The Portero Method

Do? Panic clawed at Patrick’s brain.

  For the second time tonight, he felt himself grabbed by the back of his coat. This time he was hauled to his feet.

  “Steady him,” the big one, the one called Ricker, said as a pair of massive arms twined around Patrick’s head and neck like anacondas.

  “Wh-what’re you doing?” he cried, although he sensed with a sick terrifying certainty what was coming.

  “What the accident didn’t, buddy boy,” said Ricker’s voice close to his ear.

  Patrick writhed in their grasp and cried out his fear as he felt those arms tighten, but he was trapped and pinned and helpless as a moth about to have its wings plucked…

  …and then a jarring impact, an agonized “Uhnh!” from Ricker, a startled “What the—?” from the other, and the murderous grip loosened, the arms fell away, and something slammed against Patrick’s back, knocking him face first onto the ground. He heard scuffling feet, grunted as someone’s heel kicked him in the ribs, then winced as he heard a loud, wet, crunching smack! followed by a brief light rain of warm heavy droplets against his head and the back of his neck. After that, a heartbeat of silence, followed by the impacts of two heavy objects thudding to the ground, one on his left, another on his right. Then…

  …silence.

  He waited in panicked confusion, holding his breath, playing dead, praying he’d survive the night. Silence persisted. Warily he raised his head, inching it upward, spitting the dirt from his lips. To his left he saw a pair of blackclad legs and sneakered feet, only this time they were horizontal. With growing alarm he slowly rotated his head left—

  —and scrambled to his feet with a startled cry when he found a bloodstained face and dead staring eyes only inches from his own.

  Heart hammering, he backed away from the two still forms, the one who’d been struggling with his car door, and the bigger one, the one called Ricker, the one who’d been about to snap his neck when—

  When what? What had just happened here?

  He did a full, stumbling turn as he edged out of the grove, searching the shadows for something, anything that might account for the two dead men, but found only more shadows. When he reached the edge of the foliage he ran, blindly at first, but then a passing splash of light from above told him where the roadway was. He veered right and began to claw his way up the steep slope, stumbling, slipping, the rough granite tearing his pants, cutting his skin. Finally he reached the battered steel guardrail and pulled himself over.

  No one else in sight. Where was Romy? God, he hoped she was okay.

  Aching and bleeding, he slumped against the cold metal and tried to catch his breath.

  Not in shape, he thought as he searched his pockets for his PCA. And even if he were, he wasn’t in shape for a carjacking and dead bodies. He was a talker, not a fighter. He—

  Shit! He’d plugged the PCA into the recharger in the car!

  All right. As soon as he claimed a second wind, he was going to start running, and keep on running until a car showed up. And then he was going to stop it and have them call 911.

  Lights glowed beyond the curve to his left. As a car careened into view, he rose and staggered across the shoulder toward the roadway, waving his arms. Only when he was completely exposed and vulnerable did it occur to him to wonder whether it might be friend or foe.

  Moot question. The car hurtled past without even slowing.

  Patrick looked down at his wrinkled, torn, bloodstained suit. I wouldn’t stop for me either.

  Maybe he’d be lucky and the driver would call in about a disheveled crazy looking man wandering the Saw Mill. But the way his luck was running…

  He ducked and turned as he heard a noise on the slope below…moving closer. Someone climbing his way. He peeked over the guardrail and sighed with relief when he recognized her.

  “Romy!” he said, rising and extending his hand. “Thank God you’re safe!”

  And please don’t say, No thanks to you, my hero.

  He helped her over the rail and noticed she wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “Are you all right?” she said, giving him the once-over as she straightened her coat. “Where are you bleeding from?” Was that real concern in her eyes?

  “What? Oh…only a little of that’s mine.”

  He recounted what had happened in the grove.

  She glanced between him and the dark pool of the ravine. “And you didn’t see who it was who saved you?”

  “Not a hair, not a trace.”

  She nodded, looking around. “Typical.”

