by Chuck Dixon
“Come on, esek,” he muttered to himself over and over like a prayer.
Haluk's big ass swung into view high atop the berm. He was moving with dainty steps as he climbed backwards down the rungs to the road surface. Kola spied the gym bag slung over the man's shoulder and the breath caught in his throat.
Kola leaned across the console to swing the passenger door open. Breathing hard, Haluk bundled himself inside, the bag on his lap. Kola gunned the car off the shoulder, spraying gravel, and into traffic.
Further along the parkway, they pulled onto the lot of a Waffle House. Kola took the bag onto his lap and unzipped it.
“Sik beni.” Fuck me, Kola sighed at the heap of bundled cash inside the bag. He looked over to see Haluk’s eyes wide, a wolf’s leer growing on his face. Kola zipped the bag closed and tossed it in the back seat.
“Call Savas. Tell him to take care of things at the house,” Kola said, turning the car on the lot to take them back out onto Parallel Parkway.
Haluk fished a cell from the pocket of his coat and poked the keys with his gorilla fingers. He held the phone to his ear, blinking.
“He’s not answering,” Haluk said.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“The ground at your back is only safe if everyone there is dead.”
44
Savas did not hear the man approach. In an instant, an arm was about his neck, closing on his throat with a suffocating pressure, pressing him back into the chair with irresistible force. The arm was naked and smeared with drying blood. A fist clasped about the wrist of the choking arm, cinching the noose tighter.
He clawed for the gun in the waistband at the small of his back but only succeeded in trapping his hand against the chair back. With his free hand he clawed at the arm encircling his neck. He dug his nails into the hard flesh, drawing fresh blood. The arm would not yield. If anything the terrible hold increased in force. He looked to the girls seated in chairs and on sofas all around him in the great room. Savas opened his mouth to plead for help. No sound emerged.
The girls turned from the television to regard him. He saw some of them look past him to the man applying the deadly pressure to his neck. They watched with the same level of attention they showed for the hours and hours of television they watched. After a few seconds most decided that the telenovela they were watching held more interest and they turned away.
Somewhere through the fading rhythm of his pulse he heard a high trilling sound. On the coffee table before him his cell phone came alight and danced in place. He released his grip on the choking arm to reach out, fingers splayed and quivering for the cell. Leaning forward only increased the strangling pressure.
A feminine hand picked up the cell from the table. It was the mousy little Latvian. Her battered face creased in a tiny smile. Her eyes, hooded by swollen flesh, watched him with animal ferocity. His gaze locked on those dark eyes, staring at him from twin caves of bruised tissue.
Safas jerked in spasms. Fought for air. Fought to remain conscious. His heels ground furrows in the carpet. He pissed himself. Then, like the moon passing behind clouds, those damning eyes boring into his vanished behind a curtain of black.
“He is dead,” Sonata said.
“Not yet,” Levon said between gritted teeth, keeping the choke hold tight. He had a knee jammed into the seat back. Sweat stood on his skin with the effort. A crimson slick ran down his arms and back. He could feel the big man’s weakening pulse through his biceps. He waited until it flickered away to nothing then counted thirty before releasing.
“What does the phone say?” Levon shoved the man in the chair forward. He pulled a .38 in a heavy frame from a clamshell holster in the corpse’s waistband.
“Haluk. He was another one of the men who watched us,” Sonata said.
“Is he the one with Kola?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all the guards then?” Levon found a ring of keys in the dead man’s pocket. It included a key remote and ignition key for a Mustang.
Sonata nodded, thinking of the man called Yafuz lying on the kitchen floor in a spreading pool of blood. The naked man took him down in total silence, striking over and over again with the knife she gave him, striking with lightning speed to the soft tissue of Yafuz's underarm, driving the long blade deep into the heart and lungs. A hand clasped tight over the big man's mouth and nose. All over in seconds while Sonata watched in dumb wonder.
Then the naked man she freed drained a quart of milk he found in the refrigerator.
“If they called that means they’re thirty minutes out,” Levon said. He snapped his fingers in her face. Sonata lifted her eyes from the black-faced man slumped motionless in the chair.
Some of the girls, certain now that something in their world had changed, rose from their seats. Exchanging glances and whispers they drifted away and up the stairs to their rooms.
“We leave?” Sonata said.
“I need clothes. Do the men keep clothes here?” Levon said.
“They have a room where they sleep sometimes.” She nodded toward the back of the house.
“Let’s go,” he said and followed the girl, the .38 in one fist and a Czech 9mm, taken off the man in the kitchen, in the other. The key remote was in his teeth.
The back room looked like it might have been servant's quarters at one time. There was a twin bed and dresser. Some shirts and socks in the drawers. A sweatshirt and sweat pants lay discarded on a chair.
“Wait here,” Levon said and stepped into a bathroom. A steel tub rimed with rust with a new shower nozzle hooked up to the faucet. He squatted in the tub and ran steaming hot water over himself. The floor of the tub turned crimson. Lifting his head back, he drank some of the warm water raining down on him. He cleaned the wounds to his wrists and ankles with a bar of soap. He dried himself with the cleanest towel he could find. Then he tore the towel into strips. He wrapped his wrists and tied them tight.
