The Payback Assignment (23 page)

           
The waiter reached under Morgan’s windbreaker and slid the nine-millimeter out of its holster.
 

           
“I’m pretty sure that’s a knife on the other side,” Griffith said.
 
Tommy nodded and pulled on Morgan’s left shoulder to partially turn him.
 
Morgan turned just enough, and Tommy reached forward awkwardly, his left hand going across the front of Morgan’s body as it slid under his windbreaker.
 
This was the moment.

           
“What’d you do, poison me?” Morgan asked through clenched teeth.
 
He bent farther than before, again grasping his own waist.
 
As he did, he gripped his belt buckle in his right hand.
 
With a short tug, it came loose from his belt.
 

           
As the buckle came away, so did a three inch, black, razor sharp, double-edged steel blade.
 
The belt buckle served as the square handle of a push dagger, concealed in the leather of his wide belt.

           
Morgan turned half way to his left, thrusting up under his own left arm into the exposed ribs of the gunman behind him.
 
The blade slid in high enough to find Tommy’s heart.
 
The man did not even have time to moan before death took him.
 

           
Morgan knew that Griffith could not really see what was happening.
 
Morgan’s back faced him for an instant, and Morgan’s jacket cloaked the action.
 
Griffith might be staring into his accomplice’s astonished face just long enough for Morgan to spin back toward him, very fast. Morgan snapped his right arm out in a wide arc, and it was a blur as it swung past Griffith’s outstretched arm.
 
Griffith’s pistol dropped from nerveless fingers, and blood burst from the heel of his palm.
 
He had time for one short grunt of pain before Morgan’s left fist, powered by all the rage an old soldier can hold, crashed into his jaw, sending him tumbling over a table.

           
Morgan knew he had been lucky.
 
First of all, Griffith and his backup man were guilty of unforgivable carelessness.
 
The idiot behind Morgan had stretched out his left arm, leaving his heart side ribs wide open.
 
And Griffith had been close enough so that, after the killing thrust, Morgan’s back swing had just caught Griffith’s gun hand.
 
Morgan had continued the spin and his left cross put Griffith over the table and into dreamland for a while.

           
Ignoring his aching knuckles, Morgan tucked Griffith’s larger automatic into his belt, then recovered his own.
 
After wiping the push dagger on the dead man’s shirt, he returned it to its belt scabbard.
 
While Griffith was dazed, Morgan performed a quick body search, netting a twenty-five caliber pocket pistol and a big folding knife.

           
Tossing Griffith’s backup weapons aside, he roughly yanked the ex-Marine to his feet.
 
When his eyes snapped open, Griffith found the cold steel muzzle of Morgan’s pistol resting on the tip of his nose.
 
He raised his hands slowly, giving Morgan a half smile of respect.
 
Morgan released his shirt and sat down on a table for two.

           
“So you sold me out.”
 
Morgan practically spat the words out.

           
“Nothing personal,” Griffith said, trying for a light tone.
 
“Strictly business.
 
You’d have done the same thing.”

           
Morgan let that pass.
 
“And what was the plan, really?”
 
Moving his pistol, he motioned Griffith into a chair.
 
“Were you going to just kill me in here and deliver my head to Stone for a fat reward?”

           
“No, man,” Griffith said, tying a cloth napkin around his hand and wrist as he talked.
 
“I was just going to deliver you.
 
Whole. I’m a soldier, not a hit man.
 
I figured, if Stone wanted you taken out, he’d have to do it himself.
 
He could take care of you face to face, if he’s got the balls.”

           
“Sounds like fun,” Morgan said.
 
“Why don’t you just take me to him.
 
Now, I know you’ve got the front covered.
 
So we’ll just go upstairs and across the roof.
 
Then we can go have a little rendezvous with our mutual friend with the white hair.”

           
“You know I can’t do that.”
 
Griffith’s face dropped into a genuine hard look.
 
Morgan’s twisted into a snarl.
 
They stared into each other’s eyes for ten long seconds.
 
Morgan knew that he was facing a tough, hard man, a veteran of many battles and a man who, like Morgan himself, had walked with death every day for years.
 
A bullet in the brain would hold no terror for him.
 
But maybe, just maybe, something else would.

           
Without breaking eye contact, Morgan reached under his right arm an exaggerated slow motion and pulled his fighting knife free.
 
Mindful of the distance, he switched his pistol to his left hand, the knife to his right.
 
He held the flat of the blade toward Griffith.
 
A light beam flashed off the steel, making the seated man blink.
 

           
“Hold out your left hand,” Morgan commanded in a cold monotone.
 
Griffith clenched his teeth and lifted his arm out straight toward his captor.
 
One tiny bead of sweat swelled from his forehead and rolled down into his left eye.
 
He blinked twice, his gaze brushing over the corpse lying behind Morgan.
 
Quickly his eyes snapped back to the Morgan’s grim face.

           
“You recognize this?” Morgan asked.
 
