Stanzer scratched his head. “I still don’t see the connection. Where’s the link?”
“Larson.”
“Larson?” Stanzer said. “How?”
“He’s got a brother named Oscar who works for the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security. That’s where all the funding is these days, fighting America’s boogeymen.”
“And?” Stanzer asked.
“And so he’s on this stakeout trying to catch some Al-Shabaab techno kid and the shit is just boring. Day after day of just sitting in a room filled with screens for weeks. The Larson boys, they’re the type that like to go out and bust heads.”
“So?”
“So one day on the phone Oskee and Larson are catching up, telling one another about what they’re each up to, and Oskee gripes about how he’s on the world’s lamest stakeout, one that supposedly revolves around some kid, a youngin’ from Larson’s part of the world, Detroit, who’s turning into some kind of urban crime fighting legend. Some underage MMA cage fighter from the projects that’s been recruited to secretly hunt terrorists, like a myth.”
Stanzer nodded his head, finally seeing it. “So that’s when it clicked?”
“I figure it’s got to be the same kid, right?” Puwolsky said. “And my reasoning goes that if a girl like this is so hot for him, he’s gotta be twice as hot for her. I mean this little honey was just WAY out of his league so that’s the card we played. The threat of danger to her was just bait to lure him in.” Puwolsky laughed. “Never underestimate the stupidity of teen love, right?”
Stanzer didn’t respond.
“So I go on a little fishing expedition to discover more of the facts. After that, you know the story. A payoff to Krewls, I bait a nice hook on the assumption the kid still cares about her, he bites, takes the mission, and voilà! My problem’s solved.”
“So she really loved him, huh?”
“Still does, I’m sure,” Puwolsky said. “Gonna be both of their fucking downfalls.”
Stanzer nodded and reflected on what he’d just heard. It made sense. Puwolsky needed someone who could get into Jentles and take out the High Priest. If M.D. failed, no big deal. Puwolsky had no real ties to McCutcheon, and couldn’t have given a shit if his soldier died behind bars. Yet if the person Puwolsky sent in to the D.T. succeeded, then he and Larson’s big problem with D’Marcus Rose disappeared and they’d be back in business with a new High Priest. Plenty of upside, little downside.
“Gotta give it you,” Stanzer said. “It’s pretty clever.”
“Damn right it is,” Puwolsky said. “You F.B.I. gumps ain’t the only ones with brains. You know what your problem is, Stanzer?”
“What’s that?”
“You thought you could keep your mysterious little unit a secret,” Puwolsky said. “Only failures can be kept secret. When you succeed, people hear about the shit.”
“All right, so lemme ask ya,” Stanzer said. “How many other guys you railroad with Krewls?”
“What, you mean like backdoor into Jentles?”
“Yeah.”
“Seven, maybe eight, each for a different reason. Some rival gangsters of the Priests. A few businessmen who wouldn’t play ball with our other various enterprises. What’s that you say?” Puwolsky said. “Sometimes good people need to do some very bad things. Krewls had this special cell he’d toss the guys into and we’d never hear from them again.”
Puwolsky smiled, but Stanzer didn’t return the grin. The colonel remained stone-faced. Disapproving, even.
“What?” Puwolsky said. “You never took justice into your own hands?”
Stanzer checked to make sure he had a full cartridge in his handgun. “What do you think I’m doing here right now?”
At five forty-five a.m., McCutcheon stood outside of an unremarkable building in an unremarkable suburb of Detroit with the morning wind howling through the streets. Rain began to fall in the predawn blackness. Using the back entrance, M.D. went through a door, climbed three sets of stairs two at a time, and stopped at suite 310. Home of Bump-n-Grind Soundscapes.
A rinky-dink music studio, M.D. thought. Classic Stanzer. Soundproofed walls. Single-entry access. Guy had probably already jammed all the Wi-Fi and cell tower signals within a hundred-yard radius, too.
McCutcheon checked his phone. No bars. Yep, clearly a trap. A trap, McCutcheon knew, he had to walk into.
