Chapter One

  NINE YEARS EARLIER

  MAR­RAKESH, MO­ROCCO

  Jonathan Quinn sat quietly in the back of the van, eyes on the video mon­itor, wire­less ear­buds in his ears. On the screen was the video feed from the body cam worn by the op­er­a­tion’s team leader, Thomas Klopp.

  “There’s Canto,” Nate said. He sat next to Quinn, keep­ing tabs on the feeds from cam­eras hid­den around the neigh­bor­hood.

  Quinn glanced at his ap­pren­tice’s mon­itor. The up­per left feed showed a street wide enough for only ped­es­tri­ans and mo­tor­cycles. At the bot­tom of the im­age, a su­per­im­posed des­ig­na­tion iden­ti­fied the loc­a­tion as be­ing three blocks from the tar­get’s house. Maurice Canto was cen­ter screen, sur­roun­ded by four body­guards, pic­tures of each hav­ing been in the brief­ing file. Based on Canto’s known habits, an ad­di­tional guard would be a dozen or so meters in front, and an­other the same dis­tance be­hind.

  Quinn toggled his mic. “Al­pha’s ap­proach­ing.”

  “Copy,” Klopp re­spon­ded.

  To Nate, Quinn said, “Loc­ate the body­guard on point.”

  “Check­ing.” The im­ages from dif­fer­ent cam­eras flicked on the screen un­til Nate stopped on one. “There.”

  The lead guard was a block ahead of his boss.

  “How did you miss him?” Quinn asked.

  “I-I’m not sure.”

  “A slip like that could get someone killed.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  By most meas­ures, Nate was prov­ing to be an ex­cel­lent ap­pren­tice, but when mis­takes like this happened, Quinn wondered if the kid would ever be­come a full-fledged cleaner.

  Quinn ac­tiv­ated his mic again. “Guard one is two blocks away, us­ing route C.”

  “Copy,” Klopp said.

  Be­ing a lookout was not a task Quinn nor­mally took on. He was a scene cleaner, the per­son who scrubbed a mis­sion loc­a­tion of all evid­ence of foul play. A job that, more times than not, in­cluded the re­moval of a body. But due to cir­cum­stances that the cli­ent—Al­bert Sanger of Stone­well Se­cur­ity Solu­tions—had de­scribed as “out of my con­trol,” the mis­sion team was short-handed and Quinn had re­luct­antly agreed to the ad­di­tional du­ties.

  Like he and Nate had seen on the scouts they’d per­formed over the last two days, when the lead body­guard reached the house, he brought up his phone and stud­ied the screen to check the se­cur­ity cam­eras in­side the house. These were the same cam­eras Quinn and Nate had tapped into the first night on the job, the feeds from which played on a third mon­itor in the van, between Quinn’s and Nate’s sta­tions.

  The guard com­pleted his check a few seconds be­fore his boss ar­rived. He shared a few words with Canto, and pushed a but­ton on his phone.

  A mes­sage flashed on the cen­ter mon­itor.

  “Alarm’s off,” Quinn said into his mic.

  “Copy,” Klopp whispered.

  Canto did not enter the res­id­ence right away. In­stead, he and two of his body­guards waited out­side while the four oth­ers went in.

  “Stick­ing to script,” Quinn said. “Ad­vance team’s in­side. Canto still out front.”

  Klopp clicked his mic once to ac­know­ledge.

  Via Canto’s own se­cur­ity cam­eras, Quinn and Nate watched the men in the house split into two groups. One stayed on the ground floor, while the other pair star­ted up the stairs.

  Canto’s place was a tra­di­tional, old-city home—sev­eral floors with open walk­ways all built around a cent­ral core open to the sky. Its age, how­ever, did not mean it was run­down. Canto had clearly in­ves­ted a lot of money renov­at­ing it, both in terms of style and se­cur­ity.

  Like Quinn and Nate had seen be­fore, the duo on the stairs went straight to the roof deck first. After they con­duc­ted a quick search, they des­cen­ded to the fourth floor and took a fast but thor­ough look around. When they des­cen­ded to the third level, Quinn switched his mon­itor to one of the rooftop cam­eras and said, “Cleared to po­s­i­tion one.”

  Half a second later, Klopp and his four-man team ap­peared on top of the build­ing be­hind Canto’s. After quietly lower­ing them­selves down the three-meter dif­fer­ence, they crept over to the top of the stairs.

