Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job (The Kim Oh Thrillers) Read online

  According to Monica, as she’d told me about it last night, that would put the fear of God into the jittering little twerp. Or at least the fear of Cole, which was worse. And if she said this was what would do it for the guy, and keep him from running his mouth off, I was willing to take her word for it. She was the one who’d slept with him, after all.

  I found the number Monica had put in and hit it with my thumb. I held the phone up toward the hinge of the helmet visor, close enough to hear Braemer’s voice when he answered. I looked down the street to where he was sitting, watching for him to pull his own cell phone out of his jacket when it rang –

  I didn’t see that.

  Instead, I saw a fireball – churning flames and black smoke – fill the street ahead.

  The shockwave was almost enough to knock me off the Ninja. Stunned, I tilted my head back, watching the smoke pile on up to the sky, rising alongside the facade of the nearest office building. The only sign remaining of Braemer and his dealer friends was an empty metal chair, bent by the force of the explosion, lying on its side in the middle of the pavement.

  I could hear people screaming. And shouts and all the other kinds of confusion that happen when you set off a bomb in the middle of the city.

  I looked at the cell phone in my hand and made the connection. I shoved it into my jacket, then wheeled the Ninja around and kicked it into gear. Leaning down behind the windshield, I gunned the engine, weaving the bike in and out of the stalled traffic. In the distance, I could hear the sirens starting to shriek.

  * * *

  “You sonsabitches.” I glared at the two figures lying on the mattress. “You set me up.”

  “No, we didn’t.” Cole didn’t even look at me, but just went on watching the cartoons on the portable TV. “You didn’t get hurt. What’re you griping about?”

  I was more than griping. I was ready to kill – deliberately, this time.

  The whole time heading back to the warehouse, I’d been stewing about it. Monica hadn’t been keeping anything from Cole – it was me she’d left in the dark. She and Cole had been together in this little plan from the start. Packing the old Xaver 400 device, that one that supposedly had stopped working, with that RDX explosive that he liked to use – she couldn’t have done that. Plus wiring it to a cell phone, so that when I called its number, the whole thing would go off – that was the kind of thing Cole was good at. It hadn’t been Braemer’s number that she had programmed into my cell phone. It’d been the bomb’s number.

  That was why I’d been so pissed when I’d come storming into the warehouse and found them together. Everybody had known what was going on, except me – and that Braemer guy, of course. But he wasn’t thinking about it, at least not now.

  “Kim, honey –” Leaning against the wall behind them, Monica had an arm around Cole’s shoulders. “Just relax. It’s no big deal.”

  “No big deal?” I glared at her. “I could’ve been killed.”

  “Not as long as you stayed a couple blocks away when you made the call. The way I told you. I was looking out for you.”

  She might’ve been right about that, but it didn’t take my anger down any.

  “Fine,” I said. “What about the people who just got blown away? Now I’m the one who pushed the button on them.”

  That drew a raised eyebrow from Cole as he glanced over at me. “Nobody got killed who didn’t deserve it. That guy Braemer? And those other dealers who were sitting there? They weren’t exactly innocent lambs. If they were doing business with me, you can believe it, they were dirty. In a lot of ways.” He turned his gaze back to the TV. “Besides – if you hadn’t taken him out, it could’ve been us who wound up getting killed. He should’ve known better than to go around talking the way he had been.”

  “Whatever. But that’s not the problem here.”

  “Really? What is?”

  “You lied to me,” I said. “Both of you. You had your whole little act going on, between the two of you. And I fell for it.”

  “So? You learned something, then. Didn’t you?”

  I let that one slide.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?” Inside me, I could feel my anger starting to simmer down, turning into something colder. “That this was what was going to happen?”

  “Because,” said Monica, “if we’d told you, you might not have gone along with it. But if we didn’t tell you, you would.”

  “For Christ’s sake. Couldn’t you have at least given me the chance?”

  “I did.” Her gaze locked level with mine. “Last night. When I talked to you, and roped you in. If you were as tough as you need to be . . . you wouldn’t have fallen for it. You’re still not tough enough. Up here.” She tapped the side of her head with a fingertip. “There’s still just a little too much left, of that other Kim. The one you used to be.”

  I listened to her – and I knew she was right. I wasn’t angry at the two of them any longer. I was pissed at myself.

  “All right.” I zipped up my jacket. “I’m going home now. Maybe I’ll be back here tomorrow.”

  “Suit yourself.” Cole went on watching the portable TV.

  “But if I do come back –”

  “What?”

  “It’ll be different,” I said. “A lot different.”

  I turned and headed for the door.

  EIGHT

  I went back. I didn’t have a choice.

  Think about it. If I didn’t go back to the warehouse and team up with Cole again, that would’ve meant I was still that other Kim, that Little Nerd Accountant Girl I used to be. Which would’ve meant that Cole was right about me. I wasn’t hard enough. I didn’t have what it takes. So the only way to prove the sonuvabitch wrong was to go back.

