End Game (22 page)

I
t took the better part of an hour for Boxers to pilot the Expedition to the coordinates Venice had dictated over the radio, only to find that the coordinates were approximate, at best. They took them to the right neighborhood, but from there, the search went manual and old-fashioned.

“I don’t often think we’re under-gunned,” Boxers grumbled as he approached the turn from Gratiot Avenue onto Maple Ridge Street. “But tonight, I’m worried.”

To say this was a bad neighborhood was to give bad neighborhoods a bad name. This was the worst of Detroit’s urban blight. North of Grosse Point Park, they were square in the middle of zip code 48205, the deadliest real estate in one of the deadliest cities in the Western Hemisphere.

Jonathan took in the scenery. Despite the darkness of the night, which got very little help from the streetlights that were mostly burned out, the Expedition’s headlights washed over the facades of buildings on Gratiot Avenue that clearly had once been thriving businesses. This was a well-built downtown area—lots of brick and stout construction—but as many of the buildings were boarded up or burned out as they were still alive. Those that still seemed to be in business sported bars and barricades that were every bit as intimidating and secure as anything he saw in the war zones where he’d served.

“Not exactly Mayberry, is it?” Jonathan asked.

“Only in a world where Barney Fife is played by John Malkovich,” Boxers said.

Jonathan laughed. The image tickled him. “And Christopher Walken as Andy,” he said.

That elicited a big, genuine laugh from Boxers. “That’s a whole different show, isn’t it?”

Now that they’d turned the corner onto Maple Ridge Street, the boarded-up businesses had become boarded-up houses. Again, it was sad. You could see the middle-class roots in the homes. Most of them were one story to one and a half. Jonathan imagined that they had been built post–World War II, and at one time they were occupied by families whose futures were bright. They couldn’t have foreseen the strife and the riots and the neglect that came to define what was once one of the greatest cities in America.

And now was simply a mess.

Jonathan keyed his mike. “The license plate we’re looking for is—” He recited the number from his notes.

“That’s it,” Mother Hen confirmed. “It will be on a black sedan. A Lincoln. The make and model are not clear from the video, but from what I can see, the size and the shape of the car are consistent with a Lincoln. Not the big one, but an intermediate one.”

How many could there be? Certainly, a new vehicle— anything younger than ten years old—should stand out like a beacon against the primer-coated wrecks that lined the streets.

Most of the houses were surrounded by chain-link fences whose height spoke more to keeping dogs in than keeping intruders out—though the two goals often intersected. Jonathan had donned his NVGs—night-vision goggles—in an effort to make out the terrain and the license numbers, but even in the intensified green light that mimicked a weird lunar form of daylight, the cars along the street all looked similar—and precious few of them had license plates.

As they cruised the neighborhood, the spacing between the houses opened up. Before long, they were in the middle of an abandoned industrial area. Dormant, diseased factories rose up against the urban backdrop, black stains against a black night. Jonathan noted one smokestack in particular that rose from the middle of a long, wide, flat-topped building, as if to flip off the community for the terrible fate that had befallen its inhabitants.

“Kill your lights,” Jonathan said. “Go to NVGs.” He was worried that the slow-moving headlights would attract the attention of whatever street gangs controlled this part of the city. And he bore no doubt that the neighborhood was controlled by a gang. In cities like this, where only one out of five ambulances was operational, and the average response times for police approached two hours—God knew they couldn’t come with less than a platoon of cops and an arsenal of weapons—citizens depended on gangs to keep them safe. Hell, they had to depend on
somebody.

Jonathan imagined that Boxers appreciated the opportunity to drive with NVGs instead of headlights. They’d replaced the two-tube NVG arrays that they’d gotten used to in the service with the more current, higher tech four-tube arrays, which solved the age-old problem of tunnel vision. Now, when they viewed the world through their NVGs, they had nearly a panoramic view. Jonathan’s only problem with them were that they looked funny. Every upside came with a downside, he told himself.

“What do you think about this factory?” Boxers asked.

“By the nature of the question, I think you have a concern you’re not sharing with me,” Jonathan replied.

