“It’s a bit late, Miss Collins.”
“Call me Collins or Agent. The Bureau never sleeps, Aaron, you should know that. Now you’re mine you should be prepared for a call any time.”
“Now we’re yours?”
“I thought the news would have filtered down the Troutvine by now? Were you not aware of a change of handler?”
“Well, yes we were. But we’re retired, Agent. We don’t require any handling.”
“I’ll decide that. For now this is simply a courtesy call to help us get to know each other.”
Radford jumped in. “So, Miss Collins, how about sending us a picture. We don’t even know what you look like.”
“Agent. Or Collins. And, Dan? Don’t ever get cute with me. I will rip ‘em off and shove ‘em down your goddamn throat. My reputation ain’t even half the story.” She paused. “So you want to get to know me? I’m the agent in charge. If anything comes up relating to your old case, I’m the one you call. If anything new comes to light through your old contacts, I’m the one you call. You can’t decide whether to go with cookie dough or cinnamon buns? Call me. And guess what? You get all of the above served up with a big fucking grin.” Her tone left them in no doubt as to which of the above had been less than a half truth.
“Riiight.” Radford appeared to be at a loss.
“You guys? I have your files. I know what went down.” She softened a little. “Your country owes you. But it didn’t all end there did it?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.” Trent’s face could have been carved out of stone, cast in silver and shadow by the light of the moon.
“Uh huh. Well. Your country owes you and will turn a blind eye for now to your little side jobs. But, guys, don’t fuck anything up.”
When no one spoke, Collins went on. “Because then I’d have to stick your asses in jail. Am I being heard here?”
“Loud and clear,” Radford said.
“Score one for Dan,” Collins said. “For speaking when he’s told to.”
“Is that everything, Agent Collins?” Trent ventured.
“For now. But we are going to have to do this face to face, Aaron. And soon.”
“I’ll let you know our availability.”
Collins laughed immediately, the sound lacking any emotion. “No, Trent. I’ll text you the time and date. Don’t be late.”
She cut the line suddenly, as if she’d physically cleaved it in two. Maybe she had. Trent shook his head, almost smiling. “What did we do to deserve that?”
“The bureau never sleeps.” Radford mimicked her. “Jesus.”
“Well I like her.” Silk laughed. “About as much as a background check. Shit, we should ask Doug to send her file over.”
“From the ‘bear with a sore head’ cabinet,” Radford chimed in. “Remind me to be 'otherwise engaged' when we’re summoned.”
“I wouldn’t test her,” Trent warned him. “Not until we know more.”
“Look.” Radford’s attention wavered, and he pointed out of the window. “Dallas.”
Trent engaged the satnav. The coordinates for The Lakeside development were already programmed. “Thirty eight minutes,” he said. “As soon as the realtor gets in, call them and arrange the appointment. If we can’t do this the easy way, we’ll have to break in later. Either way, I want us up and running by tonight.”
He stared through the darkness hard, as if he might pierce its scuttling core and blaze a trail right through Oleg Roth’s operation to Monika Sobieski’s side.
*
They took a brief ride through the development before the sun came up. The majority of the houses were situated on landscaped lots. Twisting driveways led to Italian marble porticos between gurgling fountains and sparkling ponds. Three and four car garages were topped by games rooms. Every lot was unique, some twisting their way up manmade hills, others smack-bang in the valleys. House lights and security lights shone everywhere. They didn’t pass a local patrol, but Trent had to assume there would be one. Eventually, they wound their way to the site’s limits where the black-top ended and the hardcore-filled makeshift trail began. On reaching the other half of the site, the three men stopped the car and stepped out into the cool of predawn.
Radford shivered, whispering, “This is s’posed to be Texas, man.”
Trent drank in the view. Darkness dwelled in the land beyond, clinging hard to the deeper valleys, crawling like black ink through the hills and trees. The half-constructed carcasses of maybe two dozen dwellings clawed at the retreating night like enormous beasts stuck in a thick, sticky quicksand.
