The Suppressor

by Erik Carter

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  “You’re gonna lose him!” Pace shouted.

  “Shut up!” Tanner said as he swung the Lincoln back around, toward the front of the port.

  But Pace was right. The tall silhouette had disappeared in between the shipping containers, and as they’d drawn closer, it had run past them, through a patch of shadows and into the belly of the port.

  Finding Jake in this industrial maze would be next to impossible. But that didn’t matter. All Tanner needed to do was head for the gate. Jake would be going toward the exit, of course, and there was only one way out.

  The blue light flashed off the windshield in front of him, as the Lincoln’s tires squealed. Tanner gritted his teeth, not so much in determination but at the thought of the damage to the tires. Brand-new Dunlops. He’d just had them installed last week. Martha would flip her lid if he ruined them in one night.

  Hell with it.

  He yanked the wheel hard, and the Dunlops screeched louder. The tangy smell of burnt rubber filled the cabin.

  Jake Rowe was meeting a pair of handcuffs tonight.

  A good man whom Tanner had trusted and taken under his wing.

  And who then became a murderer.

  With all the conflicting emotions running through Tanner’s head, they all led back to one nice, logical conclusion: catch Jake Rowe.

  That was the great thing about logic: it always trumps emotion.

  The Lincoln’s engine howled as they drove past an administration office on one side and a fenced-in area of barrels to the right.

  But no sign of Jake.

  Tanner slowed slightly, and he braced for another sarcastic comment from the passenger seat. Instead, Pace shouted, “There!”

  Tanner followed Pace’s finger. The shadows ahead. The tall figure of Jake Rowe, sprinting with all he had.

  He was only yards from the exit.

  Tanner floored the gas again. A chirp from the Dunlops.

  At the gate, the guard emerged from his shack, into a pool of light, waving his arms at Jake, who sprinted even faster now, if that was possible, his long legs pumping furiously.

  The guard reached out for him, and with one easy, swift move, Jake stiff-armed him, sending the guard to his ass.

  “Holy crap,” Tanner said as his eyes widened.

  As big as Jake was, Tanner had never thought he was that strong. The guard wasn’t a small man, and Jake had taken him down like he was cardboard.

  Jake vaulted over the boom arm.

  Tanner smashed the gas pedal. And he grimaced.

  Because if Martha was gonna be mad about the tires…

  She was going to be livid about this.

  Pace shielded himself. “What the hell are you doing?”

  And Tanner drove right into the boom arm.

  SMASH!

  The Lincoln’s grill snapped the arm at the base. The big tube clunked over the hood, punched a crack in the windshield, and rolled off the trunk, clattering loudly on the pavement behind.

  Tanner checked the rearview.

  The guard was still on the ground, rubbing his head, but the arm had missed him entirely, rolling several feet away.

  Steam trickled from the Lincoln’s hood.

  Busted radiator. Cracked windshield. And the bumper and grille were surely destroyed.

  Out of the port. Onto the street. Ahead, Jake sprinted hard. He’d gotten a couple blocks away from them, heading west toward Palafox Place.

  Of course he was.

  He was going for the anonymity of the crowd.

  Damn, he was running fast. When the hell did he get in such good shape? He must have spent the entire time he vanished from Pensacola in the gym.

  Out in the nighttime city light, Tanner could see now that Jake was wearing all black—jeans and a canvas jacket.

  He shuddered at the preparations this guy had taken for his latest murder. Methodical.

  Jake cut diagonally through a parking lot, weaving his way through the vehicles, shouldering past pods of laughing people coming and going from the festival.

  Then he turned into an alley.

  And was gone.

  “Shit!” Tanner said.

  They were back on Jefferson Street. Tanner hit the brakes, sending him and Pace jolting into their seatbelts.

  Two cars in front of them, brake lights aglow. Parked cars lined the opposite side of the street too. Chortling pedestrians weaved, stumbled through the vehicles.

  There would be no more driving.

  Tanner jumped out. Pace followed.

