As Nate drove away, Connor assured him further. “Honest Nate, after we get opened up, we will have one of the boys drive us around in a company car. We will keep your Lincoln locked up.”
Nate chuckled. “I didn’t mean to make such a big deal of it, but damn. Whenever someone gets something nice for themselves, someone else takes it upon themselves to destroy it.”
“Sammy’s grandmother really shines Nate. It makes you wonder how the heck he got off the path in the first place.”
“No man with similar principals Thomas,” Nate replied. “She can only go so far. These stooges hyping single woman child rearing have damaged this society to the point it will take years to bring it back to sanity.”
“We men are all child molesters, rapists, and wife beaters Nate. If you were unaware of that fact, we may have to also establish a sensitivity training class for our business.”
“Forget it Mutie. After you left the Company, and we got that pervert in the White House, they made us all attend a sensitivity class as a diversity thing. I almost had to stuff that commie piece of shit, they had teaching it, in the trash bin. He had the nerve to become upset with me over a remark I made during the discussion. Now what kind of tolerance could he have been representing?”
Connor sighed smiling. “What did you say Nate?”
“First off, he was Chinese-American, or one of those hyphenated minorities. Secondly, he spends the first half an hour putting down everything even remotely part of America. Thirdly, the arrogant little prick comes over after bad mouthing my country, and asks me what I, as an Afro-American, think of the way my people had been betrayed by America.”
“Uh oh.”
“Yeah, so I told him he must have me confused with one of his insecure, hyphenated, soul brother, socialist whackos. I told him I was proud to be a black man, and I was proud to be an American, and I told him to get his Red China loving, pinko, commie ass out of my face before I drop-kicked it into the wall.”
“I can not believe he could become upset over that,” Connor said in mock confusion.
“Exactly Thomas,” Nate said in mock seriousness. “Anyway, the little shit gets all excited, and walks over towards Johnny Loo for comfort and.”
“Our Johnny Loo,” Connor asked, as he covered his face in mock horror.
Nate nodded his head affirmatively, as his shoulders shook in silent laughter, and he tried to keep from losing the ability to finish his story. “Johnny opens his coat, and puts his hand on the butt of his piece, and.” Nate loses it for a moment of loud laughter, as Connor joined him, knowing what must be coming.
“and.Johnny shoots him the death laser from space look, and tells him ‘one more step, and Mao will have one less follower. Keep your lying, traitorous, victim crap on the other side of the room.’ By this time, all the guys in the room are howling. Johnny pulls his piece out, and lays it across his desk, with the barrel pointing in the general direction of this clown. I mean, Thomas, he does this without breaking eye contact with this guy, and still firing the death ray out of his eyes. The guy storms out of the room, and Johnny just breaks down. He laughs so hard, the tears are flowing like water, and he doubles up at his desk gasping for air. God Thomas, now that’s entertainment.”
“How would you like to handle Mr. Big?”
“I say we have some fun. I will be ‘Don’ Johnson again, and you can be Benny, the Enforcer.”
“You want to play around, and then arrest him?”
“Hell Thomas, you know better than that. What kind of charges would we bring, and what would we use for proof? We killed everyone, who could have testified against him.”
“Well, if we are going to have a little fun Nate, you get in the back seat. I’ll chauffeur you to his place, and run interference, just in case they don’t want to play at first.”
“That might be better,” Nate agreed as he pulled over. “After all, I do not want some cheap little thug to screw up the Lincoln.”
Connor got into the driver’s seat, while Nate entered the back seat, and settled in comfortably. “Will we use the guns this time?”
“No, we have already been a bit noisy today as it was Nate. It would be good to handle this matter quietly.”
“But still have some fun, right?”
“Of course ‘Don’,” Thomas agreed smiling. “We will make sure Mr. Big sends no one, after anyone, anymore. No matter how fast I am Nate, this will be dangerous. Are you sure you want to play around with this.”