“Ssshh,” Stanzer said to Puwolsky, his eyes fixed on the door handle as it began to turn. “He’s here.”
Dressed in black, M.D. entered the room. Puwolsky, safety off the Glock, slid his finger from the barrel of his weapon down to its trigger.
“Be a long time before anyone finds a body in there,” McCutcheon said, nodding toward the recording booth on the other side of a long rectangular sheet of double pane glass.
“Oh, they’ll find it eventually,” Stanzer said. “Yet not with any trace of who’s behind the deed, of course. Go on in and sit.”
Stanzer made sure to remain a minimum of five feet away from McCutcheon at all times. Pressing a gun against the head or chest of M.D. would be exactly what McCutcheon would want, because it would give him an opportunity to seize, spin, and strike. But leaping sixty inches or more to disarm the colonel before he could pull the trigger—not even the fastest of the fast could cover that type of ground quickly enough to avoid eating a bullet.
M.D., however, didn’t move.
“I said go,” Stanzer repeated.
“You’ll free her?”
“Of course,” the colonel replied. “We don’t take out civilians. Part of the code.”
M.D. sniffed. Code. Yeah, right.
Stanzer used the barrel of his Crimson Trace Sig Sauer P226 to point to the inside of the recording booth, the red targeting beam’s laser showing the exact spot where he wanted M.D. to go. The Sig was a good weapon, accurate and powerful, but Stanzer brought another firearm with him, too, a Colt .25 strapped to his ankle. Out in the field he could never be too prepared.
“Now,” Stanzer said to M.D.
The large padded recording booth on the other side of the black-and-gray mixing board was about the size of a large bedroom. The space could easily accommodate a choir of ten. M.D. studied the particulars. Eight chairs had been configured in a semicircle near the back wall, and there were three floor lamps, all turned on, each emitting a soft, yellow light. There was a single brown stool, too, tall like the kind found at a bar, front and center, where a lead singer would most probably sit.
Definitely the place where M.D. would be told to go.
“Right there,” Stanzer said, using his Sig to nods toward the bar stool. Before taking his seat McCutcheon squatted and tapped the ground.
“What’s that?” Puwolsky said, his Glock at the ready.
“It’s called tapping out. I’ve never done it before.” M.D. rose to his feet. “But now I have. I assume you want this?”
M.D. reached behind his back and withdrew a handgun. Both Stanzer and Puwolsky tightened their grip on their own respective weapons, but M.D. fingered his piece delicately making sure not to wrap his palm around the gun’s handle. His move wasn’t meant to be aggressive. He wanted Gemma returned home safely, and with no route other than submission available for him to achieve his aim, he surrendered. Not with shame in his heart, though. He’d been fighting in the cage long enough to know that eventually even the best get beaten.
Besides, McCutcheon always knew he’d die a violent death. It was the only thing that made sense after having lived such a violent life.
“Shut the door,” Stanzer said. Puwolsky sealed the room and Stanzer moved to a secure position directly behind M.D. He raised his weapon. Pointed it at the back of McCutcheon’s head. An infrared dot projected a glow on the center of his young soldier’s skull.
“I never like to kill a man unless he knows why he’s dying,” Stanzer said, his Sig at the ready. With his free hand Stanzer reached into his pocket and handed Puwolsky his phone. “G’head. Show hi
m.”
Puwolsky raised Stanzer’s cellie, tapped the screen, and handed McCutcheon the screen. A video started to play.
“Colonel, could you please make sure you speak your answers into the microphone. Remember, we are filming this.”
“I said, there are currently no active agents under the legal age of eighteen years old working under my authority.”
Puwolsky reached for the phone, but Stanzer waved him off because he wanted the entire video to play. The recording only lasted a few minutes and M.D. watched every single frame. When it ended, McCutcheon raised his eyes and spoke to Stanzer through the reflection he saw in the glass partition that separated the recording booth from the mixing table, much like the way a man would address another man through the rearview mirror of a car.
