Dead Wrong (11 page)

In three more years his twenty years would be up and he could start pulling down a good pension, drink beer in the sun out on the Gulf, fish whenever he wanted. Or maybe even partner with his brother-in-law to start that charter fishing service they’d been jawing about all these years. To top it off, he could earn some extra bucks working security at the nearby Indian casino. Maybe tour the country every other year in his RV that, so far, spent most of the time in the shed. They could spend a summer in northern Michigan, winter in Tucson. Yeah, life outside of the military would be sweet!

He would build that house Doreen selected from the Palm Harbor catalog: the Magnolia. A three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,584-square-foot beauty. A solid prefab, not a trailer trash single-wide like Dad’s. They had already paid off the lot in full. A sweet acre and a half he picked up on the cheap in the months after a hurricane devastated the area. It was just a tad down the road from Gulfport, smack in the middle of the Redneck Rivera. Even before the hurricane, he knew that was where he wanted to retire. So when prices plummeted in the aftermath, he snapped it up for pennies on the real value. He smiled at the wisdom of his decision.

He glanced at the phone still in hand, dreading the next call to Colonel Cunningham. How could he explain the total fuck up here in the office? Killing the civilian, well, that could be explained. But Washington’s death? Even if he sold the story that McCarthy shot him, there was always the question of how McCarthy got the drop on them in the first place. His mission was to drain intel from McCarthy and then, if necessary, kill him. Not the other way around.

W
ARREN SIKES PEERS out the car window across South Figueroa at the rusted wrought iron bars protecting the dust-caked window with the glowing Corona Extra sign. He and Washington have been waiting four hours, hoping a banger or a junkie doesn’t knock over the dump before they had a chance to interrogate their target.

A customer pushes out the door, a six-pack weighing down a beige plastic bag. A moment later the last customer of this string, a bag lady, ambles out.

“Ready?” Sikes pulls the black .22 from under his shirt and locks on the flash suppressor.

Washington grabs Sikes’s arm. “Hold up.”

Sikes slaps his hand away. “Don’t fucking start. Hear?”

Washington raises his hands. “Easy, man.”

The car interior falls silent. A pair of motorcycles with chrome monkey-hanger handlebars rumble past.

Washington lowers his hands. “Just don’t want this to end up like the last one. That’s all. Took a shitload of explaining to the colonel. Okay?”

“Fucker was a terrorist.”

“Know that for certain?”

See, that’s the problem with people like Washington. They ignore the obvious. “Guy walks into a liquor store, points a .38 at the clerk; he’s a robber even if you don’t hear him ask for money.” What’d it take? They’d been through this a hundred times.

Sikes pushes open the door. “You coming or not?”

T
HE AIR IS thick with chilidog, coffee, and the bag lady’s sour body odor, a mixture of sweat, urine, and mold. Sikes glances around. No one else inside except the camel jockey behind the counter. He nods to Washington, who flips the door sign from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
and engages the deadbolt.

The clerk leans forward on the scarred laminate countertop, yells, “Yo, dude! The fuck you think you doing? Can’t do that shit.”

Sikes looks him over, making sure there’s no mistake. Early thirties, black hair, moustache, skin naturally pigmented to a hue most L.A. whites agonize to perfect. Wears an Old Navy logo shirt, looking every bit the struggling minimum-wage college student. He is, in fact, Majid Zaki: a piece of shit they’d spent a month investigating. Zaki manages six exchange students who gather information on port activities in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and San Diego.

Sikes says, “You’re closed.”

“The hell—” Zaki’s eyes grow wide. “Bro, c’mon, ain’t nothing in the till but a few bucks. Go on, take it. Just don’t hurt me.” Hands raised, he backs away from the till. “Here. Take it.”

Sikes levels his weapon at Zaki’s chest. “Turn off some lights.”

“What?”

“I said, turn off some fucking lights.” He feels his blood pressure rising. What is it with people who act like they can’t hear?

