Dead Six (26 page)

Conrad was sitting at a desk, clicking away at a laptop when I walked in. I spotted my .44 sitting on a shelf behind his desk. “I’m here for my gun,” I said simply. I really didn’t feel like having another conversation with this asshole.

Conrad didn’t look up from his screen. “Well, if it isn’t Doc Holliday looking for his big shootin’ iron.”

My head still throbbed, and I felt a surge of anger shoot through me. “Just give me my gun so I can go,” I said, stepping closer to Conrad’s desk.

“The colonel thinks you’re hot shit. That’s the only reason you didn’t end up in the Gulf,” Conrad said, grabbing my revolver from his shelf. “You know what I think?”

“I don’t really care,” I stated. “Just give me my gun.”

“I think you’re just a dumb kid who’s in way over his head,” Conrad said, pretending to examine my revolver. He then set it down on his desk with a clunk.

The muzzle was facing toward me as I grabbed the .44. As I stood up, I flipped the gun around in my hand and extended my arm. I aligned the sights on the bridge of Conrad’s nose. I’d had enough of these people.

I pulled the trigger.

Click!
Conrad raised an eyebrow as the revolver’s hammer fell on an empty chamber. I pulled the gun in close to my chest and hit the cylinder release. The security man had unloaded it before giving it back to me. I could tell the moment I picked it up. Smart move on his part.

He put his hand on the butt of his gun. “You trying to scare me or something? I’m with the
organization
,” he sputtered, like I knew what he was talking about. “You’re a fucking
temp
. You’re
nothing.
”

“I’ll see you later, asshole,” I said. I holstered my gun, turned on a heel, and left the office.

I made my way downstairs and out the front door, almost crashing into Sarah as I stepped back into the heat. “Michael!” she said, seemingly unsure of what to say. “What happened to you?”

I almost laughed. “What
happened?
Hunter was ready to shoot me, that’s what happened!”

“Michael, I didn’t mean for—”

I cut her off. “No. Just stop. I learned a long time ago not to fish out of the company pond, and this is why. As soon as I piss you off, you run to the boss, and I get the
shit
kicked out of me. So just stay away from me, alright? I got a mission to plan.” I stepped around her and walked away, not looking back.

It took me a few minutes to get back up to my room. Sweat was trickling down my face by the time I made it to the third floor of the dorms, and I thought I was going to pass out. I locked the door behind me, cranked the air conditioner up, and sat down on my bed.

I noticed something shiny on the floor by the bathroom door. It had fallen out of the old Arabian puzzle box. The object was silver in color and had a silver chain attached to one end. I grabbed the chain and picked the trinket up.

It was roughly cylindrical, a few inches long and maybe as big around as a ballpoint pen. Surprisingly heavy, the object was intricately carved and looked as it if had many moving parts. It also looked very old. The top of the object, where the chain was attached, appeared to be a knob. I gently tried to rotate it to see if anything would happen.

To my surprise, the thing audibly clicked and more than a dozen tiny metal pins of varying lengths popped out of the shaft. Rotating the knob the other way caused the pins to disappear again.

I sat back down on my bed, playing with the trinket, wondering what it was. It seemed like a key of some kind, but that was only a guess on my part. Whatever the object was, it was still in my hand when I fell asleep.

I told myself it was a coincidence, but I had the most macabre, horrifying nightmares of my entire life.

LORENZO

April 16

I was wandering the local market when my cell phone buzzed. It was secure, encrypted, and not very many people had my number.
Caller unknown.
Glancing around, there was nobody close enough to eavesdrop, and there was enough background hum from the various vendors and customers that listening in would be difficult. Half the Arab world was on a cell phone at any given time anyway.

“I heard you were looking for me,” Jalal Hosani said, cutting right to the point. I had been trying to reach him all week. If anybody knew what was really going on, it would be the local neighborhood arms smuggler.

“I need some information.”

“As do I.” There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Are you involved in what has been happening?”

“Not my style. You know that.” I had the professional reputation of being a man of subtlety. “I was actually going to ask you the same question.”

Jalal actually laughed. “Are you serious? I’ve been afraid to stick my head out in public for fear of losing it to these men leaving the playing cards.”

