Tiger (15 page)

TIGER AND RACHEL WALKED SIDE BY SIDE THROUGH the neighborhood, drawing little interest from the housewives running errands or the gardeners mowing lawns. The two of them wore tracksuits and tennis shoes, and both had nylon tennis-racket cases slung over their shoulders. They carried water bottles in their hands, hydrating at regular intervals the way any young, upwardly mobile power couple would on their way home from a tough match of mixed doubles. The two of them didn't share a single word.

The western end of the housing tract was bordered by a tall, dense row of trees, the kind that are planted specifically to block an unattractive view. From the sidewalk, Tiger and Rachel ducked off through the trees, soon coming up against a tall perimeter fence. Tiger flipped the tennis-racket case off his shoulder and opened it, producing a heavy set of wire cutters. Within just a few moments, they breached the fence and entered the property.

For the next ten minutes they walked across open ground. It had once been cultivated fields but was now hard and sterile. They reached a wooded hill and ascended—it took only a minute to reach the top. They stopped there, shrugging off their bags and finding an observation spot behind a clutch of maple trees. Rachel pulled out a
snaiperskuyu vintofku
—a sniper rifle with a long-range scope—mounting it on a bipod at ground level.

Tiger was surprised to see the weapon.

“I thought we were just here to scout.”

“We are,” she answered. “But if we're spotted, things could get difficult.”

Tiger pulled out a nonreflecting tactical spotting scope and used it handheld, crouching just a few feet from Rachel. In silence, they scanned the territory on the far side of the hill. It was a shallow valley—probably less than half a mile across—bordered on the other side by a hill almost identical to the one they were set up on. A single access road entered the property from the south. Paved with asphalt, it was sprung all over with cracks that had weeds spearing up through them. The road hadn't been maintained in many years.

At the center of the valley sat a large abandoned factory of some kind, surrounded by a high perimeter fence. The fence itself looked no more than a few years old and appeared completely intact. The factory contained by the fence, however, had obviously gone unused for years; graffiti covered every inch of the place, even the highest parts of the walls, which rose up to four stories in one section. The sheet-metal walls along the ground had been almost completely stripped away by scrappers, and what was left was completely rusted.

“It was a munitions factory,” Rachel said. “It's been shut down for decades.”

“Are we going in?”

“No. We're waiting.”

They perched there for nearly three hours, silent and unmoving. The sun eased down behind the hills to the west, and Tiger was surprised at how cold it became once the sun had fallen out of sight. If Rachel felt any discomfort, she did not let on.

“Do you have a dossier?” he asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Have you been arrested before?”

She hesitated before answering, suspicion in her voice. “No.”

“Did you go to school?”

“Yes.”

“Secondary only, or college?”

“Hofstra.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“College.”

“And what did you study?”

“Business.”

They were quiet for a while before she broke the silence.

“Why?” she asked.

“It makes me curious. It seems to me there are many choices for you, many possibilities. But you choose this.”

In the dimming light, Tiger could feel Rachel watching him closely.

“This is business,” she finally said. “Our family business. And yours.”

Tiger considered this. Of course she was right—his path through life had been determined by the circumstances of his birth. He had assumed that the pull of such things wasn't as strong in America, but maybe he'd been wrong.

Minutes later, they spotted two large, black SUVs—Ford Expeditions—entering the valley and approaching along the access road, from the south. The vehicles reached the perimeter fence and continued on to the entrance gate, just two hundred yards from where Tiger and Rachel were waiting.

A man emerged from the passenger side of the first car. He was burly looking and wore a dark suit, his hair shaved in a close buzz cut. He unlocked the gate and rolled it to the side, allowing both vehicles to enter the yard that surrounded the factory. Once the cars had stopped, things got busier: eight other people stepped out of the vehicles, two adult Hispanic-looking men and six younger people who Tiger guessed were in their mid-teens—at least two or three years younger than himself. Four were boys and two girls, and all of them equipped with weapons—assault rifles and automatic handguns.

