“They will this time, Mr. Alvarado. You have my word, and do you think I would have pledged my life on that promise if I had even the slightest doubt?”
“I hear your words, the sincerity in them, but until Tanner is dead, they are just that, only words.”
Martinez’ phone rang, after answering it and speaking for a short time, he ended the call, and then fiddled with his phone until he brought up the sketch of Alexa. It was made from the description the young guard, Joaquin, had given to an artist, and the likeness matched her well.
“This woman, you want her as well, yes?”
Alvarado gazed at the phone and a fire lit his eyes.
“Yes. That bitch killed my brother-in-law.”
“I just heard from my strike team leader, Steve Bennett, and it looks like she’s with Tanner. I guess the two of them are working together in Oklahoma.”
The news perplexed Alvarado, and he looked at Martinez with a skeptical gaze.
“Are you certain? That sounds unlikely.”
“It hasn’t been established as a fact yet, no, but my men have four witnesses who saw them together.”
“Who are these witnesses?”
***
In Oklahoma, Scar, Bruise, Wound, and Abrasion were all on their knees inside their motel room.
Steve Bennett stood before them, looking down, with his men standing beside him.
With nothing else to do until Tanner resurfaced, Bennett and his men went to check out the motel where Tanner had killed the five men with a grenade.
While there, Hakeem had witnessed an argument between the motel’s night clerk and a member of the local media.
The young reporter was sticking her finger in the clerk’s face and telling him that he should go talk to the police, and that it was his civic duty. The clerk called the woman a second-rater and stuck out his own finger, his middle finger.
After Hakeem went over and talked to the clerk, he learned that he was looking to sell information. Minutes later, the man was a thousand dollars richer and Bennett and his team knew about The Tin Horsemen Motorcycle Club.
The clerk knew the Horsemen because he used to live in Enid.
“Yeah, I work down here now but I come from Enid. That’s up north a bit. Anyway, I know the four fools that were here when the grenade killed those gangsters. I see them all the time when I visit my sister. She lives right across the street from them, and Lordy if those crappy bikes of theirs don’t make a racket.”
Once they had the motorcycle club’s address. Bennett called it all in to Martinez, who passed it along to Hexalcorp, and someone in the main office tracked Scar to a motel by way of his mother’s credit card.
Bennett saw that The Tin Horsemen were all scared, and an idea occurred to him, an idea similar to the one the deceased Georgie had. He would use The Horsemen as cannon fodder to help wear Tanner down.
“Get up, boys.”
Scar had trouble standing, because every time he put pressure on either of his cut hands it hurt like hell, but he rose after Bruise gripped him by an elbow and tugged.
Bennett reached into his pocket and brought out a roll of money. Hexalcorp supplied the cash to him on every job. It usually went unused, but not today. The motel clerk had received a grand of it, and now Bennett handed each of The Tin Horsemen a hundred dollars.
“You four are on the payroll. I want you to ride around the city separately. The first one of you who spots Tanner or the woman will get five-hundred bucks, all right?”
The four fools smiled at each other, but Scar had a question.
“We saw a third poster for some other dude. Will you pay if we find him too?”
“Hell yeah, the man we’re working for wants that man as much as he wants Tanner, maybe even more so.”
“Good,” Scar said. “The guy looks familiar, but I can’t remember where I’ve seen him.”
“That’s enough talk, get on your bikes and start looking.”
Simms handed out cards to the boys.
“If you find anything, call that number.”
“But don’t try to take Tanner or the others until after we arrive on the scene,” Bennett said. “We, uh, we want to see you take them down.”
“Us?” Bruise said, and a whistling sound accompanied the word due to his missing front tooth.
Roger Wilson smiled at the boys.
“You’re The Tin Horsemen, right? Hell, Tanner doesn’t stand a chance against you guys.”
Scar and his crew left and Hakeem frowned at Bennett.
“Steve, Tanner will tear through them like a chainsaw through tissue paper.”
“Yeah, but while he’s busy doing that, maybe one of us will get him lined up in our sights.”
“Was there any news on Martinez’ end?” Simms asked.
Bennett smiled.
“Yeah, get this, they think Tanner was behind the raids on those drug companies. He’s really got it in for Alvarado.”
“I don’t blame him,” Hakeem said. “Alvarado is a dirtbag.”
Bennett pointed at him.
“Wrong. He’s a client. We don’t judge, remember? And you know as well as I do that the good guy/bad guy thing is bullshit. Look at us and the shit we’ve done for our country. To our fellow countrymen we’re patriots and to our enemies we’re the scum of the earth. All I know about Alvarado is that he can pay the bills, and oh yeah, he doesn’t force people to buy drugs, he just supplies them.”
Hakeem held up his hands in surrender.
“I got it, but I still don’t have to like the man.”
“I don’t either, but just like us, he is what he is.”
“And Tanner, what’s he?” Hakeem said.
Simms freed his gun from the shoulder holster beneath his jacket and pretended to take aim at a target.