  “In po­s­i­tion,” Klopp said.

  “I’ve got you on screen,” Quinn replied.

  On the cen­ter mon­itor, the two guards who’d been on the ground level went up one flight, where they were met by the two com­ing down. After a search of the floor and a short huddle, one pair re­turned to the ground floor while the other headed up again.

  “Guard three and guard four head­ing back your way,” Quinn said.

  A click from Klopp.

  As they’d re­hearsed, Nate switched his screen to a feed from the ground floor, while Quinn ac­tiv­ated the quad-box func­tion on his, giv­ing him shots from all four rooftop cam­eras sim­ul­tan­eously.

  On Nate’s mon­itor, the ground-floor guards walked over to the front door and let their boss in. The two guards who had been wait­ing out­side with him re­mained where they were.

  Some might call Canto para­noid, but the man had reason to be cau­tious. His po­s­i­tion as a trus­ted ad­viser to the no­tori­ous arms dealer Janus Sideropoulos put a tar­get on his back.

  On three of the four cam­eras Quinn was watch­ing, the other two guards stepped onto the roof, con­sid­er­ably more re­laxed than they’d been on their pre­vi­ous visit. They didn’t even real­ize they weren’t alone un­til darts filled with Beta-Som­nol—a fast-act­ing knock­out drug—hit them. One was able to get his hand halfway up to the dart be­fore he dropped to the deck. The other one didn’t even try.

  Quinn shot a look at Nate’s mon­itor, but neither Canto nor the guards with him gave any hint they’d heard a thing. Canto had grabbed a bottle of some­thing from a cab­inet and was start­ing up the stairs.

  Quinn said, “Canto’s on the way.”

  “Alone?” Klopp asked.

  “Alone.”

  “Copy.”

  On the third floor, Canto went to his of­fice and shut the door be­hind him.

  “Al­pha in loc­a­tion three-one,” Quinn said. “Guards one and two still on ground floor, guard one us­ing the toi­let, and guard two by the front door. No eyes on the stairs. You are free to move.”

  “Copy that.”

  Klopp led his team onto the stair­way and down to the third floor. There, two of his men peeled off to keep an eye on Canto’s of­fice, while Klopp and the other two con­tin­ued down un­til they were one floor above ground level.

  “Status,” he whispered.

  “No change,” Quinn said.

  Klopp clicked his mic. He and his men then moved along the walk­way, be­hind the half wall at the edge.

  When they reached the op­timum spot, Quinn said, “Stop.”

  The men com­plied.

  “Guard two’s stand­ing near the front en­trance,” Quinn said. “It’s a straight shot from there. If you move four meters ahead, you’ll have your best angle on the door to the toi­let. Ap­prox­im­ately at your two o’clock.”

  Klopp left one of his men at the first po­s­i­tion, and pro­ceeded with the other to the second spot.

  “Any move­ment at the toi­let?” Klopp whispered.

  “Door’s still closed.”

  With a sig­nal from Klopp, the man at po­s­i­tion one rose just high enough to aim his dart gun and shoot. Guard two must have seen the pro­jectile com­ing at the last second, be­cause he tensed but couldn’t avoid be­ing hit. In a panic, he turned to­ward the front door, but the drug took him down be­fore he could touch the knob.

  The whoosh of a flush­ing toi­let.

  “Here he comes,” Quinn said.

  With no need to hide now, Klopp and his com­pan­ion braced their weapons on top of the half wall and aimed them at the bath­room door. A mo­ment later, the door swung open and guard one stepped out, his gaze on his crotch to make sure his pants were fastened.

  Klopp’s part­ner fired a dart into the guard’s shoulder. This guy yanked the dart out be­fore it could de­liver its full pay­load, so Klopp pulled his own trig­ger, hit­ting the tar­get in the thigh. The man reached for it but wasn’t speedy enough this time, and kept head­ing down un­til he crumpled on the floor.

  That was Quinn and Nate’s cue.

  Quick and ef­fi­cient, they shut down the mon­it­ors and cleared everything from the cent­ral area of the van. Nate moved into the driver’s seat, and Quinn the front pas­sen­ger’s. On pre­vi­ous mis­sions, their spots had al­ways been re­versed, but the time had come for Nate to take on more re­spons­ib­il­it­ies.

  Quinn toggled his mic but­ton. “Team two, ready?”

  “Team two ready.”

