The Warriors Series Boxset III Books 9-12: Warriors Series Boxset, #3

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Copyright © 2018 Ty Patterson

Books by Ty Patterson

Death Club

Trigger Break

Scorched Earth

RUN!

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Copyright © 2018 Ty Patterson

The Warriors Series Boxset III Books 9-12 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Original Cover Design: Nathan Wampler

Books by Ty Patterson

Warriors Series

The Warrior, Warriors series, Book 1

The Reluctant Warrior, Warriors series, Book 2

The Warrior Code, Warriors series, Book 3

The Warrior’s Debt, Warriors series, Book 4

Warriors series Boxset, Books 1-4

Flay, Warriors series, Book 5

Behind You, Warriors series, Book 6

Hunting You, Warriors series, Book 7

Zero, Warriors series, Book 8

Warriors series Boxset II, Books 5-8

Warriors series Boxset III, Books 1-8

Death Club, Warriors series, Book 9,

Trigger Break, Warriors series, Book 10

Scorched Earth, Warriors series, Book 11

RUN! Warriors series, Book 12

Warriors Series Shorts

Zulu Hour, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 1

The Shadow, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 2

The Man From Congo, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 3

The Texan, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 4

The Heavies, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 5

The Cab Driver, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 6

Gemini Series

Dividing Zero, Gemini Series, Book 1

Defending Cain, Gemini Series, Book 2

I Am Missing, Gemini Series, Book 3

Wrecking Team, Gemini Series, Book 4

Cade Stryker Series

The Last Gunfighter of Space, Book 1

The Thief Who Stole A Planet, Book 2

Zeb Carter Series

Zeb Carter, Book 1

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Acknowledgments

No book is a single person’s product. I am privileged that Death Club has benefited from the inputs of several great people.

Sylvia Foster, Charlie Carrick, Pat Ellis, Dori Barrett, Simon Alphonso, Dave Davis, V. Elizabeth Perry, Ann Finn, Pete Bennett, Eric Blackburn, Margaret Harvey, David Hay, Jim Lambert, Terry Pellman , Jimmy Smith, Theresa, Mark Campbell, who are my beta readers and who helped shape my book, my launch team for supporting me, Eliza Dee for her editing, and Donna Rich for her proofreading.

Special thanks to Gwen Samson, Arthur Livingston, Michelle Rose Dunn, Chazmim Benton, Misty Vassar Stockton, Sylvia Foster, Eric Blackburn, David Prudhomme, Charlie Carrick, Blair Nicholson, Ralph Phares, Lyn Fox, Peter Polny, Coleen Robbins, Cathy Silveira, Mary Ellen Garza, Jennifer Anderson, Angel Siemer, Tammie Pearcy, Claire Forgacs, Lucy Pearson, Bryan Licsko, and Debbie Bruns Gallant for participating in a competition to name Cherie, Morgan, Dalton, and Privalov.

Dedications

To my parents, who taught me the value of a good education. My wife for her patience, and my son for listening to my jokes. To all my beta readers, my launch team, and well-wishers.

To all the men and women in uniform who make it possible for us to enjoy our freedom.

Chapter One

Mike Klattenbach knew he wouldn’t last long. His mind had stopped working, conserving the last of the available oxygen, trying to survive. His body had long given up on him and was ready to curl up and die.

Klattenbach knew he was going to die, and very painfully. Several of his ribs were broken and one eye felt like it was permanently damaged. Bones were sticking out of his left hand and his whole body was one giant mass of pain.

He stood swaying, blinking sweat away from his eyes as a figure danced in front of him. The dull roar assaulting his ears wasn’t just the blood pounding in his head. It was the voice of a blood thirsty crowd who had paid top dollar to witness a killing. They wanted bloodshed. They got it.

They wanted a death. Mike Klattenbach knew they would have it.

The dancing figure came closer, a man of enormous proportions, almost six feet five inches tall, all of it muscle and hard bone, his head clean shaven, ink all over his body, his face an impassive mask.

The man was bare-chested, as was Mike Klattenbach. He was dressed in jeans and sneakers, and on his hands were a pair of boxing gloves. Klattenbach had the same attire, though his gloves hadn’t offered much defense to him.

The approaching man jabbed and caught Klattenbach flush on his chin. Klattenbach staggered back but managed to stay on his feet. Hands shoved him back against his opponent who punched again, low, hard, wicked, and another rib broke.

The attacker rained more punches on his face and abdomen, each of them bringing out groans from Klattenbach. The losing fighter didn’t put up any resistance, his body too far gone to defy the punches. His hands lay limply by his side, his uninjured eye blinking rapidly.

The taller man spun in the air and brought Klattenbach to his knees with a spinning kick. His knee crashed into the fallen man’s face. Klattenbach sprawled on his back and his last sight was that of his attacker looming over him.

Nothing moved in the sand and brush of Oregon’s High Desert in the morning hours, except for the sun continuing its relentless journey and for a few fleecy clouds moving in the sky.

The desert covered five counties in the state and was one of the most sparsely populated regions in the country. There were a few large ranches, but the chances of coming across a rattler or a bighorn were higher than encountering human life.

The first sign of life came when the sun was directing its light straight down and shadows were the smallest. A small blob appeared over the horizon and over time, resolved into a human figure.

The person moved steadily, stopping every now and then to wipe sweat and take a swig of water. The man was well-equipped with a backpack and had several liters of water in cans strapped across his body. The backpack contained several pieces of clothing to tackle the heat and the cold. The temperature in the summer could go as high as the mid-eighties and could fall to the low forties.

The man was brown-haired, lean and tall, and moved with an easy gait that suggested a lot of experience walking outdoors.

The man, Zeb Carter, did have that kind of experience. He had walked in some of the most inhospitable deserts in the world and across the most rugged terrain. He wasn’t going to any particular place this time, nor was he on any mission.

