Blackman struggled up off his knees and collapsed into it. “I don’t know,” he said. “When I went to pick her up this morning, she wasn’t there. Somebody had killed my boss and either took her or let her escape.”
“That’s not good enough,” Killian said. He took a pen from Blackman’s desk as he walked over to the wounded man. He jammed the pen into where the bullet had entered the thigh.
Blackman screamed.
Killian removed the bloody pen from the wound.
“God damn it,” Blackman said, gasping. Sweat had beaded up on his forehead. “You had her coordinates. Why the fuck didn’t you track her down instead of coming here and blasting everyone to hell?”
“Coordinates? Coordinates for what?” Killian asked.
Blackman looked at him with a pained and confused expression. “You... you’re not from New Orleans?”
Killian jammed the pen back into the thigh wound. Blackman screamed and tried unsuccessfully to free it from his leg with his one good hand. “The more you fight it, the more it will hurt,” Killian said, removing the pen from the wound. “Now listen to me because I don’t want to repeat myself. I want you to tell me who you sold Toni to and exactly what the hell you mean about coordinates.”
Sweat was now pouring down Blackman’s reddened face. He leaned back in the chair, trying to catch his breath. “We... they are tracking her through a GPS locator chip implanted under her breast. I have a phone in my jacket pocket. I can show you.”
“Slowly,” Killian said, pointing the barrel of his gun closer to Blackman’s forehead.
With his good hand, Blackman reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. After waking it up and entering its passcode, he opened the locator app and selected Toni’s ID. He then handed the phone to Killian.
Killian studied the app for a moment before sticking the phone into his pants back pocket. He looked at Blackman expectantly, waiting for him to continue.
Blackman was turning pale from the loss of blood. He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. He spoke slowly. “We sold her to someone from New Orleans. If you’re not with the team sent up to get her, then that blip on the app must be them heading back to New Orleans with her right now.”
“What’s the name of the someone who bought her?” Killian said impatiently.
“I don’t know,” Blackman said weakly. It was an anonymous purchase through an auction site on the dark web.
Killian jammed the pen into Blackman’s thigh. “You’re lying. If you know where this someone is from, then you know who this someone is.” He twisted the pen in deeper. “Now tell me everything you know, damn it.”
Blackman sat straight up. His eyes went wide, but he didn’t have the strength to scream. “Okay, okay. Stop. We have a guy...”
Killian removed the pen from the wound.
Blackman leaned back again. His face was drained, a sickly white now that shined with sweat. “We have a guy who was able to hack into the auction site and trace the account of an earlier transaction we made with Toni’s twin sister. We were able to trace it back to some rich fuck from New Orleans named DeBlanc. We contacted him directly and offered to sell him Toni, assuming he would be into the twin sister thing. He was. He made the purchase and the pickup was scheduled for earlier this morning. That’s it. That’s all I know.”
Satisfied with the response, Killian nodded his head and said, “Okay, I believe you.” As a look of relief washed across Blackman’s pale face, Killian unexpectedly jammed the pen as hard as he could back into the thigh wound, digging and twisting it down deep into the meat until Blackman finally stopped screaming and struggling and passed out.
With Blackman unconscious, Killian took off his backpack and took out from it a balaclava identical to the ones he wore during his vigilante hits. He placed the mask on Blackman’s head and rubbed it into his hair for a moment. He then took it off and tossed it into the open cabinet drawer safe. Next, he took out the machete from the backpack and unwrapped it from the plastic bag. Certain that he had never touched the weapon with his own bare hands, he wrapped Blackman’s bloody right hand around its grip to get Blackman’s compromising prints on it. He then let it drop from Blackman’s hand onto his desk.
By then, Blackman had started coming to. Killian smacked him with his gloved hand, bringing him fully back to consciousness.
It took a minute before Blackman could bring his focus onto T-Rex’s gun pointing at his forehead. “You’re still going to kill me, aren’t you?” he said to Killian, resigned to his fate.
