Extraordinary Retribution (9 page)

“Elimination. Assassination.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “
Murder
, however you want to label it. And that detective showed me photos,
doctored
photos, showing the cabin was
fine!
Claiming I’d made the whole thing up!”

Houston shook her head. “They might not have been doctored.”

He pushed away from the table. “Look, I know what I saw.”

“I’m not questioning what you saw, Francisco. But I’d put money that if you return to the cabin today, you’ll see some work has been done.”

He sat very still. The implications were insane.
Paranoid
. Major conspiracy theory material. “Do you know what you are saying?”

She nodded. “I’m saying that someone wants what happened to your brother buried deeply and forgotten.”

“Someone?
Who
?”

“We’ll get to that later.”

His fist slammed down on the table, spilling coffee and turning heads. “I need answers, now!” His anger and frustration shocked him. Eyes darted in their direction.

“I’m
sorry
, I can’t give them to you
now
. Not here,” she whispered sharply. They were both silent for several minutes until the patrons turned away once more. She laughed softly. “Miguel said you had a temper. And a hell of a left hook.”

Father Lopez closed his eyes. “Fights. Miguel was with me in many. As a teen, before I embraced the Church, it was the only thing I was good at. Two dark Mexican boys in junior high in Alabama? You can imagine. Once I got angry, it came naturally. Too easily.” He sighed and opened his eyes. “Look, two cops saw the wreckage. Saw the body. Saw the scene. Now they’re dead. Am I to think something suspicious about that?”

Houston leaned in closer. “What cops? When?”

“They came right after I called 911. Two young guys. They combed the scene, examined my brother’s body. Asked me a bunch of questions. Wrote it
all
down. They looked a hundred times more professional than anyone else around here I’ve dealt with.”

“Oh God, Francisco. Those weren’t police.” She looked at him pityingly.

“What do you mean they weren’t police? I
saw
them! They had uniforms, badges, police vehicles.”

“Police showing up instantly on a mountain road? Walking around a crime scene, potentially contaminating it? Ruining evidence?” She shook her head. “Whatever you saw was a carefully planned ruse to deceive you. They weren’t police, Francisco. And they’re not dead.”

“The detective said the officers were dead, died in an accident.”

“I’m sure the real officers are dead.”

His expression was a shocked mask. He didn’t know if he could absorb any more of this madness. “Who were they then? These killers?”

“I don’t know, Francisco. They’re part of this. Whatever
this
is. There’s a lot I need to explain, and a lot I can’t, because I don’t know myself. But your brother’s death is not the first.” She exhaled slowly. “I came here to warn your brother, Francisco. There have been a lot of deaths from my old division. I worked with many of them. I worked with Miguel.” Her face tightened, and she looked away. “I’m here unofficially. The CIA will not
officially
recognize what is happening. There is a web, of dirt and lies, and I don’t know who is tangled in it. I just knew that Miguel was in danger.”

“You cared a lot about him,” said Father Lopez.

She glanced out the window, her face set. “Yes, Francisco, I did.”

Who is this Sara Houston?
Lopez eyed her closely, a determined look on his face. “Then, maybe you want what I want. Maybe, you
can
help me.”

Her blue eyes locked with his. “To do what?”

Lopez worked hard to control his voice, his emotions. He fingered the arrowhead underneath his shirt, hung now as a pendent alongside his cross. “Find his killers. Bring them to justice.”

14

S
till and silent, three men sat at a table in a dimly lit and dusty room. The walls had the appearance of years of neglect, and a musty smell drifted upwards from the floorboards. A fine mist of particles hung in the air like a fog, screening out the faint light from a cracked window across from the door. The men stirred, turning their heads toward the doorway as a fourth man entered, a look of suspicion on his anxious face.

“I was followed, but I lost the tail before entering the packing district.” He was lanky, in his mid-fifties, with gray, thinning hair trimmed close to his scalp. He wore an expensive suit completely at odds with his surroundings, a contrast echoed in the dress and mannerisms of the other conspirators. Looking across their faces, he could barely make them out in the dim light.
Better that way
, he thought cynically.
We’re only ciphers now.

