McCutcheon passed Stanzer his gun.
“’Bout time,” the colonel said, holstering his Sig. He pushed past McCutcheon, reached under the bar stool, and yanked free a quart-size bag of white powder that had been secretly duct taped underneath. Four ounces of premium Columbian blow.
Stanzer, still wearing gloves, meticulously placed Puwolsky’s fingerprints on the bag of coke, tore a seam in the plastic, and then mixed the white powder together with the red blood that had spilled from Puwolsky’s brain. It only took a moment to ruin the usability of the drugs by creating a concoction of pink and sticky paste.
Stanzer picked up the Glock, placed the Double T in Puwolsky’s right hand, and fired off two rounds into the wall, so that once the coroner’s unit discovered the body they’d be sure to find gunpowder residue on the dead man’s fingertips. As Stanzer applied the finishing touches to the fabricated crime scene, M.D. gazed downward at Puwolsky’s lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. They were empty and cold. Without emotion, M.D. reached into the dead man’s pocket, removed his cell, and rolled Puwolsky’s inert thumb over the screen.
“Good thinking,” Stanzer said.
With the phone unlocked, M.D. went into the Settings section and commandeered control of the device.
“Now come on,” Stanzer said after executing the final details. “Time to go get this prick Larson. Clock’s ticking.”
Stanzer quickly fired off a series of coded text messages through the DarkNet.
“Why’s the clock ticking?” M.D. asked.
“Because,” Stanzer said. “They grabbed Kaitlyn.”
Stanzer weaved through traffic doing eighty-five miles an hour while the rest of the cars on I-75 cruised at an average speed of sixty. The colonel slalomed through vehicles, zigzagged between lanes, and crossed double yellow lines, like a running back on a football field looking for daylight. Everyone on the road, alarmed by the nut in the white Chevy four-door, all thought the same thing: Asshole’s driving like a maniac.
“Where we going?” McCutcheon asked.
“Eaton Street. A few blocks off of Livernois.”
“Livernois?” M.D. said. “That’s Priest territory.”
“Correct.” Stanzer took a hard right and did a four-line lane change, ignoring the horns that blared at him. “Puwolsky brokered a deal with a new shotcaller named Puppet. Ever heard of the guy?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s heard of you…Bam Bam.”
McCutcheon nodded. His whole life the price for being an underground cage warrior had always been a tax he never wanted to pay. He loved the sport but the notoriety that came with being the best of the best fit him like a poorly tailored, brightly colored suit: uncomfortable to wear and something that drew far too much attention. Even now, a long while after he’d left the MMA war tour, the myth of Bam Bam the Conqueror still affected his life.
“How do you know all this?” McCutcheon asked.
“It took some doing.”
“And when did this doing get done?” M.D. asked, placing extra emphasis on the word when.
Stanzer merged from the I-75 onto the M-10 and checked the GPS coordinates of his destination. Before heading to the site, the colonel knew he’d need a place to settle and craft a plan. Where, he wasn’t yet sure, but maybe, he thought…
McCutcheon suddenly swiped the homing device from Stanzer’s hand. “Colonel!” he snapped. “I need to know.”
Stanzer nodded. He knew what he was being asked. McCutcheon wanted to know what the hell had happened to him and why.
“I knew it was a mistake to let you go into Jentles,” Stanzer began. “But I also knew it would have been a bigger mistake to stop you because you would have been damaged goods after that. If something really did happen to your girl, you’d have resented me for the rest of your life.”
M.D. didn’t say a word.
“I only knew what you did at the start, anyway: there was a threat to Kaitlyn, these Doper cops were tainted, and the prison scenario was a tactical nightmare. But I had no idea it was all a setup. I tried to get some eyes on you inside the penitentiary, but planting a mole like that takes time.”
“What finally clued you in?”
“A tip came in via e-mail. Ratted me and my unit out by name,” Stanzer said. “We tracked it right to his desk in Detroit. After that it wasn’t hard to piece everything together. Puwolsky knew I’d go looking for you at some point over the course of his scheme. This meant that at some point he knew he’d have to deal with me.”
