Jet 04: Reckoning

by Russell Blake

  “What’s next?”

  “I’ll report back to the scientists in the lab and see what they come up with. This was obviously not as good a move as anticipated. Odd. I really thought this would deliver a marked improvement.”

  “Can you show yourself out? I’ll need to talk him down. He’s going to be furious. You don’t want him acting out. When he gets angry and isn’t thinking straight…you know he killed his dog?”

  The doctor’s face exuded shock. “Good lord. No. When?”

  “Last week. At night it was in the room with him, as he preferred, and apparently something caught its attention – maybe one of the guards. Whatever. By the time I woke up, it had been barking for half an hour. When I made it to him, the animal was dead. He’d strangled it. He cried for days afterwards, but the noise was so painful he couldn’t help himself – he said he tried everything to block out the sound, but when it came down to it, in his mind it was either him or the dog. He loved that animal. More than any human,” Standish finished simply.

  “I…I had no idea.”

  “No. You don’t. But you don’t want him staying angry. Ultimately, he pulls the strings, and his displeasure could be…significant.”

  “You’ll talk him down, you say?”

  “That’s the idea. For everyone’s sake.”

  The doctor descended the wide wooden stairway to the ground floor as Standish returned to the bedroom, aware that the next hour would be spent trying to reason with a human whose entire body was one raw nerve capable of manifesting only unspeakable agony.

  He inched the door open and peeked in. The patient was still, the only sound in the gloom the rhythmic ticking of the machines and the hiss of the humidifier. Standish approached the bed, taking a moment to study the twisted flesh of the patient’s face, disfigured by horrific burns, and then the gash that was his ruined mouth moved.

  “Kill him,” Arthur commanded, his voice barely a whisper.

  “That’s not going to solve anything. He’s deeply regretful for his failure, but he’s your best shot. He’s got a staff of experts working on a solution. To kill him would be counter-productive.”

  “Your job is to follow my orders. If you won’t, I’ll find someone who will.”

  Standish was used to this. Since Arthur’s near-death, Standish had received instructions to kill countless members of the staff for real or imagined indiscretions. None of which he’d followed through on. Thankfully, Arthur usually came back to earth once the rage subsided.

  “You miserable bastard, if I could get out of this bed without going into shock, I’d tear your eyes out and make you eat them,” Arthur fumed.

  Standish nodded humbly in response. The threats were a good sign, as was the abuse. All part of the job as his personal assistant – one that paid very, very well. Arthur’s fortune from the drug trade was unimaginably massive, which Standish had administered on his behalf since his near death. Arthur also relied on him to coordinate his affairs, some of which involved ‘delicate’ matters that required a great deal of diplomacy. Standish had been working for Arthur for nearly twenty-five years and was used to carrying out tasks that would have had lesser men questioning their sanity. Not Standish. He had gotten rich by being a trusted confidant to the great man – not hundreds of millions, but more than enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life, leaving the clandestine world far behind him. As he listened to Arthur rant and threaten, he wondered for the umpteenth time why he stayed, and then smiled to himself.

  Power. Pure and simple.

  As Arthur’s mouthpiece, Standish moved mountains and commanded anything he could imagine. He shaped destiny, had the power of life and death – was a kind of minor deity.

  “Are you listening to me, you shitbird?” Arthur hissed.

  Standish nodded.

  Ever since the night of the shooting, when Arthur had died three times on the table before stabilizing, he’d been completely dependent upon Standish for everything, and if Standish played his cards right, much of the man’s fortune would wind up in Standish’s account. Arthur had no relatives, no children, and had no time for charities or benevolence. Since the untimely demise of his dog, Standish was the only thing he had in the world; that, and a single-minded thirst for vengeance and a relentless drive to remain a vital player, in spite of his incapacity.

  “Of course I am. I hear every word,” Standish said obligingly, and allowed the toxic vitriol and recriminations to wash over him without soiling or affecting him in any way.

