Swords of Exodus

by Larry Correia

  Drumming my fingers on the table top, I tried to think of what could be going on. Maybe whoever was in charge now was happy that Eddie was gone. Maybe they were going to throw me a big thank-you party. I scanned the room. No balloons. No cake. Probably not.

  The roof of the Glorious Cloud hotel was visible from here. I had let Jill come along against my better judgment. She wasn’t cut out for this kind of mission. I’d given in to her, and now she was in danger because of me. I was such a fool.

  “It’s been a long time, Lorenzo.”

  The bamboo door had opened so smoothly behind me that I’d not even heard it. The voice was female and hauntingly familiar. The accent was Swiss.

  “Seven years,” I said automatically, without turning. “Hello, Katarina.”

  “Really, that long?” I could sense her walk up behind me. One of her hands landed softly on my shoulder. Her fingernails were painted blood red, and she dragged one up my neck, caressing the edge of my ear. An electric shiver passed through my bruised face. “It seems like yesterday,” she purred.

  “Still working for the Montalbans, I see.”

  She kept her fingernails on my neck as she circled my chair. She blocked my view of The Crossroads and stopped directly in front of my knees. Always beautiful, she had aged extremely well. Her lips were full and red, her skin was as smooth as the day I had met her, and her ice blue eyes twinkled with a predatory mischievousness. She was wearing a black silk kimono that was entirely inappropriate for polite company.

  “Working for the Montalbans?” She laughed as she lifted one long, perfectly muscled leg, and draped it over my own. Katarina settled down onto my lap, with her fingers intertwined behind my head. I could smell her warmth and her perfume. “Lorenzo, my dear, I run the Montalban Exchange now.”

  “You’ve moved up in the world,” I replied in the most noncommittal way possible. She always had been the ambitious one. It wouldn’t have been a surprise for her to grab whatever she could after Eddie’s death.

  “Indeed,” she answered, breathing on my neck. Some of her soft blond hair hit me in the mouth, and I could see down the top of her kimono. “I’m very glad to see you.”

  “Yeah, I got that impression.” This was certainly not going the way that I had expected. My ex-girlfriend was the capo of a group of hired killers that should want me dead, but apparently she was all about kissing and making up. I tried to remain stoic, but it is difficult to keep a poker face in a situation like this. “So, if you’re so glad to see me, why’d you have your thug knock me out?”

  “I told him to bring you in. Anders is an efficient employee. Would you rather he have subdued you by force?” She rubbed one hand down my chest. “Mm, you’re still doing all those pushups, I see. Maybe I should’ve told him to be forceful after all. I should have liked to see that fight, I think. Pity.”

  “Where’s my crew?”

  “They’re fine,” she whispered into my bad ear. I could feel her teeth. “Perfectly safe.”

  I’m only a man, and it was hard to hide my reaction, but I knew Katarina, the human razor blade, far too well to fall for this kind of thing. Besides that, if I was anything, I was loyal. “Kat, I’m glad to see you too, and I’m real glad you didn’t have me killed, but . . .” I gently grasped her hands in my own, and pushed them away. “Ain’t gonna happen. This trip is all business. Nothing personal.”

  She guided my hands to someplace really unexpected. “All business is personal,” she said, punctuating it with that sultry laugh of hers.

  This was awkward. I don’t usually have mob bosses sit on my lap and try to seduce me, but then again, this was the best looking mob boss I’d ever dealt with. “Kat, get off me.”

  “Very well. I just wanted to see if the fire was still there. I never felt more alive than when I was with you.” She leaned in and kissed me, just like the old days, hard enough to almost draw blood. I didn’t respond. She broke away. Disappointed? Who could tell with her. “Too bad . . . ” Her warm thigh dragged across me as she stood. Katarina stepped back, adjusted her kimono, put her hands on her perfect hips, and smiled. “Besides, our breakfast guests are here. Please, have a seat.”

  I glanced back at the door. The guards and Anders were flanking the guests. Looking past an obviously nervous Reaper, there was Jill. And the look on her face was a mixture of disgust, anger, betrayal, and shock.

