Cooch

by Robert Cook

  “Search him,” Alberto directed. The two men walked to Alex, one standing back a little, in a combat crouch, his Beretta raised to Alex’s face. The other motioned him to put his hands up, tucking his Beretta into the waistband behind his back. As Alex stood with his arms raised, the bodyguard expertly patted him down for a weapon, finding nothing. Alex stood with his eyes fixed on those of Alberto, his face cold and impassive. When the bodyguards had moved back to their stations, Alex did not move, still staring coldly at Alberto.

  “Please be seated, senor,” Alberto said. “I have heard much about you today, and am pleased to make your acquaintance. I am Alberto.”

  Alex continued to stare coldly at Alberto, then sat in the chair, clasping his hands lightly behind his neck, elbows forward and relaxed. “I am Paco. What is it you wish of me?”

  “I am looking for a man of violence for a small job that pays well. It seems that you are such a man.”

  “You are mistaken. I am but a humble peasant who does not wish to be disturbed. You are disturbing me, senor.”

  Alberto laughed scornfully. “You say that when either of my associates here would shoot you through the heart at a nod of my head? Incredible!”

  Alex turned his head to look at one, then the other of the bodyguards. “I think not,” he shrugged.

  As Alberto turned to one of the bodyguards, Alex dropped his hand down the back of his shirt neck, pulled a flat throwing knife from the sheath that was hanging there, and in one motion threw it at the second guard, hitting him squarely in the throat, then leaped from the chair at the first, just as he was bringing his Beretta up. He grabbed the hand raising the Beretta with one hand and with the other drove his extended, flattened knuckles into the guard’s larynx, crushing it.

  Alberto was half out of his chair when Alex sat down, holding the Beretta. With a languid, almost bored, motion, he waved Alberto back to his chair with the pistol, then unscrewed the silencer. After inspecting it and giving it a nod of approval, he dropped it into his shirt pocket. He pressed the magazine release on the side of the Beretta, and allowed the magazine to drop into his hand. He pulled back on the slide and caught the chambered round as it was ejected, then pushed it into the top of the magazine. He pulled back on the slide and allowed it to lock.

  He looked down into the chamber, then again released the slide and worked it back and forth on its rails several times. With a faint, cold smile, Paco pointed the pistol at Alberto and pulled the trigger, causing a loud click as the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He pushed the magazine back up into the butt of the pistol until it engaged with an audible click, worked the slide again to chamber a round, and engaged the safety.

  Still looking at Alberto and shaking his head sadly, Alex said, “The weapons are dirty and the trigger pull is ragged and fouled. Watch the bodyguards of the American president sometime on the television. They never look at the president—only at the crowd where the danger lies. When these men looked at you, they lost nearly a full second of reaction time.”

  The liquid sounds escaping from the dying guards were loud and demanded attention. Alberto forced himself not to look at them.

  “I don’t deal well with pressure, senor. It makes me violent, but then again there are those that think I am by nature a violent man. But now that I am feeling violent, it is also true that I have a great need for money to help me avoid further difficulties in my life. Tell me what is that you wish me to do, and how much you will pay me to do it. When I have had some time, a day perhaps, to find out who you are and whether I can trust you, I will give you my answer.”

  Alberto looked at him, slumped easily into the chair, relaxed. The noises had stopped as the bodyguards died, but the stench from their voided bowels and bladders was becoming oppressive.

  “And how do I check you out, my violent friend?” Alberto said.

  Alex leaned forward, pulling his right sleeve up to expose the tattoo. He flexed his forearm and caused her to dance for a second, and said, “She is Lola. I am called Paco. It should be enough.” He gestured to the bodies on either side of the desk. “And perhaps a small payment for the demonstration? Would a thousand dollars be too much? And you also owe me one hundred dollars for the meeting.”

