Swords of Exodus [Dead Six 02] (28 page)

“General thievery. You know how it is. Boring stuff,” I answered mechanically.

She and Anders were sitting across from us. Jill was sitting on my right, and Reaper on my left. There was a submachine-toting guard standing at each end of the room. Jill was brooding, her face a mask, barely concealing her emotions. I could understand what she was going through, but thank goodness she was smart enough to let me do the talking. Whatever Katarina was, she was dangerous, and she was also our captor, so Jill was better off holding her rage in for now. I just hoped she would believe me when I had a chance to explain that I was innocent, assuming, of course, that they just didn’t drag us all out back and put a bullet in us first.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I was very surprised to hear that a Spanish businesswoman named Maria Consuela Garcia was coming to The Crossroads to do business with Sala Jihan. The coincidence was striking, considering that identity had originally been prepared for my use. I’m such a fan of irony that I felt I needed to meet this person.”

“Whoops.”

Breakfast had been brought in by servants and sat steaming before us. I had to admit that the bacon smelled really good
.
A plate was put before Kat first. The boss got a steak so rare it still had feelings. “I had heard you were retired. That was the word on the street.”

“This is just a temporary thing I’ve got to take care of, then back to the old folks home.”

“Decent fieldcraft for somebody retired,” Anders stated as he helped himself to a heaping pile of pig meat. “By the way . . .” He paused, pulled something out of his pocket, and tossed it across the table. It was a badly crumpled twenty dollar bill. “I always pay my debts.”

“So you’re out of the business, and you’re no concern of ours, but here you are, in our backyard, with a . . .” Katarina sniffed. “
Crew
. Skyler, it’s good to see that you’re still alive.”

“Uh-huh,” Reaper muttered as he chewed, keeping his head down. He had always despised Katarina. “And it’s
Reaper
.”

“That was such a silly name for a young boy.”

“Well, I’m no kid anymore.”

“Where are Carl and Train? Oh, wait. That’s right. My predecessor here had them both killed. How about that?” Katarina turned to Jill. “And this must be my replacement. Lorenzo always believed in having a pretty young thing on his team. You can get into places that a male thief could only dream of. Oh, but Lorenzo always was
quite
the lady’s man back in the day. You have no idea how many times he seduced some poor girl during our scams, whatever it took to finish the job. He could pretend to be anything, for anyone. Quite the heartbreaker, our Lorenzo, but he always came back to his
crew.
”

Katarina was baiting Jill, testing her, and sadly, Jill fell for it. The mask fell away, and her temper shined through. “He’s my boyfriend, you bitch. We live together.”

“Lorenzo settled down? With
you?
” Katarina laughed as she used a knife to cut her breakfast steak. “What are you, twenty?”

“Twenty-
six
,” Jill answered defiantly. I had a feeling that if it wasn’t for the two guards with P90s, she would have gone across the table and twisted Katarina’s head off. “What’re you,
fifty
?”

Katarina’s eyebrows narrowed. “I’m younger than your
boyfriend.”
I had seen that look before, kind of like how she had looked right before shooting Datuk Keng in the head. She turned her icy blue eyes back toward me. “So, when did you start robbing the cradle?”

I was fourteen years older than Jill. “I make up for it by being immature. It averages out.”

“Well, he dumped your skank ass, and he comes home with me. Speaking of which, I would appreciate it if you kept your tentacles off my man,” Jill said calmly as she scooped herself some breakfast. “Or we’ll have us a problem,
puta
.”

Reaper looked over at me, raised an eyebrow, as if asking if it was okay to watch the catfight. I shook my head in the negative, and then nodded toward the guards. “Jill, machine guns.” My ex was not the person to provoke.