The High Desert wasn’t a region he had previously visited, and he was rectifying that during this trip. He was alone, his vehicle parked in a motel in Burns, which was on the edge of the desert.

He had been in the desert for three days, camping in the open, and it was on the third day, he spotted the bald eagle. It was circling in the sky, swooping lower, and disappeared out of sight, a mile away.

Zeb had nothing better to do and set out in the direction of the eagle. It rose several minutes later and through his binoculars, he spotted a piece of flesh in its beak.

Probably a wild animal, dead. He checked his location and his phone. His GPS was working, his cell phone had no signal. The eagle was flying away in the sky and became a distant speck.

Zeb navigated past a rocky outcrop and came to the bird’s position and stood still at the sight that beheld him.

A body, a human, male from what remained of it, lying face up.

He looked around swiftly, assessing any threat, the action second nature to him. Nope, no threat. He was the only living person for miles around.

He approached the body cautiously, watching where he placed his feet. There were no tracks for him to carelessly erase.

He got closer to the body and crouched next to it. The face had been savaged by wildlife, as was the upper torso. Heat and the dry weather had decomposed the skin and white bone showed in several places.

Male, white, bare-chested, was what Zeb could make out from the remains. The bare-chested part intrigued him. No sane person was foolhardy enough to wander in the desert without clothing.

The lack of tracks intrigued him even more. There wasn’t much wind and loose soil and sand wouldn’t have covered tracks. He moved in widening concentric circles, but he still didn’t come across any vehicle tread marks.

He came back to the body and photographed it from various angles. He spoke in his phone and narrated his discovery of it. He went closer to it to get a better angle when a remaining patch of skin on a forearm caught his attention.

There was a tattoo on that patch of skin, a design he knew very well. Several of his friends wore that ink. He pulled out his sat phone and powered it up, knowing that his holiday had just ended.

The tattoo was that of a dagger crossed by three lightning bolts, on a darker, arrowhead background. Zeb had seen that ink on several of his friends once they had left the Army.

It was that of the Special Forces.

Chapter Two

Zeb sat on his haunches and studied the body for several long minutes as he considered his actions. Yeah, he would call the sheriff, maybe even the state troopers. But did he want to get involved? In his mind he heard the twins groaning and rolling their eyes, and that decided it for him.

The sheriff could handle it.

He searched for the local sheriff’s number and called in the body. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he told the dispatcher, ‘I’ll be waiting at the scene.’

Zeb looked around for shade and finding none, drew a battered Stetson from his bag and jammed it over his head. He brought out a map of the region and rested his back against a conveniently located rock. The rock was warm and pretty soon, it would turn hot, but for now, it would do.

Zeb’s sat phone had maps, he was carrying a laptop and a tablet computer, those had maps and more applications, but he still preferred the touch and feel of paper. He unfolded the map and folded it back again to focus on the High Desert and the surrounding towns.

He had set out early in the morning from Burns and had walked for five hours, before he had come across the body. He was in open country, somewhere to the west of Summer Lake and to the east of Diamond. He could see nothing but undulating land and shrubs and vegetation that didn’t reach any great height. Nothing moved; even the eagle had disappeared.

He reckoned the sheriff would take three or four hours to arrive; the sheriff would have vehicles, but topography and natural caution would slow down the law enforcement officers.

Zeb took another swig, lowered the hat over his face and went into a dreamless state between sleep and alert.

Zebadiah Carter, Zeb to his friends, was the lead agent in a covert U.S. agency that was known, simply, as The Agency. Barely a handful of people knew of its existence and the missions it undertook were known to even fewer. The Agency went after threats to national security; stolen nuclear weapons, taking down terrorists, erasing international criminal gangs – its remit was loose and it operated across international borders.

The Agency’s setup was unique which made it very different from other covert agencies and that structure played a major role in its success. The Agency had a near-zero admin footprint; Zeb and his seven fellow operatives were based in New York and worked in a private security consulting firm. The firm advised corporations and large businesses on premise and executive security. The firm was genuine and had real clients all across the country, and its work provided cover to the operatives as they went about Agency business.

All but two of the eight operatives had served in the U.S. armed forces; Zeb, Bwana, Bear, and Roger were ex-Special Forces, while Broker had been an intelligence analyst in the Pentagon. Chloe had been with the 82nd Airborne and was the oldest of the three female operatives.

Beth and Meghan Petersen, twins, took care of the intel side of The Agency and also oversaw its logistics and equipment. The sisters, in their late twenties, were the youngest in the crew and came from an illustrious law enforcement family. They brought youth, energy, and humor and had become integral to the unit.

The Agency was headed by Clare, who rarely gave out her second name. Those who knew her, didn’t need it. Those who didn’t, had no need. Clare had overhauled the covert unit when she had taken over as its first female director and, along with Zeb, had devised its current organization.

The structure enabled The Agency to move much faster than other deep-black agencies, and provided total deniability that Clare’s boss, the President, needed.

The rumbling of engines roused Zeb and when he peered beneath his hat’s brim, he saw two police vehicles making their way slowly over the uneven terrain. The lead vehicle, a SUV bearing the crest of Harney County, flashed its lights at Zeb, acknowledging his presence. A short, stocky, man jumped out of it and stood for several seconds with his hands on his hips, surveying the scene. He was joined by a second police officer, who crossed his arms and seemed to take his cues from the short man.

‘Garav,’ the short man introduced himself when he approached Zeb. ‘Sheriff Jeremy Garav,’ he added needlessly since his title was displayed on a nameplate on his chest. ‘That’s my Deputy, Packman,’ he gestured to the second man who nodded at Zeb.

