Hangman (Jason Trapp: Origin Story Book 1)

by Jack Slater

  “I wasn’t tryna kill nobody,” the prisoner hissed.

  Trapp raised his eyebrow. “Did I just imagine you jumping out of a truck in front of his house, armed to the teeth and about to kick down his back door?”

  “You killed my friends!” the man yelled. “We was there to snatch him, not kill him, and then you blew them the fuck up. So what does that make you, asshole?”

  “I –”

  He paused, noticing the honesty in his prisoner’s frustration and anger. The guy was telling the truth. He either wasn’t there to kill Chino, or at least didn’t think he was.

  Still, did it make any difference, really? Whether or not they had intended to kill Chino in his own home, what were they going to do with him if they just kidnapped him instead? They couldn’t return him to his normal life, not after that.

  The parallel with his present situation was uncomfortable. In hashing out their plan over the previous few days, Trapp and Chino had never broached the topic of what to do with anyone they managed to capture for interrogation. It was just sort of glossed over.

  But now the problem was staring him in the face.

  Trapp decided to address the problem from his prisoner’s perspective, deciding in that instant that he wasn’t prepared to torture this man – or anyone – to get the answers he wanted. That wasn’t who he wanted to be.

  “Okay,” he said softly. “You’re worried about what happens to you if you talk, right? You’re worried about the shallow grave, and the crows, and whatever the hell else comes out at night to pick your bones clean. Am I on the right track?”

  The man said nothing, but didn’t demur, which Trapp took as encouragement. “Good. Because I’m worried about that, too. I don’t want to have to kill you. I killed your friends earlier, you’re right about that. But I didn’t bust down their front doors. I didn’t start anything. I only acted when I had no other choice. And if you cooperate with me, I won’t hurt you. Sure, I’ll hold on to you for a few days. I’ll have to. But I won’t kill you, and I won’t hand you over to the police.”

  “How can I trust a word you say?” the prisoner said, the sting drawn out from his tone. Trapp counted that as a small victory.

  “That’s a fair question,” he allowed. “The answer is: You’re just a cog. A piece of the puzzle I have to find before I get what I really want. Which is the names of your bosses. Everything you know about them.” Trapp stretched out his arm, pointing at Chino behind him. “And who killed his friends.”

  The prisoner shook his head. “I don’t know shit, man. I’m just a grunt. They don’t tell me nothing.”

  Trapp stood, shaking out his stiffening muscles. “I was a grunt too. And the thing about wearing the boots on the ground is you see what things are really like. So why don’t you tell me what you do know? How about you start with your name? We can take things from there.”

  The prisoner’s chin fell against his chest. He paused there for a few seconds, breathing heavily. “Marcel,” he mumbled. “Marcel Hawkins.”

  “I’d shake your hand, Marcel,” Trapp said, glancing ruefully at the cable ties that bound his wrists. “But those obviously get in the way. I’m Jason. Jason Trapp.”

  He thought he heard Chino exhale slightly behind him. It was an understandable response. They hadn’t discussed how the interrogation might go. It felt right in the moment to give Marcel his name in return, like a declaration of trust.

  “Okay, Jason,” Marcel said, his breath ragged. “Okay, I’ll tell it like it was. I never went to kill nobody. Your friend there, they said he was a real bad hombre. Said they just wanted to ask him a few questions, that’s all.”

  Trapp chuckled. “He look like a bad guy to you?”

  Marcel looked up, drinking in Chino’s hunched, broken frame. He said nothing, but his posture shrank visibly in front of Trapp’s eyes.

  “What were you going to do with him once you snatched him?” he asked.

  “Take him to Copper City. That’s all I know.”

  “What’s that?”

  Behind him, Trapp heard Chino moving again, and he looked around sharply in order to wave his friend off. But the Latino was going for a stack of papers on the counter near the sink. “I heard that name before. There was an article about it. It’s a training base, right?”

  Marcel grunted his assent. “Yeah, out in the Mojave. About 50 miles from LA. It’s some old U.S. Army training camp. Still got the ammunition bunkers and everything. That’s where we were supposed to drop him,” he finished, jerking his chin at Chino. “I promise, that’s everything I know.”

