The Hunt (Mike Greystone, Book 1) (2 page)

3.

"
Mike, turn on
the TV," Dermot said.

"Hi Dermot, I'm sort of busy now," I growled.

"Mike, turn the fucking TV on, I'm not joking," Dermot insisted.

"I'm with a lady, Dermot."

"You're probably banging a whore, not a lady, get the TV on," Dermot barked.

"That'll do for friendly banter. I have the TV on now. What's the story?"

I had the news on and saw a parking lot in a school. Cars with bullet holes and smashed windows, police officers escorting shocked kids and moms to police cars or ambulances. In the background, the school building was burning in places and smoke was billowing out. The faces of the kids showed shock and terror. Their mothers were hugging them to calm them down, but this didn't work great as they were nearly as shocked as their kids. Mayhem. The newsreader said at least 18 people had been killed and many more injured. This included both children and mothers. TV was all about either brutal, emotional or heart breaking stories, and they had found a goldmine. On this very day, exceptionally, siblings called Karrie and John were dropped off at school by their dad, not their mom. Their father, Carter Wimbledon, was one of the people killed according to witnesses.

The news anchor said they wanted to respect the tragedy and the privacy of victims, and therefore they would show the survivors only very briefly.

"If I was to respect their tragedy, I just wouldn't show it," I thought to myself. "Obviously, if you get shot, the TV is more than happy to show a close-up of the hole made by the bullet. What's more, I'm sure some of the victims are thinking clearly enough to have spotted a brilliant opportunity to make themselves well-known on TV, perhaps to be invited to Oprah Winfrey's show. Well, there are probably not enough dead victims to catch Oprah's attention. I'm also certain that some of them captured the events on their mobile phones and have already posted the pictures and videos on YouTube and Facebook.

"Quite a sad story," I said.

"It's fucking tragic, not sad," Dermot retorted.

"Let's cut to the chase. Why should I be interested in this story?"

"You are going to find, interrogate and kill this motherfucker," he said in his usual vulgar-business-like manner.

"Why?" I asked, but immediately corrected myself. "How much is it worth?"

"We pay the usual fee, quarter of a million plus all extraordinary expenses," he responded. He added, "Needless to say we don't provide insurance."

"The usual fee is three hundred thousand, I hadn't noticed any significant deflation happening in the economy."

"We are on the edge of this fucking fiscal cliff. I was asked to cut my fucking budget across the board," Dermot complained.

"I understand your plight, Dermot," I tried to sound emphatic, "but I also have a considerable expense base, I have to pay my team and other bills."

"Stop bullshitting me, you were wealthy before you got into this business, and by now you shit with hundred dollar bills."

"Dermot, I like to occasionally splash my cash, that's my personal choice," I said. "And that's none of your fucking business. I'm sure when you need some cash, you can ask Ben Printer Bernake, and he'll easily print a billion or two, if not a trillion."

"Stop fucking joking, what's your final price?"

"I heard that Ben is now female, since Ben's term in office ended. You could send her one of your handsome young officers with a big cock. I'm sure she'll turn on the printing presses without any delay," I said.

"Mike, I don't have fucking time for jokes, what's your price?"

"I can make a concession, I can look around for two hundred fifty."

"You can look around and kill this motherfucker."

"Why do you want to dispose of him, he merely killed a few school kids. Is it about the RPG angle?" I asked.

"Yes, I don't like freaks running around with rocket launchers," Dermot responded. "An RPG is a serious investment, anybody who uses this stuff has a grudge against somebody, or against everybody. I prefer to have such motherfuckers killed once and for all. I don't like a wronged freak with a portable grenade launcher roaming our streets."

"Do you have any preliminary intelligence on the event and the guy?" I asked.

Dermot Clenaghan was head of the Research & Execution Agency. I’m not sure if this was his real name though. He liked all things Irish, so he may have assumed an Irish name just for fun. Or perhaps it was his real name. I wasn't too bothered, as long as they paid. Moreover, they didn't live long in their trade unless they were very smart. The Research & Execution Agency was a joint venture between the National Security Agency, the CIA, and Homeland Security. The Secret Service were participating as a separate body even though technically they rolled up to Homeland Security. I think the FBI were on board too, Dermot did mention them a few times. So there were quite a few founding members of R&E.

