by Ty Patterson
‘You weren’t bothered about killing the loser?’
Navarro shook his head, not reading the menace in Roger’s posture, pride creeping in his voice. ‘I’ve broken many legs. Many limbs. I have killed many men. Women and children too.’ Those were the last words he spoke for a while.
Roger rose after knocking him out and paced the room, his fists knotted.
‘They’re all criminals. All killers. Pedos. Rapists. The worst kind. That’s why the club is so successful. It’s a gathering of like minds,’ Zeb watched his friend for a while and then turned his attention to another problem.
‘Meghan?’
‘Still here. We got everything. Werner’s onto the club.’
‘Call Burke. I want two good men. They’ll stay here, close to Navarro and Loya. Bear?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You and Chloe good to stick with those watchers? Bwana and Roger will spell you.’
‘We’re good.’
He sized Roger up, then Loya. ‘You and he are the same height and build, aren’t you?’
Roger considered the driver for a moment, ‘yeah, why?’
‘You and I. We’re going to the fight.’
Chapter 26
Four Days to Fight Night
Werner worked on the Death Club’s website in the night and when day dawned, it had printed out everything that it had found.
‘Navarro. Posada. Stabel. Eppinga. Clow,’ Meghan read out the killers’ names. ‘We know about Navarro. Posada is from Chile. Stabel is Austrian. Eppinga is Dutch. Clow’s Australian.’
‘Four of them have Interpol warrants. Clow is wanted in Australia.’
She listed out five more names, the drivers. Loya was one of them. Beth distributed the printouts to all of them except Zeb and Roger who were readying to go out for their coffee.
‘You know where the other four are?’ Zeb asked Meghan.
‘Nope. Werner’s working on it.’
‘Where?’
‘Where’s the fight? No idea. Didn’t Navarro say he would get a message? I suspect it’s close by. Maybe an hour of traveling.’
Gruzman had traveled early and was ready. His van was exactly where he wanted it to be. A hundred and twenty feet from the entrance to Carter’s building. A clear line of sight. The getaway cars were in place. He had a commuter ticket for his escape from Penn.
His .338 Lapua Mag was by his side. Scoped. Zeroed.
Now was the waiting. He had been at his self-made kill site since five am. He had watched Carter and his crew come out of the building and go for their run. He hadn’t watched for long, however. People like Carter had a sixth sense. They could detect a shadow, or when they were under surveillance.
He had seen them return from their run, and knew it wouldn’t be long for his kill. Carter usually stepped out around ten am, went to a local coffee shop and grabbed a drink. He was alone most days.
It didn’t matter to Gruzman if Carter wasn’t alone. He would take out his companions too. The glass front of Carter’s building ended in a black marble strip that ran all the way from top to bottom. The strip was five feet wide and was the ideal backdrop for his shot.
Everything was in place. All Carter had to do was show up.
Carter showed up at ten am. His ball cap was pulled low, shades over his eyes and when he turned right, Gruzman’s left, his phone was held to his left ear. Most of his face was obscured by the phone.
Gruzman made an expression of distaste. The old man was right. Carter had let himself go. He had fallen into a routine. He could see Carter’s lips move as he spoke in his phone. He could have taken him out, then. Gruzman wasn’t to be hurried, however.
Carter was two feet away from the marble strip. There was no other traffic on Columbus Avenue. No pedestrians. No school kids. No joggers. No moms pushing baby strollers. It was all clear.
One foot away from the strip. Gruzman’s finger curled around the trigger. His breathing was low, even. His pulse was steady. He was alert.
Carter took the first step and was inside the marble strip. Gruzman would take the shot at the next step. Carter took another step and his next move flummoxed Gruzman.
Carter turned, presenting his full body to the killer, raised his right hand, and made a gun with his fingers. Pow. Gruzman lip-read him. That’s not Carter! Trap!
