24: Deadline (24 Series)

by James Swallow

  The younger man answered after a moment. “No.”

  “Have you?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Do you think I could look my daughter in the eye knowing I’d ignored what’s going on in this town?” Before Chase could answer, he went on. “Do you think for one second that the FBI and the state police don’t know about the Night Rangers? For an MC to keep a whole community under their thumb, that takes money and force. Bribes. Influence. Like I said, I saw the same thing in Serbia when I was with Delta. There was always more to it than just drugs and prostitution. This is no different. So. I’m not going to walk away.” He held his gaze. “And I don’t think you will, either.”

  At length, Chase gave a nod. “Okay. We go get Laurel’s friends. What then?”

  Jack resumed walking. “We turn over some rocks and see what crawls out.”

  * * *

  For someone who liked to consider himself as “off the grid,” the speed with which agents of the Russian government discovered his location would have shocked Hector Matlow to the core. The number of the “dead drop” digital mailbox Matlow had given to Mike Roker was meant to insulate him from a permanent wired connection, but after a few calls the SVR team had been able to marshal technicians from one of their covert cyber-security installations in Minsk to track the American hacker and find a probable location for him. With the carte blanche President Suvarov had given Bazin’s unit in their search for Jack Bauer, they had the resources they needed in short order.

  He considered this as the Augusta AW109 swept low over the treetops, running dark so that anyone who spotted the helicopter would have no clue as to its identity. Like Bazin, everyone on board the aircraft wore a set of night-vision goggles, turning the world around them into a lunar landscape in shades of pale green and deep black. He peered at the paper map in his hand and looked up at Ziminova, who sat across the rear compartment from him. She had a plastic case open in front of her, and she was at work assembling the pieces of a weapon: a stubby, wide-mouthed tube, a pistol grip, a wire-frame stock ending in a shoulder pad.

  “I would prefer a more nuanced entrance,” he told her. “Stealth more than sound and fury.”

  “What is that phrase the British have?” she said, without looking up. “Needs must when the devil drives.”

  “There is a risk you will kill him.”

  Ziminova nodded. “A margin of error. But if the sensor does its work…” She trailed off.

  On that thought, Bazin turned in his seat to address Ekel, who sat up front in the copilot’s position. On his lap he carried an olive drab portable monitor and keyboard setup, trailing wires. The device’s screen showed a series of start-up displays as it came on line. The text on the screen and the keyboard was all in Chinese. Bazin tapped him on the shoulder. “You can read that?”

  “Of course,” Ekel replied. “Who do you think stole it from Shanghai?”

  The helicopter was slowing and Bazin looked at the map again. “We’re here,” he announced to his team. “Get ready.”

  As the AW109 slowed to a hover over a clearing in the trees, Ekel pointed at the ground. “Sir, if you would?”

  “Of course.” Checking to make sure he was securely strapped in, Bazin leaned over and pulled on the latch holding the helicopter’s side door shut. It slid open on oiled rails, allowing the cold night air to gust into the cabin, buffeting them. Bazin looked down, seeing rectangular shapes arranged in messy rows beneath them. There was no sign of movement.

  He picked up the heavy sensor head from where it lay on the floor of the cabin, taking care not to get entangled in the cables that led back from it to ports on the side of Ekel’s monitor unit. Bazin could feel power running through the sensor as he aimed it out of the side of the helicopter and down at the ground.

  “Working,” announced Ekel.

  “No other aircraft in the area,” reported the pilot. “But that may change at any moment.”

  “Understood.” Bazin craned his neck to look back at Ekel’s screen. The display showed an image that resembled waves breaking on a shoreline as viewed from above. Some were disrupted by blemishes, others smooth and regular. The ground-penetrating radar system had originally been built by the Chinese army to detect buried land mines, but in the hands of a trained user, it could seek out anything concealed beneath the earth.

  After a moment, Ekel pointed at the screen, to where a particular trace was moving around. “There. Someone is down there, under the trailers. It has to be him.”

