Bird Dogs: A John Crane Novella

by Mark Parragh

  BIRD DOGS

  A JOHN CRANE NOVELLA

  MARK PARRAGH

  CONTENTS

  Copyright & Credits

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  John Crane will return

  Pendulums

  Afterword

  Join the Hurricane (Reading) Group

  Also by Mark Parragh

  Bird Dogs

  by Mark Parragh

  A Waterhaven Media Publication

  Third Edition – June 2017

  Copyright © 2017 by Waterhaven Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by Kerry Hynds, Aero Gallerie

  Bird Dogs edited by Brandi Salazar

  Pendulums edited by Jennifer Harris

  Production Coordination by Nina Sullivan

  There’s more of John Crane’s world waiting for you at AgentCrane.com. Explore Crane’s other adventures and join the Hurricane (Reading) Group to get the first word on upcoming releases and sales pricing, join fan contests, and get free bonus materials like the novella Sneakernet, available only to group members.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Nina, and for the future

  CHAPTER 1

  Logan County, West Virginia

  John Crane had come to treasure these little moments. After the violence, there always seemed to be a beat of complete stillness, as if the world was holding its breath in astonishment. Crane sat belted into the driver’s seat of a Subaru Crosstrek, surrounded by deflated air bags and looking out at lush green foliage. The engine ticked softly, and he heard the call of a Cooper’s Hawk drifting through the forest. It was a moment of utter peace.

  But of course it couldn’t last. Crane took a deep breath, released the seatbelt latch, and fell straight down. His shoulders slammed into the roof liner, his legs slid out of the footwell, and he landed in an awkward heap. A moment later, there was a shout from back up the hillside, and the shooting started again. Crane heard bullets slapping into the underside of the car. It was time to go.

  He drew his knees up to his chest, relieved to find that his legs still worked, then he thrust out hard with both legs and kicked out the windshield. His Sphinx SDP pistol, the camera, and the paperback he’d bought to read in the motel lay scattered around him. Crane grabbed the gun, and hooked the camera strap with his other hand. The book was no big loss. He slithered out of the car into a tangled thicket of Mountain Laurel.

  The Subaru had suffered badly from the gunfire, from the impact of the truck, and especially from its long, careening trip down the steep bank to where it now rested. Above, back up the eighty feet or so of scar the car had carved through the underbrush, he could see the roofline of the pickup that had run him off the road. Then a rope sailed out into the clear sky, uncoiling as it fell. It slapped the ground, and a figure appeared over the edge of the bank, walking down the steep slope with a submachine gun in one hand and the other holding the rope for stability.

  Crane switched on the green laser tucked between the Sphinx’s muzzle and trigger guard. Then he popped up over the car, put the laser dead center on the man’s torso, and fired three quick shots. His target fell, tumbling down the hillside as his two companions opened up from the edge of the road.

  Crane dropped back behind the car and took off down the slope in the opposite direction.

  It was supposed to have been a simple trip. His employer, Josh Sulenski, had learned that a coal mining company in the area was cutting corners on the surface impoundments where they stored tailings and other mine waste. That would hardly be a surprise. The region was infamous for coal slurry spills. Just a few miles away was the site of the Buffalo Creek flood, where an impoundment dam failed back in the ‘70s and unleashed a 30-foot wave of waste water that killed hundreds and wiped out whole towns.

  But Josh was unusually idealistic for an Internet billionaire. He wanted to stop this one before there was another Buffalo Creek. They were the only ones who could, he’d said, and that made it their responsibility. It was the usual argument. The fact that Crane reluctantly agreed with him didn’t make it any less annoying that Josh kept coming up with risky missions and leaving Crane to execute them.

  In this case, Crane was supposed to slip into the site and bring back photos that would prove what the company was doing. Josh would use them to force regulators to step in. Simple. But the mining company, as it turned out, objected to this plan. Strongly.

  Crane followed the contours of the mountainside downward, following the path of least resistance. He’d been driving on a gravel road that wound its way up and over the mountain ridge. He knew it switched back a few hundred yards from where he’d gone off the road. If he kept heading down, he’d pick up the road again.

  But of course the men hunting him had a truck, and he was on foot. He couldn’t count on catching a ride with a passing car out here. He hadn’t seen a vehicle that didn’t belong to the mining company since he’d turned off the main road. A road did not represent safety.

  Crane stopped and sank to the ground behind a tree. He took a moment to control his breathing and listened for sounds of pursuit. He heard nothing. He could take a moment to collect himself. His jeans were dirty and his shirt had ripped on a broken branch back in the Mountain Laurel. Crane wiped his dark hair off his forehead with one hand, felt the sting of sweat in his eyes.

  He flipped open the camera’s access port and popped out the data card that held his pictures. The card went into a tiny pouch on his shirt sleeve. He was about to start moving again, leaving the camera behind, when he heard the sound of someone moving through the underbrush nearby.

  A moment later, he made out the sound of the truck’s engine running loud and fast somewhere below.