Tiger watched them closely through his scope. The teens were of various ethnicities. One of the boys and one of the girls were black, very dark skinned. Two other boys were Hispanic, and one of each gender was Caucasian, with an Eastern European look to them. They moved with purpose, constantly scanning the area with their eyes. Despite their youth, they carried their high-powered weapons as if they were natural extensions of their limbs.

Tiger had an uneasy feeling of recognition. There was a man who was known as Sweet, a black-market transportation
pasrednik
—a “fixer”—who operated throughout Eastern Europe, Africa, and South America. His chosen name was Swede, but during his operations in the eastern Congo—delivering shipments of weapons to tribal guerrilla troops—the locals had pronounced his name as Sweet, and it stuck.

As far back as the mid-nineties, Sweet had surrounded himself with a multiethnic cadre of very young bodyguards, rootless and war-ravaged teens he assembled from areas where he did dirty business. Sweet trained the youths himself and always kept them close, valuing them for their boldness and unfailing loyalty. They were not drugged or brutalized like other child soldiers but instead were highly incentivized with cash and perks. Most of all, they were a very effective security measure. There was something inherently terrifying about a teenager with a submachine gun, a sense that bestial, bloody havoc could be set off by even the slightest miscue.

Tiger had once met Sweet face-to-face, during a weapons exchange in Gjilani, Kosovo. Only fifteen himself at the time, Tiger was part of a security team backing up one of the bosses from
Piter
 . . . St. Petersburg. Though he was a low-level member of the team, his boss had made a point of introducing him as the son of Alexei Klesko—apparently, his father and Sweet had done profitable business over the years, and Tiger's presence as a member of his crew lent his boss a certain credibility.

Sweet was a short, pudgy man with wispy blond hair and a fair complexion that seemed permanently scarred red after so much time spent in sunny equatorial destinations. Tiger remembered the man as having an oddly warm manner, smiling more than you would expect from someone involved in the arms trade. Sweet had shaken his hand, a gesture Tiger found especially reassuring at the time, since they were surrounded by no fewer than twenty of Sweet's heavily armed teenagers.

Now, sitting undercover atop the hill in eastern New Jersey almost three years later, Tiger was nearly certain that the group of young fighters he was observing were an arm of Sweet's security force. Tiger wondered if Rachel and her father could possibly be aware of his distant connection to Sweet. He also wondered exactly how far across the planet he would have to travel to escape the influence of his father—he had a nasty suspicion that no distance would be great enough.

“What are we looking at?” Tiger asked Rachel.

“You tell me.”

Tiger looked through the scope, focusing on the group below as they entered the abandoned factory together, most of them carrying flashlights now as they systematically made their way through the complex. The layout of the factory started to become clear to Tiger: the left side of the factory was low and long, thirty feet high, but obviously one large room. This had to be the manufacturing side of the plant, probably a long assembly-line system. To the right was the management side, a tall building with five separate floor levels.

Tiger watched the flashlight beams move through the complex, first along the manufacturing side—quickly—and then moving on to the taller section as the team scanned every floor. The team was moving much too quickly for this to be a search.

“A security sweep,” he said. “They have something planned for this space, and this is their early recon. We're scouting them as they scout the site.”

Rachel nodded, confirming his assessment.

“What are they protecting?” Tiger asked, sure he already knew the answer but interested to hear what Rachel's answer would be.

“Does it matter? Tell me what they've decided.”

“The left side is a large open space, not a good place to defend anything or anyone at risk. The tower on the right is more secure—especially the upper floors—so whoever or whatever they are guarding will be found there.”

The two of them watched as the team below filed out of the factory and back into their vehicles, the same big white guy locking the gate behind them and climbing into the lead vehicle before they drove away, their headlights necessary now in the dim twilight as they sped back along the access road and disappeared from the valley.

After waiting just a few minutes, Rachel stood up and shouldered her racket case.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a medium-sized handgun—a
9
mm Beretta—and held it up for him to see.

“Finding a place for this,” she said, and started walking downhill, into the valley. “Wait here.”

