by Sam Powers
He waited until they’d moved in close, laughing at their friend’s joke, their sheer numbers and his deliberate expression of terror enough to convince them that it would be an easy kill. The four from due west had pipes; one hefted a machete. A second of the two men from the club pulled a pistol from his waist band; his friend slipped on a pair of brass knuckles.
As soon as they were within spitting distance, Brennan reacted, charging the four men to his left. They froze for the barest of moments, shocked that one man was going on the offensive, and he took advantage, leaping head-on toward the smallest man’s head, grabbing him around the neck as he tried to duck and cover, slamming him to the pavement neck first, then continuing on into a forward roll. He heard the pistol slide moving and threw himself sideways, putting the other three men between himself and the shooters even as they turned to face him.
The bouncer reacted too slowly and squeezed off a shot at the moving target, the bullet striking his friend in the chest. The gunshot startled his two friends, and Brennan came up in a crouch, hammering one man in the testicles with a short upper cut, then shooting his left foot out in a low side kick, taking out the other man’s knee.
They got off two more shots but he stood and pivoted, using the pain-stricken gangster cupping his groin as a shield, running around him and using his neck for an arm hold, jumping up into a running pair of sidekicks, the two gunmen taking hard blows, at least one weapon clattering to the ground. The force of the American’s weight brought his makeshift fulcrum to his knees and Brennan finished him off with a backward elbow strike.
As he rose, the doorman was getting to his feet as well, trying to train the gun on him. Brennan ignored theatrics and went straight for the man’s wrist with a hard punch, shattering the radial bone, the bouncer yelping with pain. Brennan hit him with a pair of quick crosses and he dropped to his knees, then over sideways unconscious.
He felt the man’s hot breath behind him before he heard him and he turned side-on, lowering his target mass, the man’s knife blade sliding by and barely grazing him. Brennan reached up and yanked the shorter man’s head down by his ponytail, bringing his heel up at the same time into a hard chin strike that sent him tumbling to the ground, next to his friends.
The bouncer had regained consciousness, barely, and was crawling over the cement toward the butterfly knife that his beaten associate had dropped just seconds earlier. As his hand reached it, Brennan put a sandaled foot down hard, the bones in the man’s hand breaking with a sickening crunch, like someone tossing wishbones into a grinder. “I really wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Who…,’ the man panted in pidgin English, “… who the fuck are you, man?”
Brennan kicked the knife to one side and the man slumped, giving way to the fatigue and pain, barely able to move. “I’m nobody,” he said. “I’m just someone who wants to be left alone.”
***
Brennan’s hotel was an old favorite, a semi-residential rooming house from the French colonial days, with wide covered balconies and rooms that were really just small apartments. The place came cheap, less than twenty dollars a night, paid for courtesy of the United States Navy. And that was with maid service and free dry cleaning.
He liked the room. It had white mosquito netting over the four-poster bed, and the old air conditioner rattled like a Victorian-era radiator. The hotel would send houseboys out for food and just about anything – or anyone – else that someone might prefer delivered. The whole thing had a ‘debauched Vietnam war speakeasy’ vibe, which he knew was kind of shameful, but was nonetheless an exotic change from the Afghan highlands. A real vacation. A real break from the enduring horseshit of attempting to be a civil human being.
The guy in the next room, Nestor, was a Jamaican poet/journalist, just back from his latest trip to Vietnam and extolling the virtues of a centrally planned-but-capitalist economy, no matter what they called it. “It’s socialist and cares ‘bout ya, mon, but it’s also got all the opportunities Irie’d ever want… yah mon!”
Then he’d lit another Thai stick, or what amounted to a cannabis cigar, using real dried leaf for the wrapper, the entire thing bound around a short wooden stick to keep airflow through the middle. He’d lit it and then withdrawn the stick, the cigar billowing clouds of white smoke as Nestor planned humanity’s course mentally for the next few hundred years.
