Deadly Justice (2 page)

“It's been truly pathetic watching you with your goodie-goodie Boy Scout mentality, thinking you could make a dent in trafficking in South Texas.  Stupid fool.  Nobody will ever stop it, not when there are so many people practically lining up to buy.  Pot, cocaine, meth, heroin.  That's where the real money is.  It's all about supply and demand, Sammy.  Junkies demand and we,” he waved between himself and Chavez, “supply.” 

Webster held out his hand and Chavez handed over what looked like a sandwich baggie containing an uncapped hypodermic inside.  Peeling away the plastic, Webster held up the syringe, its barrel filled with an unknown golden-hued liquid.  Handling it with care, his black gloved fingers depressed the plunger, and a drop of liquid pearled at the tip. 

“Best stuff money can buy, Sammy.  It's too bad, really.  If you'd been a little more flexible, we could have worked together.  Kept the DEA in the dark and made a bloody fortune.  A couple of years and we could've been living like kings in the South Pacific.” 

Webster gestured toward him, and one of the goons shoved Carpenter's sleeve up past the elbow. 

“No!”  He couldn't stop the single word from spewing forth.  No matter how hard he struggled, he couldn't budge.  Immobilized, Webster yanked his arm forward, and plunged the needle into his vein.  One quick press on the plunger, and it was over. 

The SIG fell from his limp hand onto the cold concrete beneath his feet.  A strange warmth flooded his body and he knew whatever Webster'd shot him up with was invading every cell.  Whether a fast-acting poison or heroin, it didn't matter.  He'd be dead within minutes anyway, because Webster was too smart to leave him alive. 

“It's too bad you took out your whole team, Sammy.  This crap really fries your brain, and it looks like you've sampled too much of the product you're supposed to be stopping.  Just one more thing to take care of and then I'll let you rest.”

Webster placed the syringe into Carpenter's hand and made sure his thumb print was on the end of the plunger. 
Prints to prove I injected myself
.  The man was nothing if not smart, and knew how to cover his bases.  Then Webster reached down and picked up the SIG Sauer he'd forced Carpenter to hold minutes earlier.  He slid out the magazine and put it into a pocket, and pulled out another one, identical to the first he'd pocketed.  He forced the clip into Carpenter's hand, and wrapped his fingers around the outside.

“Have to make sure your prints show up nice and tidy on all parts of the weapon, don't we?”  With his vision growing fuzzy, Carpenter watched as his former partner slid the clip into the gun and chambered a round. 

“Sammy, I'm gonna need you to pull the trigger.  You have to have gunshot residue on your hands for the cops to believe you took out your teammates.  That's right, slide your finger onto the trigger.  Good boy.” 

Carpenter tried to raise his hand and point the gun at Webster, but there wasn't enough strength in his arm.  It felt like it was attached to his shoulder by rubber-bands and dangled uselessly at his side.  

Webster tutted.  “Here let me help you.”  He stepped behind Carpenter and brought his arm up, shoulder high.  “There we go, Sammy.  Are you ready?” 

“Nuh…”

“Sure you are.  You do this one little thing, and then you can lie down and take a nice long nap, 'kay?” 

Inside his head, Carpenter heard himself screaming.  The echoes rang inside his brain, but only garbled nonsense emerged from his lips.  Webster's hand wrapped around his, finger pressed against his index finger. 

In a move faster than he could anticipate, Webster swung the gun straight at Chavez's laughing face, and squeezed Carpenter's finger onto the trigger.  The gun jerked in his hand.  He felt the recoil, watched the bloom of red spread across Chavez's chest where he'd been struck.  Droplets of blood splattered through the air.  The impact knocked him backward, off his feet, and Chavez's head hit the concrete with a sickening thud.  Sightless eyes stared upward, empty and devoid of any sign of life.

The SIG slid from his hand onto the ground at the same time his knees buckled.  He slid in an inglorious heap onto his knees, head lolling on his shoulders.  Blinking, he struggled to bring his surroundings into focus.  A dark shape shifted and wavered in front of him.

“Well, Sammy, I'd say it's been fun, but you've been a real pain in my ass from day one.  All the big boys at the DEA are going to be so disappointed their rising star turned out to be just another junkie, looking for his next fix.”