  Every moment alive for Arthur was a worse punishment than any Standish could have imagined. And while Arthur could hurl invective all day, the truth was that he needed Standish, so he would settle down. That, and the increase in pain from each burst of his tirade would further bludgeon him with agony, so he’d eventually wear himself out.

  Standish’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he turned to face the door as he viewed the small screen.

  “You dare turn your back on me?” Arthur raged, working himself back into a lather.

  “I’m sorry, sir. It’s a message from our South American contact. I need to go make a call. It’s about the woman.”

  “What did he say?” Arthur demanded, his fury forgotten in an instant now that his favorite topic was being discussed – kidnapping, torturing, and eventually murdering the person responsible for his purgatorial existence.

  The woman.

  Jet.

  “I’ll brief you once I know. All the message says is to call as soon as possible.”

  Standish ignored the growled rejoinder and moved to the door, anxious to be away from Arthur, at least for the moment.

  “I’ll be back shortly. Try to get some rest. It does you no good to put yourself through this.”

  Arthur sank back into the bed, his white hair sticking out in tufts, his scarred face contorted in a familiar expression of pain and fury, and then the door closed, leaving him to his silent ongoing punishment.

  Chapter 11

  Jet bypassed Montevideo by sticking to the less-traveled roads, and by eleven that night they were pulling into San José de Mayo. The small motel she had stayed at the prior night was no fuller than before, and she booked three rooms – one for Magdalena, one for Hannah and herself, and one for Alan.

  Hannah had been a trouper all the way and had spent most of the trip dozing, as only toddlers can. Magdalena had politely inquired about their plans, and Jet had given her the abridged version – she was thinking that it would be best for everyone if Magdalena and Hannah stayed at a motel or a rental apartment for a week or so, while Jet and Alan dealt with the putative boyfriend once and for all.

  Magdalena didn’t ask what ‘once and for all’ meant, and Jet didn’t elaborate, although the blood smears in the hallway had left little to the imagination. She had asked Jet repeatedly if Hannah would be safe with her, and Jet had reassured her that, yes, the boyfriend was after Jet, not her daughter. Perhaps a small white lie, but also one that could be true, given that they had no idea why the private security company from America was trying to kill her.

  When they separated and went to their rooms, Jet pulled Magdalena aside and emphasized that she would be fine, and apologized for the continued chaos that seemed to follow her around. Magdalena was understanding, but Jet could tell that her patience would only go so far, money or not.

  Which got Jet thinking. The only way that her assailants could have known about the condo was by following the money, and to do that, they would have needed to get information from the bank. Or, she thought, from the attorney who had handled the trust.

  She prepared Hannah for bed and rinsed off in the shower, and then mother and daughter crawled under the covers and closed their eyes, the dull roar of an occasional car or truck their lullaby as they drifted off to sleep, exhausted after the long day. Hannah curled up with one of Jet’s arms protectively encircling her, all well in her innocent world, while Jet fought to still the demons running amok in her head. Eventually, she
won the battle, at least for a while.

  ~ ~ ~

  The streets of the Recoleta district in Buenos Aires were quiet at midnight, other than occasional couples hurrying down the empty sidewalks to a late dinner at one of the trendy restaurants near the Four Seasons hotel. A cold wind blew down the wide boulevards, rustling the trees that stood like stoic sentinels guarding the approach to the cemetery that was the final resting place of luminaries such as Eva Perón.

  Music boomed from a Renault sedan rolling down a darkened street that fronted one of the countless second-floor nightclubs in the upscale buildings, where the city’s privileged would dance and drink until dawn. Azul was the latest in a string of hot nightspots created and operated by a pair of young, hip entrepreneurs who ran successful discos in the ultra-trendy Palermo district only a few miles southwest.

