Blowback, p.4
Blowback, page 4
part #12 of Nathan K Series
After several minutes of failed attempts, Nathan considered jacking the car with a screwdriver slammed into the keylock. It would get the vehicle running, but only once. Beyond that was a crapshoot if it would ever start again.
But luck dealt him a nice hand for a change. A few sparks and the engine finally flipped over. He tied the wires together, sat up, and drove off. His upper-arms locked with shaky tension and even his breathing had turned shallow. He kept expecting Octavia to come racing out of the hospital, opening fire on him, but nothing happened. Once he left the parking garage to drive down Webster Road, he allowed his mind and body a few moments of peace.
It did not last long. Weaving through the streets of Brisbane, waiting for Robin to text him a motel address, he tried to focus on the city. Sunlight crashed against the buildings, the streets, the people — reminded him of Florida. But his brain could not let go of the pressure. He checked the building windows for snipers, kept track of the streets for escape routes, and scanned the people for enemies. The idea of spending eternity locked in paranoia made him want to vomit. Also made him feel more paranoid, but thankfully, his phone dinged the arrival of a text message — the address of a motel about an hour to the west.
When he reached the place, he knew that Robin had done well. The Sunset Motel sat on the edge of a nothing road leading into the massive deserts that made up most of Australia. Brisbane sprawled closer and closer but the edge of the city still remained a solid half-hour behind. Give it another decade and this rundown motel with a rundown bar across the street would be gone — absorbed by the ever-hungry needs of a growing populace.
There were eight rooms lined parallel with the road. Nobody had bothered with upkeep to the place — peeling paint, dirty windows, dirt parking area. It could do with a second soul.
Robin had texted they were in Room 7 near the end. With no cars visible, he figured they were the only ones renting today. He expected vacancies to be snatched up at night when the patrons of Argie’s Tavern got drunk, hooked up, and sought a bed for a half-hour or so. Then again, Argie’s didn’t look much better than the Sunset. Perhaps the place would never open again.
No sign of Dieter’s van. Good. Robin either left it around back or had already ditched it. Nathan grinned.
He parked up by Room 4 and walked back to the door for 7. Before he could knock, Robin opened up and ushered him in. The place looked as bad inside as it did outside, but it served its purpose fine. Dim lighting could not hide the stains and cracks nor the stale odor of mold and cigarettes. Dieter sat on a plastic chair in the back corner with a broken glaze in his eyes. Robin had a few cellphones, a laptop, and a notebook spread out on one of the two small beds. Thankfully, she looked every bit Robin-ish as when Nathan had left. In fact, she seemed a bit more so than usual.
“Why’re you so excited?” he asked.
She bounced back onto the bed and swiped up two phones. “You didn’t think I’d sit around here doing nothing, did you? Course not. You know me better by now. I figured I’d do my best to help us make our next moves.”
“Next moves?”
“I grabbed the CCTV files off the cameras near the souvenir shop and easily matched those bikers with two criminal records. I mean it’s not like that took a big leap — bikers and criminal records. They kind of go together like caramel and good sex. Anyway, the gang is called the Desert Devils, which is not that great a gang name but these guys aren’t known for their creativity, and the third guy probably has a record but the image was too blurry to confirm. Naturally, the police have files on the various biker gangs, so once I had the gang name and the guy with the eyepatch — Roy King, by the way — then the rest was easy. They’re on parole, so technically, they shouldn’t be leaving Brisbane, and I’ve got three addresses for you.”
Though Dieter did not move, Nathan could feel the man listening to every word. Before Robin launched into more, Nathan said, “You used that laptop and those phones. What about Clockwork?”
“Not a problem. See, Clockwork is obviously searching for somebody trying to hide their tracks. But I’m using Dieter’s laptop right now and patching it through several VPNs. It’s a bit sloppy, but I doubt it’ll flag Clockwork’s attention. Not yet, anyway. When it does — because eventually, it will — he’ll see that Dieter is a man dealing in criminal activity. Hiding his movement with a few VPNs wouldn’t be strange at all. In the long run, Clockwork will figure it out. Something will clue him in, but for the moment, and under the circumstances, you should be impressed with me.”
