Max took a bite of Wiener schnitzel and grunted in agreement.
“Has Willy learned anything yet from the al-Iraqi interrogations?” Tom asked.
Max swallowed his Wiener schnitzel. “Al-Iraqi say anything about Maman’s or Charlotte’s killers?”
“Al-Iraqi still isn’t talking,” Hank said. “He’s a hard one. I’m hoping Blade’s tongue will loosen more easily.”
The restaurant was now full of guests, and the Waynes stopped talking business and focused on their breakfast.
When Max’s plate was clean, he went over to the pastry table and served himself some apple strudel. He returned to the table and sank his teeth into the soft, warm apple sweetness. “I love Vienna.”
“Do you even take time to taste it?” Tom asked.
“Always,” Max said with a mouthful of pastry.
They finished breakfast and passed through the restaurant doors out into the cruel world once more, and Max returned to shooter mode. They went back to their room to plan more of the details and prep their gear.
Around noon, they popped out to the hotel restaurant and ate lunch. In contrast to breakfast, Max neither liked nor disliked his food. He was in mission prep mode, and he was simply filling his fuel tank. When his tank was full, they returned to their rooms.
Max went into the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, stepped into the shower, and turned on the hot water. He stood away from the spray until it warmed up. He’d experienced enough cold water ops to know that he didn’t like them. When there was a choice, he chose the heat. Wisps of steam rose in the shower stall, and Max stepped under the hot liquid. He didn’t care about massages, mists, or eco-bullshit—he just wanted it hot and hard. He cranked the water to full blast. It soothed his skin and relaxed his muscles. In his alone times like this, he didn’t squander his time dwelling on his demons. Instead, he preferred to seize the day. Life was simple, and he considered himself a simple man. The hot shower was deluxe.
Although he wanted to simply soak under the steamy water, this was a professional shower. Tonight he’d be in Blade’s apartment, and he didn’t want to leave traces of DNA for the Viennese police to find, so he shampooed his hair and scalp vigorously, removing any loose hairs or skin tissue that might betray his identity. Then he scrubbed himself the rest of the way from his head down to his toes, continuing his transformation into a hunter of bad men.
16
Artificial lights pushed the darkness out of the hall in Blade’s condo. Max picked Blade’s door lock while Tom kept a lookout in the hall. The two were dressed as carpet installers with brown backpacks that matched their brown coveralls. They also wore thin winter gloves, great for leaving no fingerprints—not so great for picking locks. Their rolled-up carpet sat beside them on the deck.
Max poked the small end of an L-shaped Quiet Steel tension wrench into the bottom of the keyhole and turned the wrench clockwise, but the lock was firm. Then he turned counterclockwise, which seemed to give more. He maintained the counterclockwise pressure with the torque wrench while he inserted a pick into the top of the keyhole. The pick was a long, thin bar with a hook at the probing end. Max lifted the pick and felt the first spring-loaded pin rise inside the lock. The second pin pushed back hard, making it difficult to lift, so Max eased up on the torque wrench until the difficult pin lifted. Then he increased the pressure again slightly to keep the difficult pin up.
Time ticked. A tenant could happen by at any moment and disrupt everything. And Blade’s dinner wouldn’t last forever. The hall was cold, but his body burned hot, as if overcompensating, stressed, or both. But thinking about possible disruptions and body heat would only slow him down more, cause him to err, and jeopardize the mission, so he shut out everything else, trusted Tom to protect him, took a deep breath, and increased his laser focus on the task.
He pressed deeper with the pick and raised the next pin easily—until he encountered another stubborn pin. Again, he eased up on the torque until the defiant pin surrendered. Max continued until the last pin went up. Finally, he turned the torque wrench counterclockwise, and the door unlocked.
Max glanced at Tom and the hall—clear. Grub had mentioned that Blade might run video surveillance of his apartment, so Max came prepared. He reached through the left pocket opening of his coveralls and into his suit trouser pocket from which he pulled out a black balaclava. He pulled it on over his head before pocketing his lock pick tools. Then he reached through the right pocket opening of his coveralls and drew his pistol from his hip holster.