No lights shone out there. The impression it gave was of haphazard construction, a wilderness of exposed beams, spars and half-built walls. It was not inviting, Trent reflected, nor was it meant to be. This huge, harsh, hard reminder of the country's instability had been designed to avert prying eyes. He was sure of it now. A blight on the doorstep of the rich, it retained its own dubious exclusivity whilst effecting an unforgiving pariah-like pollution.
“This is the place,” he said quietly. “I'm sure of it.”
Silk shifted beside him. “You think Monika's out there?”
“She is,” Trent grated. “Or she was. Roth could pull this off. Low key. Sporadic. Acres of space. Time and means to dispose of any bodies. Anonymous. He'll make a ton of money doing this, but that won't bother him. Feeding his greed and passion is his goal.”
“Sun's coming up.” Silk squinted at the sky. “It won't do for us to be seen here.”
Trent breathed in the fresh Texan air and wondered if, right now, he was overlooking the place where Monika Sobeiski lay in captivity. In truth, he hoped he was. The alternative was much more tragic. He turned away.
They drove to a hotel one street over from the realtor's address, reserving three rooms by internet. A couple of hours of down time, and it was fast approaching 9:00 am.
Trent entered the hotel's coffee bar just as Silk and Radford started on their second steaming mug. He wasted no time with small talk.
“Make the call.”
Radford dialled.
“Hi. My name is Mr Hathaway. I'm looking for somewhere to rent in the area.” He paused for a second, listening. “Oh no, sir, I already have somewhere in mind. I sure do.”
Another pause
“Well, the Internet can be a wonderful thing.”
A final pause.
“The Lakeside. The amount of rent is not a problem. You'll meet me there in thirty minutes? Excellent.”
Radford smiled at them over the rim of his double espresso. “Money talks, my friends. And when it says jump, most realtors ask how high?”
*
Eight hours later, they were in place. Checks were made, money advanced, more money secured on deposit, papers signed. No problems were flagged when Mr Hathaway's bank accounts were scrutinized. The money was actually in place. At least digitally. What the realtor and the house's owners – Roth Holdings – didn't know, was that Radford had programmed the money to leapfrog over to a secondary, secret account in seven days. When the mysterious Mr Hathaway's details were checked, they would lead any investigators to a spoof identity – an individual who simply didn't exist.
The Hathaway ID was toast after this job.
It didn't matter. Radford had plenty more ready to go.
Trent locked the door to their new home. Silk and Radford carried the hardware from the built-on garage, through a connecting door right into the house. Radford had developed his own version of the mass-market software Cryptofeed, a product that enabled almost anyone with a bare minimum of equipment and a satellite dish to intercept a live video feed. The Iraqi insurgents had done it with the Predator drone feeds years ago, the Iranians still did it, albeit to a monitored point. Radford’s version enabled him to bypass almost any encryption level by bombarding a network with requests and using the responses to obtain the network key in minutes. Even feeds protected by tried and tested techniques such as Mac ID filtering and static
IP addressing could be sniffed out and spoofed. Newer security algorithms like WPA2 would be more challenging, but Radford was an expert at identifying security vulnerabilities.
Within an hour, the three men were set up in the living room, sitting side by side on a leather couch with Silk’s equipment arranged on a low coffee table before them. Silk used a wireless keyboard as he tried to sniff out local feeds.
“Nothing,” he said, disappointed.
Trent chewed an energy bar. “If we’re right,” he said. “Roth may only do this once or twice a week. He can only invite so many people to watch the fight ringside. Therefore he has to beam it live to all his other customers. Just like Pay-per-View.”
“Big fees. Big gambling. Big fights,” Silk said. “MMA, only underground.”
“And perfect for the jaded rich,” Trent speculated. “Televised in secret. No rules. I bet they eat it up and beg for more.”
Radford flicked through various screens. “And therein lies Roth’s vulnerability. His ego. His greed. We will get him.”
