Sympathy For the Devil (14 page)

“I don’t know, but that’s what I’m trying to find out. It’s too complicated to explain before your Texas friend gets here, but I just need you to help me with a little housekeeping tomorrow morning.”

‘Housekeeping’ was the University’s code for an assassination. Even though they were speaking in Russian, certain protocols still had to be observed.

“What kind of housekeeping?” she asked.

“A little high dusting.” It was code for a sniper assignment. “Nothing you haven’t done before and in worse conditions. And with minimal risk to you.”

Hicks would’ve been disappointed if she’d agreed to do it right away. “Tell me more about what happened with Colin. Did he compromise any of us? Are the rest of us in danger? I’m not just talking about me. I’m talking about the others working for you in New York.”

“Have you noticed anyone watching you?”

“Don’t answer a question with a question.” She stabbed at the lemon peel with her pinky nail. “I hate it when you do that.”

Hicks didn’t dare annoy her any further. She wasn’t the only sniper he had On Staff in New York, but she was certainly the best shot. “My gut tells me he didn’t tell them much but, then again, I never thought Colin could be turned, either. I know you’re working on a big assignment now, and I know this is beyond our agreement, but I could use your backup tomorrow morning.”

Tali inched her cocktail glass away from her. “Is this against the people who hurt Colin?”

Hicks didn’t see a reason why he should lie to her. “No, but it’ll help me get closer to the people who did. It’s difficult to explain in the time we have.”

“Of course,” Tali smirked. “There is never a straight line between Point A and Point B. Where and when do you need me there?”

“The job is in Queens across from an old railroad building. I’ll send you a detailed mission package as soon as I get back to the office. I assume you still have your handheld.”

“No, I pawned it to pay for the drinks. Of course I still have it, I just don’t carry it all the time. I check it several times a day. How many targets are we looking at?”

Hicks shrugged. “Maybe four. The railroad building has become a shooting gallery for junkies.”

She looked him up and down and surprised him by actually smiling for once. “You need backup for only four? You must be slipping in your old age.”

Hicks felt himself smiling, too. “I’m not slipping. I’m just old enough to not push my luck when I don’t have to. The layout’s tricky and I’m going to have to extract one of the junkies. I’ll feel a lot better with you watching my back on the way out.”

Tali looked at her glass again. “High dusting, just like you said.”

“With minimal risk to you,” he reminded her. “Standard equipment should suffice.”

“Of course,” she said. “Just send me the details and I’ll be in position before you get there.”

“Thank you,” he said. “It’ll mean an early start, though. Your Texan won’t like that.”

Tali shrugged her slender shoulders. “I’ll do what I always do. Give him his little blue pill; he passes out and I tell him he was wonderful.”

“Good girl.” Hicks drained most of his scotch. The smoky burn felt good at the back of his throat. “Now, how do you want me to get out of here? If I just pay for my drink and leave, especially since we’ve been speaking Russian, the bartender might get suspicious. So you should act like I just...”

She quickly turned away from him as if slapped and sat ramrod straight. She snapped her fingers at the bartender and said, “This man is bothering me. He is a rude and common pig. I want him removed immediately.” The act drew enough attention from the other patrons to be convincing, but not enough to be unbelievable.

Hicks feigned drunkenness and threw up his hands. “I’m going, I’m going.” He drained his scotch and signaled for the check, which the bartender quickly printed up and gave to him.

As he reviewed his bill, he said to the bartender, “Christ, this new crop of Russian broads sure are touchy, aren’t they? There was a time when speaking Russian got a guy special treatment from a Russian girl. Now? Nothing. Fucking Berlin Wall came down and now they all…” He made like his mind drifted as he tipped the bartender thirty percent. He’d always had a soft spot for bartenders and wanted to make sure he could come back to the bar again if he had to. A generous tip was a good way of staying on a bartender’s good side.

Tali didn’t look at him as he walked out of the bar either, trailed by the murmurs of the well-heeled clientele of the Mark Bar.

H
ICKS HAD
already been in position for over an hour by the time sunrise rolled around. He was less than ten miles away from the stylish décor of the Mark Bar but, given his current surroundings, he might as well have been on the other side of the world.

The convoluted absurdity of the entire situation wasn’t lost on Hicks. He’d just arranged for an Israeli sniper to watch his back as he raided a drug den to retrieve the junkie son of a money manager who would give him a hundred grand to finance an operation against a suspected Somali terrorist who may or may not be planning some kind of attack on U.S. soil. One thing led to another and none of it might lead anywhere except smack into a brick wall.

Hicks felt the enormity of all the possibilities and intricacies begin to build up inside him again, so he closed his eyes and focused on his breathing until he cleared his mind and calmed down. Nothing was ever a straight line in the intelligence game. When it was, it was too good to be true and couldn’t be trusted. Every single thing was just one fucking serpentine path from one point to the next with the serpent frequently swallowing its own tail.

Hicks had known all of that before he’d gotten into the intelligence game, but it still bothered him at times. He decided to push his doubts and frustrations aside and compartmentalize like the Dean had said; focusing on the immediate task at hand. He had to get Junior out of the shooting gallery and home to daddy so Hicks could get that hundred grand.