Sonata was sitting on the bed waiting for him. A sweat suit, t-shirt and socks lay beside her.
“Do you have warm clothes for yourself? Winter clothes?” he asked as he dressed.
She shook her head.
“Well, put on whatever clothes you have and meet me in the living room. Layer them. You understand?”
“Put on many clothes?”
“That’s right. Put on many clothes,” he said. She ran from the room.
He could hear her bare feet rushing up the stairs as he laced a pair of Nikes he found under the bed. With an extra pair of socks on his feet they were close enough to his size. There was a fleece-lined jacket on the back of the door. He took it with him to the living room. He turned off the lights all around the room. He muted the TV but left it on. The flickering light created a strobing effect on the room. A digital home fire.
Sonata rushed down the steps wearing a sweater two sizes too big over a white blouse and jeans. On her feet were some boat shoes more suited to summer at the beach. She wore thick wool socks under them. The ensemble managed to make her look even more petite than she was, a little girl playing dress-up. The illusion was dispelled when she brushed her hair back to reveal swelling that distorted her face.
“You’ll need this too,” Levon said and handed her the fleece-lined jacket. He moved to stand by a front window, parting one of the heavy drapes to watch the driveway before the house. He could see the late model Mustang parked in the shadows. He keyed the remote once. The car’s lights flashed yellow.
“We are leaving? You will take me with you?” she said, draping the jacket over her shoulders.
“I will. But first we’re going to wait for my money to come back,” Levon said.
45
“You understand I’m well outside of my jurisdiction?” the Kansas State trooper said from behind the wheel of an unmarked state car. The blue light atop it cleared the lanes ahead, currents of red lights parting to allow them through.
“As of when?” Bill Marquez asked.
“As of the middle
of the Heart of America bridge a minute or so back. We’re on the Missouri side now,” the trooper said.
“Looks like more Kansas to me,” Tom Salucci said from the back seat, watching the rooftops of warehouses blur past.
“We need your help finding this place. We’ll say you’re with us. Assisting federal agents in pursuit of a suspect,” Bill said. The trooper was not much reassured by this.
“You can wear one of our windbreakers,” Salucci said, amused by the young trooper’s discomfort.
“Very generous of you,” the trooper said and pushed the unmarked harder down the highway following the signs for Raytown.
"I wanted to keep this sweep under as tight a wraps as we could manage, okay? This Stomata organization already has a hair up its ass and there are more rocks to turn over. The three-hour delay on the warrants didn't help," Bill told the trooper.
“We’re looking for counterfeit cash?” the trooper asked.
“That’s what it says on the warrants. But Tom and I think that the money is long gone, hidden where we’ll never find it or destroyed by now,” Bill said.
“Then what are we looking for?
“A white male. Six foot plus. Lean. I have pictures on my phone. He’s on the terror watch list,” Bill said.
It was an exaggeration. They couldn’t put someone on the watch list until they had at least a tentative ID. There were no John Does on the list. The man in the pictures from St. Louis airport was still a ghost, a nameless perpetrator that existed only as a digital image.
Wysocki at DHS had weaved a tale of smoke and mirrors for a magistrate judge to issue a warrant. The suspect list on the warrant was peppered with names that sounded like probable candidates for ISIS membership. That made it all go down easier. The fact was that the closest this bunch of Turks got to honoring Allah was watering the drinks at their strip joints. If the feds found their man all would be excused. The guy had roamed across a dozen states killing everyone he met. Nailing him for terrorism should be cake. Deputy Director Wysocki might even let Bill start calling him “Darren” again.
But first they had to find Tex, AKA Roeder, AKA Dresher.
Other units of combined federal agents and state cops spent the evening tossing dry cleaners, used car dealerships, laundromats, bars and fast food places all owned jointly under the umbrella of Nu-Seff Enterprises Incorporated in Nevada. The name was derived from a combination of Seyfettin Stomata and his wife Nuray. On paper she was a full partner though Bill doubted she was aware of this.
Bill and Salucci joined in a few of the more likely raids at the bars and clubs, turning up nada. Bill had no stomach for terrorizing laundromat managers or shaking used car salesmen out of bed. And he didn’t expect to find their runner hiding in a tumble dryer or the trunk of a creampuff Cadillac. Bill scanned the list of Nu-Seff holdings for something that smelled right. Or, more accurately, smelled wrong.
He landed on a property in a residential area of Raytown, a suburb of K.C., Missouri that had been slipping out of the middle class since the turn of the millennium. Googling the address convinced him that this long hunch might pay off. The map showed a rambling house sitting well back on a wooded lot at the end of a cul de sac. Of all the other addresses on the list, this one looked most likely to be a bolt hole for old Tex. It reminded Bill of a Bugs Bunny cartoon he'd seen as a kid. A gangster's getaway destination had a blinking neon sign on the roof announcing in six-foot-high letters that it was a HIDE-OUT.
The unmarked veered off for an exit marked East 63rd Street.
“How much farther?” Bill asked.
“Ten minutes out,” the trooper said.
