The Count of Carolina, page 8
part #2 of A Clean Up Crew Series
That was also the reason she’d practiced assembling sniper rifles until she knew all the major models and the nuances of each. The Finnish 7.62 TKIV 85 was relatively simple, as it consisted of the stock, the combined barrel/trigger mechanism, stabilizing legs, and of course, a scope. Without moving her eyes from the house, she had the pieces fastened together in less than a minute, even tightening screws with a small Allen wrench. She then loaded it with a five-round clip of 7.62x53mmR cartridges. That action made an unavoidable clicking sound, but it was one so gratifying that she made no effort to muffle it. This sound too apparently went unheard.
Meanwhile, the house remained inert. There had been, since their arrival, no real indication beside the closed blinds that anyone was truly inside. Nicole had assumed that if this was in fact the place where they were holding J.J., there would be at least one person awake at all times, so even though they had arrived in the predawn hours, she’d anticipated even the most minute hint of light would sneak out of at least one of the shuttered windows. But it had not.
As another hour passed, she began to worry that they may have wasted valuable time by staking out the house at all. But at just that moment, she picked up the sound of a vehicle on the road, approaching the house. She aimed the rifle toward the parking area in front of the building and waited. Soon, a black sedan pulled up to the house. At the same instant, the front door opened. As she realigned the rifle in that direction, a man stuck his head out and looked around the property. As he stepped through, satisfied apparently with that pathetic check that the perimeter was secure, Nicole could see a gun in his hand.
But this guy became a secondary target almost immediately as two more people emerged. The first was a very large fellow, also holding a gun (though in his huge hand, it looked like a toy), who reached back through the doorway and grabbed a young woman with a black cloth bag pulled over her head. He dragged her out into the open, then pushed her in the direction of the idling car.
Cole’s heart rate spiked. Who else could the masked girl be but J.J.? She needed to quiet her pulse quickly, so she drew in a deep, even breath, letting it out slowly. She repeated the exercise, and felt her circulatory system reward her by responding favorably.
The first shot caught the brute pushing the girl. It struck him in the forehead, sending a spray of pink fog behind him. He crumpled to his knees, then fell face first onto the driveway.
By the time his misshapen head landed, she’d fired a second shot, catching the man who’d exited first. This fellow she hit in the back, directly in the spine. He too fell.
After the first gunshot, a slider on the second floor of the house had opened and a man carrying a shotgun had emerged onto a balcony deck. Upon hearing the second shot, he aimed in Nicole’s general direction, but before he could squeeze off a round, she heard three quick reports from her left and she knew that Dan was intent on stopping any return blast before it happened. Cole could also see that all three shots had missed, and the shotgun barrel quickly pivoted toward Dan’s hiding place. She had chambered a third round in the rifle, but just as she was about to take the shot, Dan resumed firing. At least one bullet struck the man, and the shotgun fired into the air as the man’s muscles spasmed. He fell backward, dropping the weapon over the deck’s railing.
When the masked girl had heard the first shot and realized the man behind her was no longer pushing her along, she’d dropped to the ground. Her hands were tied together, but she brought them up to cover her head.
Nicole realized there was still at least one person in the car. She pulled her H&K from the back of her waistband and prepared to fire at the dark-tinted windows, but before she could, the problem resolved itself as the backup lights came on and the tires screamed. In a display of stunt-driving that rivaled the fastest and most furious, the sedan tore out of the driveway and back down the twisting road in reverse. It was out of sight almost at once, and by the time Nicole and Dan had quit their stakeout positions and run to the hooded form on the ground, it could no longer be heard.
Nicole reached the trembling girl first, and quickly pulled off the hood.
J.J. blinked her eyes as they adjusted to the sudden influx of morning sunlight. Her mother and father first cheered at the sight of her face, then littered it with joyful kisses. When they finally stopped, J.J. regarded them.
“Mom?” she said, her eyes moving to the gun in Nicole’s hand. Then she turned toward Dan and saw the .45s in each of his hands. “Daddy? What the hell is going on? Why are you both carrying guns?”
