by Barry Eisler
Spoken like a true sniper, I thought. Waiting out a target was second nature for Dox. I think part of him even enjoyed it.
“All right,” I said, “we need to be in position before it gets light. Which means we have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. To start with, I want to get a firsthand look at her neighborhood. Discreetly. Maybe on a bicycle. I mean, who ever looks suspicious on a bicycle?”
Larison said, “What else?”
“A vehicle. Overall, the U-Haul truck is great cover. But if anyone witnesses the snatch, a U-Haul truck is going to be remembered, and looked for, like a giant neon sign. Even if we swap in some stolen plates, the truck itself will be radioactive.”
“That’s a good point,” Treven said. “Well, a panel truck would work. Could borrow one from a long-term parking lot. I doubt it would be missed until after it didn’t matter.”
“I’m thinking the same thing,” I said. “We park the truck somewhere nice and quiet, use the stolen panel truck for the snatch, and break the circuit by transferring Kei from one to the other. Let’s start walking this thing through.”
Dox popped a Red Bull and smiled. “Maybe I should have bought a few more of these.”
It was a long but productive night. One stolen GMC panel van; one stolen Ford Fusion; assorted items from a hardware store, a sporting goods place, a supermarket. Mapping out Kei’s neighborhood. Identifying the ideal spot for the snatch, and for the switch. Planning the op; positioning the vehicles. We’d slept for a few hours, gotten up while it was still dark, dispersed, and then regrouped near Kei’s house before sunup.
One problem from our perspective was that Selma Avenue, and La Baig, which led into it, permitted no parking on the street—not even any stopping, according to the signs. So if we parked the van anywhere near her house, we ran the risk of an annoyed neighbor coming out to talk to us or even calling the police. The good news was, there was a motel on the corner, a long, pink and blue, two-storied affair that stretched along the west side of La Baig for about two hundred feet starting at the corner of Sunset. We had parked the van there, on the side of the lot closest to Kei’s house, front end in, rear end facing La Baig. If Larison’s and Treven’s intel was sound, and Kei stuck to what we preliminarily assumed was her routine, we would be good to go. And if Horton’s guys were trying to identify trouble before it reached Kei, the first spot they’d check would be exactly where we’d parked the van.
Which is why three of us were watching it now: Larison, from between two parked cars in the driveway of a small apartment building across the street; Treven, from the dark stairwell in the center of the motel; and I, from a prone position on the balcony of the motel directly above the van. Dox was waiting in the stolen Fusion a few miles away. The chances of someone stumbling upon any of us at this hour were slim, but if it happened, Treven and Larison were dressed in the latest Nikes and Under Armour, just another couple of early morning L.A. fitness fanatics. I was less sportily attired, in jeans and a sweatshirt, and would have to be a drunk sleeping it off. Thin cover for action, but reasonable under the circumstances, and in all events better than nothing.
At just before sunup, as the first gray light crept into the sky, a dark Chevy Suburban pulled into the far end of the motel parking lot. I watched it from my perch and felt a warm surge of adrenaline spread through my torso. It was unusually early for anyone to be arriving at, or returning to, a motel. Nothing else at the motel, or in the surrounding neighborhood, had yet stirred.
The doors opened, but no interior light came on. Two big, clean-cut Caucasian men got out, both dressed casually in what looked in the dim light like jeans and bulky fleece jackets. They paused and looked around, then moved out, letting the doors click quietly closed behind them.
The earliness of the hour, the lack of an interior light, the quietly closed doors, the watchfulness…if these weren’t Horton’s men, they could only have been here to rob the motel. But thieves who moved as stealthily and professionally as these two typically have better uses for their talents than budget motels. They had to be here for us.
They moved silently along the row of parked cars, their heads swiveling, shining penlights into the interiors of the vehicles they passed. They swept their lights along the balcony of the motel’s second floor, too, but I saw the light coming my way and simply flattened myself against the ground beyond the angle of their vision.
They came to Treven’s position and checked the stairs, but I knew he would have melted away at their approach. I also knew he’d be back as soon as they had passed.
When they came to the van, they stopped. I knew what they were thinking. A panel van. Perfect for a snatch. And parked exactly where we would have parked it ourselves.
They shone their lights through the front windows and then tried the side doors, which we had locked.
Try the back door, I thought. You never know.
One of them stepped back, scanned, and took a notepad from one of the fleece pockets. He shone his light on the license plate and jotted down the number. Then he slipped the notepad back into his pocket and they circled to the rear of the van.
I was hoping they would give the door their simultaneous attention, but they were too good for that. One tried the door while the other one scanned behind them. I couldn’t see him, but I knew Larison would have moved out from concealment, up to the edge of the apartment building wall directly across the street. Either he or Treven could have shot them left-handed from this close, but we didn’t have suppressors, and couldn’t risk waking up the neighborhood with the sound of gunshots. Because of that, and because we had to assume they were armed, too, we had to be practically on top of them before they knew we were there if we were going to pull this off quietly.
One of them started to open the rear van door. The other was still watching behind them. Larison and Treven only needed a second, but they weren’t going to get it.
