Smoke and Mirrors wm-4

by John Ramsey Miller

  “You know I can’t promise you any such thing,” Alexa said. “If I can stop him, I’ll have to do it. He’s a man of considerable ability, but he isn’t bulletproof. You thought he had Cyn, didn’t you?”

  “He’s certainly capable of that. She would have been a great card to play. But I believe he’s working with the casino, and he’d know that taking Cyn could have had an adverse effect on the land acquisition.”

  Winter was quiet for a few seconds before he told Alexa what had been troubling him for some time now.

  “A year ago I was in Rogers, Arkansas, consulting with Wal-Mart’s security director about executive protection in other parts of the world. After I got to the airport, a man I’d never seen before sat down beside me. He started a conversation about Wal-Mart before he told me that if he was Paulus Styer, I’d be dead. He told me he was delivering a message for the people who wanted to find Styer. He told me that Styer killed the Russian KGB colonel who trained Styer, a man who was a father figure to him-the man who had betrayed him. Styer was no longer connected to any organization and was without the restraints that brings.”

  “Why did the colonel betray Styer?”

  “The CIA cut him a deal for Styer’s head because he made them look bad by killing people they were protecting.”

  “Anyway, this colonel was paranoid and he knew Styer better than anybody. He was heavily guarded. One night he goes to bed with a young woman. There are guards just outside the room. In the morning they open the bathroom door to find the colonel has been skinned alive. The woman was in bed asleep. Styer left behind a single red toothpick soaked in clove oil. He is still being paid to kill, but nobody knows who’s paying him. I’m wondering if Styer found out about that cutout I met in Arkansas. Why else would he have shown up? The way we left it…”

  “You said, if you left him alone, he’d do the same.”

  “I made a deal with the devil, and based on what I know about him, he’d have kept it. At least I always believed he would. If I’d wanted to track him, it would have been all but impossible for me.”

  “You saying he’s an honorable man?”

  “No. Well, yes, I guess I am. Maybe I misread him, but I thought there was a glimmer of some kind of honor or decency in him. That maybe leaving me alone was a way to atone for what he’d done to Hank and Millie Trammel. But maybe he always planned to come after me, and this was his opportunity.”

  Alexa said, “Hatcher’s call is still bugging me. There’s no way he should have known about my request for intel on RRI. I called Louis, and Louis called me back. He told me that there was no active file on RRI. If so, why did Hatcher call me? And I’m sure he already knew you were here.”

  “You think he’s been listening in?”

  “If that’s the case, I’m worried on lots of levels.”

  Winter said, “J. Edgar is alive and kicking.”

  “You should worry about Brad,” she said. “He’s way out of his element here. No matter what you’ve told him about Styer, he has no frame of reference for a man like that.”

  Winter shrugged. “All I know is this is my opportunity to stop Styer.”

  Alexa shook her head slowly.

  “We should get some rest,” Winter told Alexa.

  “Massey, just do your ripping-shit-apart thing. I got your back,” Alexa said, slapping his foot playfully.

  You always have, he thought, smiling.

  54

  Later that night, after following the Yukon to the sheriff’s house and seeing that it had parked a block away, Styer shut off the van and got ready to approach the house on foot. In the driveway, parked near the sheriff’s truck, were a Jeep and the Dodge the woman-Alexa Keen-had been driving-both rentals with Tennessee plates. Massey and Keen formed a nice round variable to roll around in his mind.

  A single light burned in a downstairs corner room in the rear, most likely the master bedroom where the sheriff would be sleeping. He based his assumption on the fact that the window in the room beside that one was smaller, so it had to be a bathroom. Massey and Keen would be upstairs in guest bedrooms, probably sleeping peacefully.

