“You gonna make us?”
“You’ll go on your own, you’ll just be worse for wear when you do it.”
The other biker left his ride and strode toward Tanner with a cocky gait. Although smaller and shorter than his friend, the man was six-three and weighed two-twenty. The cockiness of his stride was a reflection of his personality and of the overconfidence he was feeling. He was a Dixie Devil, an outlaw biker. He wasn’t going to take any shit from a damn security guard in a suit.
He stuck out an arm to give Tanner a shove and his overconfidence came to an end. Tanner grabbed the man’s wrist with both hands and buried a knee in his stomach. Still gripping the wrist, Tanner tripped the man onto his back.
The biker hit the ground hard and the impact stunned him. Before he could recover, Tanner placed a foot on his chest, twisted his arm, then yanked upwards.
The man let out a scream as his shoulder dislocated from its socket. When he tried to sit up, Tanner kneed him in the mouth. The other biker was coming at Tanner while removing the knife from its sheath. He was out for blood and determined to stab Tanner in the chest.
Tanner stood his ground and let the man come to him. As the thug jabbed at him with the knife, Tanner moved under the thrust and struck the biker on the side of his head with an elbow. The guy shook his shaggy head and held on to the knife, then lunged at Tanner, who had moved to his right.
Tanner sent out a high side kick that sent the blade flying out of the man’s hand, then a second kick did damage to a knee, while a third kick knocked the man on his ass. With the biker down, Tanner sent a final kick at his face, which broke his nose and sent blood flowing freely down the front of his shirt.
The other Dixie Devil with the dislocated shoulder was at his bike and fumbling around in his saddlebag. Tanner was about to take out his gun when a voice shouted from the porch.
“If you’re reaching for a pistol, I’ll shoot your ass dead.”
It was Kendra. She had the shotgun up and pointed at the biker. The man froze for a moment, then he removed his hand from the saddlebag slowly, so that Kendra could see that it was empty. Tanner pushed the punk aside and removed a Beretta from the saddlebag. The gun was loaded and had a round chambered.
The big man made it to his feet and headed for his bike, while doing so, he left a trail of blood behind. He was angry, and out of habit he shoved his helmet on his head. When it made contact with his broken nose, he bellowed in pain and nearly slipped off the bike.
The other man started his engine. As he looked over at Tanner, he issued a warning.
“Next time we come back, security guard, there will be more than two of us. Then your ass will be in a world of hurt.”
“If I see you again, I’ll kill you,” Tanner told him, and the biker gave him the finger.
As the pair rode away, Jake came down the stairs to look at the blood left behind by the huge biker. When he gazed up at Tanner, he had a grin on his face.
“That was badass.”
One more look at the blood, and then the boy made a gun with his fingers and pretended to aim it at the departing bikers. Tanner recalled once more what his grandfather had said, about how we each carried our ancestors inside us. He wondered how much of Benjamin Boudreaux lived on inside his great-grandson Jake.
78
Thanks For Letting Me Live
GUILDFORD, ENGLAND, SEPTEMBER 2003
From their previous days of watching the activity taking place at the moving company, the boys knew the habits of the people working there. The group usually filed out of the building between five and six p.m.
The boys arrived back there at four-fifteen and were pleased to see the moving van parked at the loading dock door.
Although they had their guns with them, they intended not to use them unless needed. The moving company was in a complex that housed other businesses. A single shot would bring the police to the scene in quick order.
The fact that they were two going up against seven didn’t faze Cody and Romeo in the least. They were trained and experienced. Even if one of them were alone they could triumph over such odds.
The first order of business was to gain entry. Someone had given some thought when installing the locks on the building and there were three deadbolts in place. That same someone had neglected to secure the other less obvious entry points into the warehouse. They found the bathroom window in the men’s room unlocked. Unfortunately, the damn window squealed like a stuck pig as Romeo eased it open. Rather than try another point of entry, the boys shoved up the window, stepped inside, then shoved it back down and locked it.
Six seconds passed, then there was the sound of two male voices growing closer.
“I think it came from the bathroom. Maybe the exhaust fan is broken.”
“That fan has never worked,” said another voice.
The owners of the voices stepped into the men’s room and gazed around. One man was tall while the other was short. The short man got down as if he were going to do push-ups and looked under the stall doors. He saw a pair of feet in one stall, but only one foot in the one he was directly in front of. The other foot, which belonged to Cody, was raised and headed toward the stall’s door.
The metal door exploded outward and its edge struck the small man in the face, ripping open his left cheek while also stunning him.
The tall man cried out in shock while reaching for the knife he wore on his belt. Romeo emerged from his stall and kicked him in the chest. It sent the man backwards toward the sinks; the porcelain edge of one struck him in the small of his back. The man grunted in pain, then exhaled in a rush as a second kick hit him in the stomach.