At some stage in the past they came to the conclusion that the administrative side of keeping the country safe was throttling their effectiveness, so they created a new unofficial agency to operate in circumstances where the regular operatives of these agencies would have to seriously break the law to fix a problem. Research & Execution were under the radar, funded by unofficial money from the three or possibly even five agencies plus various auxiliary sources of income, not legal in most cases. It was well-managed without the red tape, and it coordinated efforts to quickly and efficiently solve problems that their parent agencies encountered. This was a setup where everybody was happy. The government agencies were restricted in what they could do. People would think that they could do whatever they deemed necessary. This was true to some extent, but there was an increasing supervision from Senate Committees over their activities and budgets, and the politicians wanted to have more and more influence. As a side note, politicians loved power without the responsibility. They, the politicians, were the first to rack up trillions of dollars of debt, ruin the economy through lack of foresight, or create an economy based on credit card debt, student loan debt, and sub-prime mortgage debt. Once they were done on the political scene, regardless of the result, even if they bankrupted the country, they still got a hundred grand pension in perpetuity, or were hired by big banks and corporates as consultants for a million a year, or as executives in corporate world for much more. Or, if they were high enough in the hierarchy, like a president or prime minister elsewhere in the world, they would give lectures for a bargain price of five grand per thirty minute speech. So these politicians wielded a big magnifying glass and had a big fine-tooth comb, and they went through every single detail relating to government agencies and asked difficult questions. To simplify things, the Research & Execution department was founded. As far as the public was concerned it was an agency exploring the synergies between the activities of the main security agencies – the CIA, NSA, HS, etc - to ensure the resources were channeled and coordinated without waste or effort. That was the PR line. In reality, R&E were dealing with, as Dermot put it, “hot potatoes.” Occasionally, hot potatoes were scalding hot, far too hot for Research & Execution, and that was when Dermot called me. He would also call me if he didn’t have adequate skills within his team or enough bodies on the ground.

"We don't have any intel yet, my staff are working on it," Dermot said. "We should have some information in a few hours. It's not that difficult to track down an RPG purchase in most cases."

"I'll get my guys working on it right away."

"Do. Find and kill this motherfucker."

I collected my thoughts and suddenly realized there was one more thing. "Haven't you forgotten something?" I asked Dermot.

"No, I haven't. What do you mean?"

"I expect a nice bottle of single malt Bushmills after this project is done. I wouldn't mind the 21-year-old one, but I would be okay with the green one too. You promised that a while ago. Have you made a trip across the pond to source some fine spirits recently?"

"Yeah, I was playing golf in Ireland last spring. I may have brought some nice stuff back then. I'll see if I have anything left. I'm afraid after twenty something years of marriage my wife likes whiskey more than I do, and may have sampled most of nice stuff when I was not at home, which due to this job is not infrequently. If you do well, I'll buy you some online."

"Appreciated."

"And I'll add a little leprechaun as well," Dermot jested.

"Deal."

"But remember, no kill, no leprechaun. And no Bushmills."

"Fine."

4.

Dermot didn't give
me any intel whatsoever. I'd probably get something from him in the next few hours or in a day. These guys were really good. If there was something that looked like a terrorist attack and it wasn't done by professional, they would find the guy or his traces within an hour. They were really quite good at it. If it was an experienced pro, it would take a little longer, a day or a few days. If it was a mastermind, they may not find him. But regardless of that, Research & Execution had a pretty decent track record of finding terrorists and internal or external enemies of the state. Obviously, they sometimes needed help for whatever reason. And that’s when I was getting engaged. I had my own geek squad to do research for me, but I did use Dermot's guys as well. You know, I had to economize to stay in business. Still, I didn’t complain. The fee was generous enough. The fee for a job less expenses, less champagne, less staff costs still left a handsome profit that I could spend on girls and gadgets. Not that I actually spent it that way. And whiskey. I didn’t drink crap. I liked nice whiskey, especially if it was as old as I was. And I was in mid-thirties. I always got a nice bottle from Dermot after a successful assignment. Every assignment was successful. I didn’t make mistakes, or at least in most cases I didn’t.