Gruzman whirled as his van’s rear door was flung open. His right hand snaked away from the rifle, and sped towards his handgun. A shadow appeared in the doorway and shone a bright light at him.
Gruzman squinted, blinded by the flashlight. His gun, a Smith and Wesson, started rising. He could still get away. Pump at the figure. Ditch the van. Get to one of the escape vehicles.
‘Don’t.’ Gruzman could swear the shadow sounded amused. It was Carter. Who else could it be?
‘You should have taken the shot the first day. When you saw us. I wasn’t armed. You were in a white van, weren’t you?
He knows! Gruzman brought his gun up, but it was too late.
Gruzman didn’t die.
Zeb shot him in both shoulders before the killer could fire. Gruzman’s round went wide and that was the only shot he got. Zeb drove him away in his van to an abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn and with no one around to witness him, started interrogating the killer.
No one could withstand aggressive questioning. Everyone gave in, Zeb too. He had held out once for three days, and had eventually confessed. Gruzman to his credit, held out longer than Navarro, but in a calculated way.
The South African realized there was no escape and figured whatever he told might help in his sentencing. He didn’t have much to reveal, however. All he had was a name. He communicated with that name through a secure site. He had never met the client, didn’t know what he looked like, or what he sounded like. In his business, people rarely met anyone. It was only the foolish or the amateurs who met their clients.
He was paid through an offshore account from another offshore account. Carter’s dossier had been mailed to him from a one-time email account. Death Club? What was that? Gruzman was genuinely confused. He hadn’t heard of it.
Gruzman drank gratefully from a bottle of water that Zeb held to his mouth. ‘How did you know?’ he asked his captor.
Zeb smiled with no humor in it, ‘I knew for a long time.’ He didn’t give any details.
Gruzman’s urgency had played into Zeb’s hands. He knew the killer had to take the shot before the fight. He surmised the killer would make his move with three or four days remaining. That would give enough time for surveillance, make plans, and have a buffer of a second day if the first day failed.
Once he guessed the likely days, the rest was relatively easy. Their office building had hidden cameras that watched Columbus Avenue. One of those cameras had captured the white van and Werner had automatically run its plates. There was a hazy image of the van’s driver; hazy was an easy challenge for the supercomputer. It had sharpened the image and had presented Gruzman to Zeb’s crew.
Falling into a routine, setting up a kill spot, getting the lights on the avenue to malfunction and stay red, erecting temporary barriers to foot access; all those had followed once Zeb guessed a likely day.
He hadn’t wanted to involve Roger, but his crew had been adamant. A reluctant smile tugged his lips. That man, Roger. Only he could pull off such a play.
‘What happens now?’ Gruzman asked him hoarsely.
Zeb dragged him into the yard in front of the warehouse. ‘Look up.’
Gruzman looked up at the blue sky and at the fleecy clouds. An airplane blazed a lonely trail as it carried people in its aluminum body.
‘You won’t see that sight for many years,’ Zeb told him and hauled the killer back into shade.
He dialed another number and when he got Burke, said simply, ‘He’s yours.’ He made another call to Meghan, ‘Set it up.’
And with that, a news item went out that a former special forces operative had been gunned down by an unknown assailant, in New York.
He showered when he arrived at the office and heads raised when he joined his crew. No one asked him how it had gone. Everyone knew how he felt about aggressive interrogation. He hated it. There were times, however, when nothing else worked.
‘He gave us a name,’ he told the twins.
‘Privalov.’
No Privalov existed. Not one who had any kind of connection to the fights. It wasn’t that common a name and Werner quickly unearthed the holders of that name. There were fifteen males in North America, eighty in Russia, and a handful scattered across the rest of the globe.
The twins made calls all day, each call drawing a blank.
‘Not one of them fits our profile,’ Meghan cracked her knuckles and fluffed her hair tiredly. ‘Privalov, that’s probably not his real name. No trace of Miguel either.’