“You're gonna…rot in…hell.”  His tongue felt huge and thick within his mouth.  He could feel his lips moving, and wondered if anything he'd said even made sense.

“I'm sure I will, Sammy, but you'll be there long before me.  Have a good life—what's left of it.”  With that, Webster's shadowy figure made a motion with his hand, and he felt a burning pain in his thigh, felt something warm spill across his skin as the bullet slammed into him.   

His eyes didn't seem to be working right.  He couldn't focus, and all he made out were blurry, shadowy blobs moving away.  One of them was Webster, escaping with the rest of Chavez's crew, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do.

“You'll pay…I swear…you're gonna pay…”

The slamming of car doors was the last sound Carpenter heard before surrendering to the blackness. 

Three years later, Dallas, Texas

F
or a war room, it lacked a little panache.  The window above the back corner booth of the Coffee & Crullers shop was rimmed with dust and grime and a greasy layer of heaven only knew what else.  The dark maroon plastic bench sported two pieces of duct tape placed in an overlapping X shape in a vain attempt to hold in the stuffing where it had split open.  The L-shaped bench seat held four men squashed into the tightly confined space.  Carpenter pulled up a wooden chair with a padded green seat, turned it around so he straddled it, his elbows resting along its slatted back. 

His gaze missed nothing, glancing around the table, eyeballing each man.  These were his handpicked, select employees, integral to accomplishing his mission without alerting either the media or the feds.  If the alphabet squads descended, everything would go to hell in a hand-basket before he ever got within a mile of Richard Webster.

Thinking about his ex-partner had him unconsciously clenching his fists.  The moment he noted it, he casually unfurled them, hoping the others hadn't spotted the nervous gesture.  This was his op, though many higher ups in the government probably considered it a personal vendetta, but he'd be damned if anybody would stop him from bringing down the turncoat bastard who'd been responsible for his disgrace and summary dismissal from the DEA.  Only a team of hotshot and extremely high-priced attorneys had kept him from doing life in prison.  Money did have its privileges. 

“Boss, this gonna take long?  I need to get back to the data I'm running on the Russian job.”  Stefan Carlisle had one of the finest brains in the Western Hemisphere, and his nimble fingers could dance their way across anybody's internet connection with the skill of a sharpshooter zeroing in on the bull's eye. 

“Pipe down, geek-boy,” Nate Blackwell retorted, smacking Stefan on the back of his head.  “He'll brief us when he's ready.” 

“Sheesh, gimme a break.  I've got three different caseloads running simultaneously back at HQ, and I'm damn close on the Sokolov case.”

“Push Sokolov to the back burner, Carlisle, we've got bigger fish to fry.”  He pulled out a folder and laid it precisely on the tabletop before him.  Inside was the key, the integral puzzle piece to finally catching Richard Webster.  After months of dead-ends and a multitude of blind alleys, one itty-bitty blip on the World Wide Web had brought his nemesis to the surface.

“Richard Alexander Webster.” 

Groans rose from a couple of the men seated at the table.  They'd heard the man's name until they were blue in the face.  Knew exactly how much time and effort, not to mention money, Carpenter spent tracking the former DEA agent.  The man was a traitor who'd betrayed the United States government, absconded with millions of dollars in cash, marijuana, and a fortune in illegal weapons.  Somehow, he'd managed to disappear without a trace. 

“We have a lead.”  Carpenter pulled open the folder and slid a glossy eight and a half by eleven inch photo into the middle of the table.  Carlisle let loose a wolf whistle at the woman smiling up from the picture. 

She was gorgeous.  Not in the fashionable sense of stick-figured professional models or Hollywood starlets.  Instead she looked like every man's fantasy woman.  Dressed in business attire, the dark charcoal gray suit did nothing to overtly emphasize her silhouette, but her pencil skirt highlighted and displayed curvy hips, the material pulled tight across her ass as she bent over a file cabinet.  She was partially turned toward the camera, as if she'd been caught off guard by whoever was taking the photo, but her smile mesmerized with its openness and honesty. A deep purple colored blouse beneath the jacket emphasized breasts that would be the envy of any pin-up model.

It was hard to tell from the picture what color her eyes were, but Carpenter instinctively knew they'd be green. 