  Team two con­sisted of the fifth and sixth men work­ing with Klopp. They were po­si­tioned near Canto’s build­ing.

  “Head­ing to you now,” Quinn said.

  “Copy.”

  Nate star­ted the en­gine and nav­ig­ated the an­cient streets to­ward their des­tin­a­tion. Un­like the nar­row road Canto and his men had ar­rived on, the one in front of his house was wide enough for small vehicles, such as the un­der­sized de­liv­ery van Quinn and Nate were in.

  “Twenty seconds out,” Quinn said into the ra­dio.

  As the van turned onto the tar­get’s street, Quinn and Nate ca ught sight of Canto’s re­main­ing pair of guards stand­ing in the front-door re­cess.

  Nate eased the van to a stop right in front of Canto’s house, to avoid draw­ing any at­ten­tion. Other than from Canto’s body­guards, of course. One of them slapped the side of the van and shouted for Nate to keep mov­ing. Be­fore he could make a second de­mand, team two moved into the nar­row gap between the van and the build­ing at either end, de­liv­er­ing the same Beta-Som­nol fate that had be­fallen the guards’ col­leagues.

  Quinn and Nate moved into the back of the van, slid open the side door and, with the help of team two, man­euvered the un­con­scious body­guards in­side. They then donned stock­ing caps, checked that their long sleeves were all the way down, and pulled on their rub­ber work gloves. With the tools of their trade in pre­packed duffel bags slung over their shoulders, they ex­ited the vehicle and team two entered.

  Quinn nod­ded at Nate, who knocked twice on the house’s front door, paused, and knocked once more. One of Klopp’s in­side men opened the door, and the two clean­ers slipped into Canto’s home. As soon as the door closed, they heard the van drive off. That whole op­er­a­tion had been ac­com­plished in less than forty seconds, match­ing the best time from their prac­tice the pre­vi­ous day.

  Nate knelt be­side the downed body­guard near the door, while Quinn checked the one by the toi­let. The man’s pulse was slow and steady. A single dose from the darts would have been enough to keep someone his size un­con­scious for at least two hours, but this guy had been hit twice, re­ceiv­ing at least some of the first dose and all of the second. He’d likely be out for at least an ex­tra hour. And boy, did he have a hellish hangover com­ing.

  Quinn plucked out the dart from the guy’s thigh and found the one the guard had pulled out on his own. After stow­ing them in his bag, Quinn glanced up the cent­ral open­ing to­ward the third floor. From his angle, he couldn’t see much of any­thing, but knew Klopp and his team would be pre­par­ing to storm Canto’s of­fice. Once they had the tar­get sub­dued, a second van would be called in, and Canto would be trans­ferred into it in the same ef­fi­cient man­ner as be­fore.

  Quinn and Nate’s main job on the mis­sion was not only to stage the house so that it looked like a kid­nap­ping—not a stretch since that was ex­actly what it was—but to also plant evid­ence in­dic­at­ing the ac­tion had been per­pet­rated by Laurent Hájek, a rival of Janus Sideropoulos.

  In one of the duffel bags, sealed in a spe­cial case, were par­tial fin­ger­prints of known Hájek as­so­ci­ates. Quinn and Nate would trans­fer them to a few se­lect spots within the house. The trick was to leave just enough to con­vince Sideropoulos’s people that their com­pet­itor was be­hind this. Too many prints—or too few, for that mat­ter—and the scene would look like the setup it was.

  Quinn rolled the guard over and tied his hands be­hind his back with the same kind of cord favored by Hájek’s as­so­ci­ates. Much less ef­fi­cient than the zip ties Quinn and Nate usu­ally used, but to each their own. After he’d bound the man’s ankles, Quinn shoved him against the wall and headed over to see how Nate was do­ing.

  “Klopp to Quinn.”

  Quinn clicked on his mic. “Go for Quinn.”

  “I need you up here. We have a prob­lem.”

  “Copy.” To Nate, Quinn said, “You good here?”

  “I’m ac­tu­ally done.” Nate zipped up his duffel. “You want me to come with you?”

  Quinn nod­ded, and the two men headed up the stairs. When they reached the third floor, they dis­covered one of Klopp’s men stand­ing out­side Canto’s of­fice.

  “Your boss in­side?” Quinn asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, mov­ing out of the way so they could enter.

  The of­fice was twice as long as it was wide, run­ning par­al­lel to the outer walk­way. Shelves filled with ex­pens­ive trinkets and treas­ures and old books lined the walls in a gaudy dis­play of wealth. The spoils of blood money, Quinn knew.