  Alberto, comfortable again, laughed. “That seems a reasonable sum.” He reached into his desk, noting the Beretta coming up and Paco’s thumb releasing the safety. He slowly removed a stack of one hundred dollar bills, and counted eleven of them onto the desk. He replaced the stack in the drawer, then closed it, picked up the bills, and handed them to Alex.

  Alberto folded his arms on the desk and began to speak. “We wish to cause great fear in one individual, such that he will convince his older brother to provide a service to us. The older brother is too important for us to convince directly and has so far refused to help us. Both of these men are consumers of our product, and have a need for it, but they need something more in the way of motivation. You are to provide that motivation. For this we will pay you ten thousand dollars.”

  Alex stood. “I do not wish to offend you, senor. There are many who would do this task for the amount you offer, or less. But I have standard fees, if you will, and a certain reputation. I will kill a man for fifty thousand dollars if he is ordinary—not a politician or one with priority access to the machinery of government to pursue me. For an official or a law enforcement officer, my fee is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. There is no sum for which I would kill a prominent national figure such as the gringo president, since escape from such a mission is unlikely. I prefer to kill, because there are no witnesses. But as I said, I need money. I will do this job for fifty thousand, if you choose. If you would like to find another, less expensive person to do this, I will understand. It is business. But if you choose another, do not betray me to the authorities nor attempt to blame me for the task.”

  He walked across the room to the bodyguard with the knife handle protruding from his throat, stepped casually on his face, and pulled the knife out. He wiped the blood from the knife on the shirt of the corpse and reached behind his head to replace it in its sheath. He walked to the door and turned.

  “Whoever trains your bodyguards should look for a throwing knife suspended below the collar in the back. It would make your life safer. But if you betray me, nothing will protect your life. Later perhaps I will train some bodyguards for you. For a fee. I will come back here tomorrow after my work, unless I hear differently from you.”

  As he walked out of the building, he moved quickly into the shadows. Screwing the silencer back onto the Beretta, he waited, but no one came out. After a few minutes, he walked quickly down the street. Ten minutes later he was at a pay phone in the shadows beside a 7-Eleven.

  “Mac.”

  “We got lucky. I think I just met the number two guy for the area; he matches the DEA description. He has an office in Menlo Park, in the same building the DEA gave us for the boss. I think his will be a lot easier to bug, so we should have a team on that ASAP. I’m going back there tomorrow. He wants me to scare someone for him with no marks, so I’ll need a safe interrogation room. A basement somewhere would be good, a garage where I can stash a car without being seen would be better. Things are moving faster than we thought. And Mac…?”

  “Yeah, Alex?”

  “Any chance you get someone else to do the scare routine? I hate that shit, and it’s getting worse. I had nightmares about it for a month the last time. I just hate those nightmares.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Mac said, and then was silent for a second. “Sorry, Alex. I should have anticipated this and had someone out there, but I didn’t. Like you said, things are moving pretty fast. I guess you’re stuck with it this time. Last time, I promise—even if I have to do it myself.”

  “Ah shit, I guess the prize is worth the game. That’s why we’re risking all this anyhow. It wouldn’t be good to bring in an outsider—just adds to the exposure.”

  Mac sighed and said, “I’m glad to see your para
noia is alive and well. We’ll get on it. Anything else before I hand you over to the recorder?”

  “They’re going to check me out today. I gave them Paco and Lola. See if NSA can find out who they contact, and maybe we can catch an Interpol bad guy too. Here comes the memory dump.”

  Alex talked steadily and quickly, describing in detail the building and the rooms, furniture, office equipment, computers, and staffing of the office where he had met with Alberto. He described Jesus and Alberto in detail, then abruptly hung up. Fifteen minutes later he was brushing his teeth at the tiny sink in his room.