Garav was in his late fifties with a full head of steel-grey hair. His tanned and deeply lined face had a somber expression as he knelt over the body and inspected it from up close. A look at Packman stirred the deputy into action; Packman unslung a camera from his shoulder and started taking pictures of the scene from various angles.

‘What’s the story, sir?’ Garav addressed Zeb, his brown eyes moving over Zeb’s body and resting momentarily on his rucksack. He looked behind Zeb and frowned, ‘Where’s your vehicle?’

The sheriff looked at him dumbfounded for moments when Zeb told him about the eagle and coming across the body.

‘You walked?’

‘Yes, Sheriff.’

‘For five hours?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘In this heat? Why? What’s there to see here? It’s nothing but flat land and some vegetation.’

‘I like walking, sir. I was exploring this part of the country.’

The sheriff’s eyes narrowed as he mulled over Zeb’s words and from his body language, Zeb knew Garav wasn’t buying his story.

‘You know this man?’ the sheriff asked him with an inscrutable expression.

‘No, sir. I am new to this county. His face isn’t recognizable, in case you haven’t noticed,’ Zeb added dryly and mentally berated himself when a dull flush spread across Garav’s face. No need to antagonize him.

‘I can see that,’ the sheriff snapped and turned to his deputy. ‘Packman, search the body, see if there’s anything in his pockets. Call in to Debbie. Get her to send the van.’

‘He was without a shirt?’ this was addressed to Zeb without looking at him.

‘Yes, sir. The body is as I found it.’

‘You didn’t touch it?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What do you do, Mr. Carter? Most people would touch the body and trample all over the scene.’

‘I run a security consulting firm in New York, sir. I was in the Army. I’ve seen some bodies before.’

‘Where did you say your vehicle was?’

‘At a motel in Burns, sir.’ Zeb repeated evenly, knowing the sheriff had heard him the first time round.

‘Sheriff,’ he called out softly when Packman turned away from them and spoke in his phone.

‘I am not your problem,’ he met Garav’s eyes. ‘You’ll find my car at that motel. They’ll have reservation records. This body looks like it’s been out here about two days. Two days ago, I was nowhere near Harney County.’

‘You can tell the body’s been here that long?’

‘I was in the Special Forces, sir. Like I said, I’ve seen some dead bodies.’

Garav glanced back at the body, his eyes lingering on the ink on the dead man’s hand and there was a question in them when they returned to Zeb.

‘Yes, sir,’ Zeb confirmed. ‘That’s a Special Forces tat.’

Garav and Packman spent a couple of hours searching the scene and when they returned, the sheriff jerked a thumb at his vehicle. ‘Let’s go,’ he told Carter. ‘I’ll drop you off at the motel. There’s nothing keeping you here, is there?’

The sheriff watched him out of the corner of his eyes as Carter buckled himself in and after issuing a few more instructions to Packman who was staying back to retrieve the body, set off on their bumpy ride.

‘What kind of consulting?’ he broke the silence finally when his companion made no effort to converse. The man’s barely moving. I’ve seen more animated statues, he grumped to himself.

‘All kinds. Perimeter security, premises, protection of executives,’ Carter replied without elaborating anymore.

‘Big firm?’

‘Nope. There are eight of us. We hire contractors if we need more people.’

Garav drummed his fingers on the wheel, fiddled with his radio, and finally burst out. ‘Heck of a thing. We had one accidental death in the last five years, a drunk who mishandled his gun. We’ve never had a murder. Heck of a way to die, out there.’

Garav felt the weight of Carter’s stare and shifted in his seat. His butt was acting up again, but he didn’t want to yield to the itch in the man’s presence.

‘You’ll know who he is, soon enough.’

‘Yeah? How do you figure?’

‘If he was in the Army, they’ll have his DNA records.’

Garav turned red at the blindingly obvious answer and laughed self-consciously. ‘You must be thinking we’re dumb hicks. Small town sheriff, what’ll he know?’

‘It would have come to you, Sheriff. I had more time to think about it. Don’t run yourself down.’

The softly spoken words were strangely comforting to Garav as he relaxed in the silent presence of Carter.

Zeb stood apart from the sheriff when they reached the motel, giving him space to verify Zeb’s story. He wandered to a wall which displayed a map of Oregon and rested his finger on Portland, the largest city in the state. I can continue my hike or…he turned to the reception desk when a shout interrupted his musing.

Garav was hunched over his phone, barking questions, his back to the desk, one hand gesticulating furiously. Zeb waited till he had finished his call and had warded off questions from the woman behind the desk.

‘A problem?’ he asked Garav.

The sheriff raked his hands through his hair and glared at Zeb in anger, a rage that Zeb knew wasn’t directed at him.

‘Cherie Klattenbach lives in Dalton, about an hour from here, at the edge of the county. Nice, classy, lady. Can do no wrong. She’s got a lovely daughter, Morgan. Morgan and my kid were classmates.’

Zeb waited, knowing the sheriff was going somewhere with his rambling.

The sheriff looked out of the motel, in the direction of the desert, his eyes unseeing.

‘That’s Mike Klattenbach, out there. Cherie’s ex-husband.’

Chapter Three

Arkadian Privalov rose from his uncomfortable seat and yawned, his fingers brushing the roof of the sand colored RV as he stretched. Privalov’s six-foot-seven-inch tall and muscled frame filled the inside of the vehicle and made it look small.

Privalov had been in the RV since the day before the fight, three days ago now, planning, organizing, and making sure everything went just right. He didn’t go to the fight scene himself, he had men under his command who managed the spectators and organized the floodlights. He had more people who manned two perimeters; one was half a mile away from the fight, a loose circle that was tightly guarded, while the other was a further mile away.

Privalov based himself in the RV, his central command, and monitored the fights, the arena, and the perimeters. During the fight he had three drones in the air which sent feeds to monitors in his command vehicle. One drone circled the fight, another circled the first perimeter, and the last one surveyed the outer ring of guards.