  A quick glance back at the Lincoln. The front end was a jagged, steaming nightmare. Martha’s impending wrath would be historic.

  They ran into the crowd, heading for Palafox Place, one block over.

  Down a side street lined with arts and crafts vendors. Paintings. Wire sculptures. Local honey. People turned to look at them. Some shocked faces, others drunken, laughing, pointing.

  A mass of people had congealed at the corner, and Tanner shoved through a tangle of sweaty arms and onto Palafox.

  Absolute pandemonium.

  A giant, swarming mass of people, all shoulders and beer and sweat. Laughter. Joyful shouting.

  Tanner wanted to go for his gun. He needed it in a situation like this, hunting down a murderer. But he couldn’t. Not here. Not with people bumping into him from all directions. Not with thumping music that cut into his skull and pissed him off.

  So many people.

  So many that even a six-foot-three man could blend in. Hundreds of people. Thousands? Several of them six-foot-three or taller.

  It was a lost cause…

  Wait.

  No, it wasn’t.

  There he was. Strolling away. Except…

  He wasn’t dressed in all black. This man wore a white shirt.

  Tanner squinted, studied.

  The dark hair. Identical. And the frame, the stature—just like Jake’s, though harder, tauter, less gym-sculpted. Tanner’s mind flashed on how much stronger Jake had looked when he pushed the guard over at the port.

  The man wore black jeans. He could have easily torn off the black jacket to reveal a white shirt.

  It was him.

  It was Jake.

  Tanner shot a quick glance over his shoulder. Pace had fallen back. There were several people between them. Tanner gave a quick nod of the head—Follow me—which Pace acknowledged.

  He kept his eyes locked on the tall figure as he pushed through the crowd.

  With every step, with every drunk he pushed past, Tanner was more certain it was Jake. Why else would the man be by himself in this massive party, casually working his way through the revelry, unaffected, unimpressed?

  Ten feet behind the man.

  A giggling twenty-something woman in a bright red wig and a green tutu jumped in front of Tanner, said something silly. He shouldered past her.

  Five feet away.

  Tanner stepped onto the sidewalk to avoid a cluster of middle-aged men, laughing loudly.

  Back onto the street. Jake was right in front of him, no one between them, a foot away.

  Tanner clamped his hand down on Jake’s shoulder, yanked him around.

  It wasn’t Jake.

  The man had sharp features, dark and almost exotic looking, like a really tall, really big Johnny Depp staring down at him with a perplexed look on his face.

  Tanner removed his hand. “So sorry. I … thought you were someone else.”

  The man continued to give him a confused stare. But he said nothing. There was a small twinkle in his eye, almost a smile.

  He just kept staring.

  Screaming and laughter and music pounded through the walls surrounding them.

  The little smile grew a bit bigger. And almost kindly. Tranquil.

  How much had this guy had to drink?

  Tanner inched back.

  Finally the man nodded, turned around, and slipped into the crowd.

  Someone bumped into Tanner, and he d
iverted his attention to look.

  It was Pace, panting.

  Tanner turned back around.

  And the man was gone.

  Just … vanished.

  Tanner looked left, right.

  Nothing.

  Pace exhaled, catching his breath. “Wrong guy?”

  “Obviously,” Tanner said. He thought of the bizarre smile the man had given him. “Just some weirdo.”

  He scanned through the crowd, his focus bouncing from one tall man to the next. None of them looked remotely like Jake.

  Tanner sighed.

  “He’s gone.”

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Laswell looked across the water at the police lights coming from the port. There were a half dozen cop cars, flapping yellow tape, and lots of milling personnel, but the energy was slow and methodical. It had been half an hour since the action had spiked.

  “You’re damn right,” he said into his cellular phone. “Suppressor finished him off. Nakiri put around through his shoulder first, so I guess it was a bit of a tag-team effort. Call it 70-30.”

  “Assets don’t work in teams,” Briggs said from a thousand miles away in D.C. “That was the whole point of this training assignment. It was meant to be Suppressor’s final exam.”