  We had just moved to a whole different stage of awkward.

  I thought back to Malaysia, and the aftermath of the Independence Day Massacre seven years ago.

  “Sorry, Kat, it’s over.”

  “Are you talking about our employer . . . or are you talking about us too?” she suddenly looked sad, but I knew that was an act. A year ago I would have believed she was capable of sadness but now I doubted it. Any human emotions Katarina had, had long since been expunged.

  “Both.”

  “I thought you loved me . . .” she said, voice cracking, and this time, I almost could believe her. Almost . . . I turned my back on her and walked away.

  I had loved her once, to say otherwise would be a lie, but she was broken inside. There was something wrong with Katarina, deep down, just plain abhorrent. She never talked about her past, and all I really knew about her was what she had chosen to reveal to me, and that wasn’t much, and over the last few months I’d decided that she had fabricated most of that too. Not that I was somebody who could say much about that.

  “Wait!” Her voice was plaintive. I paused, just for a moment, weak. “You can’t leave me, Lorenzo. Not like this.”

  It had been great at first. For the first time in my life I had found someone who was just as conniving and malicious as I was. Ambitious, smart, and for a man like me, who lived his life on the ragged edge of law and probability, she had actually been fun. But that had changed over time.

  It was like she was several different people, wrapped into one beautiful, fragile shell. The one that I fell for was a relatively decent human being who had endured a difficult life, a scared girl with a good heart. The next minute she could turn into a cold-blooded murderer, all calculation and ruthlessness, her body a weapon in more ways than one, and when she was off her meds, she turned into a screaming psychopath, flying off in a rage at the slightest provocation. She popped pills like crazy. Not so many at first, but the more jobs we pulled for Big Eddie, the more she had taken. Which Kat you ended up with depended greatly on which personality was running the show that day.

  Working for Big Eddie was bad for her. I could see it. No sane person could exist in his world for long without being corrupted, and Kat was now his favorite intermediary. I was never allowed to meet the man. I had tried to get her to leave, but she had refused. Her future was with the Montalbans. That ambition that I had been so infatuated with had required her to turn totally into the cold Kat, with occasional outbursts from the crazy Kat. I was certain that the good Kat was still in there somewhere, but that side of her was weak, so she had locked it away in her cage made of drugs and hate.

  Yes, I had loved her, but not anymore.

  “Don’t walk away from me! Lorenzo!” she shrieked. “Damn you! Don’t you leave me! Not like this!” She grabbed onto arm, her nails tearing into my skin. And just like that, she lost it entirely. Kat attacked me, clawing at my eyes, ripping my shirt, her spit hitting me in the face. She was a trained fighter, but when she flew into one of her rages, there was no skill, just savagery. I bore it for a moment, waiting for her to do something stupid like actually start fighting, or to go for a weapon. Finally, I put one hand on her chest and shoved her violently to the ground.

  She curled into a ball in the wet Malaysian grass and began to sob. “But . . . But I . . . I need you.”

  “Goodbye,” I said simply and turned back to the house. Carl was watching from the front door. He nodded once and left to get Reaper, Train, and the car. We were out of there. Kat could stay and deal with Eddie all she wanted. A small part of me expected a bullet in the spine, but none
came. Apparently she had taken at least some of her medications today.

  “You’ll pay for this, Lorenzo, I swear to God!” She screamed, cursed, and cried as I walked away. I didn’t look back.

  “So, what brings you to my neck of the woods?” Katarina asked innocently.

  “General thievery. You know how it is. Boring stuff,” I answered mechanically.

  She and Anders were sitting across from us. Jill was sitting on my right, and Reaper on my left. There was a submachine-toting guard standing at each end of the room. Jill was brooding, her face a mask, barely concealing her emotions. I could understand what she was going through, but thank goodness she was smart enough to let me do the talking. Whatever Katarina was, she was dangerous, and she was also our captor, so Jill was better off holding her rage in for now. I just hoped she would believe me when I had a chance to explain that I was innocent, assuming, of course, that they just didn’t drag us all out back and put a bullet in us first.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “I was very surprised to hear that a Spanish businesswoman named Maria Consuela Garcia was coming to The Crossroads to do business with Sala Jihan. The coincidence was striking, considering that identity had originally been prepared for my use. I’m such a fan of irony that I felt I needed to meet this person.”

