The Tanner Series - Books 1-11: Tanner - The hit man with a heart

by Remington Kane

  “This team of yours,” Malena said. “How many men are in it?”

  “There are four, and they will find Tanner and kill him.”

  Malena laughed, and Martinez thought it sounded as if it carried a touch of madness. When the laughter subsided, she spoke.

  “Tanner has killed over a hundred of our best men and you send only four after him? That’s next to useless.”

  “With all due respect, Señora Alvarado, I disagree. My team is just that, a team. These men were the best when they served their country overseas and now they are the best the free market has to offer. They’ve studied Tanner and they understand he’s a formidable and very unconventional warrior. They will not be easily fooled or misled as others have been, and they will kill him. It’s just that simple.”

  “I want a guarantee,” Alonso Alvarado said.

  “A guarantee?”

  “Yes, a personal guarantee. And by that, I mean if your men fail to kill Tanner, you will never leave this compound alive. Do you accept the terms?”

  Martinez leaned back in his seat and folded his hands together. This was not the first time he had been asked to pledge his life as a guarantee of his men’s success, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

  “I agree. But when they kill Tanner, I want all your security business, and I would also like the opportunity to invest with you. I’m sure if I gave you money to invest in your operation that you could triple it in no time.”

  Alvarado nodded in agreement. “If you kill Tanner for me, you’ll never have to worry about money again, and I’ll make certain you rise to the top of your company as well.”

  That last perk was unexpected, and it brought a smile to Martinez’ lips. “We have a deal. Tanner will die at the hands of my men. I guarantee it.”

  Malena stood and stared down at Martinez. “Someone will die, of that we’re certain.”

  In Texas, Martinez’s elite team of operatives were cleaning their weapons inside a motel room as they waited to hear word of Tanner’s whereabouts.

  The four men were Steve Bennett, the Strike Team leader, Roger Wilson, Hakeem Brown, and Mortimer Simms, who just went by Simms because he hated his first name.

  They had fought in two wars together and knew each other nearly as well as they knew themselves.

  The four men grew up in different sections of America and had vastly different backgrounds, but they were a family as well as fellow warriors.

  Bennett, their leader, grew up an army brat and later joined the Marines. He was thirty-eight, while the others were either a year younger or older than he was. Bennett had dark hair to go along with his good looks, as did Roger Wilson. Wilson had grown up in Los Angeles as the son of a single mother who was a failed actress and an alcoholic.

  A black man, Hakeem Brown was rich and the son of a Philadelphia publishing mogul. Hakeem’s father had jumped aboard the hip-hop craze early and made millions by creating magazines and websites that catered to the fans of that style of music.

  Hakeem was given two million dollars on his twenty-first birthday, but Hakeem was a soldier at heart, and other than the condominium he owned in Key West, Florida, the money went virtually untouched.

  Mortimer Simms looked nothing like his name. He was a huge blond guy from Chicago with muscles upon muscles and had competed in bodybuilding contests before joining the Marines after the events of 9/11.

  Hakeem reassembled his weapon and checked the slide action. “This Tanner is no joke, Steve. How do you plan to handle him?”

  Bennett fed rounds into a magazine as he answered. “I think the way to defeat Tanner is to be patient. The man is a wrecking ball, but even a wrecking ball is harmless once it stops swinging.”

  “All right, we’ll be patient, but what’s that mean?” Simms asked.

  “It means, gentlemen, that once we find Tanner we do nothing. With the price he has on his head, adversaries will keep coming at him. We will let them wear him down and exhaust his resources before we make our move.”

  Roger Wilson smiled. “This sounds like what we did in Detroit a few months ago, with the gangbangers.”

  “That’s right, we let them waste their ammo on that rival gang, lose a few men, and then they were easy pickings. And as good as he is, Tanner is still just one man.”

  Hakeem slid his weapon back into the shoulder holster he wore. “It sounds good to me. Once we nail him, why don’t we hang at my place in Florida. Martinez promised us some time off.”