“Then count me impressed.”
“Damn right. As long as we don’t abuse the setup, I can do the work we need done.”
Nathan’s hopes brightened. “Then get us on a flight to LAX or anywhere in the States. Once we’re there, we can —”
“No, no. That’s way too obvious. The last time Dieter flew to the US was over seven years ago. Now, suddenly, he’s booking two tickets and making other travel arrangements? That’s the kind of thing to get noticed. Anyway, we’re not done here. I mean, weren’t you even listening? I found the addresses of those bikers.”
Nathan wanted to tell her that Dieter’s vengeance no longer mattered. Octavia had arrived and that changed everything. But Robin’s skin flushed as empathy glistened in her eyes. He looked back at Dieter in the corner — broken, lost, empty yet filled with anger.
“Look,” Nathan said, “I understand, I do, but with Clockwork —”
“I told you not to worry about him.”
“But —”
“You’re still not listening, and you’re definitely not thinking. We have a job to do, right? We help people. That’s it. My father’s uncle — well, he wasn’t really an uncle but everybody called him Uncle Petey, so that’s how I think of him — he always said that if you cut out the nonsense in your life, you can focus on what really matters. Clockwork and all the games your kind of people play — that’s nonsense.”
“No, it’s deadly serious.”
“Not if you ain’t going to live long enough to see any of it play out. That’s the thing I’ve started to learn about you all. It matters to you, and I respect that, but you need to recognize that most of what worries you and Clockwork and Larkin and that whole group is nothing to me. I’ll be buried long before those games finish. And when they do, from the way you’ve made it sound, they’re just going to start up new games. But here, now, we’ve got a real-life situation that we can do something about — that I can do something about. This man’s daughter is dead, and we can help make it right. Clockwork? He’ll always be out there, and he’ll always be closing in on us. I’ll do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen, but I won’t sit around and do nothing out of fear of him. Understand? We help people in the now. We can worry about your friends in the later.”
Nathan held back several comments as he let her words sink in. The passion in her urgent tone, the strength in her taut muscles — they underscored each point she had made. He nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll check out the addresses. But Dieter needs to start now on getting us to America. Things are happening fast and we might need to go sooner than we expected.”
Robin froze and stared back. After only a second, but a second that flashed with fear, anger, loathing, and worry, she said, “You ran into one of them already?”
He nodded. “They don’t know how close they were to us, but they’ll be looking into that store shootout.”
She shut the laptop and turned off one of the phones. “Is Clockwork here in Brisbane?”
“I don’t know. Possibly.”
He hated tearing apart her enthusiasm, but the emotions that had replaced it would serve her better for now. It didn’t change her bravery in his eyes. She had meant every word, and the longer he felt those words dance inside him, the more he agreed with each step. That didn’t change the danger of having Octavia and Clockwork nearby, but he knew Robin’s bravery would hold up against the practical weight of dealing with these Immortals.
He put out his hand. “Give me the addresses. We’ll do everything we can to help Dieter. But you make sure he helps us, too.”
She tore a sheet out of her notebook and passed it over. As he folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket, she rushed over and hugged him. “Be careful.”
CHAPTER SIX
The first address took Nathan clear across the city to the oceanside of Brisbane. Over an hour drive thanks to a few wrong turns. That gave him too much time to fret about Octavia.
Though she could be genuine, even nice towards him, she never allowed him to forget the true danger that lived within her. She had the pain of centuries behind her cold, brown eyes — the trauma all Immortals held compounded by navigating generation after generation as a black woman. Dealing with her had been easier than other Immortals but certainly not easy. They were all damaged individuals.