Tiger watched her progress as Rachel reached the bottom of the hill, then jogged across open ground to the locked gate of the complex. Less than a minute later—did she have a key, or did she pick the lock?—Rachel was through the gate and prowling inside the old factory building itself.

He saw the glow of Rachel's flashlight moving through the building, in much the same way the recon team's had, except Rachel moved directly to the tower side of the structure, climbing the steps to the top floor as her first order of business. At that point, the flashlight glow settled in one place and did not move.

Tiger watched and waited. He felt uneasy—he wasn't sure why—and a thought came into his head: he didn't have to stay there. He could easily turn and go, disappearing into the night and putting Rachel, Archer Divine, and the Ranch behind him for good. This possibility—that he could reclaim a sense of control and independence that he hadn't felt in months—gave him a warm feeling.

Just as easily, though, he imagined himself out in America alone. He'd be capable of surviving, but to what end? He had dreams of a new life—naive dreams, maybe—but the pact he'd made with Divine offered the only tangible route toward achieving what he wanted most. There was a price for holding on to his dream, and Tiger had been paying it.

He would not stop now. If fate threw obstacles in his path he would face them like a man, just as he had done every day of his youth, in the streets of
Piter
. Tiger held his ground and waited. Soon Rachel would return from the compound below. Before long, Tiger would certainly learn what destiny had in store for him.

He would be ready.

WALLY WOKE FEELING A POWERFUL NEED TO BE
productive—at
anything
. For all the danger and hassle they'd been through the previous day—finding themselves at the mercy of Afrika Neems and the rest of the GMBs, and then getting blasted by Greer for blowing up the surveillance at the smoke shop—Wally had precious little to show for it. She was as far from finding Tiger as she had ever been, and just as far from understanding what was behind Alabama's attacks.

She decided to surprise Lewis Jordan by actually showing up for work.

Jake and Ella were still asleep, so she left some cash out on the kitchen counter with a note. She hoped they'd go out and spend the money having fun. Wally left a chunk of frozen fish on Tevin's island, but this time he sulked and remained fully immersed.

“There's such a thing as being
too
low maintenance,” Wally said to the snapper. “If I wanted warm and cuddly I'd have gotten a cat, but you could show me a little something.”

She headed out of the apartment and made her way toward the subway. Watching her back along the way to make sure that she was not being followed, Wally scanned the cars parked outside her apartment building. She half expected to see Alabama or some similar creep waiting for her. Whatever it was the men wanted from her—or whatever connection they had with Tiger—Wally had the powerful sense that they would keep coming for her until they got it. She didn't see anything or anyone that worried her, but made a mental note to be alert and aware of her surroundings throughout the day.

It felt good to get on the
G
train again, just for the sense of routine and continuity, and she began to look forward to a long day of work on the Society's database. When she arrived at the office, she was relieved to find that there were no new handsome young clients waiting there, ready to turn her life upside down.

Wally made tea and got right to work, setting a huge stack of case files on her desk and plowing through them at blinding speed with little or no comprehension. When Lewis finally arrived late in the morning, Wally emerged from her trancelike work mode and found that of the twenty case files she had begun with, only one or two remained.

“Well, hello there,” Lewis said, surprised to see her. “You're back with us again? How was your time away?”

“Hey Lewis. It was okay.”

“You sound discouraged.”

“I'm fine. I've had some personal things going on.”

“Anything you want to talk about?” Lewis asked as he hung up his coat and hat.

Wally hadn't decided yet what she wanted to tell him—where would she start, anyway? With the total fiasco of her trying to help Kyle, or the part where gunmen were chasing her all over the state for reasons unknowable?

And she had killed a man—there was that. A memory that she was able to put out of her mind for hours at a time, only to have the images of that terrible moment explode back into her consciousness. One day soon she would share the details about all of it with Lewis, but now was not the time. She kept her eyes focused on the screen in front of her, worried he might read her face and realize her situation was more dire than she was letting on.

