Tanner- Year One Page 15

  After Nick Cannon returned to the living room, he reiterated how pleased he was with the outcome of the raid. Tanner told Cannon what he had earlier relayed to Logan, that Kate had left to return home. Pullo was quizzed about Gracie and asked if he had any idea where she might be. Pullo pretended he didn’t know a thing and faked confusion over what could have happened to Gracie.

  “If she contacts you, let us know,” Cannon said.

  Pullo said he would, then he and Tanner were sent on their way with a reminder to attend the meeting at the mess hall.

  “Almost everyone will be there,” Cannon said.

  Tanner was hoping that was the case. It would make it easier for Briggs to retrieve the thumb drive. All Briggs would have to do is to slip into the home through the basement window, grab the drive, and slip back out. It should take him less than ten minutes.

  They met up with Briggs inside the mess hall early and watched as the area filled with militia members. They wanted to be seen there before slipping away to the house. If you ignored the fact that many were wearing sidearms and dressed in military attire, it looked like any other small-town gathering.

  Once the meeting began, the militia’s council would deal with mundane matters before getting to the heart of the meeting.

  Gracie had told them that the monthly council gatherings always ran the same way. Deal with the day-to-day problems first, then discuss any big issues. Gracie herself was a council member, although she’d only been one for several months.

  Cannon acknowledged them with a nod as he made his way to the front of the room. Sullivan was accompanying him and sent Tanner a glare of hatred.

  Briggs slipped out first, with Tanner and Pullo following a few moments later, as people were still straggling into the hall. Tanner thought they might make it back before the meeting even began.

  As Briggs headed for the rear of the main house, Tanner and Pullo walked around to keep an eye on the front of the building. A lone guard was there. It wasn’t the gangly teen who had been on duty earlier, but an older man.

  They kept an eye on the guard by standing in the shadow of a supply shed. If the man rushed into the home, it meant Briggs’ presence had been detected. Tanner expected no problems. When over ten minutes passed, he began to wonder if he’d been wrong.

  Inside the home, things had gone smoothly for Briggs. He’d navigated through the basement clutter with the aid of a flashlight and made it to the office quickly. The thumb drive was where Kate said it would be, and Briggs pocketed it and turned to leave. Then, he saw the computer and decided to push his luck.

  Gracie and Kate weren’t trained agents. It was possible that Kate had missed something during her perusal of Cannon’s computer files. Thinking it would only take a few more minutes, Briggs powered on the computer.

  Logan, like Tanner and Pullo, had been awake all the previous night. After having eaten a big meal, he’d made the mistake of sitting down in a comfortable chair to rest for a moment. He had drifted off to sleep within moments.

  When Cannon failed to see him at the meeting, he called Logan on his radio. Logan woke with a start and assured Cannon that he would be right there.

  After leaving his room he was headed down the hallway past Cannon’s office. That’s when he heard the unique squealing sounds a computer makes when linking to a dial-up connection.

  Logan opened the door expecting to find Cannon at his desk, while wondering why he had rushed back to the building. When he spotted Briggs, anger flared in his eyes.

  “I knew there was something off about you. You’re a damn Fed, aren’t you?”

  Briggs shot out of the seat and headed around the desk as Logan freed his gun from its holster. Before he could fire, Briggs slammed into Logan. The two lost their balance and tumbled onto the hallway floor, where they struggled over possession of the gun.

  Logan shouted. “Guard! Guard!”

  The militia member on the porch had been pacing back and forth while chewing gum. Tanner saw the man stop in mid-stride as his head jerked in the direction of the door.

  “Something’s wrong,” Pullo said.

  The guard rushed into the home with his weapon drawn. After checking to see if anyone else was around, Tanner and Pullo left the shadows and rushed to the house.

  Upon entering they found the guard shouting at Briggs to stand up and show his hands. The federal agent was still on the floor grappling with Logan as they engaged in the struggle to control Logan’s gun.