“How could you sell young girls into sexual slavery, you scum piece of shit?” Killian said disgustedly, not knowing the girls Blackman had sold were the man’s own daughters.
Blackman grunted out a quick, pained laugh. “Easy. All I had to do was find a buyer.”
Killian jammed the barrel of the gun right in the center of Blackman’s forehead. As he held it there, his hand shook from anger.
Blackman didn’t move. He just stared directly into Killian’s eyes and smiled.
Killian jerked the gun away from Blackman’s head and spat into the smirking face. He then walked back to where T-Rex was lying on the floor and got down on one knee. He once again aimed the dead man’s gun at Blackman’s forehead.
Blackman struggled to lean forward in his chair. “Fuck you,” he said, right before the bullet blew open a hole right between his eyes and slammed him back into the chair.
Killian moved quickly. He placed the gun into T-Rex’s large left hand, the same hand that the dead man had held the gun in when he drew it on Killian in Savage’s office. He then raised T-Rex up, had him point the gun in his hand at Blackman, and then pressed T-Rex’s trigger finger three times, firing three more rounds into the white man’s dead body. He let T-Rex’s body fall back down to the floor. The gun came free from the hand’s lifeless grip. He left it there where it laid. He then walked back over to Blackman and dropped the dead man’s own gun down on the floor right underneath where his bloody right hand hung down lifelessly. Next, he took Savage’s cell phone out of his backpack, got Blackman’s fingerprints on it, and tossed it into the safe on top of the mask. The last thing he did before leaving was to jam the pen down into the wound in Blackman’s thigh until it was consumed completely beneath the flesh.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Lukos Sabra sat parked along the curb behind a rusted-out Honda Civic in his white rental pickup truck wishing he were in a less conspicuous-looking vehicle. He had rented the truck expecting it to remain for the most part in its natural rural environment of southern Pennsylvania; but, instead, there it sat in an unwelcoming North Baltimore public housing neighborhood looking noticeably out of place. While keeping a close watch on the neighborhood evening activities going on around him, and an even closer watch for the return of his mark to the Demon parked a half-a-dozen cars ahead of him, Sabra zipped his backpack partially open, slipped a hand inside of it, and searched around until he found the Sig Sauer P320 RX. He wrapped his fingers around the weapon’s cold, comforting stainless steel grip and kept a loose hold of it inside the backpack, not because he expected to use it, but because he appreciated the reassurance it provided. While he would have preferred to have in hand an MP-443 Grach, the standard-issue sidearm for both the Russian military and police force, and the weapon issued to him for his two years of training with Russia’s Military Intelligence Directorate, for now the P320 would more than suffice.
He had been waiting for his mark to return to the Demon for close to an hour before he heard the first gunshot. It came from somewhere west of his location. He had no idea who was doing the shooting – it was North Baltimore so he was sure gunshots were not that uncommon of an occurrence – but his intuition told him the shots had something to do with his mark. He firmed his grip on the Sig Sauer as he kept his eyes trained westward toward all the various gaps and walkways between the several squat, brick apartment complexes that ran the length of the street opposite the side he
was parked. Because Sabra was looking westward, expecting the mark to emerge somewhere from that direction suddenly due to his haste to put distance between himself and the gunshots, Sabra didn’t notice the mark’s return to the Demon until he already had the car door opened and was just about to slip inside behind the wheel. Although, Sabra could only assume it was his mark since the large man’s face was now hidden beneath the low rim of a black ballcap, which itself had the black hood of a sweatshirt pulled over it. If Lebon had been involved with the shooting, which Sabra now wasn’t so sure about, then that meant, in order to return from an other than westerly direction, he would have had to have gone well out of his way, and he would have had to have been hustling to do it, to get back to his car as fast as he did after the last gunshot had sounded.