  Styer figured the watchers there expected him to make a run at Massey, and that Massey had enlisted their help, and who could blame him? They never learned, always merely reacting to whatever he did. Creativity in cutouts was seriously lacking. They were bulls in a china shop. If he took out their team-and here they were, sitting around with their thumbs up their butts and asking for it-the hunters he couldn’t see would be even more infuriated than they were now. It was very tempting. Of course, that move would change it into a different game altogether, because there’d be cutouts everywhere, but then again, that might add some sport.

  He took out his Ruger MK II pistol, a Luger-shaped semiautomatic in.22 LR with a built-in suppressor that was seamlessly connected. The small gun was reliable, easy to conceal, and accurate for close work. The suppressor made the shots as quiet as cat farts.

  “Time to go to work,” Styer said to himself.

  55

  Winter was dreaming that he was with Hank Trammel and Faith Ann Porter in New Orleans when something awakened him. Lying there in the darkness gathering his wits, he wondered what it was that had interrupted his dream. The travel clock beside the bed clicked away each second. He knew he was in Brad’s guest bed, and he reached beside him for his Reeder.45, but his hand found only flat sheet where he’d left the cocked-and-locked weapon.

  “Well, well,” the eerie voice said. “We meet again.”

  In the darkened room, Winter could make out the shape of a man standing beside the bed.

  “Your friends are dead, and it’s all your fault. If you had kept our bargain, they wouldn’t be.”

  A sudden flash from the gun’s barrel illuminated the room and Winter yelled out. Sitting up, he grabbed his handgun.

  The light came on and Alexa rushed in, sweeping her Glock around to cover the room. “What happened?” she asked, looking at him and the gun in his hand, which was aimed at the wall beside the bed. Styer’s presence had been one frightening dream wrapped in another.

  “Nightmare,” he said, his voice cracking. The clock read five-thirty.

  Alexa dropped the Glock to her side and frowned at him. “Want to talk about it?” she asked.

  “No, Lex,” he replied. “Sorry I woke you.”

  She looked at him with tired eyes and said, “Maybe you should keep that gun a little farther away when you sleep. Just a suggestion, since I’m on the other side of the wall.” She flipped off the light and closed the door.

  Winter lay back, resting his head on the pillow, which was damp from perspiration. He lifted his head and flipped the pillow over to the dry side.

  He was shaken by the dream, and doubted finding sleep again would be possible. There was no question in Winter’s mind that Styer was responsible for both killings, and since the casino had the only motive in both, someone there had to be involved. Winter figured he’d turn the casino upside down and see what hit the ground.

  56

  The two teams of Cutouts following Massey split up after the trio had settled into Barnett’s house for the evening. The second team would rest until daybreak, then relieve the overnight team, and eight additional team members would be arriving the following day. While one of the two men put Global Positioning System locators on the Jeep and the Tundra and took up a position behind the house, the other remained in the Yukon watching the front of the house for lights. Massey’s history with their organization had taught them that you couldn’t take him for granted. The ex-deputy U.S. marshal was a legend with the group, having taken out several of them a few years before-a feat unparalleled in the organization’s shadowy fifty-year history. Five members of the team remained in Tunica, and several cleaners were on call, if and when that became necessary.

  Traffic in the sheriff’s neighborhood was extremely light. Of the six or seven cars and trucks that passed on the street after eleven o’clock, only
one was a police cruiser, and the sole officer occupant didn’t even slow as he passed the SUV. The Yukon carried Mississippi plates, a move designed to make the vehicle fit in. If the plates were run, they would be traced to a corporation set up for regional dark operations. If, by some miracle, cutouts were taken into custody, they would be out before they were booked and within hours, there would be no record of the arrest.

  As each vehicle passed the Yukon, the watcher there would open his laptop and type in the plate. None of them raised any flags in the computer, which had immediate access to governmental mainframes.

  Around three in the morning, the watcher in the Yukon radioed his partner. When he received no response, he climbed from the SUV, tacking a silenced Heckler amp; Koch Mark 23 under his jacket and putting on night vision goggles. Slipping into the cover of bushes, he moved toward the place the second watcher was supposed to be.

