just that. We flew here on a private jet, and now we have a fast car to get us the rest of the way. Unless she is just as equipped, we will beat her there.”
Gareth nodded along. “I’m glad we have the chance to get a jump on her, but I’m still starving. Can’t we take advantage of our lead and at least swing in to a Taco Bell or something?”
Roderick frowned.
“Sorry — it’s like… good road trip food.”
“There is no ‘Taco Bell’ here.”
Gareth was about to protest — if Roderick didn’t even know what the restaurant was, how could he know if they existed in Russia? — but before he could open his mouth again, Roderick spoke.
“There is a cooler behind your seat. It has food.”
“No shit? You’re just now telling me this?”
Gareth risked removing his seatbelt while barreling down the highway at breakneck speeds and twisted around, finding the small cooler smashed between his seat and the back.
Inside he found a few cans of soda, bottles of water, and piles of snack foods. Most seemed like Russian knockoffs of American cookies and chips, but Gareth knew it could just as easily be the other way around.
Between the drinks and the snacks sat two brown bags, filled with sandwiches of some sort. “Want anything?” Gareth asked.
“Yes,” Roderick said.
Gareth waited for the man to expand, to clarify what exactly he wanted, but once again he remained silent. He shrugged, grabbed two cans of soda — something diet and something he assumed was like Coke — and four of the sandwiches.
Roderick nodded in thanks as he drove the vehicle with one hand, still maintaining the ridiculous speed. Gareth watched in fascination as the man coolly unwrapped the sandwich, crammed half of it into his mouth, and then finished the rest of it with a second bite, all while keeping his eyes on the road and passing three slower vehicles.
Gareth shook his head. And I thought I was hungry. He took reasonable bites out his sandwich — some sort of delicious deli meat with mustard and sauerkraut— knowing that there was plenty more if he was hungry later.
“How long until we’re there?” he asked through a mouthful of food.
“Ten minutes, maybe less.”
“Great. What’s the plan?” Gareth asked. “Storm the castle?”
Roderick frowned.
“Figure of speech — run in, guns blazing? Or like last time, walk in and scope things out nicely first?”
He secretly hoped they would just rush in, tackle whomever this client was, and extract him or her to safety before their killer arrived.
“We move quickly, but we go in silent. Just like last time — no ‘guns blazing’ or ‘storming the castle.’”
That tells me a little about him, then, Gareth thought. Efficient. Careful. Interested in completing the task at hand with as little complication as possible. I can work with that.
“Got it. And who’s the client this time?”
Roderick was about to answer when his cellphone rang. He put the second sandwich down and picked up the smartphone from the cup holder and answered.
“Yes. He is with me.”
Gareth couldn’t hear the speaker on the other end, but he assumed it was the bank lady.
“Yes. We are aware. I apologize for our not —” he paused, then nodded. “Thank you. We were minutes late, I am afraid, but it will not happen —”
This time he stopped mid-sentence and glanced over at Gareth.
Gareth raised an eyebrow. That’s not good.
“Are you sure?”
Gareth saw Roderick’s hand grip the steering wheel tighter, his nostrils flare.
“Understood. Correct, we are ten minutes out.”
Roderick clenched and unclenched his jaw, then slowly applied the brakes.
“What’s up, Rod?” Gareth asked. The man was still listening intently, but his entire demeanor had changed. He listened for a few more seconds, then hung up the phone without saying another word. He tossed the phone back into the cup holder, a bit more violently this time.
“We are going the wrong direction,” he said.
“What? How? I thought you knew —”
“I did know where this client was. The third on the list. Vladivostok, just as I said.”
“Then what’s the deal?”
“It was the wrong client?”
“Why?” Gareth asked, thoroughly confused. “What happened? Was that your boss?”
Roderick nodded. “Yes. She said it was the wrong client because another client — number six on the list — has just been found dead.”
Number six? “I thought she was working in order, going down the list?”
“We thought so too,” Roderick said, exiting the highway. He turned and faced Gareth full-on in the car. “We thought she was following the list in order of how large their deposits were. But we were wrong.”
“Maybe this place — the client that was just found dead — was closer to the previous one? Less of a haul, knock out two birds with one stone, that sort of thing.”