Romeo yanked the knife from the tall man’s hand, spun him around, and banged his head against the sink with enough force to knock him out. While that was happening, Cody had dropped to one knee, taken hold of the small man, and repeatedly slammed his head against the tiled floor. The man made a sound similar to a goose’s cackle, then settled onto his stomach, as unconscious as his friend.
They were left alive because there was still doubt that they were members of Green Wrath. While their activities were suspicious, they were not indicative of those intent on causing harm to others.
Romeo rushed to the door and opened it a crack to listen. When he detected no new sounds, he looked back at Cody.
“The others might be too far away to have heard anything.”
“Good, we’ll have the element of surprise.”
“If we have to kill them, we still need to keep one alive to make them talk about that compound they went to today,” Romeo said. “I don’t want to go in there blind.”
“Agreed,” Cody said.
* * *
After splitting up and exploring the warehouse, the boys reunited at the dock. The other members of the terrorist cell were inside the rear of the moving truck. Whatever they were doing in there kept them occupied, because they never heard Cody and Romeo’s approach.
The group was gathered around a crate and talking in low tones. When Cody spoke, all five of them jumped at once.
“What is that you’ve got there?”
Faces blank with shock filled with fear and anger as each of the cell members brought out a hidden knife. Cody and Romeo kept their guns holstered, yet still gripped their own knives. Romeo used his to point at the group.
“If anyone attacks us, we’ll kill you.”
The warning went unheeded as the group rushed at them en masse with the woman leading the charge. Cody side-stepped her thrusting knife while smashing a fist into the side of her head. She tumbled away, and the others were upon them.
Someone had trained them in knife-fighting, or rather, in the fundamentals of the skill. They held the blades properly and moved with the knife in straight lines. Had they been facing any other two men in the UK, they could have come out on top.
However, Cody and Romeo had trained as Tanners. They were each a master at wielding a knife. They had also trained on a contraptio
n known as the gauntlet, which simulated dozens of knife-wielding attackers. Cody had become so proficient with the machine that he could step from its maw without a mark on him. Romeo had been less adept but was still capable of defeating a number of opponents at once.
The cell members were not nearly as skilled. They grew frustrated when their first attempts missed their targets. The four male attackers were either seriously wounded or dying within ten seconds of the battle’s beginning.
“We’ll question the woman,” Romeo said, while he walked over to her where she lay on the floor. Her knife was still in the palm of her hand, which was open with the fingers relaxed.
When he was leaning over to check on her condition, her eyes opened, and she thrust her knife at Romeo’s face. Romeo, who had been prepared for an attack, gripped her wrist, twisted her arm, and plunged her own blade into the side of her throat, severing an artery.
Cody came over and looked down at her as she died in a pool of red.
“I guess we’ll be talking to the two we left in the bathroom.”
Romeo headed inside the truck. “I want to see what’s in here.”
When he reached the rear of the large vehicle, he switched on a flashlight to augment the interior’s weak lighting.
“Whoa, Xavier, these dudes are definitely terrorists. There’s a crate of bombs back here designed to look like briefcases.”
Cody waited until Romeo emerged from the truck before going inside to have a look. Unlike the five fools they had fought, they weren’t going to risk getting locked inside. If they were in the back of the truck at the same time, someone could come along and bring the rear door down on them.
Once he was eyeing the bombs, Cody saw that they worked with a simple timer attached to some sort of homemade plastic explosive and an electronic fuse.
“I think Green Wrath is upping their game. They’ve never used explosives before, unless it was to destroy an oil pipeline. These briefcases tell me that they were going to leave these bombs in public places.”
“Yeah, man,” Romeo said, “and they had to have come from that compound we were at earlier. It must be a bomb factory.”
“It won’t be anything when we’re done with it. Do you have that little camera on you?”
“No, but my new phone can take pictures.”
“Yeah? I’ll have to get one of those. Let’s take some pictures of these bombs to send to Kay. Maybe she’ll be able to tie them to other bombings, if there have been any.”
A loud moan came from one of the dying men on the warehouse floor. As Cody walked off the truck, the man managed to point a finger at him.
“Too many.”
Cody knelt down next to him. “Too many what?”
“Of us… too many of us to kill… get me to a doctor, and, and, I’ll tell the others to let you live.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Cody said. After straightening up, he kicked the man on the side of the head hard enough to render him senseless. He would bleed out before he could awaken.
* * *
The two men from the bathroom came to and found themselves strapped to the inside of the truck, with their dead comrades near them. The short man with his ruined cheek refused to talk, but his tall companion was willing to cooperate. He had a sizable lump on his forehead from Romeo smashing his head against the sink.
Cody figured the man thought that they might let him go if he answered all their questions. The man had figured wrong. He was a terrorist, and there was no earthly reason to keep him alive.
“Not just bombs, they train people there too, people like me and the others. We were the first group, but they’re training three other groups now too.”
“Is this the first time you were given bombs?”
“The kidnappings take a lot of planning and risk. With the bombs, we could destroy property belonging to Big Oil and then demand reparations for the rape they commit every day on the environment.”