Katarina pushed her plate away. “It’s Jill, right? Well, listen to me carefully,
Jill
. I have been killing people professionally for the world’s most dangerous criminal syndicate since you were wearing a training bra. I clawed my way to the top of this organization by pure ruthlessness. And then, when Big Eddie died, I had to fight every other one of his lieutenants for the scraps. They died. I didn’t. So I won.” Suddenly she reached across the table, faster than I could react, and stabbed her steak knife into the wood directly in front of Jill. The handle vibrated slightly. I had forgotten how fast Kat was. “So don’t think you can come into
my
house and disrespect me in front of my men. Another word, and I
bury
you . . . Now the grownups need to have a conversation.”

Jill started to say something, but I reached over and grabbed her hand under the table. She glanced at me, anger flashing in her dark eyes. I shook my head. Jill had no idea what Katarina was capable of, so hopefully the look I gave her conveyed the danger we were in. Anders glanced around, shrugged, and went back to shoveling food in his face.

“Good. Now where was I?” Katarina smiled, and pulled her plate back. Another knife appeared out of her kimono sleeve, one of those fancy, expensive titanium folders. It was razor sharp and zipped through the meat like it was made of air. “Oh, that’s right. You were about to tell me why you had the audacity to bring a crew onto my territory to perform a job without my permission.”

“Better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” I tried to joke. She didn’t go for it. There was no laughter when Ruthless Kat was in charge. “If I had known it was you, believe me, I would have asked. I didn’t exactly leave the Exchange under the best terms.” I was praying that she didn’t know that I was the one that had killed Eddie.

“Why are you here?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Very well.” Katarina didn’t bother to look up from her food. “Diego, kill the girl.”

One of the guards lifted his subgun. Jill gasped. “Okay! Okay!” I raised my hands. “Don’t shoot. I’ll tell you everything.” The guard lowered the gun, and waited for further instructions.

Katarina smiled as she popped a piece of ultra rare in her mouth. She chewed with her mouth open, a disgusting habit that had always annoyed me. “Your softness surprises me. You’re certainly not the man you used to be. Talk.”

“I’m here looking for a man, an American FBI agent. He came to The Crossroads to investigate Sala Jihan. He was kidnapped. If he’s alive, then I will rescue him.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then I’ll kill the people that took him,” I stated simply. “Then I’ll go home.”

“Just like that?” Katarina quipped.

“Just like that.”

“Tell me, why on earth would you, of all people, be trying to help an American policeman? Ahh . . . yes. Your brother was FBI, wasn’t he? You mentioned that once. Oh, and you were even foolish enough to take on your adopted family’s name as your cover.” Katarina snapped her fingers, and one of the guards quickly brought her an iPad. He placed it into her waiting hand, then retreated back to his station. She began to read. “Special Agent Robert T. Lorenzo. Disgraced, paranoid, delusional, conspiracy theorist, fired for revealing classified information, disappears from the US, only to arrive in The Crossroads, to immediately stir up trouble by harassing Sala Jihan, which, by the way, is never wise. He’s a nosy, self-righteous, goody-two-shoes, law-and-order pig, who meddles in affairs he does not understand, and pays the price.”

“So, you’ve met Bob. Where is he?”

“Sala Jihan has him,” Anders spoke up. “By the time I found out, there was nothing I could do.”

I turned my attention from Katarina to Anders. “Why would you
do
anything?”

Anders wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “Because Bob Lorenzo came here to find me.”

“I don’t understand.”

The giant shook his head. “I’m the Fourth Operative.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I didn’t know what to say. Bob had been right all along. “You’re the man that knows about Project Blue?”

Anders dropped his fork on his empty plate. “Take a walk with me, Lorenzo. There are some things you need to know.”

Chapter 15: Old Friends

VALENTINE

Crossroads City

March 15th

Our breath smoldered in the frigid air as Ling and I stepped out into daylight. Though the sun only occasionally peeked through the heavy layer of gray clouds, the snow amplified the brightness enough that I put on a pair of tinted goggles. These had the added benefit of helping to conceal my identity. We were dressed in what passed for street clothes in The Crossroads: heavy jackets, knit caps, and thick gloves, most of it either North Chinese or Russian military surplus. All of the high-end cold weather gear I’d been issued might have drawn more attention.

