Rise: Luthecker, #2

by Keith Domingue

  “I take it you’ve landed safely in your little fiefdom,” Howe said as soon as Parks activated the call.

  Parks waved at one of the Escalades as he answered. “Have you been tracking me?”

  “Did you expect anything less?”

  Two soldiers dressed in black military fatigues and armed with AK-47s were suddenly standing in front of Parks, awaiting his next order. He waved them toward the Citation X.

  “No. I suppose I did not.”

  “And you have the woman with you now?”

  “Yes,” Parks said as he watched the soldiers step inside the Citation X and escort Nikki from the plane and into the back of the lead Escalade.

  “And Luthecker?”

  “He’s on his way.” Parks began walking toward the Maybach.

  “Good. When you have them, I want you to kill them. Immediately.”

  Parks stopped. “I was led to believe that Alex Luthecker was a valued asset of Coalition Properties. You could have done this on your own if you simply wanted them dead.”

  “True. But that wouldn’t have created the opportunity that I require.”

  “Which is?”

  “I have a business proposition for you. One not only of legitimacy, but insulation from prosecution; for both of us. I want you to be part of the Coalition Properties family. But only after you’ve taken care of my problem.”

  “I thought Luthecker was considered an asset to your organization.”

  “Alex Luthecker is an illogical obsession of the board. To me, he introduces variables to a formula that is already under control. I want him gone. Consider this your price of admission.”

  The phone went dead before Parks could respond. Parks pocketed the phone and looked toward the sky. He noted that dark clouds were beginning to gather, and it looked like it would rain.

  Parks didn’t like Howe, but he knew with the enormous assets and momentum of Coalition Properties behind him, Howe was a very dangerous man; perhaps even equal in threat as was Parks himself. Parks knew since the beginning that his freedom from incarceration was not free, and beyond disposing of Alex Luthecker, he realized that he was about to discover exactly what that cost was. And whatever Howe’s “business proposition” entailed, Parks knew it would come at considerable risk on his part. That was how men who kept their distance from the blood of the battlefield operated. The larger game afoot had officially begun.

  The sound of a Maybach’s horn honking with impatience snapped Parks out of his thoughts. He approached the Maybach, and as he reached the car, its driver, a short, heavyset man dressed in a parka, climbed out and opened the passenger door of the large customized limousine. Parks took another deep breath before getting in the car.

  “It is good to see you again, my friend,” Ivan Barbolin announced in a gruff voice, thick with a Russian accent.

  Parks nodded as he settled down next to the older Russian.

  “You look well, all things considered,” the man known as the Barbarian said to Parks as he stuck out a thick meaty hand for Parks to shake. Parks took the hand in his and shook it with one quick pump.

  Parks watched through the windshield as the lead Escalade began to move, the Maybach following behind it. Barbolin pressed a button and a shield of soundproof glass raised between the passenger seats and the driver.

  “Your castle, my friend; I have seen it, and it looks fit for a king,” the Barbarian continued. “It is almost as nice as mine. Drink?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Parks watched as the Barbarian reached over to the small bar of the Maybach and pulled two glasses and a bottle of vodka free. The Barbarian spoke as he poured. “So, what is this…package you hold for the corporatists?”

  “I’m not exactly sure yet.”

  “I have heard rumors.”

  “From?”

  “Drugal. He has been arrested, you know. You sent him on a fool’s errand.”

  “That’s because he is a fool. Does it matter to you that he lives?”

  “No.”

  “Then he will die a fool’s death at the hands of our enemies.”

  The Barbarian smirked. “Tell me you are not curious. About what this package can do.”

  “I am curious as to why he is so important to the corporatists.”

  “So am I.”

  “The most powerful of the corporatists wants him dead.”

  “Really? Perhaps it is not complicated, then. Perhaps the package simply harbors secrets.”

  “I think it’s different. I think it is the opposite.”

  “Explain.”

  “I think the corporatists fear the package can illuminate all secrets, and not just their own.”