He also had men posted on the nearest highway or access road, during each fight, and in the nearest towns as well. He had a police scanner in his RV that would alert him of any law enforcement movement, and often bribed small town police officers to look the other way.

Privalov had been running the fights for a long while now and had perfected their operation. Not one fight had come to the attention of law enforcement. Not a single fight had ever surfaced in the media. There was an internet betting channel for the fight, there was a live internet relay that went out all over the world, the underground network of spectators was growing, as were the fighters lining up to participate.

Not a squeak to the outside world despite all that, Privalov smiled grimly and ran a hand over its stubble. It made a rasping sound and reminded him to take a shower.

He patted the shoulder of the other occupant in the RV, Grigory, the drone operator and computer whiz, and disappeared into the bathroom.

His boss, a man in New York who even Privalov, ex-Spetsnaz-turned-mafia-king-turned fights-organizer, feared, had come up with the idea of the fights. His boss had been visiting a harsh Siberian prison, one that was closer to a gulag in its condition and treatment of its inmates, than to a modern penal facility, when a fight had broken out among inmates.

His boss had watched in fascination as the guards made no attempt to stop the fight and instead, cheered the fighters on till one of them died. The victor had ripped off the dead man’s ears, had stuffed them down his uniform, and had raised his blood-stained hands in victory. The watching guards had applauded him briefly and had then brutally felled him with their truncheons. In the prison, there would be only one victor – the guards.

His boss had come away with the idea of organizing underground fights, to the death, and the Death Club had been born.

The first fight took place in the cold winter of Siberia, in a snow-laden forest, with ten fighters and fifty spectators. All fighters were ex-cons and had been carefully vetted. Each and every spectator was similarly scrutinized and extensive background checks had been carried out. The spectators, then, had paid a paltry thousand dollars to witness men killing one another.

The fee had grown several fold since then, and the Death Club fights were as well run as any international boxing or MMA championship.

Not all fights resulted in a man dying. Privalov and his boss had learned lessons from the early days – there was a limit to how many people they could make disappear in a single night.

Now, each Death Club fight night had just five fighters. A software program written by Grigory gave them coded names. The same program made the draws and the five men fought one another, in a sequence the program generated. The losers in the build-up fights were severely maimed and many of them ended up being crippled for life. However, they lived.

The final fight was the only one in which the victor killed the loser.

The fighters had to pay to participate, but there were some exceptions. Former soldiers could fight for free. There was something about men who had served their countries, participating in such illegal fights. It added to the glamour of those particular fights.

The combatants came from all over the world, drawn by the prize money, a cool million dollars to the winner. It was not just the winner, but every participant, whether winner or loser, got a reward. Every fighter had to state a relative or a friend, any one person, to whom their prize money would go in the event of their death. The prize money was disbursed to the nominees via an insurance policy that was administered by companies whose ultimate ownership was untraceable. The final winner got the money in cash.

The fights didn’t have referees. There were no time-outs. There were no doctors to render any aid. A Death Club fight night was organized in the open, in remote areas, under the glare of vehicle mounted flood-lights. Spectators, those who attended in person, formed a loose ring around the fighters.

The fights had minimal rules. Fighters had to be barechested. No weapons were allowed. A loser had to explicitly state he was surrendering. The final loser had no such choice. Everything else was game.

Fighters could use any style of fighting, they could wear gloves or go bare-handed. They could kick, maim, punch, or break limbs. They could bite, and draw blood. A loser, a surviving loser, had to make his own arrangements to leave the scene, if he was maimed.

Every surviving fighter had to abide by several rules. They usually made more money in a single fight night than they had ever earned. That prize money came with a code of conduct. The money couldn’t be flashed about. They couldn’t go into a bar immediately afterwards and buy a round of drinks for one and all. They couldn’t splurge on fancy cars or a home, in the immediate aftermath of a fight.

They had to spend the money discreetly. They didn’t have a choice, since there would be a team of PIs, private investigators, watching over them for two years after every fight night. Default resulted in death.

Initially it was the prize money that was the draw, that attracted the fighters; now the Death Club had acquired an underground cult status and Privalov was in the position of turning away more fighters than he took on. He had to turn down spectators as well, in their hundreds, since only rigorously vetted audience members and fighters gained entry.

Fighters came from all over the world; there were North Americans, South Americans, Chinese fighters, South African men, Russian criminals … there were participants from countries Privalov hadn’t heard of. All were usually ex-cons, active criminals, or ex-soldiers who had fallen on hard times. Most of the fighters had experience of close quarters combat. Many of them knew martial arts of some kind. All of them had fought with their bare hands. All of them had their lives on a downward spiral; the Death Club’s prize money offered them the ultimate opt-out clause.

Every fighter or spectator had to give their real-life details to the Death Club. They had to reveal their family members, their employment, and names of all their friends. Privalov had a team of vetters, a bunch of experienced PIs on permanent retainer, who went through the backgrounds and came back with either a green or a red light.

The PIs didn’t know they were working for the Death Club. They came from different law firms that dealt in messy cases - runaway dads, domestic abuse, bail jumpers, criminals, corporate espionage – all sufficient grounds for using PIs. The PIs were used to some of their clients dying unexpectedly. After all, they were used to dealing with shady clients and knew when to turn a blind eye. If they suspected anything about the Death Club, they kept it to themselves. Staying alive was a little more important than keeping their license.

The gamblers, those who bet on the club’s website on the darknet, were similarly investigated, as was the live feed audience.

The Death Club’s reputation was such that all knew a red light meant a killing. No mercy was shown to anyone who had provided wrong details or whose background didn’t stack up. Privalov’s private army of enforcers took decisive action if a red light turned up, and the defaulter’s body usually turned up in an alley.