  “You think he’s aware of us?” asked Ziminova. She had finished assembling the weapon, a Pallad single-shot 40mm grenade launcher. She broke it open and dropped a high-explosive round into the breech.

  “He will be soon.” Bazin shot a look out the window. “Ekel, where is our man?”

  “Twenty degrees to the right. Moving away now.”

  “Understood,” Ziminova replied, and she raised the gun to her shoulder. She took a second to steady her aim and then fired. The hollow chug of the Pallad’s discharge was lost in the sound of the rotor blades.

  Bazin watched the shell drop in on the roof of one of the overgrown trailers, and at the last second he flipped up his NVGs to avoid being dazzled by the blast.

  The trailer detonated into matchwood, orange fire and black smoke forming a brief inferno that lit up the clearing and the surrounding tree line. In the immediate aftermath, he could see where the grenade had excavated a great scoop of dark earth out from under the smashed trailer. The corner of a hidden construction was now visible, bricks collapsed and a metal frame twisted.

  “Another?” offered the woman, rolling a second shell in the palm of her hand.

  Bazin shook his head and pulled back the slide on the Skorpion submachine gun strapped to his chest. “No need. We’ll go in from here.” He signaled the pilot with the flat of his hand. “Drop us off, then wait on station.”

  Ziminova was out swiftly, leaping to the damp grass before the helicopter’s wheels had even touched the ground. Bazin followed at a warier pace, but he was the first to glimpse movement as the aircraft climbed back into the sky, twisting the plume of smoke away in its rotor vortex.

  A figure, hobbled and slow, dragged itself out of the wreckage and started to move sluggishly toward the trees. Ziminova fired a burst from her Skorpion, stitching a line through the dirt in front of the survivor that made him recoil and collapse.

  Bazin approached, walking through a snowfall of light debris that had been kicked up by the grenade blast, torn pages from books, scraps of tissue paper, fragments of cardboard. He raised an eyebrow as his boot landed on something that strangely resembled an abstract map of Stalingrad. He dismissed it and carried on, dropping into a crouch next to the cowering, smoke-blackened figure.

  The man was bleeding from his ears and nostrils, and his eyes were wide with raw panic. Bazin cupped his chin in his hand and turned his head to look directly at him. “Hector Matlow,” he said, slowly and carefully enunciating his words. “Good evening. You are going to help me.”

  Matlow nodded weakly.

  13

  The inside of the Crankcase was aptly named. Dark and dingy, with a strong odor of smoke and engine oil that lingered in the air, the core of the club was a raised dance stage lined with brass stripper poles. Two women were up there as Jack and Chase entered, both wearing a G-string and nothing else, both gyrating blankly to the harsh background music with dead-eyed, mechanical movements.

  It was immediately clear there were two distinct groups of clientele at the Crankcase. The smaller group were the road-weary truckers, who nursed their beers and kept to their side of the club; the other, outnumbering the truck drivers three to one, were a hooting chorus of bikers who cheered on the dancers or argued amongst themselves. Jack glimpsed Night Ranger MC patches with rockers showing county names from all over the Midwest. They congregated at tables surrounding the end of the worn catwalk, and past them on one side of the club interior was a long wooden bar. Behind
it prowled a heavily bearded man-mountain in denim who served drinks like each one was an insult to him. Glass broke and someone shouted, a punch was thrown, but it seemed like par for the course.

  They were three steps into the place when a biker wearing a jacket identical to the one Jack had seen on Brodur stepped into their path. “And who the hell might you be?” he demanded. Tall and wiry, he had matted black dreadlocks that reached past his shoulders and a scarred chin that jutted out when he talked. He carried a pool cue in one hand, although Jack noted that the nearest table was on the far side of the room. “You ain’t familiar to me.”

  Jack looked the biker up and down. “Where’s Rydell?” he asked in a bored tone. “He here?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  The pause before the reply told Jack that this guy didn’t know the answer, and he waved him away, walking on. “Forget it. You can’t help me. Get lost.”

  The pool cue came up in a threatening rise. “You don’t talk to me like that, asshole.”