  Washington,

  DC

  MAC turned from the phone as the recorder stored Alex’s details, and put his feet up on his desk, pondering. He hated that they were operating within the US; all sorts of political problems could arise from getting caught doing that. But letting the druggies mess successfully with national security could lead nowhere but nasty places. They had vast pools of cash and the powerful addiction of their consumers to enable a new business. Somehow they had to be convinced that they shouldn’t be tugging on Superman’s cape, as the old Chicago rock singer, Jim Croce maybe, used to sing about. Ten minutes later he picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Office of the national security advisor,” a woman answered.

  “Shirley, it’s MacMillan,” he said. “I need thirty minutes with the boss, soon.”

  “Hold on a second,” she said. After a few moments she returned to the phone and said, “Forty minutes. His office.”

  “Roger that,” Mac said. He hung up the phone, pulled his file from the secure filing cabinet, and slammed the drawer, locking it. He picked up a pen and began to organize his thoughts on a yellow legal pad.

  Thirty-five minutes later, Mac walked into the ornate office waiting room and plopped into a chair, nodding at the assistant, who smiled as she picked up her intercom phone and spoke into it. After a few moments, the national security advisor, Cyrus Miller, opened the door and said with a grin, “Well, look what the cat drug in. Are we being invaded, or to what do I own the honor of a surprise personal visit? Come on in, Mac.”

  Miller was a big man, dressed in a suit that was getting a little baggy on him; the seventeen-hour days and no time to work out were taking their toll. He sat down in an upholstered chair in front of a small round table positioned to the side of his cluttered desk, as Mac eased himself into a similar chair facing him.

  “What’s on your mind, Mac?” Miller said.

  “It’s about that cocaine bunch chasing DARPA secrets out West that I’m working on,” Mac said. “I think there’s more to be done there than my little band can do. Much more than we discussed earlier.”

  “Oh?” Miller said as he sat a little straighter. “How so?”

  “We have the DARPA radar thing under control, I think. We’re on the druggies and have figured out how they are doing things and identified the top of their organization. They’ll probably go down tomorrow or the next day. We’ll splash the leadership, foul their distribution operation, and cause the baddies back in Colombia some consternation as a result, but I think we’re missing the chance to make a much bigger point with them and their clients about messing in our national security sandbox.”

  Mac leaned forward and said, “I think our objectives should be twofold.

  “First,” he said, “what we should do is throw a big wrench into any thoughts the Colombians and their ilk have of using their drug cash to enable a shortcut to the Middle East and its potential cocaine consumers as well as making their European supply system bigger and better by leveraging the Muslim network. To me, if they make that work, it’s not a stretch to see the druggies start to use their distribution network to start moving weapons of mass destruction around in North America in return for that Muslim help in getting into Europe and the Middle East with their drugs. It’s a way for them to get a double win and a lot more money. At least so far, they can’t see much risk to implementing that strategy, and the money would be good. It’s time to cause them to have an attitude adjustment about their risk.

  “Second,” Mac said, “the Chinese and obvious others would love to replicate our military advantage without spending the vast R&D money that we’ve spent. They’d rather steal our stuff and work from there. We believe that many of China’s top defense electronics scientists are in play for us, as a result of this druggie venture. We’ve identified six of the ten that got aboard that yacht in Puerto Vallarta as big names. Their CVs are in the briefing doc. There are also two flag officers that lead the electronics efforts within the Chinese defense system. These are not folks they can afford to lose, so there are eleven bodyguards protecting twelve ranking Chinese. It looks to me like the Chinese see a big opportunity here, and see the risk to their players as acceptable—given the US wimpiness that we have given them reason to count on. As discussed, the yacht’s owner and four of the Arabs on board are known Al-Qaeda supporters.”

  “Well, on the first topic, the business of leveraging an illicit distribution network,” the national security advisor said. “We’ve certainly had conversations ad nauseum about the three prongs of weapons of mass destruction getting out of control, and it seems to me that your worries could entail at least two of the three, radiological and biological cargoes, being moved by the druggies. Chemical attacks involve a lot of weight, like blowing up a train or a refinery. Our job there may just be a matter of figuring out how to minimize damage after a chemical attack, broadly, and I have people worrying about that; we think it is just planning for the downwind scenario of something like a chlorine explosion. But, I’d love to see us send a credible message that would give everyone second thoughts about the risks of enabling the movement of the first two. What do you have in mind?”