The mystery of the mark’s return confused Sabra, but he didn’t have time to work through this confusion because within seconds the Demon came to life with a resonating growl and pulled away from the curb and headed up the street. At the first four-way stop, the Demon took a left and Sabra soon lost sight of it. But the undercover agent wasn’t concerned about losing his mark. He grabbed a twelve-inch tablet from the passenger seat and began following the car’s movements with a GPS tracker app. The Demon, now a blinking digital red blip, took a right on a street that led straight to North Avenue. When the blip turned left to begin heading west on North Avenue, Sabra started his truck. He set the tablet down within a space in the center console and watched the slow-moving blip turned left to head south on North Calvert Street. He put the truck into gear and continued his slow, cautious pursuit.
The blip continued down North Calvert Street until it came to East Chase Street. It remained blinking there for several moments, waiting on a red-light Sabra assumed, before moving again to head west on Chase Street, which eventually became Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. By the time Sabra reached the boulevard, the blip was already heading south on route 295. Sabra had no guess as to where the blip was heading. He only hoped it wasn’t too far because, as his gas gage was warning him, he was in serious need of fuel. He was considering pulling off on the West Nursery Road exit since his navigation system indicated there were gas stations nearby, until he saw the blip exiting onto I-195. When he saw that, he knew exactly where Lebon was heading. Without any further worry for the need for fuel, he stepped heavily on the accelerator. He would have to break some speed limits if he were going to get visuals of his mark before he disappeared inside the Baltimore/Washington International Airport.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The Gulfstream G650 landed at New Orleans’ Lakefront Airport and taxied to a private hanger, where inside waited a black Cadillac SUV with its engine running. As soon as the hatch on the airplane was opened and the stairs let down, McKnight and Henderson whisked the still groggy RJ and Toni off the plane and into the waiting SUV, which, with tires squawking rubber on the concrete, sped away even as McKnight was in the process of closing the back door. The SUV’s departure revealed Henderson’s black Cadillac sedan.
“Damn it,” McKnight said as he walked over to the car. “I was hoping they’d drop off my Caddy so I wouldn’t have to hear you bitch about my smoking.”
“Well, I, and my lungs, are thankful they brought my car instead of yours,” Henderson said as he opened the driver’s door and slid in behind the wheel. “Besides, everyone, including Ham, knows I’m a much better driver than you.”
McKnight opened the passenger-side door. There was a large envelope setting on his seat. He picked it up and set it on top of the car. He then dug an American Spirit out of his jacket pocket and lit up as he studied the envelope.
Henderson popped back out of the car. When he saw McKnight smoking he rolled his eyes dramatically and then asked, “What’s Ham got for us?”
McKnight opened the envelope and slid its contents out onto the roof of the car. It was an 8x10 photograph of Killian, the last official portrait he had taken while still in the navy. In it, he was wearing his service dress blue uniform. His blonde hair was cut close on the sides and back of his head. On the top it was thick, wavy, and long, perhaps too long for navy standards, and combed over to the side. There were slight crow’s feet around his icy blue eyes as they looked off somewhere far beyond the viewer. His jaw was set firm, his mouth unsmiling. An American flag hung behind him off his right shoulder.
“Better call Ham,” McKnight said as he slid the photo over to Henderson.
Henderson looked it over. “Tough-looking hombre,” he said approvingly as he slid the photo back to McKnight.
McKnight didn’t say one word during his call to Hammond. He just smoked, studied the photo, and listened, while grunting an occasional response. After he ended the call, he returned his phone to his jacket’s inside pocket and brought out from it a fresh cigarette.
Henderson watched impatiently as McKnight went through his light-up ritual. “Jesus, Mack. What the fuck did Ham say?”
McKnight ignored his partner as he took in a deep drag off the fresh smoke and dropped the spent butt onto the concrete floor. He stamped out the butt and then began to recap the call. “Well, apparently this dude in the photo is in fact one tough hombre. According to Ham, he’s a highly decorated Navy SEAL. Double tours in Iraq, triple tours in Afghanistan. Your basic All-American war hero.” McKnight tried to sound unimpressed as he spoke.
