Death Minus Zero

by Don Pendleton

  Riba saw the guy’s pistol fly from his hands, bouncing as it hit the floor and slid across the smooth wood. He lowered his Colt, surveying the scene. Almost as an afterthought, he flipped open the loading gate and methodically worked the empty brass shell casings out of the cylinder before reaching into his jacket pocket for fresh cartridges and reloading. It was reflex action, based on a rule he always followed that made him reload after using his gun the moment he had the chance. It was a piece of advice he had learned early: never pass up the chance to reload. It was akin to the military rule of always catching sleep and always eating between actions—simple rules, but important, when a man’s life depended on his being alert at all times.

  A wreath of smoke hovered in the air. Riba walked forward into the room, stepping up to the bodies. He picked up the discarded pistols and placed them out of reach before he crouched to check their pockets. Neither man carried any backup weapons. He found wallets and cell phones. He examined the wallets and found driver’s licenses that identified both men. They were also carrying substantial cash amounts—too much for casual needs. The cell phones gave him a list of addresses and a number both men had called a lot.

  Riba made his way outside by the main door, glad to be out of the room that smelled of gun smoke and the aftermath of violent death. He took out his cell and speed dialed the number for Valens. When she answered, he gave her an update.

  “You hurt?”

  “No. But there are two dead guys who tried to shoot me when I caught them going through Saul’s belongings. And one very alive man tied up outside.” Riba paused briefly. “And I found a body out by the back door. Elderly guy. Looks like a local. Working guy. Somebody cut his throat, Valens. Damn it, they didn’t need to kill him. This was a little more than I expected. These people play rough.”

  “Maybe your dead handyman just walked in on them, Josh. I agree, they’re setting the bar really low. But it’s interesting someone is ready to go through Saul’s home,” Valens said. “Maybe they were expecting he had Zero technical data there.

  “Josh, will you wait around until help arrives? Give me time and I’ll have backup come to you. You can hand him over and let them work the scene. You may have to answer some questions but I’ll make sure you’re not given too much hassle.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Riba said. “Any news about Saul?”

  “Afraid not, but there’s certainly something in the wind, Josh. And thank you for your help.”

  Riba put away his cell. He went back inside and located a blanket he could cover the old man with. Then he went to collect the guy he’d left by the SUV. He took a lock knife from his pants’ pocket, snapped it open and cut the tie around the guy’s ankles and took off the gag.

  “What in hell went on in there?”

  “Your friends left a dead man on the back step,” Riba said. “So when we came face-to-face, we danced around and they decided to sit the rest of their lives out.”

  “Jesus, you killed them both?”

  “Now, things started to get rough. Your buddies weren’t about to give in. They wanted me dead, too. Only that wasn’t going to happen.”

  Riba took the guy inside through the front door. When he saw the bodies, the man tried to break away. Riba tightened his grip on the guy’s arm. He led him through to the kitchen and sat him on one the chairs at the table.

  Riba found the makings and set a pot of coffee on to brew. He sat facing the man across the table. “Look over there,” he said, indicating the blanket-covered form.

  The man glanced at the body. Looked away just as quickly.

  “This is the big one,” Riba said. “You’re in it up to your neck. I’m guessing that old man out there caught your buddies at work.”

  “I never came inside.”

  “Something like this, you all go down.”

  “That guy wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “If he could speak, I’m sure he’d agree with you. But he’s still dead. A wrongful death, I think it’s called.” Riba said. “What do I call you?”

  “Lloyd.”

  “That’s a start.”

  The guy stared at Riba and then glanced through into the other room at his dead partners.

  “The hell with this,” he said. “I don’t have to talk to you. Damned if you’re even a real lawman.”

  “True. But right now I could shoot you and that would be an end to it all.”

  “Yeah?”

  Riba stood, drew the Colt, cocked and fired the .45 slug, clipping the man’s left sleeve. It was close enough to burn his skin.

  “What the hell? You crazy Indian...”

  Riba eased back the hammer and moved the Colt’s muzzle.

  “Crazy? Maybe so. Keep thinking that way, Lloyd. So what were you looking for? Easy question. Even for a dumb ass like you.”

  “Hey, I got rights.”

  “Please don’t start that crap with me. I get a bellyful of that from the likes of you. Every time it doesn’t go your way, out comes the human rights garbage. You boys should think about that before you go out and commit crimes.”

  “I can ask for a lawyer.”

  Riba had to smile that time. “Sure you can, but, hey, I don’t see any shingles hanging on tree branches out here. Figure it, Lloyd. We’re a long way from home. Just you and me. So pucker up and stop doing the shuffle. Think about it—this is where the rule book gets forgotten.”

  Riba put the Colt away and crossed to where the coffeepot was steaming. He poured two mugs, set them on the table. Moving behind Lloyd, he cut the tie around the man’s wrists.

  “Go ahead,” he said, picking up one of the mugs.

  “First you shoot me. Now you make me coffee,” Lloyd said.

  “Maybe I don’t like drinking on my own.”