  “Well, hell, I want to kill all of the players stealing defense secrets, for sure,” Mac said. “That’s what I do for Uncle, and avoid expensive trials as a result—and this is too good to pass up. It sure looks like a free lunch for us. But while I do that, we should want their assessment of risk in a caper like this to make the caper unattractive and consequently unacceptable. That’s the key to this op. Let’s try to make it just a business assessment for them; here’s the risk and here’s the potential reward. It’s just business.”

  “Your blood lust is widely appreciated, Mac, and not a surprise,” Miller said, chuckling. “As you say, the bigger part of this is the message we send, but if we can cripple the Chinese’s defense brain trust for a while without negative geopolitical impact, I just might kiss you. I assume that you also have a way for the homefolk in Colombia to think new thoughts about risk.”

  “Yeah, I do,” Mac said, “And I’ll show you the part to kiss when it’s time, and when we have time to draw a crowd in Macy’s window. But more about that later. First, let me summarize the macro-situation that the dumb-shit Colombian druggie in San Jose or wherever just served up, by maybe setting back the Chinese electronic warfare efforts for years. We can hit this ball out of the park.

  “The Chinese and the others have no business off our West Coast in a yacht that is receiving allegedly stolen defense secrets. We’re not supposed to know they are there, so they’ll have trouble with any public accusations, but they’ll know it was us, of course. They’ve obviously decided that the potential reward of gaining our secrets justifies their risk in sending their big brains abroad. That is the key bet. The Chinese would lose too much face in defending why their men were there if there were no proof that they were. I think they would just suck it up, and reassess this objective with that long view they have. With a little luck, they’ll also execute the mission planner and his crowd, if this works for us. The Arabs are just looking for another way to stick it to us. Killing some of the major Saudi sponsors of terrorism is a wonderful bonus.

  “I’ll need more access to DOD assets than we discussed earlier,” Mac continued. He pushed the ops file across the table to Miller and said with a worried frown of his face, “The Man gave me a pr
oblem to solve, and I think we’ll solve it quickly. Expansion of this mission to a violent global riposte is not the kind of thing I can easily talk to the Man about. That’s well beyond my pay grade.”

  “I’ll talk to the Man if it comes to that, and it well may,” Miller said. “Tell me what you have in mind. I’m liking this already. I keep forgetting what a devious sumbitch you are.”

  Silicon

  Valley

  THE following evening Alex became Paco once more and returned to Menlo Park to meet with Alberto. He was searched before entering Alberto’s office, the bodyguards rough and hostile. They took the ceramic knife from its sheath behind his neck, then allowed him to enter.

  Albert rose from his desk and offered his hand. “Paco, amigo. Be seated.”

  Alex sat in the same chair as the night before, but no bodyguards were present. He relaxed into the chair, crossing his right boot to rest on his left knee, his hands resting comfortably on his knee, a short reach from the handle of the throwing knife resting in its boot sheath. He watched Alberto without expression.

  “So, amigo, Interpol says you are perhaps a dangerous man,” Alberto said, looking at a single sheet of thermal paper, still curved a little after rolling from a facsimile machine. “Contract assassin, no photo, no political ties known. Six foot two to six foot four, one hundred to one hundred ten kilos. Tattoo right forearm, female dancer with name Lola inscribed beneath. Expert in small arms, martial arts. Rumored to have extraordinary physical strength. Said to favor throwing knife and explosives. Believed born in Puerto Rico, 1964 to 1970. Believed to have worked for the Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan, French, and Thai governments. Rumored to have done extensive private work as well. No warrants. Detain for questioning.”

  Alex looked steadily at him. “I have read it. I also killed the man who gave them the description—slowly.”