Brennan took a shower, the cold water streaming off his muscular torso, the beads cascading over the huge, protruding scar near his abdomen, a field dressing having barely saved his life from the shrapnel. The bomb had been dropped by one of their own guys, his computer given the wrong co-ordinates in a glitch, Brennan’s unit lit up rather than the Al-Qaida encampment just over the mountain face, in the valley below.
It happened. He hadn’t made a federal case of it, and neither had any of the guys in the unit. They understood why Rick Gasperotto’s family was suing the government, why they were so angry they’d been lied to. But the men also knew Rick, and how he really would’ve felt. They’d all been sure of that. They’d all agreed that was how it had to be, because otherwise it was just a horrific shitshow of negative emotion, an admission that a six-year veteran whose work with local villages had helped rebuild relations, pave the way for their society to grow… that he’d just died for nothing.
He should never have gone back into the field. He was the best, but that was tempting fate, pushing the odds. Sooner or later, Brennan thought, our number comes up.
He didn’t think himself so special that he hated the idea of dying any less than the next guy. But he’d accepted that when serving your country in the field of battle, it would never be at the moment of a man’s own choosing.
He walked out to the balcony and glanced down to the street, three stories below. The same dapper man in the white linen suit was having the same cold mineral water at the same café table as he had for three straight days. He was never there when Brennan left, only when he was home. And then he was always there. He thought he’d caught a glimpse of him earlier, also, when walking home from the bar fight.
The fight made him frown. He should’ve known the kid was just bait. It was obvious. But he’d seemed so helpless, and that’s a terrible feeling, Brennan knew. He’d been trapped, once, cut off from support behind a pocket of enemy infantry, an attempt to blow a small bridge across a valley foiled by damp electronics. They’d seen him, pursued him across the craggy terrain of the mountainside for hours, until it seemed futile to do anything but give up. And then he’d seen the gunship come up over the ridge and known that as long as they were near, he was never alone.
And then they’d dropped a bomb on him and killed his friend.
The cure had been a series of special assignments, wet work. The kind of off-the-books missions that would make important locals question U.S. motives, the elimination of as many so-called allies as terrorists.
His successes had become legendary, his precision and ability to eliminate targets the stuff of awed conversations. But none of it helped; none of it fixed the void he’d felt since the bomb.
There was a knock on the room’s door. “Just a second,” he yelled. He crossed the living room, walking behind the bamboo couch and past the king-sized wooden bed to his left. At the front door, he stood to one side, then quickly leaned over to check the spy hole, wary that the men he’d beaten up might have tracked him down, not wanting to leave a shadow under the door jamb that might give someone the idea to open fire.
It was one of the houseboys. “Message for you, Mr. Brennan.”
He opened the door. The man had an envelope in hand. “I’m to help carry your things for you to the car downstairs.”
He wrinkled up his nose at it, surprised and thrown off. It had to be something from the group, or from the SEALs. He opened the envelope. There was a small white card. In blue ink cursive, it said simply, “You’ve been upgraded.” Along with the card was a keycard to the Royal Wing, an upscale luxury resort along the coast.<
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“What is this?” Brennan demanded.
The man shrugged. “They just pay me at the desk to give it to you.”
“Who? Who paid you?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know sir, really. Another western man. American, I think. They have a car for you downstairs, a limousine. Very nice. You want I should send it away?”
They had his attention. “No. No… I’m curious now. Let’s see where this is heading.”
The lobby to the Royal Wing was glass and chrome and wood, all with an Edwardian, aged walnut sheen, polished curved lines and deep dipping crystal chandeliers. Brennan figured it wouldn’t have been out of place in Manhattan or L.A.
As the porter held open the front doors, Brennan was immediately greeted by a woman in a business suit, holding a clipboard. “Mr. Brennan, sir,” she said in flawless Briton-accented English, “I’m Josephine, and I’m your personal valet for the duration of your stay in the Presidential suite.”
