Hangman (Jason Trapp: Origin Story Book 1)

by Jack Slater

  “I reported it, right? Did everything I could to get someone to listen.”

  “You did,” he confirmed.

  “Well, I think that’s why they came after me. I think they were tying up loose ends. They tried to make it look like a hit and run. Didn’t expect me to get the jump on them.” Trapp winced, remembering the horror of pushing down on the open wound in Shea’s chest, the heat of her blood pulsing through his fingers.

  He looked up at his friend, hot tears prickling in the corners of his eyes. “No one listened, did they? Well I’m done asking for help, Ryan. I’m going to make the assholes who hurt that family, who hurt Shea, I’m going to make them suffer.”

  “I believe you, okay?” Ryan said softly, gesturing at the ground for his friend to calm down. “But this is a hell of an accusation, Jason. You’re going to need some proof.”

  “I’ve got all the proof I need,” Trapp growled.

  He explained how he and Chino had baited Odysseus. How they had one of the mercenaries chained up in the basement of the safe house at that very moment. And how the interrogation had led them here.

  “You’re not serious,” Ryan muttered, open-mouthed.

  Trapp just stayed silent, daring his buddy to tell him he was joking. Apparently, whatever the certainty looked like that was radiating off him, it was contagious.

  “You’re serious,” his friend whispered.

  The awareness of a sound in the distance surfaced in Trapp’s unconscious mind before its source became visible. Even so, he snapped into action, pointing at the ground and dropping onto his chest. Still stunned, Ryan took a couple of seconds longer to respond, but joined him shortly after.

  Still keeping low, Trapp scrabbled in his bag for a set of binoculars. He pulled them out, grunting with irritation as the strap got tangled with a section of webbing inside the backpack.

  Finally free, he raised them halfway to his eyes. Counterintuitively, he closed his eyelids and cocked his head to one side, allowing his ears to do the heavy lifting first. He homed in on the sound, and then continued the search through the high-powered lenses.

  The scene, when it came into view, was more like something out of war-torn Somalia or a post-apocalyptic film set than 21st-century America. Half a dozen “technical” pickup trucks, just like those used by warlords across Africa, skidded through the desert at high speed, kicking up wild clouds of dust behind them that hung in the still air, causing a plume that fed back for half a mile, like a forest fire to graft from space. The technicals had machine guns mounted in the back, and each weapon was manned by a single gunner.

  Trapp gently fiddled with the dial on the binoculars, bringing the cabin of the foremost pickup into view. He saw at least two shooters inside, and maybe a third in the back, though it was difficult to make out for certain. His attention was so focused on the front pickup he barely noticed what was going on behind.

  “Down!” Ryan hissed, grabbing the back of Trapp’s jacket and pushing him to the ground.

  The shooting started a second later, a combination of heavy machine gun fire that thundered even above the ruckus caused by the truck engines, and lighter, sharper rap-tat-tats from the rifles.

  Plumes of dust exploded into the air along a seemingly never-ending front that started about fifty yards ahead of Trapp and Price’s position, and didn’t end for what felt like an eternity, as the mercenaries emptied can after can into the emptiness of the desert.

  As the vehicles departed, Trapp distinctly heard an exultant whoop echoing after them – the cry of immature boys playing at being soldiers. He let his forehead drop against the ground, and only realized how soaked in sweat he’d been when he lifted it back up to find a streak of wet mud across it. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

  Ryan rolled onto his back, breathing hard. “What the hell was that?”

  Trapp caught his breath, reaching for a plastic bottle of brackish water and gargling the dust from his mouth. He offered it to Ryan, who accepted it gratefully. “I told you, they’re cowboys. I’m guessing that was them training.”

  The last word positively dripped with disgust.

  Ryan shook his head. “Explains a lot. A hell of a lot.”

  Gingerly, Trapp rose, first to a kneeling position, and then after a full rotation, he stood. The coast was clear. He offered out his hand. “Come on. We’re not done yet.”