  Chase stepped in, his expression hard and unforgiving. “Don’t be stupid, tough guy.”

  “Where d’you think you are?” snarled the biker. “You got about ten seconds to start showin’ some respect, before you get messed up—”

  Jack silenced him with a glare. “Is this one of those things where we have to kick the shit out of someone before we get an answer?” He gave Chase a sideways glance and the ghost of a nod.

  Chase caught the thin end of the cue in his open hand with a slap of wood on flesh. He shoved the biker back with enough force that the top third of the stick snapped off and he jammed the ragged, splintered end of it into the meat of the man’s throat. The volume of rowdy conversation in the rest of the bar dropped off significantly.

  Without waiting for the other man to reply, Jack went on. “We’re here to see Rydell. Chicago sent us.”

  “Chicago?” The name of the city made the biker hesitate. “What you doing here? You ain’t supposed to be here.”

  Chase spread his hands, moving the broken cue away. “Says who?”

  “Rydell ain’t around,” said the other man, regaining something of his composure. “Wait up. I’ll get Sammy.”

  “You do that,” Jack said to his back, as he pushed away through the crowd toward a door past the line of the stage.

  “Chicago?” repeated Chase, in a low voice.

  Jack nodded. “This MC can’t move anything on any scale that’ll make money without bumping up against Mob connections. Chicago’s the biggest, closest organized crime hub to this place. I figure the Night Rangers would have some kind of a relationship with the families there.”

  “Good guess. Let’s hope they’re on friendly terms.”

  Jack shook his head. “We’ll see about that. If I’m off base, we’ll know when they come out shooting.”

  Chase looked around, taking the place in. “Stairs at the back,” he said, indicating them with a nod of the head. As he did so, a pair of bikers walked down, laughing harshly. “Probably lead to the cathouse.”

  “If the women Laurel mentioned are all on site, they’ll be kept secured.” Jack considered his options. On the surface the Crankcase seemed like a slapdash construction, but someone had thought carefully about how to build in choke points around the exits to stop anyone from making a fast getaway. “We need a better angle.”

  The dreadlocked biker returned, followed by an older man who was thickset and florid-faced. He walked with a shuffle, and Jack guessed that under his jeans his right leg was a prosthetic.

  “Sammy,” said Jack, as if he knew the man. “Thank your friend here for the warm welcome.”

  Sammy squinted at the two new arrivals, then back at his associate. “Sticks don’t know when to keep his mouth shut.” He scowled. “I know you?”

  “My man Charlie,” Jack nodded toward Chase. “I’m Joe. And this is what you might call a surprise visit.”

  “Surprise is right,” said the biker Sammy had called Sticks. “Why you even here?”

  “We were told to come take a look,” Chase offered, picking up the thread of the lie and spinning it out. “There’s been talk, y’know?” He gestured around. “About what goes on in Deadline.”

  “Our people in Chicago, they don’t like talk,” Jack added. “It makes them nervous.”

  Sammy’s scowl deepened. “This is not a good time. I just got a new load in. We’re real busy here. Come back tomorrow.”

  Jack smiled thinly. “Not gonna happen.” He pressed on, keeping up the momentum. “Look. I didn’t want to come all the way out here to nowheresville, and I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.” He had learned the hard way that keeping an undercover “legend” intact was mostly a matter of confidence. If they could keep Sammy and his friends off-balance and reactive, the bikers would have less time to ask questions that Jack and Chase wouldn’t be able to answer. “I’m sure you don’t want us getting in your way, either. So let’s deal with this and we can all get on with our lives, yeah?”

  “Check ’em,” ordered Sammy, and Sticks came forward to give Chase a cursory pat down. He obliged, and the biker found his gun in short order.

  “Now what are you doing with that?” Sammy said, his eyes narrowing.

  Jack opened his jacket to show the M1911 he was carrying. “You think we’d come in this rat hole without some iron?”

  Sticks warily performed the same check on Jack, before stepping away. “Unless they got it up their asses, these boys ain’t wearing wires.”