  “What’s that mean?” And then he realized she didn’t look the least bit shocked or worried.

  “It means the organization is looking out for you.”

  “What organization? Those ‘friends’ you mentioned earlier? Who—?”

  She pivoted and held up a hand to shush him. “Hear that?”

  He heard a car engine gunning in the ravine. No way that could be his. They both leaned over the rail, squinting into the dark.

  “When I was hiding in the brush down there I spotted another van just like the one that drove us off the road. On my way back up here I noticed that the two guys I gassed were gone.”

  “You think they took the bodies with them?”

  “I’ll bet on it. This wasn’t a couple of beered-up Teamsters. These people had a plan and they were following it by the numbers, military style.”

  Patrick noticed her stiffen, as if a bell had just rung. “What?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  As the sound of the van’s engine faded, Patrick stared again into the dark ravine, trying to locate his BMW, and was struck by how perfectly their “accident” had been planned. If he had trouble locating his car in the shadows below—and he had a fair idea where it should be—a passing car wouldn’t have a clue.

  A shudder cut through his body. He began to tremble inside.

  “Don’t tell me ‘nothing,’” he said. “Somebody tried to kill us and—”

  “They were going to shoot me up with something first…to ask me questions.”

  “Oh, Christ! What are we into here? Who were they?”

  “SimGen, I suspect.”

  “No way! With their clout in court and Congress, they don’t need to hire killers.”

  “Who’s got more to lose?”

  “No, Romy, I don’t buy it—I won’t buy it. They’re—”

  She leaned close. Intensity radiated from her like heat from a reactor core. “They’re hiding something, Patrick. And whatever it is, the two of us—you, me—we’ve touched a nerve. We’ve somehow threatened that secret.”

  “Just great,” he said. “One of the largest corporations in the world has painted a bull’s-eye on my back.” He held up his hands and watched them shake. “Look at me—I’m a wreck.”

  “The shakes are normal,” Romy said, holding out her own trembling hands. “Just excess adrenaline. It’ll pass. How do you feel otherwise?”

  “How does terrified sound?” He wasn’t ashamed to admit it: He was shaken to his core. “It’s not every day someone tries to kill me.”

  “The all-important question is: Have they scared you off?”

  “Oh, they’ve scared me, but not off,” he said, hoping he sounded a lot braver than he felt. “You see, they made a big mistake when they ruined my practice: It left me with only one client. I can’t quit.”

  Romy smiled at him, and he sensed genuine regard in her eyes. Somehow that made the terrors of the past few minutes almost worthwhile. Almost.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” he said, feeling a growing anger blunt the edge of his fear. “I’m still not convinced SimGen was behind what happened here, but just in case it was, I’m putting them on notice.”

  Her eyes never left his face. “How?”

  “I’m sure I saw the word ‘SimGen’ on the side of the van that sideswiped us. How about you?”

  “Come to think of it,” she said, touching an index finger to
her temple, “I believe I did too.”

  “Of course you did. We’ll make sure it’s in the police report, and I’m going to mention it in every interview over the next week or so. SimGen will deny it of course, but a suspicion will be implanted in the public mind. SimGen will be praying nothing happens to us.”

  “I love it,” she said. “Turns the tables in a wonderfully underhanded way.”

  “I aced Underhanded 101 and 102 in law school.”

  “I’ll bet you did.” She pulled a PCA from her coat pocket. “Time to call the cops.”

  11

  SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

  “I understand,” Luca Portero said for what seemed like the hundredth or thousandth time, trying to calm the voice on the other end of the hard-encrypted line.

  Truth was, he didn’t understand. Not one damn bit.

  He rubbed his burning eyes. Somewhere outside this sealed office in the subbasement of SimGen’s Basic Research building, the sun was preparing to rise. Luca hadn’t slept in twenty-three hours, but he wasn’t the least bit physically tired. The fatigue weighing on him like a lead-lined shroud was mental, from hammering his brain for an explanation as to how such a simple op could go so fatally wrong.

