Callsign: King II- Underworld (3 page)

Shaking his head, Becker approached the nearest vehicle—the rear end of a silver Ford Taurus, was poking out from under the tanker-trailer of a big rig—and stuck his head in through the sprung left rear door. Through the almost overpowering smell of evaporating gasoline and diesel, he caught the metallic odor of blood. Red-black streaks and clumps of gory tissue painted the interior, but there were no bodies.

Becker felt a chill creep down his back in defiance of the Sonoran Desert heat. He moved over to the nearby semi and peered in through the spider-webbed windshield.

No one there.

“What the—?”

Becker’s disbelief gave way to trepidation as he moved into the heart of the pile-up, but there was not a single person, living or dead, in the entire tableau. Only blood, sometimes in copious amounts, splattering the interiors of the wrecks and drying to black spots on the asphalt, offered any sort of proof that the occupants of the vehicles had not been simply whisked away, raptured off to heaven or beamed up onto an orbiting alien starship.

No
, Becker thought.
People died here. And then someone took them
.

He kept searching, but his initial eagerness had given way to funereal dread. On the far edge of the pile-up, he found one last vehicle, a dark blue Nissan Altima that had slammed into the underside of an overturned shipping container, which stretched across the road like a gate. He glanced up the highway and saw that, here too, a surreal buffer zone existed between the wreck and the line of traffic from the east.

Becker circled the Altima, knowing full well that there would be no body, but then something caught his eye and he stuck his head in through the opening where the driver’s side window had been.

Lying on the floor, covered in tiny particles of broken glass, was a smartphone.

He picked it up and swiped a gloved thumb across the display to wake the device. The screen immediately lit up and showed a live-action image of the interior of the car; the video-camera function was actively recording.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. Someone had been shooting footage of the accident, and Becker realized that the answer to the bizarre disappearance might literally be in the palm of his hand.

He tapped at the ‘stop’ button, and saw a menu pop-up on the screen.

Upload video? [YES] [NO]

He tried to stab at the “no” button, but his gloved fingertip must have dragged across the alternative, because the menu changed to a progress bar that quickly registered “100%” and then flashed the message:

File Uploaded

“Crap.” Becker stripped off his right glove, knowing full well that it was a serious break in procedure, and with far more dexterity, he navigated through the phone’s files to locate the video segment by its timestamp. He tapped on the file icon and the display switched to a view of the crumpled front end of the Altima, as viewed from the driver’s seat.

Becker watched and listened with rapt attention as the Altima’s occupant—a young woman by the sound of her voice—recorded the aftermath of the experience.

Then something unbelievable happened.

After six years with DPS, Matt Becker thought he’d seen it all, but he had never seen anything like this.

EXCLUSION

1.

New York City — 1335 UTC (9:35 am Local)

George Pierce stared at the person sitting in the threadbare easy chair with a mixture of pity, revulsion and disbelief. When the man smiled, revealing missing and decayed teeth, the proportions remained about the same, but the emotional brew roiling in his gut spilled over like beer from a shaken bottle.

“George,” the man said, his voice grateful, but with an undercurrent that made Pierce wary. “Long time, brother.”

You aren’t my brother
, Pierce wanted to say.
You’re someone who happens to share some genetic material with me, but you sold your right to call me ‘brother’ for an eight-ball, and shot up, snorted, smoked…or whatever the hell it is you do with that crap. You burned that bridge a long time ago. My real brother is sitting downstairs, waiting for me
.

But he didn’t say that or anything like it. Instead, he managed a weak smile and sat down. “Hey, Micah.”

“I’m glad you came,” Micah Pierce said. He nodded his head enthusiastically, but to George Pierce, it looked almost like an involuntary nervous tic. “I feel good about this. I think I’m really going to be able to kick it this time.”

Pierce also felt his head bobbing, but the confident utterance made no impression whatsoever. Micah was reading from an old script; they had played this scene out four times,
was it
?
Five
?
I’ve lost track
, Pierce thought.

The first time, Pierce had been wholeheartedly supportive of his sibling’s declared intent to end his narcotics addition. He had taken a leave of absence from his position at the University of Athens, effectively ceding control of a very important research project to one of his colleagues and along with it, the credit for the subsequent discovery, to give Micah his unconditional emotional support during the weeks of rehab and his subsequent effort to get established in society.

The second time, almost eighteen months later, Pierce had been more cautious, but still hopeful. Relapses happened, but Micah was family—his only remaining blood relative.

Micah’s second “clean” period, or rather the length of time between the end of his stint in rehab and his arrest for attempting to sell stolen property, which led to another court-ordered stay at an addiction treatment facility, had lasted only four months.

Pierce no longer felt any hope when Micah emerged from his personal darkness with another promise to throw the monkey off his back once and for all. Pierce felt only a profound weariness, and no small measure of guilt, partly because of his perceived failure to do the impossible and somehow lift his brother up, but mostly because he just wanted Micah to stop calling.

He nodded perfunctorily at Micah’s assurances, and chimed in with as few words as possible when his younger brother began reminiscing about experiences from their childhood—memories that were so colored and distorted as to bear little resemblance to anything that had really occurred. Pierce did not attempt to set the record straight. He had read a lot of literature about addiction over the years and recognized the classic behavior of an incorrigible addict.

On an earlier occasion, armed with academic knowledge, Pierce had confronted his brother with these realities, reducing Micah to tears, but in the end, it hadn’t made any difference. Now, Pierce no longer bothered.