‘I have better news than Ms. Gloom,’ her sister cracked. ‘Those watchers, they are from a mid-town PI firm. Divorce, missing people, bounty hunting, inheritance claims, they do it all. Wait one,’ she held a finger when Bwana made to interrupt her. ‘Werner snooped in their systems. They were hired by a law firm and there the trail ends. Law firm does not exist.’
‘Maybe we should call on those PIs,’ Bwana suggested. ‘Read them the riot act.’
‘Nope,’ she shot him down. ‘That would tip our hand. Let them watch. We are watching them.’
‘I can’t have a word with them? Politely? Just a friendly tap on the shoulder?’ he begged.
‘Nope,’ she glanced at Zeb and raised an eyebrow at Meghan, who shrugged.
Zeb hadn’t said a word after mentioning Privalov’s name. He lay on his couch, playing with a softball, lost in thought. He had stirred just once, to make a call which hadn’t lasted long.
‘Zeb? ZEB?’ Beth roused him.
‘Yeah?’
‘You’re with us? We get it that officially you are dead, but that doesn’t mean you have to act the part.’
‘I heard everything.’
‘And?’
‘I’ve been thinking of Navarro and Loya.’
‘What of them? They’re out of the picture.’
‘Nope. They’re going to the fight.’
She gawked at him as he rose and stood next to Roger.
‘You’re looking at Navarro and Loya.’
Chapter 27
Three Days to Fight Night
Privalov spent the next three days getting all details right. All the fighters were in the city holed up in secure locations the Russian had arranged. All five had PIs on them. None of the fighters had broken any rules.
The attendees required less vetting. They were well known to Privalov, from previous fights. They would be making their own accommodation arrangements.
Grigory was putting in final touches at the two houses. The basement of the fight house had been cleared, and the escape route, which was nothing but a tunnel from the basement to a neighboring car park, had been widened. Privalov had made arrangements for the car park to be temporarily owned by the Russian Culture Center on the day of the fight; not directly, but through various shell companies.
His master stroke was in putting up discreet signs in the upscale neighborhoods, posters that said there would be a reception at the fight house and there would be increased traffic. Now, no one would bat an eyelid at the vehicles rolling in.
Grigory had gotten the network working to his satisfaction, with layers of secure code and proxies and automatic switching of proxies. Technical terms that Privalov didn’t know and didn’t care. All he was interested in knowing was that the feed worked. Grigory was there to take care of the security.
Privalov was feeling more upbeat, even though he knew he wouldn’t be running another Fight Night anytime soon. There was too much risk in the New York one and he wanted to lie low for a while. Voronoff agreed with him, which was a surprise.
On reflection, he figured he shouldn’t have been surprised. This buyer and his demands and getting Miguel to do the switch at the fight, had made Voronoff tetchy. His boss too wanted to get the fight over and done with.
No, the reason Privalov was feeling upbeat was because one problem had been taken care of. Gruzman had taken out Carter. The South African had contacted Privalov the evening of the kill and had asked him to check out a two-line news item on a mainstream news website. Carter was dead. One major thorn was out of the way.
Miguel was on his way to see the Statue of Liberty. He had found a cheap hostel in Manhattan that catered to students and backpackers and had faithfully followed Vasquez’s instructions. Keep a low profile. Keep his head down. Report in every day. Carry the flasks with him, wherever he went.
He had a brush with the cops on the second day of his arrival in the city. Not a brush exactly, but it had been unnerving. Miguel had been sitting on a park bench, chewing through a burrito, when the cop had approached and had accosted a drunk next to him. The cop had wished him a good day, but his very proximity had made Miguel retch as soon as the cop had been out of sight.
He had checked to see if any police were around, before he boarded the ferry and had breathed in relief when he didn’t see any uniforms. He had seen the other sights and now it was only the Statue that remained to be visited.
As the wind blew in his face and as the glorious lady came closer, he wished Maria and Juana were with him. Soon, he promised himself. Very soon. Not many days left.
