Gathering Storm

“Four a.m. I’ll bring along my client. Let him check the stuff out. If everything is okay, we can complete by tomorrow evening. Just remember he’ll want the full shipment up front before he hands over any cash.”

The Briton stood. “I’ll go and get my people working on it.” He dropped a folded paper onto the table. “My hotel and room number. Give me a call if anything crops up.”

As soon as the Briton had left the bar, Regan beckoned to his men. They came to his table.

“Follow him. Let’s see if he’s who he says. I don’t want this deal screwing up.”

“Don’t you trust him?”

Regan smiled, scrubbing at his unshaven jaw. “I don’t trust anyone.”

One of the bodyguards grinned. “You trust us.”

“Do I? Who the fuck ever said that, Bubba?”

THE BRITON LEFT the bar and made his way along the street. It was already dark. The night warm and sticky. He took his time, knowing full well that Regan would have him followed. It was what he would have done in Regan’s place. He returned to his hotel, collected his key and went directly to his room. Inside he crossed to the window overlooking the street and saw one of Regan’s bodyguards lounging against a storefront on the far side, half hidden in shadow. The man was lighting a cigarette and trying to look as though he belonged. He failed badly. No matter how casual his attitude, he still identified himself as an overmuscled hardman, even down to the bulge where his too-tight jacket fitted over the shoulder-holstered gun he was carrying. The other man had obviously gone into the hotel and was, even now, probably paying the desk clerk to take a look at the Briton’s details in the guest register.

George Reese, British National. Home address, London.

That was what it said in the register. If a deeper probe into Reese’s background was carried out, his background in dubious operations would show. Suspected of involvement in arms smuggling, some drug dealing. His sphere of operations would catalog deals in the Middle East, Asia, South and Central America. George Reese, though traceable if anyone wanted to follow through, was in fact a totally fictitious character who only existed in the computer files at Stony Man Farm, Virginia, U.S.A. Any requests for information on the character would be routed through to Stony Man, where his fictitious profile would be accessible to any tracer. George Reese was nothing more than a cover for one of the Phoenix Force operatives on this particular mission.

David McCarter.

TURNING BACK from the window, McCarter took off his jacket and tossed it onto the bed, went to the dresser and picked up a pack of Player’s cigarettes. He needed one to take away the taste of the tobacco he had purchased from the hotel bar. It was rough, running a close second to the home-brewed beer they sold in the area. He lit the cigarette and took a long draw, sighing with relief.

He took a cell phone from his pocket and hit a speed-dial number. When his call was answered, McCarter asked, “Did you pick me up?”

Calvin James affirmed his query.

“We trailed you back to the hotel. Watched one guy go in while the other stood across the street. Hey, your first guy just came back out. He’s crossing to meet the other one.”

“Let’s hope they bought my biography.”

“Hell, these guys don’t exactly look like they work for the Oxford English Dictionary.”

“You and T.J. follow them. See where they go. Who they meet. Call me if anything happens we need to know about.”

McCarter broke the connection, waited a couple of minutes, then made another call. This time it was to Gary Manning and Rafael Encizo. They were on board the sixty-foot motor vessel anchored off Santa Lorca, along with the cargo Phoenix Force was offering for sale to Regan.

“I did my deal with Regan,” McCarter told Manning when the Canadian answered his call.

“And?”

“I show him samples. Early morning call. Four a.m.”

“Okay. Let’s hope he brings his buyer along. If he doesn’t, we’ve come a long way and set this deal up for nothing.”

“Took our pessimistic pill this morning, did we?”

“You have to admit this has been a hell of a long shot from the word go.”

“So? We’ve worked thinner operations before.”

“Yeah? This one is so thin Stevie Wonder could see through it.”

“Bugger me, is that Canadian humor I hear?”

Manning chuckled softly. “I’ll see you later.”

McCarter glanced at his watch. A long time to go before he made his rendezvous with Regan. He figured to allow himself a couple of hours to get to the boat, pick up the samples and get them to the dock area where Regan’s warehouse stood. Until then he had little to do, so he decided to relax. If anything cropped up, the others would let him know. James and Hawkins were keeping in the background, acting as shadows to cover McCarter, without showing themselves to Regan or his men.