So I improvised. In ersatz sexual ecstasy, I moaned, “Oh, God, yes, don’t stop, don’t stop, fuck, yes, that’s so good, don’t stop…”
They both immediately oriented on the sudden disturbance. I knew the incongruity would cost them precious nanoseconds of processing time: they’d been attuned to a range of possible problems, including sounds of stealth and ambush. And now they were hearing sounds, but not ones they could quickly fit into the threat matrix through which they were approaching their current environment.
“Oh my God, yes!” I said. “Yes!”
For an instant, they were what-the-fuck paralyzed. Then they both reached inside their jackets.
Too late. Larison and Treven had already rushed up behind them, grabbed their gun arms, and jammed the muzzles of their own guns against the backs of their heads. I heard Larison say, “Freeze, or I’ll blow your brains through your face.” His voice had the kind of command authority that could stand down an attack dog.
I swung down off the balcony to the parking lot and circled around to the rear of the van. Before Horton’s men could overcome their surprise and make a tactical decision, I reached inside each of their jackets and extracted a suppressed Glock from a shoulder harness. Quiet enough, yes, but unfortunately for Horton’s men, a hell of a long draw.
I shoved one of the guns into my waistband and checked the load on the other. A round in the chamber, as expected, but it doesn’t hurt to be sure.
“Lean forward,” I told them. “Legs apart, knees straight, faces down, palms against the van. Or we’ll find out just how quiet these suppressers are.”
The threat was deliberate. I didn’t want them to count even a little on any hesitation we might have about the sound of gunshots.
They complied. I handed Larison the other suppressed pistol. He secured his own gun in his waistband and we covered the two of them while Treven searched for weapons. He came away with two folding knives, two mini-lights, two cell phones, two wallets, two notepads, and a set of car keys. He pocketed all of it, secured their wrists behind their backs with heavy pla
stic flex ties, opened the van doors, and got inside. The flex ties could be defeated by someone who knew what he was doing, but for now all we needed was to inhibit them and slow them down. Larison and I shoved them in, got in ourselves, pushed them face down onto the floor, and closed the doors behind us. Larison kept them covered while Treven moved to the driver’s seat. We’d punched peepholes in the van’s sides and back. I removed the duct tape covering them and looked through. Between Treven in front and the peepholes in back, we had three-hundred-sixty-degree coverage of the area around the van. So far, it seemed our brief interaction outside had attracted no attention.
One of Horton’s men said, “What are you going to do with us?”
Larison said, “The next one of you who talks without being asked a question first, I’m going to pistol whip.”
No one said anything after that. We watched the street for five minutes. It was getting lighter outside. Everything was quiet.
Treven stayed up front at the wheel, going through the items he’d taken from Horton’s men. I put the duct tape back in place over the peepholes and turned on the rear dome light. Larison and I sat Horton’s men up and pushed them back against the passenger-side wall, their legs splayed in front of them. I was going to ask them a few questions myself, but something about Larison’s body language—the confidence, and also the menace—made me realize he was going to handle it. And likely handle it well.
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” he said, placing the muzzle of the suppressed Glock first against one of their foreheads, and then against the other. “I’m going to ask you some questions. The first one who gives me useful, accurate information that tracks with what I already know, gets to live. Whoever loses the race to talk first gets an instant bullet in the head. That’s the game and there’s only one winner. You ready?”
The two men looked at him, then at each other. Sweat broke out on their foreheads. The inside of the van suddenly reeked of fear.
Larison pointed the ominously long suppressed barrel of the Glock at one, then the other. “Who sent you? Why? Where is he? How do we get to him? What else do you know? That’s it. Ready, set, go.”
Their eyes were bulging now and they were beginning to pant. They looked at Larison. They looked at each other. The one on the right shook his head, as though pleading or in disbelief. Suddenly, the one on the left turned his head and shouted, “Colonel Horton! To protect his daughter!”
The other guy screamed, “Shut the fuck up!” Larison instantly swung the pistol over. There was a crack about the loudness of someone snapping his fingers and the guy’s head smacked into the wall behind him. Then he lay suddenly slumped and still, a neat hole just above his left eye.
“Congratulations,” Larison said to the remaining guy. “You won the first round. But you have to keep going.”
“Jesus!” the guy spluttered. “Jesus Christ!”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Larison said. “I said, you have to keep going.”
The guy was starting to hyperventilate. “You’re just going to kill me, too!”
Larison shrugged. “Maybe not. Make me like you. Make me feel grateful to you. I’m as human as the next guy.”
“Oh, my God!” the guy wailed.
“Calm down,” Larison said. “I know it’s stressful. This is the most important moment of your life, and you don’t have much time. Because, and I think you know this now, I’m not very patient.”
“Horton…Horton sent us. What else do you want to know?”
“Who else did he send?”
“I don’t know of anyone else!”
“You sure?”
“Yes!”
“His name is Raymond Trent,” Treven called from the front. “North Carolina driver’s license. The dead guy was Carl Ryan. Virginia.”
“All right, Ray,” Larison said. “What’s your connection to Horton?”
Ray swallowed. “We freelance for him.”
“What does that mean?”
“We do…contract work.”
