A Man Of Respect

by Remington Kane

  Wicks smiled. “I was going to use dynamite on the drug dealers, but I left it in the pickup truck I stole.”

  “Pick-up truck? Dynamite? What the hell went on while Stephen and I were out?” Taylor said.

  “Nevermind that. The point is, bombing those bastards would have been a good way to even the odds. Once the blast killed them, we could have come in afterward and scooped up whatever cash was lying around.”

  Hendricks shook his head at what he was hearing. “I know you’re drunk, Roy, but that’s some crazy shit you’re saying. Explosions cause fires. What if all the money they had burned up after the blast?”

  Wicks shrugged. “We’d be no worse off, Stephen.”

  Taylor drained his coffee cup, then slapped himself on the cheek several times to help clear his head. Afterward, he opened the door on the Jeep.

  “That’s enough talk. Let’s do what we came here to do.”

  Wicks pointed at an old white cargo van. “Let’s take that; it looks to be in good shape for its age.”

  Hendricks slid a slim jim bar from a duffel bag. “I’m on it. Carl, you and Roy grab some plates off another van.”

  Hendricks had the door open on the van in seconds, then went to work on the steering column to access the wiring. Before becoming a cop, he had been a wild kid who had taken several cars for joyrides. He knew how to hotwire a vehicle.

  Within minutes, Hendricks had the van moving and backed it up to park beside the Jeep. While he transferred their belongings, Taylor and Wicks removed the van’s license plates and attached replacements from another vehicle. Minutes later, they were tooling around in the van, minus Darren Stepp, and more desperate than ever.

  30

  A Favor From An Enemy

  Eriksen’s phone rang while a doctor was immobilizing her broken fingers with a splint. She smiled when she saw that the call came from her husband.

  “Are you all right, Amanda?”

  “Yes, honey, as I wrote in the text I sent you, don’t worry, I’m fine.”

  “You were in a plane crash?”

  “It was a helicopter, and I broke two fingers, but otherwise I’m all right.”

  “Stay where you are, and I’ll come to you.”

  “That’s not necessary, John, besides, I’ll be on the move soon. I’m still tracking down three of the men I’ve been after.”

  “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “I promise, and I hope to be back home by tomorrow.”

  “Okay, but if you need to stay in Texas longer than that I’ll come to you.”

  “I love you, John.”

  “I love you too, Amanda.”

  After a few more minutes of conversation Eriksen ended the call and was glad to see Greene’s doctor walking toward her. The woman was Indian and greeted her with a smile.

  “Agent Greene will have to stay with us for a day or two while we evaluate his head injury, but I am confident he’ll recover completely.”

  “Is he in much pain?”

  “We’ve given him a nerve blocker for his broken ribs; however, the injury to his scalp is causing some discomfort.”

  “Thank God he’ll be all right, can I see him?”

  “Of course, although not for too long.”

  Eriksen wouldn’t be lingering at Greene’s bedside. She was eager to get back on Wicks’ trail.

  The small one-story house on Santa Clara Street in Laredo, Texas, looked no different than any of the other homes nearby. The fact that there were three men out front with the outline of guns beneath their T-shirts told another tale.

  There were also bars on all the windows, while the eight cars parked along the side of the house spoke of more bodies inside.

  Wicks lowered the binoculars he was using. They were watching the home from the other side of the block. The front of the drug dealers’ money drop was visible between a gap in two houses.

  “Given the number of vehicles there are, we could be looking at as many as eight men, and maybe more.”

  Wicks had stopped drinking once they had decided to raid the drug dealers. He wouldn’t pass a DWI checkpoint if he were tested for his alcohol level, still, he was as sober as he’d been in days.

  “How the hell are we going to take on eight guys with guns?” Hendricks asked.

  Wicks remembered the dynamite he’d had and cursed himself for leaving it behind. He hadn’t yet learned that it was responsible for killing nine innocent people, including six police officers.

