Evan didn’t have time for a better plan.
The D.C. mission had cramped him on one end, Kiara’s pending flight on the other.
Big Face had flown back today from Suriname, probably landing about the same time Evan had landed himself. But Russell Gadds would have taken a direct flight on a private jet, whereas Evan had flown a switchback route in economy, arriving at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport with an ache in his lower back reminding him of parachute landings that were bad and fist-to-fist clashes that were worse.
After going to a safe house to clean up the cuts on his hands, grab some load-out gear, and switch vehicles to an old Ram pickup, Evan had driven straight to the wholesale district.
From the roof of the neighboring bakery, he’d intercepted enough radio comms with a parabolic mike to know that Gadds was on premises along with his sixteen remaining associates, that they were braced and ready for an attack, and that the cinder-block building was virtually unassailable.
Though Evan was vastly outnumbered, all the targets were gathered in one location, and with Kiara due to touch down around noon tomorrow, he couldn’t risk letting any of them leave that building alive.
Not if he was to keep his promise to Trevon.
Evan pressed his palms on the thighs of his cargo pants once more to blot the blood from his cuts. Then he gripped the steering wheel with one hand and with the other lifted his ARES 1911. The contour of the grip, the high-profile straight-eight sights, the matte-black finish that gave off neither glint nor gleam—it felt like home.
He’d loaded it with 230-grain Speer Gold Dot hollow points, because why fuck around?
The industrial neighborhood was deserted for the night, the surrounding streets and buildings empty. The back edge of twilight leached from the sky, stars visible overhead even through the downtown smog.
He would have preferred more time for operational planning.
But sometimes you had to go with a full-frontal assault.
A cooling breeze blew through the pickup’s rolled-down windows, riffling Evan’s hair. Idling across the street from the compound, he watched the flicker of movement between the fence-filler strips that obscured any clear view through the chain-link.
Gadds’s men were on high alert, walking overlapping patrols around the building.
Evan waited for two of them to cross by the front gate.
Then he seated the accelerator against the floor.
The Ram shot forward, 240 horses and 420 pound-feet of torque powering more than two tons of Detroit steel through the perimeter fence.
The gate smashed down, crushing both men.
As a bonus the impact yanked down the neighboring sections of fence, the concertina wire snaring another man beneath it.
Screeching to a halt, Evan fired through the open passenger window, putting the trapped man down as he tried to untangle his bloody torso to lift his Kalashnikov.
Before the men guarding the entrance could react, Evan shot out the windshield and drilled them each with a round, painting the metal door behind him with their blood.
Kicking open the driver’s door, he jumped out and sprinted for the row of shipping containers on the west side of the yard.
More of Gadds’s men sped around the corners of the building, responding to the threat. Their rap sheets had been helpfully listed on the DEA chart, Evan pairing an identity with each shot he fired.
Richard Brewer, a dime in Lompoc for second-degree murder—center mass.
Hector DeJean, good-behaviored out for kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon—bridge of the nose.
Esau Corona, convicted and released serial rapist—left clavicle entry, dinner-plate-size chunk of shoulder blade blown out the other side.
Eight men down.
Eight left.
Return fire came from the others, AKs coughing out rounds, strafing the shipping containers. They held the weapons improperly, arms winged out, unleashing long spray-and-pray bursts with ample muzzle rise. They were clearly not expert assaulters, but at these numbers they didn’t have to be. The assault was war-zone relentless, the illicit full-auto weapons clearly an added perk of Gadds’s import operation.
Evan knifed between two of the massive metal boxes, ducking as ricochets flew overhead, ping-ponging between the containers.
He ran through the tight space, corrugated metal sandpapering both shoulders, and popped out the rear as two more men shot into sight at the end of the row.
Evan was off balance, firing into the blaze of Kalashnikovs. Again the men gripped the AKs inexpertly, all wrists and elbows, the lack of resistance causing one gun to short-cycle and the other to unload high.
David Stade, assault with a deadly weapon—left eye, right eye.