“Can’t stop living, and having fun Thomas, or we might as well start living in a little cracker box, while we wait for the mailman, and read obituaries everyday to find out who we out lived.”
“Right as always Nate,” Connor sighed. “I just don’t want you to get hurt, and leave me to tell Claire and Nate Jr. his old man just wanted to have fun.”
“I expect your mutant ass to be sacrificed long before they get to mine.”
“Good point. We are almost there. Wow, nice place.” Connor slowed, and he and Nate both leaned over for a look over the sprawling residence with brick and iron fencing, circular drive, and guarded gate. Connor pulled up to the gate slowly as he rolled down his window to speak to the uniformed guard approaching. Connor could see another guard on the phone inside.
“Good evening Sir, how may I help you,” the guard asked crisply.
“Would you be kind enough to let your employer know Thomas Connor, and the ‘Don’, would like to speak to him. The guard nodded and went in to talk to his friend, who relayed the information over the phone. The first guard came out a moment later, and opened the gate. He motioned them through. Connor followed the circular driveway to the front of the house. Six men with automatic weapons emerged from the house, and surrounded the Lincoln. Thomas, who had left his window rolled down, waved at the nearest man.
“Are you here to escort the ‘Don’ and I to see your employer, my good man?”
“We’re goin’ to escort you alright. You and the ‘Don’ get your asses out of the car, and we’ll all take a walk.”
Connor nodded. He rolled up his window, and got out of the car slowly, shutting the door behind him. He drove the man’s nose bone through his brain, grabbing the rifle out of his hands before the body dropped lifeless to the ground. Within seconds, the remaining five were down, and no shots had been fired. Connor looked around to see if they had drawn any attention from the guard post, but there was no sign of movement. They had only an obstructed view of where the Lincoln sat. Connor nodded to Nate, and then began dragging the bodies over by the side of the house.
Nate got out of the Lincoln, and walked up to the front door with Connor following. He stepped aside and let Connor enter ahead of him. The entryway opened into a huge foyer, where a staircase wound its way to the next floor above. Nate checked one side of the lower floor for any signs of movement, as Connor did the same on the opposite side of the house. They met up again in the entryway.
“Do you want to go on with this fun stuff Nate, or have you had enough excitement for now? I only found a few service people in the kitchen, and no sign of anything else. They must be upstairs, and you can bet this guy has more than one layer of guards,” Connor stated.
“They won’t fire until they find out what they want,” Nate replied. “They think we might be the lower rung of some big operation moving into their territory, otherwise, those guys outside would have opened up on us. They have not met the ‘Mutant Terror’ in person yet, so they will not feel all that threatened.”
“Okay then,” Connor chuckled. “Shall we proceed upstairs, and introduce ourselves ‘Don’?”
“After you Bwana.”
Connor scowled again at Nate before leading the way upstairs. Two men were posted down the hallway, in front of a large doorway. Both men were Chinese. Connor had time to exchange surprised looks at Nate, just before they were spotted. Connor walked slowly towards the guards with his hands at his sides. Nate stayed to his right side. The guards rushed up to them with
weapons drawn.
“Where are the other men?” the first guard asked suspiciously.
“Downstairs,” Connor replied. “We are not armed, so they remained downstairs. Your employer did want to see us, right?”
The two guards stared at them for a time, with the one glancing down the stairs once as he said something to his companion in Chinese. The other guard shrugged. The first man said something else in Chinese, and then turned and entered the room they were guarding. A moment later, he came back out and motioned for his companion to bring Nate and Connor inside.
When they entered the room, both Nate and Connor gaped at the huge high tech control room and conference area. There were banks of monitors, computer stations, and every form of business apparatus imaginable. Connor breathed a sigh of relief as he noticed the monitors were not for surveillance, but for conference calls. A well-dressed, middle-aged Chinese man sat at the conference table with two more Chinese men standing behind him.
“You wished to see us?” Connor asked politely.
“Why do you think I would wish to see you two?”