He wondered if someday he would be the same. Even in the short handful of years he had already spent as an Immortal, he had seen and done things that would have sent a normal mortal into years of therapy. Actually, a normal mortal would have died several times over.
The idea of going to therapy elicited a snicker. He could imagine the look on a therapist’s face as she tried to hold still while he laid out the truth of Immortals. By the time he got to Primes like the Cardinal, it would all be over. She would have him escorted by burly men in white to lock him away for decades of study.
He parked a block up and one over from the rental home matching Robin’s address. A casual stroll — making sure to pass by on the opposite side of the street – revealed a place that had not been maintained but was certainly lived in. Through the windows, Nathan saw busted furniture and torn wall hangings. More telling — several browning plants clung to life through what sunlight they could manage while praying for water. The smell of the ocean lightened the area, making it seem less threatening, but it could not hide the drunk man on the sidewalk or the crime scene tape two buildings up.
On his second pass around the block, a delivery truck arrived with an Amazon package. The driver set the box at the door, rang the bell, and hurried away. Nathan made a third and fourth circuit, and each time, the package remained. Nobody was there, and any further waiting would see that package swiped off by some greedy passerby, making any continuation worthless.
Back in the car, he headed for the second address. Thankfully, not as far a drive. Just a hop to the northern part of Brisbane and a bit closer into the city.
The wind picked up, blowing at his back as if pressing him faster to this next location. Nathan had never been a believer in omens, but the thought flashed through him that this was going to be the place. When he pulled up to a three-story townhouse and saw the motorcycles parked out front, he knew the omen had been right. He sat in the car a moment longer, trying to recall if the word omen implied good or bad things.
He decided the answer didn’t matter. Octavia gained more traction the longer he and Robin remained in Australia, so this issue of Dieter’s vengeance had to be handled now. While Nathan understood that these men had been hired by an Immortal — perhaps even Octavia — he also knew they were merely human. Not one of them carried the aura of an Immortal, and as much as he despised using that mystical word, it fit. Almost all Immortals had an intangible glow around them, an energy that stood out and made them easier to spot.
He walked up to the front, rang the bell, knocked on the door, made a tight fist, and waited. The day kept getting hotter, and he tasted sweat trickling into the corner of his mouth. He wiped his hands against his pants before resetting tight fists.
When the young, muscular biker answered, Nathan knew the omen had been a good sign. Taking this man by surprise guaranteed the entire assault would go much smoother. If the young man had been elsewhere in the house, he would have been alerted to Nathan’s attack, and they would have had a fair fight. Nathan had no intention of fighting fair.
The young man frowned and that was it. Nathan kicked upward as if attempting to set a record — right between the man’s legs. Pain smashed into confusion. Despite all the strength of the man’s muscles, his hands cupped his groin, tears filled his eyes, and he crumpled over. He wheezed in search of air. Nathan wrenched the man’s head back and chopped hard at the neck. So much for getting air.
Horrible way to die. Painful. Slow. Probably be dead by the time Nathan left, though, so not too slow.
“Oi, Cane,” a gruff voice called from upstairs. “Tell the ass to screw off and get back up here.”
Nathan stepped over Cane and entered the house.
“C’mon, mate. I got more of your money to win.”
The door opened to a living room on the left and a staircase hugging the right wall. Rich woods and old wallpaper dominated along with furniture from a half-century ago. Lace doilies and frilled carpet runners. Not a biker’s place. But since the front door wasn’t splintered in and they had parked their bikes out front in the open, Nathan did not expect to find a dead old couple somewhere in the house. More likely, the place belonged to one of the biker’s grandmothers, and they were the “sweet dears” coming over for a visit now and then.
Climbing the wood stairs with methodical steps, Nathan cleared his thoughts and readied for the next enemy. He did not wait long. The hefty biker with the barbed-wire neck tattoo stomped out of a bedroom, scowling and ready to cuss out Cane. He pulled up short at the sight of Nathan. To the man’s credit, he switched attitudes fast. Now he wanted to defend his buddy. Unfortunately, all that credit would do no good.