“Well, we’ve got these big fences,” Big Guy said. “They present a perimeter of, what, a hundred, two hundred yards?”

“Something like that.”

Boxers shrugged. “I’m just saying you can hide a lot of rolling stock back there and we’d never see it.”

It was a very good point, Jonathan thought. They were big buildings that sat far from the road. How difficult would it be to drive into the middle of the compound and then just park your vehicle—hell, it could be the size of an eighteen-wheeler—behind a wall and out of sight?

“I’m switching to thermal,” Jonathan said.

When you paid as much for a set of night vision devices as he paid for these, you got options that the hunting public never experienced. By flipping a switch on his NVGs, the device switched from image enhancement—essentially reflecting infrared beams that were shot out to the target object—to true infrared reading, which captured the heat signatures that were emitted by target objects.

His vision flashed. After a day as bright as this one, every surface emitted heat, so he needed to dial down the gain.

Once the images were stabilized, he would be able to read the relative heat signatures of the various buildings and vehicles. A car that had recently been driven, for example, would paint as hotter than one that had not been driven in a while, even though both may have been in the hot sun all day. It worked the same way with buildings. Those that were occupied should show up as warmer than those that were not.

Boxers drove slowly as Jonathan scanned the horizon. Nothing jumped out as significant.

Jonathan pressed his transmit button. “Mother Hen, can you give us anything more specific on the location?”

“Of course,” she said, but there was an edge to her tone. “I could give the actual address and close-up pictures if I wanted to, but as usual, I’ve decided to let you wander aimlessly.”

“Ooh,” Boxers said. “The lioness is cranky.”

“I’ll take that to mean a negative,” Jonathan said. He made no effort to keep the irritation out of his voice. “I’ll take whatever you can give me, up to and including a reliable gut hunch.”

“So, what’s
your
gut hunch, Boss?” Boxers asked. “I figure you’ve always got one.”

“I’m thinking that if we find Jolaine Cage, we’re also going to find Graham Mitchell.”

Boxers made a groaning sound. “Congratulations, then. Because you’re a hell of a lot more optimistic than me.”

“Everybody’s more optimistic than you.”

“Har, har. I’m just sayin’ that I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that either of them are still alive.”

“The kid has to be alive,” Jonathan said. “He’s got the information they want.”

“Unless the Ruskies got to him first. He’s got the information they want to keep quiet. And as for the Chechens, the second the kid opens his mouth and gives them what they want, he’s toast.”

Jonathan waved him off. “No, now that’s not true, either. Not right away, anyway. They’ll want to buy some time to make sure that what he gave them is actually the code.”

Boxers laughed. “Oh, good. Even better. So terrorists will wait to confirm that they have nuclear capability and
then
kill our PC. Yeah, good. Now I feel better. So tell me this: Why keep the girl alive?”

Jonathan sighed. “That’s a tougher one,” he said. “I’ll only give even money on her. Maybe not even that much. Whatever it is, they drove her all the way out here for a reason. Maybe it’s just to get rid of the body, but it’s a reason. There’s also a reason why Graham wasn’t killed with those others. That tells me that his snatchers are of the Chechen variety, not the Russian variety.”

“Well, there you go,” Boxers said. “Case solved.”

They cruised for another two hundred feet. The first factory, first of several in a row, showed no signs of life. As they approached the next, Boxers pointed at a spot beyond the windshield. “Hey, Boss,” he said. “Trouble at twelve o’clock level.”

Jonathan pivoted his head to the right to see a clutch of young men approaching them in the dark. They were all black, and they all walked with attitude. He cursed himself for being so involved with his survey of the area that he missed the obvious.

“I see weapons,” Jonathan said. The young toughs were not even making an effort to conceal their firepower. Among the six of them, Jonathan recognized two MAC-10s and at least four pistols.

Next to him, Boxers drew his M9 and cocked the hammer. “I’m ready,” he said. “I’ll take the three on the left.”

“Not yet,” Jonathan said. “Only if they fire first.”

“Shit,” Boxers spat. “You know, if they fire first, they might just hit something, right?”

“This isn’t the fight we want,” Jonathan said.