“I guess sometimes,” M.D. said, “good people have to do some very bad things.”
“I think our next moments together will certainly prove that point,” Stanzer replied.
M.D. nodded and waited for his bullet. He debated whether to cross himself. Whether to bow his head, raise his finger, touch his forehead then his chest then his left pectoral muscle then his right pectoral muscle and finally his heart.
Did God even exist? In these last few moments McCutcheon owned as many doubts as ever.
Puwolsky pressed his gun against the side of McCutcheon’s head. “You want me to take the shot?”
“Don’t matter to me,” Stanzer said. “But my piece is clean.” He tilted the Sig sideways. “Numbers gone. Untraceable. Part of our burner cache, so that the bodies we leave behind can’t ever be tracked back to the weapon that was used.”
“Then best for you to take it,” Puwolsky said. “The Double T is my personal sidearm.” He kissed the barrel of the Glock. “The Terminal Terminator. It finishes foes.”
Puwolsky took a step backward and smiled.
Sniper school taught shooters to fire a weapon from the stillness to be found at the bottom of an exhalation because it improved a marksman’s accuracy by leaps and bounds. Stanzer calmly adjusted the beam of his Sig, blew the last bit of air from his lungs, quickly rotated, and squeezed the trigger. Bam! He fired two more rounds. Bam! Bam! All three head shots. The sound of gunfire exploded through the room, but none of the noise escaped beyond the padded walls of the soundproofed recording studio.
Puwolsky crumpled to the floor, a trifecta of hollow points cratering his skull.
McCutcheon swung out of the chair, ripped a hidden blade from his belt, and darted low. He dashed for the legs. Closed the distance of five feet quick as a cougar, and before Stanzer pointed the barrel of his weapon downward, M.D. was holding an 8.5-inch Al Mar S2KB SERE combat knife up against the top portion of Stanzer’s upper thigh.
Right at the femoral artery.
“Drop the gun.”
“Son, you don’t know what you are doing.”
“Yes, I do,” McCutcheon said. “One slice and you’ll bleed out. Li’l prison trick I learned. No chance of survival.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I’m done with words. Drop the gun.”
Stanzer did as he was told. McCutcheon kicked the gun away, spun the colonel around, and violently rammed him up against the wall. Smash! He pressed his elbow into the center of the colonel’s back, and Stanzer groaned. M.D. swung the knife around to the front of the colonel’s throat, and then held his blade up against his prey’s jugular.
“Other weapons?”
“Of course,” Stanzer said, his ear being painfully pressed into the recording studio’s wall. “Ankle holster sports a .25, belt buckle holds a Blackhawk Mark 1 combat knife.”
M.D. disarmed the colonel and frisked him top-to-bottom for additional arms. He’d told the truth; he held no other weapons. McCutcheon picked up both guns, stepped backward five feet, and turned the Sig on his former boss, the red laser targeting beam pointed at the center of the man’s chest.
“Where is she?”
“You heard him,” Stanzer said. “Kaitlyn’s still in Detroit.”
“Don’t mess with me. I mean my sister.”
“She’s safe.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Norman, Oklahoma. Horseback riding camp. Having the time of her life.”
McCutcheon glared.
“Just put the fucking gun down so we can talk a sec, will ya?”
M.D. raised the red beam from the center of Stanzer’s chest to the center of the colonel’s forehead.
“I’m done talking. Mind games are over.”
“It was all a ploy, McCutcheon. A ruse to smoke him out.”
“I’m done with tricks.”
“There is no Senate inquiry. It was all a lie.”
M.D. shook his head. Didn’t believe a word of it.
“Google it,” Stanzer said. “There is no senator from Nebraska named Ackersleem. It was all staged. Four actors, an empty conference room, one video camera, limited perspective. Easy stuff to do.”
M.D. considered what he’d seen in the video. Cautiously, he took two more steps backward to create even more distance between the barrel of his handgun and Stanzer, in case the colonel tried anything. Using Jeffrey’s phone, he went online. Or at least, he tried to.