  They drank in silence. Lloyd’s eyes moved back and forth, and Riba knew he was assessing his chances. He let his right hand rest on the wood grips of the holstered revolver.

  “Let’s start with the easy questions,” Riba said. “Like who hired you?”

  “You really think I’m going to tell you?”

  “Lloyd, all I’m doing is trying to get something to keep the people on their way here happy. If they decide you’re not being cooperative...well, you know how these federal agents are. Face it, Lloyd, this is way beyond a simple burglary. It’s downright murder. A capital offence. They could have you placed in one of those max-security federal lockups where you don’t get visitors or see even daylight. Life sentence with no parole. Unless you can talk your way through.”

  Riba drank his coffee and poured himself another.

  He caught a glimpse of Lloyd as he turned. The man was weighing the odds. With people like Lloyd, personal survival was paramount. He could rant and bluster, but in the end he wanted out of the mess he’d gotten himself into.

  “How do I know you ain’t just scamming me? Trying to scare me?”

  Riba shrugged. “Lloyd, you are entitled to be scared. This is the main event. You take the full rap for it. No skin off my nose. End of the day, I go home. You don’t. You got to ask yourself, Lloyd, ‘am I ready for this?’ It’s an easy option to figure.”

  Lloyd stared into his coffee mug. He knew he was caught. There was no way out.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Jesus, you talk a damn streak, Chief. I’ll bet one of your ancestors was a damn horse trader.”

  “Well, his name was Charriba. And he was an Apache, same as me. He exchanged shots with the US Army. Ran a game with them for years, him and his bunch of wild-ass ’Pache bucks. But he didn’t trade horses. He stole them from the cavalry.”

  “That figures.”

  “So you understand where I’m coming from, friend.” Riba jerked a thumb in the direction of the blanket-covered body. “You boys did a bad thing the
re. Nice guy comes to do his work. Walks in on you guys and gets himself killed for it.”

  * * *

  LLOYD PICKED UP his coffee and took a long swallow. He took another look around the lodge. At his dead buddies. At the body under the blanket. His mind weighed the odds. As the Indian said, he was in this on his own. His life on the edge. If the Apache took it into his mind, he could kill Lloyd and that would be an end to it.

  Lloyd had been on the thin edge of life since being a teenager. It had been better than working nine to five in some ass-wipe daily job, he’d figured then. He’d started by thieving. Then he moved up to join one of the local criminal groups. Early on Lloyd had proved his worth behind the wheel of a car, so that had become his skill. He’d had some hair-raising experiences burning rubber, but he’d always gotten away. Teaming up with Mace and Remy had been good. They had known each other for years, and the three of them forged a strong alliance.

  It suddenly hit Lloyd that his longtime buddies were dead. The Apache sitting across from him had wiped them out. Just like that. The thought made Lloyd feel sick. His coffee lost its appeal and he put the mug down and pushed it away. Life had changed completely. His partners were gone and he was facing jail time. Big jail time. The prospect filled him with a cold dread. He’d done a little local prison time, but this time it would be far worse. He’d heard the rumors about federal prisons and even if some of it was made up, the thought of ending up in one of them scared the hell out of Lloyd.

  He saw there was no way around this.

  The Apache had him dead to rights.

  They would be coming for him soon. The Apache would hand him over and Lloyd would be on his way to a new life.

  Some life.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The limousine had only just left the airfield when Xia Chan’s sat phone rang. He picked up and recognized the clipped tones of Jake Moretti. The American headed the mercenary group Chan had hired for the work in the States. From the tone of Moretti’s voice, he was not about to give Chan good news.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Moretti,” Chan said.

  One of Moretti’s saving graces was the fact that he spoke Cantonese; it was something he had learned during his service time in the East.

  “Things have not gone as planned, Colonel,” he said. “Our teams have been compromised.”

  “To what degree?”

  “Shot to hell. Dead men. Armaments seized by an American agency.”

  Chan fell silent as he digested the information. He absorbed what Moretti had said and quickly assessed what it meant in overall strategy. It was disturbing news, but not catastrophic. Hitting Zero Command would have been a helpful matter, because with the operating base damaged it would make what Chan needed to do that much easier. In truth, it had been a secondary part of the operation; a useful adjunct to the main effort, but not completely necessary.

  The fact remained that gaining control of Zero came down to extracting the correct information from Saul Kaplan. If that did not happen, taking the main control center off-line would not matter.

  “Moretti, regroup. Calculate your situation and then get back to me. Let us see if we can salvage something from this mess. Call me when you have done so.”

  “Will do, Colonel.”

  Chan ended the call and leaned back in the padded seat. Beside him Yang Zhou turned away from the window he had been staring out of.

  “Something has happened?”

  “Yes,” Chan said.

  Zhou listened to what Chan had to tell him.

  “To be expected,” he said. “You want my sympathy?”

  “Will I get it?”

  “Sympathy, no. But I am concerned.”

  “Your concern is noted,” Chan said.

  Zhou shrugged. “I was never in favor of you placing your trust in gweilos.”