He held out a hand to shake. She showed a flicker of surprise, her eyebrow creeping north for just a split second, but long enough to tip that she didn’t get many greetings. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “My what?”
“Your valet. Your personal assistant in all matters related to the hotel and, indeed, any requirement you should have while in Pattaya City.”
“She comes with the suite,” the porter explained. “Most expensive room in Pattaya.” He was an older man and he winked at Brennan as he said it, showing an expert read of the situation. He’d been around town long enough to know Brennan wasn’t the suite’s typical mover-and-shaker short-term resident.
“Uhhhh huh. Okay,” Brennan said. “That still doesn’t explain why I’m the person she’s greeting.”
The woman seemed puzzled. “You are booked into our Presidential suite for ten days, are you not?”
“Apparently I am,” Brennan said.
***
Ten minutes later he was standing on the suite’s balcony, overlooking the ocean. It was bigger than his last apartment in Buffalo, a black-marble-floored wraparound that took up most of the hotel’s upper level. The suite’s windows were all electric and slid back, opening the entire unit to the warm evening breeze.
There’d been no explanation yet. There was a new suit in his exact measurements in the closet, a Bill Blass or a knockoff, nicer than anything he’d ever owned. The bar – not a mini-bar, but a full standup bar – in one corner was stocked with thousand-dollar champagne and hundred-dollar scotch.
What the hell is going on, exactly?
The phone rang. There were multiple extensions around the vast suite, and he walked over to the cordless wall unit in the middle of the balcony’s back wall. “Brennan.”
“Mr. Brennan? My name is Herbert Volkker. As you may probably tell from my accent, I am German.”
“And I’m confused. Are you the guy paying for this place?”
“I am. Would you join me for a drink in the executive lounge, so that I may explain? It is on the seventh floor…”
“When?”
“I am… there at present. If you do not mind such short notice.”
“Like you said: it’s your money, I guess. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Okay?”
“Ja, sehr gut.”
Brennan hung up. Then he dialed another number. “Yes operator, put me through to Forward Base Kandahar, Charlie-Lima-Zebra, please.”
“Authorization?”
“DEVGRU 32-dash-98.”
“Hold on, please.”
He waited while the joint forces operator put the call through. It rang twice. “Mike Bernard.”
“It’s Joe. I’m in Thailand and need a favor.”
“Aren’t you out?! I thought you were…”
“Technically, yeah. Technically, I’m not calling you.”
“They’ll have an operator’s record…”
“Which will be filed away with no one having ever looked at it, let alone checked it. Can you do me a solid or not?”
“Joe…”
“You know, I know your wife pretty well. But I still have one-eighty amnesia about that furlough in Qatar…”
“Fine.” Mike sighed as if Brennan had asked him for a personal loan. “What?”
“It’s good talking to you, too. I need a check on a name. I’ve got a possible black hole I’m walking into, someone laying on enough hearts and flowers to be lowering my guard.”
“Okay, shoot… hey: where are you, anyway?”
“Bumfuck, Thailand. You don’t want to know. Run a “Herbert Volkker” through your handy interwebs database.”
“Internet. Nobody’s using ‘web’ anymore. You can still take me up on lessons for how to use these things properly, once I get back stateside, you know.”
“I might just do that.”
“Okay… here we go. He’s got a few entries from NSA and DoD. Herbert Werner Volkker, fifty-one. Personal assistant to Eric Stoneman, President and CEO of Dark Sun Security and Personnel.”
Brennan allowed himself a small whistle. “The big man himself. I know a few senior guys who don’t think we’d even be in Iraq if it wasn’t for that guy’s influence in the White House.”
“Yeah… official line, bud. So, I’ll just be keeping any opinions to myself, likelihood of anyone checking or not. But… yeah, there you go. What’s this about, anyway?”
“Don’t know. Hit me back tomorrow if you want an update, okay?”