“Yeah,” Henderson said as he stepped up on the car’s doorframe and leaned over to grab the photo, “that big ass gold SEAL pin on his chest kind of gave it away.” He looked over the photo again, this time noticing the Navy Cross with valor ribbon among all the many other variously colored ribbons pinned on his chest, all of which resided directly under the prominent gold SEAL warfare insignia.
“So, what’s John Wayne here got to do with us?” Henderson asked, his eyes still locked on the photo.
“It seems it was his farm where we tracked Toni to,” McKnight said.
“So... what’s their relationship?” Henderson said, as if it was something he shouldn’t have to ask about.
“Undetermined,” McKnight said. “However, the redhead we know is a hometown girl, and it seems by their school records that she and our hero here go way back. Which means—”
“Which means,” Henderson said, cutting McKnight off, “that John Wayne here is motivated to want to rescue at least one of our packages.
“Exactly,” McKnight said as he inspected his shrunken cigarette. He took one last long pull off it, drawing it down red-hot to his yellow-stained fingers before dropping it to the ground and crushing it beneath the leather sole of this burgundy wingtips. He did his partner the courtesy of exhaling all his smoke before squeezing his large mass into the sedan.
Henderson started the engine and looked over at his partner struggling to get his seatbelt buckled. “What’s next?” he asked.
After McKnight finished wrestling with the seatbelt, he said, “Well, our navy boy is already on his way here. He’s on a flight from BWI that lands at Louis Armstrong at 21:43. We need to be waiting for him upon arrival and—”
Henderson cut McKnight off again. “Neutralize him,” he said eagerly.
McKnight didn’t disagree with him. He just looked down at his watch and said, “It’s 19:47. That means we have more than enough time to swing by a fast food joint before we have to be in position.”
Henderson laughed. “Dude, swear to god, if you ain’t smoking, you’re eating.” He looked over to his partner for a response as he started the car.
McKnight just stared straight ahead, beyond the open hangar door and out into the warm night, yellow from all the twinkling tarmac lights. Henderson’s smile widened as he shook his head knowingly and put the Cadillac into gear.
The pilot had just disembarked the jet and was securing the hatch. When he heard the car’s engine rev, he looked back over his shoulder and waved. Henderson gave him a two-finger salute as he mashed the gas pedal down and squealed away.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Despite his exhaustion and the relative comfort of his business class aisle seat, Killian couldn’t sleep. This was nothing new, his not being able to fall asleep. At least it wasn’t new since his coming out of the coma. His pounding head, burning eyes, and frayed nerves only added to the intensity of the panic attacks he had whenever closing his eyes in an effort to sleep. He looked down at his watch. 18:43. It had been over thirty-six hours since he last slept. The realization served only to add further pressure on him to get some much-needed rest. He wished he had one of those Restorils on him that his VA shrink had prescribed. He needed sleep and without the drug the only way for him to do that right now, to keep away the night terrors, was to try to bring to rest all the frantic thoughts pinging through his head, causing his heartrate to crank upwards and his chest to tighten.
Chief among these anxiety-inducing thoughts were of RJ and the trouble she was in, trouble he had gotten her in. What if he was too late? Or, what if he were to screw up again like he did with the hit on Savage? Or, what if he were to find her like he found the Yazidi girls? It all had to stop. The what ifs and the could have beens were driving him mad, and mad would get him killed, or worse – it could get RJ killed.