“Because you directed the kidnapping of a teenage boy to attain our whereabouts so you could have us killed. Since you cannot see us dead, I thought perhaps you would like to see us alive. I must admit the ‘Don’ and I were surprised to find the Chinese connection to the black gangs and slave ring so soon.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, and he tensed at the reference. “What do you know about slave rings, or black gangs, other than your recruitment of a few minor thugs?”
“I plan on knowing quite a bit by the time I leave here,” Connor informed him.
The man laughed. “What in the world makes you think you two will be leaving here?”
Nate whirled and smashed the man just behind him to the floor. He continued down with him, and broke his neck. He stayed there, crouched over the body as a flurry of movement took place around him. He heard one shot, and he grabbed the dead man’s gun under him, sensing the worst. Nate threw himself to the side, and came up with the gun ready to fire. Connor was standing over the Chinese boss, holding a small.32 caliber Berretta in his hand. Connor had been shot in the chest, and Nate could see the blood running down the front of his suit.
Connor smacked the man across the face with his open hand hard enough to send him crashing to the floor. He looked up at Nate then, “The little prick was packing Nate. I should have been more careful.”
Nate rushed over, but Connor stopped him with a gesture. “Just go on out and see to those two gate guards. We don’t want them crashing our little party. I’ll be fine.”
“Fine hell, you got shot in the chest you moron. I need to get you to the hospital.”
“Nate, trust me. Get on down there and take out the two guards and then come on back up,” Connor instructed.
Nate hesitated momentarily, and then turned quickly to the door. Nate took out his own silenced weapon and carefully went downstairs. He found the gate guards, still at their post. Apparently a gunshot did not attract attention around this place. The two men in the guard shack turned only long enough to have Nate’s face as the last thing they saw on this earth. Nate grabbed each of them, and dragged them into the foliage by the fence. He hurried back into the house and up the stairs.
Connor had the Chinese man back in his seat, where the man held his damaged face. Connor smiled, “Hi Nate, that didn’t take long.”
Nate rushed over and opened Connor’s suit coat, vest, and shirt to find nothing but some drying blood. Nate pushed Connor playfully, as he shook his head in amazement. “I might have known you would have a healing factor, you freak. You might have told me.”
“I had not planned on getting shot buddy. He ruined my favorite new suit too. Nice work on the guard when we first came in. You were kind of in the way for me to do that one quick enough.”
“It was a pleasure. Now what do you want to do with Mao here Mutie?”
“Just a couple of questions Nate. I waited for you, because this brave little crime boss does not like pain. He has been moaning over my little slap the whole time you have been gone. I guess Sammy can take it a bit better. Would you like to explain our questioning procedure to him?”
Nate smiled grimly, and walked around to the man. He gently grabbed hold of the man’s entire suit front, lifting him slowly up in the air. Nate let him down on the top of the conference table. The man sat gasping for breath, as it had been choked off while in transit to the tabletop.
“My partner and I have photographic memories. We would like you to begin telling us everything you know. My friend has a rather annoying talent of knowing exactly when you tell the truth, or if you stray from it. When you stray from the truth, you will be punished.” Nate slapped him across the face.
The man screamed in pain, covering his head with his arms. Nate shook his head angrily. “Amazing how you can send out an army of thugs to whip up on a teenage boy without batting an eye, but you scream like a little girl, when you get a taste.”
Nate sat down next to him with a big sigh. “Get started talking chump, I have to get home for some dinner. Begin now, and start with your full name.”
The man looked at Nate fearfully. “I have money. “
Nate put his arm around him. “Did I ask you for a financial lesson on your wealth status? I will let that pass, because it reminded me of some more information we will need. Include all of your account numbers, and then we will verify them here in your business trophy room. Don’t forget the passwords.”