  The evening’s festivities were just getting underway and wouldn’t hit full speed until two to three A.M.; the custom among the party-goers was to dine at midnight, then hit the clubs until the sun came up. Those whose lives revolved around dancing to pumping beats didn’t have to worry about mundanities like jobs or school – they were the offspring of the small percentage of the population where most of the nation’s wealth was concentrated.

  An already-drunken pair of young women in impossibly short skirts and towering heels giggled as they wobbled down the sidewalk towards Azul’s entrance, and a smirking man in his mid-thirties with slicked-back hair and a two-hundred-dollar shirt greeted them from where he was lounging against one of the nearby buildings, savoring a cigarette, one of his blue suede Gucci loafers propped against the stone base of the French-inspired edifice. The girls smiled coquettishly at him, and the taller of the two waved, the promise of a night of sybaritic pleasure obvious from her body language.

  He grinned as they teetered on their precarious pumps and greeted the club’s doorman, who hugged them like they were long-lost relatives and then smacked one on the behind in a decidedly un-familial way as she moved past him, to titters from both. Taking another drag on his pungent smoke, he blew a haze of nicotine at the night sky and then flicked the butt into the gutter before peering both ways down the street.

  It was a good night for unwinding. His pockets were full of cash from the latest gig, and he was looking forward to putting some of it to good use, perhaps buying drinks for the pair that had just gone into the club. He could do worse, he reasoned; he certainly had in the past. He checked the time on his new Panerai watch with quiet satisfaction, a purchase from earlier in the day when he’d been wandering the city’s streets looking for something to blow money on – a way to treat himself after a big job well done. The watch had been a stupidly expensive acquisition from one of the most upscale jewelers in Buenos Aires, and he’d only decided to buy it after the clerk had looked at him with skepticism, clearly doubting that he could afford it. The look on the smug prick’s face when he’d whipped out a wad big enough to choke a mule and peeled off the asking price without blinking had been reward enough, and he could still picture the man’s shocked expression whenever he glanced at the glowing oversized dial.

  César was street-smart, raised in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the unforgiving city. He’d been living by his wits since his mother disappeared when he was ten, going for cigarettes one night and leaving him and his twelve-year-old sister to fend for themselves. He had survived by picking pockets and selling drugs, working his way up until he’d made bigger money as an enforcer, his ruthless aggression and viciousness having caught the attention of the local organized crime gang who ran the shanty town that was his personal hell. He’d done his best to look out for his sister, but the reality of a life without hope had taken her early, dead of an overdose at fifteen, already a prostitute for three years, diagnosed with AIDS at fourteen.

  The first man César had ever killed had been the pusher who’d sold her the heroin that was her chemical vacation from a grim nightmare existence. He still remembered the puzzled expression on the young tough’s face when he’d fired a home-made zip gun point-blank through his right eye from five feet away and then urinated on him in front of his crew, daring them to retaliate. César’s secret was that he honestly didn’t care whether he lived one more day – a powerful advantage in the line of work he would eventually gravitate towards: executioner for the gangs that ruled the slums with brutal efficiency, above the reach of the law in areas the police didn’t dare venture into. He became known for his brazen courage, and within a few years was commanding top dollar to kill – sometimes as much as twenty-five hundred pesos, the equivalent of almost eight hundred dollars.

  Not much had changed, he mused, except for the price. He was a cold-blooded hit man who killed without remorse, and he’d learned to do so with anything at his disposal, ultimately leaning towards explosives – his patrons were willing to pay more for a car bomb than an attempt with a gun or a knife, and César always followed the trend that would pay the most.

  He wished he could tell someone about his crowning achievement – the bomb on the ferry that the entire town was buzzing about – but he never, ever discussed work with anyone. It was part of the set of rules he’d been living by for years, and they had served him well. That he’d made it to the ripe age of thirty-three was proof enough that he was smarter and better than most – almost all his peers were dead by their late teens, killed by rivals or the police, or so addled by drugs that they’d fallen prey to other predators in the urban jungle.