Jay Gordon, human trafficking—scalp.
As Gordon went down, he swung the AK, forcing Evan to dive back between the containers to avoid the incoming volley.
Six men left on the premises.
And Russell Gadds.
The ARES was empty, the slide locked to the rear. The aggressive front-frame checkering and specialized Simonich Gunner Grips had opened up the cuts on Evan’s hands again, blood snaking down his forearms. Slamming his back to the metal rise and bracing his boots against the opposite wall, Evan slid down, hitting the slide release and dropping the mag.
As he slapped the fresh mag home, wincing as the base bit into his palm, he could hear shouting as the others circled the shipping containers, hemming him in. His vantage was limited, none of the men daring to venture across the mouth of the aisle on either side.
He went to chamber a round, but his fingers, greased with blood, slipped on the slide. Before he could try again, the men unleashed. The percussive roar came at him from all directions, threatening to swallow him up.
He flattened to the ground, burying his face in the dirt, enduring nearly ten seconds of sustained fire.
Ten seconds could be a very long time.
He heard the men approaching now and did his best to force his cramped hands around the ARES, but it fell from his grasp. He worked his phone from his pocket, leaving the fabric darkly smeared, and thumbed it on.
But he had no one to call.
He was all alone with what remained of his plan.
Stuck in the cramped space, he stared up the narrow alley, the ambient city lights guttering, blocked by the shadows of men moving in.
He turned and looked in the other direction, noting the same.
He thought of Trevon in his humble East L.A. apartment with Cat-Cat and a breakfast table with one chair. Kiara, who was at this moment obliviously airborne, winging her way to Los Angeles. Jonathan Bennett, who was regrouping in the White House, no doubt planning future assaults that would spell disaster for the other Orphans who had fought so hard to move on and get by.
Evan looked down at his fallen pistol, the opened lacerations on his palms.
He clenched his fists against the pain. Dark spots appeared in the dirt below.
He’d never take six men wielding AKs. Not like this.
“Wait!” he called out. “Just—wait! I’m done! I’m coming out!”
A rough voice answered him, “Throw your gun first! Now!”
Evan picked up his ARES and hurled it clear of the containers.
The voice was closer now. “Walk out. Hands laced behind your neck.”
Evan complied, his palms sticky against his skin. As he shuffled between the containers, he heard men pile into the makeshift alley behind him, blocking off any escape route.
He stepped from between the shipping containers into a semicircle of four men. They were fanned out around him at a fifteen-foot standoff, automatic weapons raised. The remaining pair of men pushed free of the alley behind Evan and completed the ring.
Even if he still had his weapon, there’d be nothing he could do.
They could end him right here, but Evan knew that Russell Gadds was a talker and a sadist. He’d want to look into Evan’s eyes. He’d want him to know what was coming. Gadds’s henchman, Terrance DeGraw, had told him as much: The chief likes to take his time with folks. Give ’em his full attention.
The bitter tinge of body odor, fear, and fury hung in the air, the scent of a posse ready to do its worst. Evan stood very still, not wanting to give them an excuse.
The speaker—Danny Hurtada, human trafficking—gestured with the tip of his AK, the flab of his arms rolling with the motion. “Search him.”
One of the others stepped forward and clocked Evan in the face. He crumpled, briefly blacking out, but the impact with the ground jarred him back to consciousness.
Hands frisked him, seizing his phone from his pocket.
A steel-toed kick cracked a rib, and then the others closed in on him.
“Hang on,” Hurtada said. “Chief is gonna want to see this motherfucker.”
Menacing faces glared down at him, silhouettes against the night sky.
For a moment Evan thought they might beat him to death despite Hurtada’s orders.
But then he was hoisted to his feet.
Scott Marcus—manslaughter—pocketed the RoamZone and spit on Evan’s boots.
Fernando Corté s—murder one, fugitive—frisked Evan roughly and then prodded him toward the building with the muzzle of his AK. Evan’s legs felt heavy, his head still clouded from the blow.
