Page 24 of Triple Threat

“Is this really the safest place for this discussion?” Kaijin asked. “This is…serious.”

“Do you see the people around us?” I asked. “These men, and the handful of women in here, they’re lobbyists. They’re senior staffers. They sit on committees, and that room over there? The Lafayette Room, it’s reserved not for people in Congress, it’s for theimportantpeople in Congress. Nothing said inside these walls leave these walls. Deals worse than you’re offering me are going down, right now, in that room.”

“Or they are having the crab cakes and the sauvignon blanc,” Malmaison said. “I find it hard to imagine that your leaders would be so brazen in their actions.” The only thing I could offer him was a polite smile and small shrug. This was the sort of conversation that Roan could wade into easily, but the sort that I had no interest in.

“We have a persistent problem with a rival cartel,” Ajahi said. “And not the sort of problem we can sort out easily, ourselves.”

“Our rival has contacts, contacts that allow them to harass our… employees… without fear from government reprisals,” Malmaison said. “We need several of these key people eliminated from their positions. Once they are gone, we can move forward with our own housecleaning.”

“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” I said. “Do you have a dossier?” Kaijin offered me a flash drive, and a manila mailing envelope. I took both.

“How long can we expect this to take?” Ajahi asked. “I am not a patient man.”

“Neither am I,” I said. “I like to be paid quickly, so I work quickly.”

“You men, always rushing,” Kaijin said.

“Madame, I onlyworkquickly. I take my time when I… play.” I gave her a quarter of my smirk and saw the corners of her lips turn up, and a hint of color in her cheeks. She could be fun to play with. Maybe later.

* * *

I returnedto the hotel room and plugged the flash drive into the external port that Roan had given me. He would lecture me on how all sorts of dangerous viruses and whatnot could be fit into a flash drive, or even an email. Some didn’t even have to be opened, you just had to receive it and it would wreck your system. Roan’s external port was protection wrapped in protection with tons of cybersecurity and the rest. I watched as lights flickered on it, and when the flicker turned green, it was clear.

The files were extensive.

It seemed that being in the international heroin trade involved a ton of rivals and complications.Escadron de Mort, the Death Squad, original name that, was a group of former associates ofle Generale. Seemed they had a falling out and the four members decided to try and fight the general for his portion of the drug trade.

I scanned through their faces, the scarred and hardened portraits of career criminals and mercenaries. These would-be hard targets. The sort that didn’t blubber and cry. The dangerous sort who might take a mortal wound and instead of bowing out to hold their bloody guts would make their last few moments count. No wonder the pay was good. They were also liaising with at least one agent from the office of the US Drug Enforcement Agency, and more contacts with international organizations. Seemed straightforward to me, if they couldn’t take over the operation, they would see it destroyed, burned to the ground.

I forwarded Roan the files that were relevant, so we could start our mission plan.

Less than an hour later, his threat matrix was complete. Both he and his machine with its algorithms worked quickly. The plan could turn into a nightmare just as fast. These Death Squad counter-counter-insurgents had decided to make their base of operations in Texas.Fucking Texas.Yee-fucking-hawTexas.

Damnit.

I made a call down to room service – a bottle of gin, crab cakes, and I let the front desk go over the dessert menu before passing. I was working through the itinerary, figuring how we were going to go in and take down these heroin-smuggling turkeys.

Flying in would be tricky. They were smart and would have something in place to watch the airports and airfields, especially the ones close to them. The answer was an easy one –drive. I pinged Roan a note that this sort of long road trip would be a good way to break in a new car, or an excuse to buy one, even if it was a one-shot throwaway car. Those, drive ‘em hard and leave ‘em abandoned in an airport parking lot kind. A car could sit in economy parking for months without being noticed.

Roan suggested thrashing across the south in a sport truck, and the notion was as intriguing as it was ridiculous. I accepted his proposition, though. It was easy to cruise through a major city in a Maserati or Ferrari, but that drew the wrong sort of attention when you were out in the country, or doing work in the southwest. A big truck could cost almost as much as any of the cars I’d been thinking about except with the added benefit that no one would look twice, other than in cap-tipping approval. Roan told me he’d have a truck lined up for me by morning, and that made travel plans easy – no security checks, no flight plans, no scheduling. The rest would be swinging by the house, picking up what supplies I needed from the arsenal, and then I would be off, tearing across the heart of Dixie.

I considered calling an escort, killing some time, maybe share a bit of the gin. I sighed, my heart wouldn’t be in it, I was still in work mode. Work now, play later. A few more texts and my inventory was complete, Roan confirming that when I picked up the new truck, it would have all of my gear already in it. He was efficient like that.

* * *

Sixteen hundred miles.I had sixteen hundred miles to settle into the driver’s seat of the overbuilt and overpowered full-sized truck. The auto concierge boasted of luxury and comfort, as well as the massive turbos and the amount of movement in the suspension. If he was to be believed, this beast could do eighty miles an hour over sand and rough terrain with minimal vibration to the occupants.

Ridiculous. Overpriced too, but it would serve for this job. If it survived, Roan could flip it. The concierge mentioned how long the backorder was to get into one of these which explained part of the price tag. I did like the overall white paint job with black trim. I told the concierge that the color reminded me of how the Vipers had looked back in 2010; how much I appreciated that.

I hit the interstate and hated the truck as it lugged through DC traffic. I could see the ire in the other drivers, especially the condescending glares from the Tesla and Prius drivers. Once the DC traffic cleared, the truck apologized as we shortened 81, and turned Virginia into rearview-mirror real estate. 81 merged into 40, and I put the hammer down and sped across Tennessee like a white rocket. There were more vehicles like mine, and there became something of a game. For a while I tried to not let myself be drawn into it, but the truck with its massive fire breathing V8 begged to be turned loose.

I crossed the Cumberland Plateau doing 125 mph with two other trucks and a single Corvette playing chase.

Between the spells where I had fast cars that wanted to race the monstrous truck, or other beast machines wanting to see who’s big truck was the biggest and fastest, the drive was dull. Normally this wasn’t a problem, normally I flew, or where it was possible, I took trains. Pragmatic, and they didn’t require my full attention or my sobriety. That left my mind unoccupied, and undistracted. I thought about Sadie Brooks.

How many years had it been? The last time I could remember her, she was just a stick, all skinny legs and huge eyes. She still had those large eyes, and like pools I wanted to swim in them. The stick was gone, she had filled out, not just tits though. Those were certainly something I was keen to see, but she had hips now, and those teenage lips I had kissed had certainly filled out, too. Gone was the sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl; in her place was a woman, and I wanted to kissher.

There were so many questions. What had happened to her after the foster house, after the ongoing disaster that had been our life when we were trapped with the Daughton’s? How had she gone completely from the system without making so much as a ripple?

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