by Michael Todd
As he moved, his mind ran the scenario. There were two SUVs. Depending on how closely they’d packed them, he would face a maximum of ten men. Two were already dead, and the others would probably advance in a pincer motion. It made sense to try to drive their quarry out to where they expected someone might be standing guard. Of course, they couldn’t be sure anyone would be, given the shots they’d no doubt heard, but these dumbasses didn’t even have a decent comm system—no radios, no earbuds, nothing. They played off the cuff, which meant the operation was rushed and, most likely, spur of the moment.
Despite that, they had to have a couple of pros in the mix. Someone had to run the operation on the ground. He made some quick decisions as he moved stealthily through the right side of the lot, staying low and listening intently.
“There is a group converging on the building Anderson is in now,” Anja announced through his earpiece. “They all look heavily armed, but they… Well, they’re all out in the open and don’t seem to know what they’re doing. Honestly, the quality is disappointing after the last team you and I engaged.”
“These are locals, brought in to boost numbers,” he grumbled as softly as he could. He froze when he rounded a hulk and the space afforded a clear view of the open area in front of the small building. Six men stood out in the open and peered around like they weren’t sure what to do next.
“It’s like shooting fish in a barrel,” Savage said with an edge of disgust to his tone as he inched closer. “Where the fish literally gave me the gun, the bullets, and pointers on how to shoot them more efficiently.”
He raised the weapon and smiled at the comfortable weight of the MP-5 as he stepped forward and pulled the trigger.
As he’d expected, his ears immediately rang painfully as the first three-round burst tore through the open square. One of the men dropped. Two of the rounds had struck the back of his vest but the third found his neck and drilled through to open a strawberry-sized hole around his Adam’s apple. The operative couldn’t actually see it, but it was a safe assumption based on experience. The bleeding was fairly minimal, though, since the last round had also severed his spine and killed him instantly.
Dead before he hit the ground. Savage pivoted and selected another target—who seemed to react the quickest to the assault—and squeezed the trigger again. The MP-5 kicked lightly into his hands. Submachine guns were never meant for accuracy, of course, but they did pack as much firepower into as small a container as possible.
That said, the weapon he held was a decent compromise, and the second man fell backward when all three rounds powered squarely into his chest with a force of impact similar to what a mule’s kick might deliver.
He wasn’t out of the fight completely, but he would take a while to catch his breath and accept the fact that his sternum would probably be a source of pain for the remainder of his life.
The others had enough time to turn and open fire. Thankfully, none of them really had any idea where the original shots had come from and simply released a random barrage of lead all around them in the hope that they might actually hit something.
Savage ducked behind the car, ejected the half-empty mag, and slapped a new one in. It wasn’t his gun, and he had no need to conserve bullets. The invaders sprayed ordnance like it was candy and this was Halloween.
“Really?” he asked himself aloud. “That’s the metaphor you’re going with?”
“Are you talking to yourself?” Anja asked.
“Yep, you know what they say—if you ask your MP-5 a question, you’re going crazy.” He wouldn’t be able to count how many bullets were actually being fired, and honestly, it really didn’t matter. It was enough to know that the weapons delivered a constant stream of bullets in all directions, and only a few actually impacted the car he used for cover.
After about fifteen seconds, the shooting stopped and was immediately replaced by the desperate sounds of five men trying to reload.
“My turn,” he declared under his breath and stepped out into the open. The men saw him immediately but hadn’t managed to reload. Savage knew that every shot would count at this point, so he switched the weapon from three-round bursts to semi-auto. He raised it to align his eyes with the sights and fired.
The first man fell with two slugs between his eyes.
A second a little further away was the closest to actually being able to return fire. Another of the pros, the operative recognized and fired twice. The bullets punched through his neck and lower jaw and he sagged with a strangled moan. It wasn’t an instant kill and it would take a while but still make sure that he was out of the fight for the duration.
I could simply pretend I meant to do that. He smirked because none of them would really care much either way.
A third man shoved the mag into the gun and fumbled to pull the bolt back and load a round into the chamber. He targeted him next, pulled the trigger three times, and nodded with satisfaction when, although one of the rounds went high, the other two thumped into his head.
Which left one more, loaded and ready to fire.
He flung himself forward and one of the bullets grazed lightly across his back. With a grimace, he rolled over his shoulder and pushed onto his knees within an arm’s length of the gunner who still tried to track him.
Without even a moment’s hesitation, he shoved the stock up from his shoulder and drove it between the man’s legs. The pain had to have been explosive and the man shrieked as Savage dropped his weapon onto his assailant’s shoulder and immediately cupped his hands protectively to his groin. He followed through with a powerful thrust that hammered the stock under the poor fool’s jaw. The man sprawled at his feet, unconscious.
At this point, it was a mercy killing. He would wake up with a broken jaw and ruptured testicles, along with a severe concussion.
The operative lowered his weapon to the man’s head and fired a single shot. Any more would simply have been superfluous. You could only kill a man once after all.
Chapter Six
The single survivor lay on his back and groaned and writhed in pain as he tried desperately to reach beneath his vest, most likely for the extra mags he kept there.