  The hike up to the ridge line ahead took another 45 minutes. It was only three clicks away, but they had to move slowly, knowing that at any moment another of what passed for a patrol in these parts might roll past and accidentally – or not – light them up.

  They were almost at the peak when Ryan froze. He sounded a warning, and for the second time that hour, the two men hit the dirt. Seconds later, a sleek blue executive chopper roared over the rocky outcropping, a couple of hundred yards to the east, but low enough for the rotor wash to be kicking up a storm of dust and brush in the chopper’s wake.

  “What now?” Ryan wondered out loud.

  Once the helicopter’s engine noise began to audibly fade, they crested the ridge and lay chest down on top of it. Odysseus’ Copper City training facility stretched out in the desert below, like an army base transported from the plains of Iraq.

  Ryan looked over with wide eyes. “Well, shit…”

  43

  Trapp was nursing a beer alongside Chino when Price stumped back up the stairs from the basement. The photos from the afternoon’s reconnaissance trip were still wet from the developing fluid and were strung out to fully dry on a wire across the room.

  Price emerged from the doorway and spoke without looking up. “He’s not lying.”

  Trapp glanced at Chino, stretched out on the deck chair dragged in from outside before he spoke. “Nope.”

  The door closed behind Price, and he leaned against it with his eyes closed. “So what the hell do we do now?”

  “This,” Trapp said, standing and walking toward the drying photographs, “is Lieut. Col. Charles Dawes.”

  He unclipped half a dozen of the images and laid them out on the wooden dining table, wiping the tips of his fingers against his pants when he was done before glancing at Chino and jerking his head to indicate that his friend should join him.

  The shots depicted a man in his mid-forties with a black-rimmed monk’s pate gleaming in the desert sunshine. Trapp studied them himself as Price and Chino joined him, the second man’s progress marked out by the gentle tap of his cane against the floor.

  “How did you learn his name already?” Price asked, his earlier dread momentarily swept aside by the genuine interest that showed in his tone of voice.

  “I didn’t.” Trapp grinned, pointing at Chino. “He did.”

  “Good man,” Price muttered, sizing Chino up properly. “How?”

  “Contract documents,” the Latino replied. “He’s listed as the chief procurement officer on every Odysseus contract for the last 24 months. Close to three billion dollars of deals, mostly no-bid contracts. Even the ones that aren’t, the requirements are set out so they can’t possibly lose.”

  “Okay.” Price nodded. “What do we know about him?”

  Trapp noted with approval that Ryan focused his attention on Chino rather than himself. It was good leadership.

  Chino, for his part, seemed to puff up as he replied, barely using his cane as he moved in toward the table. The photographs were just decoration, really, not revealing very much at all except that Lieut. Col. Dawes and the Odysseus CEO, Jeffrey Banks, appeared to share an unusually close personal relationship. There was a lot more physical contact in the photos than Trapp would have expected for a man wearing Army dress greens on official business.

  “Married but divorced. County records in Alabama are available online, but they don’t list why. No evidence of a girlfriend, but then I have no way of finding out for sure. No kids. He’s 44 years old and appears to have led an uninteresting career.”

  “Why ‘Bama?” Price questioned, comple
te with a raised eyebrow for emphasis.

  “That’s where the Army Contracting Command is based, out of Redstone Arsenal. I called a friend who’s still in and asked him to do me a favor. Looks like our friend Dawes didn’t make the grade for a full bird colonel. He’s up for retirement in about nine months. And he knows it.”

  Price clapped his palms over his ears in mock horror. “You didn’t say that, and I didn’t hear it, okay?”

  “You got it, chief.” Chino grinned.

  “So we’ve got a motive,” Trapp grunted, tapping the nearest photograph with restrained malice. “A procurement officer looking to pad his retirement account, legal or not. And our buddies Odysseus are only too willing to make that deal.”