“You mean to get rid of you?”
“Yes,” Stanzer said. “Before I figured out the truth and began hunting him.”
“So how’d he find you?” McCutcheon asked. M.D. had tried himself but come up empty.
“He didn’t. No one does,” Stanzer said. “So he tried to blow the whistle on my operation. As you know, we’re not exactly authorized.”
“So he figured that was his best angle to take you out?” M.D. said.
“Exactly,” Stanzer said. “Without the ability to snuff me out, he went for the next best thing: make me fight a different war on a different front, a bloody one. It’s a classic military strategy.”
Stanzer ran right up on the tail of a silver BMW and flashed his lights, his bumper only inches away from the sleek luxury sedan. The Beemer, driving at a normal speed, moved a lane over to the right so Stanzer could fly past.
“Puwolsky figured leaking the existence of the Murk to the do-gooding bastards in Congress would swamp me in red tape and bureaucratic muck. Hell, using minors to fight domestic enemies might even get me tossed in jail. He would have loved that.”
Stanzer zipped around a blue minivan and accelerated toward Exit 9.
“Certainly a congressional inquiry would bog me down far too much to chase after you,” Stanzer said. “He figured there was just no way I could deny your existence under the glare of D.C.’s spotlight and pursue your whereabouts at the same time.”
McCutcheon shrugged. “Not a bad attack.”
“Not bad at all,” Stanzer admitted. “Except the guy completely underestimated how deeply the FBI can crawl up anyone in America’s digital ass. Not just the FBI, but the CIA, the DEA, the NSA, and so on. If a U.S. citizen sends an e-mail using anything other than the DarkNet, we can find out every last detail about the user, to, from, location, content, etcetera within a matter of minutes. It’s fucking child’s play at this point.”
“So you tracked the e-mail to his desktop computer, put two and two together, and then created a fake Senate panel to make it look like you were in deep shit.”
“Correct.”
“But why did you shoot him?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” McCutcheon said. “You had him. Why not let justice take it from there?”
“Justice did take it from there, son,” Stanzer replied. “I’m just its angel of execution.”
M.D. didn’t offer a response. Didn’t comment one way or the other, but by not saying anything, he clearly communicated a sense of disapproval.
“Dirty lawmen burn me,” Stanzer added. He gripped the wheel much tighter than necessary. “I mean, where’s the goddamn code?”
The colonel exited the highway at the Livernois off-ramp and slowed the Chevy to twenty miles per hour as they entered the heart of the 48204, one of the three most dangerous American zip codes year in and year out. Stanzer knew that a guy like him, in a car like the one they were driving, stood out like a red tomato on a plate of green lettuce, so he stayed clear of the final destination until he and McCutcheon could get on the same page about the plan.
The white Chevy rolled past a three-story brick auto parts building, its top floor burned completely off. The place looked as if a bomb had been dropped on its roof. Then they passed a vacant lot with long, tall, overgrown grass. The space hadn’t been tended to in years. Then they passed a decently kept home with two red tricycles sitting in the driveway. Then they
passed a charred house. Then they passed another decently kept home and then another scorched house, its frame a mixture of exposed brown wood and black singe marks. As rain began to fall, Stanzer inspected the property more closely. The house’s windows had been broken out, two crater-size holes gaped where a chimney used to exist, and a white sign, clean and visible from the street, had been taped to the smashed front door.
DEMOLITION SCHEDULED
WARNING: STAY OUT
The residence was just one of hundreds, maybe thousands, in the greater Detroit area on a list to be bulldozed. As M.D. knew, there were simply too many structures slated for destruction for the city to keep pace with the volume, but the longer these abandoned homes stood, the longer the heroin addicts had a place to shoot junk, the hookers had a place to turn tricks, and the curious little seven-year-olds had a place to go investigate cool, interesting urban artifacts like soiled condoms and used hypodermic needles.
Stanzer peeked down the driveway.
“This’ll work.”
“How close are we?” M.D. asked.
“There’s an abandoned market—you know, beer, wine, lottery, that type of thing—three blocks up to the east,” Stanzer said. “Blue walls, covered with gang graffiti, well fortified, shuttered tight. She’s in there.”
