The Warrior (Warriors Series Book 1) Page 15

  Zeb twists to his left, falling, the gunman half facing him, his right hand searching and finding and gripping the assailant’s throat as he falls and brings the gunman on top of him awkwardly. Zeb squeezes, draining the life out of the gunman, uncaring about the blows against his body, uncaring about the knife sinking deeper into him.

  The gunman’s thrashings slow down and then stop.

  A few feet away, Holt has been watching curiously, and he now rolls over and shoves himself up, dragging his right leg as he approaches Zeb. He picks up Zeb’s fallen gun, holding it casually as he stands over Zeb.

  ‘I wonder if you are worth a bullet now, Major. Looks like you will be at the pearly gates soon enough and I’ll be gone with these two. The FBI will come after me now, but at least I have the chips on my side and white pussy to keep me company in the dark lonely nights.’

  Zeb whispers something.

  ‘Praying, Major? Shall I administer the last rites?’ He lifts Zeb’s Glock.

  The shot is muffled and could be mistaken for a car misfiring distantly. Except that the shot is in the room, and there is no mistaking the red ugly hole in Holt’s chest. He looks down stupidly, teetering back on his heels, and Zeb fires again from beneath the gunman’s body.

  The second blast takes Holt down just as Broker rushes into the room. Taking in Holt and Zeb in one glance, he moves swiftly to cut Lauren and Rory free before kneeling down next to Zeb. He rolls the dead assailant off him and sees the gun in Zeb’s right hand, the gun Zeb had taken off the waist of the gunman, sees the knife deep inside him, the blood dripping alongside it.

  He grips Zeb’s shoulder hard. ‘Hold on, buddy. Help’s coming. We’ll get you back in good enough shape to take a swing at Isakson.’

  Zeb looks in his eyes and sees everything there, knows it in his body. He clasps Broker’s hand in his own, his breath labored.

  The living organism expended all its efforts, all its resources in creating that ball of fire and directing it where needed. Now the need has gone, and the organism is empty, drained by that enormous burst of energy, empty of the survival instinct.

  Zeb can feel the stillness flooding him, the room dimming, Rory’s face appearing beside Broker’s shoulder.

  He has no words for Rory.

  He closes his eyes, his grip on Broker’s hand easing. Darkness floods him, and from far away he sees a pair of bright, mischievous eyes looking at him.

  ‘I’m coming, baby,’ he whispers and slips away into the welcoming blackness.

  Chapter 19

  It’s pouring, fierce driving rain battering the windows of New York, the clouds being ripped apart by the occasional streak of lightning.

  Connor, looking out the window, adjusting his tie, wonders if the city gets a momentary turn of conscience after such a rain before it lapses into its sell-my-mother-to-get-ahead ways, and then reprimands himself for being silly. After all, he thrives in the razor-sharp living of the city.

  Feeling someone behind him, he turns to see Lauren and Rory all dressed up and ready to go. Giving a hug to Rory and a kiss to Lauren, he leads the way to their car.

  The two months since Lauren’s and Rory’s rescue have passed in a blur.

  * * *

  Isakson, when he learned that fateful night that Zeb had launched his own rescue, had gone incandescent with rage and had vowed to arrest him on sight. He called Broker to find out where Zeb was and where Holt was holed up, but Broker hadn’t picked up his phone.

  As the night wore on and tempers cooled, Isakson acknowledged that Zeb had the best chance of success, since his team from Quantico wouldn’t have reached them in time, and it was likely that Holt would move his base of operations afterward, anyway.

  ‘We are bound by rules, sir, and the Major isn’t, but don’t ever quote me on that,’ he had told him privately much later.

  Connor felt only relief, enormous relief, when he heard of the rescue, and had been reduced to helpless tears when the FBI and police had brought his family back to him.

  Shame and guilt had set in later when he noticed Cassandra’s appearance. Cassandra hadn’t uttered a word, had just gone white and swayed a bit and left the apartment, followed by Broker, Bear and Chloe.

