Endangered Species: PART 1 (4 page)

“
How many of you are
there?”

The man paused then smirked a bit and said,
“Ten”.

Before the man could react, Whelan’s left
hand grasped the collar of his windbreaker while his right hand
shoved the tip of the Makarov’s suppressor nearly down the man’s
throat. It broke several of his teeth and lacerated the roof of his
mouth and tongue. He gagged and tried to struggle, but he was a
Norm—a normal human being; no match for Whelan.

Whelan leaned in close to the man’s right
ear and softly snarled. “Let’s try that again. How many?” The tip
of the Makarov never withdrew from the man’s mouth.

The man’s eyes opened wide in pain and fear.
He held up his left hand with the four fingers and the thumb
extended, indicating five assassins.

Whelan shoved him back into the chair and
placed the muzzle of the automatic pistol against the center of the
man’s forehead. “I killed two men upstairs and one in the
stairwell. Where’s number five?” He ground the tip of his weapon
into the man’s flesh for emphasis. The temperature in the kitchen
was in the mid-sixties, but the man was beginning to sweat
profusely. His eyes never wavered from Whelan’s face.

Whelan heard a sound behind him. It was the
unmistakable sound of a hammer being cocked back. A voice also
speaking accented Russian said, “You do not have to look for number
five. He has found you.”

Whelan turned slowly and
looked over his left shoulder. The fifth man indeed was there, and
training a Russian-made
PP-19 Bizon
submachine gun at his back. It had an
AKS-74 type folding butt with pistol grip and cylindrical
magazine. His memory told him it held somewhere between 45 and 60
rounds. The man was close enough that he couldn’t possible miss,
yet far enough away that Whelan couldn’t spin and deflect the
muzzle before the weapon was fired.
Smart
bastards. Someone warned them to keep a safe distance because of my
skill sets.

His stomach suddenly felt queasy as he
realized what would happen to Caitlin and their boys. His own fate
was of little concern to him. It was his family that mattered. He
had let them down; failed to protect them. The thing that bothered
him most was the likelihood that there would be no one to track
down these bastards and kill them. And kill those who had sent
them.

The man with the PP-19 Bizon said, “Put your
pistol on the table. Slowly.”

Whelan gritted his teeth and obeyed. Maybe
there would be a moment, a nanosecond, when these men would get
careless and give him an opportunity to kill them.

The man in the chair picked up his own
Makarov, stood and spit out pieces of teeth. Careful not to be in
his comrade’s line of fire, he drew back his arm and swung the
weapon at Whelan, striking him viciously across the left side of
his forehead. Whelan rocked back a bit, but otherwise didn’t move.
Puny Norms, he thought, as stars briefly flashed through his
consciousness. He felt the warm flow of blood beginning to trickle
down his face.

The man he had abused spit in his face. It
was bloody spittle from his injured mouth. There might have been
small specks of teeth in it. He stuffed the pistol in his waistband
and stepped backwards a few feet. “Now,” he said, “we kill you then
we kill wife and sons. I am told your wife is beautiful woman.” He
leered a bloody leer. “She will be good fuck. Your sons will watch.
Then we kill them all. Slowly.” He nodded at the man holding the
PP-19 Bizon. The man took a few steps backward to avoid being
spattered by Whelan’s blood.

Chapter 4—Albuquerque,
NM

It was just after six
o’clock in the afternoon when Mitch Christie left the Bernalillo
County Sheriff’s Office. The large, T-shaped building on the
southwest corner of
Roma Avenue and
4
^th
Street NW, occupied the entire block. The five-story portion
fronted on Roma. The base of the tee was a three-story structure
that stretched south toward Marquette Avenue. Like every building
in New Mexico—residential or commercial, or so it seemed to
Christie, it was a boring buff color.
Must
be a local fetish
, he thought.
Blends in with the sepia, russet, and sandstone
hues of the high desert
.