I paused in front of one of the carts. They actually had good-looking chili peppers, and I was a bit of a connoisseur. Even the smell was
hot
. I gestured for them to fill a bag. “So, how’s business treating you?” I asked as I passed over a few riyals to the eager vendor and put the peppers with the rest of the supplies I’d purchased.

“Well, half my customer base is dead or hiding, but the other half has been stocking up on guns in response, so overall it has been good. At this rate we’ll be in full-fledged revolution in a matter of months.” Jalal said that like it was a good thing, simply a business opportunity. “Why are you curious? I thought a
patriot
such as yourself would be glad to see such enemies of your homeland eliminated.”

I wasn’t going to lie. If it wasn’t for Dead Six having my box, they could burn the entire city down and I wouldn’t give a damn. “They took something that belongs to me. I need to find them.”

“Not that I know where they are, but if I were to find such a thing, that information would be incredibly valuable to many people. I’m sure General Al Sabah, for instance, would be willing to pay a fortune.”

“So would Big Eddie,” I responded as I stopped in front of another booth featuring camel, the other, other white meat.
Yum.
“He’s got deeper pockets than the general, but you know how he feels about being exclusive,” I bluffed. I didn’t have access to Eddie’s resources, but I would cross that bridge when I came to it. “Does the name Dead Six mean anything to you?”

“Perhaps,” Jalal responded after a moment of thought. “I will be in touch.” The call ended.

I shook my head. Hopefully Jalal would come up with something. That man had his finger on the pulse of the city’s criminal heart. Now I was just going to have to work my sources until I found something about Dead Six that I could use.
Well, why the hell not?
I ordered a pound of camel. You only live once.

The short walk back to the apartment compound gave me a chance to think. I had one weapon I could use against Dead Six to get them in the open, young Jill Del Toro, but I was hesitant to utilize her. The idea made me uncomfortable. Carl had been right. I used people. That’s what I did. It didn’t mean I had to like it.

Carl had said that he was surprised that I was sticking my neck out for my family. They weren’t even my blood relations, but they had taken me in. They were the only people who’d ever been good to me. I had grown up on the streets, son of a drug-addled whore and a homicidal beast of a man. I’d been put to work stealing as soon as I was old enough not to get caught, and I had been an overachiever in that respect. By the time I was ten, there wasn’t a lock I couldn’t pick, no pocket I couldn’t get into undetected. I had been a tiny shrimp of a kid, and though that had been handy for fitting through various unsecured windows, it had made me look like an easy target for the other predators. I had solved that by developing a reputation for savage violence. Pipe, knife, chain, brick, it didn’t matter. I never fought
fair
. Cross me and I kill you.

I had kept that attitude into adulthood, and it had served me well. There had only been one point in my life where I hadn’t had to fight to survive. It had been brief, but I had appreciated it. The people in that manila folder were responsible for that, and I would be damned if I was going to let Big Eddie hurt them for it.

If that meant I had to hurt some other seemingly decent person . . . so be it. In the end it was all just an equation. Whatever I had to do to reach my goals was what was going to happen.

So why did I feel like such an asshole? I sighed as I ascended the steps to our apartment, bags in hand. This was why I stuck to robbing criminals, terrorists, and scumbags. The unfortunate downside of my time with a real family was that I had developed a finely tuned sense of guilt, damn Gideon and all his morals. I had managed to utterly squash my conscience for years, but it was bugging me now.

The apartment smelled . . .
really
good. “Okay, we’re in a Muslim country, where did you guys find
bacon
?”

Carl poked his head around the corner from the kitchen. “Same place I find beer. Whenever you buy groceries, everything is too hot or weird with tentacles and eyeballs and shit.”

“You do realize that the greatest thing your explorer ancestors ever accomplished was introducing the chili pepper to Thailand? That was awesome. That whole slave-trade thing . . . not so good.” I tossed my headdress on the couch and followed the smell of pig. Carl was cooking and Reaper was sitting at the table, listening to his conspiracy-theory radio.

Carl looked at my bags as I started unpacking. “You bought camel? Fucking
camel
? See? What did I just say?”

I realized the shower was running. “Where’s the girl?” I asked suspiciously.

