The Warrior Code (15 page)

Krone was dead.

Zeb’s lips tightened briefly.
He could’ve led us to whoever is behind all this.

Roger patted him on the back. He knew what Zeb was thinking.

‘Zeb!’ A muffled shout came from far away.

He swore under his breath and mumbled at Roger, ‘I told them to keep quiet till I came down.’

He went to the basement entrance, shouted, ‘Geronimo,’ felt Roger roll his eyes, and gave him a
don’t ask
look.

Roger nodded at him and stepped out of the house as he mouthed, ‘I’ll keep a watch outside.’

The basement entrance was in the utility room, and Zeb stepped out of the line of sight just in case the twins decided to come out blasting.

They banged the door open and rushed out, guns at the ready, their backs to each other, covered the room swiftly, and relaxed when they saw him.

‘Do you realize what we went through when we heard all that firing and that explosion?’ Beth shouted at him. ‘It felt like a fucking army was here. What happened? Why didn’t you come earlier? What happened to your face?’

Probably not the best time to tell them that the way they’re bunched close together is a no-no.

He told them all that had happened, using the fewest words possible.

Meghan came close and looked at his eyebrow. ‘Is that a bullet wound? Let me have a look at it.’

He shook his head and took a step back.

Maggie pushed in from behind them, a worried look on her face. ‘Zeb, if you’re shot, we need to get you to a hospital immediately.’

‘I’m not shot, ma’am. I was careless. It’s nothing.’

She looked at him for a long while, her blue eyes bored into him, and what she saw satisfied her. She nodded once and moved to make her way past him.

Zeb blocked the route to the living room.

‘Ma’am, if you all can stay in the bedroom and call the cops? What’s out there is not exactly a pretty sight.’

Her eyes fixed him with a glacial stare.

‘Young man, I reckon I’ve seen more than my share of dead people. I can handle another few. Don’t forget I was married to a hell-raising, ass-kicking SWAT guy.’

Zeb looked at the twins, seeking their help.

He would willingly take on a roomful of the most lethal men on the planet, but dealing with children and women was not his strong point.

‘For crissakes, Zeb. We’ve known Mags since time began. She knows everything about this situation and has a very good idea of what to expect. She’s no wilting flower. Besides, this is her home.’

Zeb still blocked the door and eyed them. He knew the twins could handle whatever they saw. They’d proven that in the park. His decision was taken away from him when Meghan shoved past him, muttering something that suspiciously sounded like,
jeez, what a chicken
.

He followed the three women, heard Maggie’s shocked gasp, and saw the twins go pale. Beth glared at him, a
don’t even dream of saying anything
look. Zeb raised his arms in supplication, leaned against a wall, and let them inspect the damage and the dead.

The three he had tied and taped were outside the house, shivering in the night, under Roger’s watchful eyes.

The women sniffed at the faint metallic odor, the flash-bang’s smell, and looked at the scorch marks on the carpet where it had gone off. A part of the carpet was burnt, but luckily nothing else had caught fire.

Maggie looked at the broken windows, stepped gingerly through the glass, and looked at the bullet holes in the wall and finally looked at Krone and Romero for a long time.

The twins crowded behind her. ‘Either of these two guys the mastermind?’

‘Nope. These are two of the three guys who busted the hoods from Teton County Jail. The big one was the leader of those three guys. He was the one who called when we were in Kelly's office. Krone. That was his name. He was a mercenary.’

Beth looked at him hopefully. ‘Did he tell you anything?’ Her face fell when he shook his head.

Maggie broke away from them and headed to the kitchen, where a phone hung next to her refrigerator. ‘Cops,’ she said over her shoulder.

‘Just two, Zeb? Are there any more bodies outside? We heard bursts of firing and then a bang and some more firing.’ Beth’s voice sounded muffled from behind her hand.

‘Three bodies outside and four live ones, ma’am.’ Roger poked his head through the broken window in the front.

The twins whirled round, and their gun arms went up.

‘I come in peace, ladies.’ Roger bowed elaborately. Only he could make it look elegant and courtly with all the gear he was packing.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Beth demanded.