“That’s easy, Tanner is a dead man.”
CHAPTER 25 – Help wanted – Must be willing to kill
After Tanner received Jake Garner’s message about Dan Matthews, he called Matthews on the number given to him by Garner.
After eight rings, Tanner was about to end the call when he heard a man answer the phone.
“Please hold while I activate security precautions.”
The voice sounded bored, as if it spoke those same words often, and Tanner guessed that its owner was used to taking measures to ensure privacy.
Tanner held on the line, and after a hiss of static, Matthews came back on.
“Only one man has this number, that is, unless he passed it along to another man.”
“It’s Tanner, and you’re Matthews?”
“Dan Matthews, and I want to talk to you about an employment opportunity.”
“I work for myself. I don’t hire on.”
“That’s understood, and if we reached an agreement you would still be your own man, but my employer would like to be able to call on you when needed, at pay commensurate with your skill set of course.”
Tanner had two million dollars in an account after being paid by Joe Pullo. To earn that money he had killed scores of The Giacconi Family’s enemies. It felt good knowing that the money was there, and he was through working for peanuts.
“If I took an assignment, the price would be one million dollars.”
“Excuse me?” Matthews said.
“You heard me right.”
“Yes, and I was told that you had a high opinion of yourself, I see that wasn’t exaggerated.”
“Conrad Burke can afford it.”
“Ah, I see that Garner sniffed out my employer, and yes, Mr. Burke can afford it, but he could also hire six men for less.”
“There aren’t six men in the world that can do what I do.”
“I don’t know, Tanner; you’d be surprised at the talent pool out there, and unlike yourself, those men understand discipline and the chain of command because they’ve spent time in the armed forces.”
“Fine, hire them, and when they fail, I’ll want two million.”
Tanner h
eard an exasperated sigh come over the line.
“It’s my understanding that you’re a marked man now, Tanner. There’s a two million dollar reward for you, dead or alive.”
“Two million? Hmm, Alonso Alvarado is getting nervous.”
“The point is Tanner, you may not live long enough to take a contract.”
“Tell Burke my terms, one million a contract, but I get to refuse any offers made.”
“We also have terms.”
“Such as?”
“This offer is only valid if you’re successful in killing Alvarado, which of course is impossible. The man is locked away inside that desert fortress and our satellite surveillance reveals that he’s fortifying his defenses. By the way, if you’re going after Alvarado, you’re headed the wrong way.”
“I have business north before I head south.”
“I believe you. You’re not the type to hide or run, I’ll give you that much.”
“I get the impression that recruiting me wasn’t your idea?”
“You’re correct. However, you have an advocate within our organization and Mr. Burke agrees with them, at least for now.”
“What’s the name of this advocate?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Can I assume that I’m not the first man you’ve approached to take this job?”
“You’re correct again. Three men went after a certain target and two of the men have disappeared.”
“What about the third?”
“His body was found yesterday.”
“Is the target foreign or domestic?”
“An American living abroad, but he’s a very dangerous man.”
“It sounds interesting, and I do like a challenge, however, once I kill Alvarado I’ll be taking some serious down time. If you still need me after that, let me know.”
“Down time? I don’t think you understand. The man I’m talking about should have been put down weeks ago.”
“That’s not my problem. If you still need help in a month or so, I’ll think about it.”
“You’ll think—goddamn it! I’ll talk Burke out of using you somehow, and Alvarado will probably kill you anyway.”
“What’s got you so upset, Matthews, my lack of discipline, or the fact that I don’t give a shit about your problem?”
“It’s not my problem, Tanner, this affects the world.”
Tanner had been smirking into the phone, but Matthews’s words intrigued him.
“What are we talking about here, a terrorist?”
“This is a man who funds terrorists, chiefly because they further his own agenda.”
“All right, but there’s something I don’t get. Why is Burke in the assassination business? The government has its own killers and black ops to do this sort of work.”
“Yes, and they all failed before we were ever consulted. The government outsources many areas to us; Mr. Burke was hoping to expand into this arena as well, but we’ve proven as ineffective as the government in this case.”
“It sounds interesting, but my focus is on killing Alonso Alvarado; until that’s done, nothing else matters.”
“I understand that, and... I can help you.”
“How?”
“As I said before, we have the Alvarado compound under satellite surveillance. I’ll forward that to Garner and then he can forward it to you.”
“That would be helpful, and I take back what I was thinking about you, Matthews.”
Matthews chuckled.
“You kill Alvarado, Tanner, and I’ll believe you’re as good as you think you are.”
“It’s a deal,” Tanner said, and then he ended the call.
CHAPTER 26 – Meter reader
After speaking with Dan Matthews, Tanner had driven around the city for hours.
When he spotted the group of eight men gathered together in the side parking lot of a bar, he was almost certain that he had found what he was looking for.
The men all had the carriage of soldiers and were likely a group of mercenaries looking to cash in on the bounty placed on his head.