  Crane listened carefully, trying to locate the direction of the sounds. He checked the Sphinx. He had two more rounds. Not good. The laser wasn’t going to help under these conditions, so Crane switched it off.

  Then the sound of snapping wood, somewhere to his left. He edged around the trunk, staying low to the ground. Crane spotted a dark shape through the leaves, heard the click of a gun being cocked.

  He squeezed off his last two shots at the dark form, and then slid down to lie flat on the ground behind the trunk as a spray of automatic fire shredded the foliage around him and slapped into the tree trunk.

  Crane holstered the empty pistol and moved into a crouch. The guard had given up any attempt at stealth and was rushing him, crashing through the undergrowth like a charging bear. Timing by instinct, Crane leaned around the tree, holding the trunk in one hand, swinging the camera as hard as he could with the other. The DSLR flew in a wide arc as Crane found himself suddenly face to face with the man trying to kill him. For an instant, he looked at Crane in surprise, his eyes going wide, instinctively raising the gun.

  Then the camera slammed into his temple like a fast line drive. He stumbled off course, caromed off the tree, and collided with Cran
e. They went down together in a heap, the guard on top of Crane and already out cold. Crane struggled to get out from under the dead weight of his body, scrabbling in the loamy earth and decaying leaves for his dropped submachine gun.

  He’d just gotten a hand on it when the other man appeared in his peripheral vision. Crane whipped the gun up and emptied the rest of the clip at him. The man fell backwards, arms windmilling. His body hit the dirt and slid away down the slope. Once again, everything went still. Crane dropped the empty gun and sat up, feeling his heart pounding.

  He found some zip ties on the unconscious man’s belt and tied his hands behind his back. Then he got up and stumbled down the steep slope. When he came out on the road, he found the four-door Ram pickup a few yards up the road, the driver’s door hanging open and the engine still idling. Crane climbed in and put it in gear. When he reached the main road he took a left and headed north toward Charleston. An hour later, he was on Josh’s Gulfstream, flying west.

  “Did you get what you came for?” the pilot had asked him as they walked across the tarmac to the waiting jet.

  “Yes,” Crane had said.

  “Any hitches?”

  “No. Nothing worth mentioning.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Palo Alto, California

  Crane picked up a car at the airport and drove out toward Matadero Creek. Josh Sulenski was staying at his home there for a couple weeks. Something to do with board meetings. His company, one of his foundations. Crane didn’t know. Josh had told him, of course. Josh seemed to think it was very important that he keep Crane posted on his movements, but Crane had enough on his mind without keeping the details of Josh’s life in order.

  He pulled up outside the sprawling Spanish style house, and a woman from the household staff met him at the door. She led Crane through to the immaculately groomed backyard. Josh sat at a round, cast iron table beneath the twisting branches of an ancient oak that spread out so far Crane wasn’t sure how they resisted gravity.

  “John!” Josh said with a broad smile as Crane approached. He was barefoot, wearing cargo shorts and a Clash t-shirt. Crane imagined Josh combing vintage shops across Silicon Valley and paying some truly outrageous price for it. He half rose and gestured to another chair. “Marjorie, can we get a pitcher of sangria? How was coal country? Oh, and some of that flatbread from the other night? You have to try this stuff, John; it’s fantastic. Do we have any of that left? The fougasse? Can we get some of that? Did you get the pictures? Pics or it didn’t happen, right?”

  Crane sat down and let Josh enthuse. At some point the woman, Marjorie, inserted an “of course, sir” and withdrew. She returned a couple minutes later with a tray of bread and cheese and a pitcher.

  Over steaming bread and cold sangria, Crane told Josh what had happened. As he spoke, Josh’s expression grew gradually darker.

  “I’m sorry, John,” he said. “I had no idea. What the hell? They can’t just murder people for taking pictures! What about the men who…I mean, that’s obviously self-defense, right? I can get legal on this—”

  “It won’t come to that,” said Crane. “I checked the news. The company’s covering it up. The official story is they went off the road in the SUV I was driving.”

  Josh shook his head in disbelief. Crane reminded himself that Josh came from a different world. He’d hired a former government field agent with the idealistic notion that he and Crane would protect the innocent and save the world. But even as he sent Crane out to do battle, Josh seemed surprised that they were up against enemies who would fight back, and fight dirty.

  Crane handed over the SD card with his photos, and Josh slipped it into a folder. The folder went into a leather portfolio and was replaced by a different one.

  “I’ve had people working on the hard drive you brought in,” he said. He shook his head. “There’s still not much to go on.”

  The hard drive had belonged to a Czech gangster named Branislav Skala, who Crane had crossed paths with several months ago. Like Josh, Skala had uncovered a hidden world in which elites wielded power and wealth on a global scale. They were powers beyond government and laws, playing poker with the rest of the world as the chips. Skala had wanted a seat at that table, and so took careful notes on the players. He identified individuals and groups, tracked their alliances and rivalries, their battles for power. The hard drive was like an encyclopedia and atlas to a world Josh and Crane knew far too little about.