  Zeb’s not surviving the rescue attempt had never occurred to any of them, and it still was hard to grasp two months later. While Connor and his family had known him only for a short while, his dark brooding presence had had a huge impact on them all, especially Rory. Lauren and Rory had gone through several sessions with a shrink, and both seemed to have recovered from their ordeal. Lauren had been a teary-eyed wreck for a few weeks afterward and had turned her gratitude to Zeb into a rage over Connor’s job. Time, the shrink, and the solidity of her family around her had helped calm her down and put things into perspective.

  The rescue had blown Connor’s stories wide open. Hardinger had been arrested, Alchemy was under investigation by numerous federal bodies, and Connor was being feted the length and the breadth of the journalistic world.

  The FBI had come under ugly scrutiny but managed to redeem themselves a little by claiming credit for the rescue.

  ‘Assholes.’ Broker had shrugged when Connor spoke to him briefly a few days later and didn’t say anything more.

  Rory had come out of the hostage situation very well, the natural ebullience of youth helping his recovery. Zeb now wasn’t just a hero to him but the closest thing to God.

  Connor had found out that there had been one other gunman on the second floor that neither Broker nor Zeb had detected with their thermal imaging. Zeb had shot this guy, but if he had been detected earlier and if Broker had taken out the remaining ones, Zeb would have been fine.

  Broker and Zeb had been very close, and Connor was amazed that he didn’t show any trace of guilt or grief.

  He had ventured this question to Bear and Chloe and then shut up, his ears flaming when they had turned cold empty eyes on him.

  Broker had not let the Balthazars see Zeb’s body – Clare had accompanied his body in an ambulance to the nearest hospital, where he was declared dead.

  Broker had spent a lot of time with Rory in private, and Rory seemed to be the better for it. Connor and Lauren hadn’t asked Rory what they talked about, respecting a newfound maturity in him.

  Cassandra.

  They had seen her just once since the rescue. Subsequently, lean, hard men had appeared, calm on the outside, with a don’t-look-at-me-from-even-ten-feet-away attitude, cold-shouldering and ignoring everyone except those closest to Zeb. They had barred any access to her, taking her away from her apartment.

  There had been a time or two when some of them had accosted Isakson, the FBI squaring off against some of the most dangerous men, but Broker and Clare had intervened and calmed the situation.

  They had thought they had lost contact with Cassandra when the call came from her about the memorial service.

  * * *

  Connor stops his musings as he drives onto Park Avenue, heads toward the Church of St. Ignatius at 84th Street, and jams the brakes hard when he sees the crowd outside the church. A lot of those same hard men, but also many others, some old, a few teenagers, a few Asians and Hispanics.

  ‘Have we come to the right place?’ Lauren murmurs and then spots Broker, who is indicating some parking spaces far ahead.

  As they walk back to the church, they’re joined by Mark and Anne. Anne’s eyes are red rimmed, and the usual spark in her is missing.

  Taking in the crowd, she says, ‘I didn’t realize he knew so many people and had so many friends.’

  ‘A lot of them must be his military buddies. The rest, probably their family and friends,’ Mark and Connor reply simultaneously and then grin.

  Anne holds Rory’s hand. ‘Are you okay, champ?’

  He just nods, his gaze on Broker.

  Broker greets them at the entrance and directs them inside. ‘Cass is over there, waiting for you.’ In reply to Lauren’s unasked question, he adds, ‘She’s fine.
She’s a tough one.

  ‘More important, how are you and champ here?’

  Lauren smiles briefly. ‘It all feels like a distant, horrible dream.’

  Broker nods. ‘Yes, and if you’re feeling that, then you’ll be fine. Just think of it as something unreal. And as for Rory, he’ll be fine, too.’

  They go inside the church, which is packed, a lot of ebb and flow around Cassandra, who’s standing next to Clare and a couple of those hard impassive guys.

  Connor feels awkward as they approach Cassandra and senses similar emotions in his entourage. It’s the first time they’ve met socially since the rescue.

  Rory rushes up to her and hugs her for all he’s worth, breaking the awkwardness.

  ‘This wasn’t my idea.’ Cassandra indicates the filled church once she, Lauren and Anne have shed a few tears. ‘Broker insisted, and there were several others who came to me and said they would go ahead with this, with or without my permission.’