His struggle looked damn painful, and Savage grimaced as he approached. The thug gritted his teeth and strained until he finally managed to pull one of them free.
“I can’t have that.” The operative grunted his displeasure and proceeded to kick the MP-5 out of the man’s hands. It slid free of his fingers but, still attached to the loop around his neck, it didn’t travel far. He dropped to a knee, yanked the loop off, and tossed the submachine gun away.
“Hey, how’s it going man?” he asked and searched quickly for any more weapons. He found a revolver shoved into his belt and a knife tucked into an ankle sheath. “That looks painful. You’ll want to have a doctor look at it.”
The assassin glared at him as his last chance to fight back was thrown away as casually as one might a candy wrapper.
“The strong and silent type, eh?” Savage asked and smiled as he brought the stock of his MP-5 down on the goon’s chest. He screamed in pain and tried instinctively to roll away from the pressure but was dragged back by the collar of his now-ruined vest.
“Well, only the strong type now, eh? Yeah, these babies are effective, which is why they’re still in production, and they leave one hell of a mark when they’re put to good use. Which is how you can tell whether your bosses actually care much about your well-being. See, if they did, they would have sprung for something a little more expensive but a lot more effective, like ceramic plate weaves. They still hurt, but not the broken-ribs and shattered-sternum hurt.”
He twisted the stock into the man’s bruised torso again and dragged another cry of agony from him.
“So, I understand that you people are loyal to the man who signs the paychecks, but here’s the deal.” The operative looked around hastily to make sure Anderson wasn’t watching. He really didn’t want his boss to have nightmares about this
later. “I have…issues I need to get out. Anger, abandonment—a wild concoction of shit that rich kids sit around in therapy for. My parents weren’t rich, though, so I learned to take my issues out in more creative ways than screaming into a pillow. I know you don’t like me, so if you want me to walk away from this feeling unfulfilled and dissatisfied, make like the world’s worst prom date and spill all the goods prematurely. Do you understand me?”
The man stared at him and the defiance bled slowly away to be replaced by a trace of existential horror. As Savage pressed the stock in again, he screamed.
“Okay, okay. I’ll tell you everything I know!” he shouted and writhed as he struggled to escape the pressure.
“Awesome,” the operative said with an annoyingly bright smile. “Keep your words simple and in English. Who the fuck is Edward Smith?”
“I am,” the man gasped. “I’m Edward Smith.”
“Well, if my luck isn’t simply the best today.” He chuckled and for a moment, actually looked amused. “I come to a place looking for Smith, kill guys who come to kill me, and the one man left alive is the guy I’m looking for.”
“It’s true, I swear to God,” Smith gasped. “We’re all Edward Smith. We run a small chop operation around here, and we were going out of business after some Colombians moved in across town. Then, these bigwigs appeared out of nowhere a couple of months ago and said they were willing to pay in cash to move stuff out of inventory from a couple of local warehouses. They needed us to move the merch and keep it until some trucks came by to collect. We were supposed to mail them from a PO box in Chinatown to let them know when there was stuff to pick up. They would always leave the cash in there for us. After the first meeting, there wasn’t any contact. Okay, there were the truck drivers, but I got the impression they were in the same boat as we were. Especially when one of them showed up with one of our stolen plates. Here, I have the address on my phone.”
“Right.”
“You have to believe me, man,” the wounded man pleaded and hauled his phone out of his pocket to display the address. Savage memorized it quickly.
“I have to do no such thing, amigo,” he corrected him. “But I might actually believe what you’ve told me is the truth because you want me to leave you alive. And, of course, not come after you when you lie in a hospital bed recovering. Because you know that I’ll look into your claims, right?”
“Right,” Smith quickly agreed.
“Okay, now that we agree on that, I have a couple more questions.” He glanced around at the dead men, his expression speculative.
“Come on, I told you everything I know.”
“I doubt that,” he responded cheerfully. “For instance, I happen to know that small-timers like you don’t have access to weapons and equipment like this, so there had to have been some face-to-face contact for that to happen. And I also know that the motherfuckers who sicced you on us didn’t only send a group of amateurs to deal with the situation. Which meant they tracked us and then realized they needed to make it a hit and decided to call in local talent.”
“Come on, man, we’re not…amateurs,” Smith grumbled.
“I killed seven people, most of them with their own weapons,” Savage pointed out. “And I disarmed you and kept you alive for questioning by shooting you in the chest. You’re so far out of your league that you’re playing the wrong sport, champ. Now shut the fuck up. And then un-shut the fuck up and tell me which of these dumbasses are the ones who brought you in on the kill? I know it’s not the two dumb fucks I killed by the gate.”
“It’s…that guy,” Smith pointed at the first man to die. “And that one. There were only two of them, I swear to Christ.”
“I appreciate your help, buddy boy,” Savage said. “That concludes the Q and A section of this night’s show.”
He added a definitive full stop by cracking the stock across the poor man’s temple.