  The problem was reading it. Everything was in Skala’s private shorthand of obscure references and code names. Crane had decided it was from a combination of paranoia and ignorance. Skala had been convinced that Crane represented a group he called “Team Kilo.” Crane still had no idea who they were or what they represented, and he suspected Skala simply didn’t know what else to call them. The whole archive was like that, a tantalizing maze of clues with very few leads to follow. Josh had been growing increasingly frustrated since they’d cracked the drive’s encryption and found it hardly more legible than before.

  And questioning Skala was no longer an option.

  “You have something new, then?” Crane asked

  “I think so. We’ve identified Tamarind.”

  Crane raised an eyebrow. That definitely qualified as something. ‘Tamarind’ was one of Skala’s code names, one that kept appearing over and over throughout his notes. It clearly referred to an individual, one who was connected to an extensive web of other individuals and groups. Beyond that, they knew nothing. But it sounded as if that had changed.

  “There was a number in one of the notes about him,” Josh said. “We had no idea, but then someone tracked it down. It’s a Federal Bureau of Prisons register number.”

  “He did time,” Crane said. “Federal time no less.”

  “Six years for extortion. Apparently, he’s a gigolo. He tried to blackmail a Mexican insurance tycoon named Mora over a steamy affair with Mora’s daughter. Beat up her husband at one point too, but he wasn’t charged for that.”

  “How did he end up in the U.S. system instead of Mexico?”

  Josh snickered. “Mora moved heaven and earth to get him extradited to Mexico where he could get him under his thumb. But he’s a U.S. citizen, and the crime took place in Miami. The feds kept him.”

  “So who is he?” Crane asked.

  “The name on his passport is Rafael Bruno Campos, naturalized citizen of Portuguese origin. And that’s the name he did his time under, but it’s an alias. Trust me, we tracked it as far as it would go. A lot farther than immigration, apparently. It’s a very good identity, but it’s not real.”

  “Real enough if he’s still using it.”

  “He is,” said Josh. “His passport was used to enter Argentina this morning. He’s in Buenos Aires.”

  “You want me to go there.” It wasn’t a question.

  Josh nodded and handed Crane a folder. “What we know about him, including photos.”

  Crane opened the folder. Even in his prison photo, the man was darkly handsome with high cheekbones and a bad boy look in his eyes. In the other photos, Crane had no doubt this was someone capable of seducing a married heiress and using her to blackmail her father.

  “He’s not important by himself,” said Josh, “but he’s connected to half the characters in the archive. If he can put real names to those codes…We have to find out what he knows.”

  “Do we know what he’s doing in Argentina?”

  Josh shook his head. “No idea. But he’s been traveling a lot since he got out. He could be meeting people, reestablishing contact with all those other names. Go to Buenos Aires, John. Find out what he’s doing.”

  Crane nodded. “I’ll need some equipment. I’ll make up a shopping list.”

  “Do that,” Josh said with a smile. “I’ve hired some new people with…different skill sets. I think we can get you what you need.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  It was mid-morning when Crane cleared Argentine
customs and made his way to the arrivals area. A line of drivers in black jackets and caps stood with signs indicating what passengers they were waiting for. Crane found the one holding a sign that bore his name and introduced himself. The driver took Crane’s bags and led him outside to a black Mercedes sedan. He put Crane’s bags in the trunk beside a third suitcase that contained presents from Josh. Crane got in the back and they drove into the city.

  Tamarind was staying at the Palacio Duhau in a former neoclassical mansion in Recoleta—a leafy, upscale residential neighborhood wedged between high-end shopping districts. He could have found a more expensive hotel, but it would have taken some effort. That raised the question of where a man who’d spent the last six years in prison was getting that kind of money. Crane had read up on the Mora blackmail case before his flight. It was the daughter herself who’d gone to the FBI, not the father. There were rumors that he’d actually paid up, and that the money remained unaccounted for. Perhaps those rumors were true, Crane thought.

  The car pulled up, and the bell staff took Crane’s bags to his suite as he checked in. He had a room on the third floor of the original building, just down the hall from Tamarind’s. He settled in, then changed into a pair of Berluti slacks and a Loro Piano polo shirt and headed down to the lobby.

  Crane didn’t have to wait long for his target to make an appearance. Tamarind looked very much like the pictures Josh had provided. He ran a hand through short, dark hair thick with product. The motion seemed rehearsed, designed to draw attention to his game show host profile. Crane had no trouble believing this was a man who made his living seducing wealthy women. He walked past Crane, talking on an iPhone in faintly accented Spanish, and headed out the front doors. Crane waited a moment, then followed.

  Tamarind spent the afternoon revamping his wardrobe. He bought new shoes, a pair of slacks, several shirts. Crane caught a glimpse of an American Express card. He charmed salesgirls effortlessly. When he stopped for coffee, he flirted with the barista. He smiled and spoke to women he passed on the street. It was like an automatic reflex for him, Crane thought.