Hit For Hire

by David Archer

  “Okay,” Noah said. “Let’s go find Mr. Iverson, shall we?”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard,” Neil said. “According to the MI6 reports, if he isn’t at work he’s either at home or at a pub called ‘Mum’s.’ It’s about half a mile from his apartment.”

  “How closely do they watch him?” Moose asked. “Are they going to notice us going to visit the guy? Or more importantly, are they gonna notice if we snatch him?”

  “I doubt it. From what I read, they just tend to pay attention to him if they happen to be out his way for some other reason. I don’t think he’s considered important enough for regular surveillance.”

  “Then let’s go,” Noah said. “I’ve got another appointment later, and we need to work on prep for that one once the sun is all the way down.”

  Hackney was only about a half-hour’s drive from the house, and they were in luck: Iverson was at home when they got there. Noah and Moose went up to his flat on the second floor of his building. Noah knocked, and Iverson opened the door only a moment later.

  The smell of ale was on his breath, but there was something else in the air, as well. “Yeah? What you want?” he asked when he didn’t recognize his visitors. “You coppers, come round to gob me up again?”

  “Not all like that,” Noah said, matching his Irish accent. “Just need you to come for a wee ride, is all.”

  Iverson’s eyes narrowed. “Ride? Account o’ what?”

  Moose showed him the Glock he was hiding in his armpit. “We just think it might be a good idea.” He pushed into the room a bit and Iverson, eyes on the large bore of the pistol, stepped back to let them enter. Noah shut the door behind them and then turned back to their host.

  “'Fraid this is a bit of a siege, chum,” Noah said, using Irish slang to let Iverson know he was in trouble. “Ya been muckin’ about with our lads from back home, and the peelers’re on ya. We been sent to get ya outa sight for a bit.”

  Iverson stared at him for a moment, then the alcohol in his blood seemed to reach his brain. “What? Aw, hump off wi’ ya! What peelers? I ain’t done nawtin!”

  Noah looked at Moose and shrugged. “Well, I tried,” he said. He turned back to Iverson and suddenly produced his own pistol, which he used to break Iverson’s nose and knock him cold.

  “That was subtle,” Moose said with a grin. “Want me to lug him out to the truck?”

  “Not yet,” Noah said, shaking his head. “Did you catch the whiff that came past him when he opened the door?”

  “Whiff? I smelled a lot of beer, maybe.”

  “No, something else. Bleach, for one thing, and a lot of it from how strong it was. I’d bet he wasn’t doing any kind of laundry, so I’m wondering what else he might have been up to with it.”

  He left Moose to watch the unconscious Iverson and began walking through the four-room flat. He found the source of the bleach smell in the kitchen, where a large pan of it was heating on the stove. A bottle of potassium chloride was sitting open on the table, and there was a hydrometer, the kind used for testing car batteries, laying beside it. Noah turned off the heat under the bleach and continued looking around the flat.

  He came to what looked like a bathroom door, shut tight, and turned the knob to open it. He was right about it being a bathroom, but that wasn’t all it was used for. Stacked in the corner, beside the shower, were a half-dozen fairly new assault rifles, and there were four military-style boxes of ammunition for them, as well.

  Noah went back to the front room and looked down at Iverson. “It might be a good thing we decided to snag this boy up,” he said. “There’s a small arsenal in the bathroom, and he was brewing up some homemade plastique in the kitchen. I don’t know what he was planning, but it would have been nasty for someone.” He pointed toward the bath. “Why don’t you gather up the guns and ammo, wrap them in sheets or something, and take them out to the truck. I’ll rouse our friend, here, and walk him out.”

  Moose nodded, and Noah reached down to haul Iverson up to a sitting position. He slapped him across the face a couple of times, and the man started to come around. When he was at least partly coherent, Noah said, “Here’s the deal, Paddy. I’m taking you with me. Whether you go alive is up to you, understood?”