“You’re sure, Farnell?” asked the shadow on his right.

He glared at the man. “I know what I’m doing, Phoenix.
And no names
. We’re in the middle of nowhere, in this godforsaken dump, but we must never slacken protocol. Handles only.”

The shadow nodded, chastened. “Yes, Nexus. Play the spy games to the end.”

“That’s why we’re alive, you fool.”

Nexus removed three thumb drives. “The latest reports, gentlemen. It’s not pretty.”

A nasally voice came from a dim form on his left. “Stone?”

“Dead,” said Nexus. “Lopez, too. Our men were too late.”

A third man with a baritone spoke. “Lopez was our best.”

Nexus sighed. “Yes, he was, Bravo. Too idealistic for what we really needed him for, but unmatched. We didn’t know about his safe house, or we could have been there sooner.”

There was a silence in the room until Bravo added flatly. “Our
wraith.
”

Nexus simply nodded. “Assets posing as police were there just after his brother arrived at the scene.”

“The priest?” asked Bravo.

“Yes. He had no useful information. Said Lopez had acted strangely, left his family in a panic. Nothing we didn’t know or couldn’t guess.”

“Who’s left?” asked Phoenix.

“From the Removal Unit? Only Miller. He’s gone into hiding, we can’t locate him.”

Bravo sounded grim. “The wraith will. There is no hiding.”

Nexus stood up and paced the small room. “We’re trapped, gentlemen. This was our baby, and it’s come back to eat us. We can’t call for help. No backup, no reinforcements. Our program was black, buried, and must stay that way. It goes much too high and is much too hot. We’re alone.”

The nasal-voiced man coughed. “Do you think it will end with these deaths?”

Nexus chuckled. “Afraid for your own skin, are you, Zulu? Well, we all ought to be. This
isn’t
over. Whatever this is,
who
ever is behind it, they have eliminated nearly all the operatives of that SRU mission. They have been systematic. They clearly have resources.
They know
. No, gentlemen, I don’t think this is over at all.”

The man on the right sounded panicked. “Langley isn’t going to help us?”

“We’ve been over that,” clipped Bravo, dismissively.

Nexus paused. “Lophius has other resources. He’ll make them available.”

“The assets? Who are they?” asked Zulu plaintively, looking between Bravo and Nexus.

“They are well-trained. All of them are former employees. Decommissioned when the pansies came into office. We’ll trap the
wraith
, you can be assured of that. Our biggest worry is keeping this from the light of day. There are more important things than our hides to protect.”

“There are complications.” It was the baritone.

Nexus raised an eyebrow. “Continue, Bravo.”

“The Houston woman. It’s confirmed. She has spoken with the priest.”

“
Damn!
” Nexus ran his fingers through his wispy hair. “She could blow this entire thing open.”

“Or lead us to the wraith,” added Bravo.

Nexus eyed the shadow and nodded. “We’ll assign two assets full-time to her, and this priest, if he gets involved. Watch for now.” The lanky man glanced out the cracked window, the weak light giving his face an unearthly paleness. “But if this gets out of hand, we’ll have to terminate them both.”

15

T
he time had come. Leaving now was risky. He wasn’t close to fully healed, and an escape could end before it really began. But he had to go underground again. He could not remain so exposed and vulnerable. Too much time had passed.

The physicians had
seen
. It would be in the reports. Nurses, too.
Too many
. He sighed. He would not eliminate them: his was a pursuit of justice, and he would not taint his quest by killing innocents unnecessarily. But it would not be long before they were questioned. Even the slow minds at the CIA would figure it out, eventually.

I’m running out of time.

He had accumulated an extraordinary stash of items from the hospital: gauges, first aid kits, antibiotics, steroids, plasma, needles, supplemented protein powder, stimulants. He would need them all. Feigning far more disability than was real, he had distracted the medical staff. Besides, they were too busy with endless trauma to check the many recesses, drawer bottoms, and other hidden places that existed in a hospital room. Eventually, they would.