“Rock on, my brother.”
Brennan ended the call. There was no time like the present for finding out what Mr. Eric Stoneman wanted, he supposed. He headed back into the suite, glancing for just a moment at the closet before going to the front door and opening it. They could keep the monkey suit; blue jeans were just fine.
The executive club reminded Brennan of an airport frequent flyers’ lounge. It was designed to look like everything cost a million bucks. The side tables were carved hardwood objects d’art, the tables all glass. Waitresses in modern-stylized Asian cocktail dresses brought over drinks to men smoking cigars, lounging in big leather chairs.
“Mr. Brennan, so good to see you again.” His ‘valet’ Josephine greeted him at the door. “Mr. Volkker’s assistant informed me that you would be dining with him this evening in the club after cocktails. I shall be available if there’s anything else you need while you are here.”
It was weird, and a bit creepy, Brennan found. Did rich people really like that, having someone at their elbow tending to them all the time? It seemed indecent, somehow, to Lord it over another adult like that.
The front-of-house was another charming young Thai woman, this time in a long-tailed tuxedo and stylish grey jodhpurs. “Mr. Brennan, Mr. Volkker is anxious to meet you. This way, please.” She led him to the back corner, where a wall had been repurposed as a brass sculpture, a giant square frame with objects carved from it in relief. Behind its surprisingly effective privacy, Volkker sat smoking a cigar, playing with the small plastic cutlass that had once held his martini’s olive in place.
“Ah, Mr. Brennan!” he said standing. He held out a hand and Brennan shook it. The woman held out his chair and Brennan thanked her, pulling it away. “I’m fine, thank you. If we could perhaps just have a few minutes of privacy.”
The young woman looked a little perturbed but nodded agreement and left.
“She’s probably worried they’ll fine her if a customer doesn’t appreciate her help. These kinds of places can be notoriously mean-spirited,” Volkker said in heavily accented English as Brennan sat down.
“I asked her for privacy because I wanted us to clear a few things up,” Brennan said. “My thanks for the room. If you’re interested in talking to me because you think I’m still in the service…” It had to be an espionage play, or something criminal, he’d figured.
“Quite to the contrary, we’re rather glad you’re out. We’d like to offer you employment, Mr. Brennan. My employer is a noted American businessman who believes a specialist such
as yourself could be a valuable asset moving forward. He’s willing to offer you a… substantial package of both compensation and forward-looking assets, including company shares.”
“And… in return?”
“There are… certain targets that fall… outside of the jurisdiction afforded his company by its customers. These are advantageous and, in some cases, highly dangerous targets, people whom no one decent would ever miss…”
“He wants me to be his paid killer.”
“My employer prefers to think of it as problem solving, with a solution that is usually as permanent as possible.”
And you can call a dog turd a diamond, but that’s skipping a few steps along the way. ‘And these permanently solved individuals. Do you have any names? You know, people I might recognize?”
Volkker leaned back, seemingly apologetic. “Though I would wish to share something familiar with you, to cement the seriousness of our offer, I am reluctantly prevented from doing so by client privacy. However, it is sufficient to say that we require a man with talents that most do not possess. And we are willing to pay.”
The German slid a slip of paper across the glass table. Brennan turned it over. There were a lot of zeroes. “And that’s for…”
“Per year, Mr. Brennan. And that is aside from stock options, a home in the country of your choosing, logistical and financial support on any assignment, and insurance should you wish to mitigate loss risk and leave something to others. You would also be covered by the company’s extensive insurance and health policies, offering a full range of substantial benefits. And we will cover the cost of travel outside of assigned locations for up to six trips per year, first class.”
You know you have to tell him to stick it where the sun don’t shine, right? I mean you can do it politely, but…
Damn morality. It kept intruding whenever there was an easier route. He mentally shook a fist at the Heavens and damned his parents for giving him love and affection, stability, empathy.