  “It’s like the Wild West out there,” Price agreed, glancing at his friend. “Maybe you’re lucky you got out when you did. Army’s hurting for warm bodies, and it’s only gotten worse in the last six months. Guess images of burning Humvees on the news every night have a way of dissuading kids from signing up. No surprise they’re hiring mercenaries like the world’s about to end.”

  “Lucky ain’t half of it,” Trapp muttered.

  Ryan reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Sorry, man. I know you got stop-lossed. That’s some real janky shit. But bluntly, I’d rather have a good soldier stay around for a few extra months than some of these guys they’re shipping over. Recruiters are handing out waivers like they’re candy. I swear, half of them can hardly breathe, let alone chew gum and shoot a Hajji at the same time.”

  “I’m over it, I swear,” Trapp said.

  His friend rolled his eyes. “Sure…”

  “So what do we do now?” Chino asked, gripping the edge of the table for support and leaning over the photos of the crooked Army Lt. Col. If the anger in his eyes could be concentrated and used as a weapon, then Dawes would already be dead.

  “What we have is circumstantial,” Price sighed. “And that’s putting it mildly. No court in the country would convict on the basis of this.”

  Trapp slapped the table, causing several of the photos to jump before settling back down, askew. “So let’s grab him and ask a few questions.”

  Ryan gestured at the floor with open palms in an attempt to lower the temperature in the room. If he hadn’t been on the edge of boiling over himself, Trapp might have appreciated the sense in it, since Chino now looked like he was on the edge of spontaneously combusting. Price, though, was the only one of the three who wasn’t personally connected to this mess in some way. “We can’t just grab a serving O-6. We’d have the FBI, CID, hell, probably the Defense Intelligence Agency down on our asses so fast we wouldn’t get a chance to fart. Anyway, we don’t even know where this guy is.”

  “I got a pretty good idea,” Chino said, his voice gravel.

  Trapp made a concerted effort to calm himself. Deep down, he was aware that his pulse was elevated, palms sweaty, muscles tensing for battle with an invisible enemy. But his monkey brain was in control. He wanted to lash out, to hurt the people who had made him feel this way.

  “Chino, we can’t just –” Ryan started.

  “I’m not saying we waste the guy,” he replied. “Just keep an eye on him, that’s all. Maybe he does something that gives the game away. Maybe not. But we won’t learn shit sitting around here with a thumb up our collective asses.”

  Trapp’s eyes sprang open. He was surprised to see Chino’s pose: aggressive, almost alpha male, but even more so by the hesitant shape of Ryan’s frame. “He’s right,” he said. “Can’t hurt to take a look.”

  “Sure.” Ryan shrugged flippantly. “And how do you propose we do that? LA is a real big city.”

  That stumped Trapp, but not Chino. A broad smile broke out on his face. “I told you: I got a real good idea.”

  “How?”

  “While you cowboys were out doing your thing, I started calling up hotels and asking to be put through to the Lieut. Col. Well, I just used his name.”

  “No way,” Ryan said, shaking his head in a disbelieving way, his blond locks dancing as he did so. “There must be thousands of hotels in the city.”

  “Sure.” Chino shrugged. “So I figured why not start right at the top of the list? Guy like we think he is, you think he’s staying in a Motel 6?”

  “I guess not…” Ryan conceded. “Then where?”

  The grin grew wider. “The Beverly Wilshire. Rooms go for six hundred bucks a night. I checked. You think the Army’s paying for that?”

  Ryan’s head sagged backwards. He knew when he was beat. “Okay. I’ll play. But we do it quiet, you understand?”

  An hour later, Price exited the safe house to get some air. He walked a couple dozen blocks in no direction in particular, ambling slowly with his hands pressed deep in his pockets, peering into shop windows and cutting through side streets and parking lots at random.

  After half an hour, he was certain he wasn’t being tailed. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket. One of the unique aspects of SFOD-D, the organization more commonly known as Delta Force, was that it was run with an incredibly flat hierarchical structure. Operators weren’t just invited to give their views to superior officers; they were positively required to do so. Lives might depend on it.

  They often did.