When Hicks opened his eyes, the streetscape before him was still as bleak as it had been before. Rusting corrugated metal gates and dirty windows and sagging power lines stretched between termite ridden wooden poles. An old drunk adjusted his balls as he shambled across the street.

“Christ,”
Hicks thought, “
maybe I should’ve gone into insurance after all.”

In the light of a cold autumn dawn, the abandoned substation building looked even more rundown than it had on the OMNI feed. Its red brick façade had been faded by time, scorched by fire and tagged with layers of graffiti. Every pane of glass that could be broken had long since been broken and hastily boarded up in many places, but not all. The roof had long since gone to seed and bore the remnants of dead shrubs and weeds that sprouted up through the snow.

The building had once been part of a mighty transportation network that took goods and people out to and back from Long Island. Now it was a forgotten ruin from the near-past; a haven for junkies looking for a quiet place to shoot poison into their veins for temporary peace.

Hicks had parked more than a block away from the building to avoid being spotted by any of Devron’s lookouts. He didn’t want to be mistaken for a cop—or worse—a rival drug dealer. Although he could see the building from where he’d parked, he got a bird’s eye view of the entire facility via the OMNI feed on his handheld and dashboard screen.

The substation was set up in an ideal spot for a small incursion with minimal collateral damage. And, in clandestine work, minimal collateral damage meant minimal attention from any police patrols that happened to be rolling by.

The old substation was located in a seemingly forgotten industrial area that didn’t see much traffic until later in the morning when workers showed up for their shifts. Across the street from the substation: an overgrown embankment lead up to the deserted railway; overgrown with trees and weeds. It afforded no cover whatsoever for anyone, including Devron’s men.

If Hicks had been given enough time to plan, he could sweep in there with three guys; take out the guards and pull Junior out in a minute flat. Unfortunately, time and resources were not on his side. He felt his temper spike again. Fucking Colin.

An apartment building across the street from the near side of the substation offered a perfect sniper’s perch for Tali, assuming shooting would be necessary. And Hicks fully expected shooting to be necessary.

The OMNI viewpoint high overhead showed two men guarding the front door. One appeared to be a black man, the other appeared to be Latin. Both of them were wearing polar fleece with the sleeves cut off despite the temperature being just above freezing. The fashion statement revealed veined arms and bulging biceps. The Latin man was sporting some impressive ink: a tattoo of a grinning skeleton showing five playing cards over his bony shoulder: a red queen, two black aces, and two black eights. Commonly known as ‘A Dead Man’s Hand.’ The name ‘Death Dealer’ was written in calligraphy beneath it.

Hicks knew Tali would nail Death Dealer first. She hated tattoos. His partner would die next, probably from the same bullet if she could get the angle right. Hicks smiled. That woman was nothing if not efficient.

The OMNI feed didn’t reveal anyone else outside the building, so he flipped it back to thermal feed. He picked up the heat signatures of about a dozen people still inside. Junior hadn’t moved from the spot where he’d been sprawled out for the past few hours. Only three other people appeared to be ambulatory, strolling around the prone figures on the floor.

Hicks didn’t bother adjusting the satellite’s camera to check if Tali was in position. It was easer just to ping her handheld directly. “You in position?”

Her answer was immediate. A red dot appeared on his chest over his heart.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” he said.

The red dot disappeared.

Hicks put his Ruger in his lap and slipped the Buick into gear. “Look sharp because here we go.”

A
S SOON
as Hicks pulled up in front of the substation, Death Dealer and his friend puffed out their chests as they swaggered toward the car.

Death Dealer was the taller of the two and made a big show of bending to look into the car. Hicks didn’t roll down the window.

Death Dealer yelled, “You best be moving that car, asshole, if you don’t want to get hurt.”

The .308 round from Tali’s M24 rifle punched a hole in Death Dealer’s chest. His partner was sprayed with a red mist, but had less than a second to react before a round slammed into his skull. Both men were dead on the sidewalk before the last echo of Tali’s shots died away.

Hicks put the car in park and kept the motor running as he got out of the car. He kept his Ruger flat against his leg as he quickly walked toward the substation. He could see the doors were locked and was thinking about going back to pat down the corpses for a key when Tali fired and blew the lock to pieces. Hicks kicked the doors in the rest of the way and walked inside.

Hicks recognized Devron from his mug shot. He was walking toward him; his phone still pressed to his ear. He lowered the phone when he heard the door bang open. “What the fuck is goin’ on out there, G-Dog. I already told you about keeping that…”

At the same moment that Devron realized Hicks wasn’t G-Dog; Hicks leveled him with a headshot at near point blank range.

The Ruger was designed for impact, not stealth, and the shot boomed like a thunderclap in the cavernous substation. Every junkie anywhere near consciousness jumped to their feet and bolted for the door. The huge windows on the street side of the building had only been boarded up halfway to the top. Hicks knew that, from her vantage point across the street, Tali would be able to provide some cover if he needed it.