  “For now, we keep watch,” Wicks said. “Maybe there aren’t as many guys as we think.”

  Caleb was in his motel room doing research on a laptop to discover what gangs Wicks had dealings with as a cop. Meanwhile, Tanner decided to make a call. He was dialing Trevor Healy.

  PUEBLA, MEXICO

  Trevor Healy was south of the border overseeing a large group of Ordnance Inc. operatives. While he wasn’t usually as hands on in his current position as Executive Coordinator, Healy needed everything to go right. His boss, Grayson Talbot was eager to expand their reach, and so Healy was managing the project himself.

  When his phone rang and he saw the unfamiliar number, Healy’s first thought was to ignore it. However, instinct told him that the call was important.

  “This is Healy.”

  When the man on the other end of the line asked Healy if he recognized his voice, Healy answered as his heart rate increased.

  “Hello, Tanner.”

  “I’ll get right to the point. I need a favor.”

  “You need a favor, from me?”

  “I was told that Ordnance Inc. was hired to abduct and torture a man named Duke Philips. I would like you to refuse that contract.”

  “And what, if I say no, you’ll kill me?”

  “No, Healy, our deal still stands, which is why I’m calling. Duke is under my protection, so I want to avoid having to deal with any of your people.”

  “You mean you want to avoid killing more of my people. You’ve already murdered quite a few of them.”

  “What’s your decision?”

  “I’m not familiar with that particular piece of work, but yes, I’ll see to it that we’re no longer involved. Is there anything else you’d like me to do?”

  “Give me a quote on how much refusing the contract will cost and I’ll get the money to you.”

  Healy’s grip tightened on the phone. “Why, Tanner? You don’t want to feel like you owe us?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you do owe us, don’t you? You killed many of our best people during your encounter with our organization.”

  “It sounds like you’re holding a grudge, Healy.”

  “As you said before, our deal still stands. We’ve left you alone.”

  “It would be a good idea to keep doing that. It would guarantee you go on breathing.”

  There was silence on the line, then Healy spoke again.

  “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be ending the call.”

  “You have my thanks, and I was serious about paying for the favor.”

  “No amount of money could compensate us for what you did… goodbye, Tanner.”

  The call disconnected and Tanner put away his phone.

  Healy no longer sounded like the frightened trembling man Tanner had last encountered. His anger and antagonism were undisguised. Ordnance Inc. would attack him someday, of that he no longer had a doubt.

  31

  Three Down

  Before leaving the hospital, Eriksen needed to interview Jen.

  The doctor was being kept overnight for treatment concerning the smoke she’d inhaled while locked inside the powder room, and during her rescue. Jen also suffered a concussion. She sat up in bed wearing tubes that fed oxygen into her nose.

  True to her word, Jen had remained silent about Tanner and Caleb’s involvement. The story she told the police had her waking up inside the house and winding her way through the woods. Afterward, she was given a ride to the hospital by a strang
er who never gave his name.

  Eriksen, who was usually adept at sensing when someone was lying, pressed Jen on the details.

  “What did this stranger look like?”

  “Um, he was about my age.”

  “Hair and eye color, weight?”

  “A blue-eyed blond, with a heavy build.”

  “And the vehicle he was driving?”

  “I’m not good at telling cars apart, but it was small, a compact.”

  “Color?”

  “Red.”

  “And how was the man dressed?”

  Jen saw no reason not to be truthful about that and said that her Good Samaritan was wearing a suit.

  When Eriksen responded by asking, “Was it a three-piece suit, and did the man also have a hat?” Jen knew she had screwed up.

  “No… he didn’t wear a vest, and who wears a hat anymore?” Jen said, followed by a nervous laugh.

  Eriksen was squinting at the doctor as she asked. “Does the name Stark mean anything to you?”

  Jen shook her head no, but the look on her face betrayed her.

  Eriksen settled in a seat beside Jen’s bed and stared at her.