‘For my sins, I am Zeb’s friend, Roger. He doesn’t have many, and since I happened to be passing by, I thought I’d drop in.’

Meghan ran her eyes down Roger slowly, eyeing him in the dim light of the lounge, and her lips quirked.

‘Passing by, huh? Why is it we have a hard time believing you? In any case, thank you and welcome to the party. I hope you’re much more of a conversationalist than he is.’

‘I assure you, ma’am, I know a few million words more than Zeb, and use them regularly.’

‘Zeb?’ Meghan called out.

‘Zeb?’ She called out again when he didn’t respond.

She looked back and saw he was looking intently at the holes in the wall.

Roger strode across the room, joined him, and they crouched in silence.

‘You see it, don’t you?’

Zeb nodded.

‘See what? Bullet holes? We all see it. What else are you both seeing?’ Meghan demanded as the sisters crowded behind them.

Zeb shrugged. ‘Tell them. They’ll not let up.’

Roger grinned sardonically. ‘You have to excuse him, ladies. He’s not used to civilized company.’

He jerked his head at the marks. ‘These tell a story.’

‘What shit-fucking story? You’re as bad as him. You never get to the point.’

Roger stifled a smile
. No wonder Zeb has aged since I last saw him. He’s had to deal with not one, but two firecrackers.

‘Zeb saw those guys come in and escaped through that opening.’ He jerked his head at the dining room. ‘The three hoods pumped enough bullets in Krone and his direction, but none of those bullet marks follow him.’

He waited for them to comment, and when they kept silent, he continued.

‘Zeb says no bullet came close to him, and it takes a couple of seconds to go from here to the dining room. Enough time to have some wild shots in that general direction.’

‘So you’re saying they weren’t after Zeb?’

Chapter 16

‘Bingo. They were out to kill Krone. One of the guys at the back rushed Zeb when he could’ve taken him out with his MP-5. Now, maybe that guy was overconfident, thought he could take on Zeb one on one and claim the kill, but these bullet holes here are obvious. Zeb wasn’t their primary target.’

‘Who, then?’

Zeb was looking away in the distance when Meghan’s question roused him.

‘This was a cleanup gang. They were here to silence Krone and his sidekicks, then take me and the two of you out. Krone was the link to The Man, and once they knew Krone hadn’t succeeded in killing us, they acted. They probably were waiting for some sort of acknowledgement and either didn’t get it or heard the gunfire and knew it had become a clusterfuck.’

Maggie joined them after finishing calls to the cops and her curious neighbors. ‘So who are these new guys?’ She was composed despite the firefight in her home and the damage it had sustained.

Salt of the earth. Just like the sisters
, Zeb thought.

‘We can ask them.’ Roger glanced at Zeb. ‘I did ask them politely, and one of them spat at me, but none of them said a word. Palisano was a bit more forthcoming when I hinted that he would get the death penalty. But even he didn’t have much to contribute. He said Krone was the guy who did all the talking with The Man. Krone never told them who The Man was, and Romero and Palisano never met him. We can question these guys again.’

Zeb knew what he meant and shook his head fractionally. If it was solely their mission, he would’ve interrogated the captured men, but the cops and the FBI were involved. In any case, he didn’t want to question them with women around.

But that didn’t mean they couldn’t do anything else.

Roger and he swiftly searched the bodies, and as they expected, they found no identification. Roger silently pointed at the scorpion tattoo on the backs of the second wave of men. The men were all heavily inked but the scorpion was common on all of them.

Zeb snapped photos of the marking.

They found a phone each on Krone and Romero. Roger had searched the live and dead bodies and had found nothing on them either but their phones. He had marked their phones with a tiny mark that identified their owners.

They laid the phones in the dining room, called Broker, briefed him, and sent him all the numbers on all the phones, as well as pictures of the dead, the alive and the tattoo.

The cops came fifteen minutes later, and the night turned into flashing lights and uniforms.

Zeb pointed the cops in the direction of Krone’s Durango. The cops spread further out, and a distant shout drew a number of them away. They had found the wheels the second group of men had come in.