“C’mon, bro. Take what you want, but—”

Sikes says to Washington, “You believe this shit? All of a sudden Majid Zaki doesn’t understand English.” Sikes squeezes the trigger, blows away a fluorescent ceiling panel. Plastic and glass shards clatter down onto worn linoleum. The adrenaline of rage lifts him up onto his toes.

Zaki’s eyes widen. “Who? That is not my name. You have the wrong person.”

Sikes hates Zaki, hates every Islamic fundamentalist fuckwad like him. Big bad-asses when hooded up in front of al Jazeera camcorders, but put them on the receiving end of a gun and they’re quivering pussies.

Washington charges around the potato chips, past a cooler of malt liquor, throws open a gray circuit breaker panel, and rakes down a row of switches. Only the back room fluorescents and a mercury-vapor streetlight illuminate the store interior.

Zaki glances over his shoulder toward the back room.

Sikes catches it. “Don’t!” Then to Washington: “Secure the back.”

“Affirmative.” Washington disappears through the doorway.

Sikes steps toward the wide-eyed Zaki. “Got any clue why we’re here, Majid?”

Zaki shakes his head. “No. I am only a poor student. What would you wish from me?” His accent thickens with each word.

Sikes shakes his head again. “Not buying it, dickwad. We know who you are. Been surveilling you for months. Other agents before us. What we got here, Zaki, is a tie score, fourth quarter, thirty seconds on the clock with fourth and three. Time to step up.”

Zaki shrugs defensively. “But I am not knowing anything of interest to you.”

These guys never learn. “Wrong answer. And know what? Before we’re done I will get the right answers. Bet your life on it.”

Sweating, Zaki swallows and glances around.

Sikes edges around the counter. “Why not start with who you report to.”

“Report to?”

Sikes shrugs. “Yeah, save us all a shitload of time and you a world of hurt, you just tell us what we want to know.” He aimed at Zaki’s right knee.

“I have no idea what you are—”

Sikes squeezes off a round and catches the hot casing, dropping it into the thigh pocket of his camos. Screaming, both hand gripping his knee, Zaki crumples to the floor. Sikes leans over him.

“Know what? That’s an old IRA trick. You know about the IRA, don’t you? Terrorists just like you. Only difference is they’re Irish, so they fuck sheep instead of camels.” He kicked Zaki’s other knee. “They call if kneecapping. Works with elbows too. Do the knees, ankles, and elbows, you got yourself a six-pack. Now answer my fucking question.”

“Yo, Sikes … easy.” Washington is at the doorway to the back room looking on.

Zaki screams, “No, really … I am knowing nothing.”

Sikes empties another round through the other kneecap.

Zaki screams, louder this time.

Washington says, “Sikes, be cool, man. The mission, man, remember our mission.”

But Sikes is standing over Zaki now, grinning with revenge. “What the fuck is it you don’t understand, rag head? Think we won’t kill you, you don’t tell us?”

Zaki raises his middle finger. “You will kill me anyway. ALLAH AKHBAR!”

Sikes drops onto his haunches, presses the barrel to Zaki’s forehead. “Guess what? All that crap about the seventy-eight virgins? One hundred percent bullshit.” And pulls the trigger twice in rapid succession, changing the angle between shots.

Washington squeezes his own temples with both hands. “Fuck! What’d I tell you. How we gonna explain this to the colonel?”

Standing, Sikes slips the gun into the small of his back. The scene could easily pass for a robbery gone bad. He dials 9-1-1 on his cell.

“Explain what? We saw the whole thing from across the street, came running over to see if we could help. Clerking in this neighborhood is fucking high risk, man.”

“You the one called in the complaint?”

Sikes jumped.
Christ almighty.

A man in a black security uniform held the doorjamb with on hand while leaning into the room, gasping for breath. His belly was so big Sikes wondered when he’d last seen his dick other than in the mirror. The officer was staring at him, face glistening with sweat. A black plastic name tag just above his breast pocket showed Doolittle. Sikes couldn’t believe it.