  “Dr. Mao, if Stark helped you get away from that burning house then I can imagine that you’d be willing to lie to protect him.”

  Jen said nothing and wouldn’t meet Eriksen’s eyes. She hadn’t missed the fact that Eriksen hadn’t mentioned Tanner. She must believe that Stark was working alone.

  “This man Stark thinks of himself as a vigilante, Doctor. My guess is that he’s after the men who abducted you.”

  Jen asked a question then; she couldn’t help herself.

  “Is Stark a murderer? Is he after them to kill them?”

  “He’s never killed before to my knowledge, and he mostly operates in California. The man is a thief who steals from other thieves. I guess he sees himself as a sort of Robin Hood. I consider him to be a royal nuisance.”

  “He saved my life,” Jen said, her voice raised in passion. “I would have burned to death inside that house if he hadn’t risked his own life to save mine.”

  Eriksen arched an eyebrow at that. “Really?”

  “Yes. You call him a thief and a nuisance, but to me he’s a hero. And I won’t tell you anything about him, I won’t.”

  Eriksen stood in a rush. Jen braced herself for a barrage of questions. Instead, Eriksen laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  “I was told that Wicks and his men didn’t assault you sexually. Thank God for that.”

  “Hendricks and Taylor seemed to regret what they did to me at times, but Roy Wicks… that man is out of control.”

  “Yes, and although we’ll likely never prove it, I suspect he was somehow responsible for the explosion that claimed nine lives.”

  “I heard about that from a nurse,” Jen said, “but I don’t know anything about it.”

  Eriksen smiled down at her. “Rest and get better, Doctor, and you can be sure that Wicks and the others won’t remain free for long. The entire law enforcement community wants these men. There’s nowhere they can hide.”

  “Do you think Stark is still looking for them too?” Jen asked.

  “I don’t doubt it,” Eriksen said.

  “When they were still cops, Wicks and his crew ran a drug gang out of their town. The gang was named the Cubano Forty-niners,” Caleb told Tanner, as they sat in the Land Rover together. They had taken the time to clean up and change out of their smoke-scented clothing at the motel. At present, they were grabbing a quick lunch at a bar.

  “That gang must have set up shop somewhere else.”

  “Oh, they did. That’s the problem, the Cubano Forty-niners have gotten bigger and sell meth throughout the state. Even if we located one of their money drops it would be unlikely that Wicks and his guys would pick that one to rob.”

  “That sounds like a waste of time.”

  “Yeah, but I have another idea.”

  “Let me hear it.”

  “Whether these guys rob the drug dealers or not, they’ll still have to hide out afterwards. I’ve been thinking over the conversation I had with Wicks’ ex-wife, Sherry, and maybe I have an idea where he would go if his back was to the wall.”

  “Where?”

  “His hometown.”

  “I agree he’s in the area, but the town itself, how could he hope to hide there?”

  “Sherry said that Wicks lived in the woods behind his house when he was a teenager, sometimes for days at a time. He would trap small game and fish to get food; there was also a hidden cave for shelter. With every cop in the state looking for him, he might return to the forest.”

  “It sounds like a longshot but all we have are guesses, and that one is as good as any.”

  “So, we head into Peaksville?”

  Tanner started the engine. “If you’re right, maybe we’ll get there before them.”

  Wicks decision to stop drinking whisky was made easier when Taylor returned from a trip to a nearby market with cold beer. The market also made sandwiches, and the men ate as they continued to keep an eye on the drug dealers.

  Several groups of men had come and gone from the house while they’d been watching it. Without fail, the armed couriers arrived carrying black gym bags full of cash and leaving with a similar bag that was empty.

  “Why don’t we try robbing the couriers before they reach the house?” Hendricks said, but both Taylor and Wicks shot down the idea.

  “One bag of cash isn’t enough, Stephen,” Wicks said. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right and make off with a fortune.”