At the entry Hurtada input a code into the control pad, and the metal door buzzed open. It looked thick enough to withstand a battering ram. Flecks of blood were still making their way down the faç ade, a snail’s-pace crawl that felt hallucinatory.
Evan was propelled into the front room with enough force to make him stumble. Steel plating covered the walls entirely, save for a huge rectangle of one-way glass that Evan guessed was composed of Lexan.
The room was twenty-two by eighteen feet, precisely as Trevon had described.
Hurtada and Corté s slotted their automatics into a gun rack lining one wall. Hurtada sported two handguns, one on each hip. He drew them both, handing one off to Corté s.
Aiming at Evan from either side, they steered him across the room and stood him before the glass.
He stared at his reflection. Dark beads dripped from his fingertips. His left eye throbbed, a bulge coming up under the brow, crowding the upper lid.
He’d looked better.
An electronic click announced itself over hidden speakers, and Russell Gadds’s voice came over the loudspeakers. “How many of my men did you kill?”
“So far?” Evan said. “Ten.”
“Doesn’t look like you’ll be doing any more damage now.”
When Evan blinked, he felt the bite of crusted blood. He looked down at his slashed-up palms. “No. I guess not. I guess I’m finished.”
The voice came back on and said, “Did you frisk him?”
Corté s nodded at Evan’s ARES and the RoamZone, resting on the battle-scarred table behind them. “Head to toe, chief.”
“Bring him in.”
Hurtada and Corté s pushed Evan toward another reinforced door, which clicked open, and then he was through into an office.
This, too, was just as Trevon had described it. A fancy desk with a leather blotter, complete with gold-plated swivel pen holders. Tables with digital scales and packing materials. Doors leading back down dim corridors, the building octopusing out across the property.
Hurtada and Corté s flanked Evan, guns raised. They were taking no chances. Behind him Evan heard the door shut with a weighty clank that spelled finality.
Russell Gadds was parked at the desk, a pair of cowboy boots resting up on the edge of the desk, looking like a soap-opera bad guy. His bloodshot eyes bulged, pronounced beneath a tumble of shiny dark curls.
He regarded Evan and seemed unimpressed with what he saw. “You’re the one who’s cost me so much?”
Evan said, “Yes.”
“Who hired you?”
“Trevon Gaines.”
Gadds’s boots thunked to the floor as he rocked forward in the chair, his eyes bulging a bit more, one hand slapping the blotter. And then his lips parted, his teeth bared. He made a sound like a laugh.
He covered his mouth, sealing in the sound, and blinked a few times rapidly. Then he took a measured breath. Another. With each one he sank back further into his chair.
Finally he said, “Do you have any idea what I’m gonna do to that retard when I’m done with you?”
Evan said, “No.”
Through the bullet-resistant glass, Evan could hear the other men huddled around the table, joking and laughing.
Gadds made a noise like a whinny, which he muffled beneath closed lips. “Know what they taught me in the classes?”
Evan had no idea what he was talking about.
“They taught me that anger is a secondary emotion. That it usually covers fear, sadness, guilt. I thought this was helpful at first. I spent so much time trying to excavate the feelings that lay beneath, to see if that would help me control myself better.” Gadds’s meaty features had turned ruddy. He looked more than slightly unhinged. “But do you know what I discovered?”
Evan said, “No.”
“For me? Anger just covers more anger .”
“They say knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.”
“Who says that?”
“People who quote Lao-tzu.”
Gadds swept his shiny locks back off his forehead. “Who the hell are you?”
Evan said, “The Nowhere Man.”
Gadds had no immediate reaction, but from the corner of his eye Evan sensed Hurtada’s face loosen slightly.
“The Nowhere Man?” Gadds said. “That some sort of secret identity?”
“Something like that.”
“I heard of him, chief,” Hurtada said. Sweat glistened in his buzz cut. The wrist of his gun hand was slightly slack, the muzzle dipping. “People call him, and he helps them, like some kinda vengeance service. I thought he was … you know, like a urban legend.”