“It’s a Randall Number One custom made fighting knife.
 
It’s seven inches of the best steel available, high carbon 440C stainless, hand forged and hand ground, and tempered to a hardness of sixty on the Rockwell scale.
 
I can put an inch of the tip of this blade in a vise and stand on the handle without bending or breaking it.
 
Do you think I keep it sharp?”

           
He stretched out his right hand, keeping the pistol in his left centered between Griffith’s eyes.
 
He was impressed that the ex-Marine’s hand remained completely steady.
 
He rested the edge of the blade against Griffith’s skin, tilted it to a sharp angle and slid the knife toward himself.
 
The harsh scraping sound filled the otherwise silent diner.
 
With one long slow stroke, Morgan removed all the hair from the offered arm starting two inches above the white wrist.
 
Tiny red dots rose from the razor burn of a dry shave.
 
While he wiped his blade clean on Griffith’s pants, Morgan again made strong eye contact.

           
“Now we can go to the meeting place you had arranged with Stone,” Morgan said, “or, I can drag you upstairs and gag you and tie you up real tight.
 
You friends out front would assume you were working me over in here.
 
Or maybe they’d think I escaped and you followed me.
 
Eventually they’ll knock that door open and find Tommy over there.
 
Eventually they’d just leave.
 
Then I could spend the next three or four hours making one inch cuts, an eighth of an inch deep everywhere on your body.
 
Everywhere.
 
When I got through you’d be covered with blood.
 
Hands, feet, genitals would become useless.
 
You’d hurt like hell.
 
For months.
 
But you know what?
 
You wouldn’t die.
 
You’d never walk or work or fuck again.
 
But you wouldn’t die.
 
Now.
 
Shall we go?”

           
For the next several seconds Griffith’s eyes wandered the room, as if he was considering his options.
 
Morgan waited patiently until Griffith slowly rose from his chair.

           
“I didn’t like the food here anyway,” he said.
 

           
A door at the top of the stairs provided easy access to the roof.
 
No one paid any attention to them trotting down the fire escape stairs.
 
Once on the street, Morgan pocketed his gun.
 
He put his left arm around Griffith’s waist, with the Browning in his right side pocket pointed at the Marine across the front of his body.
 
Then he ordered his captive to hail a taxi.
 
He did not worry about their appearance.
 
Hacks cruising the village would think nothing of a couple of guys looking for a ride who were embracing, or even holding hands.
 
When a cab pulled to the curb in front of them, Morgan was confident he would soon meet with his betrayer.

           
Apart from an unduly talkative driver, Morgan’s taxi ride was uneventful.
 
They took the local route, up through midtown Manhattan. Griffith began to relax a little, which Morgan took as a bow to his own professionalism.
 
The tense moments of capture had passed.
 
Now Morgan wanted Griffith to know he was in no danger as long as he didn’t try anything stupid.
 
So they sat in silence, watching the busy city go by.

           
New York passed in an even flow of images, through clean and dirty neighborhoods.
 
By moving at exactly thirty-two miles per hour, the streetwise driver approached each traffic light just as it turned green.
 
He dodged around jaywalkers, cursing them in Armenian as he sprinted past.
 
A local bus briefly barred their way, but by swerving around and past it, between the bus and a little Honda, the taxi freed itself.
 
Morgan was thinking that the little stores and shops, so boldly ethnic, were the same in every major city in the world.

           
Traffic filled in as they left Manhattan and suddenly, they were in the Bronx.
 
Morgan had seen the results of urban guerrilla warfare up close many times.
 
Here, in the world’s richest city, was an area that bore an unpleasant resemblance to downtown Beirut.
 
He knew those crumbling tenements he was riding past had spawned some of the most hardened fighters civilization had to offer.
 
The broken windows were empty eyes staring out of pockmarked stucco faces.

           
The people here were black or Hispanic.
 
They walked quickly, alert as any jungle animal, ready for an attack.
 
When they moved around the neighborhood, they traveled in packs.
 
They roamed these mean streets as warily as if there was a war on.

           
The driver lapsed into silence as he pulled the cab over to the curb.
 
Morgan paid him, and the two passengers, captor and captive, stepped into the littered street.
 
The men locked eyes as the taxi pulled away.

           
“I recognize this feeling, this emptiness,” Griffith said in hushed tones.

           
“Yeah,” Morgan said.
 
“It’s that feeling, like when the choppers take off and you’re left in that LZ, inches from the forward battle line, unprotected.”

           
Griffith nodded, pointing a little up the narrow avenue.
 
The empty lot directly across the street was covered with broken glass, broken bricks, broken bottles, broken boards.
 
To its right stood a crumbling four story tenement building filled with broken windows, broken doors, and, Morgan imagined, broken dreams.
 
Beyond the building was yet another empty lot.

           
The building stood like a single tooth, sticking up out of a rotting mouth.
 
The number 1313 was painted on the door.