Trent sat back. The main living area of this house was bigger than his apartment. A family with two or three kids would love this place. A couple would rent it for the status it offered, nothing more. Their attempt at proving their enormous esteem, a vain effort that, in the end meant nothing, he thought. If Mikey ever came to live with Trent permanently, he would vacate the flat and go bigger. As it was, he didn’t see the point.
No longer able to sit still, he got up and began to pace the dark oak floorboards. Every minute that passed increased Monika’s danger. The only solace was that she shouldn’t be in too much jeopardy until the next fight was broadcast.
Two days passed. Days of lying low, ordering take-out, and trying hard to stay positive. Radford called another of his contacts – a woman named Jacko – and asked her to fly in as soon as possible. She would be their way in to Roth’s underground fighting ring.
At last, as Radford finessed the community’s feeds on the Thursday night, he came across a large packet of data being transmitted within the boundaries he had set. It started up at 7:00 pm, a bright warning flare across his monitor. Quickly, he called Trent and Silk and set his fingers flying across the keyboard.
“We’ve got something.”
The men sat down beside him, the leather couch creaking loudly beneath their weight. Silk performed the digital equivalent of a symphony across the black keys, learning the encrypted network’s safety protocols within minutes, searching out a password and using an address of one of the system’s authorized users to spoof himself on to the network.
Silk had connected the console to the house's big 50” TV using a simple HDMI cable and now switched it on. The feed came up live. A high-quality camera panned across an indoor swimming pool. Only this pool held no water.
Trent sat forward. “Is that . . . blood?”
“Dried blood,” Silk said. “For sure.”
The 'pool' was nothing but a wide, rectangular hole in the ground, its walls and floor dotted with rust-coloured splashes. The camera was careful to reveal no distinguishing features, and when it did rise slightly to show the select few men and women with bodies pressed against the wire cage that topped the pool, it only moved up to chest height.
Radford double-checked to make sure his set up was recording. All this would be for nothing if they didn’t get at least some faces out of it.
Even if it were only the ones they expected to get.
A second camera cut in. A grinning face appeared, arms draped around two smiling blondes and three shot glasses lined up on a table before him. The blondes pouted as he pushed them aside.
“For my Mexican friends!” he cried. “Bandera!”
In the next moment, the man knocked back all three shot glasses, one filled with green liquid, one white and the other red. Silk looked to Radford.
“What?” he said. “You think I know what that’s all about?”
“You are the resident party animal.”
“I’ve read about it,” was all Radford would admit. “The green is lime, the white is Tequila and the red is sangrita. Traditionally Mexican. Though, of course, I’ve never tried it.”
“Roth will never appear live on camera,” Trent said. “This guy must be his spokesman. His clients, I guess, are thoroughly vetted and pay handsomely. And if Roth ever gets in the ring – it will probably be wearing a particular mask. Something the client will be made aware of in advance.”
Silk nodded. “Sounds workable. The only tie to Roth then is the link to his construction company.”
The man smashed the three shot glasses against an unseen wall and reclaimed his blondes. The camera roved behind them as they moved down a passageway sparsely lit with imitation wall sconces. The camera stayed at the women’s hip level, for more reasons than just to conceal identities. The dresses they wore clung to their curves like a second skin. As they emerged from the passageway into a larger space, cheering broke out. The man bowed. The camera stayed low and panned to the right where the metal-framed entrance to the pool cage stood wide open.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Roth’s spokesman swivelled and crouched so he could stare point-blank into the camera. “And esteemed friends around the globe. It’s showtime!”
22
An announcer shouted from somewhere off camera. Immediately, the feed switched back to the original camera; same view but with the addition of a tall, long-haired man dressed in a white suit.
“Tonight’s program consists of three bouts. The pretenders, the untrained, and the specialists. Bout one will be three five-minute rounds—” He waved a hand at the entrance to the cage – in reality a sturdy ladder that led from the pool’s topside to its base. A man, dressed only in Lycra shorts and a pair of small, open-fingered gloves climbed down. Another man followed. The only clear difference between them was their hair colour and the second man's black facial stubble.