  Tanner entered the home and scooped up a heavy glass paperweight that was sitting on the entry table. He came up behind the guard, who was still shouting, and slammed the paperweight against the back of the man’s head. The guard dropped to the floor as if his off button had been pushed. He’d be out for hours, possibly concussed, but alive.

  The guard was a member of the militia but not one of Cannon’s mercenaries. Tanner saw no need to kill the man for simply doing his job.

  On the floor, Briggs had won the battle for the gun. The victory had him grinning, but it had been a ploy by Logan. When he felt his hold on the weapon slipping, Logan released it and went for the knife on his belt. Although Briggs had control of the pistol, he was holding it by its barrel. Before he could adjust his grip, Logan stabbed him in the side three times.

  Briggs moaned as he slid off Logan. The gun fell onto Logan’s chest and he released the knife and went for the firearm. Tanner tossed the paperweight. The solid glass sphere slammed into Logan’s forehead, stunning him. Pullo snatched the gun from Logan’s limp hand as Tanner claimed the knife.

  Logan recovered from the trauma to his head enough to focus his eyes on Tanner and Pullo.

  “You’re Feds too?”

  Briggs placed a bloody hand against the wall and stood with difficulty. Blood leaked from his left side and dripped onto the floor.

  “I need a doctor, but not here.”

  Pullo put an arm around Briggs and helped him to the door. Before leaving, he glanced at Tanner. It was acknowledged with a nod. Logan had to die.

  Logan was no fool. He had witnessed the exchange and knew what it meant. He lunged for Tanner, hoping to topple him. Tanner sidestepped the attack, raised his arm, and buried the blade into the side of Logan’s skull. A sharp cry of pain erupted from Logan before he slumped to the floor. When Tanner saw him take a shuddering breath, he gave the knife a sideways kick. Respiration ended and Logan was dead.

  Tanner followed the trail of blood left behind by Briggs to where it ended at the foot of the steps. Pullo was crouched down over Briggs, who was lying on his back. Tanner knew even before Pullo turned toward him to give a sad shake of his head.

  Briggs was dead.

  30

  Let The Dead Bury The Dead

  The sound of footsteps crunching alerted Tanner that someone was coming toward the house from the mess hall.

  Thinking quickly, Tanner pulled his knife from the sheath on his belt and plunged it into Briggs’ lifeless body. Pullo’s eyes widened in shock for a moment before he caught on, then he pretended to be pinning Briggs’ left arm to the ground.

  “What the hell?”

  That exclamation of shock came from one of two mercenaries. Cannon had sent them back to the house to see what was taking Logan so long to arrive at the meeting. The other member of Cannon’s Inner Core was silent. He stood frozen for a moment, then placed a hand on his weapon.

  “Briggs was a Fed!” Tanner shouted, as he pointed toward the open door of the house. “He killed Logan.”

  The first mercenary, a lean man with a mustache, spoke to his companion, a stocky man with thinning hair. The two had been along on the raid to the farm where the bikers had a meth lab; however, Tanner had never learned their names.

  “Keep an eye on these two while I take a look inside the house.”

  The stocky man nodded as he debated pulling his gun from its holster. Tanner dropped the knife and showed his empty hands to calm him. It worked, and the man seemed to relax a bit. He th
en startled as his companion called out from the doorway.

  “Logan is dead, and there’s a guard injured, it’s Marty Rivers; I think he was hit from behind.”

  “We heard Logan accuse Briggs of being a Fed, before the fight began,” Tanner said. “He also said something about a computer.”

  The man who’d been inside the house spoke to his companion. “Go back to the meeting and tell Cannon what’s happened here, and don’t let anybody overhear a word.”

  The other man took a radio off his belt. “Why don’t I just call him?”

  “Because that way someone else might hear about this. We don’t want everybody in that mess hall tramping out here. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to cover this shit up.”

  The stocky man nodded as he began rushing away. “I’ll keep it quiet.”

  The remaining mercenary pointed down at Briggs. “You two grab him and carry him inside the house.”

  Tanner and Pullo did as suggested. It was also in their interest to keep the militia members from finding out what had occurred.