Average temperatures in
Albuquerque, New Mexico in April range between the mid-forties and
high sixties Fahrenheit.
Christie paused
and buttoned the jacket of his lightweight suit. The sun was
dropping quickly toward the western horizon. Albuquerque was in the
grasslands transition area between the northern reaches of the
Chihuahuan Desert and the beginning of the pine forests and high
plains that stretched north to Santa Fe and into the mountains
beyond. The barren countryside didn’t retain heat at night, and a
brisk breeze added to the chill factor. He shivered briefly and
thought about the warmer clothes in the closet of his small
apartment twenty miles away.

Christie glanced at his
image reflected in a side window of a car parked at the curb. What
he saw disturbed him. The face staring back at him was gaunt, skin
stretched tight over cheekbones and brow. Bloodshot eyes held a
haunted look, framed by dark semi-circles like the black smudges
football players use to reduce glare. The clothes he wore were
badly rumpled and hung loosely on his thinning frame. His five
o’clock shadow had lost several additional hours in its battle with
the clock. He stared at the reflection for several seconds.
I used to a decent looking man
, he thought.
Athletic and trim, but
far from gaunt
.
I’m starting to look like a man who’s running out of time on
this planet
.

He was startled by a hand clapping him on
the shoulder and a voice that said, “This is not the kind of
weather a man stands around in, not when he’s dressed the way you
are.” He turned to see Tom Burkhardt, the sheriff’s captain who
co-chaired the OCDETF with him.

“
You look like a guy who
lost has last friend, Mitch. You okay?”

Christie hesitated for a couple of beats,
searching for the right thing to say. Finally, he said, “Yeah, Tom,
I’m fine.”

Burkhardt looked him up and down and said,
“You don’t look like a man who’s doing fine. You wanna grab a drink
and talk?”

Again, Christie was slow to respond. “I
appreciate the offer, but I’m not much of a conversationalist these
days.”

“
I noticed. Your body was
in the meeting this afternoon, but the rest of you was someplace
else.” He paused for a moment then took a firm grip on Christie’s
arm and said “C’mon. There’s a nice watering hole in the next
block.”

Christie offered little resistance and the
two men walked down the street to a small bar. It was a narrow
space between a bail bondsman’s office and a pawnshop. The windows
looked as if they hadn’t been washed in a long time, if ever. A
fading neon sign identified it as Black Jack’s Tavern. Christie
assumed it was named in honor of General John Joseph “Black Jack”
Pershing. He had led the 1916 expedition into Mexico to find and
punish the Mexican revolutionary and thug, Pancho Villa. The bandit
and his ragtag followers had crossed the border and raided
Columbus, New Mexico in March of that year. Ultimately, Pershing
had been unsuccessful, but he was still a beloved hero in the area
a full century later.

Burkhardt pushed the door open and held it
for Christie to enter first. The place smelled musty and stank of
stale beer and accumulated generations of body odors and cooking
grease. There was an earthy smell that reminded Christie of
mushrooms. Must be dry rot, he thought. Fungi are fungi; the smell
is the same. He was grateful for New Mexico’s ban on smoking in
public places, including bars. The room was long and narrow with
the bar on the left and booths on the right. Both men blinked a
couple of times trying to adjust to the dim light, most of it
produced by neon signs covering the walls and advertising a variety
of beers. A few tubes had burned out in a couple of them, making
for an occasional odd turn of a phrase. The place looked like it
had been there for a long time. The furnishings were old and
scarred. The barstools and booth benches were covered in Naugahyde.
Several had been patched with duct tape. The wooden floor was well
worn by the shoes and boots of generations of patrons.

A small group of men were clustered near the
middle of the bar. They were drinking beer and watching a sports
show on a flat screen TV mounted on the wall behind the bar. The
barkeeper was leaning against the bar glancing back and forth
between the TV and the men’s glasses. Christie recognized it as
universal bartender behavior. Keep a close eye on the patrons’
drinks. When there’s only a swallow or two left in the glass, be
quick offer a refill before the drinker can think about calling it
a night. Christie likened it the behavior to the speedy strike of a
rattlesnake. The more drinks the higher the tab; the higher the
tab, the bigger the tip. Christie, ever the cop, quickly sized up
the men at the bar. They didn’t look like big tippers. One was
wearing a postal worker’s uniform. Another had on a jacket with a
delivery service’s logo. The clothes worn by the others suggested
construction work.