Our armament was limited to what handguns we could conceal. My custom Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum revolver was in its usual place on my left hip, but it was buried beneath several layers of clothing. I could get to it, but it wouldn’t be a fast draw by any means. So I’d asked my Exodus compatriots for something smaller, that I could stash in the pocket of my coat. I was graciously offered several compact handguns. I picked a Taurus Protector Poly, a hideous .357 Magnum snubby with a polymer frame. Ugliness notwithstanding, it fit into the hand-warmer pockets of my jacket perfectly. Being a revolver, it could be fired from the pocket without malfunctioning, and I shoot revolvers better than automatics anyway.

Together, Ling and I made our way across the cluttered, crowded mess that was Crossroads City. Shops and stores of every sort lined the winding street, and where there weren’t shops there were ramshackle carts or people selling goods out of the backs of trucks. The air stunk of diesel and burning trash.

At the heart of the town was the literal crossroads from which the settlement had gotten its name. The east-west road from Kazakhstan to Mongolia intersected with a north-south road that ran from Russia into North China. Railroad tracks ran parallel to the north-south road. A bustling train station sat just south of the intersection and seemed to be the center of activity. Scores of people crowded the platform as more boarded and disembarked a stopped train. The station itself had once been very ornate, decorated in old Soviet art-deco style. Much of it had been vandalized, stolen, shot up, or crumbled from decades of neglect.

Twin statues of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong flanked the main entrance to the station. Each had their arms uplifted in the air, like something off of an old propaganda poster. Only, Stalin’s arm had been missing for many years and Mao had been spray painted with graffiti. His arm was being used to hold up a line of Christmas lights strung up over a noodle stand.

Ling and I had volunteered to go looking for Lorenzo. Even though the picture I’d been shown was blurry, there was no mistaking Anders. I had a score to settle with that son of a bitch and was eager to put a .44 slug through him. I didn’t tell Ling this, of course. Revenge might seem unprofessional, and I really didn’t want to get left at the safe house. I was sick of being cooped up. I’d been locked in a dingy old building for a long time, and I’d had my fill of it.

We didn’t bother going to the Arena. It was public and we knew he’d been carried away. That left us with only one place that was worth checking: the Glorious Cloud Hotel. That was where Lorenzo, Jill, and Reaper were staying under their assumed identities. An Exodus informant worked the desk there and Ling wanted to question her. A pair of Exodus operatives, from a different safe house, were supposed to meet us there.

The Glorious Cloud didn’t look glorious from the outside, but given the surroundings it was actually pretty nice. It was very quiet inside, decorated sort of like a P.F. Chang’s restaurant. Ling told me to wait by the door and stand watch as she approached the desk clerk, an elderly Chinese woman with a hard gleam in her eye.

People, mostly Westerners, came and went as if The Crossroads was just another tourist destination. Just by looking at the folks inside the Glorious Cloud, one might not get the impression that The Crossroads was as nasty a place as it actually was. I could only wonder what criminal business brought most of the guests to this godforsaken corner of the globe.

“Jill and Reaper were taken from here late last night,” Ling said, speaking very softly. “Four armed men, Europeans, came into the hotel, went up to the top floor, where Mr. Lorenzo was staying, and returned a few minutes later, leading them out the door.”

“No one said anything?”

“This is The Crossroads, Michael. She also told me that if other Exodus members are here, they didn’t identify themselves to her.”

“We should check Lorenzo’s room.”

“Yes. She gave me the key. Come on.”

The top floor of the hotel was quiet. There were only a few rooms on the fifth floor, and they were the most expensive ones available. The entire level was designed to minimize noise and dampen sound. Our footsteps barely made any noise on the carpet. An ornate fountain babbled quietly along one wall. The walls were made of red wood and had beautiful tapestries hung on them.