  This was only reinforced when Delta’s latest commander, Col. Noah Caldwell, had taken command several months earlier. One of the key tenets of his philosophy was that any operator, no matter how junior, could come to him at any time. He even gave out his personal cell phone number. Ryan had a good memory for things like that. And now he typed it in to the keypad off by heart.

  His thumb hovered over the keys before he typed out the message, desperately aware that this was playing with fire. If he did this, he was kissing goodbye to control over the situation, and maybe even to his best friend’s freedom.

  But it was the only way.

  44

  Two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies stood a couple of yards from each other, behind a single strand of drooping yellow crime scene tape. One was exceedingly little, the other equally large, his arms draped over a protruding belly that his protective vest was struggling manfully to contain. They were quite obviously not the cream of the crop.

  Finch watched them from inside a black SUV parked a little down the street, pleased by this observation. His eyes flicked up, attention drawn by another flash of yellow, to study the secondary crime scene on the third story of an unbuilt apartment complex. It was a good hide in the day and would have even been better when shrouded by darkness.

  Alex Woods’ single-story wooden house was still damp in parts. The fire trucks were long gone, but their earlier presence was still apparent. The windows on the front side had been shattered by the explosion in the backyard, and the smaller shards of glass had been carried almost to the street by the water runoff.

  Finch twisted in the driver’s seat and grabbed a blue windbreaker from the seats behind him, along with a slim digital camera. Then he reached into the glove compartment and removed a silver badge on a black leather base. He bent his head, looped the badge’s chain over it, and climbed out of the vehicle with one arm inserted into the jacket.

  “Hey, guys?” he called out, shrugging the other arm on, but leaving it unbuttoned. “You think you can help me out?”

  Deputy Little turned to face the unexpected sound. His thumbs were wedged into his belt, and his jaw worked like a metronomic stamping machine, pulverizing some unfortunate piece of gum. “Sure.” He shrugged listlessly as Finch got closer. “What do you need?”

  “My boss sent me over to take a couple of photos,” he said, intentionally not stating which agency he supposedly hailed from. “Guess we missed a couple on the first go around.”

  “ATF, huh?” Little replied, his tone registering no hint of interest. “Sure, do whatever you need. Crime scene guys have already been through, though.”

  Finch’s left hand froze in midair. He was about to flash his credentials at the offic
er, but there was clearly no need. He flashed a smile instead and ducked under the crime scene tape. Deputy Large didn’t even bother turning his fleshy head.

  Inside, though, he raged at the sloppiness of the two deputies. He wouldn’t tolerate such incompetence in one of his own units. The thought that one of those exact units had failed, bringing him here this afternoon, obviously did not cross his mind.

  “I’m just going to take a couple photos, okay?” Finch called out, waggling the digital camera for added emphasis. This time, Deputy Little didn’t bother turning round. The man’s right hand shot up in a half-cocked thumbs-up, and he grunted his assent.

  Finch took a couple of steps closer to the damaged, dilapidated house, careful only to walk on the paved path in order not to leave any footprints. He crouched and snapped a couple of photos where the bodies of his men must have lain. There was a little spray of blood on the right-hand side of the front door, which he captured, but most of it was already washed away.

  He thought about asking permission to go out back, then went ahead and did it anyway. The rear of the house was in a worse state than the front. The force of the blast hadn’t been enough to physically level the wooden walls, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of tiny projectiles had blasted through them, flying through the air with enough force to leave the wooden structure resembling a fishing net.

  He snapped several additional pictures, capturing the scene from every angle, but soon decided that due to the level of water damage, there wasn’t much left to learn. It was clear, though, where the explosives had been set. There was a gate at the center of the wooden fence that marked out the extent of the backyard. It was half open, and a big chunk of the fencing to the left was simply gone. The earth in front of the spot was equally ripped up, yet not significantly charred.

  Finch crouched down and retrieved a ball bearing from the ground. The crime scene techs must have missed it. He brought it up to eye level and studied it closely, though more out of interest than expectation.