“You have a handler, someone who supervises you. Where can we find them?”
“That’s Mr. Morrison, and I don’t know where he lives. If we ever need him, we have a way to contact him, a signal.”
“Tell us the signal, then describe Morrison.”
“I’m cooperating, right? You’ll let me live?”
“You’ll be alive when we leave here,” Cody said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have a choice. Now, tell us about Morrison.”
The man sniffled once, then he described Morrison as a man in his thirties who wore glasses and kept his red hair cut short. The group’s signal to contact him was a simple one. They placed a red garbage can in front of the warehouse, by the front door. Once Morrison or someone working for him saw it, they would meet at a secluded home. That home had also been used to hold kidnap victims.
“They say that Morrison never goes inside the house but will only park outside and talk with his engine running. He’s a very careful man and respected by Mr. Livingston.”
“Is there a chance that Morrison will be at the compound?”
“I’ve never seen him there.”
“What about Garth Livingston,” Romeo said, “is he out at that compound?”
“Mr. Livingston? No, I’ve never seen him there either, but I’ve never seen him at all.”
“Too bad,” Romeo said to Cody. “We could have wrapped this thing up tonight.”
Cody said, “That would have been nice,” then he spoke to the tall man again. “How many people are in that compound?”
The man looked away from Cody and at Romeo.
“You’re going to let me live, right?”
“Answer his question,” Romeo said.
The man looked up and to the left as he thought, then said, “Maybe thirty-one or so? There are ten people there full-time, but I don’t know if the three groups have seven members each like ours does…”
The man glanced at the mound of padded moving blankets that were in a corner of the truck, beneath those blankets were the dead bodies of his cell members. “I mean… seven people… like our group had. The new groups might have less members, or maybe more.”
“How many are women?” Romeo asked.
“I don’t know, likely not many. Alberta was rare.”
“Alberta was the name of the woman in your group?”
A flick of the eyes to the blanket-covered mound, and the man nodded.
When they were certain that the tall man had no more to tell them, they left him and his short friend inside the truck and shut the door on them.
“Thank you for letting me live!” the tall man called out as the door was closing.
They weren’t letting him live, they just hadn’t gotten around to killing him yet.
79
I Spy
THE BOUDREAUX FARM, LOUISIANA, JANUARY 2019
Tanner stayed awake overnight in case the Dixie Devils decided to pay another visit. Kendra rose early and began making breakfast and getting Jake ready for school. After the school bus came and plucked Jake up from where he waited out on the road, a white van entered the property. It had the name of a courier service on the side.
Tanner signed for the crate that was unloaded inside the barn and the van went on its way. It was a large barn with a tractor parked inside. To its left and closer to the house was a water tower built on wooden stilts. It was a small one for the farm’s use that stood over eighty feet high. BOUDREAUX was painted on its blue surface in faded black letters. Kendra told Tanner that her grandfather had painted the letters himself.
Kendra watched as Tanner opened the crate, then pointed at its contents.
“What is that?”
“It’s supposed to be a modern sculpture.”
“It just looks like a cube with its sides painted different colors.”
“That describes it, but it’s what’s inside that’s important.”
The sculpture was a phony and made of wallboard. It had been shipped to Tanner from New
York by Duke. When Tanner saw the name of the artist written at the base of the cube, he smiled. The phony artist name Duke had chosen was Ivan Slaughter, or I. Slaughter. Tanner had once believed Duke to be a humorless man, that opinion had changed as he’d gotten to know him better.
Tanner plucked a shovel from a wall rack that held it, raised it over his head, and brought it down on the cube. The wallboard broke apart revealing a small crate inside. After lifting it out and opening it, Tanner heard Kendra gasp.
“My Lord, that’s enough weapons and ammunition for an army.”
“As long as it’s enough to stop one, we’ll be all right,” Tanner said.
“And what are those other things I see there on the right?”
“Security equipment, such as motion detectors. I’ll also be putting up a few cameras.”
The previous evening, after he was shown to a guest room and had brought his luggage inside the house, Kendra had given Tanner more details about her problem.
A land developer named Randolph Grey owned most of the land surrounding her farm. He had bought out her neighbors and assumed that she would sell to him as well. Grey had been offering a great price for the land, but her home mattered more to Kendra than any amount of money.
“Granddaddy designed and built this place himself, and I love it.”
There was a lot to love about the home. It was nearly four-thousand square feet and three stories high, although the third floor was smaller than the other two.
The entryway and the living room had twenty-foot high ceilings and natural light was plentiful, thanks to larger windows and strategically-placed skylights.
Tanner, who had done some building in his time, could discern that the home had been constructed with excellent materials and craftsmanship. He found himself wishing he had such a home on the Parker ranch.
“Randolph Grey is a builder, a businessman, so I didn’t expect any trouble because I turned him down.”
Young Guns Box Set Page 36