  Their surveillance had led them to believe that there were nine men at the house, and that they took turns manning the porch in two-hour shifts. While it was more than the eight men they had first thought there might be, it wasn’t a drastic increase or a deal breaker. And yet, they were outnumbered three-to-one.

  That changed when each man on the porch received a text at the same time. Whatever the message said, it caused a discussion among the group, with one man becoming agitated.

  “We could be there in two minutes, man!” he told one of his companions. He had spoken so vehemently that his words carried to the van. After more arguing, the man opened the door to the house and shouted inside to someone. A moment after that, the men left the porch, jumped into a red BMW, and sped off.

  “Something else is going down somewhere,” Hendricks said.

  Wicks grabbed a shotgun that was sitting upright between his legs and opened his door.

  “We’ll never have a better chance than this.”

  “He’s right,” Taylor agreed, as Hendricks cursed while grabbing a rifle. They left the van and rushed between the houses to come out on the other side of the block.

  Three men were coming out onto the front porch to guard the home as Wicks reached the foot of the stairs. The drug dealers were talking amongst themselves and didn’t notice him until it was too late.

  Wicks fired the shotgun twice while Taylor used his handgun. The three thugs fell onto the porch either dead or dying, making the odds even.

  Hendricks had headed to the rear of the property, where he fired at a shadow moving past a window. The owner of the shadow released a scream amid the sound of broken glass. The remaining drug dealers fired back at Hendricks, with one of them discharging a rifle on full-automatic until it was empty. They missed him, as Hendricks had been running while firing.

  With their attention on the window, it allowed Wicks and Taylor to enter the house. The man Hendricks had wounded fired at Taylor. The ex-cop took a bullet to the chest that was stopped by the vest he wore. The thugs second shot was higher, and Taylor dropped as a slug entered an eye and blew out the back of his head.

  “No!” Wicks cried, as he fired off the shotgun’s final rounds. Buckshot riddled the face of the man who’d killed Taylor while wounding the other two men. Hendricks entered the room from the rear of the house and finished them off with his rifle. When he spotted Taylor’s c
orpse, tears sprang to his eyes.

  “The money!” Wicks said. He brushed past Hendricks while reloading his shotgun and entered the rear of the house, where stacks of cash were piled atop tables near counting machines. He forced himself to ignore the loose bills and looked about the room.

  In a corner were two mounds of bundled cash. The money had been banded, then wrapped up in thick plastic rectangles that were about half the size of a briefcase. Each bundle contained fifty-thousand dollars. There were eleven of them.

  “Stephen!”

  “I’m here,” Hendricks said in a voice choked with emotion. He was barely in the room when Wicks began tossing the bundles at him.

  “We need to hurry before those other men get back.”

  “Too late, cabrón!”

  Wicks spun to where the voice had come from and fired two rounds from the shotgun. The gang member was outside the rear door that Hendricks had blasted the lock off to gain entry into the home. Wicks sent buckshot into the man’s knee as his gun went off. The round passed harmlessly between Wicks and Hendricks as the other two returning gangbangers fired.

  Wicks felt a stinging pain on the outer portion of his left shoulder. Another round was stopped by the bundle of cash he had secured under his left arm. Meanwhile, Hendricks traded shots with a banger whose aim was as good as his own. The men hit each other with rounds that struck the center of their foreheads.

  Wicks looked down at Hendrick’s body and gave up the fight. With one bundle of cash pressed against his side he turned and sprinted for the door.

  Bullets followed him as he ran across the street, with one striking the money again. The impact almost caused Wicks to drop the bundle of cash. He juggled it while still running and reaffirmed his grip on it. Two of the gangbangers were still alive but only one was able to give chase.

  Wicks started the van while ducked down in the seat as a bullet caused a spiderweb of cracks to appear on the right side of the windshield. After risking a glance to see where the shooter was, Wicks sped the van toward him. He drove onto the sidewalk and pursued the thug in the gap between the houses.