Thirteen
The tinted windows of the limousine turned the
passenger compartment into a mobile cage. The glass between Abraham
Darker and the driver was as equally opaque. The overhead lights, though,
remained on when the door closed. Abe joined a gaunt, five and a half
foot Mexican seated opposite him in the spacious interior of the car.
The stranger refused to make eye contact as the car
got under way. He sat primly against the far door and patiently stared
off into space. The car drove south to the Silver Ridge Nuclear Facility,
then turned east at the junction and drove another ten or fifteen minutes
at high speed. They stopped at a rural service station to fill the gas
tank and use the restrooms. After that the drive became a worrisome
torment.
Abe’s companion glanced at him finally. “Name’s
Kopel,” he said with a trace of a Spanish accent. “What’s this all
about? Do you know?”
Abe shook his head.
“What was that little burg back there?”
The information seemed harmless enough. “Silver
Ridge.”
The little man eyed him boldly. “Things going pretty
smooth in Silver Ridge?”
Abe gave a noncommittal shrug.
“King ever give you any shit? I didn’t know his
operation extended this far west?”
Abe stared at the man, refusing to even
voice his
hesitation to answer. He didn’t dare talk about his business relationship
with King.
“Have it your own way, but I really think we’re
taking too much crap. Wait until you meet him. The bastard’s a clown.
He’s a complete psychiatric basket case. The feds are going to bust him
sooner or later. He’s too ambitious and he’s maintaining way too high a
profile. Mark my words, friend.”
Kopel was jittery. Clearly he knew more about King
and his operation than Abe. Abe wondered to what extent the man’s
agitation was justified.
The drive ended at midnight. The car turned onto a
dirt path penetrating a stand of trees, falling in behind another like
it. Headlights pulled up close behind them. The vehicles drove
single-file into a clearing and maneuvered themselves, forming a one
hundred foot circle with their headlights pointing inward. Abe counted
ten cars.
Doors opened and slammed. Drivers stood alongside
their cars, openly armed with handguns. More slowly, their passengers
began to emerge. Abe joined them, rising from the back of the car into a
warm and humid night. Thunder rumbled on the eastern horizon. The
Mexican got out the other side of the car and likewise took a moment to
take in his ominous surroundings.
A group entered the well-lit center of the clearing
already populated by
six guards with assault rifles and a giant of a man who could only be
King. Passengers of the convoy formed a line of twenty or so men.
King was a bear of a man, a Neanderthal in a business
suit with a grin that flashed a mouthful of prosthetic teeth the color of
pewter. Kopel leaned close. “Told you so,” he muttered unhappily. “He’s
seen too many fucking James Bond movies.”
King stomped his way to the far end of the semicircle
and slapped the end man on the shoulder. “Douglas, Boston Harbor!” He
moved to the next. “Williams, Torco Corporation!” One by one, he walked
along the formation and identified each man. He paused to peer down at
the much smaller man at Abe’s side. “And we have Kopel, my invaluable
little double agent.”
Abe had a hard time keeping his eyes off King’s
dentures. King had a wide mouth. The teeth were obviously metal and
somewhat oversized. He fought to keep his train of thought focused.
King eyed him and grinned broadly. “Abraham Darker,
Silver Ridge. Our operations have progressed smoothly through Silver
Ridge. Have you been compensated as we agreed?”
Abe gave an emphatic nod. “Yes, sir, I have.”
Abe had been forced to do business with a bank forty
miles away. A safety deposit box that held his bank book showed an
initial deposit of twenty-five thousand dollars. The bank had mailed him
a notice with each subsequent, weekly five thousand dollar deposit. Abe
had yet to decide how to handle such sums of money. He dared not flaunt
his sudden wealth in Silver Ridge.
“You are aware of the risks involved in our
operation, Mr. Darker, legal risks, and security risks, and the exact
nature of these risks should we fall under the scrutiny of local and
federal law enforcement organizations?”
“I know the risks,” Abe said. “Silver Ridge will
cause no problem.”