  “I believe you,” Trapp replied. “I don’t think you’re a bad guy, Marcel. You don’t sound that way, you know?”

  “I’m not,” Marcel insisted vigorously. “I was just following orders, that’s all.”

  Trapp politely abstained from mentioning that the Nazis had used the same defense in the Nuremberg trials, without finding much success.

  “So Copper City. That’s where you’re based?”

  “That’s right. Whole outfit operates out of the same facility now. Construction going on every hour, day and night. What Jeffrey Banks wants he gets.”

  Trapp remembered the name from his research. Jeffrey Banks was the CEO of Odysseus Private Security. As a result, whether he knew about the atrocities perpetrated by his men or not, he was responsible for Shea being in the hospital, for the murders of the Iraqi family whose corpses Trapp still saw when he closed his eyes at night, and for the deaths of Chino’s brothers in arms.

  “Banks,” he said, stabbing the air for added emphasis. “Tell me about him. You think he was aware of what you were sent to do tonight?”

  “I know he was,” Marcel replied. “Gave us the damn orders hisself.”

  “You’re sure of that?” Trapp questioned, wondering if Marcel was simply concocting a story he thought his captors wanted to hear. It wouldn’t be unusual for a man in his position.

  “He’s kinda hard to mistake, that smarmy Ivy League asshole. A real slicked back hair kinda guy, if you know what I mean. Anyway, from what I hear through the grapevine, these kind of off the books ops always go through either him or Finch. They don’t trust anyone else to get it done quiet, like.”

  Trapp noted this new name but didn’t change course. “Okay, so if this was so sensitive, why get you involved?”

  Marcel’s eyes darted left and right, which had the unhelpful side effect of meaning that he couldn’t have looked shiftier if he tried. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

  “I think you are, Marcel,” Trapp said mildly. “But let me put it this way: How did you get involved with Odysseus in the first place? You want me to believe you’re a real good dude. Wrong place, wrong time. You never meant to hurt my friend Chino here, all that. Okay, I’ll bite. Tell me what you got.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Marcel muttered, rocking his ankles and thighs from side to side as he shifted in place, attempting to get comfortable. “Wrong place, wrong time, that’s right. Describes my whole damn life.”

  “How?”

  “Listen, man. You seem real put together. Like you got your head screwed on right. Well, me, I didn’t get the best start in life. My daddy beat my mommy, and when she had a few too many, she gave as good as she got. So the second I was old enough, I joined the Marines. Get those G.I. Bill benefits, you know how it is. Maybe go to college one day.”

  Trapp concealed a smile. If only Marcel knew the hell he’d enjoyed growing up. But he knew better than to interrupt with the man in full flow.

  Marcel hawked a mouthful of spit and loosed it from the side of his mouth onto the concrete floor, attempting to shrug as he noticed the look of distaste on Trapp’s face. “Hey, man, the trunk of that car ain’t seen a vacuum cleaner since 1996, okay?”

  “I’ll bear that in mind next time I need to kidnap somebody,” Trapp replied, rolling his eyes.

  “Anyway, where was I?”

  “You joined the Marines.”

 
; “Yeah, that’s right. So that was two years ago, okay? Reported for basic training, got my MOS, the whole shebang. Then about three months into my first deployment – my only deployment – I got psoriasis. Real fucking bad. 95 percent of my skin covered in these big red welts.”

  “The hell is psoriasis?” Chino asked, speaking for the first time in a while.

  “Like… like eczema,” Marcel replied. “Only it never goes away. Just gets worse and worse. Especially when the body’s under stress, or around chemicals.”

  “So deployment was kind of the perfect storm,” Trapp replied, thinking back to standing around the burn barrels, disposing of trash in the field. He sometimes wondered whether breathing in those fumes would come to haunt him one day.

  “You got it, man. Anyway, the docs bounced me here, there and everywhere. Marines were as short on manpower as everybody else. But in the end I got my medical discharge. Twenty-two months served. And that means –”

  “– No college,” Trapp said, finishing the story with a curled upper lip. “And so what: you couldn’t stomach getting a job at Target so you became a killer for hire instead?”