Dan and Nicole looked at one another, then as she turned back to look again at her daughter, Nicole spoke once more the words that had changed his life forever. “I guess we need to talk,” she told J.J.
8
The Magic 8-Ball
Before any discussion could ensue, Nicole asked her daughter if there were any more people in the house.
“No. I mean, I don’t think so. They had that damn bag over my head the whole time I was there. But I only heard three different voices.”
“And the place is now decorated with three bodies,” Dan said, looking around. “I think they call that curb appeal.”
“Come on,” Nicole said, walking toward the front door. “I need to take a quick look around.”
“Could someone please tell me what’s going on?” J.J. asked, rubbing her wrists after Dan had cut away her bonds with a jack knife. “Where are we, even?”
“We’re on the outskirts of Greenville, South Carolina. And yes, I’ll explain. But first, I need to toss this place and then we need to clear out. Whoever was driving that car has no doubt already made a phone call, and it won’t be safe here for long.” Turning to Dan as they approached the house, she said, “Nice job with the guy on the deck, by the way.”
“Not really,” Dan said. “I needed like eight shots to take him out.”
“Doesn’t matter. Your first volley spun him off me. Which is good because I was close enough that the scattergun might have done some damage. Your second round caught him. So, shut up; good job.”
Dan smiled and moved to put his arm around his daughter. Just before he did, he realized his hand was still holding the .45 and he tucked it into his jeans.
J.J. was clearly completely confused, and Dan saw her shocked expression. “Sweetie, we’re so glad you’re okay,” he said.
“Yeah, me too,” the young woman said. “Still… what the fuck?”
“Language!” Nicole called over her shoulder as she cautiously entered the sprawling house.
J.J. turned to her father. “Is she serious right now? ‘Language?’ In the past twenty-four or so hours, I’ve been kidnapped by a guy who looks like Uncle Al, taken on a fast trip to wherever the hell we are, and rescued by my gun-toting parents, who just killed three people. And she’s going to call me on saying ‘fuck?’”
Nicole stopped. “I said, watch your language!” she repeated, but J.J. could see she was smiling, both in relief and at her own joke.
“Oh, I get it,” J.J. said. “She’s being funny. Sorry. My sense of humor is a little compromised right now.”
“Understandable,” Dan said, then to Nicole he added: “Told you he looked like Uncle Al.”
She ignored the comment and, her gun at the ready, entered the house. She began looking around, pulling open and dumping drawers, tipping over tables, and generally causing as much mayhem as possible, all the while looking for some sort of indication who the house belonged to.
After five minutes, she was satisfied that the building was clear of any other threats, but completely unsatisfied in her search for information. There was not a scrap of mail, no notes jotted on the small whiteboard mounted in the kitchen, not even any pencil marks on the door jamb indicating the gradual growth of children… nothing that could point her in any direction at all. Aside from leaving behind an enormous mess, she left with no fulfillment whatsoever.
“Alright, let’s get out of here,” she said at last.
Dan tried to show a brave face but was still not as comfortable in this role as Nicole, and he fully expected to hear a voice behind them say something bad-30s-movie-like, such as “Not so fast, ya mugs!” But to his relief, there was no one standing between them and the exit.
They made their way back outside, and Nicole quickly ran to her shooter’s nest and grabbed the rifle and its carrying case. She handed the briefcase to J.J. and began to weave through the trees, back in the direction of their rented Nissan. Her daughter was close behind her, and Dan brought up the rear, constantly looking over his shoulder.
“So now that you’re done vandalizing the bag guys’ house, can I get some sort of explanation?”
Nicole, despite having been the one to indicate that they needed to talk, had not quite worked out what she was going to say to her daughter. Divulging the true nature of Cleanup Crew was only a fraction of the story this time, unlike when Dan had stumbled upon her little secret. Nicole realized that if she filled in all the blanks, she’d have to reveal more than she’d planned, especially to Dan, whom she could only imagine would likely be as disturbed this time as he’d been back in December.