“No signal,” McCutcheon said. “Very convenient.”
Stanzer nodded toward his pocket. “May I?”
M.D. debated whether or not to allow the colonel to reach for his phone jammer. Since Stanzer had blocked all the signals, it was probably the only mobile device in the building that worked. However, as M.D. knew, if he permitted the colonel to access this device, Stanzer might shoot out a stealth call for backup, an alert of some sort to the cavalry.
“No,” M.D. said, knowing he couldn’t risk it.
Stanzer rolled his eyes, incredulous. “I know you think I—”
“Turn around,” M.D. ordered, cutting Stanzer off. The colonel did as he was told and McCutcheon cautiously removed Stanzer’s phone from his pocket. After taking three steps backward, he stared at the screen.
“No passcode lock?”
“I left it open ’cause I knew you wouldn’t trust me.”
“I still don’t.”
“That’s smart. You shouldn’t. I haven’t earned it yet. But think for a minute,” Stanzer said. “Why would I take him out instead of you?”
“To eliminate all connections to every part of this operation.”
“Perhaps. But the rule of thumb is, you always take out your most dangerous enemy first; and who represented a bigger threat to me, you or him? Why didn’t I search you when you came into the room? Why didn’t I fire on you when you lunged at me? Think about it, son; I could have punched your ticket many times over already. The reason I didn’t is because I never planned to.”
M.D. didn’t reply.
“I’m on your side, McCutcheon.”
He still didn’t say anything.
“For God’s sake, just Google it.”
M.D. looked at the phone, then back at the colonel. “Keep your hands up.”
Stanzer did as he was told and McCutcheon searched online. Sure enough, there was no senator from the state of Nebraska named Ackersleem.
Stanzer read McCutcheon’s eyes as McCutcheon read the information on the screen.
“I told you, it was all a lie.”
“I want to talk to Gemma.”
“Fine,” Stanzer said. “In the recent calls section of the phone you’ll see a number with a four-zero-five area code. Dial it.”
M.D. went back to Google and searched to see if 405 was in fact an area code for Norman, Oklahoma. It was, but McCutcheon knew it could still be a trap. Stanzer was a master of crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s, and routing a fake call through the city of Norman, Oklahoma, would be child’s play to him.
“Just dial it,” Stanzer said growing annoyed.
M.D. did. A woman’s voice answered. “Hello?”
“Sarah?” McCutcheon said. “It’s me.”
“I do.”
M.D. knew that Stanzer might be able to con his mother into covering for him, but there was no way the colonel would be able to get his sister to maintain a lie. If Gemma felt threatened in any way, it would take McCutcheon less than five seconds to figure it out.
“Hi, Doc!” rang a bubbly voice.
“You okay, Gem?”
“I love it here!” she exploded. “I got to polish a saddle and then they let me ride a pony, and now I know how to trot and brush a mane, and cleaning the stalls smelled like poo-poo but it was also kinda fun,” Gemma said all in one breath. “Can we get a horse, Doc? Please, please, please?”
“Put Mom back on.”
“I love you!!”
“I love you, too.”
“With gobs of heart and sunshine!!”
McCutcheon heard Gemma say, “He wants to talk to you” as she passed the phone to Sarah.
“Hello?”
“You in Norman, Oklahoma?”
“Ride ’em, cowboy.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Click. M.D. hung up, stared at Stanzer.
“You believe me now?” the colonel asked extending his arm. He wanted his weapons back.
M.D. considered what to do. He came to the rendezvous point expecting to encounter a man who had betrayed him. And so that is what he saw. But what he expected to see was now getting in the way of what he was actually witnessing. Stanzer hadn’t made any attempt on his life. Stanzer had been forthright about the weapons he carried. Stanzer had just put him on the phone with his sister, who, not coincidentally, was currently whooping it up at an equestrian center far from Bellevue.
Why so far from Nebraska? Because Stanzer knew that’s where Gemma would be safe.
Noble Warrior Page 23