  As he approached the neighboring yard where his teammate had set up his surveillance, he spotted the man’s shape, sitting in the grass with his ankles crossed, his back against a tree. The older cutout appeared to be asleep, and the watcher approached stealthily from behind. Suppressing a chuckle, he reached around and clasped his hand over his partner’s mouth. As soon as he touched the still man, he jerked his hand back. Looking at his hand in the moonlight, he saw that his gloved fingers were covered with warm blood. Pulling his pistol and kneeling beside the man, he saw that his partner’s head was exploded on the left side. Something heavy dropped to the ground behind him, and as he turned, he felt a spray of cold liquid, smelled it for what it was, and covered his mouth too late to stop the chloroform from taking him down.

  57

  The Cutout awoke and couldn’t feel his hands or feet. Opening his eyes with difficulty, he saw that he was in a kitchen chair-not trussed, but still totally powerless. The light from the open door of a closet illuminated his surroundings-an empty house that was, based on the new Sheetrock and plastic-covered floor, being renovated. Daylight was gathering outside, and he could make out the shapes of trees through the filmy windows. Across the room, a man dressed entirely in black and wearing a watch cap leaned against bare wood studs, studying him. The man didn’t look like the descriptions they had of Paulus Styer, but a convincing disguise was part and parcel to Styer’s method.

  “Welcome,” the abductor said. “Does your head hurt? Chloroform in the face delivered from a bulb is so much neater and faster than pouring it on a cloth.”

  The cutout didn’t answer.

  “I guess not. Anyway, I gave you a shot that has your body paralyzed. It’s a variation of Special K, the animal tranquilizer developed for brain surgery when they want to make sure the patient remains perfectly still but can communicate. The effects will last for a few hours. You can still feel, think, and talk, but you can’t move away from pain. The drug affects only the motor responses, but not the nerve endings in your skin. Don’t you love medical research?”

  The cutout watched his enemy, more furious than frightened.

  “Do you know who I am?” the shadowy figure asked.

  “Cold Wind.”

  “I haven’t been called that for several years,” Styer said, grimacing. “We can dispense with the small talk. Who is the woman with Massey?”

  “Her name is Alexa Keen. She’s an FBI agent.”

  “Why is she here?” Styer asked, letting the cutout see his hand and the knife it held. “Is she investigating an abduction?”

  “What abduction?”

  “A young girl.”

  “We’d have picked that up. She’s here to assist Massey because you’re here. That’s all I know.”

  “How many of your kind are here, besides you two?”

  “Just the two of us.”

  “We both know you are lying. There are at least two more of you here, many more than that within fifty miles of us. No way your handlers would hold back after all the failed, under-gunned attempts to take me.”

  The cutout knew that they had been close to catching Styer on three occasions. There was the team member Styer had taken out in New Orleans, another member Styer had left crucified in Seattle, and one he’d tortured to death and left in a car trunk at the airport in Mexico City.

  “You can join us,” the cutout told him. “Control told us to tell you that if we caught up with you.”

  Styer walked over casually, tapping the blade of a survival knife against his thigh. “If you failed to kill me, you mean?”

  “Our orders are to give you an opportunity if possible. He thinks you could be a valuable addition to our cell.”

  “I could be useful,” Styer said. “But even if it’s true, sooner or later a new control could decide my skills are less valuable than repaying me for leaving egg on the group’s collective face. I don’t trust anybody in a control position. Should I? Would I be able to trust him? Or your friends now that I’ve killed your partner?”

  The cutout nodded. “You wouldn’t be the first transplant we have. My partner was collateral damage.”

  “But I am an old man in our specialized business. My years of usefulness would be few.”

  “They don’t confide in me beyond need to know. I’m just a watcher.”

  “And not a very good one, based on how easy it was to take you. How did you people know I was here?”

  “I don’t know,” the man said truthfully. “I suppose NSA picked the intel out of a conversation over the wires.”