“Jill’s in the bathroom,” Reaper replied dismissively.

I thought about it a second. “How long?” I snapped.

Reaper looked up, stringy hair in his face, disheveled as usual. He tended to keep weird nocturnal hours, fueled by sugar and energy drinks. “Uh . . . ten minutes?”

“There’s a window in there.” If she ran, it could ruin everything. I was across the apartment in an instant and jerked open the bathroom door. The room was fogged with steam. Jill was just stepping out of the shower, naked, absolutely gorgeous, and reaching for a towel. I froze.

“Hey!” she shouted as she quickly covered herself. “You mind?”

I backed out and closed the door.

Carl was waiting for me as I returned. “Thought of that. Window’s too small, and it’s a twenty-foot drop onto asphalt.” He shoved me a plate. “Jackass.”

Reaper was looking at me in awe. “So . . .”

I nodded. I was guessing that Jill worked out.
A lot
. “Smoking hot.”

“I knew it,” he sputtered, then grinned. “You know, we haven’t had a girl on the team since Kat—”

“She’s not on the
team
,” I snapped. “Don’t get too attached. Got it?”

Reaper looked down. “I just meant . . . never mind.” He stuck his earpieces back in. Carl studied me for a moment. I gave him a look just daring him to respond. He went back to his bacon.

Jill joined us for breakfast a minute later. Apparently Reaper had decided to help out and had loaned her a Rammstein T-shirt. She accepted the offered plate and sat down across from me, looking a bit indignant. “Next time you should knock.”

I took my time and finished chewing. “Next time you shouldn’t get kidnapped by terrorists.”

“Touché,” she replied. “Fair enough. But just so you know, I’m not going to try and escape, I promise. Who am I going to run to? The cops? That worked
real
good last time. So . . . mind if I ask a few questions?” When I didn’t respond, she must have taken that as a yes. “What kind of criminals are you?”

The other two looked to me and waited, as if saying,
this should be interesting
. “The strong silent type that doesn’t talk about their work in polite company,” I replied slowly. “As in, it’s none of your business.”

“Okay, fine. How about, what do we do now?”

Pausing, I wiped my mouth with a napkin. It wasn’t like I could just tell her I was waiting for some sort of contact so I could trade her for the box. I took a moment to compose my response. “
You’re
going to lay low.
We’re
going to find Dead Six.”

“Well, I know why I don’t like them, but what’s in it for you?” She was suspicious of my motives, which meant she wasn’t stupid.

“Let’s just say that they have something I want and leave it at that.”

“When you find them, are you going to . . .
kill
them?” she asked.

“That’s a definite possibility. Does that offend you?”

“No. I just wanted to see if you needed any help.” Jill actually smiled. “It’s still kind of sinking in, but these people ruined my life. As long as they’re out there, I can’t go home.”

I don’t think she realized yet that she could never go home. Once you’ve witnessed a rogue government operation murder US citizens and they’d already reported you as KIA, it was time to just walk away and get a new name. She was now on the official to-do-list. “This isn’t amateur hour. We’re highly trained professionals. What exactly are you bringing to the table?”

“I can take care of myself,” Jill responded.

“No kidding,” Reaper said. His face was still swollen. “Where’d you learn to fight like that? Not that I couldn’t have, you know . . . taken you out, but you surprised me is all.” Carl and I both openly scoffed at him. Reaper couldn’t fight his way out of a cardboard box. “Whatever.”

“My dad owned a martial-arts studio. He taught us how to defend ourselves. I grew up in kind of a rough neighborhood, so it came in handy a couple times. Dad was a good teacher, used to fight professionally even.”

Carl scowled. His favorite thing in the world, other than chain-smoking and complaining, was to watch people beat each other bloody senseless on TV. There wasn’t a lot of televised bullfighting, I suppose. “Del Toro . . . Tony ‘the Demon’ Del Toro?” he asked. Jill nodded in the affirmative. That must have been impressive or something from the approving look Carl gave her. “Like ten years ago, I watched him on pay-per-view almost tear this guy’s arm off. I hate those Brazilian jujitsu guys. Guy needed his arm tore off, cocky
fodas
, so I remember the Demon.”