  The men all agreed. They were already looking at Tanner as if he were bagged and tagged. They were overconfident; a trait they shared with many of Tanner’s deceased enemies.

  398

  The Four Horsemen Of The Ridiculous

  The head of security for Chemzonic was a man named Jack Rockford.

  Tanner researched Rockford through an internet search of Oklahoma Real Estate and found Rockford’s house. The home was a mansion that resembled a castle and had to be worth millions. Tanner was certain that Chemzonic paid its head of security well, but he doubted they paid that well, at least on the books.

  If Rockford was receiving payments for working with or for the Alvarado Cartel inside Chemzonic, it meant he was helping to cover up whatever was going on there.

  Tanner guessed that they were manufacturing precursor chemicals that could be used in making methamphetamine, but that sort of thing would be almost impossible to keep hidden from government regulators and plant inspectors.

  That would seem to indicate that people were on the take, or maybe Chemzonic had figured out a way to conceal their illegal activities. In either event, Jack Rockford would have the answers, answers that Tanner could squeeze from the man.

  But, why do it?

  It would certainly cause Alvarado, who was Martillo, grief, but so would killing the man. And the faster Tanner found Tanner Six and figured out what was going on, the sooner he could continue to Mexico and kill Martillo.

  Tanner sighed in frustration. He had tried to reach his mentor but was only able to leave a message for him. That indicated that the man might not be at his home. In any case, he would have to wait for him to make contact. Waiting meant Tanner would be sitting instead of moving. If he was going to be delayed in getting to Martillo, he might as well do something with the time.

  Tanner drove past the palatial home of Jack Rockford once more, then headed off to find the man.

  News of the bounty on Tanner’s head was spreading throughout the criminal underworld and any punk that learned of it began to fantasize about what they would do with the money.

  In Enid, Oklahoma, a biker club calling themselves the Tin Horsemen gathered around a pool table and stared at a drawing of Tanner’s face. They weren’t really a biker club, but just four guys with motorcycles.

  After they realized that the names Iron Horsemen and Steel Horsemen were already in use, they went with the name Tin Horsemen, because after all, they reasoned, metal is metal.

  The “club” leader, an idiot going by the name of Scar, jabbed a finger at the drawing of Tanner that was on a flyer, the flyer stated that Tanner was worth a million dollars.

  “We’re gonna find this dude and get that money.”

  The other three men all nodded in agreement. They did that a lot. If Scar had pointed at an old wanted poster of Billy the Kid, the men’s reaction would have been the same. They were followers and had been following Scar around since the third grade. They would probably continue to follow Scar until the day they died. Given that their current target was Tanner, their deaths could be imminent.

  Like Scar, the three men went by nicknames. They were Wound, Bruise, and Abrasion. Abrasion considered himself the cerebral one of the group, but he had a double-digit IQ like the rest of them.

  The four idiots were all twenty-one-years-old. They had gone through life trying to get as much money as they could, without having to work for it. They lived together in a converted garage behind a home that belonged to Scar’s mother, and they routinely
raided the house for food. The poor woman’s food bill was more than her mortgage, but she loved her son and had always given him anything he wanted. Since she wasn’t rich, that consisted of a drafty garage and free food.

  The four wannabe bikers also shoplifted on occasion. Their lives of petty crime had started in high school, where they used to extort money from their fellow students by charging a protection fee. If you failed to pay the fee, you would find your locker broken into and your things missing or trashed.

  They tried using this tactic in the real world when they dropped out of high school in their senior year. The local mob explained to them in no uncertain terms that they already controlled the protection rackets.

  That lesson came with a broken leg for each of them and ended their dream to forge a criminal empire. Now they were considering going after Tanner, and the thought of claiming the million-dollar bounty on Tanner was overriding any semblance of good sense they had.