He expected no one to be inside, but he’d been fooled before. Tom patted him on the shoulder, signaling he had his balaclava on, weapon in hand, and was ready to move. Max slipped through the door and shuffled to the right, scanning the interior with his pistol. Tom peeled left. The interior was quiet except for a buzzing sound coming from a refrigerator. The place was small and the layout open, so the two breezed through the living room, kitchen, office, and bathroom areas. Blade had a massive knife collection, and a passion for neatness. All that remained were two rooms behind thick red curtains. What’s behind curtain number one?
Max threw open the first curtain and aimed, but he wasn’t prepared for what he found in the room. A malnourished, naked young man was tied spread-eagle to the bed. A variety of stab wounds, cuts, and scars covered his arms, legs, face, and most parts of his body. His mouth was gagged, and his eyes strained wide with terror. Max checked the closet, but no one was there.
Tom joined him in the room and stared at the young man as if in disbelief. The two left the room and went to the opposite end of the apartment for an impromptu parley. “It’s like Blade tested his whole knife collection on this poor guy,” Max whispered. “More than once.”
“There’s at least a hundred injuries,” Tom said, shaking his head. “The pain and degradation that guy must’ve experienced.”
Max’s stomach churned. “No more.”
“What should we do with the kid?” Tom asked.
“We can’t cut him loose now, or he’ll blow our chance of getting Blade.”
“After we get Blade and get out of Dodge, we can make an anonymous call to the Vienna police.”
“Definitely,” Max said.
Max opened the front door. They pulled the carpet in from the hall, and they stashed it in the unoccupied bedroom so it wouldn’t be visible when Blade entered the apartment. Max locked the door, and they searched the place for intel. Especially in the office area, Max found flash drives: USB, memory sticks, memory cards, and a backup hard drive. He stuffed them in his backpack with photos, passports, and IDs that he also discovered. Tom turned on Blade’s laptop and tried to bypass the password but failed, so he disconnected the cord and stuffed the whole laptop in his backpack.
Then they waited. The more they waited, the more Max’s sickened feeling at what Blade had done to his victim turned into anger, and it was going to be all he could do to keep from killing this piece of shit. Minutes later, Hank radioed, “Butter returning.” Butter was their code word for Blade.
Max broke squelch once, acknowledging receipt of the message.
Soon Hank called again. “Butter in the building.”
From the hallway, the elevator went ding. Max and Tom hugged both sides of the door and waited. Footsteps sounded. Max could hardly wait to roll up this torturous bastard. Closer. Max held himself back from running into the hall and grabbing him. A key jiggled in the lock. The fuse on Max’s energy burned so fast that he thought he might explode at any moment.
The door opened. Blade entered, toying with his cell phone. He looked toward the hostage’s room and called out something in German. His tone smacked of superiority and condescension.
“Piece of shit,” Max blurted out.
Blade’s body jolted with surprise.
All Max’s tactical training and experience flew out the window and adrenaline took over. Max picked Blade off his feet and slammed him to the deck. Crack! Blade bounced like a fish—knocked ou
t.
Max flexicuffed his hands behind his back while Tom gagged him.
“He’s a compliant one,” Max said.
Tom touched Blade’s neck for a pulse. “He’s dead.”
Max finished binding his hands. “I wasn’t that rough.”
Tom went to work binding Blade’s feet. “Dude, he hit hard.”
Max picked up Blade’s cell phone and checked it. The phone was still unlocked, so he opened the web browser and logged on to Young Park’s website. Within a few minutes, Young or one of his assistants would take control of the phone remotely and begin hacking it—downloading e-mails, contacts, web browsing history, social media data, and anything that appeared to be of intelligence value. “Not that hard.”
Tom tightened the flexicuffs around Blade’s ankles. “You can tell that to him, but he won’t hear you.”