Burkhardt led Christie to a
booth opposite the group of drinkers. The bartender watched them.
He had an unhappy look.
Probably wishes
we’d gone to the bar and saved him having to walk over
here
, Christie thought. As if to emphasize
his displeasure, the bartender ignored the two men for several
minutes. Finally, Burkhardt yelled at the man. “Hey, can we get a
coupla’ drinks over here?”

All of the men at the bar turned in unison
and looked at them. They knew cops when the saw cops. Again in
unison, they turned back to the TV screen. The bartender sighed and
threw his cleaning rag on the bar. He sized up the two cops as he
approached their booth. One was younger and looked like he spent a
lot of time in the weight room. His suit was still crisp looking
and wrinkle free this late in the day, his hair short and neatly
parted. A pretty boy, he thought. Probably banging every broad in
the Sheriff’s department. The other guy didn’t look too good, kind
of pasty faced and bent over like he wasn’t well. His clothes
looked like he had stolen them from a homeless person; a homeless
person who was a size or two larger. For a cop he had a messy,
unkempt appearance. His hair, which was receding, looked like it
was overdue for an oil change. It was obvious that he hadn’t had a
date with his razor in a couple of days. The bartender didn’t like
cops, but grudgingly admitted they were a necessity in his line of
work. There were those occasions when fights went beyond his
ability to quell them with the sap or baseball bat he kept behind
the bar.

He nodded at Burkhardt. “Whatcha’ havin’,
Mac?”

“
A shot of Patron Silver
and a beer.”

“
What kind of
beer?”

Something about the man’s attitude irritated
Burkhardt. “I don’t give a fuck as long as it’s cold.” It came out
in a semi-growl.

The bartender played stare-down with
Burkhardt for a couple of seconds then turned to Christie. “What
about you, Chief?”

Christie was very conscious of his volcanic
stomach. Almost any food or beverage contributed to an eruption.
“Do you have cream or half-and-half?”

“
What’s this look like, a
fuckin’ Starbucks?”

With surprising speed, Christie grabbed the
bartender’s tie close by the knot and yanked his head down so the
man’s eyes were level with his. “You seem to have an attitude
problem. But if you want me to, I’ll show you a whole new meaning
of bad attitude.”

The bartender had both of his hands on
Christie’s fist, trying to pull it away from his throat. He looked
in his assailant’s eyes. What he saw there frightened him. “I got
milk,” he stammered.

Christie released the man’s tie. “Scotch and
milk then.”

As the bartender scurried away, Burkhardt
leaned back in the booth and laughed. “That’s a side of you I
wasn’t aware of, Mitch. Is that standard Bureau behavior or are you
just having a bad day?”

Christie wagged his head, trying to shake
off the sudden burst of anger. It wasn’t helping his stomach
issues. He looked down at the tabletop and said, “I’m sorry. I
shouldn’t have lost it like that.”

“
Don’t sweat it. He had it
coming.”

“
Truth is, things haven’t
been going all that well lately.”

Burkhardt leaned forward and put his hands
on the table, fingertips to fingertips, forming a vee. “Yeah, I
don’t mean to intrude, but I’ve heard things to that effect.”

Christie looked up. “Like what?”

“
The divorce, the shakeup
at Bureau HQ…and the less than warm welcome you’ve gotten from
Wojakowski.”

Christie looked down again. Unconsciously,
he turned his hands palms up. “Can a man have no privacy anymore.”
It was more of a statement than a question.

“
The cop community is
pretty tight knit across all agencies. No one has any secrets for
very long.”

“
A hell of a note,”
Christie said glumly.

“
But hey, I’ve got
something that ought to cheer you up.”

Christie looked up and hesitated for a
moment then, with a suspicious note in his voice, said, “Yeah?”

Leaning back in the booth again, Burkhardt
smiled. “There’s a lady in the BSD that has an interest in you, a
secret admirer.”