  Iverson put a hand slowly to his broken nose and it came away quite bloody. He was still woozy, so he finally looked up at Noah and nodded, doing what he could to help as Noah got him on his feet. He felt the Glock’s muzzle against his side and looked at Noah, but didn’t say anything.

  “Now, we’re going out and down the stairs, then over to my truck. If anyone sees us, I’m going to say I’m taking you to a doctor because you hurt yourself in an accident. If you try to tell them anything different, I will have to kill them, so their deaths will be on you, got that?”

  Iverson only nodded. A moment later, Moose came out of the bathroom carrying a large bundle wrapped in blankets. He glanced at Noah and said, “This ain’t light,” and went out the flat’s door. Noah nudged Iverson, and they followed him.

  One woman happened to open her own door as they went by, but she only looked at Iverson with disgust and said nothing. Noah shrugged and went on, and they got to the truck without incident. Neil opened the back door and Noah shoved Iverson in, where he found himself facing Neil’s machine pistol. Moose dumped his burden into the back of the truck and slid in beside their prisoner, while Noah got into the front seat again. He nodded to Sarah, and she put the truck in gear and headed for the house.

  Noah turned back to look at Iverson. “So what were you cooking the explosives for?” he asked. “What’s about to go down?”

  Iverson looked at him, but said nothing. Noah smiled. “Okay, look, you’re going to tell me, let’s get that straight. You can do it before I rip off your balls, or after, but you’re going to tell me.”

  Iverson sneered, but then Moose reached down and grabbed his crotch and began to squeeze. Iverson’s eyes went wide as he squealed loudly, grabbing at Moose’s arm and trying futilely to push it away.

  Noah waved a hand to get his attention. “If I tell him to stop, he will,” he said, and Iverson stared at him for a few seconds before nodding vigorously.

  “'Twas for them black glundies,” he said. “Them what moved in down floor. They wanted guns and some bombs, and someone told ’em I knew the makin’. That was worth two thou to me, if ya hadn’t bunged me up!”

  Noah looked at him. “What were they going to do with it?” he asked.

  “How do I know? All they do is pay me, I don’t hold they hands!”

  Noah turned back to face the road, and Moose moved his hand to the back of Iverson’s neck.

  When they got back to the house, Noah got out and opened the garage door and Sarah drove the truck inside. Once the door was closed again, Moose dragged Iverson out and walked him into the house. He took him into one of the extra bedrooms and tied his hands and feet so that the man couldn’t get loose, then gagged him and closed the door. He stood outside it for a moment, and when the thumping began, he opened it again quickly. “Nobody said we had to keep you alive,” he said. “Piss me off and I won’t bother.” He closed the door again and listened for a few minutes, but there was only silence from the room.

  He found the rest of the team in the kitchen, where Sarah was looking into the “fully stocked pantry.” “Well, with what’s here, we can have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or we can have canned soup that has an inch of dust on top. For what they charge for this place, they could at least stock in some pizza.”

  “Did you look in the freezer?” Neil asked.

  “Yep. There’s ice in there, but no food.”

  “What time is it? There was a row of fast food places about a mile down the road.”

  “It’s only seven-thirty,” Noah said. “Take Moose with you and go get some burgers or whatever. I’ll watch Iverson while you go.”

  Sarah picked up her purse from the counter and started for the garage while Moose followed, and the truc
k backed out a few moments later.

  Noah walked down the hallway and opened the door to the room where Iverson lay on a bed, hands and feet still firmly bound. The man looked up at him, and Noah could see the fear in his eyes. He reached down and checked the knots, then closed the door again and went back out to where Neil was sitting at the table in the kitchen.

  “It’ll be dark by the time they get back. We’ll eat, then go on out to look the garage over with the drone. How likely is it that he’ll spot it?”