I’m running out of time.

He raised himself from the bed, his back screaming in pain, reminding him that the injuries were very real. He had slipped the painkillers under his tongue and spat them out later. He needed to be fully alert. The pain would be suppressed.

The lights were out, the hospital staffed minimally in the predawn hours. He had memorized this trauma center’s rhythms, its personnel. He knew the guard was flirting with the late-shift nurse about now, both often breaking the rules and smoking outside by the emergency stairway. He would need to be quiet when he passed the exit door to the parking garage underground.

He donned the surgical scrubs he had lifted the night before from the laundry cart—his pants and shirt were ruined. He filled a laundry bag with thousands of dollars of medical items, put on his shoes, and limped slowly out of the room.

Each night, he had walked repeatedly to build stamina, but such efforts could only go so far. He felt dizzy after a few flights of stairs. He set the bag down and caught his breath.
My hematocrit is absurdly low.
He would have to eat dramatically over the coming months to build his body back to performance level. Then there would be the hours of torturous rehabilitation. He grunted as he picked up the bag and continued to the lower level.

The parking garage was utterly deserted and still. His footsteps softly reverberated as he stumbled across the concrete towards a beige four-by-four. He smiled to see a shotgun in the back and hoped there were shells in the glove compartment. He drew a deep breath. This would take a lot out of him.

Ten minutes later, covered in sweat, he pulled out of the garage in the hot-wired vehicle. He came to a stop by his car in the outside lot. He would take what he needed and keep the truck. Where he was going, it would prove useful, and no one would look for it deep in the mountains. He opened the door and stumbled out of the truck.

“And just look at you.”

The voice came from behind him. He turned around quickly, preparing to engage, but his efforts demanded too much of his damaged body, and he tottered, stumbling forward into the solid shape in front of him. A pair of muscled arms caught him, and lowered him slowly to the ground.
Why isn’t he attacking me?

“Who are you?” he croaked out.

“Who am I?” scoffed the voice. “I see your appearance, what you have done to yourself, what others have done.
I
should ask, who are
you?!
”

The voice was deep, gruff, full of command. It reminded him of desert sands.
And combat
. He felt his consciousness fading.

A hand slapped his cheeks and his eyes refocused. The voice boomed. “Not yet, you fool! I have to get you out of here. This is your car, I know from the transmitter inside that called me.”

“Called you?” Everything seemed a blur.

“Yes! We had agreed.
You
arranged it. I knew you must have been in trouble to activate the rescue call. I told you in Israel that you wouldn’t survive this madness.”

“Rescue call.
Israel
. “ It sounded familiar. Plans and counter-options spun in his mind.

“
Derrmo!
You are delirious. First, we get you up and into that nice truck you have stolen. Then, some of these nice American discount stores dotting the roadways. You need clothes, food, other useful things.” The shape dug a hand through the hospital bag. “You have quite a collection, you thief. We will need all of this and more. You have to heal.”

Heal
. Yes, he had to heal, and rebuild his shattered body. He knew that hard road. He had done it before—
that
he remembered. When he had healed, then he would remember who this man was and why he was helping.

The shape pulled him to his feet and helped him into the vehicle. He felt himself dissolve into a rough sea of consciousness, dreams weaving the real with the imagined. He saw before him an extended plain, a battlefield divided in two. Like an eagle, he swooped in front of an army and planted his claws in the trodden grass. Across the divide, there screamed a legion of monsters, demons risen from the depths of hell, but their grotesque bodies possessed the faces of men! His winged arms held a broadsword and a shield. Blood dripped from the tattered flesh of his back.

He would finish this war. Those who had orchestrated the great injustice would pay dearly. He raised the sword in defiance of his enemy’s howls.

I am your death!

Part 2

16

T
he CIA woman ignored the speed limit. Father Lopez unconsciously checked his seat belt again.
95mph!
And she had not stopped talking the entire drive. He had at least confiscated her cell phone and offered to check the messages for her.
Mother of God.