Max pocketed Blade’s phone before checking him for a pulse. Nothing. “Damn.”
They untied the rolled carpet and unrolled it. Next, they dragged Blade’s body onto the carpet and rolled it back up. Blade’s body provided internal support to prevent the carpet from folding or bending. Then they tied the carpet securely to keep it from coming undone. Max knew that in Tom’s place, he’d be furious with him for offing Blade, but Tom’s tone was more of disappointment: “We were hoping the gators could get information from Blade about Mom’s and Charlotte’s killers.”
The burden of screwing up added to the heaviness of the carpet and Blade’s corpse. “I know.”
“I’m in position,” Hank said over the radio.
Max wasn’t looking forward to explaining this to his father.
“We’re on our way,” Tom said.
They took off their balaclavas before they dragged the carpet out of Blade’s condo and into the hall. Blade’s neighbor, who had a face like a prune, poked her head out the door. Maybe she’d heard Blade get body-slammed and came to investigate. Max wasn’t in a happy place, but Tom flashed her a smile, and she ducked back inside.
They took the stairs to avoid possible witnesses in the elevator. Dragging the carpet down the steps was easier than pulling it up the stairs, but it was still a chore. Max felt sorry for letting Hank and Tom down. Maman and Charlotte deserved retribution, but now they had nothing.
As Max neared the bottom, a spry resident hopped down the stairs behind them, but he was blocked by the brothers and their carpet. Max stepped to the side, and Tom stepped aside, too. The man passed.
Max and Tom hauled the carpeted corpse roll the last flight of steps and out the front door. Exhaust drifted from the tailpipe of the van with Hank behind the wheel. The van’s sliding door was already open, and Max and Tom heaved the carpet inside. They jumped in, too, and Max closed the door.
Hank put the van in drive, but the wheels spun as if caught on ice. A businessman walked by and watched them spin their wheels. The wheels caught traction and the van moved forward. Hank pulled out into the street. “We got him!” he exclaimed.
Max and Tom remained quiet.
“What’s wrong?” Hank asked. “You did get him, didn’t you?”
“We got him,” Tom said.
Hank flicked his turn signal before making a turn. “Why the gloomy faces?”
“He’s dead,” Max said.
Hank accelerated. “Dead?”
“Dead,” Max said.
“How the hell did that happen?” Hank asked.
“I got a bit rough.”
“Al-Iraqi hasn’t given us squat, and Blade was our chance to obtain some real intel. Why?”
Max wanted to curl up in a hole and hibernate. “I didn’t think …”
Hank was peeved, rightly so. “You didn’t think.”
“I didn’t think that …”
Hank pressed harder on the gas, and when they neared a stoplight, he pressed harder on the brakes. “Don’t talk while I’m interrupting.”
“It was an accident,” Tom said.
The traffic light turned green, and Hank sped through the intersection and past the Wiener shops. “Accident?”
“If you don’t watch the speed, Dad, the police are going to pull us over,” Tom said.
“I’m watching the speed.”
“You’ll have quite a time explaining to the police about the dead body rolled up in a carpet,” Tom added.
“I’m not speeding!”
A siren blared behind them.
“See,” Tom said.
Hank slowed the vehicle and pulled over, but the police car raced by. Hank returned to a snowy cobbled lane and rounded a Baroque building. “You know how important this mission is, Max,” Hank said.
“It’s important to Max, too,” Tom said. “And me. She’s our mother. And Charlotte was my girl.”
Max put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. More than anything in the world, Max loved his brother and dad, and more than anything in the world, he hated to hear them argue.
“I’m not talking to you, Tommy,” Hank said.
Tom didn’t back down. “You complain about Max being too tough on a worthless tango, but you’re too tough on Max—you always have been. When we were kids, you expected him to be an adult, and as an adult, you expected him to do the impossible—and he did. He still does. Give it a rest—just this once!”
Because Hank was tough on Max, he became tougher for it, and because Hank believed in Max, Max believed in himself, too. Max’s sweat in peacetime hardened him for war. It made him who he was, and he didn’t want to be anyone different.