Zeb and Roger went under the knife three days before the fight. A surgeon implanted a surveillance device in their molars; it had a miniature microphone that would relay the audio signal back to their office via a network of relays and amplifiers. It was also a listening device.
Two days before the fight, Bwana and Bear took a man along with them to where Navarro and Loya were held captive. The man, one of Hollywood’s best makeup and disguise artists, made plaster casts of the captured men’s faces. He measured their limbs, shoulder width, and fingers. He recorded them as they walked in the hallway, under Bwana’s supervision.
He spent the entire day before the fight, with Zeb and Roger, getting them accustomed to the prosthetic facial parts he had made for them. He inked various tats on the two men and got them to walk like the captured gangsters. He dyed them the same color as Navarro and Loya’s skins with a pigment that would wash away in a week’s time. He styled their hair like the criminal and his driver. He made them practice their facial tics and accents all day long and as he was leaving, shook his head mournfully.
‘That’s the best I can do,’ he said to Zeb. ‘It may not be enough,’ and left them on that cheerful note.
Broker had been busy while Zeb and Roger were being coached. The two men would be wearing Navarro and Loya’s clothes, with minute alterations, and Broker was overseeing the changes to the driver’s shirt. They had buttons made of resin, billions of their kind found on shirts all over the world.
Broker removed the buttons and hand-sewed similar-looking buttons. These new ones looked identical except that they were a larger and thicker by a fraction of an inch. That size was required to accommodate the nano-cameras embedded in them. The cameras were powered by a long strip of lithium-ion battery that looked like woven fabric, and felt like cloth.
Broker sewed the battery to the inside of the shirt and completed the circuit. He inspected his handiwork after testing it with various detectors.
‘I really am a genius,’ he mumbled to himself, when he had finished. He watched Roger wear the shirt and checked the feeds. The cameras worked and so did the battery.
Bear and Chloe drove Zeb and Roger to the office unit late at night, and there the two waited for the Death Club’s instructions.
Fight Night
Bright sunshine streamed through the office on the day of the fight. Zeb and Roger didn’t peer out to see if the watchers were still in place. They were. The rest of their crew, spread out discreetly in different vehicles, had confirmed their presence. There had been no calls, no alarms raised from the Chevy, Meghan whispered in their ears. Of c
ourse, we have a drone in the air, she snorted in an un-ladylike manner.
Yeah, the FBI agents, the ones who had been guarding the trussed up Navarro and Loya, had left without detection, she confirmed.
‘No sign of Miguel. No record on Privalov,’ she replied to a query from Roger. ‘It’s down to you, Rog. You have to save the world.’
‘I know,’ the Texan drawled. ‘It always comes down to me. You folks are pretty bad at it.’
‘Where’s Zeb?’
‘Right here. You know the dude. He’s gone into his Buddha-like state. The dude needs to lighten up. He didn’t react to my best quips. Maybe he didn’t get them,’ he complained.
Privalov and Grigory woke up to the same sunny day in the house in New Jersey. They had arrived the previous night, after inspecting the fight house one last time. The first of the organizers arrived at ten am and by eleven, all fifteen of them were at the fight house.
Six of them wore the uniforms of a private security firm. Three of them manned the entrance at the front; they would be responsible for verifying the attendees and the fighters. Three security personnel went to the rear entrance which overlooked a curving street. Both, the front and the rear roads didn’t see much traffic. The neighborhood had wealthy residents, bankers, lawyers, doctors. Such folks liked privacy.
The organizers were all criminals, members of various gangs that Privalov knew. They had as much to lose as Privalov if the fights were raided by cops.
Voronoff messaged before lunch. ‘Everything’s on track,’ Privalov replied, ‘What about Miguel?’
‘Vasquez has confirmed. Miguel will be there. What time will you be starting?’
‘Two pm. We will finish by four. The buyer’s reps will have enough time to get away.’ The buyer had wanted the fight to end by four and blocked any questioning by Voronoff.