Ling unzipped her jacket. “That’s the room up ahead.” I nodded and unzipped my own jacket so I could get to my .44. Upon reaching the door, she tried the handle. The room was unlocked. The Exodus operative looked back at me as she pulled an engraved Browning Hi-Power pistol from a holster on her belt and swiped the safety off. I nodded again and drew my .44, holding it close to my chest, muzzle-down.

Ling quietly opened the door. Somebody was talking inside. We entered the suite as quietly as we could. Ling moved like a cat, graceful and silent. Lorenzo had himself a nice setup there, a multi-room suite. The entrance room was a small foyer that led to a central common room. The voices were coming from there.

We swept into the room, guns raised. There were two men in the room. They were armed too, and startled. I had one, a thin man with a brown complexion and dark hair, in my sights. Ling held up her left hand, “Hold on,” so I didn’t fire. His eyes were big and white as he stared at my revolver. The Glock 19 in his hands was shaking.
He must be new at this
.

“Diamond,” Ling said cryptically.

“Sapphire,” the other man responded. Ling lowered her pistol, and so did they. I let my .44 linger on my target for just a moment before pulling the big gun back to my chest.

“Michael, this is the other team that was sent to the hotel,” Ling said. “They are from Ibrahim’s sword.”

“Michael?” the other Exodus operative asked. He was a short man, dressed in dark clothes, his face hidden under a watch cap, Oakley sunglasses, and a scarf. His voice sounded familiar. “Val?”
Very
familiar. He pulled down the scarf.

I blinked hard. “Skunky?”

“Hey bro,” he said sheepishly, holstering the two-tone Beretta 9mm he carried. “Long time no see.”

“Jesus tapdancing Christ,” I blasphemed. “What the fuck are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since . . .”

He smiled. “Since Mexico? Yeah. I know. Sorry about that.” He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me in an awkward man-hug, slapping me on the back as he did so.

“Friend of yours?” the other Exodus man asked Skunky.

“We were in Vanguard together.”

Skunky’s real name was Jeff Long. He’d grown up in California, the son of Chinese immigrants. About a year before Vanguard had landed the Mexico contract, he was assigned to my team, Switchblade 4. He had been there on our last mission, acting as our team’s designated marksman, when our chopper was shot down. The last I’d heard, Tailor had tried to recruit Skunky, just like he had for me, for Project Heartbreaker. Now I knew why he’d declined. “You’re working for Exodus? How? Why?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” He grinned.

“I recruited him the same time I tried to recruit you,” Ling said. “You were both instrumental in saving Ariel.”

Me, Skunky, and Tailor had been the only survivors of Switchblade 4’s disastrous operation in Mexico. “Hell, did you try to recruit Tailor too?”

“He wasn’t Exodus material.” She didn’t explain what
Exodus material
meant, but Tailor was a lunatic.

Skunky laughed. “Tailor was one cigarette being put out on his skin as a kid away from being a serial killer.”

“He had my back in Zubara.”

“Yeah, I heard that went south . . .”

Ling turned her attention back to Skunky. “You two can catch up later. What have you found here?”

“There is some sign of a struggle,” he said, indicating for us to follow him into one of the rooms. “The door wasn’t kicked in, but there was definitely a struggle.”

A laptop sat on the desk in one of the rooms, a screen saver displayed on its monitor. It was connected to a pair of external hard drives. Another cable ran from a USB port to what looked like a modem of some kind. A cable from that ran out onto the balcony, where a compact satellite dish was set up. A pair of headphones was plugged into the machine, still playing heavy metal. The chair was knocked over. Half a dozen empty cans of Monster energy drink were scattered across the room. Reaper struck me as messy. What gave it away was that a half-full can of Monster had spilled on the desk, around the laptop, and hadn’t been wiped up. Messy or not, that boy would never let anything like that happen to his equipment.

“This is Reaper’s room alright,” I told Ling. “So Anders has got Lorenzo, Jill, and Reaper.”

Ling cursed in Chinese. “This is not good. They know too much about our operation.”