  “We needed local people. The purpose was to get them close to Zero Command so they could inflict damage if the occasion arose. I understand that may be a moot point now, but a group of our people dressed in American Air Force uniforms would not have been helpful. And before you say more, Zhou, my operation with regard to attacking Zero has been put on hold for the present. We move on. We play our winning card. Saul Kaplan is still in our hands. The main objective of our plan. Or do you see flaws there, as well?”

  “I will reserve judgment on that,” Zhou said. “There is still a long way to go before we achieve success.”

  “What would I do without your optimistic disposition, my dear Yang?”

  Zhou gave a noncommittal grunt.

  As the limousine made its way along the winding road, Chan stared at the scenery.

  “Such a clean country,” he said. “Don’t you think so, Yang?”

  “I would rather be home.” He waved a dismissive hand at the Swiss scenery. “This is not Zhongguo. It is the land of the gweilo.”

  “Do I detect a touch of xenophobia, Yang?”

  “If you do, I will not apologize. These people are not our friends, Colonel. They do not trust us, as I do not trust them. They will tolerate us as long as we pay them, but their hearts are against us.”

  Chan saw he would never win against Zhou. The man was an isolationist. If Zhou ran the country, he would close borders and eject every foreigner from China. He would return to the old days when China held itself aloof from the rest of the world, content with its own destiny and removed from contact with outsiders.

  The man was a throwback, still dreaming of the days when the country lived by the rules of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The West had trivialized it by retitling it The Little Red Book, but the Chinese people had revered it. Not that they had much in the way of choice. In those years the overwhelming power from Beijing had held sway and the masses were bound to the strictures of ideology under the threat of reprisals. Over the years, with realization that the old ways were not exactly bringing about the rewards they promised, the ruling class had slackened the reins to a degree where foreign deals were struck and Chinese production was geared to making the merchandise the West wanted.

  Yang Zhou remained rigidly true to tradition. The West was his enemy. Never to be trusted. There to be taken advantage of whenever possible. In his blinkered view the West, for better or for worse, had to be overcome. If China could not create, then it would take. As with electrical goods and clothes, it could copy items and produce them in far greater quantities than the West.

  A prime example was the Zero technology. All of China’s efforts in the field had come to nothing. The admittedly amazing achievement by Saul Kaplan was looked on with pure envy. China needed the Zero capability and if stealing it was the only way forward, then that was how it would proceed.

  Chan envied Zhou’s simplistic approach, his black-and-white view of things. He just wished life could be as easy. Unfortunately that was not so. All Chan had to do was to look back at the phone call he had just received. The failure of the hard strike against Zero Command had been thwarted even before it actually got under way. He blocked off his negative thoughts. The matter, a secondary one in truth, was out of his hands now. His priority was Kaplan. He had the man en route to Switzerland and once Kaplan was safely delivered, the process of learning Zero’s secrets could begin.

  Chan was determined it would succeed. He had people waiting who were experts in extracting information from the most resistant minds. He did not doubt that Saul Kaplan would fight with every breath in his body to avoid giving up. The man may have been strong-willed, stubborn, but the skills of Chan’s team, plus the sophisticated drugs they could employ, would break any resistance. Saul Kaplan would eventually give away the data he carried in his brain. It was inevitable.

  He felt the limousine tilt as it negotiated the rising road leading to the mountain slopes. Another hour or so would bring him to the stronghold, where he would
be welcomed by the team flown in from China. They had been in place for almost a week, preparing themselves and their equipment for Kaplan’s eventual arrival.

  The program was ready. When Kaplan arrived, still under sedation, he would be installed in the room prepared for him and allowed to recover from the drugs he had been given. He would be allowed time to return to a healthy condition, would be given the opportunity to rest before any procedures were initiated. It was essential Kaplan was in good health before Chan’s specialist took over. If he was under par before the sessions began, results would be uneven, perhaps well below what was anticipated. So Kaplan would be allowed time to recover.

  Chan found himself smiling. Kaplan would realize that there was no rush. He would not be put under immediate pressure. There was no timetable that had to be followed. It would take however long it needed. Time was not an obstacle.

  However long it took.

  The Chinese were masters of patience.

  Experts at the waiting game.

  * * *

  THE LIMOUSINE NEGOTIATED the curved drive leading to the house—a large structure on two levels—and came to a gentle stop near the steps that led to the veranda. Two people stood waiting for Chan’s arrival.

  Dr. Luc Melier was a slender, thin-faced man with hair brushed straight back from his forehead. A recognized expert in his field, Melier was the one Chan would depend on to strip Kaplan of his knowledge. Melier was a mild, well-mannered man of good breeding and taste, and possessed a precise personality that allowed for no errors. Chan had past experience of Melier’s skills and was placing great faith in the man’s knowledge.

  Beside Melier was Major Chosan, dressed in a conventional Western suit complete with white shirt and a neat tie. In his thirties, Chosan was a close associate of Colonel Chan; Chan had put him in charge of security and overseeing matters that required a military mindset. Chosan had a manner that was directly opposite that of Dr. Melier. He was all about duty, with no regard for the niceties of life, but he was totally dedicated to Chan and respected his authority.