Roderick shook his head. “This dead client is also here, just outside Vladivostok, about twenty minutes the opposite direction from the airport. We could have been there, but…”
He trailed off and Gareth didn’t need him to finish. We failed.
Again.
He had many questions, but there was one pressing harder into his conscious than any other. He turned to face Roderick. “Then why are we turning around? I hate to be morbid, but if the client’s already dead, shouldn’t we focus on the client that’s not dead yet?”
Roderick nodded. “There is one more client of ours in the area outside Vladivostok. Three total, and this client was number five on the list.”
“What makes you think we should visit number five, then. And why not number four, like we were going to?”
“My boss told us to see five first.”
“But why? How does she —”
“Because client number six was not dead when she was found. She was on the floor, bleeding from a wound to her head, but she was, unfortunately for her, still lucid when her husband found her. She whispered something to him, then she died. Her husband called the bank, and spoke directly with my boss.”
Gareth was wide-eyed. “What did she whisper?”
“A man’s name.”
“I’m guessing it was —”
“Yes. She whispered the man’s name who is number five on our list.”
19
GARETH PINCHED THE TOP OF his nose, the area his doctor, long ago, had told him would help reduce stress. That, rubbing his temples, and squeezing and massaging the skin between his index finger and thumb were all supposed to be great places for ‘relieving stress and anxiety.’
He wasn’t a doctor, but he had a feeling most of these ‘cures’ were really a combination of forcing the user to take his or her mind off the real issue — crippling anxiety, severe stress, emotional discomfort — and tricking the brain into thinking the body was relaxed, forcing the brain to release its grip on whatever was ailing it.
So he wasn’t sure if it was all a placebo or if there was real scientific evidence to back it up, but he had developed the habit during his sessions of behavioral therapy and never fully been able to kick it.
He focused in on the motion now, trying to sense whether or not he felt relaxed.
Nope.
He was stressed. He was angry.
And he was still hungry.
“I don’t understand,” Gareth said. “Why would she move to another target, go in a different order?”
“Perhaps she saw us back there, and she now intends to throw us off?” Roderick replied.
They were heading back the direction they’d come from, toward the airport. Roderick had Gareth navigating, using the address he’d given him on his own smartphone. The route was more or less a straight shot,
up the highway, off an exit north of the airport and city, and a quick meandering route on a smaller highway that followed the waterline.
The application told him they would arrive in thirty-nine minutes.
This girl has to take a break at some point, he thought. Right?
If they could get in front of her, move to her next target before she arrived, they could stop all of this. But Gareth knew that would require two things: that she take a break from killing through her list, and that they could successfully determine who was next on the list.
The problem was he didn’t know when she would need a break — so far, Gareth and Roderick hadn’t stopped, but there were two of them. They could take turns sleeping while the other drove.
Gareth didn’t suspect that she was working with someone else, but it was a possibility.
He shook his head. “No,” Gareth said. “The way she’s operating, this is all planned out, and it’s been planned out well. She’s been moving fast — faster than us, of course — and I don’t think she’d be able to change things up this quickly and still keep ahead of us.”
“So what are you saying?” Roderick asked.
Gareth tried rubbing his temples for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m thinking out loud, but there must be something else. Something important we’re not realizing.”
“Like what?”
“You tell me, Roderick,” Gareth said. “I’m not the one withholding information, remember?”
Roderick shot him a glance as he eased the large luxury car up and onto the top section of a split highway. “What do you mean by that? What am I ‘withholding?’”
“Well if I knew what it was, it wouldn’t be withholding, would it?” Gareth snapped.
Roderick didn’t respond.
“Look,” Gareth said. “You either trust me or you don’t. I get that you won’t give me any details about your personal life — that’s your business. But if we’re in this together — and I’ve got a one-million-dollar letter that says we are — I want to know more about this list.”
“The list?”
“The list. What is it, where is it, and when can I see it?”
Roderick picked up his phone. “Mr. Red, if I thought there was anything more to glean from our list, I would have shown it to you immediately. I am not trying to withhold anything.” He flicked through the phone’s screen with one thumb, expertly driving with his other hand.