  The Barbarian mulled over Parks’ words a moment before responding.“Your concern is justified,” he finally said. “And the woman?”

  “Incidental. The corporatists claim no real interest in her. In any event, beyond the answers to my curiosity and any leverage the two of them may provide against the corporatists, neither will be alive any longer than necessary. And then we can get back to business.”

  The Barbarian handed Parks a glass. “Salute.”

  Parks nodded and swallowed the shot of vodka. The familiar warm sting down the back of his throat was comforting.

  “And yet, something affects you,” the Barbarian said.

  “This may all lead to us taking on new partners in order to keep the peace. At least for the moment.”

  “A splinter faction of the corporatists who no longer wish to compete. And this is perhaps the true purpose of your involvement with the package,” the Barbarian speculated before filling his glass with more vodka. He offered Parks the same, but Parks declined with a quick wave of his hand.

  “They are an enemy.”

  “Enemies are either eliminated or absorbed.”

  “This enemy is the most dangerous of them all. And they are far too large to absorb. And I believe it is their intent to take over our business.”

  “We are the ones who are dangerous, my friend. And there is no competitor too large to either eliminate or absorb. Remember the Soviet Union. ”

  “This one is different.”

  “How so?”

  Parks thought a moment before answering. He finally turned toward the Barbarian. “You. You grew up on the streets of Moscow, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tough winters in Moscow. Tough streets. With many cold, difficult nights on those streets.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Yet you survived. You rose to power. You did what you had to. Killed who you had to. With your own hands if you had to. Correct?”

  “Miami was warmer, my friend, but the streets no less filled with blood by your own hands, no?”

  “We both did what we had to. However the person we deal with is a political animal.”

  The Barbarian looked at his drink. “He visits the savages. But he is not of the savages. Is this what you say?”

  “He would like to think he is. But he confuses ruthlessness with savagery. Indifference with cunning. And ambition and with will.” Parks turned toward the Barbarian further. “And through political means but not strength, with ruthlessness but not savagery, and with ambition but not will, he managed to gain control of the largest weapons manufacturing organization in the world.”

  “A spoiled, petulant child with a gun. With many guns.”

  “A reckless fool with more firepower at his fingertips than we could possibly combat.”

  The Barbarian finished his drink, and poured himself another. “I understand your concern.”

  “There is tremendous opportunity here. I am sure of it, but much peril as well. We must tread carefully. I believe the package is instrumental in all of this, but I am unsure yet as to how.”

  The Barbarian offered to pour another drink for Parks, and this time Parks allowed it. “Then my suggestion to you, my friend, is that you find out how this package, this Alex Luthecker fits into the picture, and do so quickly, an
d turn it to our advantage before we’re forced to face an angry fool with more than enough firepower to take out half the world.”

  19

  Underground

  Yaw Chinomso wiped sweat and dirt off his brow, pausing a moment to look at the wall of rubble that used to be the entrance to Metro 417. He, along with Chris Aldrich, Officer Dino Rodriguez, and a half a dozen of the able male refugees had been moving large chunks of concrete and digging through the rubble for more than an hour, and they had been stopped cold by a section of collapsed ceiling that weighed well over a ton, with one end still hanging by several pieces of rebar.

  Yaw tried to control his breathing, tried to conserve air by remaining calm. It required an almost meditative level of focus to control his energy expenditure. He tried to work around the collapsed section of ceiling, thinking he could create a crawl space around the immovable chunk of concrete. He lifted a large piece of ceiling rubble that was moveable and dropped it immediately when he felt dizzy. He took a controlled breath of air and steadied himself. He fought off an unexpected wave of panic—he knew if he was feeling the effects of oxygen depletion, it was not a good sign, particularly for the others, who were far less conditioned than he. The air was running out quicker than they had anticipated.

  Yaw looked back at the refugees grouped in the far corner of the subway station. They were huddled close together and visibly frightened. Other than a few cuts and bruises, the group had survived the explosion and entrance collapse. Most of the huddled were women and children, and the women had been told not to let the children fall sleep. Their biggest enemy now was time. Yaw decided, despite the thinning air, that he would double his digging efforts.