King drew closer, his gray eyes narrowing. “I need
to increase the risk tenfold. There will be no added responsibilities on
your part, but the consequence of failure would be far more severe. We’ll
be bringing an extremely dangerous and valuable substance through Silver
Ridge. Consider the contraband we’ve been smuggling a dry run. Are you
game?”
All eyes were on him. Abe scrutinized the man
boldly, trying to hold his own against King’s knack for intimidation.
“Does our financial compensation remain the same?”
King bellowed laughter. “No, it does not.
Compensation will increase tenfold as well.”
One quarter of a million dollars? Abe’s stomach
knotted with tension. He had no use for a sum of money that great. “May
I ask what is you’re bring through?”
“You may not. We’ll be containing our product in the
same plastic foam spacers, but the product will be metallic, a solid
pellet in form, not a powder. There will be fewer of these items, but not
a single spacer is to be lost in transit.”
It was a bad time to voice his reservations. “I
understand,” Abe said evenly.
“Compensation will be one quarter million American
dollars paid in advance, although the account will be inaccessible until
the successful conclusion of our business together. There will be no
other stipulations. Failure to fulfill your end of the bargain will make
it necessary for your estate to decide how to dispose of your
windfall. After your funeral and burial expenses, of course.”
Abe’s head reeled with disbelief. He had no
understanding of what he had gotten himself into. He had no use for one
quarter of a million dollars, nor the death threats that went with it.
Neither could he just turn away and hope to turn back the clock to a time
before King’s representatives had contacted him with offers of reasonable
amounts of cash for reasonable levels of risk.
King stepped back and addressed the overall group.
“Most of you are new to my organization. This is our first meeting face
to face. I have important information for each of you regarding the new
phase in our operations. I could have funneled this information through
intermediaries as I have in the past, but there is also the matter of
security to discuss. I want it equally clear to you that our lives are on
the line. A traitor in our midst would destroy us all.”
King surveyed his audience, smiling. His gaze
settled on the man standing at Abe’s side, the little Mexican named Kopel.
Slowly, King’s smile faded. Kopel blanched, his expression turned to one
of abject horror. He stepped back and half turned to flee.
King was surprisingly quick for a man his size. He
caught the shrieking man by his shock of hair and dragged him before the
group. King’s voice roared above the man’s screams. “This is not a
warning, only a demonstration of why I am not a man to be misjudged,
challenged, or defied!”
King pulled the small man closer, then forced his
head back. Abe’s shock was too intense to recall the rumors he had
heard. King seemed like a reasonable man, certainly an intelligent man.
King was a generous man, and an obvious professional. But as he watched,
King clamped one hand over Kopel’s face. He lifted the small man kicking
and screaming into the air with his free hand placed behind his head.
Before Abe could turn away, King’s gaping mouth
closed over Kopel’s throat. Kopel convulsed once, his screams cut short
by the gurgling sound of a severed windpipe and arteries filling his lungs
with his own blood. Abe whipped his head aside as King pulled free, his
jaws filled with raw meat. Arterial blood gushed wildly.
Of the group that witnessed the horrific murder, most
turned away, ashen, with expressions of horror. A few panicked and dashed
madly toward the safety of their cars. More than one or two stopped to
vomit along the way. Only a few openly stared at the scene of horror,
transfixed in macabre fascination by King’s ghoulish behavior.
Abe had been forewarned.
Now, he had seen for himself.
Numbed with shock, he returned to his limousine only to find that most of
the crowd was being turned back to the clearing to finish their business
with the bloodied giant. But Abe’s driver signaled for him. “You’re
done, Darker. Lucky you. Time to go home, except you'll spend
the day in a nice motel until King’s done with everyone, just in case. I’ll pick you up
midnight and have you home by dawn tomorrow.”
Abe sat alone in the back seat until the driver
closed the doors and drove away. Time and distance between himself and
what he had witnessed did little to dim the images burned into his
memory. He had thought that he would be bettering himself, his family,
and Silver Ridge at the expense of drug runners and the sick society they
preyed upon. He had not thought of himself as naive and ignorant as Noah
and Lazarus.
But now he feared that he had brought ruin upon them
all.
