Luthecker

by Domingue, Keith

  Yaw put the receiver to his ear and waited. The phone rang twice before someone on the other end picked up.

  “Fed Ex.” Yaw said.

  “Wait.” Was the abrupt reply, and then the line went dead.

  Yaw hung up, stepped free of the booth, and nodded to the others.

  “It’s on.” He told them.

  Payphones were still monitored by NSA computers in Langley, but their priority was very low, as drug dealers were not yet a concern and encrypted satellite phone technology was the choice for most foreign operatives. However since dedicated scanning software would still roam the hard lines for key words and flag them, coded messaging was still required.

  Couriers always used the commercial and therefore neutral slogan “Fed Ex” when they called in, and the reply of “wait” was a coded response that meant exactly that. Someone would be along shortly to receive them.

  Yaw instinctively stretched, contracting back and wincing as he did, briefly forgetting the bullet wound, which, although bandaged and beginning to heal, was still quite painful.

  “How’s your side?” Camila asked.

  “How’s your wrist?”

  “Fool.” She said with a smile.

  The trio had made the journey from Arizona to New York in thirty-six hours, choosing to drive straight through the night in shifts. They knew they were let go to be watched, but they weren’t sure how.

  “How do you think Alex is doing?” Camila asked, as she scanned across the busy street, eyes like a hawk.

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement, a small cluster of three humming birds, flying in close formation, dancing around the buildings as they darted about in choreographed perfection. She marveled at their speed and coordination as they suddenly zipped by overhead.

  “I don’t know.” Yaw answered her question. “But we finish this job, we find him next.”

  “They’re tracking us. The question is how.” Chris warned.

  “I don’t know. But we want them to see what we’re up to now. See that we’re doing some good. We can work on dumping surveillance after.”

  “Before they try and pick us up, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ll be waiting.”

  “I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”

  “Guys.” Camila interrupted.

  They looked at her before following her line of sight, which led to the other side of the street, to a late model sedan parked two blocks north of where they stood. Three large men exited the vehicle, dressed in black leather jackets, brown khaki pants, and black leather shoes, trying to look casual but achieving anything but. They spotted the three couriers and slowly began walking in their direction, trying to make it look natural.

  Yaw quickly shot a glance South: Two more just like them were on the sidewalk, already on their side of the street, laughing with one another, feigning distraction, fast approaching.

  “Not our guys.” Yaw thought out loud.

  “Nope.” Chris added.

  “Let’s move.” Camila replied.

  “Parking lot.” Chris nodded.

  All three eyed the parking lot across the street and its sea of cars, all parked in a perfect grid.

  “Split between the cars. C-Ram you take the middle. Chris, you and I will double back. We’ll pick’em off.”

  Camila adjusted Yaw’s backpack as he spoke, made sure his aluminum Kali sticks were easily available, as Chris did the same for her.

  Yaw did the same for Chris as the three of them began to cross the street. Yaw looked to the north, and saw that the men were now running towards them.

  “Stay low.” He said, before a shot rang out and a bullet whistled by, exploding off a lamppost.

  The three ducked low and broke into a full sprint, each splitting off in their own direction and disappearing between the multitudes of cars in the parking lot, not unlike children dispersing in a cornfield.

  One of the pursuers approached from the north side of the lot, a knife-faced giant half a foot taller than his companions, swearing at the shooter in Russian for opening fire too soon. He then gave a quick, sharp whistle to get the attention of the other two men approaching from the south, pointed to the parking lot, did a half circle with his hand, indicating for them to loop around to the other side of the lot. After what appeared to be a brief discussion between the two of them, they did what they were told, pulling weapons, and sprinting to the other side of the small field of autos.

  Camila ducked low between the cars, keeping out of view, until she was roughly in the middle of the lot. She tried to control her breathing so as to not make a sound. She carefully pulled her three-foot long aluminum sticks free from the holster on her back, like a bowman pulling arrows from a quiver. She peeked her head up, peering through windows of the car she hid behind.

  She saw three men wading between the cars, guns drawn, looking, wary. The tallest one barked at the other two in Russian, and they split up, guns drawn, beginning their search between the vehicles, slowly, car by car. She smiled, sticks ready, and waited.

  Chris stayed low and darted between the cars with cat-like speed and agility, zigzagging right and left, occasionally touching down with either hand for balance as he cut around the corners of the vehicles. He was headed to the southeast corner of the lot, knowing that Yaw would head to northeast, and Camila would take the middle. He reached his destination and dropped down on one knee, watching as two short, heavy-set men huffed and puffed their way around to the other side of the parking lot. He saw one wipe sweat from his forehead, pull what looked like a 9mm, and start into the lot and between the cars from the east side and to his left. He watched as one man pointed, and his partner split off from him, unknowingly headed towards Yaw. They’re separating, he thought. These men were enforcers and not experienced tacticians. They did not rely on tactics and training, but on brutality and intimidation. They had no idea what they were in for. He slowly pulled his sticks free from their holster.