“You’re contractors?”
“Yes. No. I mean, we freelance. Sometimes Horton asks us to do things on the side. You know, moonlighting. Off the books.”
“What else has he had you do?”
“I don’t know, all kinds of stuff.”
Larison didn’t answer, and after a moment, Ray hurriedly went on. “Black bag work. Eavesdropping. Surveillance. Sometimes a hit.”
So far, Larison hadn’t elicited anything we hadn’t already assumed. But I was thinking about the four guys we’d dropped at the Capital Hilton. That was an important op for Horton, and we were no easy target, so I knew he would have cared enough to send only the very best. My sense was that Ray and Carl were backup, a B team. If they were pinch-hitting for the four dead guys here, where else would they have to step in? What else would Horton have in mind for them?
“What do you think?” I said to Larison. “Are you liking this guy? Feeling grateful for what he’s telling us?”
Larison kept his eyes on the guy and shook his head. “No.”
Ray said, “Look, I don’t want to die here, okay? This is just a job for me. I’m not trying to protect anyone. Just tell me what you want, I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“How long are you supposed to watch Kei?” I said.
“Horton told us probably a few days,” Ray said. “Until further notice. He paid for a week.”
“How long have you been out here?” I said.
“Horton called us four days ago. We flew in the next morning.”
That tracked with when we took out the team at the Hilton. Horton must have gotten paranoid—though obviously not without reason—and called on these guys just in case one of us learned about his daughter and decided to make a run at her.
“Did he mention any other travel?” I said. “Any other assignments?”
“No. He just asked us to keep our schedules open—to let him know if anything was going to tie us up in the next couple weeks so he could have first dibs.”
If that was true, it meant Horton was planning something else, or was at least planning for a contingency. But that was neither surprising, nor particularly useful.
“Nothing else?” I said.
“No.”
I decided to try for a long shot. “Nothing about schools?”
He looked genuinely puzzled by that. “Schools?”
I was disappointed, though not surprised. After all, it wasn’t likely Horton would have shared anything operational with these two beyond what was immediately necessary. But Kanezaki had said there was chatter about possible school attacks. And Treven and I had been speculating about the same thing.
Larison said, “Tell me how to get to Hort.”
“Get to him? I couldn’t get to him myself. But wait…wait. Maybe I can help you think of something. I mean, he lives in the Washington area, I think. I could call him, on a pretext, tell him—”
He was just blathering now. Scheherazade, without even a story to tell. “—that I need to meet with him in person, something like that. Flush him out for you.”
“I don’t think he knows anything,” I said to Larison. “There’s no real reason to think he would.”
Larison nodded. “I agree.”
Ray said, “Look, I’m really trying to help you. I really am.”
Larison said, “I believe you,” and shot him in the forehead. Ray’s head snapped back, then his body sagged and he slumped over against his partner.
“Maybe we’ll get something from the phones,” Treven said from up front.
“I doubt it,” I said.
Larison took Ray’s body by the collar and dragged it forward, away from the rear and side sliding doors. “If we grab Kei, it’ll all be academic,” he said. “But it’s nice that Hort keeps losing guys like this. At some point, he’s going to get short on volunteers.”
I hauled the other one forward and we covered them with a tarp. We could reveal them to Kei as circumst
ances warranted, but I wanted to have the option. No sense freaking her out without a reason.
I didn’t mind that the two of them were dead. If Larison hadn’t been so quick to do it, I would have taken care of it myself. They were certainly here to do the same to us. Besides, as Larison had observed, it was two fewer pieces on the opposition side of the board.
But I’d have to watch him with Kei. Dox had been right. It wasn’t just that he was professional to the point of ruthlessness. There was something beyond that, something that made me wonder if he took not just pride in his work, but also a little too much pleasure.
I watched La Baig, in full daylight now, from the passenger-side peephole in the van. Larison had headed out around the corner to a small commercial parking lot on Harold Way, where he’d do some light stretches and calisthenics like someone warming up for a run or doing one of the WODs he and Dox seemed enamored of. I estimated we’d have at least a full minute from when Kei first appeared at the corner of Selma and La Baig to when she reached our position—enough time to alert Larison and for him to react. Treven was still at the wheel of the van, waiting for word from me. We had energy bars, canned coffee, and big mouth water bottles to piss in. The only thing left was to wait.
At a little past eight, I spotted someone heading toward us on the east side of the street. There had been several false alarms already—a jogger, a dog walker, two young women probably on their way to the bus and then to work—and I tried not to get excited. But as this one came closer and the sun slanted in on her face, I saw it was her. My heart kicked up a notch. “Here she comes,” I said, without taking my eye from the peephole.
“Got it,” Treven said. “Calling Larison now.” A moment later, I heard him say, “She’s on her way.”
Treven fired up the engine. I kept watching Kei. Her hair was tied back and she was wearing cut-off shorts and a white tee shirt under a navy fleece zip-up. A leather mailbag was slung over her left shoulder. A beautiful kid, even better in person than in the photos I’d seen. Leggy, curvy, with a long, confident stride. Someone who knew where she was going and how she would get there, and who wasn’t going to let anyone get in the way.