The club’s website followed up the killing by posting a picture of the body. It was a stark message to all fighters and spectators. The Death Club lived up to its name.

Privalov and his boss could more than afford the expenses involved in running the Death Club. The Death Club’s turnover ran to eight figures, all transactions were in cash or in Bitcoin. Tax? That was an alien concept.

Privalov had initially organized the fight nights in Russia, Ukraine and parts of Eastern Europe, and in several countries in South America and Africa. The boss had then suggested organizing the first fight night in the U.S.

It had taken a long while to get everything in place, but that first Death Club fight in the U.S. had opened their eyes to the revenue potential in that country. There was something about organizing illegal fights in the most powerful nation on earth; it made the fighters willingly ante up the high participation fee. It was just high enough to ensure only serious combatants applied.

The attending spectators shelled out the astronomical admission fees without demur. The gamblers and the internet audience didn’t blink when the subscription fees shot through the roof.

Privalov and his boss had planned for all contingencies. They had layers of companies that distanced themselves from the fights. No one had seen them - not the fighters, nor the audience. Privalov’s people, those who were in contact with the fighters and the attendees, were disposable. They were criminals with extensive gang affiliations.

No one knew who owned or ran the Death Club. It just was.

Privalov had a strong cover if his RV or his drones were discovered. At a click of a button, all data would be erased, and an earth-mapping program would come on the screen. The RV was registered to a geological survey firm and Privalov, under another name, was in its employ.

Privalov stayed in the RV for three days at the fight scene after each fight night. The loser’s body was buried in that time and all traces of the fight were erased. The team of organizers were then disbanded and Privalov departed, to start planning the next one.

Privalov emerged from the bathroom and stood in front of a mirror, toweling his hair. He grimaced as he thought back to the night. This one hadn’t gone as smoothly as he wished.

Three days since the fight and they still hadn’t been able to bury the body.

Once the fight was over and all the spectators had left, his men had started digging a deep grave under the floodlights. However, an urgent call from the man on the highway had halted them. The highway watcher had warned of a convoy of police cruisers on the move.

Privalov’s organizers had turned off the floodlights and had melted into the darkness; he had assumed the role of earth mapper. That alarm had proven to be false, but the next two days were similarly jinxed.

A crop-dusting plane had criss-crossed the desert in the daylight hours and had put off the burying.

Then that hiker had turned up, followed by the sheriff.

Privalov buttoned a blue shirt and tucked it into his jeans and joined Grigory at the screens.

‘Where are they?’

‘Burns and Portland.’

Burns was where the hiker currently was. Portland was where the winner was.

Privalov had a problem with both of them.

Chapter Four

Marcello Descadeo waved a large hand in the air and roared, ‘Another round for my friends,’ to the bartender and smiled broadly at the approving cheers and whistles. He caught his reflection in the glass behind the bar; large frame, bald, bearded, tats all over his face and arm, he was a handsome one. He would find some woman to spend the night with and show her what a real man was.

A man thumped his back and clunked his mug with Descadeo’s and shouted something in his ears. Descadeo felt warm and happy. His friends deserved to enjoy his success, even if it was the first time that he had met them. Heck, the whole of Portland deserved to enjoy. He lumbered around to yell out, to call even those on the street, but some element of caution stirred in him.

He clamped his mouth shut and turned back to the bar and grabbed his mug and gulped it noisily.

Descadeo had driven out of the high desert with the rear seat of his Chevy full of plastic bags. The bags were stuffed with bills, used bills, in small denominations. Descadeo hadn’t seen a hundred thousand dollars in one go, let alone a million and every now and then he had glanced back to check he wasn’t dreaming. Nope. The bags were there.

He reached out and grabbed one with his right hand and brought out a wad of notes and smelled them. They didn’t smell anything special, but to him they felt like drugs. He rolled down his window and let fly a few bills in the night air and howled at the sky like a wolf.

A wolf. That’s what he was. He had been a hitter, once, for a Colombian drugs gang. He had gotten into trouble with his own gang for pocketing some of the baggies and had escaped by wiping out a local boss and his lieutenants.

He knew there would be a contract out on him and had made his way to Mexico. There, he had paid a chunk of money to coyotes who had gotten him across the border and into the U.S. He had relaxed a bit, but not much. Looking over his shoulder had become a habit, but when he was in a bar in New Mexico, with some drug runners from another gang, he had thought of the Death Club.

He had gone to one of its fight nights in Mexico and had registered as a fighter on the spot. He had paid up front and had been told there would be a verification process. ‘What, like the chota, the police?’ he had sneered and had straightened when the organizer had given him a cold stare.

Several months later he had been told he had been selected and could put himself forward for any of the fights on the underground website. He had immediately applied and had been put on a waiting list. He had seen more fights and was confident he would beat anyone he came across.

The high desert fight was pure coincidence; he had gone back to his motel room and had logged into its WiFi, after going through several proxies and had seen the message. A fighter had dropped out, would he be interested?

Heck yeah! He loved fighting. He loved killing too.

The fights had been brutal and unfortunately he hadn’t been able to kill all, except the last one. That last dude had been good, seriously good, and there were moments when Descadeo had felt scared, but he had prevailed in the end.

The organizers had offered him cash or Bitcoin, he had chosen cash. He didn’t trust the electronic currency, even though all gangs used it. An organizer had helped load the bags in his car, all the while repeating the rules, and for a moment, Descadeo had felt like crushing his throat.

He had driven away quickly, the rules floating out of his mind like the wind rushing past his Chevy. First stop would be Portland, to celebrate. Tomorrow, who knew about tomorrow? With all those bills in his car, he could forget about any tomorrow.

He had found the bar on Albina Avenue and after moving the bags to the trunk, had started his party.