“Well,” Gadds said, “looks like he bleeds the same as everyone else.” He stood up, pressed his knuckles into the chocolate leather of his blotter. “So what is it exactly that you do, Nowhere Man?”
“Why don’t you call my number and find out?”
With some effort Gadds converted his scowl into a smile. He dragged the phone closer on his desk and punched the speaker button. The dull whine of the dial tone filled the office. He stared at Evan expectantly.
Evan said, “It’s 1-855-2-NOWHERE.”
“I get it,” Gadd said. “That’s cute.”
He snatched one of the pens from the gold-plated swivel and began punching in the numbers. The men stood expectantly. Evan watched closely.
“And also?” Evan said.
Gadds finished dialing, looked up.
Evan said, “Thanks for gathering all your men in one place for me.”
Gadds’s head jerked down at the phone speaker as the call went through.
In the blastproofed front room, Evan’s RoamZone did not ring.
Instead it forwarded the call.
To the tiny circuit-wired detonator inside the fresh magazine he’d inserted into his ARES 1911.
That magazine wasn’t packed with bullets.
It was packed with C4.
The boom was impressive.
The aluminum forging of the ARES provided plenty of shrapnel. The plates on the walls turned the room into a steel box, amplifying the overpressure waves that Evan had calculated from the precise dimensions of the space supplied by Trevon.
The four men were dead instantly, cut through by flying chunks of aluminum, their organs collapsed from blast pressure.
A weighty throw of flung spatter thrummed the bullet-resistant window in its frame.
Of the men inside the office, only Evan was expecting the explosion.
He skipped back from between the two men guarding him, grabbing the wrist of Hurtada’s gun hand as he fired, aiming the shot past his own chest into Corté s’s.
He twisted the fat man around, seized the remaining pen conveniently presented by the gold-plated swivel on the blotter, and jabbed it twice into the side of Hurtada’s neck.
The carotid spurt shot straight up, tapping the ceiling. It attained less height with the next heartbeat.
Evan dropped the pen and turned around. One of the doors leading back from the office still trembled on its hinges.
Russell Gadds was gone.
* * *
Panting audibly, Gadds ran through the warren of corridors, passing storage bays, packing rooms, surgical tables dusted with baking soda, an assemblage of recycled lab equipment, heaps of gas masks.
He couldn’t rate his anger on a scale of one to ten, but it was safe to say his terror was at an eleven.
Rounding a corner, he tripped over a shipping box filled with jugs of paint stripper. As they rattled on the concrete floor, he stared behind him up the long, unlit corridor, waiting for the Nowhere Man to appear.
Nothing.
Shoving himself to his feet, Gadds doubled back, cut through an open galley kitchen, and stumbled into a parallel hall.
Way up its length, he could see another of the doors to his office laid open.
Hurtada sprawled on the floor, one hand covering his throat, the other at his side. He was long gone, but darkness still oozed between his fingers, slowed to a trickle.
Sensing a change in the air, Gadds spun around frantically, but there was no one behind him.
With a moan he lunged up the hall to the Rage Room with its padded, soundproofed door, as secure as a vault.
He lurched in, slamming the door shut behind him and shoving it until he heard the autolock engage. The room had been replenished at his command, a new stock of delicate furniture and valuables there for the smashing.
For a few seconds, he stood at the door, his sweaty forehead pressed to the padding, trying to get his breathing under control. He told himself to pay attention to his body cues.
Pulse rate galloping. Fire in his belly. Pins and needles pricking his scalp.
The same tricks that worked to control anger should work to control fear. He grabbed for one technique after the other, but nothing worked to slow the torrent.
He backed away from the door, brushing against an accent table and toppling a Tiffany-style lamp. At the crash he whirled around.
A figure stepped out from behind the china hutch.
He wore a catcher’s mask.
He held a baseball bat, end-weighted, heat-treated, and double-walled.
Blood dripped from his hands, dotting the floor at his feet as he approached.
“I take it back,” he said. “Maybe I’m not finished just yet.”