Swords Of Exodus Part 14

The first time I'd actually met Lorenzo was in Zubara. I put a bullet through an arms dealer named Jalal Hosani, and that same slug hit Lorenzo . . . who unfortunately had been wearing a vest. The night that Fort Saradia fell to the Zubarans, Lorenzo had broken into my room, trying to steal an old Arabian puzzle box that I'd taken on one of my operations with Dead Six. I closed my eyes as that memory came back to me. That was the night Sarah died. I would've died with her if he hadn't dragged me out. We'd met one last time, this time as reluctant allies to get Jill back from Gordon. We parted ways when I'd gone after Gordon. I'd never known much about him, hadn't wanted to, and figured I'd never see him again.

The snarky thief had done quite well for himself. Somehow he now basically owned an island and lived a life of leisure and luxury. Meanwhile I was getting mind-f.u.c.ked by a mad scientist working for a shadow government organization. It hardly seemed fair, all things considered.

Returning my attention to what I was doing, I clicked through the files on Ling's laptop. I was alone in the bungalow, but before Ling left she showed me all of the information that they'd recovered from North Gap. Much of it was about me. It was unsettling, to say the least. Dr. Olivia Silvers had taken me on as a pet project. Originally, they were interested in me because of Project Blue. Once they realized I'd told them everything I knew, Silvers opted to keep me there for her own purposes, stringing her superiors along that I might still be useful. I suspected that her doing so was the only reason they hadn't just taken me out back and shot me. I basically owed her my life.

I wasn't going to send her a thank-you card.

I had barely been able to sleep the night before. I'd been drugged, sedated, restrained, exhausted, and unconscious for so long that I just didn't want to lie in bed anymore. Then there were the dreams. They weren't nightmares, exactly. These dreams were different. There were numbers that didn't mean anything to me, places I wasn't familiar with, and people I mostly didn't recognize, voices, overlapping and contradictory, some familiar, some not. They had to be subconscious leftovers from my time in Silvers' tank.

One person I did recognize from the bizarre dreams was Lorenzo's brother, the other Lorenzo, Bob. Probably because I had given him up. He was the one I'd given Colonel Hunter's flash drive to, and he'd dumped that information onto the internet. From what I'd heard from Ling, Project Heartbreaker was now a well-known government scandal. From what I'd heard today, it turned out that Bob had been trying to expose them for years. I regretted not trusting him more when we'd last spoken. I wanted to find him. We needed to compare notes.

Ling's rescue had retrieved a box with all the things that had been in my possession when I had been captured. My custom Smith & Wesson 629 Performance Center Cla.s.sic .44 Magnum revolver was returned to me, complete with holster, the couple boxes of ammo I had in the car when they took me, and speed loaders. I'd meticulously cleaned and function-checked the heavy, stainless-steel firearm. It felt good in my hand. My arm felt more whole when I held it. Having it on my hip again was a welcome comfort. It wasn't just my gun, though. My clothes were in there, loose-fitting now, since I'd lost weight in captivity, as well as my shoes. I found my Benchmade Infidel automatic knife, too, which I was happy to have back. More important than that was my father's harmonica. I'd been carrying it everywhere since Afghanistan and was happy I didn't lose it.

Staying focused was difficult. I looked at the screen again. I had just watched a security camera video of one of my interrogation sessions. It was a surreal experience. You'd think it'd be hard to watch, but I found myself oddly detached from it all. My concentration was interrupted by a knock on the door. "It's open."

Lorenzo stepped into the little beach house. "Hey," he said awkwardly.

"Yo," I said. Lorenzo was an una.s.suming-looking man. He might be Mexican, sort of, maybe Middle Eastern, or even Indian. He had tanned skin, dark hair, and no really remarkable features. His face was accented only by unshaven stubble, like a permanent five o'clock shadow. He was shorter than me, but muscular. His eyes always seemed to be watching you and he moved like he was wound pretty tight. It was really hard to tell how old he was, probably somewhere between thirty and forty-five. It was probably closer to the higher end just because of his apparent level of experience.

"You were in Switchblade, huh?" he asked.

I looked up at him. "Yeah . . . yeah I was. Switchblade Four, to be specific, for a few years. How'd you know?"

"Reaper did some digging on you. You guys made the cover of Soldier of Fortune."

I smiled. "Yeah, I remember that. We all had to pay up, a case of beer each."

"Who was your team leader?"

"Huh? Ramirez. Jesus Ramirez," I said, p.r.o.nouncing his name "hey-sous." "But we all called him . . ."

"You all called him Jesus," Lorenzo interrupted, p.r.o.nouncing it like Jesus from the Bible. "And everyone would make bad puns about when Jesus is coming back, or Jesus is watching you, or Jesus saves."