“Kill the lights. We go in quiet,” Bill said.
From the back seat came the spung, spung, spung sound of Salucci checking the load in a pump shotgun.
46
Levon caught the men exiting the Lincoln Town Car. They were at their most vulnerable and unsuspecting then. When they stepped from either side of the car he keyed the remote for the Mustang, setting off the car alarm.
Both men turned at the bleating horn and flashing lights. Levon stepped from the shadows in front of the house, firing the Czech pistol to bring down first the one called Kola and next to his beefy companion. Emptying the pistol as he closed on them he walked across the yard. When the action locked back he tossed it aside.
With the snub nose .38 he finished off the larger man Haluk with two head shots. The big man’s feet kicked at the snow twice and then were still.
Levon stepped around the car. Kola lay on his back feebly attempting to unbutton his coat with palsied fingers. He wheezed wetly from a half dozen shots to his chest. The man had a look of profound confusion frozen on his face. That look faded to a gaze into the infinite a half second before Levon opened his skull with a double tap.
Sonata was beside Levon and made to spit on Kola’s still form. Levon clapped a hand over her mouth.
“DNA,” he said.
She nodded, not really understanding, swallowing her spit, and he lowered his hand.
“Get the bag out of their car,” he told her.
Levon crouched and removed his own Sig Sauer from under Kola’s coat. He checked the load in the Sig and dropped the .38 to the snow. On the bigger man he found a Taurus automatic .45 with a spare magazine. Sonata came to him with the gym bag, a fragile smile on her face.
“Your money?” she said.
He nodded. “My money.”
From somewhere beyond the trees he could hear the sound of an approaching car. Headlights glowed on the approach street.
Levon took Sonata’s hand and pulled her into the dark away from the house.
47
Bill Marquez was out of the unmarked before it came to a full stop. His gun was in his fist though he didn’t recall drawing it. He charged toward the dark house with the red clapboard siding, ignoring Salucci calling out to him.
Two bodies lay on either side of a Lincoln. Doors open. The snow a pink slush beneath them.
“Back up! Radio for back up!” Tom Salucci shouted to the statie before running to follow his partner. The statie, his shotgun cradled in his arms, turned back to his car.
Bill shouldered the front door open and bawled out a warning as he swept the front room with his sights.
“Federal agents! Ef! Bee! Eye!”
Salucci crashed in behind him, the shotgun held high and traversing to the right to cover the opening to a shadowed dining room.
A still figure sat slumped deeply in an armchair in the flickering light of the silent big screen.
“Federal agents! We’re serving a warrant!” Bill bellowed to the empty room as he made his way to the bottom of the stairs.
Panicked squeals and footfalls from the floor above.
“We’re too late, Bill,” Salucci said, backing toward him, the shotgun trained to cover their six.
“He’s here. I know it. I feel it,” Bill seethed through clenched teeth and started up the steps.
Gunshots from outside. Five shots in rapid succession. The boom of a twelve gauge.
Bill pushed past Salucci to race for the front door. The roar of a racing car engine and tires spitting gravel.
The statie was face down on the snow by the unmarked. His shotgun was gone. The front tires of the unmarked were shredded flat. Same for the Lincoln. The red tail lights of a car swerved away down the street.
The Mustang.
“Shit! Shit!” Bill hissed. He reached the open door of the unmarked to find the radio destroyed by a load of buck fired into the dash at point blank range. The Remington pump lay still smoking on the seat where the shooter had left it.
He knelt to touch the throat of the statie. He was breathing but had a nasty lump rising on the back of his close-shaven scalp.
Salucci was already on his cell calling it in. He gave their location and a description of the escape vehicle, such as it was. He reported an officer down and requested an ambulance.
Bill punched the glass of t
he unmarked hard enough to star it. He stooped to pick up a handful of snow to hold to his bruised knuckles. He looked up at the dark house and listened to Salucci giving directions to a K.C., Missouri police dispatcher. In the windows on the second floor he could see silhouettes cast against the glass.
The phone still to his ear, Salucci turned to him.
“Local PD are on their way and an ambulance. They’re going to throw a ring around this place. We’ll get him.”
Bill turned away, shaking his head. The locals were stretched thin. The Mustang would be well away by the time any kind of effective roadblock could be set up. The rest of their task force was miles away on the wrong side of the Missouri River. It would be sheer luck if anyone spotted the runner based on the weak description of the escape vehicle. Mustang: unknown year. Color: dark. License number: unknown.
So far, the runner had luck on his side every step of the way. Bill had no real hope that his string of good fortune would end tonight.
48
Sonata stared in wonder at the contents of the bag open on the console between them. The rough man with the kind voice counted out bills from the bound stacks that filled the bag.
The sun was just becoming visible over the rooftops in a slate-colored sky. They were parked in the rear lot of a place called Howlin' Hounds Coffee in Omaha, Nebraska. They'd driven through the night to get here. Across a street was the Trailways bus terminal.
“There’s fifty thousand here for you. Wait until you get where you’re going to spend these, right?” he said, placing four thick stacks of twenties in her hand. They were wrapped in rubber bands.