The TANNER Series - Books 13-15 (Tanner Box Set) Read online

  Josie licked her lips.

  “Yes?”

  Tanner pointed at an empty potato chip bag.

  “Pick that up; I hate litter.”

  Josie pouted.

  “Don’t you like me?”

  “You’ll do as a neighbor, and your husband seems like a nice guy.”

  “He is nice. He’s too nice, but I know a bad boy when I see one, and you Mr. Tom Myers, you’re a very bad boy.”

  Tanner laughed.

  “It’s not gonna happen, so save the act and go home.”

  A flash of anger crossed Josie’s pretty face as she stood. It didn’t last very long, and she sent Tanner a sexy smile.

  “You’ll change your mind someday, you’ll see.”

  “Goodnight, Josie.”

  “Goodnight Tom, sweet dreams.”

  Josie made sure to wiggle her tight butt as she walked away. Tanner watched her. He would never touch her, but she was fun to look at.

  He sat there a while longer and the neighborhood watch made another circuit. As they were headed back towards the avenue while bullshitting with each other, Tanner saw something moving in the woods to their right.

  He was off the porch in a flash and into the trees just seconds later.

  There were two figures and they each held something in their right hands. When the moonlight filtered down through the trees, Tanner saw it glint off the objects they had.

  He moved closer even as the figures stalked the neighborhood watch. Whatever weapons they were carrying were kept hanging by their sides, but if they raised their arms in a shooting stance, Tanner would open fire.

  As he closed within twenty feet, he saw that they were young, just teenagers, but neither one was Dexter Hodges. At ten feet, his interest in them turned to puzzlement, as he got a good look at what they were carrying.

  Tanner moved up on the shortest of the two and placed the barrel of his gun against the back of his head.

  “Stop moving and stay quiet,” Tanner whispered.

  The two teens were Pete and Rocco, Dexter’s friends. They both held a can of Silly String in their right hand.

  Tanner had his gun pressed against Rocco’s head. When Pete turned around and saw the weapon, he started crying.

  “Don’t hurt my brother, please? We’ll give you our money.”

  Tanner squinted at Pete.

  “Money? Kid, we’re in a forest; what kind of mugger works in the forest?”

  “Robin Hood,” Rocco said. “Robin Hood mugged people in Sherwood Forest.”

  Tanner lowered the gun.

  “I can’t argue with that, now what the hell are you two doing here? And what’s with the Silly String?”

  Rocco pointed in the direction that the neighborhood watch took.

  “We were gonna teach those guys a lesson; they messed with our friend.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Dex Hodges,” Pete said. “And those guys hurt him last night.”

  “And you were going to teach them a lesson with Silly String?”

  “Mr. Hodges won’t let us have guns. He says that we would shoot ourselves.”

  “I think he’s right. Stay away from the neighborhood watch group, okay?”

  Rocco nodded, but he had a question.

  “What about Tom Myers? He hurt Dex too. Can we teach him a lesson instead?”

  “I’m Tom Myers.”

  Rocco held up the can of Silly String and sprayed Tanner’s hair with it.

  Tanner nearly shot him.

  CHAPTER 22 – Amateur hour

  In Elizabeth, New Jersey, Jake Vincento made sure that no one was around when he headed straight for the hiding place he had discovered the day before.

  It had been a nice spring day. But the sun was long gone, and being so close to the water, there was a stiff breeze blowing in. The gusting wind not only chilled Vincento, but it also annoyed him. There was a metal sign hanging off a wall of the factory. It swung and squeaked with each breeze.

  The meet in the factory parking lot wasn’t supposed to happen until one a.m.

  Vincento had hours to go until DeLillo and his bodyguards showed up, but felt it was better to be two hours early than one minute late. He was worried about the bodyguards and hoped that there would be no more than two of them. If DeLillo brought more than that, there was a good chance that one would survive long enough to return fire.