“Who is she?”  Wilson “Gunner” Everett, Carpenter's security and weapons specialist asked, reaching for the picture.  Carpenter barely resisted snatching it off the table, away from the mens' lustful gazes.  This was business.  Hell, he'd never even met the woman.  He had no right to feel possessive.  Everything was about to change, though, as this case, this woman, pointed them straight at Richard Webster. 

“Her name is Andrea Kirkland.  She's an executive assistant for Lawrence Mitchell of Mitchell International.”

“What's her connection to Webster?  She's obviously involved or you wouldn't bring her into the equation.”  Trust Jean-Luc to get right to the heart of the matter.  The Cajun former Navy SEAL was his best friend.   His blood brother.  They'd taken an oath while still in school to always have each other's backs.  Carpenter had gone to school with all four of the Boudreau brothers, or as the New Orleans' locals called them, Gator's Boys.  He'd lost touch with most of the folks back home over the years when he'd been undercover.  Everyone except Jean-Luc.  

It had been a natural fit to put the ex-SEAL in charge of his private security company when he'd founded it three years ago.  Jean-Luc was an independent S.O.B. who didn't deal with authority well, but he didn't have a problem running things for Carpenter—well not much anyway.  Put two strong alpha personalities together, they'd bump heads from time to time.  It came with the territory.  Fortunately, Jean-Luc understood Carpenter would let him have free reign, but he always had the final word.  As long as nobody tried to overstep their boundaries, things ran smoothly.  

The men on the team understood the hierarchy, and rarely pushed the boundaries.   He could only think of one time, but once was enough when faced with a fire-breathing Cajun dragon. 

Carpenter had no problem leaving the day-to-day operations in Jean-Luc's capable hands.  Everything except this case.  This one was personal.  Dealing with Richard Webster elevated things to a whole different level.   

“Two weeks ago, Ms. Andrea Kirkland initiated a transfer of funds to an account held by Richard Webster.  Different name of course, not an alias we'd seen before, and buried beneath so many dummy corporations it was nearly impossible to track, but boy genius over there,” he gestured to Carlisle, “nailed it down.”

“Are we thinking Ms. Kirkland is working with Webster?”  Nate asked before popping a bite of doughnut into his mouth.  Carpenter shook his head.  Damn, the man was a bottomless pit.  He had no idea how the man put away so much food, but still kept his body trained like a lethal weapon. 

“That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question.  She's the executive assistant to Mitchell.  There's no record of him knowing Webster, though.”

“I've heard of him,” Jean-Luc's deep voice rumbled, his Cajun accent coloring his words.  He rarely spoke in these meetings, preferring to listen and observe, gain all the evidence, information, and facts, to make the job efficient and executable with the minimal amount of fuss or interference by outside entities.  Especially those with alphabet names.  Jean-Luc had a real problem with authority figures.

That didn't mean he didn't keep his thumb on the heartbeat of industry.  He might look and act the droll Southern boy from deep in the Louisiana bayou, but there was a vicious fire breathing dragon underneath the spit and polish portrayal.  One who would swoop in and decimate his enemy while rescuing the damsel in distress without a single scale out of place.  That picture pretty much described Jean-Luc to a T.

“We haven't been able to determine what her connection is to Webster.  The bank transfer was done through Mitchell's corporate account, identified as funds to a service provider or vendor.  Since it was such a small amount, less than ten grand, it skated right beneath the limits of reporting.” 

“Come on, boss, you really think this pretty little gal is in cahoots with Webster?”  Gunner ran his finger along the edge of the photograph, like he could memorize it by touch. 

Carpenter clamped down on the heat rising in his chest.  Teeth clenched until his jaw ached, he forced himself to calm.  “I have no idea exactly what the connection is between Ms. Kirkland and Richard Webster.  It's your job to figure that out.” 

“What's the plan, boss?”  Nate leaned against the corner, his demeanor casual and nonchalant, but Carpenter knew better.  Blackwell was constantly alert and on guard.  With one glance he could tell you exactly where every person was in the coffee shop, how many people were inside the building, what they wore, and who carried weapons. 

Gunner had been Carpenter's first choice when thinking about this operation.  He'd planned to have him go in and get to know Ms. Kirkland, but after seeing his reaction to her photo, he nixed that idea.  The possibility of Gunner falling sway to her pretty face?  Not a chance he was willing to take.