  Neil shrugged. “If he’s wearing night vision gear, he probably will. Other than that, my idea is to try to stay high and look for any obvious places he might be able to hide, and then work my way down through the levels. I’ve checked it out online, it’s a four-story parking garage. The walls are only partial, so there’s a way in on every level. If I stay near the ceilings and close to the edges, I should be able to look through it pretty thoroughly.”

  Noah nodded. “We’ll leave as soon as we eat.”

  Moose and Sarah pulled back in a few minutes later with a bag full of small hamburgers and fries, and they sat at the table while they ate. Sarah managed to get half a burger down before she shoved the rest away. She sat quietly while the rest of them ate, but Noah could tell she was worried.

  “Relax,” he said after a few minutes. “This is just going to be a recon mission. Neil’s drone is the only one who’ll be in any danger right now. If Adrian spots it, he’ll probably blow it out of the air.”

  “It isn’t right now I’m concerned about,” she said. “You’re going back there in a few hours, and he’s gonna be trying to kill you. What happens if he manages to do that, Noah, have you thought about that? What happens to me, to us?”

  Noah looked at each of them in turn, and then turned back to Sarah. “You’ll all be reassigned, of course. Allison isn’t going to waste the best support team in the organization.”

  Sarah leaned toward him, then, and he could see the tears threatening to brim over. “But we won’t have you,” she said, and even he could hear the potential grief in her words.

  He said nothing, and after a moment she leaned back in her chair once again. When all three of the men had finished eating, Moose and Noah went to check on Iverson once more, and then they went out through the garage.

  It took them almost an hour to get to the garage, but Sarah drove past it as if it was of no importance. A half-mile further along, she pulled over and parked beside an abandoned building, and all four of them got out. Neil set his computer on the hood and powered up the drone in the bed of the truck.

  Like a ghostly apparition, it rose almost silently and went straight up for almost four hundred feet, then veered off in the direction of the garage. The four of them watched the monitor as the images captured by the onboard camera were transmitted back through Neil’s phone. The phone was connected by cable to the computer, so all of the video was relayed to the bigger screen. A moment later, the top of the garage came into view, and Neil used the camera’s magnification to zoom in for a close look.

  There were a half-dozen cars on the top level, scattered around in no discernible pattern. Neil tapped a key and the view suddenly split into two separate screens. One of them was the normal view, but the other was infrared, allowing them to see that there was no one hiding in any of the cars.

  “That’s neat,” Moose said. “If he’s in that building you ought to be able to find him with that.”

  “That’s the plan,” Neil said, grinning. He continued maneuvering the drone around from well above, looking for other possible hiding places on the roof. He scanned a large box that seemed to hold a fan for drawing exhaust fumes out of the structure, but the only heat source in it was the fan’s motor itself, so he sucked in breath and began bringing the drone down slowly.

  He backed off the zoom so the image was stable, and after a couple of minutes, he was able to hover the drone just three feet over the top-level floor. From there he moved toward the ramp that started down, and followed it, staying just below the ceiling and constantly swinging the camera from side to side.

  This level also held a few cars, and one of them showed a heat signature that was consistent with a human body. Neil moved toward it slowly, watching for any sign that the figure inside had seen or heard the drone, but it appeared the figure was lying prone in the back seat. There was no visible movement, so Neil went in for a closer look and saw the silhouette of a man who was apparently sleeping in his car.

  He pulled back slowly and rose to just under the ceiling again, then continued searching the level. When he came to the next down ramp, he followed it.

  “This is spooky,” Sarah said. “Doesn’t it seem strange that he’d say he wanted you to meet on the top floor, but he isn’t up there waiting?”

  Noah shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “If I’m heading for the top floor, I have to drive through the lower three to get there, right? He’ll most likely be hiding somewhere on one of them.”

  The drone continued its search pattern, but the second level was completely empty of cars and heat signatures. Neil shook his head and started down the final ramp.

  There were several cars on the lowest level, and four of them had heat signatures. Neil hissed as he tried to slide the drone quietly over each of them, watching for movement that might indicate someone awake and watching with a gun.