  “Whoops.”

  Breakfast had been brought in by servants and sat steaming before us. I had to admit that the bacon smelled really good. A plate was put before Kat first. The boss got a steak so rare it still had feelings. “I had heard you were retired. That was the word on the street.”

  “This is just a temporary thing I’ve got to take care of, then back to the old folks home.”

  “Decent fieldcraft for somebody retired,” Anders stated as he helped himself to a heaping pile of pig meat. “By the way . . .” He paused, pulled something out of his pocket, and tossed it across the table. It was a badly crumpled twenty dollar bill. “I always pay my debts.”

  “So you’re out of the business, and you’re no concern of ours, but here you are, in our backyard, with a . . .” Katarina sniffed. “Crew. Skyler, it’s good to see that you’re still alive.”

  “Uh-huh,” Reaper muttered as he chewed, keeping his head down. He had always despised Katarina. “And it’s Reaper.”

  “That was such a silly name for a young boy.”

  “Well, I’m no kid anymore.”

  “Where are Carl and Train? Oh, wait. That’s right. My predecessor here had them both killed. How about that?” Katarina turned to Jill. “And this must be my replacement. Lorenzo always believed in having a pretty young thing on his team. You can get into places that a male thief could only dream of. Oh, but Lorenzo always was quite the lady’s man back in the day. You have no idea how many times he seduced some poor girl during our scams, whatever it took to finish the job. He could pretend to be anything, for anyone. Quite the heartbreaker, our Lorenzo, but he always came back to his crew.”

  Katarina was baiting Jill, testing her, and sadly, Jill fell for it. The mask fell away, and her temper shined through. “He’s my boyfriend, you bitch. We live together.”

  “Lorenzo settled down? With you?” Katarina laughed as she used a knife to cut her breakfast steak. “What are you, twenty?”

  “Twenty-six,” Jill answered defiantly. I had a feeling that if it wasn’t for the two guards with P90s, she would have gone across the table and twisted Katarina’s head off. “What’re you, fifty?”

  Katarina’s eyebrows narrowed. “I’m younger than your boyfriend.” I had seen that look before, kind of like how she had looked right before shooting Datuk Keng in the head. She turned her icy blue eyes back toward me. “So, when did you start robbing the cradle?”

  I was fourteen years older than Jill. “I make up for it by being immature. It averages out.”

  “Well, he dumped your skank ass, and he comes home with me. Speaking of which, I would appreciate it if you kept your tentacles off my man,” Jill said calmly as she scooped herself some breakfast. “Or we’ll have us a problem, puta.”

  Reaper looked over at me, raised an eyebrow, as if asking if it was okay to watch the catfight. I shook my head in the negative, and then nodded toward the guards. “Jill, machine guns.” My ex was not the person to provoke.

  Katarina pushed her plate away. “It’s Jill, right? Well, listen to me carefully, Jill. I have been killing people professionally for the world’s most dangerous criminal syndicate since you were wearing a training bra. I clawed my way to the top of this organization by pure ruthlessness. And then, when Big Eddie died, I had to fight every other one of his lieutenants for the scraps. They died. I didn’t. So I won.” Suddenly she reached across the table, faster than I could react, and stabbed her steak knife into the wood directly in front of Jill. The handle vibrated slightly. I had forgotten how fast Kat was. “So don’t think you can come into my house and disrespect me in front of my men. Another word, and I bury you . . . Now the grownups need to have a conversation.”

  Jill started to say something, but I reached over and grabbed her hand under the table. She glanced at me, anger flashing in her dark eyes. I shook my head. Jill had no idea what Katarina was capable of, so hopefully the look I gave her conveyed the danger we were in. Anders glanced around, shrugged, and went back to shoveling food in his face.