  “A key in on the toothpick thing, no doubt. I have certainly developed an affection for the taste of clove. So Keen and Massey talked about me over the wires?”

  The cutout lowered his gaze. All he could do was move his head. “Just get it over with,” he said.

  “What’s your hurry? Valhalla is open twenty-four/seven.” Styer reached up and drew his blade down the cutout’s forearm. Blood rushed from the wound, which, due to the sharpness of the instrument, merely felt like a dull pressure. Pain was something the cutout was conditioned to ignore-to a point, at least. But, as if Styer were reading his mind, he reached behind the chair and lifted a bottle of bleach.

  “I can’t just take your word for it. I know you understand that. We can’t just take each other’s word, can we?” Styer said, looking out at the coming dawn. “We have time to talk. I want to see how much I can learn from you first. You’d do the same for me, I am sure.”

  Styer tugged the cutout’s left nipple out and used the blade to excise it. The sensation was similar to having a concentrated jet of cold air aimed at the spot. He would not tell Styer anything useful, because he didn’t know anything that could be useful. Styer probably knew that already. The cutout could take a great deal of pain, and Styer was sadistic, which meant this was going to last a very long time.

  58

  SATURDAY

  Winter climbed out of bed and was getting dressed when he heard Brad open the back door. Seconds later he heard Ruger’s steady barking from the backyard. He slipped his gun rig on over his wool vest and went downstairs, where Brad stood at the back door in sweatpants and a T-shirt looking out through the screen. He whistled several times in rapid succession.

  “Ruger after a rabbit?” Winter asked.

  “I don’t know,” Brad said. “She’s going to wake up the neighborhood. This isn’t like her. She always comes when I call her.” He whistled again.

  “Come back from the door,” Winter said, drawing his Reeder and moving to a window in the den for a better view. In the wash from the porch light, Winter could see the dog standing at the picket fence, looking out at something from between the slats.

  “Get a gun,” Winter said. “Cover me from here.”

  Winter took his high-intensity flashlight from the vest pocket. Hurrying to the front door, he opened it as silently as possible and moved around the house, his trigger finger flat against the receiver, aiming the.45 as he went. When he got to the fence he turned the flashlight on, aiming the light spot and the gun at a figure seated at the base of a tree
with his back resting against it. Winter slipped through the gate, keeping the shape illuminated.

  The seated man wore all black, assault boots, and a knit wool balaclava with eye and mouth holes in it. His gloved left hand held a pair of night vision goggles, and in the dew-coated grass next to his right hand lay a silenced HK SOCOM Mark 23 with a noise suppressor. Much of the left side of his head was missing, and a red toothpick had been jammed between his front teeth.

  Using his flashlight, Winter quickly scanned the neighboring yard. Thankfully there were no lights on in that house.

  Winter clicked on the thumb safety of his cocked.45 and waved Brad out before he moved over to the body for a closer look.

  He heard Brad and Alexa talking as they approached the fence, Brad commanding the dog to stop barking. Lights from a car pulling into the driveway washed the garage and trees in Brad’s backyard. Winter prayed it wasn’t the cops.

  “What is it?” Alexa asked.

  “Looks like a dead body,” Brad replied. “That’ll be my father coming for breakfast before he does his early rounds at the hospital.”

  “What are you kids doing?” Winter heard Dr. Barnett ask as he approached the fence.

  “Stay back, Daddy,” Brad said.

  Dr. Barnett ignored his son’s warning.

  Brad opened the gate for the others to enter the yard where Winter was using the harsh light to study the dead man.

  “I’ll call the police,” Brad said.

  Ruger whined.

  “You are the police,” Dr. Barnett said. “Quiet now, girl.”

  “This is a city matter,” Brad replied.

  “Hold up,” Winter told him. “We need to think this through.”

  “Who is he?” Brad asked. “Is it…?”

  Winter looked up at the three faces. “It isn’t him. But he did this.” He pointed at the toothpick.