  Vincento remembered that Deke Mercer had tried to talk him out of taking the contract, citing the fact that Vincento had only killed other men from a distance while serving his country. Vincento scoffed at Deke’s concern and told him that the hit would be no different, and that he could look into the eyes of another man and kill without mercy.

  “It’s a less common ability than you might think,” Deke had told him. “Rarer still is to avoid having it scar you for life.”

  Vincento wasn’t certain, but it seemed as if Deke had been speaking from personal experience.

  As he waited, Vincento became chilled, and the water he was drinking made him have to pee. He thought about just going where he was, but the smell of urine would be bad in the tight space, and so he held it in and listened to the annoying squeak of the sign.

  By midnight, he was fighting sleep. He had gotten little of it the night before, thanks to the lovely flight attendant, Eve. As he tried to recall Eve’s face in detail, Vincento leaned back against a plywood board and closed his eyes. He fell asleep in less than a minute.

  ***

  When the young man pried open the door to the hideout, Vincento woke and cried out in surprise.

  Unaware that he had dozed off, it seemed to Vincento like the kid had appeared from thin air. The boy, who was named Max, was only eighteen, but he was a neo-Nazi with the letters HH tattooed prominently on his neck.

  Vincento wasn’t the only one getting in place early for the meeting, the Nazis had sent a man to do the same. They had plans to ambush the arms dealer, DeLillo. Vincento’s perfect hiding place had been constructed by them just hours before he arrived on the scene and discovered it.

  The Nazi boy, Max, said nothing, but only reached for the knife hanging in a tan leather sheath on his belt. His left hand was holding a duffle bag full of weapons, and the knife was the easiest thing to kill Vincento with.

  Vincento’s AK-47 was slung across his back by its strap. But he might as well have left it in his motel room when it came to dealing with the knife.

  He only had time enough to grab the kid’s wrist with both hands and pushed him backwards, leaving the hideout. The boy was strong, but untrained, and Vincento had been taught hand-to-hand combat while he was a soldier.

  He managed to twist the boy’s wrist until the knife was facing back at him, and then he forced the tip of the blade into the kid’s chest.

  Max let out a cry of pain, and Vincento saw the look of panic come over him.

  “Don’t,” Max pleaded in a harsh whisper, as his eyes begged for mercy. It was too late, and Vincento drove the knife home, causing it to rupture an artery leading to the kid’s heart.

  Max wilted, fell to his knees, and then flat on his back. After a convulsion that made his legs jerk wildly, the boy exhaled once, and then laid still.

  Vincento just stood there and gazed down at Max for a moment, as his heart raced and he fought the urge to vomit.

  The boy at his feet was dead and Vincento marveled at how easy it had been. A brief struggle, a bit of sharp metal, and the decades of life that the boy had in front of him were gone, just gone. Deke Mercer had been right, killing up close was different, and more intimate than sex.

  Then, suddenly, panic set in, and when Vincento looked at his watch, he saw that it was 12:38 a.m.

  Did I fall asleep? he asked himself. Then, he admitted to himself that he must have, which is how the boy was able to walk right up on him.

  Vincento cursed his stupidity as he looked around for signs of others. After seeing no one, he grabbed the dead boy’s ankles and pulled hi
m towards the water.

  Max had barely bled a drop outwardly, other than the blood that was staining the black sweatshirt he wore. Vincento knew that if he could just get the body in the water he might still pull off the hit.

  At the end of the sloping parking lot there was a five-foot high chain-link fence. On each end of the fence, there was a gap that led to another incline, which went to the water’s edge.

  The water was farther away at the gaps, because the fence was shaped like a wide U. Vincento thought about lifting Max up and tossing him over the fence, but doubted it would work.

  Max had been a big boy, over six feet in height and well over two-hundred pounds of dead weight. Lifting Max would be hard enough, but there was a strip of land several yards wide between the fence and the water.

  Vincento could never toss the body that far, and so he dragged the boy over to the nearest gap, the one on the right. The earlier chill he had felt was gone. He was sweating.