  Yaw carefully watched from a crouched position as a barrel-chested man around six feet tall who looked to go about two-fifty squeezed between the cars, slowly making his way towards his position. The man led with his gun, moving carefully from car corner to car corner. Yaw ducked low, moving silently between the cars, doubling back around and behind his would-be assailant.

  Yaw was quickly one car behind him. He could judge the man’s distance by his labored and nervous breathing. He doubled back around a Ford F-150 pickup truck. He was now directly behind the gunman. Sensing it, the gunman turned, only to catch an aluminum stick across the jaw, breaking it, on the wrist holding the gun, breaking it and sending the weapon skittering underneath the truck, and yet again across the temple, breaking the orbital bone around the eye, and knocking the man unconscious right where he stood.

  The three strikes hit in such quick and fluid succession that the man fell to the ground face first, his body dropping as if he’d been shot in the head. Yaw disappeared between the cars again before the unconscious man’s limbs settled to a stop on the pavement.

  Chris heard the scuffle a quarter of the parking lot away, and knew he had to move. Almost on his man, he lunged around the corner of a late model Chevy Malibu, striking and shattering the gun-wrist of his hapless pursuer with one stick before spearing him in the mid-section with the other, causing the man to double over, and followed by striking him in the back of the head, knocking him out cold. Done in less than two seconds. A shot rang out and a bullet shattered the car window behind him just as he dropped down out of view.

  Camila was on it. She crept cat like behind the shooter, striking his right shoulder from behind, not on the “meat” of the trapezius muscle, but on the nerve endings near the bone, causing the entire arm to go slack and the gun to drop free from the hand. She then wrapped her arm and stick around the man’s neck, put her knee in his back and pulled him down from behind, completing the choke out in less then twenty seconds.

  The Russian who st
ood half a foot taller than the rest heard the commotion and turned in Camila’s direction just as Yaw leapt over the hood of a Nissan Sentra and tackled him. The bear of a man slammed against the side of a Mercedes sedan, smashing the mirrors and driver’s side window, the car keeping him on his feet in the process. The big Russian let out a roar and shook Yaw off, but Yaw landed low and balanced in a perfect three-point stance, immediately launching from his position and striking the man in the testicles with his fist, all his leg strength behind it. It literally lifted the man off his feet, allowing Yaw to easily but forcefully guide his landing, face-first through the windshield of the Mercedes.

  Yaw sprang to his feet and immediately looked for Camila. He spotted her and she nodded that she was unharmed as they both heard sticks on flesh and muffled cries of pain, followed by a body-thud on pavement, all happening in less than three seconds.

  Chris poked his head up from ten cars away. All three looked at one another.

  “Is that it? Is that all of them?” Chris asked.

  • • •

  “It’s not going to be that easy.” Said the gaunt-faced man with the black wool knit cap pulled low over his ears. “They’re going to come after you. The Russians. Now that they know someone has their merchandise.”

  “So let’em.” Yaw said defiantly.

  “How’d they know we were here?” Chris asked.

  “Looks like they’ve been watchin’ that phone. It’s dead now, tell your people don’t use it no more. I’m not surprised, their merchandise has been missing for three days, and they’ve been combin’ the streets twenty-four-seven.”

  Camila carefully examined “Sam”, their contact, as the other two spoke with him. He was short, in his forties, skinny, and his clothes noticeably smelled of body odor. They had spotted him shortly after the parking lot scuffle, waiting on the corner by the phone booth. After a shaky introduction, he had led them to a large Public Storage building in Brooklyn. As they now stood outside the six-story building, she saw that he was shifting from foot to foot, nervous, but he never looked to his feet, instead he looked Chris and Yaw in the eye when he spoke. She detected no lies from him.

  “So when can we see them?” She asked.

  “Right now. Follow me.” Sam replied, as he turned towards the storage facilities.

  “You kept them in a storage facility?” Yaw asked, incredulous.

  “I kept them safe.” Sam answered, without looking back.

  He led them into the building and down the concrete hallways, up two floors, pulling keys from his pocket as he approached a large 10x15 unit. He unlocked the garage-style door and with one strong pull rolled it open, the roar of the pulleys rolling on metal tracking echoing throughout the steel and cement surroundings.

  Yaw’s jaw tightened at what he saw. Camila picked up his emotional response instinctively, and she gently took hold of his arm to calm him.

  Inside the storage unit, four small young Vietnamese women, haggard and terrified, were huddled in a corner, wrapped close together in an old blanket. Three men, none of them over one hundred and thirty pounds, did what men did, and stood defiantly in guard over the women, ready for anything, nothing but fear in all of their eyes. Pots and pans were piled in the corner, along with empty water bottles, and a handful of belongings.

  “They’ve been fed, and have a bathroom down the hall they use.” Sam stated.

  They all stared at Yaw, afraid of him most because he was the biggest. He immediately held up his hands, palms out, to indicate he was not a threat.

  “We are here to help you. We’re going to take you some place safe.” He said to them as gently as he could, his voice cracking with emotion. For some reason, he thought back to the campfire, and Mawith, recalling the conversation about where he was from, and he remembered what the old man said about who and what he was.

  “I swear this to you, on my life.” He added.