  “We have to believe that people on the outside are trying to get to us. There’s no way the explosion went unnoticed,” Rodriguez said as he stood next to Yaw.

  Yaw noticed Rodriguez was covered in sweat and labored to breathe. “Winn has to know what happened by now as well,” Yaw replied. “And if he does, trust me, he’s working on it. In the mean time, let’s get back to doing what we can.”

  Yaw watched as Rodriguez steadied himself against the wall. “You should rest,” Yaw said.

  “I’ll be fine in a sec.” Rodriguez moved off the wall and slowly approached the pile of rubble. Despite their efforts to move away the smaller pieces of concrete, there were too many large and unmovable pieces around the section of collapsed ceiling.

  Rodriguez paused a moment and said aloud what both men were thinking. “We’re really trapped in here.”

  “Don’t think that. Just remember that those people huddled in the corner are depending on us to get them out of here. So let’s get back to work and find a way.”

  “The rubble’s at least fifty feet thick at the entrance,” the man in the hard hat told Winn. “And the ceiling’s collapsed. Even with the cranes, we’re looking at several hours.”

  “Can you at least drill air holes?”

  “It’s close to one hundred feet deep from street level. And the entrance is too fragile. The whole thing could collapse even further.”

  “What of the old rail lines into the station?”

  “Those have been sealed for over thirty years. The quickest way we got is straight through the rubble.”

  Both men looked at the array of cranes and fire engines that filled the street and circumvented the collapsed subway entrance.

  “It won’t be quick enough,” Winn said, as he looked at the helicopters hovering overhead, less than a thousand feet about the scene.

  “The police want to talk to you,” the man in the hard hat said, but when he turned to see Winn’s response, the Asian man was gone.

  Winn hustled down Hill Street toward Pico Boulevard. When he had originally explored the abandoned subway station as a training site and potential emergency barracks for the refugees, he certainly hadn’t anticipated an RPG attack. But he had examined every aspect of the underground tunnels, including one of its final stops at Belmont Station, now under the Belmont Station Apartment complex in downtown Los Angeles. Roughly one and a quarter miles from the Metro 417 station on Hill Street, the tunnel entrance had long since been sealed. However Winn believed he had an alternative way inside the abandoned underground rail system.

  The final stop of the exit tunnel was a three-feet thick concrete wall covered in graffiti, but underneath the apartment complex, adjacent to the subterranean parking garage, there was a wet wall in the laundry room that Winn had no doubt he could break through. And it was that plumbing crawlspace that ran water pipes up and down the building that also led to the underground rail system. Once he broke through the wet wall and accessed the long defunct Belmont Station below, it would be an almost one-mile trek down the abandoned rail line that would lead to a final retaining wall at the subway station itself, behind which Yaw, Chris, the refugees, along with two LAPD officers, were trapped. The retaining wall was not a support structure but was put in place when the subway closed to keep vagrants and vandals from looting and squatting, and as such, it was less than a foot thick. With the help of a sledgehammer, Winn felt he could break through the concrete and create a path of escape for those trapped inside.

  He turned from Pico Boulevard onto Grande Avenue and picked up his pace. The Belmont Station Apartments were on the corner of Beverly Boulevard and 2nd Street, less than a mile away.

  Winn reached the Belmont Station Apartment complex in less than seven minutes. He slowed his pace as he entered the parking garage, and he followed the driveway down into the large parking lot beneath the five-story luxury apartment complex. The laundry room was at the northeast corner of the structure, and Winn navigated the underground field of parked cars until he reached the door that led inside the small chamber.

  He stepped inside the laundry room, relieved to find it empty of tenants. The room was relatively small for an apartment complex this large, with only a dozen washers and dryers lined up along a plaster wall that bubbled from relentless humidity. In the northeast corner of the laundry space was a large closet containing a five-hundred-gallon water heater, and right next to the closet was the wet wall that held the plumbing lines that also led to the rail tunnel and on to the 417.