So instead, she waffled. “Wait till we’re in the car and away from here,” Cole said. She spent the rest of the hike mentally shaking a magic 8-ball that said either “Tell all” or “Say nothing.”
Once back on the highway, the black sedan that had come to collect J.J. fish-hooked crazily as the driver, a scrawny man with a panicked expression and, in spite of the cool early morning, rivulets of sweat streaming from a retreating hairline, slammed the car into drive and sped off, away from the city. He was grateful for the car’s tinted windows, knowing that Nicole would have recognized his weasel-like face immediately.
He reached for the media screen of the car and pulled up the contact list of his phone, broadcast via Bluetooth to the vehicle. He scrolled down until it displayed the initials “C.B.” and he pushed the button labeled “CALL.”
“You get her moved?” a voice answered after two rings.
“No.”
“Not what I want to hear, Clyde.”
“I know, Conrad, I know. But as soon as Buff and Greg brought her out, someone started shooting. Sounded like from two different weapons. Derek came out on the deck and they got him too, before he even got a shot off. I figured the best thing was for me to get out of there as fast as I could.”
“Goddamn it, Clyde. Goddamn it!”
“It had to be her, Conrad. Who else could have found the little bitch that fast?”
The voice on the phone had grown a little angrier each time it came through the car’s speakers, and now it exploded in rage.
“Of course it was her, you moron! She was the whole reason we snatched the girl in the first place. And you thought it was a good idea to turn tail instead of make a stand and take care of the problem. When a solution falls right into your bony lap and you don’t take advantage, it kind of makes me wish I’d let Kurt Davenport kick your ass back in ninth grade. You’re every bit as useless to me now as you were then.”
“Aw come on, Conrad. That’s not fair.”
“‘Not fair?’ Nothing about this whole situation is fair. Is it fair that after nearly thirty I finally track her down, and you get spooked by a couple of pop-guns and run like a rabbit into a goddamn hole?”
“I know, I know…”
“You don’t know! Now, I didn’t expect her to get here this fast, and I have no idea how she found the safe house. But the whole reason we grabbed the girl was to get her mother back here. And you were probably less than a hundred feet from her, but you ran. Now the transfer to your cabin is ruined, and an unforeseen chance at ending this quickly evaporates as well.”
“What do you want me to do, Conrad?” asked the Clyde Davis that Nicole remembered.
“What I want you to do is drive that nice company car I let you use off a cliff with you still inside. But what I need you to do is get your ass back here, like yesterday. Looks like I’m going to have to do a little June-Bug hunting myself.”
“She don’t go by June no more, Conrad. She calls herself Nicole now.”
If possible, Conrad Barker’s bluster increased still more. “I KNOW WHAT SHE CALLS HERSELF, IDIOT! I told you! I been tracking her since the day she started checking names off the client list. But in my head, she’ll always be June Barker. Don’t matter what she calls herself. Now get the fuck back here, ‘cause thanks to you, it’s back to the goddamn drawing board. Looks like I’m going to have to find my daughter all over again. And this time, I’ll finish the job myself!”
“Sure ya will, Conrad! Like I always says, you’re the Count of Carolina! No one gets past you… twice.”
Fuming, Conrad Barker ended the call. So she’d found the girl already. The girl. My granddaughter, Conrad thought to himself, then he shook his head. No, he still didn’t care for the sound of that. He might be sixty-five now, and there might be a little more salt than pepper in his full head of hair, but he still felt virile, still considered himself young. He sat at a simple desk, a laptop open, but currently displaying its screensaver.
He’d told Clyde that he was surprised Nicole had found the house, and indeed tracking the girl this quickly was impressive, but when he’d heard that someone had been checking into Nathan Lewis, a man who was paying him well to keep that from happening, he’d been delighted when his own cyber-tech person found the name Cleanup Crew attached to one of the IP addresses the hacker had used to rout inquiries.
When a nephew of one of his former clients had reported a few months back that he’d gotten work forging documents for some outfit named Cleanup Crew, he hadn’t given it a second thought. Then his IT guy (who happened, sadly, to be the late lamented Buff, charged with making sure the coast was clear… and failing) had noticed it during his back-channel trace of the person hacking various Greenville institutions.