“Can I hit you back on that, Lewis?” she said. “I'm not sure I have it in me right now, and to be honest, I'm enjoying the grind of my Herculean database project.”

“That's fine,” Lewis agreed as he turned on his computer, readying for work.

His implicit trust made Wally feel guilty for holding out on him.

“I can tell you, though,” Wally said, “that over the past couple of days I've actually had a chance to appreciate some of your smart advice.”

“What particular wisdom are you referring to?” Lewis peered dryly at her over the rim of his reading glasses. “I've offered you so much.”

Wally smiled. It felt good to be back in the office—Lewis was really good at pulling her out of a dark funk.

“The part about how it's not really in our power to rescue people,” she said, leaning back in her chair and meeting Lewis's eyes. “We can play a part, but ultimately they have to fix themselves. I sort of stuck my neck out for someone who wasn't ready to be helped, and it did no good at all.”

Wally had absorbed that lesson from her relationship with Kyle. It had hit home when she had called
911
, potentially making things worse.

“You're welcome for the wisdom,” Lewis said, studying her. “But don't be too hard on yourself. The impulse to help is an essential thing. It just needs to be exercised with caution.”

“You're not gonna say ‘I told you so'?”

“Not hardly,” Lewis said, climbing out of his chair in order to fill both their cups from the teapot. “One day, Wally, I'll bring you up to speed on my own litany of mistakes and regrets, covering the full span of my long life. I promise you—my countless shortcomings will make yours seem like small beer.”

He ambled back into his office, leaving Wally to guess what “small beer” meant.

“Thank you,” she said, and she meant it.

They both got back down to work in silence. Wally quickly returned to her hyperproductive mode, an almost hypnotic state in which she processed another dozen case files. When she finally came up for air, it was almost six o'clock in the evening and Lewis had gone for the day—she only vaguely remembered him mumbling a “goodbye” on his way out.

He'd attached a note to her messenger bag: “Nice to have you back where you belong. Keep up the good work.”

Wally felt pretty good on the train ride home—reenergized, maybe—and allowed herself to consider her next move. Every question remained open: Where was Tiger? Where was Kyle? How long would it be before Alabama and the others made another run at her? The burner phone she had grabbed upstate was still the only lead she had, and finding its point of sale hadn't brought her any closer to the answers she needed.

Paige had said she would try to dig more information from the phone, but she hadn't been in touch. Wally texted her, assuming it would go through once she emerged from the subway.

Anything?
Wally typed. It wasn't until she emerged from the subway station that Paige's reply finally came:
Wrkng on it stay tuned.

Wally walked the half mile home from the station, stopping in her apartment just long enough to slip into workout clothes. Jake and Ella weren't back yet. She jogged down Nassau Avenue to Orson Dojo, where she went through the usual warm-up torture and then prepared for some sparring exercises.

“Not so fast,” Orson said, leading her to the far corner of the floor where he had brought in a fighting target—basically a punching bag that had padded arms sticking out at several angles. “I can't have you breaking any more of my clients.”

“You're putting me in the corner?”

“Just to demonstrate consequences,” Orson said. “Most people come to my dojo only for exercise, Wallis, not to prepare for war. If too many of them leave here with broken noses, I will lose all my business.”

“Fine,” said Wally, annoyed. “Okay if I break the target?”

“Do what you will.”

Wally began her striking sequences and quickly discovered the training value of the target dummy: it never got tired, never retreated. You could beat the crap out of it and it was always ready for more. After just ten minutes of work she was so exhausted she could barely raise her arms to wipe the sweat from her forehead, and her hands and feet felt bruised from the nonstop barrage of contact. It felt oddly satisfying.

Orson stepped in then and returned Wally to the sparring rotation with the others in the class. She fit in much better from that point on, too tired and sore to do any real damage and a little more on par with the rest of the class.

By the time she made it home, Jake and Ella had crashed on the couch with the TV on. Wally spotted a couple of takeout bags on the kitchen counter, and the tantalizing aroma of food made her stomach rumble.

“How was it?” Wally asked them. “Did you get to the city?”