  Abrasion wiped his nose with his sleeve as he spoke. He was on the short side and skinny, as were Bruise and Wound. Scar was taller, and it was this attribute that caused the others to follow him. He had always been bigger than they were, like an adult, and so they assumed he knew more.

  “A million dollars, and it says dead or alive, so we don’t even have to kill him.”

  Bruise pointed at Tanner’s eyes. “He looks mean.”

  “He’s a killer,” Wound said. “So yeah, he’s probably mean. But Scar, how are we gonna find this guy? He could be anywhere.”

  Scar sent his men a crafty grin. “Ain’t we somewhere?”

  The others thought that over and nodded.

  “Well, Tanner’s got to be somewhere too, and if he comes near this somewhere, he’s ours. All I’m saying is let’s be ready for him.”

  “Ready how?” asked Abrasion.

  “Simple, we keep the bikes filled with gas, load up some supplies in case we have to move, and then we’ll go hang out at McGinty’s. Them mob guys drink there. If this Tanner comes around, they’ll know about it, and then we’ll know about it too.”

  Wound rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Those guys don’t like us, Scar, and I don’t want my leg broken again.”

  Scar smiled as he reached in his pocket. When his hand came out, it was holding a hundred-dollar bill.

  “My mom hit the number the other day and gave me some of the money. If we buy them mob guys drinks, they’ll let us stick around.”

  “What number did your mom play?” Bruise asked.

  “Um, I think it was 666,” Scar answered.

  “That’s an unlucky number,” Abrasion said.

  “Not for my mom,” Scar said, as he pointed at the flyer again. “But if you want a lucky number, look here, $1,000,000.00.”

  The four fools grinned at each other. They had no idea who it was they were hunting.

  399

  He Has His Pride

  The Chemzonic plant was a huge complex aptly located on Chemzonic Drive in Oklahoma City.

  Tanner told the guard at the security gate that he was there to apply for a job. After he received a visitor’s pass, he drove in and parked near the front office. There was a fenced in parking lot near the entrance to the office. It had a gate that slid aside when the right key card was fed into the box that controlled it. Inside that area were nearly twenty luxury automobiles, which must have belonged to the company’s corporate elite.

  Tanner wondered if Jack Rockford’s car was parked in there, but then he realized that Rockford’s ride likely didn’t match his house, not if he was being compensated under the table.

  Despite his title of Chief of Security, Rockford wasn’t a CEO or a Vice-president, and wouldn’t be given the same perks as the men or women in those positions.

  Tanner confirmed this when he walked along a row of parking spaces that were outside the fenced in area. The spaces had names stenciled at the rear of them. Tanner came to one that indicated it was reserved for a, J. ROCKFORD. The vehicle in the slot was a late-model Chevy. It was a nice car in a good shade of blue, but it didn’t match Rockford’s stately home.

  Tanner left the car and went inside. The office looked like most other reception areas of large companies. There were pictures behind the reception desk that displayed an aerial view of the Chemzonic plant, while on either side of that were photos of Chemzonic’s bigwigs, who apparently were all white, fiftyish, and balding, including the woman VP of Plant Operations, who had an odd hairline for a female. Tanner shrugged inwardly. Maybe it was something in the chemicals.

  There was beige carpeting on the floor of the reception area, a glass coffee table with magazines, and chartreuse vinyl chairs that looked as if they would squeak when you sat in them.

  The office also came with a middle aged blonde. She had a face that said fifty, while her taut and tanned body said thirty. She was standing behind the reception desk as she looked through a tall filing cabinet.

  The woman welcomed Tanner with a gleaming smile, and the nameplate on her desk proclaimed that she was Trisha.

  “Hello, are you here to fill out an application for work?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Tanner said, and saw the woman frown slightly. Tanner assumed that Trisha hadn’t liked his use of the word, ma’am.

  “The only positions available at the moment are in the cafeteria. They need someone to bus tables, or to work as a dishwasher, will either of those do?”