  Winn approached the large closet that held the water heater and pulled it open. The water heater filled the space, and the chamber was well insulated. Resting in the corner of the closet, its handle leaning against the wall, was what Winn was looking for—an eight-pound sledgehammer that he had stored here the day he decided to move his dojo to the 417.

  He took the sledgehammer and carefully closed the closet door. He removed both his backpack and the holster that contained his Kali sticks before he approached the wet wall. He lifted the sledgehammer and swung the mallet in a sideways arc. The wall dented on impact, the dull thud echoing throughout the small laundry room. Winn reared back with the sledgehammer and repeated the strike, this time cracking the plaster and concrete. On the third swing, he punched through completely.

  It took Winn less than a minute to create a hole in the plaster and concrete big enough for him to crawl through, even with his backpack on. He went to his backpack, unzipped it, and removed a flashlight before poking his head through the hole, shining the flashlight up and down the narrow channel where the building’s water pipes ran.. The space that made up the wet wall was less than three-feet wide, with over a dozen pipes of various sizes running vertically up and down the internal structure. Winn focused the flashlight at the bottom of the narrow channel, panning the beam slowly until he saw what he was looking for—a semi-circle shaped water drain peeking out of the concrete base thirty feet below. The building schematics that Winn had researched during his planning of the dojo indicated that the water drain was twenty feet in length and led straight into the abandoned subway tunnel. Satisfied with the find, Winn pulled himself from the hole, turned, and pulled a thin nylon cord from his backpack. He looped the cord through an eyelet on the end of the flashlight before hanging it around his neck.
He then slipped the sledgehammer through a loop on the bottom of the backpack and strapped it, along with his Kali sticks, across his back.

  He leaned into the punctured wall hole, reached out, and grabbed hold of a water pipe that was three inches in diameter, then he pulled the rest of his body into the narrow space. After wrapping his legs and feet around the pipe, flashlight beam bouncing downward from the neck chain, he slid down the pipe like a fireman down a fireman’s pole. When he reached the bottom, his feet touched down on the damp concrete floor.

  Winn moved toward the water drain, sliding the sledgehammer free from his backpack. He blinked sweat from his eyes as he slid the handle of the hammer between the checkerboard strands of wire-mesh grate that covered the entrance to the water drain. He twisted and heard the rusted metal framework start to give, and with one final turn, the mesh popped free. Winn put the sledgehammer aside and removed the flashlight from the cord around his neck. He squatted low and shined the flashlight down the length of the drain channel. The beam revealed a horizontal crawlspace with another wire mesh cover that signified the end of the channel, roughly twenty feet away.

  The semi-circle drain was three feet in height at the apex. Winn removed his backpack and Kali stick holster and used the holster tie strings to fasten the backpack and sticks to his ankle. Then, with flashlight in one hand and sledgehammer in the other, he entered the channel on all fours, sliding along on his belly, dragging the sticks and backpack behind him. The surface he crawled along was cold and wet, and he heard the scuffle of rats scurrying by, even feeling one zip across his hand. Sweat dripped from his face, and he gave his head one quick whip to keep the perspiration from dripping into his eyes. He kept forward at a steady pace, ignoring the rats and focusing on the drain exit as he drew closer to it.

  When he reached the other end of the drain channel, he grabbed the sledgehammer and started pounding on the wire mesh. The sound of metal on metal echoed, but the mesh didn’t move. Winn paused for a moment to catch his breath. He set down the sledgehammer, reached below him, and unfastened the backpack and stick holster from his ankle. Then he turned on his side, pulling knees tightly against his chest, before rotating his body so that his feet were against the wire mesh. He then put his hands against the concrete to brace himself. He started to kick against the wire barrier with both feet, again and again. It still did not budge. Winn took a deep breath, and let out a scream before kicking at it repeatedly. The screen finally gave, clattering to the concrete floor of the rail line, just inches below that of the storm drain. Winn crawled out of the storm drain channel and stood up inside the large rail passageway.