  “Hey, man,” Marcel said defensively, attempting to throw his hands up in front of him but only succeeding in testing the cable ties around his wrists. “I ain’t killed nobody.”

  Trapp pressed his face close up against his prisoner’s, allowing a mocking sneer to cross it. “Yet.”

  “Jason…” Chino said, his voice raised slightly in warning. “Why don’t we keep things easy? I thought we were getting someplace. What about you, Marcel?”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. We good, man.”

  Trapp kept quiet, and after a couple of seconds nervously glancing between his two captors, Marcel filled the silence. “So I guess I needed the money, and a buddy told me about Odysseus. The psoriasis ain’t no thing as long as I’m in the States. You couldn’t pay me to go back to Iraq, man…”

  “Some of my buddies never got that choice,” Chino said quietly. Trapp didn’t turn around, but the sense of menace in his friend’s voice was palpable.

  “They were hiring a whole load of contractors in Iraq by the time I left,” Trapp interjected. “Odysseus, plus the rest. I get why they have to pay the big bucks. You couldn’t pay me to go back either. Not cash, anyway. But some people figure sixty grand, seventy maybe for nine months work, tax-free, is a good trade-off for the risk of getting maimed or killed. Not a choice I would make, but I get it, all right? What I don’t get is –”

  “Why pay me?” Marcel said, raising his eyebrow and causing a droplet of sweat to fall from his forehead. “I guess I didn’t know the answer either. Not until I met Finch.”

  Trapp molded his expression into one of mild interest, as though he hadn’t been waiting to tail back onto this subject all this time. He had a pretty good idea of who Finch was already. “Who?”

  “Eric Finch. Tall white motherfucker with a big red beard and a shaved head. Trust me, he’s not the kind of guy you want as an enemy. He’s a real scary dude.”

  Trapp realized with a jolt of anger that he knew exactly who Marcel Hawkins was referring to. The man who’d shot him. The man who had almost killed Shea. A face that had haunted his dreams ever since he woke up in that hospital bed.

  And now he had a name to go with the nightmare.

  He bit down on the anger, and somehow his voice held. “So what’s your relationship with this guy?”

  “He was my… trainer, I guess. He used to be special forces, I think, but I don’t know what unit. He’s kind of Banks’ go to guy. He got a problem needs fixing, Finch is the hammer. And I ain’t kidding about that, either. He’s never seen a problem he doesn’t want to beat the shit out of.”

  Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.

  “Finch took an interest in you, then?” Trapp asked casually.

  “Yeah, I guess you could put it like that, man. I didn’t tell the recruiter about the whole psoriasis thing. Figured maybe I could get a gig on base or something if they made me ship out, but I should get my foot in the door either way. Then Finch, he asked me about it. Had my service file and all. Said he’d have to let me go. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Trapp asked, visualizing the picture he had of the man he believed to be Eric Finch.

  “Unless I did a few favors for him, off the books.”

  “Like what?” Chino asked from the back of the room.

  Marcel’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, you recording this? I got my Fifth Amendment rights, you know.”

  Trapp laughed out loud. “You really think we’re dumb enough to record ourselves committing half a dozen felonies? No, we’re not taping this, you have my word. And maybe when you get outta here you could try picking up a copy of the Constitution sometime. Might come in useful, the way you’re heading.”

  “Okay, okay. So the first time, it was only a week ago, you know. He caught me just as I was clocking off base for the weekend. Handed me a pistol and told me we were going on a drive.”

  “Where?”

  “Mexico.”

  Trapp squinted. “What the hell for?”

  “He didn’t say, I didn’t ask –”

  “Marcel, I thought we had a deal,” Trapp growled.

  “I was getting to the good bit already! Here’s the thing. We took a couple trucks full of equipment for the Mexican military through the border. Picked them up from the ammunition bunkers, took ‘em straight down. No questions, no papers, we drove right through.”

  “So what, you sold the kit to someone else?”

  Marcel shook his head. “No, we made the delivery on time. We just took a detour first.”

  “Where?”

  “A warehouse in Sinaloa province. Finch told me to keep my mouth shut, so I did. But I kept my eyes open. I watched them hauling out bales of cash, man. Shrink-wrapped pallets of brand-new hundred dollar bills, all of them from the same batch. You could tell from the serial numbers. Then there was the rest of it. Dirty bills. Twenties, fifties, hundreds, tens. Finch even gave me a Washington. Called it a souvenir.”