  ‘This is Roger and Bwana. They were with us during our Catskills trip,’ she continues, introducing two men standing next to her, one African-American, and the other, a relaxed Texan.

  They both nod to Connor and his party.

  ‘And this is Andrews. He was Zeb’s handler at the agency.’ She points to another, whose immaculate appearance doesn’t mask hollow eyes and cheeks.

  ‘Who are all these people?’ Mark asks. ‘I thought Zeb was a loner.’

  ‘He was. Many of these people are those he helped, or families of those he helped over the years.’

  ‘Over there’ – she points to a teenage girl accompanied by her father – ‘Dad owns a chain of retail stores in the Midwest. Daughter went to Mexico for a holiday and got kidnapped, with the kidnappers demanding a ransom. Zeb rescued her. There are many such people here. Zeb didn’t know it, but all of them kept in touch with me.’

  Cassandra smiles sadly and then chuckles at Mark’s stunned expression. ‘You really thought there would be about ten people or so here at the most, didn’t you?’

  ‘We all thought that,’ Connor says before wandering away to have a look around and meet some of the people.

  What feels like hours later, he turns to the lectern at the front as a hush falls across the hall.

  Broker steps up, looks around, and chuckles. ‘I think Zeb would be amused to know that so many had gathered in his memory. I’m sure he never thought he was that important. He would also shrug and think it was all just a waste of time. Thankfully we are all not Zeb.’

  The room chuckles with him.

  ‘But because we are all not Zeb, it’s all the more important to pause from life and remember that there are these unusual people who impact our lives and change us. Today is not about mourning and not about Zeb alone. I am sure there are many more people like him that you might know. Today is about celebrating such people.’

  He pauses and waits.

  Silence greets him.

  ‘You bastards, that was the cue for you to shout my name.’

  Laughter fills the hall.

  ‘Some of you will know this next speaker, though I’m not sure why,’ Broker says, stepping aside.

  A tall black man, distinguished looking with silver hair, fills the hall with his presence as a frisson of excitement ripples through the crowd.

  Matthew Ferrer is widely regarded as the best Hollywood actor of his generation, with a worldwide following that even the Pope would envy.

  ‘A few years back when I had won the Academy Award for Forgotten, I started receiving weird death threats, and my studio and my agent suggested that I seek personal protection. It did not sit well with me. Here I was, on top of the world, recognized all over the world, women chased me’ – he paused – ‘men, too.’

  A ripple of laughter, the crowd hanging on every word.

  ‘And suddenly, there were these crazies who seemed to be intent on doing me harm. Nevertheless, I took the advice of my agent and spoke to a few people; those few people gave me some names. I also spoke to the LAPD. The LAPD and quite a few of the others I spoke to kept mentioning one name, Major Zebadiah Carter. They also said he was not easy to get to and not very friendly.

  ‘That suited me, that last bit. I had enough hangers-on in my life without a bodyguard looking at me with doe eyes. My agent called him; no response. I got the LAPD to call him; no response. I called him and left a message for him.

  ‘He never returned my call, but one night after shooting on location in New York, he was sitting in my hotel room waiting for me, late at night. Boy, did that freak me out – this guy sitting Zen-like in my hotel room all dark, just looking at me, not uttering a single fucking word.

  ‘“I want to hire you,” I told him. “Everyone I have spoken to tells me you are the best personal protection guy out there.”

  ‘He just sat there looking at me. I’m sure you all know the Zeb look.’

  A loud shout of assent in the hall.

  Matthew takes a sip of water.

  ‘I got him to talk somehow, or rather, he got me to talk and laid down the rules for working with him. Yes, me, Hollywood superstar, toeing his line. It was galling, I tell you, but my agent said I had no choice. Not if I was going to take those threats seriously.

  ‘Zeb was my personal protector for three years, travelled with me all over the world, and saved me from a katana-wielding stalker in Tokyo, who just pounced on us when I was having dinner with my cast. That was some weird shit. Here we were having dinner in Tokyo’s finest, the restaurant empty save for the cast, and then this guy bursts in through the door, yelling and shouting, waving a giant sword, nearly taking the director’s head off. The guy jumped on my table, and then Zeb showed up, there was a blur, and next thing I know, the guy was hog-tied and Zeb was calmly sampling my dinner.’