  A large, an­tique desk sat to­ward the other end of the room, and slumped over the top was Canto. By all ap­pear­ances, it looked as if Klopp had achieved his goal, but if that was the case, Klopp and the three men with him would not have looked so un­easy.

  “What’s go­ing on?” Quinn asked.

  Klopp grabbed Canto by the hair and lif­ted the man’s head. The Italian’s eyes lolled dead in their sock­ets, and his mouth was sur­roun­ded by foam.

  “The as­shole killed him­self,” Klopp said. “I tagged him, but there was some­thing weird about his ex­pres­sion as he fell down. I didn’t think any­thing of it un­til I checked his pulse and real­ized he was dead.”

  Quinn walked around the desk to the other side of Canto. “Lean him back.”

  Klopp grabbed the dead man’s shoulders and pulled him into a sit­ting po­s­i­tion.

  “Did you see him put some­thing in his mouth?” Quinn asked.

  Klopp shook his head. “His hands never got close to his face.”

  Glan­cing at Nate, Quinn said, “Flash­light.”

  When Quinn opened Canto’s mouth, Nate shined his light between the Italian’s teeth. One of the mol­ars on the bot­tom right was broken. An old-school, fake-tooth sui­cide pill. He mo­tioned for Klopp to take a look.

  “Je­sus. Is that what I think it is?” Klopp said.

  “It ap­pears to be.”

  “I thought those things were just Cold War fairy tales. Who would want one of those in their mouth?” He frowned. “Sanger is go­ing to be pissed.”

  Quinn didn’t care. Deal­ing with Sanger’s re­ac­tion would be Klopp’s prob­lem.

  The main thing Quinn needed to con­cern him­self with was that he and Nate now had to get rid of a corpse. But, like any job he took, all the con­tin­gen­cies had been planned for.

  The mis­sion was es­sen­tially the same as far as Quinn was con­cerned. While Sanger and his friends at Stone­well wouldn’t be able to ex­tract any in­form­a­tion from the dead man, they could ex­ploit his dis­ap­pear­ance and make Sideropoulos think his rival was gun­ning for him.

  “We could use a little help,” Quinn said.

  “What kind of help?” Klopp asked. Op agents were sel­dom in­ter­ested in as­sist­ing the clean­ing staff.

  “Ty­ing up the guards on the roof,” Quinn said. “Nate can give you the cord. Hands be­hind the back and ankles. And be sure to col­lect the darts and bring them back to me.”

  “That is not really our re­spons­ib­il­ity,” Klopp said.

  “No, but Canto’s death is. Which has made my job more dif­fi­cult. And don’t for­get, no one leaves un­til Nate and I leave.”

  Klopp grim­aced but nod­ded and said to his men, “Se­bastian, Car­los, take care of it.”

  The two men ob­tained the cord and left the room.

  While Nate re­moved a body bag from his duffel and spread it on the floor, Quinn used pa­per tow­els and his spe­cial homemade solvent to clean the foam that had trans­ferred from Canto’s mouth to the desktop. He did the same with the foam still on the man’s face. The tow­els were then put in a plastic trash bag. Next, Quinn wiped down the en­tire sur­face of the desk to re­move any re­main­ing foam particles and oil marks made by Canto’s fore­head and face.

  He then grabbed Canto’s right wrist, and set the dead man’s hand down on the desk in a few spots the Italian would have nor­mally touched. He checked to make sure a suit­able amount of fin­ger and palm prints had trans­ferred ef­fect­ively, and did the same with the left hand. That done, he zip-tied Canto’s hands to­gether and re­peated the pro­cess with the man’s ankles. This would keep the limbs from slid­ing around and throw­ing Quinn and Nate off bal­ance as they car­ried him out.

  He and Nate put Canto in the body bag and zipped it closed, after which Nate re­trieved a hand­held va­cuum cleaner from his duffel and ran it over the desk and chair and sur­round­ing area. Though both Quinn and Nate were wear­ing cloth­ing that left little hair or skin ex­posed, it was best not to leave any­thing to chance.

  “Point out every­where you and your men have been in the room,” Nate said to Klopp.

  The op leader did so, and Nate va­cu­umed those areas, too. As he was fin­ish­ing up, the two men who had gone to the roof re­turned.

  “Any prob­lems?” Quinn asked.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36