  Briggs was deposited on the hallway floor between the injured guard and Logan’s body. Afterward, Tanner suggested that the guard be placed in the living room atop a sofa. The mercenary agreed and Tanner and Pullo moved him. While they were out of sight of the mercenary, Tanner whispered to Pullo.

  “We have to say we followed Briggs because we thought he was acting odd.”

  “Yeah,” Pullo agreed. “Otherwise it makes no sense for us to be here.”

  “It’s still a weak story, but Cannon has no reason to think we’d be helping Briggs.”

  After depositing the guard in the living room, they returned to the hallway and stood by the mercenary. In their absence, he had discovered the thumb drive on Briggs’ body, along with a receipt for a motel. It was the motel where Briggs had stashed Gracie, and where Kate was too. Seeing that made Pullo’s jaw tighten.

  Nick Cannon arrived with Sullivan, the stocky man, and another mercenary, the Mexican man named Perez. It occurred to Tanner that the men in the house were the only members of Cannon’s Inner Core left alive.

  Cannon stared at Tanner and Pullo as he passed them, then made a sound of disgust as he gazed down at Logan’s body.

  The lean man with the mustache filled Cannon in on what he had found upon arriving at the house. After handing Cannon the thumb drive, he pointed into the office.

  “The computer is on in there and it’s showing the home screen. Logan must have caught Briggs before he could sign off.”

  Cannon held up the thumb drive. “Why download onto this when he could have just sent it off in an email?”

  “If Briggs had done that,” Tanner said, “anything he found might be dismissed by a judge, since he didn’t have a warrant. With the data stick, he could always claim it was passed to him by an informant.”

  “That makes sense,” Cannon said, “but why were you two here instead of staying at the meeting?”

  Tanner told his story about following Briggs because he was acting odd. Cannon might have bought it, but Sullivan didn’t.

  “He’s lying, Nick. I think they’re Feds too.”

  “You think so, Sullivan?” Pullo said. “After what we did the other night to those bikers.”

  Sullivan waved that away. “That was just to save your own asses. You knew if you refused that we’d have killed you.”

  Cannon paced in a circle as he held his head in his hands. “Everything is falling apart lately.”

  “Yeah,” Sullivan said, “ever since these two showed up.”

  Cannon stopped his pacing and stared at Tanner and Pullo.

  “Come into the office with me, Sullivan. The rest of you load these bodies into the van, and for God’s sake don’t let anybody see you doing it. If not for the meeting I’m sure everyone would know about this already.”

  The bodies were deposited in the van after being wrapped up in sheets taken from Logan’s bedroom. Afterward, Tanner and Pullo stood with the others near the van while waiting for Cannon to issue further orders.

  He emerged from the house with Sullivan at his side and walked toward them. When Tanner saw the grin on Sullivan, he understood that Cannon must have given him permission to kill him and Pullo. Even if Cannon believed in their innocence they had seen too much. They had also overheard Linda talking about the, “Sick shit,” Cannon was involved in that concerned the girls at the cult.

  When Tanner looked over at Pullo, he saw that he was staring at Sullivan’s smiling face with squinted eyes. The mobster also realized they had become liabilities.

  Sullivan leaned in to speak to Perez in a quiet voice. The swarthy man tapped the stocky mercenary on the arm and the two of them headed back into the house.

  Cannon smiled at Tanner. “Ray, I need you and Joe to go with Sullivan and the others to get rid of these bodies, and don’t worry, you’ll be compensated for it.”

  “I can always use the extra cash,” Tanner said.

  “Sullivan, when you’re finished, come back here and pick me up. I want to pay Shasta Shah a little late-night visit.”

  Sullivan grinned. “Damn you’re a lucky man to be nailing that, Nick. Give her a jab for me while you’re at it.”

  Perez and the stocky man came out of the house carrying another bundle wrapped in a sheet. That shocked Tanner. He wondered if the blow he had struck the guard with had killed the man. That idea fled his mind when he spotted a foot sticking out from the sheet. It was clad in a pink sneaker.