  He liked Azul better than most clubs – the clientele was upscale, and it made him feel superior when he was able to charm a local socialite out of her panties after a few lines of coke in the wee hours. That he, an autodidactic wonder from the wrong side of the tracks, could violate the city’s princesses and then leave them used and humiliated when he was finished empowered him like nothing else…besides the power of life and death he controlled with his skilled hands. Murder was the ultimate rush, but when he was between jobs the clubs were the next best thing. His natural targets were the daughters of the rich, out for a thrill with a dangerous, brooding stranger, and he played to their fantasies with conviction, giving them just enough of what they wanted to get them to his nearby apartment, where things would inevitably take an ugly turn for the worse once the evening had gone too far.

  A skulking figure stood in the shadows thirty yards away, and when César caught the man’s eye, he knew he’d found what he was looking for – the perfect complement to the night’s hunting, as he thought of it. He wanted to score some cocaine, and the streets around the clubs were inevitably prowled by dealers who catered to the convenience crowd that wanted to avoid having to buy in the dangerous barrios where drugs were ubiquitous.

  The dealer nodded and then turned the corner, slinking into the gloom at the alley’s mouth, and César sauntered after him, anticipating the night’s possibilities. Maybe he would be able to get both of the girls to go home with him – they’d had a look that hinted they were up for anything. A look he knew all too well, and appreciated like no other.

  The white hot jolt of pain stabbed through Cesar’s ribcage a split second after he stepped into the narrow walkway. He stared in surprise at the handle of the ice-pick protruding from his sternum, where an unusually strong arm had jammed it through his heart. Blood dribbled from the edge of the puncture as he fumbled for the handle, and then he fell forward, his heart stopped from the shock, his eyes glassy, consciousness fading even as he hit the cobblestones with a smack.

  His attacker peered out of the alley, and confirming that he was unwatched, methodically stripped César of the heavy gold chain he wore around his neck – Jesus on a crucifix suspended in hand-wrought fourteen-carat glory from its intricate links – and then pocketed the wad of cash. The new watch was the final item the killer took, and when he strapped it on, admiring its heft on his wrist, he grinned a reptilian smirk before moving away from the body and walking down the quiet street, quickly rounding the corner at the end of the block
and disappearing.

  ~ ~ ~

  Jorge-Antonio’s heavy work boots clumped unsteadily against the pavement outside his flat as he staggered home after a long night of celebratory dancing and anonymous sex in one of the gay clubs in San Justo, an area where he was a regular, his angry dark good looks and practiced sneer a magnet for young twinks looking for someone dangerous for a few minutes of fun and games.

  His condo was modern, with all the latest creature comforts, decorated in contemporary glory by an old flame who had favored Bauhaus and had an eye for symmetry. Jorge-Antonio could have cared less about his surroundings most of the time, having spent years all over the globe hired out as a mercenary, earning top dollar for doing work nobody else wanted to be a part of. He’d killed child soldiers in Africa, tribal chieftains in Afghanistan, union agitators in Colombia and Central America, and nuns in Brazil. He wasn’t discriminating, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do – for a price.

  Posing as a truck driver had been easy, and slipping off the Montevideo ferry had been child’s play, his soiled clothing swapped for a maintenance worker’s in a quiet corner of the big boat. He’d never been told exactly why he was driving the truck onboard, but he’d learned not to ask too many questions, and when a job came along that paid for six months of high living, his curiosity went on permanent vacation.

  When news of the explosion had shrieked from the news programs he’d been unsurprised, and he’d felt nothing at hearing that his efforts had murdered close to a thousand people. He’d long ago stopped counting the number dead in his wake; it was just a number, an abstract that had no meaning for him. Life came into being and flickered out every day. It was a natural cycle. With seven billion people on the planet, a thousand more or less wouldn’t affect anything; but fifty thousand dollars in a slimline briefcase would, and that’s what mattered to him, nothing more.