“Do you know the people we’re looking for, Val?” Skunky asked.

I nodded. “You have no idea.”

LORENZO

The Montalban Exchange

Crossroads City

March 15th

There was a large balcony that circled the top level of the Montalban exchange. The red tile roof was suspended over our heads by giant wooden beams, and the only thing that separated us from a good plunge to the ground was an intricately wrought iron railing, complete with dragons and swans. The breeze carried the rough civilization smells of The Crossroads up to us. Jill and Reaper had been escorted back to the
guest
quarters. Anders and I walked the perimeter while one of the guards shadowed us, far enough back to not hear anything.

“So, who are you? And what is all this Fourth Operative bullshit?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Anders picked a spot with a good view of the mountains, and leaned against the railing. It creaked against his weight. As big as he was, Anders was probably a solid two-seventy of muscle. “Let me tell you a story first.”

This man had shadowed me for days without being spotted. I already knew he was dangerous. I wasn’t in a story mood, but no need to push him. Anders took his time finding words. I got the impression that he wasn’t much of a talker. “I assume you know something about my former organization.”

I nodded. “Just what Bob said in his notes.”

“I doubt he knew much.”

“Enough to throw his life away in some vain attempt to stop Majestic for launching Project Blue.”

Anders smiled briefly, still staring out over the distance. “Majestic . . . The name started out as a joke. Our organization had lots of names, none of them official, most of those names were just line items on a budget that went into a big black hole. It was the conspiracy theorists that started calling it Majestic. We laughed at them, but it had a nice ring to it, so it stuck. But that was long before I was recruited.”

“From where?”

The big man shrugged, not wanting to say any more about himself. “What I was doesn’t matter now. Those days are gone. There is only
now
.”

“That’s very Zen of you, Leif Erikson.”

Anders looked over at me, raising one eyebrow, as if internally debating whether he should just kill me on the spot, but he continued. “There’s a secret war being fought. It’s a cold war, but both sides have spilt a lot of blood.”

“Between who?”

Anders looked at me like I was stupid. “Between my guys and the Illuminati.”

“Another joke name, I take it.”

“Of course. I don’t know what they call themselves. It’ll do though. You of all people should know all about them. You’ve served the Illuminati interests most of your life.”

“My brother’s the conspiracy theorist. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Just another pawn then.” Anders went back to looking at the view, his unkempt beard fluttered in the breeze. “Majestic was founded to fight commies, but they were bound to butt heads with these other assholes. The Illuminati is made up of thirteen powerful families. They’re all old, powerful, and rich. They’ve been pulling the strings for a long time. Their base is mostly European, but they’re involved in everything, same as us. Business, crime, politics, currency manipulation, terrorism, you name it, they’ve got a piece.”

“I’ve never heard of them before Bob’s notes, let alone worked for them.”

“One of the thirteen families is Montalban. Ring any bells, jackass?”

“Heard of them . . .” I muttered.

“Rafael Montalban was the head of the family. It was supposed to be hands off, but Gordon had him offed in Zubara. Next in line was his brother Eduard. You killed him. Now their family is in shambles, but the other twelve go about their business, still having their secret war, like nothing ever happened. Whichever side wins steers the destiny of the world.”

I could honestly say that I didn’t want to root for either side in this one.

“Project Blue was our doomsday contingency plan to destroy the Illuminati once and for all. If the war ever went from cold to hot, my team’s job was to cut their heads off in a preemptive strike.” Anders cleared his throat and spit over the edge, watching it fall all the way to the bottom. “Majestic is so layered in secrets that nobody ever knows what’s going on. The highest levels come up with plans, but they don’t want to know how we get the job done. They just want it done. The first operative, his name was Barrington, was given the mission parameters and told to set the contingency plans in place.”

“The senator?”

“Former senator. He was the idea man. Gordon Willis was number two, operations, he made it happen. Gordon was my immediate boss in black ops. He picked me and another guy named Hunter to be the boots on the ground.”