Sikes nodded. “Yes, sir. I called it in,” he said, flashing his stone-cold dead eye.

“What’cha got?” Doolittle craned his neck to scan the area, both thumbs hitched on his belt.

“Officer Doolittle, Lieutenant Sikes. Department of Defense.” He flashed his ID. “We have an extremely bad situation.”

Eyes wary, Doolittle retreated a step. “What kind a situation?”

Sikes replaced the ID, dragging out the moment. “Double homicide,” he finally answered, with a nod toward the shattered glass window separating the reception desk from the waiting room.

Doolittle focused on that direction and did a double take before making the sign of the cross. “Holy Mary, Mother of God—”

M
CCARTHY CRACKED THE hall door, put his ear to the opening, and listened. He heard no more voices, no sound of movement, just an eerie, echoing silence of an empty hall. He opened it further, enough to see the west elevator alcove. It too was empty.

Taking a deep breath, he leaned out far enough to look down the entire hall. Clear. Now was his chance.

Then he was across the hall and into the stairwell, carefully closing the heavy fire door with only a soft click. And realizing he was holding his breath.

Heart jackhammering, he listened for footsteps or voices but heard only more hollow stillness, as if the entire world had stopped. Then he was racing down two steps at a time. When he hit the eighth-floor landing, he grabbed the doorknob and pulled. Locked. Shit! He fumbled out his master key.

It didn’t fit.

He’d forgotten that three months ago they’d rekeyed all the fire doors after three offices had been burgled in one night. Druggies looking for product. Just great! And come to think of it, all these doors opened freely from the hall into the stairwell but not vice versa. Only the first floor and basement level doors would open from both directions.

Pound on the door, hope someone heard? Yeah, like one of Sikes’s men?

Glancing around, he wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to think.

At each end of the building a stairwell ran from the ninth floor to the ground level. But only one set of stairs continued down to the basement. How would Sikes guard the exits? Well, that depended on how many men he had, and McCarthy had no idea what that number might be. Sikes would probably keep one man in the lobby. Question was, did he have one watching the basement too? No way to know. But if he could make it to the basement it’d be an easy shot through the tunnel to the hospital to call the police. So the big question was, was this the stairwell to the basement? If not, he was screwed.

Seconds were ticking away. He had to do something.

Couldn’t go up and couldn’t stay here, so he started down again, checking each door on the way, hoping maybe a smoker had shimmed one open. Floor seven was locked.

Same with six.

He was flying past the fifth floor when a male voice came from below. “Roger that. I’ll check this one.”

He stopped, his gut knotting up. Trapped.

Then he remembered that the west side of the fourth floor differed from the other floors—it was nothing but a huge maintenance closet. A perfect place to hide.

Assuming his master key fit the lock.

He started down again, hand sliding along the tubular railing for balance, no longer trying to mask his sounds, and hit the landing while sorting through his keys.

He could hear footsteps racing up from below, closing in on him.

Come on, come on.
Finally he found the right key and thrust it at the lock but missed. The footsteps were growing closer.

Another try, this time he got it. He darted into the room and threw his weight against the door to slam and lock it. Then checked to make sure the lock was secure. It was.

He blew out a long breath and slumped against the wall. Now what?

Someone started pounding on the door, yelling, “Open up. Security.”

Tom stepped away from the door, turning 360 degrees to inspect a room he’d only seen occasionally when walking past the open door. Thirty square feet of floor-to-ceiling cinder blocks lit by two bare fluorescent ceiling rods. The wall to his left contained two metal elevator doors and a smaller single door. Had no idea where the single door led but tried it. Locked.

On the opposite wall was another door, which he figured should open onto a section of roof. He tested the knob, found it wasn’t locked, and opened the door into blazing sunlight, shimmering heat waves, and the scent of hot tar.