  The incline was unpaved and Vincento’s feet slipped in the dirt as he tried to drag the body down to the fetid water of Newark Bay. When he was halfway there, Vincento saw a huge truck tire laying on its side among the various debris that littered the ground, such as the torn and threadbare blanket that blew in the wind like a flag.

  He dragged the boy’s body behind the massive tire and then checked his watch. It was 12:42.

  An urgent feeling in his bladder reminded him that he hadn’t peed. He moved a few feet from the body and took care of it. The relief was pleasurable, and it somehow helped him to calm down.

  He returned to the body to drag it to the water, when he saw that he had screwed up once again. He had moved uphill to pee. The stream of urine had run down towards the tire, flowed around it, and into the face of the boy, whose mouth was agape in death. Another branch of the stream had flowed down the tire’s other side, and wet the cuffs of the boy’s jeans.

  “Shit,” Vincento said, and then covered his mouth as he searched for movement and listened for voices. He saw no one up in the parking lot and heard only the lapping of the water, along with the ceaseless white noise of the traffic moving along the nearby elevated roadway.

  And of course, there was the annoying squeak of that damn metal sign.

  He was still alone though, and that meant there was time to get back into position.

  Vincento had been gripping the dead boy’s ankles to pull him along, but now the cuffs of the jeans were moist with urine.

  A check of the time told him that the scheduled meeting was just minutes from taking place. Vincento decided to leave the boy where he was and cover him with the torn blanket. DeLillo and his men wouldn’t walk down to the water, and if they did, the ratty blanket would hide the body.

  The blanket had been caught on a piece of twisted metal, but Vincento tore it free and managed to tuck it around the corpse.

  He made it back to the hiding place before anyone else arrived and dragged Max’s duffle bag inside. Curiosity got the better of Vincento, and when he opened the bag he found a surprise.

  There were stun grenades, flash bangs, two of them, along with a Mini-Uzi.

  Vincento reasoned that the neo-Nazis were planning to kill his target. He then came to a second realization, which was actually rather obvious. He needed a new place to hide.

  If the Nazis were planning an ambush they wouldn’t just be using the kid he killed, there would be others, and they would know about the hiding place.

  Vincento left the hidey-hole and jerked his head around, trying to find a new place to take concealment, or even better, cover. He decided to hide behind the dumpster, because it should protect him from bullets and shield him from the concussive blast of the grenades, or so he hoped.

  Vincento crawled behind the massive green dumpster which sat near the building, and, unfortunately, beneath the cursed squeaking sign.

  As he did so, he heard voices growing nearer.

  ***

  Michael DeLillo arrived with six bodyguards. They were all heavily armed ex-combat veterans, although they had served in armies other than the one belonging to the United States.

  The five-foot-six Michael DeLillo looked like a pale dwarf as he stood amidst his giant dark-complected bodyguards, one of whom pointed out the lights of the van approaching.

  The van pulled slowly into the parking lot and stopped near the building, just several yards away from the dumpster. Then, seven armed neo-Nazis left the van and stood looking at the other group. The Nazis were all wearing dark sunglasses, although the parking lot lights were dim. Their driver had stayed inside the van, which had been kept running.

  DeLillo pointed at them.

  “You guys have so much hardware on you that I’m wondering why you need my services.”

  A man stepped forward, he had chiseled features and a blond crew-cut. He was the leader of the neo-Nazis and went by the name of Granite. He was also the father of the dead boy, Max.

  “Are we doing business or what?” Granite said, and then he stepped back and lowered his eyes, as he had expected to hear a stun grenade go off.

  DeLillo puzzled over the strange behavior, but he had done business with stranger men.

  “Come over here and tell me what you need,” DeLillo said.

  Granite looked confused, and repeated himself, only much louder.

  “I said, ARE WE DOING BUSINESS OR WHAT!”

  It was the signal that Granite had given his son to memorize. Max would never hear that signal.

  DeLillo knew that something wasn’t right for sure and he swiveled his head around, as he moved behind his men.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  When the flash bang grenades failed to appear, Granite realized that they had to do things the old fashioned way and whipped off his sunglasses.