He didn’t know how long he was at the bar, the drinks kept flowing, and men kept yelling in his ears. He didn’t spot the man in a corner of the bar who had been on his tail ever since he left the desert. He didn’t notice the man who shoved in next to him, till he felt a tap on his shoulder and looked in the coldest blue eyes he had seen.

The man jerked his head and walked out of the bar. Descadeo followed him blindly, some instinct in him telling him it was prudent to do so. A drunk grabbed his shoulder and asked him to stay. Descadeo shook him off and walked out in the night and breathed deeply.

It was two am, and the bar had officially closed at eleven pm, but the party inside had continued. Descadeo buttoned his coat, followed the man around the corner, and into the shadows behind his car.

‘You know who I am?’ the man asked him.

Descadeo narrowed his eyes and took the man in. He was big, as big as the hitter, but he didn’t think he had seen him before. Wait, was he from the club? ‘Death Club?’ he guessed.

The man nodded. ‘You were told about the rules. You didn’t take long to break them.’

‘What rules, man? I won, the fight is over. I don’t care no more about any rules.’

‘Rules are for a reason. They protect the club’ the man’s voice lowered to a whisper and his shoulders hunched.

Descadeo’s mind cleared swiftly. This dude was dangerous. He wasn’t here to issue a warning. He was here to–

He struck without warning, a crippling blow aimed at the man’s neck.

Privalov read the signs in the hitter’s eyes and body long before the blow sailed out. He ducked easily and caught Descadeo’s arm in a lock and twisted it and broke it. It was a move that he had deployed thousands of times, using the opponent’s momentum and body weight to his advantage.

Descadeo opened his mouth to yell. Privalov choked it off with a blow to his throat. Privalov lost his iron control for a few seconds and grabbed the hitter by the neck and squeezed with his large hands. Descadeo flailed, but Privalov evaded his hands easily and a knee to the hitter’s groin subdued him.

He squeezed till the hitter almost lost consciousness and just when Descadeo’s eyes were fluttering, he let go. The hitter slumped against his car, wheezing, gasping, and clutching at his throat.

Privalov watched him for a moment and then sank his blade into the Colombian’s neck.

He moved out of the way of the arterial spray and when the hitter was dead, dragged his body to a pick-up truck and dumped it in the rear. Descadeo was big, but Privalov moved him easily. Strength wasn’t only about size. It was about training and practice and mechanics of muscle and tendon. He covered the body with a tarp, secured the ends, and eased out of the parking lot.

The blood would be discovered, as would be the bags. The cops would think it was some kind of gang or revenge killing. There was nothing to lead them back to Privalov.

Privalov hummed in the night as he drove out of Portland and back to the desert, where a grave was being dug for Descadeo.

Once the hitter was buried, Privalov would turn his attention to his second problem.

The second problem had been driving to Portland, taking the same route the hitter had, and had entered the outskirts of the city, searching for an empty bar or a diner, when Descadeo had started his drunken spree.

Dinner, then a clean hotel room, was on Zeb’s agenda. He had left Garav in Burns after giving a formal statement, and had left his number with the sheriff. He didn’t expect to be called; there wasn’t anything more he could add to the investigation.

Sure, he would keep an eye out for any news, maybe even give a call to Garav in a few days. Just out of interest, he told himself as he backed into a parking lot, stretched, and headed inside a diner.

‘Juice, orange juice,’ he told the weary server. ‘Nope, juice. Not coffee.’

She came back with his drink and took his order. The diner was nearly empty, just the way he liked it. Less noise, more space, more quiet. He demolished his eggs and salad and only when he’d finished he realized he had gone without food all day.

He sat back in his chair and sipped his drink slowly, taking in the other patrons, and watching the outside world through the windows. There was a couple in the corner, talking softly, and laughing. A girl, a child, was asleep on the woman’s shoulder and her blonde hair stirred whenever mommy spoke.

Spend a day in Portland and then make my way home. No hurry. There’s no mission. Will take my time. See some country, Zeb thought as he idly watched the couple. The woman’s free hand was gripped in the man’s hands, his thumb caressing her wrist. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled back and even across the distance, Zeb could make out a tat on the inside of the man’s forearm.

Dead man had Special Forces tat.

Not my problem. Garav will investigate it. Maybe he’ll call in the State Troopers. They’ll be better equipped, he silently argued with himself.

Since when did you turn your back on a fellow operative?

He may not be an operative. Hundreds of men and women wear that emblem. Not all of them are Special Forces. Heck, many of them aren’t even in the Army.

He could be an operative. You don’t know.

I can’t get involved in every random death.

Zeb’s eyes were drawn to the couple when the woman laughed suddenly and her companion joined in. The man stretched in his chair and the motion brought his tattoo into clear view. Zeb recognized it immediately. It was that of the 82nd Airborne.

The server returned to an empty table and spotted a generous tip next to the plate. She looked around the diner, to thank her customer, and her eyes rested on the couple.

‘He left suddenly,’ the woman read her glance. ‘He paid, didn’t he? I saw him pull out some bills.’

‘Yes, ma’am. He was very generous.’

Zeb brought up the GPS screen when he was on black top and punched in the coordinates.

To Dalton.

Chapter Five

Zeb reached Dalton after five hours of driving non-stop, passing the occasional truck on the lonely roads, his lights cutting twin beams as they vanquished darkness. He reached a hotel at three am and his tires crunched on gravel as he entered the parking lot. A yawning clerk tossed a key to him and got him to sign the register. Technology and plastic door-entry cards hadn’t reached the establishment yet.

The room was clean, the linen was freshly laundered and the bathroom was surprisingly big and as clean as the room. Zeb didn’t have many requirements from a hotel; he was okay if it didn’t have white linen service. He didn’t mind small rooms. He didn’t care if it came along with a swimming pool and a gym. Cleanliness was important.