The great thing about working for Dermot was that I got a nice set of government papers with authorization for any inquiries in any circumstances. This made my life easier. Be it local sheriffs, federal agents, the CIA. I was a busy man. I didn’t like wasting my time. If there was an eager local policeman, I just showed my credentials and gave him a steely, unfriendly gaze, implying I was not fucking joking, and it was usually sufficient to allow me or my team to work without any obstacles.

I liked Dermot. You wouldn't believe it, but I’d never met him. Yes, I did get a bottle of whiskey and a leprechaun after every job, however funny it was. But I had never met him. He was a sort of a friend, although you wouldn’t really have any friends in my line of business. And we had regular catch-ups since he was one of my more important clients. But I had never met him. I had never seen him. To be honest, I didn’t know what he looked like. I didn’t even know if he was a man or a woman. He could be both. Voice modification devices were cheap as dirt. I suppose he could be a woman, who knows? But on the other hand, he knew quite a lot about whiskey, so he seemed rather more of a male person. Or perhaps he was just buying the most expensive stuff to impress me and keep a good relationship with me, a key contractor. You never knew. So he was definitely either man or woman, no doubt about it. Well, let me correct that. These days, you couldn’t be sure of anything. Maybe Dermot was trans-gender? Hmm, it would be funny to have a trans-gender head of a secret government agency. Maybe in twenty years, but it was probably too early for that yet. This was not Sweden or Norway, where prime ministers admit to alcoholism and people go naked to the public sauna. This was the USA, no such thing here.

As I said, I liked Dermot, whatever his gender. I liked the bottle I got from him after every job. But I was not entirely sure he was of Irish origin, despite his claims. It could just be a cover. His accent didn’t reveal that much. At his level of the hierarchy, he surely didn’t want to reveal his identity. I wouldn't be surprised if he was ... of Chinese origin? Why not? His name might not even be Dermot. Needless to say, I did some research for Dermot Clenaghan online, but it was very inconclusive. So I was quite convinced it wasn’t his real name. It was safer for him that way. It was a high-risk business.

"Have you interviewed any of the victims?" I asked Dermot.

"Some of them, yes," he answered.

"Any useful information from that?"

"One shooter, white, automatic gun, RPG rocket launcher. You probably heard it on the news."

"I did. Anything else?"

"What you probably haven't heard is that he looked Eastern European."

"How did you find that out?"

"One of the mothers of the children from that school who witnessed the shooting, and who moved to the US around fifteen years ago from Czech Republic said he looked definitely like somebody from Eastern Europe. She said she bets he’s from further east, like a Ukrainian, Belorussian, Russian, or Lithuanian."

"That could be helpful," I interjected.

"Could be, but let me finish," Dermot continued. "Not the southern or central eastern European lot, like Bulgarians, Romanians, or Polish. To be honest, I don't even know where all these countries are, but I took some notes. As you very well know we do some business in Europe, you did a project or two in Europe for us, didn’t you? Anyway, I know most countries west of the Oder River, but east - I don't care, not much business there so far after the Berlin Wall came down. Although Putin has been going crazy recently. Anyway, none of the witnesses heard him speak, so we can’t pin down his nationality."

"Did anybody recognize the car or write down the number plates?" I asked.

"Mike, these were all terrified mothers. Most of them wouldn't recognize and remember the car even if they stared at the badge and model name for half an hour in less stressful conditions. They just told us this was a nondescript big black pickup. Not very helpful."

"Did you ask any of the boys about the car?" I asked. "I’m sure most of them would know and tell you the exact make and model."

"Well, we haven't thought about that."

"Let me make some inquiries. I'll interview the kids of the deceased male. Where are they now?"

"They’re still at the 'Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh'. Feel free to do whatever you need to do. I can assist you with whatever you need."

"I need your jet to take me to Pittsburgh."

"Well, this one I can't assist you with. You know, we’re in a sort of economy mode here, I can’t afford for now," Dermot lied. Of course they could afford it. "I need this guy caught, but it's not a matter of life and death yet."

"Yeah, right. Okay, I'll pay for this one, but when I need it at short notice, no bargaining. Deal?"

"Deal," Dermot confirmed.