  He shouted, “Waste the guards!” even as he opened up on them with his Glock. His men followed his lead and soon had the upper hand. They were firing downhill while DeLillo’s men were shooting at an upward angle. The Nazis scored double the hits, and only one of their men was killed during the firefight. Most of the wounds had been leg wounds, as it was assumed that protective vests would be worn to the meet.

  DeLillo had taken an errant round to the chest, but he too had worn a vest beneath his jacket. The vest deflected the round, but the impact broke one of DeLillo’s ribs, and he was moaning from the pain.

  All but two of DeLillo’s bodyguards survived the barrage, but the survivors all suffered life-threatening wounds. Granite’s men moved in on them and shot each of the wounded men in the head.

  Afterwards, Granite’s most-trusted man, Sean, cleaned out DeLillo’s pockets along with the guards, and claimed their keys, wallet, and phones. Once that was done, two of Granite’s other men bound DeLillo and shoved him into the van.

  Granite went looking for his son inside the hiding space they had created for him. When he found it empty, he shouted out his son’s name.

  “Max!”

  When there was no answer, he told Sean and two other men named Chris and Albert to spread out and look for his son. Sean, Chris, and Albert were all cousins, and the three men had dark brown hair worn short.

  Sean was the oldest at thirty-four, while Albert was only twenty-three and wore wire rim glasses that made him look studious.

  The three of them did as they were told, although they knew that the police could investigate the gunfire at any moment.

  If no one had been near enough to pinpoint where the sounds of the gun battle came from, there were many who could have seen the muzzle flashes from the overpass or other docks and waterfront properties.

  It was Granite who found his son’s body under the torn blanket, and as he bent down beside him, Vincento sprinted out from behind the dumpster and charged at the van.

  ***

  Jake Vincento had peeked out from his hiding place after the gunfire had died down. When he saw that DeLillo was still alive, he nearly cursed out loud.

  But then he understood.
Why buy arms from the man? It’s cheaper to torture him into revealing where he keeps his stash of weapons.

  But Vincento needed DeLillo dead, and he was going to make it happen. He was not going to fail.

  ***

  Granite had just come to terms with the fact that his son was dead when a flash bang grenade exploded inside the van.

  The driver of the van was screaming and holding his head with both hands. The two men he’d left to guard DeLillo were too stunned to defend themselves, and were shot to death by a guy dressed all in black.

  Granite’s other men were spread out near the water, where they had been helping him search for his son. One of them, Sean, had a rifle. Sean fired at the man and the round went high, but a second shot made the man cry out and run towards the street.

  “Grab that motherfucker! I want him alive,” Granite said, and his men ran after Vincento.

  Granite scooped his son’s body up in his huge arms and carried him to the van. When he looked inside, he saw that his men were dead, the driver included, and that DeLillo had been executed with a shot between the eyes.

  Losing the men, all recent recruits, was an inconvenience, but losing DeLillo was expensive. As Vincento had assumed, Granite had planned to torture DeLillo and steal the man’s stockpile of weapons.

  DeLillo had arrived in an Escalade, which he had left parked out on the street. Granite walked over to it and found Sean and Albert opening the back of the vehicle. After laying Max’s body in the rear of the Escalade. Granite told Sean to drive, and they moved away from the scene as the sounds of multiple sirens grew closer.

  “The cops will be here any minute, you know what to do,” Granite said, and Sean nodded.

  Setting up the hiding place for Max wasn’t the only precaution they had taken. After driving only a block, Sean hit the button on a remote control. A corrugated door opened on a building to their right, as it slid up along its metal track.

  They had just managed to back the Escalade inside and lower the door when three separate sirens went screaming by outside.

  They were in a machine shop and there had been just enough space to back the vehicle in. Granite knew the owner, a virulent racist, and the man had been happy to help the cause. The sharp odors of cutting oil and grease permeated the air of the small shop, but they were nothing compared to the pungent smell of Max’s corpse, which had vacated its bowels.