“I am
not
dying at the hands of some untrained gangbanger. I’ve lived through too much shit to die that way.”

Over the years, Jonathan had listened to Boxers describe countless venues in which he intended not to die. On balance, that was a good thing. “You know, if you took up less space you’d be a smaller target,” he said.

“Then you’ve got no chance of ever bein’ hit, little man. No wonder you feel cocky.”

Jonathan flipped him off. “I’m going to meet them halfway,” he said. “You stay put. If they shoot me, take out the MAC-10s first.”

“Machine guns first,” Boxers parroted. “Really? Wow, I never would have thought of that. I normally aim for the guy with the slingshot first, but if—”

Jonathan tuned him out and opened his door. He drew his Colt, but he kept it dangling by his thigh. If any of them so much as twitched, he could drop three of them before his first ejected shell casing hit the ground, but that would still leave three, and those odds sucked.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Jonathan said. He modulated his voice to be just loud enough to be heard, but not so loud as to draw attention from anyone who might live in the neighborhood. He rocked his NVGs up out of the way, but kept them on his head in hopes of looking different enough to give the young men pause before doing something stupid.

The young people Jonathan had dealt with in any detail were all athletic, they all had short haircuts, and they all wore the same clothes. He knew that he was ill-prepared to deal with a bunch of teenage gangstas whose pants hung halfway down their asses.

“Who the hell are you?” one of the young men asked. He walked in the lead, so Jonathan assumed him to be the leader.

“I’m just a guy who wants no trouble from you,” Jonathan said.

“Then you shouldn’t be driving in my ’hood without lights on.”

All things considered, it was a good point.

One of the kids behind the leader and off to the left made a move to lift his pistol to a shooting position. Jonathan reached out with his free hand in a stopping gesture. “Please keep your firearm pointed at the ground,” he said. The urgency in his voice drove his volume to a higher level than he wanted.

His comment prompted the leader to turn back to his crew. “Georgie,” he said. “Be cool.”

Georgie went cool, but he took his own time doing it, finally shifting the muzzle of his pistol to a neutral position pointing to the ground.

“Thank you,” Jonathan said. He shifted his own weapon around his back to his left hand, extended his right hand toward the leader and approached. Cautiously. “My name’s Scorpion,” he said. “What’s yours?”

“Screw you,” the leader said.

“Nice to meet you, Screw You,” Jonathan said without dropping a beat. “Is that Chinese?”

Jonathan waited for the line to land. When they laughed, his hand remained extended. “Don’t leave me hanging here,” Jonathan said. “I mean no disrespect.”

The leader modified the handshake to a knuckle-knock, and Jonathan complied.

“The hell kind of name is Scorpion?”

Jonathan smiled. “It’s a kind of street name.”

“You tryin’ to be all scary and shit, right?” The kid laughed. “And what’s that shit on your head?”

“I’m still waiting on a name,” Jonathan said.

“And I’m still waiting for you to get the hell outta my ’hood.”

This was a tough point in their negotiation. The kid needed to save face in front of his pals, and at one level, Jonathan did owe him an explanation. He was, after all, in the kids’ ’hood, just as they said.

Jonathan made a point of holstering his Colt, but he kept the safety off, just in case. “That’s not going to happen,” he said. “My friend and I have business to conduct here.” Without looking back, he called, “Hey, Big Guy.”

The driver’s door of the Expedition opened, and Boxers unfolded himself. “Right here, Boss.” Maybe just for show, but probably for effect, he brandished an HK417 rifle, muzzle pointed to the sky. Chambered in 7.62 millimeter, the rifle looked every bit as badass as it was. If it came to a firefight, these guys would be dead before their fingers touched their triggers.

“Holy shit,” the leader said. Several of his friends took an instinctive step backward. “He’s one tall drink of water.”

Jonathan laughed. He hadn’t heard that phrase in years. “Yes, he is,” he said.

“So, what are you? Cops or something?”

To bluff or not to bluff? “Well, we’re something,” Jonathan said. “But we’re definitely not cops.”

“You look like cops,” the kid said.

“They look like the Army,” another kid said. “What’s with the commando clothes?”