  “Good. Now where was I?” Katarina smiled, and pulled her plate back. Another knife appeared out of her kimono sleeve, one of those fancy, expensive titanium folders. It was razor sharp and zipped through the meat like it was made of air. “Oh, that’s right. You were about to tell me why you had the audacity to bring a crew onto my territory to perform a job without my permission.”

  “Better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” I tried to joke. She didn’t go for it. There was no laughter when Ruthless Kat was in charge. “If I had known it was you, believe me, I would have asked. I didn’t exactly leave the Exchange under the best terms.” I was praying that she didn’t know that I was the one that had killed Eddie.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Very well.” Katarina didn’t bother to look up from her food. “Diego, kill the girl.”

  One of the guards lifted his subgun. Jill gasped. “Okay! Okay!” I raised my hands. “Don’t shoot. I’ll tell you everything.” The guard lowered the gun, and waited for further instructions.

  Katarina smiled as she popped a piece of ultra rare in her mouth. She chewed with her mouth open, a disgusting habit that had always annoyed me. “Your softness surprises me. You’re certainly not the man you used to be. Talk.”

  “I’m here looking for a man, an American FBI agent. He came to The Crossroads to investigate Sala Jihan. He was kidnapped. If he’s alive, then I will rescue him.”

  “And if he’s not?”

  “Then I’ll kill the people that took him,” I stated simply. “Then I’ll go home.”

  “Just like that?” Katarina quipped.

  “Just like that.”

  “Tell me, why on earth would you, of all people, be trying to help an American policeman? Ahh . . . yes. Your brother was FBI, wasn’t he? You mentioned that once. Oh, and you were even foolish enough to take on your adopted family’s name as your cover.” Katarina snapped her fingers, and one of the guards quickly brought her an iPad. He placed it into her waiting hand, then retreated back to his station. She began to read. “Special Agent Robert T. Lorenzo. Disgraced, paranoid, delusional, conspiracy theorist, fired for revealing classified information, disappears from the US, only to arrive in The Crossroads, to immediately stir up trouble by harassing Sala Jihan, which, by the way, is never wise. He’s a nosy, self-righteous, goody-two-shoes, law-and-order pig, who meddles in affairs he does not understand, and pays the price.”

  “So, you’ve met Bob. Where is he?”

  “Sala Jihan has him,” Anders spoke up. “By the time I found out, there was nothing I could do.”

  I
turned my attention from Katarina to Anders. “Why would you do anything?”

  Anders wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “Because Bob Lorenzo came here to find me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The giant shook his head. “I’m the Fourth Operative.”

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I didn’t know what to say. Bob had been right all along. “You’re the man that knows about Project Blue?”

  Anders dropped his fork on his empty plate. “Take a walk with me, Lorenzo. There are some things you need to know.”

  Chapter 15: Old Friends

  VALENTINE

  Crossroads City

  March 15th

  Our breath smoldered in the frigid air as Ling and I stepped out into daylight. Though the sun only occasionally peeked through the heavy layer of gray clouds, the snow amplified the brightness enough that I put on a pair of tinted goggles. These had the added benefit of helping to conceal my identity. We were dressed in what passed for street clothes in The Crossroads: heavy jackets, knit caps, and thick gloves, most of it either North Chinese or Russian military surplus. All of the high-end cold weather gear I’d been issued might have drawn more attention.

  Our armament was limited to what handguns we could conceal. My custom Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum revolver was in its usual place on my left hip, but it was buried beneath several layers of clothing. I could get to it, but it wouldn’t be a fast draw by any means. So I’d asked my Exodus compatriots for something smaller, that I could stash in the pocket of my coat. I was graciously offered several compact handguns. I picked a Taurus Protector Poly, a hideous .357 Magnum snubby with a polymer frame. Ugliness notwithstanding, it fit into the hand-warmer pockets of my jacket perfectly. Being a revolver, it could be fired from the pocket without malfunctioning, and I shoot revolvers better than automatics anyway.