McCarter sauntered down to the hotel bar and asked the man behind the counter if he had any chilled Coke. To his surprise the barman produced cold bottles from a cooler. The Briton took half a dozen and climbed the stairs back to his room a relatively happy man. He closed the door and settled down on the bed, switching on the TV set. It was lucky he had the Coke. It helped to ease the pain of watching old U.S. series dubbed in Spanish. He did some channel hopping and came across three Western series, yet another rerun of Star Trek, and ended up watching Mannix, with every character mouthing out-of-sync Spanish.

McCarter watched the episode, through. He smoked three more cigarettes and downed two bottles of Coke. He was feeling better. He switched off the TV, eased his long frame off the bed and crossed to the window. It was quiet down below. The Briton spent a few minutes at the window, letting the faint breeze cool him. He was about to turn away when he picked up a sound from the other side of his room door. McCarter stepped away from the window and crossed the room to stand against the wall to one side of the door. He turned his head slightly and picked up a scrap of sound. It was the sound of a floorboard creaking under weight. The weight was quickly removed but only made the board creak again. A man’s hushed voice expressed impatience and elicited a sharp response.

At least two.

But what were they doing outside his room?

The Briton decided he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out. As he eased his Browning Hi-Power from the shoulder holster he was wearing, the door handle moved slightly as pressure was put on it from the other side. He flicked off the main room light, leaving on just a small lamp on a table beside the bed.

The door swung open and two men stepped inside, scanning the room as they did. Both were armed with pistols. Seeing the room apparently empty seemed to confuse the pair for a few seconds and McCarter used the time to his advantage. He booted the door shut and as the gunners swung around he launched himself into action.

The barrel of the Browning cracked down across the wrist of the closer man, the hard blow numbing his grip on the pistol he carried. As the man grunted in pain, McCarter rapped the Browning against the side of his skull, hard, stunning the guy. As the first man slumped to his knees, McCarter turned his upper body and drove his bunched left fist into the second man’s face. The blow was delivered with full force, cracking against the target’s jaw. His head snapped around, blood spraying from a split lip. The guy fell back against the wall. The Phoenix Force leader was already closing on him, his right knee coming up in a blur to drive into the guy’s exposed stomach. The breath gusted from his slack mouth and the man clutched himself. He offered no resistance as McCarter snatched his pistol from his hand. Stepping back, the Briton kicked the first guy’s gun across the room, then backed up himself to cover the two men.

“I don’t suppose you bums are room service? No? Didn’t think so. So who are you?”

“Someone you don’t want to mess around with.”

McCarter glanced at the speaker. The accent wasn’t local. There was something familiar about it. European? Slavic maybe? Difficult to tell. The man had been mixing with other cultures and had lost a degree of his native cadence.

“Might be a good idea if you stopped watching cheap movies,” McCarter said. “Coming up with a line like that. Bloody terrible. Now why don’t we stop being silly. Just tell me who you are and what you want.”

“We want you out of Santa Lorca. We do business here. This is our territory.”

McCarter grinned. “Losing out, are you? Tough. You blokes never heard of competition? Now I suggest you get the hell out of my room and stay away from me.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand. But take it from me, chum. If you keep this up I’ll kill you. No second chances. Keep that thought when you leave. Now get the fuck out of my room.”

The two men glanced at each other. They were in a bind. No weapons, and it was plain to see that the man they had come to hassle was in no way disturbed by their presence. They gathered themselves and moved to the door. McCarter followed them into the passage and stayed until they had disappeared down the stairs. He went back into his room, closing and locking the door. He picked up the discarded weapons and placed them in his leather holdall. Then he got back on his cell phone and spoke to James again. He explained what had happened.

“You think this could cause us problems?”

“If we’ve stepped on the toes of the local union of gunrunners it could get busy. The sooner we have our meet with Regan’s buyer, the better. All we need is to identify the buyer, grab him if he fits the bill, then get the hell out of this sweatbox and go home.”

“Our boys here only went back to the bar and spoke to Regan. Looks like he was just checking up on you. We’ll keep an eye on them.”