  “I’ll take anything,” Tanner said, while thinking that they’d soon have two positions open in security once the bodies of Derrick and Bobby were found.

  Tanner perused the wall of photos near a side window. They were a collage of pictures taken at what looked like a recent company picnic. Some of them had captions, and in one, a large blond man with perfect teeth was smiling at the camera while holding up a trophy.

  It was Jack Rockford, or at least it looked like the pictures of the man Tanner had seen on the internet.

  The caption read—JACK WINS THE HORSESHOE TOSS FOR THE THIRD YEAR IN A ROW

  Tanner turned from the photos and caught the receptionist looking at his ass.

  Trisha blushed slightly. “Um, I know what you mean about taking anything. A lot of people are out of work these days.”

  Tanner pointed at the photo. “This guy with the horseshoe trophy looks familiar. Is he Jack Rockford?”

  “You know Jack?”

  “Yes, but it was years ago. I didn’t know he worked here.”

  “Oh, yes, he’s been here about four years now. Where do you know him from, was it Mexico?”

  “Jack was in Mexico?”

  “Yes, we have another plant there in Mexico City, and we’ll soon be opening another there as well.”

  Tanner glanced up at the ceiling as if he were trying to remember something.

  “Ah man, try as I might, I can’t remember the name of Jack’s wife.”

  “It’s Cindy. I see her every year at the picnic. She’s a sweetie.”

  “Yes, she is, but listen, never mind the application. I’d feel weird working as a dishwasher in a place where Jack is such a big deal. I know it’s prideful, but it’s how I feel.”

  Trisha smiled sympathetically. “I understand, honey, and I won’t even tell Jack that you were here, but listen, they say the post office is hiring.”

  “Thanks, I’ll check it out.”

  Tanner left Trisha, drove to the gate, and handed the guard back his visitor’s pass. From there, he exited Chemzonic Drive and drove across the way to park in the lot of a 7-Eleven. The parking space gave him a clear view of Chemzonic Drive. When Jack Rockford left for the day in his blue Chevy, Tanner would follow him.

  In Dallas, Alexa was also sitting in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. She had driven all morning and made the stop for a quick lunch. When she left the parking lot, she was all set to head back to I-20 West, but instead, by following her instincts, she wound up on I-35 North.

  She was headed straight for Oklahoma, City.

  4
00

  Spenser Hawke

  BILLINGS, MONTANA

  Spenser Hawke liked to think of himself as a security professional.

  The word, “bodyguard” seemed too soft and recalled the image of a man bravely taking a bullet for whoever was paying him to protect them. Spenser wasn’t jumping in front of a bullet for a client. He thought it made much more sense to keep the client out of the line of fire. He was doing that now, as he watched the home of Simone Owens.

  Simone Owens was thirty-one and the single mom of two young girls. She was being stalked by a dirtbag named Darrell Haney. Haney, a pot dealer, became fixated on Simone when he came upon her in a Casper, Wyoming, supermarket a year ago.

  Simone admitted that at first, she was interested in Haney, who was a good-looking guy in his twenties. He drove a nice car and took her out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, but it was over dinner that the crazy came out.

  Haney began talking about marriage on that first date and told Simone that they were destined to be together. That was bad enough, but when Haney assured her that she would forget her kids in time, once she gave them up for adoption, of course, she knew that she was talking to a true looney toons.

  Simone had been wise enough not to have Haney pick her up from her home, but rather from her place of business. However, when she arrived for work the next day, she found dozens of red roses covering her desk. When Haney showed up a short time later, Simone had to ask building security to escort him outside.

  She saw no sign of him when she left for the day, but the next morning he was outside her home and leaning on her car.

  Simone had spent months and a fair amount of money going through the courts and dealing with the cops to get Haney to leave her alone. It did no good. She eventually fled from her home in the middle of the night like a thief, with her two children in tow.