  “Do you understand, Portero?” said the voice.

  It belonged to Darryl Lister, Luca’s old CO, the man who’d brought him into SIRG. Just like back in the service, Lister was his direct superior, and the next stop up the ladder from Luca. Lister was understandably upset about being awakened ahead of his alarm clock with the news that two of their men were dead. He’d hung up on Luca, then called him back half an hour later—after checking with the SIRG higher-ups, no doubt.

  “Then maybe,” Lister continued, “just maybe you can help me understand how six pros go out to process a couple of soft-shelled yuppies, and two come back in body bags, while the yups are still walking around. You were running the op. Explain, please.”

  Lister’s tone surprised Luca. He sounded nothing like the Captain he’d known back in their Special Forces days. Hell, they’d stalked through Kabul and Baghdad together; he was one of the few men in the world Luca respected. Why was he coming on so managerial?

  Couldn’t worry about that now. Had to give him answers.

  Luca once more reviewed the set-up, groping for a flaw. He’d handpicked the men, all seasoned SIRG operatives. Using a bogus identity he’d personally rented the vans from two different companies—could have used unmarked SimGen vehicles but didn’t want to chance a trace. Then last night, after weeks of surveillance on Sullivan and Cadman, a golden opportunity: the two of them together driving through Westchester in the dead hours of the morning. A couple of quick calls and everyone was in position, waiting for it to go down.

  So far, so good. Not a hint that it was going to go down the toilet.

  He reran his mental tape of what he’d learned from debriefing the survivors. According to Snyder and Lowery—the wheel man and his back-up in the first van—the hit on Sullivan’s car had been perfect: over the rail and down the slope. As planned, they’d driven away and left their rented van at a body shop that knows how to keep a secret.

  After that the story murked up. The two survivors of the wet team, Cruz and Hooper, had spent too much time recovering from their doses of Mace to see anything. And they were still limping from the tap dance the Cadman woman had done on them.

  Luca shook his head, torn between rage and admiration. Some kind of broad, that Romy. He couldn’t help but admire the way she’d engineered the raid on that sim whorehouse. And then she’d made asses of two of his best men. Maybe they were still alive thanks to her. He could use someone like her.

  When Cruz and Hooper could finally see and walk again, they’d found Ricker and Green dead; they’d gathered up the corpses and hauled ass out of there in the second van.

  “I put Ricker in charge,” Luca said.

  “Good choice,” Lister replied. “I’d have done the same. But Ricker is dead, and that’s what disturbs me, Portero. How does Ricker wind up with a cracked skull? Who do you know who could take Ricker in hand-to-hand?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Damn right. He was a fucking animal.”

  No argument there. Ricker wasn’t just big and tough, he was experienced and smart. No one was going to take him down without a struggle, and not without him taking one or two down with him. But according to Cruz and Hooper, they never heard a sound.

  And Ricker’s body…his throat had been crushed—that explained the silence—and his head had been smashed. Looked like he’d leaned out of a speeding subway and got clocked by a support girder. Same with Green.

  In fact, if Luca wasn’t so sure it was impossible, he’d think someone had grabbed Ricker and Green by their necks and smashed their heads together…like a bully brother breaking his sister’s dolls. But who could manhandle two guys as fit and jacked as Ricker and Green like that?

  An icy length of barbed wire dragged along Luca’s spine.

  “According to what you’ve told me,” Lister said, “Ricker and the team didn’t know where they were going until less than an hour before they hit the road. Even you didn’t know. So how did whoever took them out know? Sounds to me like they were already there waiting.”

  “Or they were followed.”

  “But why follow them at all? Unless…shit! The Japs! I bet it’s the Japs! That goddamn Kaze Group has been sticking its dirty fingers deeper and deeper into the biotech pie, and now—”

  “I doubt it’s the Japs,” Luca said. “They’ve got no reason to protect Sullivan.”