Conrad thought about how close the connection had come to being overlooked altogether, and he shook his head. Too close, he thought. But the company name had been passed to him, and he had remembered Jacob Green’s nephew.
By the time Conrad had called him, the kid had already been given the job of providing false identities for Dan and Nicole, and though he didn’t know their real names, he’d been given DMV photos of them to insert into the fake IDs, and this, finally, was Conrad’s reward for laying low for the past thirty-odd years, and for supplementing his contracting business (prior to selling it five years back) with endeavors that fell on the decidedly shady end of the “Things to Do Today” spectrum. When the kid had sent copies of the pictures, he’d recognized her immediately. Out of the blue. It was June-Bug. His murdering whore of a daughter had fallen right into his hands. Thank you, Jesus, he thought. It never occurred to him that Jesus probably wasn’t real happy with him for anything he’d done since his wife died.
When he instructed Buff to widen the net to try to match the picture with a real drivers’ license, he’d learned that June was now Nicole Porter, and that the college-boy-looking idiot was her husband, Dan.
“Father-in-law,” he said aloud. He decided he didn’t like that title any better than he did “grandpa,” but when Buff had checked Porter’s money trail, he was thrilled to find out that his Visa had been used to purchase a ticket to South Bend, Indiana for one Jennifer June Porter. He smiled every time he thought about that fact. Jennifer June, he thought. You tried to leave us all behind, but you couldn’t completely let go, could you June-Bug? He dragged his finger across the mouse-pad on the laptop and woke it up. There she was. He’d made the license photo of June his background picture. She grown up to be a beautiful woman, prettier than her mother had ever been.
And even though she’d somehow gotten the girl back, he knew she was in the area, and he knew she was probably still going to attempt get to Dr. Lewis.
But that wasn’t going to happen. Because, like that ass-wart Clyde had pointed out, he was the Count of Carolina. He’d get to June-Bug before she got to Nathan Lewis. He’d get to her and he’d kill her. He might even have a little of the long-delayed fun he’d been hoping for on the day it all went to hell, back when June was still a teenager.
Conrad Barker smiled. It was a wicked, twisted leer, and he held it for a long time as he traced June-Bug’s lips on the computer screen with his finger, the light from the screen showing on the scar on his hand.
9
The Whole Truth… Take One
As soon as Dan began driving back to the hotel, J.J. said, “Okay, now can I get an explanation? Why did that fat little bastard tell me you had arranged for me to fly back to Indiana in a private jet as an early birthday present (which I thought was hellacool, by the way), and then walked me down a corridor he said led to a private hangar, where he put an awful-smelling rag over my nose and mouth? And why the next thing I remember after that is waking up with a black bag over my head? And why you two showed up with guns and… what is that, Mom? A sniper rifle?”
“Yes,” said Nicole from the front seat, where she had just finished putting the disassembled pieces of the rifle back into its case.
J.J. waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t, shrugged her shoulders, a look of confused exasperation on her pretty face.
“Cole, it would probably just be best to tell her at this point, don’t you think?” Dan asked.
With a heavy sigh, Nicole nodded. “Yes, I suppose it would be best. Because I know exactly why you were taken, and I know who’s responsible.”
“You do?” asked Dan and J.J. at the same instant with equal measures of surprise.
Nicole nodded again, clearly not eager to explain. But finally, she began. “J.J., I need to tell you about the truth nature of Cleanup Crew.”
For the next fifteen minutes, she laid it out, much as she had to her husband, telling everything there was to know about CUC, including how marks were selected, some of the official agencies with which they had unofficial ties, and about Dan’s discovery and their subsequent pre-Christmas trip to Romania. Some of the details were new to even Dan, and they filled holes in his understanding that he’d opted not to ask Nicole about, figuring they’d be made clear in time. He glanced in the mirror as Nicole told the story, monitoring J.J.’s reaction. He realized she was taking it a lot better than he had.