  The whole way over there, riding on the Ninja, I couldn’t help thinking that somehow I’d gotten rooked. And he won either way.

  I gave up thinking about it. There was a job to do.

  * * *

  At least Monica wasn’t there. She was at her job, over at the club. Which left Cole and me to get down to business.

  Which at the moment consisted of me tilting my head back to watch Cole swarm up the heavy gym rope that had been tied to the warehouse rafters. His arm muscles bulged with the effort, his useless legs dangling below him. I was impressed in spite of myself.

  He let himself drop, catching himself with the rope looped under his arms, just before he would’ve crashed into the motorized wheelchair below.

  “Not bad, huh?” He was radiant with sweat as he eased himself into the wheelchair. “Not at my best yet – but that’ll come.”

  I tossed him the towel that had been left draped on the padded weightlifting bench. “You didn’t look this good a couple of days ago.”

  “There’s ways,” said Cole. “I can bulk up pretty fast. When I’m motivated.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Glad to hear it. Come over here. I wanna show you something interesting.”

  I followed him as he motored over to where he kept his other equipment. Fortunately, he had scored everything on his shopping list before he had arranged for me to blow up the dealers he got the stuff from.

  “Take a look at this.” He held out something in his hand.

  “What is it?” I took it from him and rolled it in my fingertips. Some kind of bullet – I could tell that much.

  “Something special. That stuff you’ve been shooting before – that was just to sharpen your aim. Get you used to pulling a trigger. Now we gotta talk about the real hardware.” He pointed to the object I was holding. ”That right there is one bad-ass little pisser.”

  I weighed it in my palm. “Feels light.”

  “That’s what makes it so bad-ass. Shaped epoxy cartridge with segmented tungsten-and-silver loads inside. Hits soft tissue, the loads split and pinwheel, ripping things as they go. Shatters bone like matchsticks. Comes out of the barrel with a velocity three times that of a regular bullet. It’ll penetrate Class 3 body armor.
”

  “What’s Class 3 mean?”

  “That’s what McIntyre’s bodyguards wear under their coats. Bulletproof vests. Anything heavier and they wouldn’t be able to move. It’ll stop a lot of stuff – but not that little bastard.”

  That impressed me, too. I handed the bullet back to him.

  “They’re strictly controlled,” said Cole. “Only law enforcement officers are supposed to get their hands on them.”

  “Yeah, like a lot of the stuff you’ve got around here.” I glanced around the warehouse, then back to him. “But do we really need things like that? To do what we want to do?”

  “We might.” Cole dropped the bullet into the pouch at the side of his wheelchair. “If you’re imagining that this job is going to be a piece of cake, you’re way out of line. It would’ve been tough before – and now it’s going to be lot tougher. Michael’s really taking his job seriously, as the company’s security head. He’s really tightened things up. McIntyre doesn’t show his face out on the street anymore. They drive him in to the parking garage, then take him upstairs in the elevator. The whole way, he’s surrounded by his people.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I’ve got my sources.”

  “Like who?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Cole. “Some people tell me things because they hate McIntyre as much as you do. Not going to break their hearts when something bad happens to him. Other people – I’ve gotta pay them, to get them to talk. That’s one of the reasons we needed so much money. Information costs. At least the good stuff does.”

  I mulled it over. “So all that would be why a sniper operation wouldn’t work?”

  “Basically. We just wouldn’t have a chance of getting a clear shot at McIntyre. Not from a distance. So we’ll have to move in close. With the equipment we’ve got, the problem won’t be blowing away McIntyre and his bodyguards. We can do that. What we gotta work out, though, is getting in. Where we’d have a tight shot on him. We pull that off, you won’t have to worry about how good your aim is. You’ll be standing right on top of him.”

  “If,” I said. “If we can get in.”

  Cole nodded. “That’s the real job. The rest is just details.”

  “So how do we do it?”

  “I’m working on it. And you’re going to help me sort it out. You know stuff – stuff about McIntyre – that I need to know.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Think about it,” said Cole. “You sat on top of that guy’s business for over a year. Those weren’t just numbers. There were names attached. Go through that data the right way, and all kinds of useful things might pop up. You’d know who he meets, when he meets up with them, where they do it, even what they talk about. That’s what’s in those numbers. And –” He pointed with his finger. “In your head. You probably know more about where McIntyre comes and goes than he does.”

  “I’m . . . not sure about that.”

  “I am. I’ve done jobs like this before. Trust me on this one.”

  “Okay.” I sat down on the weightlifting bench, laid my arms on my knees and looked over him. “So we figure out where McIntyre comes and goes. And when. What good does that do us?”

  “Dig it.” Cole picked up a dumbbell from one of the racks and started doing arm curls. “When McIntyre’s home safe, with his bodyguards, or he’s in that office of his, then he’s protected. He’s hard to get at. But when he moves from one place to another, the protection thins out. That’s just the nature of reality. Nobody is ever as safe when they’re going from Point A to Point B, as they are once they’ve arrived. So that’s when McIntyre becomes vulnerable. That’s where we get at him.”