He still took Micah’s calls and came to visit him when he made an apparent effort to get clean, but it wasn’t because he entertained hope that things would change. He came because he knew that someday, maybe someday soon, Micah would wind up on a slab, and then Pierce would really feel guilty. He didn’t want his last interaction with his only blood relative to be one of abject rejection.

When he could take no more of it, he rose. “Mike, I can’t stay.”

The younger Pierce started to protest, but George headed him off. “I think you really can do it this time if you want it bad enough.” He leaned over and gave Micah a quick perfunctory hug, then hastened out of the room without another word.

As he moved down the short hallway to the stairs, Pierce felt like he was struggling to breathe in a vacuum. The visit with Micah had sucked the energy right out of him, and he desperately needed to get away. He was almost running as he reached the door to the lobby, and tapped his foot anxiously as he waited for the receptionist to release the electronic lock, permitting him to rejoin the man he thought of as his true brother. He caught sight of the tall, athletic-looking figure in faded jeans and a black Elvis T-shirt, standing pensively near the exit.

“That’s done,” Pierce said. “Now let’s head upstate where I can get some of the stink off…”

Pierce’s voice trailed away as he noticed the other man’s urgent expression. “Uh, oh. I know that look. Let me guess: duty calls?”

The other man returned a grim smile and held up his smartphone as if that explained everything—it did. “I’m going to need you on this one.”

2.

Ivan Sokoloff peered through the EO Tech Gen II 3X scope at the front door of the innocuous looking brownstone residence, and waited. When the door opened, as he expected it to in the next few minutes, he would become ten million dollars richer. He let his finger brush the trigger of the bolt-action Remington Model 700 and felt an unexpected stir of anticipation; it felt surprisingly good to be working again.

Sokoloff had thought he was done with this life, and up until only a month ago, he had considered himself happily retired. Like anyone who enjoys their work, there had been some moments of ennui at the prospect of giving up his lucrative career, but it had been a necessary thing. His success in his chosen profession had become a liability; too many people knew of him, knew his deadly reputation, and it was inevitable that he would eventually, having lived by the sword, also die by it. Perhaps it would be a bloody showdown with law enforcement agents or an unexpected betrayal from one of his own associates, hoping to cement a reputation by being the man who killed the world’s deadliest hitman. Or it would just be that his luck would run out—one job too many, his reflexes no longer quite as quick as they once were, his target just a little too well defended.

That was how nearly all professional killers ended their careers, and for a long time, Sokoloff was resigned to that eventuality. But the longer he stayed alive, notching one successful job after another, building a tremendous personal fortune secreted away in various untraceable bank accounts, he had begun to realize that he didn’t really want to go out in a blaze of glory. There was, after all, something to be said for the living the good life and dying at a ripe old age in a lavish cabana in the tropics.

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as giving two weeks notice and walking away. Even retired, he would still have been a very desirable target for any number of enemies. The only way to truly close the door on his past life was to end it, literally. He had to die, or rather make the world believe that he was dead.

Planning his own “murder” hadn’t been terribly difficult. He had found a suitable body double—a homeless man who would never be missed—and strangled him to death, leaving the body in a villa in Greece, along with just enough physical evidence to sell the deception. With the right bribes, he had seen to it that no autopsy was conducted before the body was cremated, and while rumors persisted for sometime thereafter that Sokoloff had faked his death, his complete disappearance from that world had eventually quieted those suspicions. After all, who would believe that the deadliest professional killer in the world had simply chosen to give up his exciting lifestyle to sip fruity tropical drinks and work on his tan?

Yet, that was exactly what he had done, and aside from an occasional wistful moment, he had done it very well for more than a decade. That was perhaps why he had felt nothing but dread when, while lounging by his pool four short weeks earlier, he had received a cryptic text message.

He had glanced at the phone’s display with almost casual indifference, imagining that it was an invitation to dinner at the casino or something equally mundane, but to his consternation, he saw that the sender was “unknown.” The message said simply:

$1,000,000 (US) deposited to your bank account (XXXXXXX833). Confirm and await further communication.

Sokoloff had felt as if someone had just walked across his grave.
Someone is probing me. Ignore it. Don’t take the bait
.

A few seconds later, the phone had vibrated again.

This amount is a deposit to secure your services. Please confirm promptly.

Sokoloff’s heart had begun hammering in his chest. He had not felt such fear, such a sense of imminent danger, in so long, his body had lost its immunity to adrenaline. For a moment, he had considered hurling the phone into the pool. Before he could act on that impulse however, the phone shivered in his hands.

Exactly sixty seconds from the receipt of this message, international law enforcement agencies will be notified of your location and supplied with the identification numbers for all six of your bank accounts. Your assets will be frozen immediately.

Another message arrived even as the first was driving through his head like a railroad spike.

There is a 63.2% probability that your arrest and/or termination will follow within 24 hours. To prevent this, please confirm receipt of $1,000,000 US as retainer for your services. You now have approximately 45 seconds.

With trembling hands, Sokoloff had pounded out a terse reply:

>>>Who teh hell is ths?

The answer had come almost immediately.

Automatic notification of law enforcement agencies suspended for the moment. Please confirm deposit to your bank account.

The money had been there, as promised, and even though he had more than enough to last him the rest of his life, he still goggled in disbelief at the updated account balance. No sooner had he logged off from the bank than another message arrived.

Your services are required. Upon fulfillment of the contract, you will receive $10,000,000 (US).

>>>You obviously know who I am, but I am retired. I don’t do that anymore.

Your unique skill set and high degree of personal motivation, in conjunction with the resources that will be made available to you, ensures the highest degree of probability for successful fulfillment of the contract. A secure communication device will arrive shortly. Stand by for further instructions.