Stanzer put the car in reverse, looked over his right shoulder, and backed the Chevy down the long, gravel driveway. After parking he cut the engine.
“Tell me,” the colonel asked, reaching behind him. “Are you ready to do the things we might have to do once we go in there?”
Stanzer flipped open the lid of a DU-HA weapons storage box sitting on the floor of the backseat and revealed a cache of arms: another Sig Sauer, a Ruger SR9c, two Smith & Wesson .357s, a Mossberg 590 A1 short barrel shotgun, and an M40A1 bolt-action sniper rifle with a special 10 power Unertl scope.
“Because there are other options for you, son. I already have a team positioned five blocks down at the ready.”
“A hostage rescue team?” M.D. asked.
“No,” Stanzer said. “This team, well…we’re not looking to make any arrests.”
M.D. weighed the words he’d just heard. He knew three items stood on the colonel’s agenda for this operation.
Number one: Larson would exit the building.
Number two: It would be in a body bag.
Number three: Save Kaitlyn.
Number one and number two were locks, but number three was only a hope, an aspiration for Stanzer. Though the colonel didn’t say it aloud, the hard truth was that, considering the circumstances, Kaitlyn might not be savable.
With Larson standing as the last link to possibly blowing the cover off of the Murk, Stanzer needed the corrupt cop’s silence guaranteed. The colonel knew that to arrest Larson meant that a greaseball lawyer would most likely, at some point, seek to trade his client’s secret knowledge about Stanzer’s activities for a plea deal. What kind of bargain would be made, Stanzer wasn’t sure, but he knew General Evans well enough to know that if the choice came down to either letting a crooked city cop walk, versus shuttering a cutting-edge covert military unit with an outstanding track record for nailing high-profile targets, Evans’s decision would be a no-brainer.
The general would let Larson skate.
Guy probably wouldn’t even get prison time, Stanzer thought. After all, his lawyer would argue, it was just way too dangerous for a cop like Larson to do time in a state penitentiary. It’d practically be a death sentence. Stanzer knew if he brought Larson back in cuffs, the charges would get bargained down to the point where he’d merely be forced to surrender his badge. Beyond that, it’d be a bunch of stupid negotiations back-and-forth about whether or not the bastard could keep his pension plan.
Dirty lawmen, they burned Stanzer. Burned him bad. But if Larson never saw a pair of handcuffs…
Stanzer picked up a .357 Magnum, extended his arm, and offered McCutcheon the handgun.
“You don’t have to come with us. In fact, considering your emotional attachment to the outcome, it could be a mistake,” Stanzer said. “But on the other hand, I feel you’ve earned the option.”
M.D. stared at the large, powerful revolver. He shook his head. He didn’t want the gun.
“Not only have I earned the option, sir”—M.D. reached past the short barrel shotgun and grabbed hold of the Sig Sauer—“but I am exercising it.”
McCutcheon lifted the Scorpion TB model Sig 1911 with a Houge G-10 grip. It featured a 4.2-inch barrel, a low profile night sight, and a modified 16 mag capacity filled with Speer Gold Dot 185 grain jacketed hollow-points. He’d chosen a tactician’s weapon, the kind favored by Marine elites.
“So what happened to your principles?” Stanzer asked.
M.D. cocked the gun.
“I have new ones.”
Stanzer packed the Ruger SR9c into his belt loop, grabbed the custom-made sniper rifle manufactured in Quantico, Virginia, and he and McCutcheon exited the car. After jumping a series of fences and crossing three streets, they took cover behind an abandoned red pickup truck sitting lifelessly on cinder blocks.
Stanzer put his earpiece in and spoke into a thin black radio mike that extended to his mouth.
“Everyone in position?”
No one spoke. Instead, six men offered hand signals. McCutcheon hadn’t seen any of them at first, each soldier having blended into the environment with almost seamless precision. A gloved hand went palm up by a tree. Another from behind a house. Two more appeared behind an ambulance that sat unattended in the far eastern corner of the parking lot, and another two flashed their ready signs on opposite sides of a large bush. The invisible squad turned visible, but only for a moment so that Stanzer could gain a fix on their positions, and then each vanished again into their camouflaged positions.