They looked organized, but they were not the men that Tanner Six had warned him about. Those men would not stand around a public parking lot to make their plans. Those men would be secreted somewhere just waiting for him to stick his head up so that they could chop it off.
Still, he could use this group to make the other group show themselves, and once they did so, he would be the one doing the chopping.
***
While shopping with Alexa the day before, Tanner had bought a set of green work clothes, along with a clipboard and calculator.
He was wearing those clothes, and after donning a plain black baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses, Tanner left the car and began working his way closer to the men inside the parking lot.
He stopped at each business he came to and went around to the gas meter. If the meter were an older model, Tanner pretended to copy down the numbers he read onto the clipboard. If the gas meter was electronic, he held the calculator against it, as if it were a device to gather data from the meter.
He had used the ploy once before and had only a clipboard, and his target at the time, a perceptive man who was in hiding, made him as a phony and slipped away. He eventually killed the man of course, as Tanner never failed to fulfill a contract, but the lesson was learned and the mistake would never be repeated.
When he was checking the meter on the dry cleaners that sat next to the bar’s parking lot, the men stopped talking for a moment as they looked over at him, but they soon dismissed him as simply a man doing his job, and resumed making their plans.
The largest of the men, a bearded giant wearing faded overalls, spoke to the others.
“Two million, man, you know whoever wants this Tanner really wants him when they’re willing to pay that much now.”
One of the other men smiled.
“You know what we should do if we bag him. We should keep quiet and wait until the price goes higher.”
“Screw that,” said another man who wore a goatee. “Once we get him, I’m cashing in and heading to Vegas.”
The other men laughed and then the big one opened up a paper map. From what Tanner gathered as he walked past them to check the bar’s meter, they were dividing the city up into grids to search.
That was good, it meant that they would be separating into smaller groups, and make themselves more vulnerable.
Tanner pretended to check the meters up and down each side of the block while the men made their plans. When the eight men separated into four sets of two, he decided to go with goatee and his partner, a skinny guy with sunburned skin.
That was when Tanner noticed that all the men had good tans, and he wondered where they were from. Wherever it was, they should have stayed there.
It seemed that Matthews was right, his bounty had been doubled to two million dollars. That was a good sign; it meant that Alvarado was worried.
Alvarado must have seen the drawing of him as well as the old mugshot, but whether he realized that he was actually Cody Parker, Tanner didn’t know.
He had been only sixteen when Alvarado killed his family and left him for dead, and as he had believed Alvarado long dead, Alvarado must have believed likewise about him.
If Alvarado didn’t realize that Tanner and Cody Parker were one and the same, Tanner would reveal it to the man before he killed him. Alvarado had murdered Tanner’s family, and he would finally pay for that act.
Alexa had suffered too, even more so than Tanner had, given how young she was at the time, and he could only imagine the damage that such a horrific experience must have caused the child she once was.
Tanner wondered about her briefly. Was she off doing as he asked her to do, or was everything she said a lie, and she had some unknown agenda?
Tanner hoped that she would pass her final test today, because if she didn’t, he’d have to kill her.
Tanner followed behind Goatee and his partner
in his stolen car as they drove off in a silver Toyota pickup. The license plate on the rear of the truck told Tanner that the men were from Arizona, which answered Tanner’s earlier question about where the men had come from.
After he thought enough time had passed to allow the other groups to travel far enough away, he decided to lure Goatee and Sunburn back to the house where he and Alexa had been staying.
***
While Tanner was busy looking for someone to lead into their trap, Alexa had been driving to the northeastern portion of Oklahoma to a lake that had cabins for rent.
Tanner had told her of a place he stayed before and knew to be secluded. It was the off-season, and empty cabins would be plentiful.
Alexa was to get a cabin, stock it with food, and then return to Oklahoma City for Tanner. It was a six-hour round trip with the shopping included, and she felt as if he was trying to keep her out of harm’s way by sending her off on an errand.
However, when she arrived at the lake, she saw what Tanner had meant. No one would think of looking for them in such a picturesque environment, and as half of a vacationing couple, Tanner would be even less conspicuous.
Alexa took a cabin that sat among a group of three, and the other two appeared empty, as no vehicles were parked outside their doors.
She then followed the directions of the woman who had rented her the cabin, and shopped at a local supermarket.
She had rented the cabin with the story that her husband would be joining her there later for a vacation break, and when Alexa first entered the cabin and saw that it contained only one bed, she smiled.
Tanner must have known that there was only one bed per cabin, and it would serve him right if she made him sleep on the sofa.
That was unlikely, she knew, because she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
When she returned from the market, she saw with a small bit of irritation that they did have a neighbor in one of the other cabins. It irked Alexa, because it meant that they would have to be more on guard.
However, the woman seemed friendly enough, and like Alexa, her partner would be joining her later that day.
“Oh yeah, Bob and I come here every year about this time. We love it here.”
The TANNER Series - Books 10 -12 (Tanner Box Set Book 4) Page 10