Hank gave it a rest. And Tom settled down, too. The mood in the van became somber as they rode beside the sleepy black Danube out of the city of dreams, which now seemed more like a nightmare, and Max was happy to leave.
17
Willy and a couple dressed in tuxedo and formal gown met the Waynes in a small private hangar, either owned or rented by the Agency, Willy didn’t say. The couple retreated to the inside of a white luxury sedan, whose engine was running. They popped the trunk open.
Max told Willy, “I’m sorry.”
Willy said nothing. He helped Max, Tom, and Hank unload the rolled-up carpet and Blade’s body from the van.
Max couldn’t think about the tortured man without feeling his blood boil again. He regretted losing his cool. He regretted not getting intel about his mother and Charlotte’s killers. Most of all, he regretted letting his brother and father down. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima freaking culpa.
They loaded the carpet-shrouded corpse into the trunk of the sedan. The car rolled away, and not a word was spoken as the Waynes and Willy walked across the tarmac to the Gulfstream and climbed the air stairs.
“I’ll put in an anonymous call to the Viennese police and tell them about the hostage in Blade’s apartment,” Willy said before disappearing into the cockpit.
Max slumped down in a chair—alone. Hank marched off to the head and slammed the door behind him. He cursed so loudly that Max heard it clearly. The swearing was followed by a boom, like he’d punched the bulkhead.
Tom sat next to him. “Dad should be a little more understanding about losing one’s temper—that’s his DNA.”
Just having Tom at his side made the hurt not hurt as much. He wasn’t alone. They taxied down the runway and lifted high over Austria. Without a word, Hank and Willy took seats across from Max and Tom.
Max’s phone vibrated. He sat up straight in his chair and looked at the caller ID: Young Park’s secure line. Young was a one-armed cyberwarrior working in the joint program between CIA and NSA at the Special Collection Service in Maryland. His job was to gather overseas intelligence critical to national security. Back when Max and Tom were in the military, they’d worked with Young in western Iraq as part of a joint task force. Young hacked into insurgents’ smartphones, laptops, and anything else that sent or received some kind of signal. If the insurgents used homing pigeons, Young would find a way to hack them.
Max desperately needed some good news, and he hoped this was it. “Hey, buddy,
mind if I put you on speakerphone?”
“Knock yourself out,” Young said.
Max put him on speaker. “What’s up?”
“One of my assistants hacked into that phone number you sent for Blade. She discovered one of the phone numbers in his contacts is for a bank account rep at Liechtenstein International Bank, which is a financial institution used by money launderers. The bank rep sent text messages to Blade about transferring tens of thousands of dollars into his account.”
“Where was the money transferred from?” Max asked.
“A nondescript account holding hundreds of thousands of dollars, managed by the same bank account rep.”
“Can you tell me more about the account with the big bucks?”
“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Young said. “We’ll keep working on this.”
“What do you have about the bank rep?”
“We hacked his phone. His name is Valentin Müller, he’s in his mid-twenties and, according to his web searches, has an interest in skiing, eating sauerbraten, and watching Italian porn. You two would get along. His e-mails suggest he’s cheating on his girlfriend and doesn’t spend much time at home. His girlfriend’s name is Emma, and they share the same apartment. She seems to have an interest in English conversation and American movies.”
“Can you give us their address?” Max asked.
“They live in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. I’ll text you their apartment address and a pic of him as soon as we finish talking.”
“Anything new on the other Ringvereine members?”
“Still working on it.”
“Keep us updated,” Max said.
“When are you and Tomahawk going to come over and play some pool? It’s not like I haven’t invited you guys before.”
“After this mission.”
“That’s what you said last mission.”
“I mean it this time.”
“I believed you last time, but I don’t believe you this time.”
Max wanted to see Young, but it always seemed like other things came up. “Later.”
“Later.” Young hung up.
Assassin's Sons: [#4] A Special Operations Group Thriller Page 11