  It seemed to make sense. If anything did anymore.

  “One more thing.” Cole switched the weight to his other hand. “That we gotta think about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What else do you want to do? Besides kill McIntyre?”

  “Huh?” I felt my brow crease. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” said Cole, “do you want to be alive afterward or not? Because it’s one kind of job to get in there and blow away somebody like that, and it’s another kind to blow them away and get back out. Which do you want to do?”

  I didn’t have an answer for him. This was something I hadn’t thought about before. In the short little movie that played on the screen inside my head, nothing came after the scene in which I emptied a gun into McIntyre’s chest.

  “Well . . .” I gave a slow nod. “I guess I want to get back out. When we’re done. And . . . you know . . . alive and stuff.” I nodded a little more forcefully. “Yeah. I’m pretty certain that’s what I want.”

  “You sure? Because that makes it harder.”

  “I got responsibilities. There’s my brother –”

  “That’s as good an excuse as any.”

  “It’s not an excuse. He’s . . . like you. He can’t get around on his own. Somebody’s got to look after him.”

  “I know all about that,” said Cole. “And that’s fine. But like I said – it makes the job harder.”

  “But we can do it, right? And get back out. That’s doable, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He went on doing reps with the weight. “I just need to think about how we go about the job. Everything’s possible, Kim. Except for the stuff that isn’t.” The veins on his arm were starting to stand out, like blue snakes. “In the meantime, you do some thinking, too. About what you know. About McIntyre.”

  “All right.” I stood up from the bench. I started for the warehouse door, then stopped and looked back at him. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What do you want? Do you want to get back out, after we kill McIntyre?”

  “Maybe.” He shrugged. “I mean . . . it’d be fine if it happened that way. But I don’t really care. One way or the other.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what to say next.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Cole set the weight back in the rack and picked up a bigger one. “It’s just one of the ways that you know. That’s there’s still a difference between you and me.”

  I didn’t say anything at all. I just turned and left.

  NINE

  At least Cole wasn’t watching cartoons when I got over to the warehouse the next day.

  “Check this out.” He had gotten himself hooked up with one of those DVR rigs – that probably also came out of the money I had stolen from McIntyre’s business accounts – so he could record and play back shows he’d otherwise have missed. “You didn’t make the news. That’s good.”

  I stood beside the mattress on the floor, unzipping my jacket, and watching the news report he brought up with a couple pushes on the remote. The face of Karen Ibanez, the reporter who I’d gone to see a while back – not that it’d done me any good – came up on the screen. She was holding a microphone with the station logo on it. Behind her was the blackened street corner where the bomb in Braemer’s backpack had gone off, the whole area cordoned off with yellow Police Investigation – Do Not Cross tapes. Usually she did straight business coverage, but since the explosion had taken place right at the edge of the downtown financial district, that must’ve been the reason she got sent out for this spot.

  Cole turned up the volume so I could hear what she was saying.

  “. . . Meanwhile, federal agents are investigating possible links between at least two of the victims and international terrorist organizations –”

  He muted the portable TV set with another push on the remote.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” He looked up at me. “They’re all going to be chasing their tails, looking for big, bad terrorists. Who said these heightened security alerts don’t do any good? Nobody saw some little Asian chick shooting away from the scene on a motorcycle.”

  “Maybe if I’d been wearing a burqa.”

  “Nah – then you’d have been even more invisible. It’s like going through security at th
e airport. Wave a cardboard scimitar over your head and shout, Death to the infidel! – they’ll invite you to sit up front with the pilot. In the meantime, you’re off the hook. Nobody’s looking for you.”

  “Story of my life.” I set my backpack down on the warehouse floor.

  “Trust me. It’s what you want.”

  “Did she say those guys – the ones who got blown up – that they were terrorists? Because if that’s what that Braemer guy was, I’m not impressed.”

  “She said links.” Cole pointed to the TV. “Connections. As in selling stuff to people, that they shouldn’t have.”

  “Like you.”

  “At least I know what I’m doing. I don’t blow myself up with it.”

  “Neither did they.”

  “Yeah, but that’s what the police and the federal types will think happened. Great thing about nitwits like that getting hold of dangerous stuff, they tend to eliminate themselves before they can do too much damage to anyone else. As a general rule . . .”

  I wasn’t really listening to him. I was trying to work out the numbers for my personal ledgers, inside my head. Just goes to show that you can make the girl into a killer, but some part of her is still going to be an accountant. The way I figured it, I had definitely killed that old man Pomeroy. So that was a solid one in that column. And now that Braemer guy and his equipment dealer buddies – that was another half-dozen, after the police coroners had gathered up all the bits and pieces. But I hadn’t been really trying to kill them – I’d just been the one who’d pushed the button on my cell phone. That whole thing had been more of Cole and Monica’s doing. But still, I should get at least fifty percent credit for that last bunch. So add in another three in the kills column.

  “This sucks,” I said aloud. “I’m racking up numbers like crazy here. And I still haven’t gotten around to killing the person I want to.”