  “Sure, whatever,” said Sammy, nodding distractedly. “My office is in back. Come on.” He shot Sticks a look. “Keep people out until we get done, okay?”

  * * *

  “Got it.” Sticks watched the two men follow Sammy across the bar and vanish through the door. Belatedly, he realized he was still holding on to the broken pool cue and angrily tossed it into a corner, before marching back to the bar to snatch up a bottle of beer. He drained half the longneck in a deep pull, running the conversation over in his thoughts. Like we don’t have enough crap to deal with.

  First there had been the problems with the red, white and blue out at the base, then some shit with the bus. Nobody seemed to know where the hell Brodur had gotten himself to. And now this.

  Sammy seemed like he had a line on things, but then Sammy wasn’t a rider anymore, and that meant he wasn’t part of the MC, not really. Not like Sticks was. Sammy lost that leg under a truck outside of Kansas City, and as a kind of payback for all the good work he had done, Rydell had given him the Crankcase to run. But Sammy had been grounded for years now, and that changed a man. Rydell would want to know about this new wrinkle and Sticks wondered if Sammy would be slow to tell the club president.

  He decided to take advantage of the situation, and fished in the pocket of his cut for the battered cell phone that all the MC’s top-rank soldiers had to carry. After a couple of rings he was talking to Lance, Rydell’s master-at-arms. “What?”

  “Lemme talk to the big dog,” he said.

  “Why would I do that, Sticks?”

  “I’m at the ’Case,” he told him. “And we got visitors from outta town.”

  * * *

  Sammy’s office was little different from the bar proper, all bare brick walls and hardwood floors. But unlike the other room, the ex-biker had imposed his character on it.

  “Like a museum in here,” Chase remarked, and that drew a nod from the other man.

  “Lotta memories,” Sammy admitted. The door slammed shut behind them, cutting down the constant grind of the strip club’s music to a dull thudding.

  Jack looked around. Every square foot of wall space that could be filled had been. There were framed pictures, many of them depicting men on motorcycles from the 1970s to the present day, others showing groups of GIs against a backdrop of Hueys and rice paddies in some distant part of Southeast Asia. There were pages from newspapers, mostly lurid headlines about the menace of biker gangs, many specifically mentionin
g the Night Rangers. One wall was dominated by what seemed to be the pelt of a mountain lion, and the other pride of place was split between a black leather jacket bearing the MC’s colors and a glass case containing two dissimilar objects.

  Jack peered closer. The case held a badly crushed fuel tank from a Harley-Davidson, displayed as if it were a war trophy. Next to it was a grimy, sun-bleached mesh-back trucker’s cap. Old, rust-brown bloodstains discolored the bill of the cap.

  Sammy smiled bitterly, noting Jack’s attention. “First one of those I got real easy. Almost killed me. Second one…” He nodded to himself. “Took me a couple of years to track him down.” The old biker tapped a big Bowie knife resting on a cradle before him. They sat, and Sammy leaned across the wooden desk in the middle of the room. Four black-and-white monitor screens in front of him blinked back and forth between images from security cameras dotted around the strip club.

  Chase caught Jack’s eye and subtly nodded toward the screens. Jack saw shots of the dancers leaving the stage, alternating with back rooms and corridors, private dances and other, more illegal activities going on behind closed doors.

  “Rydell is getting sloppy,” Jack began, starting with a challenge. “He’s drawing attention to this place.”

  “How’s that, exactly?” Sammy’s hand stayed close to the knife. “You saying someone’s talkin’ outside of church?” He shook his head. “Never happen. This place is just a lil’ ol’ titty bar and we’re like family down here, you get it? Brothers for life.” He pointed at one of the pictures on the wall, showing a group of Night Rangers standing around a gravestone.

  “The girls…” Chase nodded toward the monitors. “If your people aren’t careful about where they pick them up…”

  Sammy tapped the desk with a meaty finger. “Don’t tell me how to do my job, son. We don’t sign on anyone who’s gonna be missed. Hell, most of these mooks come willing.” He grinned. “Tough economy out there, y’know? Sure, so we don’t have a dental plan, but we pay.”