  The last time he’d seen her, Linda had been wearing pink sneakers. She had also been drunk and shooting her mouth off about Cannon’s illegal activities. Cannon had called Sullivan to the house and the bastard must have killed Linda to silence her.

  Her body was placed in the rear of the van with the others, then Sullivan gave the order to head out. Tanner climbed into the van with Pullo and the other men, but Sullivan headed over to the parking area and started up his black pickup. After stopping at a tool shed for shovels and a pickaxe, they left through the main gate and drove out into the night.

  The silence in the van was as thick as the stench coming off the three bodies. A meaningful glance from Pullo let Tanner know that he was aware they were heading to their own execution. Tanner leaned back against his seat and relaxed. Things were not going to turn out as Nick Cannon planned.

  While the van climbed into the hills above the base, Tanner thought up at least three ways he could slaughter everyone in it except for Pullo. As for Sullivan, he was Pullo’s to kill. Before the night was over, Tanner planned to fulfill his contract on Nick Cannon. He also wanted to deal with Shasta Shah. He sighed inwardly. It was going to be another busy night.

  31

  Weekend At Sullivan’s

  Sullivan’s pickup truck was in the lead as they wound their way to a secluded spot in the hills above the base. To the east, a bright tower rose into the air. It was Shasta Shah’s palace, all lit up and gleaming golden in the night like a porch light. Instead of attracting moths, Shah’s palace enticed the gullible, and the lost.

  They wove past the spot where Isaac’s body had been found earlier that day and continued on for several miles. The road had grown progressively worse and the van’s speed slackened to deal with the ruts and bumps.

  Sullivan’s pickup slowed to a near standstill before edging left along a dirt road that was narrow and had vines crisscrossing over it. The pickup truck broke through the vines and paved a trail for the van to follow.

  The road ended at a clearing that at one time held a home. What was left of the rotted structure sat at the center of the clearing which was becoming overgrown with weeds.

  Perez had been driving. He gave the order for everyone to get out of the van and to unload the bodies. Tanner and Pullo took hold of Briggs’ corpse and sat it on the ground beside the others. When Sullivan joined them, he reached inside the van and grabbed the shovels. He held them out toward Tanner and Pullo.

  “You two are the new guys,
so you get the honor of doing the digging.”

  “Yeah,” Perez said, “and make the hole deep, there are a lot of bodies going in there.”

  After talking, Perez sent Sullivan a wink. Two of the bodies they planned to leave behind were Tanner’s and Pullo’s. Once they were down in the hole and digging away, it would be a simple matter to shoot them dead.

  Tanner didn’t do anything as obvious as wink, however, the look he sent Pullo relayed the message that it was time to act.

  After observing Tanner and Pullo dig several shovelfuls of dirt, Sullivan and Perez relaxed, while the lean man took out a long, thin cigar, which were often called stogies. The cigar had no taper to either end and looked cheaply made.

  Tanner hadn’t seen one like it in years. An old friend of his grandfather’s used to smoke them, and Tanner recalled that his grandfather’s friend was from Pennsylvania as well.

  The lean man was in the process of lighting the stogie when Tanner threw dirt into the face of the mercenary beside him. The stocky man had been yawning at the time and the dirt entered his mouth, causing him to choke.

  The shovel found its next target as Tanner buried its blade into Perez’s stomach. As that was going on, Pullo had jammed his shovel hard against Sullivan’s right knee. Sullivan issued a cry of pain and fell forward, to receive a whack on the back of his head.

  The lean man had fumbled his cigar and was taking out his gun when the shovel’s blade found his face. Teeth shattered as the man’s mouth was split open by Tanner. The agony of the wound felled the mercenary and he dropped atop the weeds beside the dazed Sullivan. The stocky man, while still gagging on the dirt, managed to free his gun. Pullo brought down the shovel on his hand and the weapon flew to the right. While still in motion, Pullo swung the shovel back up and slammed it into the side of the stocky man’s head, sending him down to join his friends.