Spewing out an endless flood of profanity, the man lurched onto the stairs, catching Nathan about halfway up. That was a surprise. Nathan expected the man to hold ground and posture his dominance from above until they could fight in the second-floor hall. Plus, doing so would have allowed Roy King, the biker boss with the eyepatch, to join in.
Instead, Nathan grappled with the large man on the narrow stairs. In seconds, Nathan understood that while bulky, his opponent did not hide a lot of muscle. Still, lacking strength did not mean no strength at all. Each hold Nathan had attempted, the man thwarted with his sheer size. Nathan rifled through several jujitsu moves but none would work — the confines of the stairs making such maneuvers impractical. Close-quarter combat techniques would prevail when traditional techniques fail — something else for his to learn list.
The biker managed to swing a fist. Nathan ducked, and the punch broke through the wall. Either thin walls or the guy was a tad stronger than Nathan had estimated. As the man pulled his fist free, covered in drywall and dust, Nathan knew this had to end. Any second Roy King would arrive, and problems would mount.
Grabbing two fistfuls of the biker’s shirt — a bit of beer-stained Guns ‘n’ Roses concert memorabilia — Nathan leaned back. Far. The odd angle and the unexpected tactic pulled the biker off balance. He flailed his hands. Nathan kicked the railing, snapping off a section so those desperate hands found nothing to grip. He then let go of the biker’s shirt and dropped into a ball.
The large man was doomed. He tumbled over Nathan, banged his head into a tread, and flipped twice before slamming into the young biker wheezing out his life below. But Nathan had no illusions this would be enough to kill his current opponent. Only a truly unlucky fall would have done that.
Still, the man was dazed. Enough so that Nathan had no trouble walking back down to the first floor, standing over the biker, and stomping on his head. Three times. The first two knocked the guy out. The third provided a clear snap of the neck.
One man left — Roy King. Back up the stairs.
The second floor was empty. Nothing but more of the antique flavor from downstairs. No people. Nathan approached the stairs leading to the third floor. He slowed. Chances were King sat up top, ready to shoot the first man that stepped forward.
Nathan didn’t fear being shot. Worst case — he climbed the stairs, King pulled off a lucky bullet to the head, Nathan died, Nathan came back, King’s shock kept him from doing anything else, Nathan killed King. No problem. Other than the noise.
The police already wanted to find anybody involved in the souvenir shop shootout and more gunfire would bring them right here. Most likely, that would be dispatched over radio and computer systems, too. Clockwork would spot the situation fast and, sooner than the police, Octavia would be on her way.
Not an acceptable outcome.
Nathan glanced back along the narrow hall leading to the bedroom and bathroom. On the wall, two framed photographs had been hung crooked. He looked close to the first — family photo, husband, wife, teenage son. The boy wore an eyepatch.
“Hey, up there,” Nathan said, nothing friendly in his voice.
“You try to come up here and I’ll kill you.”
“That’s not what’s going to happen. Not at all. You listen close. You are going to stay calm. You’re going to empty your weapon and toss it down here.”
King laughed — more of a mocking tone rather than real humor but a laugh nonetheless.
Nathan went on, “You haven’t thought through this. Thought about who I am. Your two friends at the store who tried to take me on — they’re dead. Your two pals hanging out with you, the ones that were running interference as I walked up here — they’re dead, too. Now, you do what I said, you empty your weapon and toss it down. I’ll come up, and we’ll have a chat.”
“Kiss off. You can’t show your face without me blasting your nose clean off.”
“True. But I can wait. Eventually, your mother or your father or both will come home. Or maybe it’s your grandparents. This is your family house, and I don’t see any signs that they’re dead. So, they’ll come home. And I’ll kill one of them. Then I’ll ask you again to empty your weapon and toss it down. If you don’t, I’ll just kill the other one.”