  When Marcel fell silent, Trapp walked to the counter by the sink, shuffled through a stack of papers, and pulled out a black and white webpage printout. He walked back to the prisoner but kept the paper hidden. “What was the cash for? Were you buying something?”

  “I don’t know, man. I swear, I told you everything. That was the first time Finch sent me on a special op a week or two back. Guess I passed. Tonight was the second. Well, that was Mr. Banks. But same thing, really.”

  Trapp nodded but stayed silent, etching every detail of Marcel’s expression into his brain. For a brief, crazy moment, he felt the almost overwhelming urge to reach out and close his fingers around the man’s neck, to throttle him within an inch of his life. He sensed that Marcel knew what he was thinking, too, because the man’s complexion was suddenly drained of life.

  “That’s it, man. Everything I know. I got the idea that the Mexico trip wasn’t the first time Finch did something like that. But it was the first time he took me, I promise you.”

  “I believe you,” Trapp replied. He looked down, rubbing his thumb and forefinger against the sheet of paper held between them. He spun it around and held it a few inches from Marcel’s eyes. “Is that him? Is that Eric Finch?”

  Marcel’s eyes went wide. “Yeah, that’s him. How did you know?”

  Trapp’s voice was iron. “We met once before. Briefly.”

  He turned to leave, exhaustion suddenly assaulting every cell in his body as the adrenaline began to fade. He knew that he had wrung every last scrap of information from Marcel’s mind that there was to glean. It was enough for one night.

  He looked up at Chino. “C’mon buddy. We got what we wanted. Let’s get some rest.”

  “Hey!” Marcel protested from over Trapp’s shoulder. “I told you what you wanted. You can’t leave me down here, all right? We had a deal!”

  Trapp watched the fuse blow in Chino’s mind as
if in slow motion. His partner went from calm, collected – even faintly satisfied – to outright apoplectic in the blink of an eye. The Latino dropped his cane and picked up his shotgun from where it had previously lain against the wall. He hobbled over to Marcel quicker than Trapp would have believed possible and thrust the butt of the weapon hard against the man’s chest.

  Marcel squealed like a pig in an abattoir, and that was before the crunch of bone filled Trapp’s ears.

  Trapp, his own torso half-twisted to better survey the scene, winced in sympathetic agony. There was no way he hadn’t broken at least a couple of the man’s ribs earlier that night, when his boot met the guy’s chest. Chino wasn’t just finishing the job, he was making sure there wasn’t one to go back to.

  “You say that again,” Chino hissed, reversing the shotgun so that it was correct in his shoulder, the barrel resting none too gently between Marcel’s crossed eyes. “Say that again and just give me a fucking reason, okay?”

  “Chino…” Trapp said softly, not wanting to spook his friend. “Let’s talk about this, buddy.”

  But the Latino was too gone to hear. He was practically shaking with rage. Marcel didn’t say a word. He was frozen in fear and, from the look on his face, on the brink of soiling himself.

  Trapp knew that if he was going to make a move, he had to do it now. He took a step toward Chino and batted the barrel of the weapon aside with one hand, snatching it from his friend’s hands with the other. In the same movement, he gathered his arms around the Latino and pulled him in close, pressing his lips right up against the other man’s ears.

  “Chino, if you want to kill this guy, I ain’t gonna stop you. I wasted three of his buddies earlier tonight, and I’d be lying if I told you that at least a part of me didn’t enjoy it. But you know something? I gotta carry what I did to those men with me for the rest of my life, okay? I gotta hear what they cried when they knew they were going to die. And that’s fine. It wasn’t war, but it was close. They knew what they signed up for, and it could as easily have been me.

  “But this? You kill him now, that’s an execution. And I won’t blame you for it. But you will. So you got a choice to make: Either hold on to this rage for the rest of your life, like one of those Japanese soldiers who kept on fighting decades after the war ended, or be the better man. This guy had nothing to do with what happened to your friends. With what happened to you. But if you kill him, that’s on you.”