I looked around nervously, not sure what to say. "Uh . . . Yeah, we did. Did you know him?" Lorenzo knew Hawk somehow, but neither man ever told me what their history was.

"A long time ago, back when he was the FNG. So Ramirez was a lifer?"

"I guess so. He was older than most of the team leaders. He'd been in that spot for a while, but was getting ready to move over to training, with Hawk, or maybe Corporate, when . . ."

"How'd he go out?"

"Helicopter crash. Mexico."

Lorenzo's face was a mask. If he was bothered by Ramirez' death he didn't show it. "Was Decker still in command?" he asked, the tone of his voice changing slightly. It sounded like there was some bad blood there.

"Not really. Decker was the CEO and head of Operations for all of Vanguard, but I only met him a few times. I heard he still did training and stuff, but I never saw him on any of our ops unless he was showcasing us for potential clients. He was the Corporate front of Vanguard. He wore a suit instead of fatigues and surrounded himself with lawyers and accountants."

An unfriendly smile appeared on his face. "That's Decker for you."

"How do you know Decker? Or Ramirez? Or Hawk, for that matter."

"That's none of your business, kid," he said levelly. He was quiet for a moment, took a deep breath, then looked me in the eye like he was trying to bore a hole through my face. "I worked with Decker, and Hawk, and Ramirez a long time ago. Before there was a Vanguard corporation, before Decker became Mister Legitimate Businessman. It was just Switchblade back then. It was a different world. It was before PMCs got big, went mainstream. We did the dirty work."

"So did we," I suggested. "We just had PR firms to put a pretty face on it all. So what happened between you?"

"Things got complicated," Lorenzo said. He pulled out a chair, flipped it around, and sat across from me, leaning on the chair-back. Between us was a small wicker table with Ling's laptop on it. "I need to ask you some questions."

My eye twitched involuntarily. "What is it?"

"I'm not going to pretend that I busted you out of there because I like you. No offense."

"None taken."

"My brother came into contact with your girlfriend in Asia."

"He did?"

"Did she tell you?"

"Obviously not."

"My brother told Ling that there was something in your head important enough to die for. Now I risked my life getting you out of there, I brought you into my home, and I want to know what it is."

I shook my head and chuckled to myself.

"What the h.e.l.l are you laughing at?" Lorenzo growled. He was agitated.

"I don't know," I said simply.

"You don't know what?"

"Whatever it is your brother thinks I know, I don't know."

"What? He talked on and on about Project Blue. What the h.e.l.l is Project Blue?"

My eyes narrowed. "I don't know."

Lorenzo came up out of his chair. I stood up too, trying to back away. He grabbed me and pushed me against the wall, spilling my chair over as he did so. I was still shaky enough that I couldn't put up much resistance.

"What the f.u.c.k do you mean you don't know? My brother was willing to get me killed over this! He's probably dead now because of it, and you're telling me you don't know? You're f.u.c.king lying! Tell me what-" Lorenzo abruptly fell silent as I pushed the muzzle of my revolver into his chin.

"I don't know," I said quietly. "They asked me the same thing. I told them I didn't know. They kept me in solitary confinement, I told them I didn't know. They moved me to some secret prison, and I told them I didn't know. They used drugs on me, and I told them I didn't know. They shocked me with tasers, attacked me with a dog, beat me with sticks, left me out in the snow, f.u.c.ked with my mind, and I kept telling them I don't know. I don't f.u.c.king know what . . ." I began to cough. I'd been screaming in Lorenzo's face. His eyes were wide, but hard. "I don't know," I repeated, trying to catch my breath.

"I saved your life, twice," he spat, still not moving. "I risked my life to go get you, because my brother thought you were worth it. And you mean to tell me that it was all a mistake?" His voice was cold and level, and he was so mad he was nearly shaking. "Then you come into my house and stick a gun in my face?"

I met his glare. I was Calm. Lorenzo's life was in danger, even if he was too stubborn to realize it. "Get your G.o.dd.a.m.n hands off me before Jill has to come down here and clean your brains off the ceiling fan." Lorenzo stared me down defiantly, but his grip on my s.h.i.+rt loosened. I pushed him away and backed up until I was leaning against the wall. I kept the gun trained on him. The thief was livid. He stood there, glaring at me, looking like he wanted nothing more than to break my neck. My gun didn't waver. He was pretty fast with a pistol but I wasn't going to give him a chance.