  “Over in the corner,” Noah said suddenly. “There’s a heat signature there, not in a car. Can you tell what it is?”

  Neil turned the drone in the direction Noah indicated and moved toward it slowly. “It’s pretty bright,” he said. “Could be a man, I guess. I don’t see any movement yet. Let me try to get closer.”

  The image on the screen continued to get closer to the heat source, but a moment later Neil shook his head. “That’s not a man,” he said. “I don’t know for sure what it is, but it isn’t a person. Some kind of machinery, I’d guess.”

  “Then he isn’t here?” Sarah asked.

  “We can’t say that for certain,” Noah said, “but it doesn’t look like it. Moose, take one of the assault rifles and go do a careful recon of your own. If you don’t find him, then try to find a good hiding spot of your own and be ready when the action starts. I’ll be back here at midnight on schedule.”

  Moose reached into the back of the truck and picked up one of the rifles, then took three extra magazines and shoved them into his jacket pockets. The street was fairly well lit, but there was little traffic; he jogged across it and began moving through shadows and alleys on his way back to the parking garage.

  “What if he doesn’t find him?” Sarah asked. “Or worse, what if Adrian finds Moose?”

  Neil kept the drone on station until Moose got there, and then he brought it back to the truck and landed it in the bed. The three of them got in and headed to the house as Noah’s phone rang.

  It was Moose, reporting that he had found no one in the building except a few homeless people sleeping in battered old cars. “It looks really clean, Boss,” he said. “I came in by hopping the wall in the back, so I don’t think anyone saw me. I’ve got a spot where I can watch the main entrance, and I should be able to spot any movement here on the ground floor. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Thanks,” Noah said. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was a moonless night, so the only light striking the top of the car park was the glow of the city that reflected off the clouds above. From his position, two stories higher on the roof of the neighboring building, Adrian watched for any sign of movement, both on the car park and on all of the taller buildings around it. Surely the imposter would make some attempt to reconnoiter these premises before the scheduled meeting at midnight, wouldn’t he?

  He glanced down at the street that ran in front of the building, but there was very little traffic about. This was an area given mostly to office buildings, and all of their staff and occupants were gone hours ago. Only a few of them had any
sort of security, and none of those were close by. It wasn’t likely anyone would be roaming the streets, so the next vehicle he saw would likely be his intended prey.

  He checked his watch and confirmed that it was almost eleven. Another hour to wait, he mused, but he had wanted to be in position long before the other arrived. Sitting on top of a building for six hours would be a small price to pay if he was able to eliminate this complication.

  * * * * *

  Noah checked on Iverson one more time and then came back to the kitchen and looked at Neil. “He’s asleep, I think,” he said. “Check on him now and then, but don’t get close to him. If he manages to get loose, just shoot him. I’d prefer to keep him alive to turn over to Catherine and her people, but it isn’t an absolute necessity.”

  “Yes, sir,” Neil said. “Boss, you’re gonna be really careful, right? You’re coming back?”

  “I intend to,” Noah replied. “If I can get Adrian, this whole operation might still have a chance of success, but as long as he’s out there, I don’t see any way to get to IAR’s top man, and that’s the actual mission.”

  “What about just taking out the ones you already know?” Sarah asked. “Wouldn’t that send enough of a message to the guy at the top? He’d have to start all over, wouldn’t he? That would give us time to find out who he is.”

  “He’s probably got people ready to step in and take over from each of them within days of anything happening to them. No, I don’t think it would slow IAR down for more than a week. I’ve got to find out who he is, and then take him down. That’s the mission, and it’s the only way.”

  Sarah started to say something more, but then closed her mouth. She knew she couldn’t convince him to do things her way, so there was no point in trying.

  “It’s almost eleven,” Noah said. “Let’s go. Since the meeting is on top of the parking garage, he’s going to expect me to drive up there. That means I need to snag a car along the way.”