  Camila looked at him.

  “I’ll go pull the van around front.” Chris said.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  HIT

  Marcus Stern stared down at the empty tumbler that had held his Grey Goose Kamikaze only ten seconds earlier. It had been his fifth one of the evening, and his head was swirling in a haze created by the alcohol, the bar cacophony, and the mixed thoughts about the last seventy-two hours.

  “You want another one?” The bartender asked. Stern waved him off.

  Fucking Luthecker, he thought.

  A middle-aged woman at the other end of the bar smiled at him and he looked away. He reached into his pocket, pulled a C-note from his money clip and tossed it on the bar, waited for his change.

  His bonus for finding the fugitive Luthecker and bringing him in was two-hundred grand. Two-hundred fucking grand to sell his soul. For some reason the thought of it now made him sick to his stomach. He realized that he had no idea what it was that Luthecker had done that had earned him the label of threat to National Security. He realized that he himself was truly nothing but a gun for hire. He hadn’t thought about it before, but that scrawny-as-he-was-creepy little punk-ass was right- his Grandfather would have flat out disowned him for this.

  He tried to piece it together. Tried to timeline his life. It hadn’t started this way, that’s for sure. When he joined the service, it was to defend his Country. It was pure. He remembered the barely containable pride he had felt when he first donned the uniform.

  Iraq was a total clusterfuck. He was in denial before. But now he admitted it to himself. Fraud. Waste. Needless death. It was those things, and worse. Like most Veterans, he survived by doing his best to keep his fellow soldiers alive, and when it was all over, trying to forget.

  His grandfather was his father’s hero. That made him his. He remembered the man as larger than life when he was a child, and as a legend later, in his father’s stories. He looked at his right forearm. At the faded tattoo of his Grandfather’s unit. Christ.

  Fucking Luthecker.

  He wished he could clear his head. His mind raced from one thing to the next. He looked at the empty glass in front of him. For the first time, he wondered if he might have a drinking problem. He was officially on vacation from his Coalition Assurance job. He was still supposed to check in, but he hadn’t. He didn’t think he could ever go back.

  The bartender returned with his change and he left it all and added another C-note as a tip. He got up from his stool, and headed for the exit, thinking a walk in the cool air might take the wooze off, might clears his head, might help him think.

  He hadn’t talked to Wolfe, even though his partner had called him several times. Fuck him too, he thought. He had grown tired of the man’s constant condescending attitude. Endless bullshit from a complete burnout. Crotchety bitch laid down years ago. Loser. What was it that Luthecker said? Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Right. Fuck it. And fuck Brown most of all. Fuck’em all. He shook his head. His anger was everywhere, and he didn’t understand it. He decided he really did need the air.

  He reached the exit to the bar, and pushed the door open. He stepped outside. The breeze caught his face. It felt good. Like he had walked straight into a meat cooler.

  The phone in his pocket buzzed. He pulled it free, checked a text message. Speak of the devil. It was from Wolfe: Need to meet asap. Very important. It’s about Luthecker.

  If it would’ve been about any other subject, Stern would have blown him off.

  Time and place. He sent back.

  • • •

  Nikki sat on the end of her brother’s bed as he stirred. When she had brought him home from the hospital, he had insisted that she not worry about him, and had encouraged her to go have dinner with her new “friend”. She had tried to tell him with a look that she would prefer not to, without being rude to her guest, but in his condition he had missed the signal. Still, she had promised him she would be back to check on him by 9PM, which allowed her to put a cap on Philip Miller’s expectations.

  She waited until he finally open
ed his eyes. She smiled at him.

  “Hey.” She whispered.

  “Hey back. Since when did you start dating a cop?”

  “I’m not dating him. He’s just a friend.”

  “He seems nice.”

  “He is.”

  “A bit pushy though. And a little old for you maybe.”

  “I said I’m not dating him.” She gently reminded him. “How are you feeling?” She asked, changing the subject.

  “Fine. No more pain meds. After today. All I do is sleep.”

  “You need rest.”

  “No more pain meds.”

  “We’ll see.” She said, not wanting to argue the point. “I found us a two bedroom.” She added, changing the subject.

  “Cool.” He replied, barely above a whisper, giving a brief thumbs up, and she could see that he was beginning to drift off again.

  She kissed him on the cheek.

  “Rest up. I’m home for the night. If you need anything, just holler.”

  He was already asleep.

  She carefully stood up from his bed, took a deep breath, and gathered her thoughts. She had completely forgotten about her dinner plans with Miller, but he hadn’t been offended, and had been very helpful in bringing Ben home, being polite and courteous throughout the process. She knew he was attracted to her, but she had been honest, and even though he had been a bit persistent, he had not been disrespectful.

  After making sure her brother was resting comfortably, she exited his bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  “How’s he doing?” Miller asked, sitting on the couch, as he watched Nikki exit the bedroom.

  “He’s fine. He’s asleep.” She answered. She approached the couch, but remained standing.

  “Thank you for your help. And dinner.” She said to him.

  “My pleasure.”

  They stood across from one another for an awkward moment before Nikki spoke.