He hit the bed half an hour after reaching the town and slept for a straight six hours. The sun was streaming through his window when he woke up and drew back the curtains and had his first look at the town.

It didn’t seem any different to thousands of small towns across the country. His hotel was on a square, next to a community bank, and further away were retail establishments. A bigger town square around which the community revolved, was a few minutes away from his hotel.

Zeb freshened up and while he was having breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant, fired up his screen and connected it to Werner, a supercomputer housed in their office in New York. A long time back, Werner had been a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence software program that Broker and he had purchased off a couple of university students. The program was now housed in the computer and its name got transferred to the machine.

Werner was at the heart of their intelligence operations. It analyzed geo-political developments around the world, took in economic data, monitored seemingly random developments such as a Chinese nuclear submarine heading out of its berth, and came back with analyses.

It talked to several secretive supercomputers in law enforcement across the country and to many others in the world. It had access to thousands of databases and millions of records; if an event or a person existed in some networked computer somewhere, Werner could get it.

Zeb was less proficient at working with Werner than the twins and Broker, but he got by. He asked Werner to send him all information on Dalton, which the supercomputer obliged, before he had dug into his eggs.

About two thousand people in the town, he read swiftly, retail, and some industries outside the town, were the primary sources of employment. A football player from the middle school had gone on to play for the Oregon Ducks at the university. The town had other similar claims to fame.

The server, a young woman in her twenties, came to him and refreshed his juice without his asking. He thanked her and got a thousand megawatt smile in return. A town where everyone knows everyone else, is protective of its community and wary of strangers, he mused and sipped appreciatively. It was cold and fresh, just the way he liked it.

He asked Werner to get Mike Klattenbach’s file; it was classified, but that was no problem for Werner. It displayed pages on Zeb’s screen and settled back while the human perused the files.

Klattenbach had served in the 1st Special Forces Group, out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and had toured Iraq, Afghanistan, and Philippines. Good operative. Calm under pressure, were frequent commendations in his file. He was a Bronze Star Medal awardee and had several other awards and ribbons.

There was one particular mission in Iraq during which Klattenbach had rescued three injured soldiers. He had hauled them from underneath their vehicle which had been wrecked by an IED, and had carried them to safety. While hostile gunfire was raining on him.

That alone should get him another medal. Maybe a Silver Star. Zeb scanned the rest of his file but saw nothing about any more awards. He had received glowing praise for his bravery during that tour. No awards, however.

He made a mental note to check with his contacts in the Army and carried on reading the file. Originally from Portland, Klattenbach joined the Army when he was twenty one, married his girlfriend, Cherie, at twenty-five, and had one daughter, Morgan when he turned twenty-eight. Klattenbach separated from his wife when he turned thirty-one, but he continued to support his family. Didn’t divorce. Was reconciliation on the way? Zeb skimmed through the file but didn’t find any such reference and continued reading.

Cherie and Morgan Klattenbach moved to Dalton, after the family split up, the mom having found a job as a teacher in the town’s middle school. They had lived in Dalton, ever since.

That was nine years ago. Klattenbach would be forty years old, Zeb figured, and went back to the file to look up Cherie’s age. She’s thirty-eight, Morgan’s twelve.

When did he leave the Army? A year after splitting up, the file told him. He would be thirty-two then. What did he do after leaving the military? Klattenbach worked as a security consultant for a retail organization in Charlotte. That retailer went bust and the former Special Forces operative then worked in the hospitality industry for a chain of nightclubs.

Zeb looked up from the screen for a moment and stared out, unseeing. Glorified bouncer? Economy wasn’t good then, jobs were scarce, and things were hard for a vet. He went back to the file, but it trailed off after his last job, which was well over five years ago.

Zeb got Werner to widen the search and to bring up his bank accounts. Werner didn’t pick up any trail on the job front; it was as if Klattenbach had disappeared from regular employment after the nightclub gig. His bank account provided interesting reading.

Regular payments into checking and savings account during his Army days. Equally regular payments out, to his wife’s account. The inward and outward flow stuttered once he left the military. The payments to his wife became infrequent, but larger. He was making bigger payments to compensate for his irregularity. The payments dried up once he lost the nightclub job.

Both his accounts had small sums of money and showed small withdrawals. No big ticket payments to anyone, not even to his wife. There was less than a hundred dollars left in his accounts according to Werner’s report. He emptied his accounts, took out close to a thousand dollars in total. A week before he died. Was killed, he corrected himself, not died.

The restaurant was busy, tables emptying, new customers coming in, servers rushing about. Soft voices and the occasional laugh broke out. Cutlery clinked and the smell of coffee filled the air. No one came near Zeb’s table, not even the server. People seemed to give it a wide berth, sensing something in his posture, and in the faraway look in his eyes.

Zeb stirred finally and went back to his screen. Can you look up his wife’s accounts? He asked Werner. Werner did the electronic equivalent of rolling its eyes. Could it? It sure could. It wasn’t a supercomputer for nothing.

Cherie Klattenbach’s details didn’t take long to read. She had initially rented her home when they had moved to Dalton, but three years later, had bought a three-bedroom house. She taught science to the seventh and eighth grade students, and was popular, going by her students’ posts on the school’s social media page.

The home’s purchase intrigued Zeb and he turned to her financial details. They showed a family of modest means, living well within a teacher’s salary. The incoming payments from the separated husband went into a 529 Plan, there were small outgoings towards living expenses. The payments to medical insurance rose dramatically six years ago and Zeb made a mental note to follow that up.

He was nearing the end of the financial transactions when the last entry stumped him. It was an inward payment of half a million dollars. Zeb stared at the number, looked up and away, and returned to the screen. The figure remained the same. Half a million dollars from a Cuthbert and Bros, LLC. Paid recently.