  “So, he had a little helping hand. So what? You just don’t wanna admit that I was right, that Silence Jones is Asset material. I’d say that’s impossible for you to deny now, since he also led the FBI to Burton’s contact, a guy with connections to terrorist cells all over the Middle East and Europe.” He paused. “Sooooo … does he have your approval?”

  Laswell’s fist clenched as he held his breath.

  And he hoped to hell Briggs wouldn’t do another one of his long, pensive pauses.

  Thankfully, the pause was brief, only a second or so.

  “He does,” Briggs said.

  Laswell released both his breath and his clenched fist. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t make me regret this decision. Good evening.”

  Laswell grinned. “Good evening, Senator.”

  He pressed the END button.

  Footsteps behind him. He turned and found Nakiri approaching, her gray eyes waiting for him, staring coldly.

  Always such a delight, she was.

  He sighed.

  She’d changed out of her tactical gear and now wore skin-tight jeans, black boots, a gray sweater, a bit of makeup. The same woman, but totally different. She was good at switching into an out of personas.

  “Where is he?” Laswell said.

  “Should be here any moment.”

  “He did it,” Laswell said as Nakiri stopped a couple feet away from him.

  She scoffed. “Not without my help. I loosened the lid for him.”

  “And he tore the damn thing right off. You think he’s got what it takes?”

  “Do you really give a shit about my opinion?”

  He didn’t reply. Laswell had a policy of not answering questions that were answers to his questions.

  She groaned, looked across the water to the port. “Yeah, he’s got the right stuff.”

  Laswell gave her a smartass grin. “I know he does. I told both you and Briggs he has it. Told ya, told ya, told ya!”

  Laswell felt a sudden presence behind him. He jumped.

  There was Silence.

  Materialized from the shadows.

  “You scared the shit out of me,” Laswell said, and then he grinned. “Stealth. Very nice.”

  “I taught him that,” Nakiri said with the trademark dark twinkle in her eye. “And now that my instructing days are behind me, can you give me my next final assignment as soon as possible? As much as I like you, Falcon, I’m ready to never see you again.”

  “Nakiri, I never took away your final assignment. I only changed the parameters. I told you I took it away because I needed you to train Suppressor—ruthlessly, efficiently, and fast. I told you what you needed to hear to get the job done. And I also needed to see if you had it in you to do the right thing, one last test before I cut you loose into the free world again.” He gave her a respectful nod, almost a bow. “You passed the test. Assignment complete, Nakiri. Go. Go live the rest of your life.”

  Nakiri turned to him. Her face melted, softening at the corners of her eyes, lips parting.

  Laswell waved his hand back and forth between Nakiri and Silence. “You two never met, by the way.”

  Nakiri continued to look at him. She reached out and steadied herself on the hand railing.

  Laswell swiped her hand away and shooed her off with a wave of the fingers. “What are you waiting for? Get out of here.”

  Her eyes remained fixed on him. Then, slowly, she turned to Silence. A moment of staring at the new Asset. Then she put her hand on Silence’s shoulder, squeezed, and turned.

  Her back was to them now.

  A few steps at a slow pace, hips sashaying, the heels of her boots clicking on the concrete.

  And then a brisk walk.

  Then a jog.

  Then she was running.

  She disappeared into the night.

  Laswell turned to Silence. “She’s something else, isn’t she?”

  Silence nodded.

  “I got something for you, Si,” he said. “That’s what I’m gonna call you, by the way. Si. I like nicknames. Okay by you?”

  “Yes.”

  That voice. No matter how many times Laswell heard it, he still couldn’t get used to it. Bizarre. Creepy.

  Laswell smacked him on the shoulder. “You sound like a rusty chainsaw that’s been fired up after sitting in the back corner of a barn for a decade or so.”

  Silence blinked.

  “Anyway.” Laswell reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper. “I had a Specialist run the card you faxed me.”