  His voice chokes.

  ‘That was Zeb. He could slow time down. He taught me not to take myself seriously. That the world would not be permanently misshapen just because I was no longer in it.

  ‘I have dined with presidents, met the Pope, romanced the most beautiful women in the world, but I have, I had, only one brother. Major Zebadiah Carter.’

  A pin-drop silence and then a roar of applause washes over all of them. Connor notices that there is hardly a dry eye in the room, including his.

  Much later, when they have sampled the hors d’oeuvres and Rory has spent time with Broker, Roger and Bwana, they make their way toward Cassandra, who is holding court in front of a long table.

  The table has his ribbons and medals laid out: Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, a Medal of Honor – the stories behind the medals; a silver tankard, which Broker tells him is the Wimbledon Cup for long-range rifle shooting; and various commendations and certificates. At the other end of the table are a few photographs, Anne and Lauren gravitating toward them.

  Mark, Connor and Rory look over the awards, reading the stories behind them, and move slowly to the photographs. He notices a curious stillness in the women, breaks off from the medals, and joins them.

  There aren’t many photographs. Just a few faded ones of Zeb when he was serving, a couple of them in either Afghanistan or Iraq or some dusty, sun-bathed land.

  What has captured the women is a photograph in the center.

  A clean-shaven, dark-haired handsome man, smiling, holds a beautiful woman in his arms, both of them clasping a young boy – one of those pictures that arrests anyone by its vitality and grace.

  Cassandra, her voice sounding far away, explains, ‘He didn’t tell anyone. Even here, less than a handful know – Broker, Bear, Chloe, one or two others, but no one else. He and his family were captured by terrorists when he was between assignments. His wife and son were tortured and killed in front of him. He couldn’t do anything to help them.’

  Chapter 20

  He places the walnut stock of the M40 against his cheek, feels its familiarity settle in his hands, and sights down the rifle. The closed window of the apartment in a towering block opposite the street
jumps out at him through his Leupold scope.

  Broker and he have come to Rio hunting for Quink Jones, the last of the Rogue Six. He hasn’t been that easy to locate.

  * * *

  Broker was able to trace him fleeing to Europe when Zeb took down Mendes, first touchdown at Amsterdam and then in Zurich, and after that the trail went cold. He had cajoled his databases, hacked into the most secure NSA systems, Interpol, everything that he could hack into, and still no sign of Jones. It was clear that Jones had realized the Rogue Six had a short shelf life and had decided to put some distance between Holt and himself.

  However, no one could disappear like that, and his vanishing act gnawed away at Broker. Over a drink with Roger and Bwana, Bwana had joked, ‘It’s as if the critter has a new life,’ and Broker had stared at him.

  ‘Of course, that’s it. The one thing Switzerland has, other than banks, is cosmetic surgeons. Jones has a new face and new identity.’

  After that it wasn’t that difficult for Broker.

  Cosmetic surgeons in Switzerland who provided this service to terrorists, dictators, and assassins were not exactly thick on the ground. Armed with a reference from Clare, who was more than happy to make the hunt an agency one, the three of them had visited six clinics in Switzerland and at the last one had picked up the trail again.

  Jones, with a new face and identity, had been renting an apartment in Copacabana, on Rua Paula Freitas, in a high-rise, the last few months. He had been leading a paranoid’s life, seldom venturing from his apartment, and when he did, he moved erratically, seemingly without any plan – deliberately.

  Broker and Bwana had spent a couple of weeks surveilling him and had then rented the apartment in the opposite high-rise, a little higher than Jones’s but having a great view of his window.

  The long gun was the easiest to get.

  Broker’s contacts in Rio had delivered an M40, with a sleek, warm walnut finish that felt as if it belonged in Bwana’s hands. A few days shooting and zeroing and they were good to go.

  * * *

  He has one shot at Jones, a window of opportunity of a minute at the most, when the target wakes up in the morning, pulls wide the curtains of his glass window overlooking the street twenty floors below, and spends exactly fifty seconds surveying the street.