Just yesterday. A few hours after Garav identified the body as Klattenbach’s. He mulled over possibilities, but nothing made sense. He asked Werner to come up with some ideas, on how the wife could have received the money. Werner didn’t have anything useful, either.

He gave up and got the supercomputer to find out Klattenbach’s time of death. Werner found out. The autopsy results weren’t in, yet. Maybe you should ask the sheriff, Werner suggested helpfully.

Trouble came to Zeb before he could go to the sheriff.

Zeb had been aware of the three men for a while; they had been talking loudly, laughing uproariously at coarse jokes, and ignored the looks they got from other customers. An elderly man rose from his seat and requested them to be polite. One of them, a red-haired man, swore at the old man and told him to mind his own business. Loudly.

For a moment silence fell in the restaurant and heads turned toward the restaurant manager who hurried to the men and spoke softly. They behaved for a while and then reverted to their unruly selves. Zeb put them out of his mind and turned back to his screen. He was reading another report on Cherie Klattenbach when he felt another silence in the room and looked up to see the three men in front of him.

Red Hair is the leader. Beard and Skinny defer to him. Knives and forks on my table if I have to use them as a weapon. Back’s to the wall, no one can come up from behind. Too many people in the room, to use my Glock. Not safe. The thinking and assessment was automatic, hard-wired into him from years of experience. He kept silent waiting for the men to speak. It’s their ball.

‘You the dude who found Cherie’s husband?’ Red Hair cocked a surly eyebrow at him.

Cherie, not Mrs. Klattenbach. A familiar cold anger started growing in Zeb’s stomach at the insolence in the man’s voice, at the lack of respect for the dead man’s wife. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. No reason to get bothered. It’s a small town. Everyone knows the other.

Red Hair noticed the breath he had drawn and mistook it. ‘Dude, no need to be nervous. We’re just asking. Aren’t we, Billy?’ Billy, the bearded man, nodded and kept chewing his gum.

‘Yeah, I found the body.’

‘Mighty convenient of you, to be hanging out right there. No one goes there. It’s not like there’s an amusement park out there, is there, Billy?’

‘Nope, there sure ain’t.’

Zeb didn’t reply for several moments, letting the silence build. The manager looked in his direction, a question on his face. Zeb shook his head imperceptibly.

‘We asked you a question, dude. It’s polite to answer. Don’t be scared. Not yet, anyway.’ Red Hair twisted his lips in a grin and got chuckles from his friends. It was their town. It was fun to corral a stranger and mock him.

‘You guys need to practice on your comedy act. Now, can you leave?’

The grin froze on Red Hair’s face as his brain processed Zeb’s words and his eyes grew small and mean as their import sank into him.

‘Look–’

Zeb had enough. He rose swiftly, came around his table and took a step in Red Hair’s direction. Red Hair, shocked at the speed and smoothness of his movement, was startled. Zeb wedged his foot against Red Hair’s heel and got closer to the man. Red Hair moved back, lost his balance, and fell, flailing wildly.

‘When you arise, you will be polite. You will apologize and walk out of this restaurant. If I see you again, I will break your legs. If you approach me in the night, I will break your arms. Do you understand?’

Red Hair’s eyes went wide in shock at Zeb’s words, at the manner in which they were delivered, at the change in Zeb’s demeanor. His mouth opened, but no words came out. There were three of them, the stranger was alone, however, there was something in the stranger’s cold eyes, something about him. His friends helped him get to his feet and when he faced Zeb, the insolence was gone.

‘Sorry, buddy,’ he mumbled, his eyes not meeting Zeb’s. He turned away, mustering all his dignity, and walked away with his friends.

Calm returned to the restaurants, laughter resumed, and servers bustled about. Zeb’s server came to his table, carrying a jug, and topped his glass without a word. She left a note on his table and didn’t wait for him to open it.

‘Thank you,’ the note read and when Zeb looked up, the manager winked at him.

He took a sip of his juice and was getting his mind back to the Klattenbachs when a shadow fell across him.

Chapter Six

Sheriff Jeremy Garav loomed over him and growled angrily, ‘First, you find a body and make a heck of a lotta people unhappy. Then, you’re rude to our welcoming committee!’

Zeb stared at him nonplussed and started to protest when Garav’s eyes twinkled and a smile creased his face. He gestured when Zeb started to rise. ‘I got a call from Tony,’ he nodded in the direction of the restaurant manager, ‘who told me Jed, Billy, and Kane had been picking on you. I hurried across as quick as I could, by then you had ‘resolved’ the matter.’

His fingers drew quotes in the air as he seated himself with a sigh. ‘Back and knees,’ he grumbled, ‘not what they used to be.’

He greeted a couple of townspeople who stopped by their table but didn’t introduce Zeb even though they cast curious looks in his direction. ‘You’re a minor celebrity,’ he said when he finally turned to Zeb. ‘The whole danged town knew you were here within minutes of your checking in.’

‘That kind of town, huh?’ Zeb asked, making small conversation, hoping the sheriff would leave soon.

‘All small towns are like ours, buddy. So what brings you back? I thought you’d be several hundred miles away.’

‘Who were those guys? Your welcoming committee?’ Zeb stalled. He won’t like it if I tell him I’m going to look into Klattenbach’s killing.

Garav waved the question away as if the men were of no consequence, ‘Louts. They spend all day drinking and annoying townspeople. I’ve put them in the slammer a few times. They’re not bad, like real criminals; they have too much time on their hands and think too much of themselves. They won’t cause you trouble.’

‘Eleanor,’ the sheriff pointed a thumb at a table next to Zeb’s which was now empty, ‘was seated right there, and heard something about you breaking their legs.’ He chuckled briefly. ‘That would put the fear of God in them. They’re all bark. No bite.’

‘So