He took in slow, deep breaths. In and out, over and over. He tried to block everything out, the sounds of the airplane, the sound of the music leaking out from the earbuds of the passenger next to him, the sounds screaming in his head, and just concentrate on the breathing. The slow, deep breaths. In and out, over and over. He felt things begin to loosen up and slow down a bit. But he didn’t want to notice it or think about it. He just wanted it to happen so he kept up the slow, deep breathing process. In and out, over and over. A heaviness began to weigh upon him and he tried not to notice. He just breathed. In and out, over and over…
Something is irritating him. He shifts in his seat, trying to get comfortable, but it’s impossible. He feels under his butt. He’s sitting on a plastic pill bottle. He opens it and shakes out a tiny white pill into the palm of his hand. He pops it in his mouth and attempts to swallow it down dry, but it gets stuck in the back of his throat. He reaches for the plastic cup of water setting on his tray table, but it is too far away. He begins to choke, to suffocate. He needs water but he can’t get his seatbelt undone to reach it. The more he struggles with the belt, the tighter it becomes. He opens his mouth, to scream for help, but no sound comes out. The pill has completely blocked up his throat. With his eyes bulging wide, his arms outstretched, fingers just millimeters away from the plastic cup, he makes one final effort to stretch himself as far as he can until finally the seatbelt snaps loose and allows him to grab the cup. He drinks greedily from it until the pill finally clears his throat and he is able to swallow it. He realizes suddenly that he needs to move, to stretch, that he needs fresh air. It feels as if someone is holding onto his lungs in a tight grip, squeezing them, twisting them, wringing them dry of any oxygen. All his muscles constrict and tighten as he fights to breathe. His legs feel as if they had turned into petrified wood. He has to get out of there. It feels as if his seat is folding in on him now, as if it is trying to bend him in half, break him with his petrified muscles right down the middle. He looks over to the passenger next to him for help, but she is sleeping. How can she be sleeping? Why isn’t her chair trying to kill her as well? He grabs hold of the seat in front of him and pushes on it with all his might, trying to prevent his seat from folding him in half. He pushes and pushes until he is finally sitting upright again. A woman in the seat in front of him turns to look at him. She has no face. He stands up. Chunks of petrified muscle and skin break free from his body and crumble to the deck. He forces his legs to move him out into the aisle. With each step, more frozen pieces of him break off. He moves his heavy legs back toward the head. Each passengers’ blank, eyeless face follows him as he passes. With each step, his heavy feet come crashing down on the deck, causing the airplane to shake as if it is flying through heavy turbulence. The shaking causes the faceless passengers to begin screaming for their lives, fearing the plane is going to fall from the sky. They all stand up and begin rushing toward the back of the plane in a panic, screaming Astaghfirullah! He fights hard to maintain his balance, but the passengers keep swarming around him and knocking him every way as they force their way to the back and begin streaming into the head. As they pack themselves in, their screams begin to focus until everyone is screaming in unison. Astaghfirullah! After they all are crammed into the bathroom, their screams become so loud and piercing that the windows begin to blow out. One by one on each side of the cabin, the porthole windows explode like a string of firecrackers. The vacuum effect of the air rushing out of the cabin through the windows is immense. After the screaming blows out both the forward and aft hatches, the vacuum becomes too great and the faceless passengers are sucked out from the bathroom. Eyeless faces stare at him as they stream by and are sucked out of the plane through the portholes and open hatches and out into the black void of empty space. He forces his granite legs to move and slowly makes his way back toward the head. Before he can reach it, the Yazidi girls, their necks sliced open wide and their faceless mouths frozen in their final screams – Astaghfirullah! – begin to get sucked out. He reaches out for their outstretched hands as they pass him by, unable to save them but for the last. He manages to grab hold of the last Yazidi girl’s hand and prevent her from being sucked out of the plane. Her face is blank like the others as she stares at him, but her throat is not cut like theirs. She appears to be alive, but he struggles to keep hold of her. He is losing his grip when Toni is sucked out of the head and tumbles out into the void. He panics and tries with all his effort to get a better grip on the girl and pull her in to him. He almost has her when RJ is sucked out from the head. But she isn’t sucked all the way out. She is holding on to the doorframe, calling for him to help. He screams to RJ to hold on. To help her, he will have to let go of the Yazidi girl. He is uncertain what to do. Before he can decide, RJ, tears streaming down her empty face, can no longer hold on and is sucked out of the head. As he tries to grab her he loses his grip on the girl. All he is left to do is watch in horror as both RJ and the Yazidi girl stare at him from their blank faces as they are suck out of the plane and into the black, empty void. Astaghfirullah! Astaghfirullah! Astaghfirullah! …
The Good Kill Page 27