Stanzer assessed the situation. The element of surprise would be their strongest weapon. The rain helped, too. The harder it fell, the less the visibility. The abandoned liquor stored, boarded and beaten up, advertised cheap cigarettes and beer in faded paint, but the business had long ago stopped operating. It was now a large square box with a potholed parking lot. Nothing more, nothing less, a target easily taken by highly trained operatives.
If the operatives felt willing to accept casualties. Without windows or doors through which to peer inside, any assault the colonel initiated would start off blind.
“On my signal,” Stanzer said.
McCutcheon, like all soldiers, had participated in this training activity many, many times. The first two members of the team would pry open the plank being used as a front door with an alloy Halligan bar, and then a third man would blast the entranceway open with a battering ram to create ample passage for the men behind. Two marksman, weapons at the ready, would follow on their heels, and a moment later, just like in any of the video games being played at home by young kids, it would turn into a shootout.
Aim for the bad guys, save the girl, avoid getting blasted. Pretty straightforward stuff.
“Colonel, wait,” McCutcheon said. “Let’s go for wits over brawn.” M.D. knew that a straightforward assault didn’t offer the best odds for ensuring Kaitlyn’s safety. “We can play to our strengths.”
“How?” Stanzer asked.
“Instead of storming in?” M.D. replied. “What if we can get them to just bring her out?”
“Speak to me.”
McCutcheon reached for Puwolsky’s phone. “We send a text that everything’s fine. Make up a story about a new rendezvous point, and when they move her to that car, we pounce.”
M.D. nodded toward a late model Cadillac with a shiny black paint job.
“A car like that in an area like this, most probably Larson’s,” M.D. said. “Puwolsky drove a tricked out Caddy, too. Can’t be a coincidence.”
Stanzer considered it. “Well, it’s better than blitzing a hornet’s nest.”
Inside, they both knew, could be a nightmare. They had no idea how many Priests they’d face, no c
lue as to how many of the enemy soldier’s were armed and not an inkling about the type of weapons they might encounter. These weren’t petty shoplifters; these were urban gang members and they’d likely be armed to the teeth. Thirty years ago, kids on the mean streets carried low-caliber handguns; nowadays they slung fully automatic Kalashnikov assault rifles.
The biggest problem with a full frontal assault, as McCutcheon saw it, was that no one had eyes on Kaitlyn. She could be tied to a chair or chained to a pole or in any one of ten different compromising positions. Larson might have even set up a scenario where, should they be attacked, she’d be used as a human shield. M.D. knew Priests would die and Stanzer’s squad would win the day. The girl he loved, however…her well-being was a different story.
“Definitely worth a try. Let’s map it.” Stanzer spoke into the radio mike. “Hold your positions.”
They formulated a battle plan. Stanzer would lay hidden on the northeast side of the building with the high-powered rifle aimed at the front door. Once Kaitlyn exited, Stanzer would keep the rest of the enemies pinned inside the building by putting bullets on the exit. An attack like this would leave only the men who’d already walked out of the liquor store in front of Kaitlyn to do battle with the team.
Before initiating action, M.D. would head down to the side wall to play the point and spring from the blind side of the store’s front entrance. By remaining off to the right and only five yards away, McCutcheon would have the ability to leap in and go man-to-man in close combat, or stand his ground and fire on targets from close range, depending on what the situation called for. Stanzer and his soldiers would snipe, M.D. would ambush, and even if five guys exited the building prior to Kaitlyn, the team would have numbers on their enemy in addition to the element of surprise.
All angles were covered. Approximate mission time after the first shot rang out: fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds, M.D. thought, and Kaitlyn would be safe.
McCutcheon put a wire in his ear so he could communicate with the rest of the team, and after getting the thumbs-up signal, he dashed through the rain and sidled up next to the store’s western wall. He pulled out Puwolsky’s phone and prepared to send a text.
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