  At the top of the sheet was a black-and-white image of the Alabama driver’s license Silence had scanned.

  “Manual Doughty. Three prior arrests, one for murder. Not enough evidence to hold him. Our Specialist made a few adjustments in the computer, and some additional evidence just arrived via email at the Mobile Police Department. Doughty’s been arrested again, and unless he gets the world’s best public defender, he won’t beat the rap this time. He’ll never bother your neighbor again.”

  “Thank you.”

  Laswell nodded. “Walk with me, Si.”

  He started along the walkway. Silence fell into place beside him. Small waves lapped against the pier wall. Sounds of the festival in the distance. A seagull cackled as it floated on the thermals in the nighttime sky.

  “I’ve given some thought to your debt,” Laswell said. “And I finally completed it yesterday. It’s a damn good idea, if I say so myself.”

  He smiled, and his mustache twitched.

  “You were all over the place as Jake Rowe. A few years of this, a few years of that—high school teacher, college professor, police officer. And I understand that Cecilia Farone was helping you to organize your headspace, that you have issues with concentration and focus. Now you’ve received a brand-new life with a new face, new voice, new name, and you’ve lost the love of your life.”

  Silence shrugged and offered him a bit of a frown. Tell me something I don’t know, he seemed to say. He was getting eerily talented at non-verbal communication. Good. The guy was going to need it.

  “So your debt is going to be this: one day, far down the line, you’re going to come to me and tell me who you are, what you’re all about. That’s it. Of course, you could give me an answer tomorrow. Hell, you could come up with something right this second. But I know that’s not your way. You have integrity, and you’re a thinker, two of the many reasons I chose you. I know you won’t give me an answer until you have a real one. Until then, you’re going to kill people and right wrongs in this world.”

  Silence only nodded.

  “Speaking of sticking to your word, you haven’t visited her grave, have you?”

  Laswell had
made Silence promise not to visit Cecilia Farone’s grave before he put him on a plane back to Pensacola a couple weeks earlier.

  Silence shook his head.

  “Good. I’m sure you’re itching to go, but no matter how different your appearance is to the old Jake Rowe face, there are only so many six-foot-three guys who’ll visit her gravesite, and the Farone family surely has enemies still in the area. Give it some time.”

  “Okay,” Silence said.

  “How was it, your first assignment?”

  “Challenging.”

  “Good answer.” Laswell stopped, put his hands on the railing, and looked out into the dark water. “And the revenge? Killing Burton?”

  A dark look swept over Silence’s face. “Satisfying.”

  Laswell grinned. “I figured it would be.”

  He leaned off the railing, put his hands in his pockets, and faced Silence.

  “I told Nakiri what she needed to hear to get you trained. A bit mischievous, but it got the job done. I did something similar with you when I brought you aboard. I offered you a choice: join the Watchers, or I’d turned you into the authorities.”

  He paused.

  “I was never going to turn you in. Should you have turned down the offer, I would have made you a Benevolent Cause, changed your identity, and given you a new life. Killing four men in one night was brutal, but so was what they did to Cecilia. I did what I had to do to get you to join. Maybe you want to rip my face off now, but I hope that shows how much I wanted you on the team, the faith I have in you.”

  Silence didn’t respond.

  Laswell took that as a good sign. So he just nodded.

  He couldn’t help but feel a tad guilty. He remembered what Briggs had said earlier in the day.

  You can be a real manipulative son of a bitch, you know that?

  Yes. Yes, he could.

  His mustache twitched impishly.

  “Chances are, this is the last time you’ll see me in person. Assets rarely see their Prefects again beyond the initiation process. Nakiri only fell back into face-to-face contact with me again because of the weird circumstances that brought you to us. Most likely, from this point on, you’ll know me as nothing but a voice on the phone, a valediction at the bottom of an email. Any final questions?”

  “No.”

  Laswell nodded. “You’ve proven me right. You’re an Asset. But you won’t be just any Asset. There’s something special about you. I can feel it. You’re going to be a legend.”