"I'm sorry, Lorenzo. I'm sorry you all went through this for me. You think it's what I wanted? You think I wanted Ling to risk her life for my sorry a.s.s? All I wanted was to die, this time and the last time. Twice in a row you got involved, didn't let me die when I was supposed to, and both times you got p.i.s.sed at me because of it. I'm sorry, okay? I don't know what Project Blue is, and I don't know why it's so important to Bob or Majestic. The last thing Colonel Hunter told me before he died was 'Evangeline', and he didn't say who that is or why she's important. He didn't say anything about Project Blue. I'm sorry, but I just don't know."

Lorenzo didn't say anything else. He just turned and walked out of the beach house. After he left, I set the revolver down and buried my face in my shaking hands. I hoped that Ling would get back soon.

LORENZO.

"What's wrong, chief?" Reaper asked, looking up from the multiple computer screens that now filled one of my spare bedrooms. His stringy black hair was draped over half of his pale face. Even a few days of glorious St. Carl sun couldn't darken Reaper. The boy had no pigment. "You look p.i.s.sed."

"Son of b.i.t.c.h pointed a gun at me, in my own f.u.c.king house. My own house!" I punched the door frame hard enough to hurt my hand. "I should have taken that .44 and shoved it up his a.s.s. And this is after I saved his miserable life, the lousy, screwed-in-the-head, ingrate mother-"

"Say what?" Reaper cut me off as he pulled his iPod earbuds out. I could hear the blaring death metal from ten feet away.

I bit my lip. Yelling at Reaper, however tempting, wouldn't help anything. "Nothing. Never mind. How are you doing on the cover ident.i.ties?"

Contrary to what you see in movies, you can't just create a whole new ident.i.ty on a whim. It takes preparation and resources. Some countries were easier than others. In the third world, it was a piece of cake, wave around some money and tell people whatever you wanted. In nations that had computerized record keeping, professional police that actually investigated things, photo ID, taxes and other horrible things like that, it took a lot more work. The key was always some sort of number. A number let you create history. In the US, it was a social security number, and most of the developed world had some sort of equivalent. There were people who made huge sums of money farming these things. For cheap, you end up with an ID that is being shared by hundreds of illegal aliens. For guys like me, you end up with a social security number that belongs to somebody who actually existed, but never developed any of their own history. Invalids, for example.

In the modern world, people don't just pop into existence anymore. Those golden days were long gone. Now when you created an ident.i.ty, you had to groom it. I had a dozen names ready to go from six different countries. Each of those imaginary people had jobs working for corporations that were wholly owned by other international corporations, and so forth, in a maze of sh.e.l.ls actually owned by me. These imaginary people got paid a salary, which of course flowed back into other accounts that I controlled, which then went back to the corporations, to pay them again later. They all traveled for a living, with addresses consisting of PO Boxes. And once a year, they even automatically filed taxes in their respective nations just like my sh.e.l.l corporations did. I kept quite a few clueless accountants very happy. Keeping these things up cost me a lot of money, but they were oh so worth it.

Reaper spun his chair back around and pointed at the screen. "Me and you, no problem, I've got like twenty to choose from. For the others, I'm using some of the IDs I created back when we were in Malaysia. They were the escape set I developed that we never ended up using . . . I was thinking, the Exodus guys have their own, but if they needed one for Valentine, I could use one of Carl's old ones and shop the picture. Carl was too short, but we could always say he had a growth spurt."

I didn't know what Exodus' next move was. Shen, Antoine, and Dr. Bundt had been hanging around a lot before, but I hadn't seen any of them in the last couple of days. They had gotten rooms at the little tourist hotel in town, probably to give Ling time alone with the kid. Dr. Bundt had been mildly annoying, but I had actually enjoyed working with Shen and Antoine. Neither one talked a lot, and both liked to hit people. You can't ask for much more than that. Ling could sit around and mope with her boyfriend for all I cared, as long as they did it someplace far away from my people.

"You'll have to ask them. Valentine might not live that long, but whatever gets him off my island faster, awesome. . . . " Having the most wanted man in the world staying in my guest house didn't really fit with that whole low profile vibe. "And when we find Bob?" We would need ID for my brother to get out. Of course, that was a.s.suming this was still a rescue mission, and not just to identify his remains.

Reaper handed me a Russian pa.s.sport. I opened it, and there was the picture that Reaper had lifted from Bob's FBI file. "You said your brother spoke Russian."

"FBI started him in organized crime, Russian mafia stuff in New York, or at least that's what Mom said on a Christmas card one year." She had always been so proud of him. I had no idea what the cards she had sent to the other kids had said about me. Probably some variant of Crazy Hector is still s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around, wasting his life. "I'm a.s.suming this ID was groomed for Train?"