  “Maybe they just want to keep us off balance.”

  Luca began to feel an unsettling suspicion. He hesitated, as if uttering the words might turn the possibility into a reality. But Lister—and SIRG—had to know.

  “I think there’s a new player in the game.”

  “Where’d you get an idea like that?”

  “A gut feeling. And the fact that we’ve never had to deal with a countermove like this.”

  A pause while Lister digested that. “Who on earth…?”

  “I have no idea—yet. But I’m going to find out.”

  “You do that. But don’t lose us any more men in the process. Whoever these people are, they play rough.”

  “Rough,” Luca said, clamping his jaw. “They don’t know rough. Not by half.”

  “And something you should know,” Lister said. “Word from upstairs is that this was a bad idea.”

  “Bad?” Anger dueled with a sudden stab of cold fear. “It was approved! What the hell are they trying—?”

  “Careful what you say, Portero. The wrong people might hear and you could find yourself back where you came from, living on your pension while pimping for your mother—and happy to be allowed to do so. Comprende?”

  Lister’s unexpected attack rocked Luca. “What? What did you just say?”

  Rage flared through him, making him want to reach through the phone and kill. He didn’t care about the swift and inevitably deadly reprisal from SIRG, he wanted to crush Lister’s larynx, wanted to see his eyes bulge, his face turn purple while Luca screamed in his ear that yes, my mother was a whore, but only because she had to be and she’s not anymore, and yes, she doesn’t know who my father was, but…

  “Sorry,” Lister said. “That was uncalled for. I’m just…you wouldn’t believe the pressure that’s coming down.”

  Luca said nothing. All right, so SIRG was squeezing Lister, big time. That still didn’t give him the right…

  “Look,” Lister said. “Whatever you thought they said before, they now say the lawyer is not key. If he goes, he can be replaced in minutes by another lawyer, maybe a better one, who might cause even more problems.”

  Lister paused, as if expecting a comment. They’re right, Luca grudgingly admitted. No shortage of lawyers. But he said nothing.

  Lister went on: “The sims—this particular group of sims—are key. No other group has come forward looking to unionize,
only these. Why, we don’t know. Why, we don’t care. Point is, SIRG wants the focus of your efforts from now on to be the Beacon Ridge sims. Are we clear on that?”

  “Completely.”

  Calmer now, Luca already was germinating an idea. A simple plan. A one-man job. And he knew just the man.

  This time there’d be no slip-ups because he’d take care of it himself.

  Because this had become personal.

  Romy Cadman had made him look bad. Hurt his reputation. Now she was going to hurt.

  12

  WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY

  “I’m fine, really,” Romy said.

  She stood in an empty ladies’ room speaking to Zero on the secure PCA he’d given her. It was clear after last night that she was under surveillance, so she’d picked a spot at random and wound up in a coffee shop not far from the federal district courthouse in White Plains. At this hour—10:32A .M.—the dining area contained only a handful of late breakfasters, and the ladies’ room was empty; she’d checked all the stalls before calling.

  “You’re sure? Absolutely sure?”

  The concern in his voice touched her. “Absolutely. Those martial arts lessons you made me take came in handy.”

  “I never thought you’d be in physical danger, but I felt it best you be prepared for it.”

  “If nothing else, it’s helped me keep my cool.”

  Relative cool, she thought. Her nerves were still jangled. She’d tried to rest at the motel—in her own room, much to Patrick’s dismay—but sleep had remained steadfastly out of reach; so she’d compensated this morning by drinking too much coffee, which did nothing to settle her nerves.

  She caught sight of herself in one of the mirrors. A little haggard looking, but not half bad for someone who’d ducked an attempt on her life just a few hours ago.

  “But murder?” she said. “Somehow I don’t see the brothers Sinclair sitting around and deciding to have us killed.”

  “That decision was reached elsewhere, I’m sure. By someone connected to the company but with his own best interests at heart.”

  “Someone also connected to Manassas Ventures, perhaps?”