The FBI then arrived, and the inevitable turf war ensued, but there was only one winner. The Feds carted away the captives and the dead bodies five hours later, just as dawn painted the Idaho sky orange and gold.

It was agreed that the Idaho Falls Police Department and the FBI would take credit for taking down the badasses, and Roger and Zeb would be kept out of the news. Roger and Zeb exchanged glances and shrugged in acceptance. It suited them.
Clare and Director Murphy’s doing.

‘They all look Hispanic,’ Maggie mused as they watched the captured men being led into wagons.

Zeb nodded but didn’t say a word. Something was stirring in the deep corners of his mind, something linked to a previous mission. It would come to him when the memory was fully formed.

Pacho watched the
Federales
and the cops leave, and saw the two men escort the women to a neighbor’s house.
Rest and recover.

As he suspected, the men didn’t stay at the neighbor’s house. They returned to the woman’s house and disappeared inside.

Pacho was lying in a depression a thousand yards away, watching the events through a high-powered scope, a Remington M24 sniper rifle by his side. The moment he heard the flash-bang go off, he knew the mission had failed. The second man had been a surprise. Pacho hadn’t seen him arrive.

These two men had easily taken out nine good men. Six of those were Pacho’s best men, handpicked by him, trained by him. He had heard about Krone and his guys from the short man and knew that the mercenary was one of the very best at his business.

He suppressed the rage that swept over him and glanced briefly at his M-24 rifle. He could take the men out from this distance, but then this would turn into a suicide mission. There would be no escape for him as the cops and the
Federales
would swarm the area.

Now was the time for discretion. Later, when he had more men, he would attack.

He knew where he could find more men. As good as his own had been, if not better.

He would rip off the heads of these two guys and carry them back to Mexico.

‘Should we get him?’ Roger murmured.

Zeb shook his head. The man, alive and free, was worth more.

He had suspected the presence of one more guy since none of the six felt like leader material. Roger and he had slipped out of the back of the McBride home and had circled wide for three miles. They had come from behind where the cops had found the getaway vehicle and had searched till they found another concealed one.

From there, it had been easy to track the man who was now lying prone watching the houses.

They were five hundred feet behind the man, dug deep into the ground, an invisible part of the terrain, and observed him through their scopes.

They saw his lean body lie easily, ignoring any discomfort, and the way he made small economical movements whenever he had to.

‘He saw everything go down. Didn’t lift a finger to help. Knew that would be a one-way ticket. This guy has been around. He’s no pilgrim.’

A couple of hours later, as the sun was beating down on them mercilessly, Pacho slithered back slowly and, when he was fully covered by foliage, rose and headed back to his vehicle. He drove away, taking a circuitous route that would join the road a few miles away from the neighbor’s house.

It was evening when Maggie led the sisters back to her home.

Zeb and Roger had the house cleaned by a professional cleaner recommended by the cops and had taped the broken windows. By the time Maggie returned, the house smelled strongly of room fresheners, but other than the damp and burnt patches on the carpets and the bullet holes, there was nothing to show that the house had witnessed a firefight.

The men were expecting the twins to be subdued since they were still hunting for leads, but Beth’s eyes were shining.

‘Kelly’s got something. The hotel manager where we were staying approached the cops and said they had a Mexican guy staying with them at the same time as us. Now get this – he pointed us out to one of the bellboys and asked him if we were anyone famous. Now the bellboy forgot all about this, and only when he was discussing with the hotel manager the attacks on us did his memory return.’

She turned her phone upside down to show them a blurred picture of a man dining alone in the hotel.

‘I've sent that picture to Broker. The address he provided at the hotel was phoney. Kelly is running his image through various databases to see if they can match him to any identity. Broker will do the same.’

‘Nope. The bellboy or the manager doesn’t remember anything more about the guy. He was short, that’s all they know, which we can see. Why do you ask?’ Kelly’s voice sounded tinny as it came out from Zeb’s phone lying on Maggie’s dining table, surrounded by all of them.