The man looked at Nate again, and then pleadingly at Connor, who had been enjoying Nate’s interrogation techniques immensely. “Can we not come to some…”
Nate slapped the man, coldly shutting off the plea. As he raised his hand again, the man quickly began talking, beginning with his name: Raymond Yee. Connor stopped him for a moment as he took out a mini-cassette recorder, which he switched on. Connor stated the man’s name into the recorder, and had the man affirm it. Connor then signaled for the man to begin again. Mr. Yee then started thinking he had been tricked, and this was simply a government sting. He unwisely began to make things up. Connor shook his head sadly as he turned off the recorder. Nate got up, and began slapping Yee with forward and backward strokes, until he screamed for mercy. Connor waited for him to regain some composure, and then restarted the recorder.
A story unfolded, which filled in many gaps in their information, between what had been a tightly run ring of drugs, slavery, and intelligence gathering. The connection between Pierre, and the Red Chinese now became apparent. The lower rungs of the organization were now totally in chaos. Many of their leaders, who had known who to contact, were now dead. The last of the enforcers died in the warehouse where they held Sammy. When Yee finished with the description of the operation, and the names of the men he knew, Connor shut off the recorder.
Connor took out a notepad and pen. He handed them to Yee. “Write down all of your passwords, and all of your account numbers.”
Yee wrote them down with a shaky hand, and handed the pad back to Connor. “Now Mr. Yee, kindly go to your hidden safe and open it please,” Connor directed.
With Nate’s help, Yee trudged out of the room and down the hallway to his bedroom. A false panel in a bookcase revealed the face of a large safe. Yee opened it, and stepped aside. Connor looked inside, and then began piling everything out on the floor. Besides a half million dollars in cash, Connor found ledgers, notebooks, and labeled tape backups for the computers. He went back into the conference room, and picked up a briefcase he had spotted there. It contained a sheaf of papers, which meant nothing to Connor. Connor dumped the contents on the floor. He took the briefcase back into the bedroom, and filled it with the contents of the safe.
Connor signaled Nate to bring Yee along. In the conference room again, Connor directed Yee to get into the accounts, and confirm the passwords. Connor transferred all of the funds to his and Nate’s Swiss account. Yee waited in resignation for what he knew w
ould come next. Connor finally turned to him and asked him in Chinese to tell him a story about his homeland in Chinese. Yee looked at him strangely, and then began describing the village he had grown up in. After a few minutes, Connor knocked him out.
“What did you say to him Thomas?”
“I needed to hear what dialect he spoke. We are going to make Mr. Yee disappear without a trace Nate. I may need to travel as Mr. Yee to follow this game to the end. I hope not, but you never know.”
“You planning on dropping him off in Quenton’s loving care?” Nate asked.
“You got it,” Connor confirmed. “Derek can question him all he wishes, and I will give him the ledgers and hard drive back up tapes to provide him with some excitement. He can hold Yee for at least a few months, while I see if I need any special information from Yee we have not covered.”
Connor suddenly sat down and put his head in his hands. Nate came over and put a hand on his shoulder. “What’s bothering you Thomas?”
“I am beginning to think you, me, Quenton, Karen, and our boys are the only ones not in on this whole deal.”
Nate sat down next to him. “Think of it this way buddy, there are a whole lot less in this deal than when we happened upon it. Remember, we will just have to defeat evil incrementally, just like all the other mutant superheroes. I thought this was supposed to be about justice, doing right, and having fun mixed in with a bit of adventure. You fading on me Mutie?”
Connor sighed. “No Nate, I just took a look too far down the road. Thanks for anchoring me down. Let’s take Yee and blow this joint. I told Karen we would have dinner with her. She wants a ride in your Lincoln. Although we will be a bit early, she can get off. Would you like to pick up Claire and Nate junior?”
“Not until we clean out all the nests Thomas. At least we know with Yee gone, the only link to the boys will be gone too.”
“Yea,” Connor replied, “remind me to kill the little prick when Quenton gets done with him, and we can no longer use him. Sure as hell, they will tell Quenton to let him go, and we will all be in danger again.”
American Mutant Page 15