“Yeah,” Ella said, sounding unenthusiastic as she munched a handful of pretzels. “It was okay.”

Wally looked to Jake for details.

“It was weird to see some of the old crowd from the streets,” he said. “The ones who were still around, anyway.”

“They haven't changed, Wally,” Ella said. “And I guess we were feeling like we had, a lot. We didn't fit in the same way.”

“I know what you're saying,” Wally said, sitting down on the arm of the couch. “Sometimes when I'm out in the city I see some of them—Leila and DJ and that group. I always want to hang with them, but when I have it's never been good. So I usually just keep walking.”

Then a thought struck her. “Do you guys want to go back to the farm?” she asked. “I mean, it's okay if that's what you want—”

“No,” Ella said. “I mean, eventually yes, of course. But there's nowhere else we want to be now. Just here with you.”

“You're sure?” Wally braced herself for the answer. It seemed obvious now that they'd want to go back home. Because the farm
was
their home, now.

“Yeah, of course,” Jake said, straight-faced. “Especially since we found this good Mexican place on the way back, in Brooklyn. We have a bag of burritos over there, just waiting 'til you got back. So we'll definitely stick around long enough to have dinner.”

“You're an ass,” Ella said to Jake, laughing, then turned to Wally. “Take a shower and we'll heat up dinner.”

Wally did as directed, relieved that her friends weren't leaving yet. But as they ate together—huddled on the couch with
Gossip Girl
reruns on the TV—she couldn't shake the weird feeling of alienation she was experiencing. Her reunion with her closest friends couldn't have happened at a better time—but there was no question that Jake and Ella were firmly on their own path, one that could easily lead them farther and farther away from her.

And where would that leave her? The new life she had begun seemed fragile, as if it could come apart at any time. Where was she really headed in her life? Would she always be the bad girl alone in the corner, like she had been at Orson Dojo that afternoon, segregated and angry?

When Ella and Jake eventually left for the farm—which they would—Wally would be left alone in her secluded, rooftop apartment with an antisocial snapping turtle. What the hell kind of master plan was that? She suddenly felt annoyed and disappointed with herself. Things had been different when Tevin was around. She'd had her person—someone to always turn to—and she missed that more than anything.

Wally's cell phone vibrated loudly on the kitchen counter, and she set aside her food to go check the incoming text.

“Is it from Paige?” Ella wanted to know.

“Yeah,” Wally replied, reading the new message. “She was able to dig the phone log from the memory of the burner. It's only ten numbers, but she said she'll keep working.”

Wally hit the speakerphone button and clicked a few buttons—the texting program automatically read phone numbers in texts and turned them into hypertext. All she had to do was click on the numbers one at a time, and the phone would automatically dial them. From the speakerphone came the rapid, high-pitched key tones of a phone number being dialed. After just one ring, an automated female voice sounded from the phone's speaker.

“
I'm sorry
.
The number you have dialed is no longer in service
.”

Of course. Even in her distracted state of mind, Wally systematically thought the problem through. Alabama and the other gunmen wouldn't have made calls to any traceable phone numbers—Alabama had bought all two hundred stolen burners, according to Afrika Neems, and this was why. Any phone he had dialed had been destroyed and dumped by now.

“It's a dead end,” she said, setting the phone down and dropping back onto the couch. She picked up her burrito and took a huge bite, even though she'd lost her appetite.

“What are you talking about?” Ella asked. “It's still your best and only lead.”

When Wally didn't respond, Ella shook her head in exasperation and stood up from the couch, picking up Wally's cell phone herself before Wally could stop her. She clicked on the next number from the list.

“
I'm sorry
,” came the reply over the speakerphone. “
The number you have dialed is no longer in service
.”

“See?” Wally said. “It's all gone cold.”

Ignoring her, Ella persisted and went through the list—all with the same result. Even Ella looked like she might be ready to give up when she dialed one more time and got a new response. It was the outgoing voicemail message of an actual, active phone line, delivered in a loud, laughing, festive voice, the sounds of music and partying in the background.