Names were revealed whilst Trent, Radford and Silk watched intently. The first man was Jimmy ‘the Tank’ Gonzales, the second clearly better known. When he was named – Joe ‘Killjoy’ Johnson – he received a whole two minutes ovation.
Trent tapped a finger on the couch’s leather arm. “Local boy?”
“We’ll see soon enough,” Radford said, without turning away from the screen. “When the recording finishes.”
The fighters tapped gloves and faced off. The announcer slunk away to the back of the cage. The camera panned upward a little – bare legs, short skirts, black suit-pants, torn jeans and leather shorts attested to the diversity of the gathered crowd. The noise of cheering, whooping and jeering rose a notch. The screen cut to a brief graphical display announcing the time and date of the next fight night: Saturday – 7:00 pm.
Trent sighed. Another week without Mikey. Because, if everything panned out as it should, the Edge would be present at that fight.
The advertised bout was three five-minute rounds. Joe ‘Killjoy’ Johnson lived up to the other unfortunate meaning of his name, and collapsed bloodily after two. The boos and laughter rang out until Johnson regained his feet and roared up at the guests, not noticing his opponent as the man stepped in and knocked him unconscious with an elbow to the temple. Now Johnson really did crumble, and the guests brayed with glee.
The 'ring' was cleared, the cage door left open. The announcer reappeared and leaned in to the camera as if ready to impart a secret.
“And now for the part you love. The part many of you look forward to and enjoy the most.” He clapped. “It’s the maimed. The most lame. The untrained!”
Trent cringed inwardly as a body hit the concrete floor hard. It was the half-naked body of a man, dirty, battered and bruised, moving slowly with pain. A second body landed near him, this one a younger man who recovered more quickly. Trent immediately took in the condition of both men. Hungry, desperate, covered in cuts and dried blood.
“Look at their knuckles,” Silk said.
Trent had seen. “They’ve both already
been through several fights,” he assessed. “The way the older man holds himself, he has several untreated broken ribs. The younger man has—” he paused. “A fractured wrist?” He pursed his lips. “If we needed any more confirmation, guys . . .”
“Just hang on,” Silk whispered to the men on the screen. “One more round.” It was an old adage that Trent had heard before. One left over from Silk’s gangland days, and didn’t necessarily refer to fist fighting, but fighting in general.
Fighting for your life.
The announcer introduced them, “Sam Davis. Billy Rhodes. Make some noise!”
The chorus rang out again, the wolves howling for blood. Trent wondered when Roth had taken his underground sport from something that was personal and part of his life, character and makeup, to the ultimate, depraved level. A whole world of abomination existed between the creation of an underground fighting ring and the coercion of abducted men and women to do violent battle.
The crunch was audible as the two men came together. Clearly this wasn’t their first time, and through the immediacy of their acquiescence, the penalties of non-compliance were plainly brutal. The older man, Davis, stumbled immediately, the younger almost falling over him. Hisses and hoots sounded from the crowd. Davis rose up, headbutting Rhodes so that the younger man fell away. Then Davis was on him, bearing him to the ground and punching into his raw, exposed ribcage like a man possessed. The crowd began to applaud as blood flew. Davis reared up and came down hard on the other man’s jaw. The crack of broken bone gave Davis pause.
Rhodes was out cold, beaten by the fury of the assault.
A burst of rampant approval made him look up, eyes bleak, expression a study in despair. Davis’s face was crisscrossed with tramlines packed with dirt, blood, sweat and spit, forming a wretched mask, a caricature of what the man had been. Within seconds he and his fallen foe were escorted and dragged away.
The announcer was back. “Fresh meat next time,” he promised with a feral grin. “You know we deliver, friends! And now . . . the bout of the night. The main event. I present the challenger!”
The Razor's Edge Page 13