"Yep, they're both f.u.c.kin' monsters, so the stats work. And the peace day resistance . . ."

"Piece de resistance," I corrected.

"Whatever, the best part," he grinned when he handed me the next ID. I knew he had millions of dollars in the bank, but he had never found the time to get his crooked front teeth fixed. "Jill will have to pretend she's ten years older, but she does speak Spanish fluently. She's a businesswoman with a mining company based in Madrid."

"That was fast."

"Well, I originally developed this one for Ilsa, She-b.i.t.c.h of the SS."

"Katarina wasn't that bad."

"To you," he snorted. "She hated me. Dumping that psycho was the best thing you ever did."

"What do you have left?"

"I'm fles.h.i.+ng out our Spanish mining corporation. We've even got a b.i.t.c.hin' webpage. Jihan's slave mines are turning out a lot of metal. It will take a couple of days for the money to transfer over. Jill's going to be the negotiator. You're the interpreter. I'm a technician. I've contacted Uri in Volgostadorsk-"

"Little Federov? The gun runner?"

"Obviously. Our mining company is going to bribe him not to molest our survey gear on the rail line to The Crossroads. You know how those greedy Russian b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are, and I don't want my good s.h.i.+t stolen."

"How much?"

"A hundred grand."

"Our gear d.a.m.n well better be left alone. You do remember I stabbed Uri's brother in the kidney, right?"

"No, a mysterious super-thief who worked for Big Eddie stabbed his brother. You're just a lowly interpreter. And it was in the spleen, not the kidney. You're thinking of the other guy. Train shot Federov's cousin in the kidney."

"Oh yeah, that was awesome." I chuckled. "Good times . . . Speaking of which, I'm a little rusty. I'm going to go shooting."

"Actual targets, or seagulls? 'Cause I don't think Jill likes it when you shoot the seagulls."

"A seagull is an actual target. I think of them as my own interactive pop-up range." I needed the practice and besides, it helped me blow off steam.

My performance in Montana hadn't been good enough. I'd been slow. I'd let some wounded jacka.s.s escape. I'd missed a few shots and my reactions weren't what they used to be. That was simply unacceptable. The paper targets had been shredded, replaced, and shredded again. I'd lost count of how many hundred rounds I'd fired today, but there was a pile of spent bra.s.s in the sand underfoot, and my thumbs hurt from loading magazines.

The island wasn't that big, but I was using suppressed weapons, and the Montalbans had fenced off this secluded area. There wasn't a d.a.m.n thing else I could do until Reaper was done with his prep work. It gave me time to train and time to think.

Bob had been taken in The Crossroads. He'd been poking around in a warlord's business, so that wasn't a surprise. My one supposed lead was a basket case who apparently knew jack and s.h.i.+t about what this was all about. The timer beeped. I shouldered my new Remington ACR and put a controlled pair into each of the target's center of ma.s.s. I checked the timer's recording of the last shot. Not good enough. I reset the timer and went again.

I didn't know if I could trust Exodus, but what choice did I have? They were up to something in The Crossroads, but wouldn't divulge what it was. That meant that the only resources I could really rely on were me, Reaper, and Jill, who I wasn't comfortable with taking at all. Not that she hadn't proven herself capable at this sort of work, but taking her to The Crossroads filled me with dread.

I heard the four-wheeler coming a long way off. It made a lot more noise than a 5.56 with a can on it. I emptied the carbine's magazine into the last target's head, put it on the table to cool, and waited for Jill to arrive.

She parked behind me and killed the Honda's engine. "What're you doing?"

I shrugged. "Practicing."

"You're sweating."

That's because I'd been doing a set of push-ups or sprints between the strings of fire. Shooting was more challenging when your arms burned and you were short of breath. "It's a warm day."

Jill got off the four-wheeler and came over. "What's wrong, Lorenzo?"

"Valentine pulled a gun on me."

"Shocking. I warned you not to be pushy . . . And you didn't kill him."

"Thought about it," I muttered.

"I'm impressed. What else is bugging you?"

She knew me too well. I'd thought long and hard about this. "The idea of you going to The Crossroads. I really don't think you realize what that place is like or what the kind of people who work there are like."

"I understand the risks." She folded her arms. "I know what I'm doing. We play it low key. We're just investigating. We're not looking for a fight. Come on, you've taught me all sorts of stuff. You admitted yourself that I'm talented at your sort of business."

"You're a talented beginner."

"I can take care of myself." Jill went to the table, picked up my STI 9mm, lifted it and quickly shot the furthest target twice in the chest, and after the briefest instant, square in the face. She'd become an excellent shot.

"The men that took Bob aren't made out of cardboard."