“You’ll want to talk to a neurologist about that,” he mentioned casually to the unconscious man as he stood and approached the men who had been pointed out as the professionals in this operation. He assumed they wouldn’t be the actual people who called a hit on the likes of Anderson and Monroe, considering how woefully unprepared they were to handle this situation. No, they were likely tails who were suddenly given a green light for a hit with the promise of a substantial reward delivered to the man who killed them.
He paused while he rummaged through the pockets of the second man. The fact that he’d tackled Carlson on his own and left the executive alive afterward meant that his cover as merely another random man walking around was possibly blown. Anja had made sure that any footage of him was erased, but the chances were good that his picture was out there by now. People knew to look out for him, especially since they saw him with Anderson.
“Hey, Anja?” he said, retrieved a wallet and a burner phone from the first man, and moved on to the second. “I think these guys followed Anderson and I from the airport. They’re probably local muscle, but I’m not sure if they have connections. It makes sense that they do to get this amount of weaponry on such a short timeline. Is there any chance you could figure out where these weapons came from and who owns them? It might give us an idea as to who is funding them.”
“Send me a picture of the serial numbers,” Anja said briskly.
He shook his head. “No luck there. They’ve been shaved off already.”
“Not on the weapons, dummy,” she snapped. “From the vests. Kevlar isn’t issued randomly. They’d have to have it registered, and you need the pins for that. Just—”
The operative was already working to remove the vest from the man he was examining. Sure enough, on the inside beside the label with instructions on how to wash it, there was a rigid tag with a serial number on it.
“I’ll be damned,” he grunted and used his phone to take a picture. “Can you track who bought these things?”
“Nope, but I can track who sells them,” the hacker said. “While you don’t need a permit to own body armor, you do need a permit to buy the vests in bulk and the people who sell them do need to keep a registry of the sales to make sure none were sold to convicted felons.”
“Okay, fair enough.” He tried not to sound too disappointed. Having been in the army for so long, he’d assumed there were gaps in his knowledge regarding civilian use of combat equipment, and he’d actually hoped that there was more to buying body armor as a civilian than met the eye. He was a sucker for a conspiracy theory.
“This could take me a while,” Anja grumbled. “You might want to locate Anderson, and the two of you should probably bug out quickly. That may be an abandoned section of the city, but people heard the gunfire and cops are on the way. I assume that is still a no-no for you, being dead and all?”
“Correct,” Savage said. The second man’s wallet contained a wad of cash, a driver’s license, and no credit cards, along with another burner. He stood and scowled at the burning pain in his back. In the heat and adrenaline rush, he’d totally forgotten that one of the assholes had scored a flesh wound. It didn’t seem to be bleeding, but he still wanted to make sure there wasn’t any potential for infection.
He stepped inside the building where his boss rummaged noisily through some file cabinets. The operative gave the three rooms a quick sweep before he entered the office where his companion now searched. He had his phone pressed to his ear as he worked.
“That’s right,” he said as Savage stepped inside. “It looks like some gang war style violence going on in the area. A shit-load of shooting and bodies near a chop shop outside Hyde Park.” He glanced at the other man as he stepped in and noted that he still carried the submachine gun he’d taken from one of the men outside.
“Are you finished out there?” he asked.
It took the operative a couple of seconds to realize that the question was addressed to him. “Oh, yeah. I wrapped things up and have a couple of new leads too.”
“Great,” Anderson replied and return
ed his attention to the phone. “Oh, yeah, absolutely, it’s a fucking warzone around here… I hear you, absolutely. All over the place…yeah, I appreciate it, Bob. Say hi to Becky for me, would you? Okay, bye.”
He hung up and grinned smugly.
“So, Bob sounds like a really stand-up guy,” Savage said with a small smile.
“He is.” The ex-colonel chuckled. “I did my first tour with him. He got out before I did and took a job in the police force here. He’s actually part of the commissioner’s office, and they’re grooming him for the position come elections next year.”
“Hey, that’s some really great news.” He tried not to sound too sarcastic and failed miserably. “So, did he call to check up or what’s the deal?”
“Well, he owes me a favor, so I called it in. We can’t be caught here, and apparently, calls poured in about shots fired in the area, which meant we would be swimming in cops in five minutes. This way, they’ll mobilize their local SWAT teams, and that gives us about thirty minutes to bug out.”
“Well, now I feel like an asshole,” Savage admitted and looked more than a little sheepish.
“Only now?” Anderson pocketed a couple of papers he’d found in the mess and gestured toward the door.
“Well, yeah. Anyway, I have a couple of burners I took from the leaders of this attack. I assume Anja’s working on them now?” He phrased it as a question to include her.
“You would be correct in that assumption,” she said and sounded audibly upbeat about it.
“Fantastic.” He smirked, confident that she would turn something worthwhile up in her search. “Anyway, I have a lead on where all the missing merch went. It turns out the guys who ran this shop actually worked for someone and were paid what I would imagine was pennies on the dollar to move all the stuff out of the warehouses in the area and send them…fuck knows where. I have the address for the PO box they were paid from.”
“I doubt we’ll find anything useful there, but we might as well check it out,” Anderson said as they set off toward the exit. They took their time and ignored the fact that there were five bodies and one unconscious man on the ground out there in the baking sun—plus two at the gate who were still out of sight.